The British Barbarians

“No, I’m certainly not an American,” the stranger answered with a gentle courtesy in his tone that made Philip feel ashamed of his rudeness in questioning him.

“Nor a Colonist?” Philip asked once more, unable to take the hint.

“Nor a Colonist either,” the Alien replied curtly. And then he relapsed into a momentary silence which threw upon Philip the difficult task of continuing the conversation.

The member of Her Britannic Majesty’s Civil Service would have given anything just that minute to say to him frankly, “Well, if you’re not an Englishman, and you’re not an American, and you’re not a Colonist, and you ARE an Alien, and yet you talk English like a native, and have always talked it, why, what in the name of goodness do you want us to take you for?” But he restrained himself with difficulty. There was something about the stranger that made him feel by instinct it would be more a breach of etiquette to question him closely than to question any one he had ever met with.

They walked on along the road for some minutes together, the stranger admiring all the way the golden tresses of the laburnum and the rich perfume of the lilac, and talking much as he went of the quaintness and prettiness of the suburban houses. Philip thought them pretty, too (or rather, important), but failed to see for his own part where the quaintness came in. Nay, he took the imputation as rather a slur on so respectable a neighbourhood: for to be quaint is to be picturesque, and to be picturesque is to be old-fashioned. But the stranger’s voice and manner were so pleasant, almost so ingratiating, that Philip did not care to differ from him on the abstract question of a qualifying epithet. After all, there’s nothing positively insulting in calling a house quaint, though Philip would certainly have preferred, himself, to hear the Eligible Family Residences of that Aristocratic Neighbourhood described in auctioneering phrase as “imposing,” “noble,” “handsome,” or “important-looking.”

Just before they reached Miss Blake’s door, the Alien paused for a second. He took out a loose handful of money, gold and silver together, from his trouser pocket. “One more question,” he said, with that pleasant smile on his lips, “if you’ll excuse my ignorance. Which of these coins is a pound, now, and which is a sovereign?”

“Why, a pound IS a sovereign, of course,” Philip answered briskly, smiling the genuine British smile of unfeigned astonishment that anybody should be ignorant of a minor detail in the kind of life he had always lived among. To be sure, he would have asked himself with equal simplicity what was the difference between a twenty-franc piece, a napoleon, and a louis, or would have debated as to the precise numerical relation between twenty-five cents and a quarter of a dollar; but then, those are mere foreign coins, you see, which no fellow can be expected to understand, unless he happens to have lived in the country they are used in. The others are British and necessary to salvation. That feeling is instinctive in the thoroughly provincial English nature. No Englishman ever really grasps for himself the simple fact that England is a foreign country to foreigners; if strangers happen to show themselves ignorant of any petty matter in English life, he regards their ignorance as silly and childish, not to be compared for a moment to his own natural unfamiliarity with the absurd practices of foreign nations.

The Alien, indeed, seemed to have learned beforehand this curious peculiarity of the limited English intellect; for he blushed slightly as he replied, “I know your currency, as a matter of arithmetic, of course: twelve pence make one shilling; twenty shillings make one pound—”

“Of course,” Philip echoed in a tone of perfect conviction; it would never have occurred to him to doubt for a moment that everybody knew intuitively those beggarly elements of the inspired British monetary system.

“Though they’re singularly awkward units of value for any one accustomed to a decimal coinage: so unreasonable and illogical,” the stranger continued blandly, turning over the various pieces with a dubious air of distrust and uncertainty.

“I BEG your pardon,” Philip said, drawing himself up very stiff, and scarcely able to believe his ears (he was an official of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government, and unused to such blasphemy). “Do I understand you to say, you consider pounds, shillings, and pence UNREASONABLE?”

He put an emphasis on the last word that might fairly have struck terror to the stranger’s breast; but somehow it did not. “Why, yes,” the Alien went on with imperturbable gentleness: “no order or principle, you know. No rational connection. A mere survival from barbaric use. A score, and a dozen. The score is one man, ten fingers and ten toes; the dozen is one man with shoes on—fingers and feet together. Twelve pence make one shilling; twenty shillings one pound. How very confusing! And then, the nomenclature’s so absurdly difficult! Which of these is half-a-crown, if you please, and which is a florin? and what are their respective values in pence and shillings?”

