Upsidonia Part 18

"Oh no, you couldn't do that."

"But I shouldn't have to live in London in order to work. I would much rather live out of it, and have it to go to."

"That is what I really feel about Culbut. If we could live here, just as we do, without feeling that we were different from other people, I should like it better than living in Culbut itself. Do they look down on the rich people living in the suburbs near London, as they do here?"

"There is a tendency that way," I admitted. "How would you like to live at Cambridge? I should be amongst friends, and there would be plenty to do there."

"I think it would be delightful from what you have told me about it. You could do your work there, couldn't you?"

"Yes, I could do a lot of work, if I wanted to; and I could always get a game of some sort."

"I thought it was only the undergraduates who played games. You couldn't row in the boat, could you?"

"I could row _you_ in a boat. We could get a lot of fun in Cambridge, and we could always go to London when we wanted to."

"And we could get a pretty house there--not too big?"

"Yes, we could get that. I think perhaps you're right about the big house. Whoever loves the golden mean will avoid a palace as much as a hovel. Horace says that, or something like it, and what is good enough for Horace is good enough for me, also for my sweet Upsidonian bride.

Miriam, I adore you, and it is at least a quarter of an hour since I had a kiss."

So we settled to live in Cambridge when we got to England, in the prettiest house we could find, with the prettiest garden, and I prided myself greatly on the moderation of my desires, while Miriam wondered whether we were not laying up trouble for ourselves, when I said that we should want at least four servants in the sort of house I had in my mind.

FOOTNOTES:

[30] Even in the case of a marriage between families living respectively in town and country the separation was more complete than with us. There were few railways in Upsidonia, and even motor-cars were looked upon with suspicion, and only used by the rich. The poor preferred to drive, or still more to walk. But as the population of Upsidonia was divided between those who liked to live in the country and those who liked to live in towns, there was not so much going and coming as with us.

CHAPTER XVIII

A day or two after Miriam had first invited me into her garden the invitation was made public in the fashionable intelligence of the Culbut newspapers, and she and I were the recipients of many congratulations from the numerous friends and relations of the Perrys.

We were entertained by not a few of them. We went to Sunday mid-day dinner with the Earl and Countess of Rumborough, in the parlour behind their shop, over which an aroma of jaded cauliflower lay more in evidence than is customary in the mansions of the great. We drank tea again with the Earl and Countess of Blueberry, and this time the head of the house was present, and treated me with a stately courtesy that impressed me a good deal with the dignity of the family with which I was about to connect myself. I also dined with the Viscount Sandpits, at the mess of his gang, sitting on a plank in the middle of one of the busiest streets in Culbut, and drinking beer out of a tin can.[31] A married sister of Mr. Perry's, not bitten with philanthropic ideas, gave a theatre party for us, and we sat in the front row of the pit, after an agreeable wait of an hour outside the door, and ate oranges between the acts. And we conferred a much-appreciated honour on a rich relation of Mr. Perry's by accepting an invitation to a dinner-party at her house.

Her husband had been unfortunate in the coal business, and had sunk from a clerkship in a colliery company to owning the whole concern. Most of our fellow guests were melancholy and rather subservient people who had made a similar mess of their lives, and were pathetically envious of the bright prospects that were opening out before Miriam and me.

And finally, Mrs. Claudie Chanticleer, who had turned up one morning at Magnolia Hall, in a bedraggled and hectic state, to take away a few sc.r.a.ps from the dustbin, invited us to a picnic in the country, to meet all that was smartest and dirtiest in the exclusive set of which she was an ornament.

We were a little doubtful about accepting this invitation, gratifying as it was. It was Mr. Perry who pressed us to do so. He said that he hated the dirty set and all their ways. It was not through such as they that the regeneration of Upsidonian society would come. At the same time, they included amongst them some of the most aristocratic families in the country, and it would give us a _cachet_ to have our names in the papers as having taken part in one of their entertainments. When we still demurred, he pointed out that my social investigations could not be considered complete unless I mixed with all cla.s.ses of the community. So at last we accepted the invitation.

Mr. Perry refused it for himself, as he said he had a touch of rheumatism and was afraid of the damp gra.s.s; but Edward accepted, saying that he had been working very hard lately and wanted recreation; and Mrs. Perry went to chaperon Miriam. Mrs. Eppstein, who had seen the announcement of the coming function in the papers, came round to hear all about it, and said that she had not for a moment expected that Tricky Chanticleer would have asked _her_, although they had been at school together, and in those days n.o.body thought anything of Tricky, who had always had a red nose.

Most of us walked to the place appointed for the picnic, which was on a stretch of gra.s.s beside a high-road; and we were the dirtiest and most disreputable-looking company I have ever been in. But Mrs. Perry, and some of the older ladies, went in the d.u.c.h.ess of Somersault's caravan, which was hung round with baskets and brooms and wicker chairs; and there were a few donkey carts as well, and an organ barrow for the younger children who could not be left behind. Mrs. Claudie brought what was necessary for the picnic in an old perambulator, which she wheeled herself.

We were accompanied all the way by a crowd of rich sightseers, and a favourite amus.e.m.e.nt of the younger and sprightlier members of our party was to get a ride behind the carriages, and for the others to cry "Whip behind!" and to shriek with laughter at them.

The food consisted of sc.r.a.ps wrapped up in pieces of newspaper, but tea was made in an old tin pot over a fire of sticks, and everyone had brought what they wanted in the way of mugs and utensils for themselves.

