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Ci.^A?;..-rr,. Bk.Jv H^SB 
 
 THE ETHEL CARR PEACOCK 
 
 MEMORIAL COLLECTION 
 
 Main's amori monumentum 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 DURHAM, N. C. 
 
 1903 
 
 Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Dred Peacock 
 
 CK \ 
 
 ■^*-v^^ 
 
I 
 
 DUKE UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 The Glenn Negley Collection 
 of Utopian Literature 
 
^be British 
 Barbarians 
 
 A HILL-TOP NOVEL 
 
 3Bs 
 
 0rant Blleii 
 
 G. r. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK LONDON 
 
 27 West Twenfy-tliircl Street 24 Hedfor.l Street, Strand 
 
 "Cbc 1kntct!erbocf;er prc06 
 1895 
 
Copyright, 1895 
 
 BY 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 Entered at Stationers' Hally London 
 
 Tlbc Iniickcrbockcr prcse, Hew IRocbellc, "H. y. 
 
flBR 
 A H-O- 5" ^ 
 
 THE BRITISH BARBARIANS 
 
 •X^U^^ 
 
THE BRITISH BARBARIANS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 (which every reader of this book is requested 
 
 TO READ before BEGINNING THE STORY.) 
 
 T^HIS is a Hill-top Novel. I dedicate 
 it to all who have heart enough, 
 brain enough, and soul enough to un- 
 derstand it. 
 
 What do I mean by a Hill-top Novel ? 
 Well, of late we have been flooded with 
 stories of evil tendencies : a Hill-top 
 Novel is one which raises a protest in 
 favour of purity. 
 
 Why have not novelists raised the 
 3 
 
 aH^^»\ 
 
Cbc JBritieb JGarbarians 
 
 protest earlier? For this reason. Hither- 
 to, owing to the stern necessity laid 
 upon the modern seer for earning his 
 bread, and, incidentally, for finding a 
 publisher to assist him in promulgating 
 his prophetic opinions, it has seldom 
 happened that writers of exceptional 
 aims have been able to proclaim to the 
 world at large the things which they 
 conceived to be best worth their telling 
 it. Especially has this been the case in 
 the province of fiction, — let me explain 
 the cause. Most novels nowadays have 
 to run as serials through magazines or 
 newspapers ; and the editors of those 
 periodicals are timid to a degree which 
 outsiders would hardly believe, with re- 
 gard to the fiction they admit into their 
 pages. Endless spells surround them. 
 This story or episode would annoy their 
 Catholic readers ; that one would repel 
 
trbe JBrftisb JiSarbariaii6 
 
 their Wesleyan Methodist subscribers ; 
 such an incident is unfit for the perusal 
 of the young person ; such another 
 would drive away the ofTended British 
 matron. I do not myself believe there 
 is any real ground for this excessive 
 and, to be quite frank, somewhat ridicu- 
 lous timidity. Incredible as it may seem 
 to the ordinary editor, I am of opinion 
 that it would be possible to tell the 
 truth, and yet preserve the circulation. 
 A first-class journal does not really suf- 
 fer because two or three formalists or 
 two or three bigots among its thousands 
 of subscribers give it up for six weeks 
 in a pet of ill-temper, — and then take it 
 on again. Still, the effect remains, — it 
 is almost impossible to get a novel 
 printed in an English journal unless it 
 is warranted to contain nothing at all 
 to which anybody, however narrow, 
 
Cbe JBritidb :R3arbariand 
 
 could possibly object, on any <;^rounds 
 whatever, religious, political, social, 
 moral, or aesthetic. The romance that 
 appeals to the average editor must say 
 or hint at nothing at all that is not uni- 
 versally believed and received by every- 
 body everywhere in this realm of Britain. 
 lUit literature, as Thomas Hardy says 
 with truth, is mainly the expression of 
 souls in revolt. Ilcncethe antagonism 
 between literature and journalism. 
 
