Part 5

There was once a woman--obviously a thoughtful woman--who remarked that she had noticed that if she managed to live till Friday, she invariably survived the rest of the week. I did not myself know this philosopher, who is preserved to history in one of Roscoe Conkling’s speeches, but her discovery always recurs to me about this time of year, when February begins to disclose those first freshening glimpses of sunlight and blue skies to bleared, fog-smudged and shivering London. Aha! if we have won thus far, if we have contrived to get to February, then we shall surely see the Spring. At least the one has heretofore involved the other--and there is confident promise in the smile of a noon-day once more able to cast a shadow, albeit the teeth of the east wind gleam close behind that smile.

It was a day for a walk--no set and joyous rural tramp, indeed, with pipe and wallet, and a helpful spring underfoot in the clean hard roadway, and an honest, well-balanced stick for the bell-ringing gentry who shall come at you on wheels from behind--but just an orderly, contemplative urban ramble, brisk enough for warmth, but with no hurry, and above all no destination. And it was a day, moreover, for letting one’s fellow-creatures pass along with scant notice--a winter-ridden, shuffling, mud-stained company these, conscious of being not at all worth examination--and for giving eye instead to the house-fronts in the sunshine, and radiant chimneypots and tiles above them, and the signs of blessed, unaccustomed blue still further up. There was, it is true, an undeniable disproportion between the inner look of these things, and this gladness of the heart because of them. Glancing more closely, one could see that they were not taking the sun seriously, and, for their own part, were expecting more fogs next week. And farther westward, when stucco, brick, and stone gave way to park-land, it was apparent at sight that the trees were flatly incredulous.

They say that in Ireland, where the mildness of climate has in the past prompted many experiments with exotic growths, the trees not really indigenous to the island never learn sense, but year after year are gulled by this February fraud into gushing expansively forth with sap and tender shoots, only to be gripped and shrivelled by the icy after-hand of March. The native tree, however, knows this trick of old, and greets the sham Spring with a distinctive, though well-buttoned-up wink. In Kensington Park region one couldn’t be sure that the trees really saw the joke. It is not, on the whole, a humourous neighbourhood. But at all events they were not to be fooled into premature buds and sprouts and kindred signs of silliness. Every stiffly exclusive drab trunk rising before you, every section of the brown lacework of twigs up above, seemed to offer a warning advertisement: “No connection with the sunshine over the way!”

Happily the flower-beds exhibited more sympathy. Up through the mould brave little snowdrops had pushed their pretty heads, and the crocuses, though with their veined outer cloaks of sulphur, mauve, and other tints still wrapped tight about them, wore almost a swaggering air to show how wholly they felt at home. Emboldened by this bravado, less confident fellows were peeping forth, though in such faltering fashion that one could scarcely tell which was squill, which narcissus or loitering jonquil. Still, it was good to see them. They too were glad that they had lived till February, because after that comes the Spring.

And it was better still, as I turned to stroll on, to behold coming toward me down the path, with little swinging step, and shapely head well up in air, none other than our Ermyntrude.

I say “our” because--it is really absurd to think of it--it seems only a few months ago since she was a sprawling tom-boy sort of a little girl, who sat on my knee and listened with her mouth open to my reminiscences of personal encounters with unicorns and the behemoth of Holy Writ. She must be now--by George! she _is_--not a minute under two-and-twenty. And that means--_hélas!_ it undoubtedly means--that I am getting to be an old boy indeed. At Christmas-tide--I recall it now--Mrs Albert spoke of me as the oldest friend of the family. It sounded kindly at the time, and I had a special pleasure in the smile Ermyntrude wore as she, with the others, lifted her glass towards me. I won’t say what vagrant thoughts and ambitions that smile did not raise in my mind--and, lo! they were toasting me as an amiable elderly friend of the Fernbank household. No wonder I am glad to have lived till February!

Ermyntrude had a roll of music in her hands. There was a charming glow on her cheeks, and a healthy, happy, sparkle in her eyes. She stopped short before me, with a little exclamation of not displeased surprise!