Philip picked out the coins and explained them to him separately. The Alien meanwhile received the information with evident interest, as a traveller in that vast tract that is called Abroad might note the habits and manners of some savage tribe that dwells within its confines, and solemnly wrapped each coin up in paper, as his instructor named it for him, writing the designation and value outside in a peculiarly beautiful and legible hand. “It’s so puzzling, you see,” he said in explanation, as Philip smiled another superior and condescending British smile at this infantile proceeding; “the currency itself has no congruity or order: and then, even these queer unrelated coins haven’t for the most part their values marked in words or figures upon them.”

“Everybody knows what they are,” Philip answered lightly. Though for a moment, taken aback by the novelty of the idea, he almost admitted in his own mind that to people who had the misfortune to be born foreigners, there WAS perhaps a slight initial difficulty in this unlettered system. But then, you cannot expect England to be regulated throughout for the benefit of foreigners! Though, to be sure, on the one occasion when Philip had visited the Rhine and Switzerland, he had grumbled most consumedly from Ostend to Grindelwald, at those very decimal coins which the stranger seemed to admire so much, and had wondered why the deuce Belgium, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland could not agree among themselves upon a uniform coinage; it would be so much more convenient to the British tourist. For the British tourist, of course, is NOT a foreigner.

On the door-step of Miss Blake’s Furnished Apartments for Families and Gentlemen, the stranger stopped again. “One more question,” he interposed in that same suave voice, “if I’m not trespassing too much on your time and patience. For what sort of term—by the day, month, year—does one usually take lodgings?”

“Why, by the week, of course,” Philip answered, suppressing a broad smile of absolute surprise at the man’s childish ignorance.

“And how much shall I have to pay?” the Alien went on quietly. “Have you any fixed rule about it?”

“Of course not,” Philip answered, unable any longer to restrain his amusement (everything in England was “of course” to Philip). “You pay according to the sort of accommodation you require, the number of your rooms, and the nature of the neighbourhood.”

“I see,” the Alien replied, imperturbably polite, in spite of Philip’s condescending manner. “And what do I pay per room in this latitude and longitude?”

For twenty seconds, Philip half suspected his new acquaintance of a desire to chaff him: but as at the same time the Alien drew from his pocket a sort of combined compass and chronometer which he gravely consulted for his geographical bearings, Philip came to the conclusion he must be either a seafaring man or an escaped lunatic. So he answered him to the point. “I should think,” he said quietly, “as Miss Blake’s are extremely respectable lodgings, in a first-rate quarter, and with a splendid view, you’ll probably have to pay somewhere about three guineas.”

“Three what?” the stranger interposed, with an inquiring glance at the little heap of coins he still held before him.

Philip misinterpreted his glance. “Perhaps that’s too much for you,” he suggested, looking severe; for if people cannot afford to pay for decent rooms, they have no right to invade an aristocratic suburb, and bespeak the attention of its regular residents.

“Oh, that’s not it,” the Alien put in, reading his tone aright. “The money doesn’t matter to me. As long as I can get a tidy room, with sun and air, I don’t mind what I pay. It’s the guinea I can’t quite remember about for the moment. I looked it up, I know, in a dictionary at home; but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it. Let me see; it’s twenty-one pounds to the guinea, isn’t it? Then I’m to pay about sixty-three pounds a week for my lodgings.”

This was the right spirit. He said it so simply, so seriously, so innocently, that Philip was quite sure he really meant it. He was prepared, if necessary, to pay sixty odd pounds a week in rent. Now, a man like that is the proper kind of man for a respectable neighbourhood. He’ll keep a good saddle-horse, join the club, and play billiards freely. Philip briefly explained to him the nature of his mistake, pointing out to him that a guinea was an imaginary coin, unrepresented in metal, but reckoned by prescription at twenty-one shillings. The stranger received the slight correction with such perfect nonchalance, that Philip at once conceived a high opinion of his wealth and solvency, and therefore of his respectability and moral character. It was clear that pounds and shillings were all one to him. Philip had been right, no doubt, in his first diagnosis of his queer acquaintance as a man of distinction. For wealth and distinction are practically synonyms in England for one and the same quality, possession of the wherewithal.

As they parted, the stranger spoke again, still more at sea. “And are there any special ceremonies to be gone through on taking up lodgings?” he asked quite gravely. “Any religious rites, I mean to say? Any poojah or so forth? That is,” he went on, as Philip’s smile broadened, “is there any taboo to be removed or appeased before I can take up my residence in the apartments?”