 \\li)% then, publish one's novels seri- 
 ally at all? Why not appeal at once 
 to the outside public, which has few 
 such prejudices? Why not deliver 
 one's message direct to those who are 
 ready to consider it or at least to hear 
 it ? Because, unfortunately, the serial 
 rights of a novel at the present day are 
 three times as \'aluable, in money worth, 
 as the final book rights. A man who 
 
^be JBritisb ^Barbarians 
 
 elects to publish direct, instead of run- 
 ning his story through the columns of a 
 newspaper, is forfeiting, in other words, 
 three quarters of his income. This loss 
 the prophet who cares for his mission 
 could cheerfully endure, of course, if 
 only the diminished income were enough 
 for him to live upon. But in order to 
 write he must first eat. In my own 
 case, for example, up till the time when 
 I published The Woman Who Did I 
 could never live on the proceeds of 
 direct publication ; nor could I even 
 secure a publisher who would consent 
 to aid me in introducing to the world 
 what I thought most important for it. 
 Having now found such a publisher, — 
 having secured my mountain — I am 
 prepared to go on delivering my mes- 
 sage from its top as long as the world 
 will consent to hear it. I will willingly 
 
Zbc J6riti6b :fl3arbarianB 
 
 forego tlic serial value of my novels, 
 and forfeit three quarters of the amount 
 I might otherwise earn, for the sake of 
 uttering the truth that is in me boldly 
 and openly to a perverse generation. 
 
 For this reason, and in order to mark 
 the distinction between these books 
 which are really mine — my own in 
 thought, in spirit, in teaching — and 
 those which I have produced sorely 
 against my will, to satisfy editors, I 
 propose in future to add the words, "A 
 Hill-top Novel," to every one of my 
 stories which I write of my own accord, 
 simply and solely for the sake of em- 
 bodying and enforcing my own opin- 
 ions. 
 
 Not that, as critics have sometimes 
 supposed me to mean, I ever wrote a 
 line, even in fiction, contrary to my 
 own profound beliefs. I have never 
 
XLbc :fi3riti6b :fi3arbai*ian5 
 
 said a thing I did not think ; but I have 
 sometimes had to abstain from saying 
 many things I did think. When I 
 wished to purvey strong meat for men, 
 I was condemned to provide milk for 
 babes. In the Hill-top Novels, I hope 
 to reverse all that — to say my say in 
 my own way, representing the world as 
 it appears to me, not as editors and 
 formalists would like me to represent it. 
 The Hill-top Novels, however, will not 
 constitute, in the ordinary sense, a series. 
 I shall add the name, as a Trade-Mark, 
 to every story, by whomever published, 
 which I have written as the expression 
 of my own individuality. Nor will 
 they necessarily appear in the first in- 
 stance in volume form. If ever I should 
 be lucky enough to find an editor suf- 
 ficiently bold and suflficiently right- 
 eous to venture upon running a Hill- 
 
lo Zbc JGrttidb :03arbacland 
 
 top Novel as a serial through his col- 
 umns, I will gladly embrace that mode 
 of publication. But while editors re- 
 main as pusillanimous and as careless 
 of moral progress as they are at pres- 
 ent, I have little hope that I shall per- 
 suade any one of them to accept a 
 work written with a single eye to the 
 enlightenment and bettering of hu- 
 manity. 
 
 Whenever, therefore, in future, the 
 word^ " A Hill-top Novel " appear upon 
 the title-page of a book by me, the 
 reader who cares for truth and right- 
 eousness may take it for granted that 
 the book represents my own original 
 thinking, whether good or bad, on some 
 important point in human society or 
 human evolution. 
 
 Not, again, that any one of these 
 novels will deliberately attempt to 
 
Zbc JiSritfsb JBarbarfans n 
 
 prove anything. I have been amused 
 at the allegation brought by certain 
 critics against T/ie Woman Who Did, 
 that it '' failed to prove " the practica- 
 bility of unions such as Herminia's and 
 Alan's. The famous Scotchman, in the 
 same spirit, objected to Paradise Lost, 
 that it ** proved naething " ; but his 
 criticism has not been generally en- 
 dorsed as valid. To say the truth, it is 
 absurd to suppose a work of imagina- 
 tion can prove or disprove anything. 
 The author holds the strings of all his 
 puppets, and can pull them as he likes, 
 for good or evil ; he can make his ex- 
 periments turn out well or ill ; he can 
 contrive that his unions should end 
 happily or miserably ; how, then, can 
 his story be said \.q prove anything? A 
 novel is not a proposition in Euclid. I 
 give due notice beforehand to reviewers 
 
12 Zbc JGritieb JGarbariane 
 
 in <^cncral, that if any principle at all 
 is '* proved " by any of my Mill-top 
 Novels, it will be simply this, — " Act as 
 you think right, for the highest good of 
 humankind, and you will infallibly and 
 inevitably come to a bad end for it." 
 
 Not to prove anything, but to suggest 
 ideas, to arouse emotions, is, I take it, 
 the true function of fiction. One wishes 
 to make one's readers t/ihi^ about prob- 
 lems they have never considered, /ir/ 
 with sentiments they have disliked or 
 hated. The novelist as prophet has 
 his duty defined for him in those divine 
 words of Shelley's, 
 
 " Singing songs unbidden till the world is 
 wrought 
 To sympathy with hopes and fears it 
 heeded not." 
 