“Why, how nice to run upon you like this,” she said, in high spirits. “We thought you must have gone off to the Riviera, or Algiers, or somewhere--for your cold, you know. Mamma was speaking of you only yesterday--hoping that you were taking care of yourself.”

“Had I a cold?” I asked absently. The air had grown chillier. We walked along together, and she let me carry the music.

“O--you haven’t heard,” she exclaimed suddenly, “such news as I have for you! You couldn’t ever guess!”

“Is it something about crinoline?” I queried. “Your mother was telling

“Rubbish!” said Ermyntrude gaily. “I’m engaged!”

The wind had really got round into the East, and I, fastened my coat at the collar. “I am sure”--I remarked at last--“I’m sure I congratulate--the happy young man. Do I know him?”

“I hardly think so,” she replied. “You see, it’s--it’s what you might call rather sudden. We haven’t known him ourselves very long--that is, intimately. You may have heard his name--the Honourable Knobbeleigh Jones. It’s a very old family though the title is somewhat new. His father is Lord Skillyduff, you know.”

“The shipping man?” I said, wearily.

“Yes. He and papa are together on some board or other. That is how we came to know them. Papa says he never saw such business ability and sterling worth combined in one man before--I’m speaking of the father, you know. He began life in quite a small way, with just a few ships that he rented, or something like that. Then there was a war on some coast in Africa or Australia--it begins with an A, I know--oh, _is_ there a place called Ashantee?--yes, that’s it--and he got the contract to take out four shiploads of hay to our troops--it would be for their horses, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes: the asses connected with the military branch are needed at home--or at least are kept there.”

“Well, after he started, he got orders to stop at some place and wait for other orders. He did so, and he waited four years and eight months. Those orders never came. The hay all rotted, of course: the ships almost moulded away: I daresay some of the crew died of old age--But Mr Jones never stirred from his post. Finally, some English official came on him by accident--quite! and so he was recalled. Papa says very few men would have shown such tenacity of purpose and grasp of the situation. Mamma says his fidelity to duty was magnificent.”

“Magnificent--yes,” I commented; “but it wasn’t war.”

“Oh, bless you! there _was_ no war _then_,” explained Ermyntrude. “The war had been ended for _years_. And all that while the pay for shipping that hay had been going on, so that the Government owed him--I think it was £45,000. Of course he got more contracts, and then he was made a baronet, and could build his own ships; and now he is a lord, and papa says the War Office would be quite helpless without him.”

“And the son,” I asked; “what does he do?”

“Why, nothing, of course!” said Ermyntrude, lifting her pretty brows a little in surprise. “He is the eldest son.”

“I didn’t know but he might have gone in for the Army, or Parliament, or something,” I explained weakly: “just to occupy his mind.”

She smiled to herself--somewhat grimly, I thought. “No,” she said, assuming a serious face, “he says doing things is all rot, if you aren’t obliged to do them. Of course, he goes in for hunting and shooting and all that, and he has a houseboat and a yacht, and one year he was in the All-Slumpshire eleven, but that was too much bother. He hates bother.”

We had come out upon the street now, and walked for a little in silence.

“Ermie,” I said at last, “you mustn’t be annoyed with me--this is one of my sentimental days, and you know as an old friend of the family I’ve a certain right of free speech--but this doesn’t seem to me quite good enough. A girl like you--beautiful and clever and accomplished, knowing your way about among books, and with tastes above the ruck--there ought to be a better outlook for you than this! I know that type of young man, and he isn’t in your street at all. Come now!” I went on, gathering courage, “look me in the face if you can, and tell me that you honestly love this young man, or that you really respect his father, or that you candidly expect to be happy. I defy you to do it!”

I was wrong. Ermyntrude did look me in the face, squarely and without hesitation. She halted for the moment to do so, and her gaze, though not unkindly, was full of serious frankness.

“There is one thing I do expect,” she said, calmly. “I expect to get away from Fernbank.”

_Suggesting Considerations possibly heretofore Overlooked by Commentators upon the Laws of Property_

You will find Dudley up in what he calls his library,” said Mrs Albert in the hallway. “I’m _so_ sorry I must go out--but he’ll be glad to see you. And--let me entreat you, don’t give him any encouragement!”