By this time Philip was really convinced he had to do with a madman—perhaps a dangerous lunatic. So he answered rather testily, “No, certainly not; how absurd! you must see that’s ridiculous. You’re in a civilised country, not among Australian savages. All you’ll have to do is to take the rooms and pay for them. I’m sorry I can’t be of any further use to you, but I’m pressed for time to-day. So now, good-morning.”

As for the stranger, he turned up the path through the lodging-house garden with curious misgivings. His heart failed him. It was half-past three by mean solar time for that particular longitude. Then why had this young man said so briskly, “Good morning,” at 3.30 P.M., as if on purpose to deceive him? Was he laying a trap? Was this some wile and guile of the English medicine-men?

II

Next day was (not unnaturally) Sunday. At half-past ten in the morning, according to his wont, Philip Christy was seated in the drawing-room at his sister’s house, smooth silk hat in gloved hand, waiting for Frida and her husband, Robert Monteith, to go to church with him. As he sat there, twiddling his thumbs, or beating the devil’s tattoo on the red Japanese table, the housemaid entered. “A gentleman to see you, sir,” she said, handing Philip a card. The young man glanced at it curiously. A visitor to call at such an early hour!—and on Sunday morning too! How extremely odd! This was really most irregular!

So he looked down at the card with a certain vague sense of inarticulate disapproval. But he noticed at the same time it was finer and clearer and more delicately engraved than any other card he had ever yet come across. It bore in simple unobtrusive letters the unknown name, “Mr. Bertram Ingledew.”

Though he had never heard it before, name and engraving both tended to mollify Philip’s nascent dislike. “Show the gentleman in, Martha,” he said in his most grandiose tone; and the gentleman entered.

Philip started at sight of him. It was his friend the Alien. Philip was quite surprised to see his madman of last night; and what was more disconcerting still, in the self-same grey tweed home-spun suit he had worn last evening. Now, nothing can be more gentlemanly, don’t you know, than a grey home-spun, IN its proper place; but its proper place Philip Christy felt was certainly NOT in a respectable suburb on a Sunday morning.

“I beg your pardon,” he said frigidly, rising from his seat with his sternest official air—the air he was wont to assume in the anteroom at the office when outsiders called and wished to interview his chief “on important public business.” “To what may I owe the honour of this visit?” For he did not care to be hunted up in his sister’s house at a moment’s notice by a most casual acquaintance, whom he suspected of being an escaped lunatic.

Bertram Ingledew, for his part, however, advanced towards his companion of last night with the frank smile and easy bearing of a cultivated gentleman. He was blissfully unaware of the slight he was putting upon the respectability of Brackenhurst by appearing on Sunday in his grey tweed suit; so he only held out his hand as to an ordinary friend, with the simple words, “You were so extremely kind to me last night, Mr. Christy, that as I happen to know nobody here in England, I ventured to come round and ask your advice in unexpected circumstances that have since arisen.”

When Bertram Ingledew looked at him, Philip once more relented. The man’s eye was so captivating. To say the truth, there was something taking about the mysterious stranger—a curious air of unconscious superiority—so that, the moment he came near, Philip felt himself fascinated. He only answered, therefore, in as polite a tone as he could easily muster, “Why, how did you get to know my name, or to trace me to my sister’s?”

“Oh, Miss Blake told me who you were and where you lived,” Bertram replied most innocently: his tone was pure candour; “and when I went round to your lodgings just now, they explained that you were out, but that I should probably find you at Mrs. Monteith’s; so of course I came on here.”

Philip denied the applicability of that naive “of course” in his inmost soul: but it was no use being angry with Mr. Bertram Ingledew. So much he saw at once; the man was so simple-minded, so transparently natural, one could not be angry with him. One could only smile at him, a superior cynical London-bred smile, for an unsophisticated foreigner. So the Civil Servant asked with a condescending air, “Well, what’s your difficulty? I’ll see if peradventure I can help you out of it.” For he reflected to himself in a flash that as Ingledew had apparently a good round sum in gold and notes in his pocket yesterday, he was not likely to come borrowing money this morning.

“It’s like this, you see,” the Alien answered with charming simplicity, “I haven’t got any luggage.”

“Not got any luggage!” Philip repeated, awestruck, letting his jaw fall short, and stroking his clean-shaven chin with one hand. He was more doubtful than ever now as to the man’s sanity or respectability. If he was not a lunatic, then surely he must be this celebrated Perpignan murderer, whom everybody was talking about, and whom the French police were just then engaged in hunting down for extradition.