I must confess that if one didn't eat, or only ate the eggs and fruit which some of the young bloods had raided from the farmhouses that we pa.s.sed on the way, the entertainment was amusing enough. It was rather annoying to be surrounded by a crowd of gaping sightseers, but the company seemed to be used to it, and, indeed, to prefer it to seclusion, or they would not have fixed upon so public a spot. Newspaper reporters were a good deal in evidence, and cameras were directed on us from all sides, as we sat on the gra.s.s and enjoyed ourselves.

There were many quite intelligent people there. The company, ragged and filthy as it was, was superior to that which I had met in Mr. Perry's club, or to the people I had come across in the large houses in which I had gone slumming with Mrs. Perry.

I happened to sit on the gra.s.s next to a travelling tinker, who told me that he had been Master of a college at c.o.xford, but had given it up because he wanted to see more of life.

"I have often been accused of being a sn.o.b," he said, "especially by those who are envious of the fine company I keep. It is true that my birth would not ent.i.tle me to a place in this brilliant society, but I consider that my learning ought to gain me an entrance into any society, and it has as a matter of fact gained me an entrance into this. I consider that this is the best society that can be had, not because it is aristocratic and exclusive, but because it opens up larger vistas of life. Purely learned society does not do that, and after spending over thirty years of my life in c.o.xford, I grew tired of it, and set out to play my part in the great world."

Finding himself possessed of a sympathetic listener, he expatiated further on the advantages of his present life. He had not seen his way to denuding himself of all property. He had acquired his tinker's outfit because his previous life had unfitted him for the purest form of idleness. "One has to be born and brought up to that," he said, "and, as I told you, I do not pretend to have had the advantages of some of our friends about us here."

"But isn't work a good thing?" I asked; for here he seemed to be denying one of the basic principles of Upsidonian philosophy.

"It is not one of the best things in itself," he said, "although for the great ma.s.s of mankind it is necessary. Freedom and knowledge are the best things; and freedom is even better than knowledge."

"I shouldn't have thought that all the people about us here were remarkable for their love of knowledge," I said.

"Not perhaps of knowledge to be learnt from books," he said, "though a good many of them are not lacking in that. But in knowledge that comes from going about in the world, and seeing human nature denuded of all its trappings, there is hardly any one of those you see around you who is not superior to the most learned scholars of the universities. They know the simple facts of life, as none who do not enjoy the freedom of extreme poverty can possibly know them; and the simple facts of life are the great facts of life."

"Do you consider poverty to be an end in itself?" I asked, mindful of the criticisms I had heard directed against the dirty set.

"It is so near to being an end," he said, "that there is no harm in considering it so. It is only by denuding yourself of everything that you can possess everything--beginning with yourself, which is the only possession really worth anything, and the only one which those foolish people who cannot make up their minds to do without _some_ form of property never can attain to. Why should I want more than the whole earth? It is mine, if I do not shut myself up in one little corner of it and put a fence round me. The moment I do that I lose all the rest. I have exchanged the world for a building plot. With every possession I permit myself, I gouge out a weak place in my armour; I am vulnerable at that point. Possessing nothing, I am impervious to attack."

"You can't possess absolutely no thing," I said. "You must have clothes, for instance."

"You must, as society is at present const.i.tuted; and you are vulnerable, as I said, at that point. If anybody takes away my clothes, I lose my freedom. I cannot go about till I have found some more. And if anybody takes away my tinker's barrow, I lose the work that my training has unfitted me to be without. It is not, strictly speaking, the barrow that I am vulnerable over, because if I could do without it I should have practically my only burden removed; it is the habits I have acquired that are the unfortunate possession there. And that is why book-learning would be considered an evil in a purer state of society. Books themselves are, of course, the most odious form of bondage, and even in my tied-down days I never would acquire them for myself, but borrowed those I could not do without, and committed what was necessary to memory."

"Why should book-learning be considered an evil?" I asked.

"Because it is an acquisition. You are vulnerable in your memory, in which you have stored it. The only knowledge that is worth having is that which impresses itself on the collective mind of mankind. n.o.body can take that away from you, because you share it with all the rest. It is all about you."

"Excuse my touching upon a possibly delicate subject," I said, "but do you object to the name that is commonly fastened on to you?"

"The dirty set? Not at all. Why should I? Cleanliness is only a habit, and a very binding and inconvenient one. If you can break yourself of that one habit alone, you are well on the way to realise what freedom means. You have broken the chain that keeps you circling round in the narrow orbit of the soap-dish and the water-jug, and can wander where the spirit leads you. I have not taken a bath since I left c.o.xford, and all desire to do so has now left me."

The fact had obtruded itself upon me to such an extent that the desire on my part to leave _him_ now became insistent, and as there came a general movement at the moment towards the cocoanut shies, put up by Sir Sigismund Rosenbaum, I withdrew myself from his society. But he was an interesting man, and had given me something to think over.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] Sandpit's Gang was a very smart one. Its members could shift more stuff in an hour than ordinary gangs in two. It was one of the sights of the town to see them running to and fro with heavily loaded barrows, over a plank so narrow that it seemed as if they _must_ fall off and hurt themselves.

CHAPTER XIX

It was at this point that Lord Potter came upon the scene. He had, I believe, refused Mrs. Claudie's invitation, but whether he could not bear to be left out of any important society function, or whether he had made up his mind to take this opportunity of making himself publicly unpleasant to me, he came shuffling along the road, with his toes sticking out of his boots, and was greeted with acclamations by the distinguished company.

I happened to be standing next to Mrs. Claudie when he came up to her, and he favoured me with an indignant and contemptuous glare before he showed me his shoulder, shook hands with her, and said in a loud voice: "And where is the fortunate gentleman from the Highlands? I should like to be introduced to him."