“What!” I cried, “encourage Uncle Dudley? Oh--never, never!”

“No, just be firm with him,” Mrs Albert went on. “Say that it mustn’t be thought of for a moment. And Oh--by the way--it’s as well to warn you: _don’t_ ask him what he did it for! It seems that every one asks him that--and he gets quite enraged about it now, when that particular question is put. As like as not he’d throw something at you.” She spoke earnestly, in low, impressive tones.

“Wild horses should not drag it from me,” I pledged myself. “I will not encourage him: I will not enrage him; I swear not to ask him what he did it for. But--if you don’t mind--could I, so to speak, bear the shock of learning what it is that he _has_ done?”

“You haven’t heard?” Mrs Albert asked, glancing up at me, with an astonished face, as I stood on the stairs. When I shook my head, she put out her hand to the latch, and opened the door, as if to heighten the dramatic suspense. Then she turned and looked me in the eye with solemn intentness. “What has he done?” she echoed in a hollow voice: “You go upstairs and see!”

The door closed behind her, and I made my way noiselessly, two steps at a time, to the floor above. Some vague sense of disaster seemed to brood over the silent, half-lighted stairway and the deserted landing. I knocked at Uncle Dudley’s door--almost prepared to find my signal unanswered. But no, his voice came back, cheerily enough, and I entered the room.

“Oh, it’s you!” said my friend, rising from his chair. “Glad to see you,”--and we shook hands. Standing thus, I found myself staring into his face with a rude and prolonged fixity of gaze, under which he first smiled--a strange, unwholesome sort of smile--then flushed a little, then scowled and averted his glance.

“Great heavens!” I exclaimed at last. “Why, man alive, what on earth possessed you to--”

“Come now!” broke in Uncle Dudley, with peremptory sternness. “Chuck it!”

“Yes--I know”--I stammered haltingly along--“I promised I wouldn’t ask you--but--”

“But the original simian instincts triumph over your resolutions, eh?” said my friend, crustily. “Yes, I know. I’ve had pretty nearly a week of it now. That question has been asked me, I estimate, somewhere about six hundred and seventy-eight times since last Thursday. It’s only fair to you to tell you that I have registered a vow to hit the next man who asks me that fool of a question--‘What did you do it for?’--straight under his left ear. I probably saved your life by interrupting you.”

Though the words were fierce, there was a marked return of geniality in the tone. I took the liberty of putting a hand over Uncle Dudley’s shoulder, and marching him across to the window.

“Let’s have a good look at you,” I said.

“I did it myself; I did it with my little hatchet; I did it because I wanted to; I had a right to do it; I should do it again if the fit struck me----” Thus, with mock gravity, Uncle Dudley ran on as I scrutinised his countenance in the strong light. “And furthermore,” he added, “I don’t care one single hurrah in Hades whether you like it or not.”

“I think on the whole,” I mused aloud--“yes, I think I rather do like it--now that I accustom myself to it.”

Uncle Dudley’s face brightened on the instant. “Do you really?” he exclaimed, and beamed upon me. In spite of his professed indifference to my opinion, it was obvious that I had pleased him.

“Sit down,” he said--“there are the matches behind you--hope these aren’t too green for you. Yes, my boy, I created quite a flutter in the hen-yard, I can tell you. Did my sister tell you?--she nearly fainted, and little Amy burst out boo-hooing as if she’d lost her last friend. When you come to think of it, old man, it’s really too ridiculous, you know.”

“It certainly has its grotesque aspects,” I admitted.

Uncle Dudley looked up sharply, as if suspecting some ironical meaning in my words. “You really do think it’s an improvement?” he asked, with a doubtful note in his voice.

“Of course, it makes a tremendous change,” I said, diplomatically, “and the novelty tends perhaps to confuse judgment: but I must confess the result is--is, well, very interesting.”