“No; I brought none with me on purpose,” Mr. Ingledew replied, as innocently as ever. “I didn’t feel quite sure about the ways, or the customs, or the taboos of England. So I had just this one suit of clothes made, after an English pattern of the present fashion, which I was lucky enough to secure from a collector at home; and I thought I’d buy everything else I wanted when I got to London. I brought nothing at all in the way of luggage with me.”

“Not even brush and comb?” Philip interposed, horrified.

“Oh, yes, naturally, just the few things one always takes in a vade-mecum,” Bertram Ingledew answered, with a gracefully deprecatory wave of the hand, which Philip thought pretty enough, but extremely foreign. “Beyond that, nothing. I felt it would be best, you see, to set oneself up in things of the country in the country itself. One’s surer then of getting exactly what’s worn in the society one mixes in.”

For the first and only time, as he said those words, the stranger struck a chord that was familiar to Philip. “Oh, of course,” the Civil Servant answered, with brisk acquiescence, “if you want to be really up to date in your dress, you must go to first-rate houses in London for everything. Nobody anywhere can cut like a good London tailor.”

Bertram Ingledew bowed his head. It was the acquiescent bow of the utter outsider who gives no opinion at all on the subject under discussion, because he does not possess any. As he probably came, in spite of his disclaimer, from America or the colonies, which are belated places, toiling in vain far in the rear of Bond Street, Philip thought this an exceedingly proper display of bashfulness, especially in a man who had only landed in England yesterday. But Bertram went on half-musingly. “And you had told me,” he said, “I’m sure not meaning to mislead me, there were no formalities or taboos of any kind on entering into lodgings. However, I found, as soon as I’d arranged to take the rooms and pay four guineas a week for them, which was a guinea more than she asked me, Miss Blake would hardly let me come in at all unless I could at once produce my luggage.” He looked comically puzzled. “I thought at first,” he continued, gazing earnestly at Philip, “the good lady was afraid I wouldn’t pay her what I’d agreed, and would go away and leave her in the lurch without a penny,—which was naturally a very painful imputation. But when I offered to let her have three weeks’ rent in advance, I saw that wasn’t all: there was a taboo as well; she couldn’t let me in without luggage, she said, because it would imperil some luck or talisman to which she frequently alluded as the Respectability of her Lodgings. This Respectability seems a very great fetich. I was obliged at last, in order to ensure a night’s lodging of any sort, to appease it by promising I’d go up to London by the first train to-day, and fetch down my luggage.”

“Then you’ve things at Charing Cross, in the cloak-room perhaps?” Philip suggested, somewhat relieved; for he felt sure Bertram Ingledew must have told Miss Blake it was HE who had recommended him to Heathercliff House for furnished apartments.

“Oh, dear, no; nothing,” Bertram responded cheerfully. “Not a sack to my back. I’ve only what I stand up in. And I called this morning just to ask as I passed if you could kindly direct me to an emporium in London where I could set myself up in all that’s necessary.”

“A WHAT?” Philip interposed, catching quick at the unfamiliar word with blank English astonishment, and more than ever convinced, in spite of denial, that the stranger was an American.

“An emporium,” Bertram answered, in the most matter-of-fact voice: “a magazine, don’t you know; a place where they supply things in return for money. I want to go up to London at once this morning and buy what I require there.”

“Oh, A SHOP, you mean,” Philip replied, putting on at once his most respectable British sabbatarian air. “I can tell you of the very best tailor in London, whose cut is perfect; a fine flower of tailors: but NOT to-day. You forget you’re in England, and this is Sunday. On the Continent, it’s different: but you’ll find no decent shops here open to-day in town or country.”

Bertram Ingledew drew one hand over his high white brow with a strangely puzzled air. “No more I will,” he said slowly, like one who by degrees half recalls with an effort some forgotten fact from dim depths of his memory. “I ought to have remembered, of course. Why, I knew that, long ago. I read it in a book on the habits and manners of the English people. But somehow, one never recollects these taboo days, wherever one may be, till one’s pulled up short by them in the course of one’s travels. Now, what on earth am I to do? A box, it seems, is the Open, Sesame of the situation. Some mystic value is attached to it as a moral amulet. I don’t believe that excellent Miss Blake would consent to take me in for a second night without the guarantee of a portmanteau to respectablise me.”