My friend did not look wholly satisfied. “It shows what stupid people we are,” he went on in a dogmatic way. “Why, the way they’ve gone on, you’d think I had no property rights in the thing at all--that I was merely a trustee for it--bound to give an account to every Tom-Dick-and-Harry who came along and had nothing better to occupy his mind with. And then that eternal, vacuous, woollen-brained ‘What did you do it for?’ Oh, that’s got to be too sickening for words! And the confounded familiarity of the whole thing! Why, hang me, if even the little Jew cigar dealer down on the corner didn’t feel entitled to pass what he took to be some friendly remarks on the subject. ‘Vy,’ he said, ‘if I could say vidout vlattery, vot a haddsobe jeddlebad you ver, and vy did you do dot by yourself?’ It gets on a man’s nerves, you know, things like that.”

“But hasn’t anyone liked the change?” I asked.

Uncle Dudley sighed. “That’s the worst of it,” he said, dubiously. “Only two men have said they liked it--and it happens that they are both persons of conspicuously weak intellect. That’s rather up against me, isn’t it? But on the other hand, you know, people who are silliest about everything else always get credit for knowing the most about art and beauty and all that. Perhaps in such a case as this, I daresay their judgment might be better than all the others. And after all, what do _I_ care? That’s the point I make: that it’s _my_ business and nobody else’s. If a man hasn’t got a copyright in his own personal appearance, why there is no such thing as property. But instead of recognising this, any fellow feels free to come up and say: ‘You look like an unfrocked priest,’ or ‘Hullo! another burglar out of work,’ and he’s quite surprised if you fail to show that you’re pleased with the genial brilliancy of his remarks. I don’t suppose there is any other single thing which the human race lapses into such rude and insolent meddlesomeness over as it does over this.”

“It _is_ pathetic,” I admitted--“but--but it’ll soon grow again.”

Uncle Dudley laughed a bitter laugh. “By Jove,” he cried, “I’ve more than half a mind not to let it. It would serve ‘em right if I didn’t. Why, do you know--you’d hardly believe it! My sister had a dinner party on here for Saturday night, and after I’d--I’d done it--she cancelled the invitations--some excuse about a family loss--a bereavement, my boy. Well, you know, treatment of that sort puts a man on his mettle. I’m entitled to resent it. And besides--you know--of course it does make a great change--but somehow I fancy that when you get used to it--come now--the straight griffin, as they say--what do _you_ think?”

“I’m on oath not to encourage you,” I made answer.

“There you have it!” cried Uncle Dudley: “the old tyrannical conspiracy against the unusual, the individual, the true! Let nobody dare to be himself! Let us have uniformity, if all else perishes. The frames must be alike in the Royal Academy, that’s the great thing; the pictures don’t matter so much. You see our women-folk now, this very month, getting ready to case themselves in ugly hoops which they hate, at the bidding of they know not whom, because, if they did not, the hideous possibility of one woman being different from another woman would darken the land. A man is not to be permitted the pitiful privilege of seeing his own mouth, not even once in fifteen years, simply because it temporarily inconveniences the multitude in their notions as to how he is in the habit of looking! What rubbish it is!”

“It _is_ rubbish,” I assented--“and you are talking it. Your sister who fainted, your niece who wept, your friends who averted their gaze in anguish, the hordes of casual jackasses who asked why you did it, the kindly little Jew cigar man who broke forth in lamentations--these are the world’s jury. They have convicted you--sorrowfully but firmly. You yourself, for all your bravado, realise the heinousness of your crime. You are secretly ashamed, remorseful, penitent. I answer for you--you will never do it again.”

“And yet it isn’t such a bad mouth, either,” mused Uncle Dudley, with a lingering glance at the mirror over the mantel. “There is humour, delicacy of perception, affection, gentleness--ever so many nice qualities about it which were all hidden up before. The world ought to welcome the revelation--and it throws stones instead. Ah well!--pass the matches--let us yield gracefully to the inevitable! It shall grow again.”

“Mrs Albert will be so glad,” I remarked.

_Narrating the Failure of a Loyal Attempt to Circumvent Adversity by means of Modern Appliances_

If his name was Jabez, why weren’t we told so, I’d like to know?” demanded Mrs Albert of me, with a momentary flash in her weary glance. “What right had the papers to go on calling him J. Spencer, year after year, while he was deluding the innocent, and fattening upon the bodies of his dupes? To be sure, now that the mask is off, and he has fled, they speak of him always as Jabez. Why didn’t they do it before, while honest people might still have been warned? But no--they never did--and now it’s too late--too late!”

The poor lady’s voice broke pathetically upon this reiterated plaint. She bowed her head, and as I looked with pained sympathy upon the drooping angle of her proud face, I could see the shadows about her lips quiver.

A sad tale indeed it was, to which I had been listening--here in a lonesome corner of the cloistral, dim-lit solitude of the big drawing-room at Fernbank. It was not a new story. Kensington has known it by heart for a generation. Bloomsbury learned it earlier, and before that it was familiar in Soho--away off in the old days when the ruffling gentry of Golden Square fought for the chance of buying ingenious John Law’s South Sea scrip. And even then, the experience was an ancient and half-forgotten memory of Bishopsgate and the Minories. It was the old, old tragedy of broken fortunes.

Mrs Albert was clear that it began with the Liberator troubles. I had my own notion that Mr Albert Grundy was skating on thin ice before the collapse of the building societies came. However that may be, there was no doubt whatever that the cumulative Australian disasters had finished the business. There were melancholy details in her recital which I lack the courage to dwell upon. The horse and brougham were gone; the lease of Fernbank itself was offered for sale, with possession before Michaelmas, if desired; Ermyntrude’s engagement was as good as off.

“It won’t be a bankruptcy,” said Mrs Albert, lifting her face and resolutely winking the moisture from her lashes. “We shall escape that--but for the moment at least I must abandon my position in society. Dudley is over to-day looking at a small place in Highgate, although Albert thinks he would prefer Sydenham. My own feeling is that some locality from which you could arrive by King’s Cross or St Paneras would be best. One never meets anybody one knows there. Then, when matters adjust themselves again, as of course they will, we could return here--to this neighbourhood, at least--and just mention casually having been out at our country place--on the children’s account, of course. And Floribel _is_ delicate, you know.”

“Oh well, then,” I said, trying to put buoyance into my tone, “it isn’t so had after all. And you feel--Albert feels--quite hopeful about things coming right again?”

My friend’s answering nod of affirmation had a certain qualifying dubiety about it. “Yes, we’re hopeful,” she said. “But a fortnight ago, I felt positively sanguine. Nobody ever worked harder than I did to deserve success, any way. I only failed through gross treachery--and that, too, at the hands of the very people of whom I could never, _never_ have believed it. When you find the aristocracy openly actuated by mercenary motives, as I have done this past month, it almost makes you ask what the British nation is coming to!”

“Dear me!” I exclaimed, “is it as bad as that?”

“You shall judge for yourself,” said Mrs Albert gravely. “You know that I organised--quite early in the Spring--the Loyal Ladies’ Namesake Committee of Kensington. I do not boast in saying that I really organised it, quite from its beginnings. The idea was mine; practically all the labour was mine. But when one is toiling to realise a great ideal like that, one frequently loses sight of small details. I ought to have known better--but I took a serpent to my bosom. I was weak enough to associate with me in the enterprise that monument of duplicity and interested motives--the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn. Why, she hadn’t so much as an initial letter to entitle her to belong----”

“I am not sure that I follow you,” I put in. “Ladies’ Namesake Committee--initial letter--I don’t seem to grasp the idea.”

“It’s perfectly simple,” explained Mrs Albert. “The idea was that all the ladies--our set, you know--whose name was ‘May’ should combine in subscribing for a present.”

“But your name is Emily,” I urged, thoughtlessly.

“Oh, we weren’t exactly literal about it,” said Mrs Albert; “we _couldn’t_ be, you know. It would have shut out some of our very best people. But I came very near the standard, indeed. My second name is Madge. You take the first two letters of that, and the ‘y’ from Emily, and there you have it. Oh, I assure you, very few came even as near it as that--and as I said to Dudley at the time, if you think of it, even _her_ name isn’t _really_ May. It’s only a popular contraction. But that Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn, she had no actual right whatever to belong. Her names are Hester Winifred Edith. She hasn’t even one _letter_ right!”

“Ah, that was indeed treachery!” I ejaculated.