 That, too, is the reason that impels 
 
^be JBiitlsb JBarbariane 13 
 
 me to embody such views as these in 
 romantic fiction, not in dehberate trea- 
 tises. *' Why sow your ideas broad- 
 cast," many honest critics say, " in 
 novels where mere boys and girls can 
 read them ? Why not formulate them 
 in serious and argumentative books, 
 where wise men alone will come across 
 them ? " The answer is, because wise 
 men are wise already ; it is the boys 
 and girls of a community who stand 
 most in need of suggestion and instruc- 
 tion. Women, in particular, are the 
 chief readers of fiction, and it is women 
 whom one mainly desires to arouse to 
 interest in profound problems by the 
 aid of this vehicle. Especially should 
 one arouse them to such living interest 
 while they are still young and plastic, 
 before they have crystallised and hard- 
 ened into the conventional marionettes 
 
14 ^be JBritieb ^Barbarians 
 
 of polite society. Make them think 
 wliile they arc young; make them feel 
 while they are sensitive: it is then 
 alone that they will think and feel, if 
 ever. I will venture, indeed, to enforce 
 my views on this subject by a little 
 apologue which I have somewhere read, 
 or heard, — or invented. 
 
 A Revolutionist desired to issue an 
 Election Address to the Working Men 
 of Bermondsey. The Rector of the 
 Parish saw it at the printer's, and came 
 to him, much perturbed. " Why write 
 it in English ? " he asked. " It will 
 only inflame the minds of the lower 
 orders. Why not allow me to translate 
 it into Ciceronian Latin? It would 
 then be comprehensible to all Univer- 
 sity men ; your logic would be duly 
 and deliberately weighed ; and the tan- 
 ners and tinkers, who are so very im- 
 
^be JBritlsb :©arbarfan6 15 
 
 pressionable, would not be poisoned by 
 it." ''My friend," said the Revolu- 
 tionist, " it is the tanners and tinkers / 
 want to get at. My object is, to win 
 this election ; University graduates will 
 not help me to win it." 
 
 The business of the preacher is above 
 all things to preach ; but in order to 
 preach, he must first reach his audi- 
 ence. The audience in this case con- 
 sists in large part of women and girls, 
 who are most simply and easily reached 
 by fiction. Therefore, fiction is to-day 
 the best medium for the preacher of 
 righteousness who addresses humanity. 
 
 Why, once more, this particular 
 name, ''A Hill-top Novel"? For 
 something like this reason. 
 
 I am writing in my study on a 
 heather-clad hill-top. When I raise my 
 eye from my sheet of foolscap, it falls 
 
i6 iibc 3i3riti5b JGarbarians 
 
 upon miles and miles of broad open 
 moorland. My window looks out upon 
 unsullied nature. Everything around 
 is fresh and pure and wholesome. 
 Through the open casement, the scent 
 of the pines blows in with the breeze 
 from the neighbouring firwood. Keen 
 airs sigh through the pine-needles. 
 Grasshoppers chirp from deep tangles 
 of bracken. The song of a skylark 
 drops from the sky like soft rain in 
 summer ; in the evening, a night-jar 
 croons to us his monotonously passion- 
 ate love-wail from liis perch on the 
 gnarled boughs of the wind-swept larch 
 that crowns the upland. But away 
 below in the valley, as night draws on, 
 a lurid glare reddens the north-eastern 
 horizon. It marks the spot where the 
 great wen of London heaves and fes- 
 ters. Up here on the free hills, the 
 
{Tbe JBritisb :J8arbariaii6 17 
 
 sharp air blows in upon us, limpid and 
 clear from a thousand leagues of open 
 ocean ; down there in the crowded 
 tovvai, it stagnates and ferments, pol- 
 luted with the diseases and vices of 
 centuries. 
 
 This is an urban age. The men of 
 the villages, alas, are leaving behind 
 them the green fields and purple moors 
 of their childhood, — are foolishly crowd- 
 ing into the narrow lanes and purlieus 
 of the great cities. Strange decadent 
 sins and morbid pleasures entice them 
 thither. But I desire in these books 
 to utter a word once more in favour of 
 higher and purer ideals of life and art. 
 Those who sicken of the foul air and 
 lurid light of towns may still wander 
 side by side with me on these heathery 
 highlands. Far, far below, the theatre 
 and the music-hall spread their garish 
 
1 8 ilbc JSrittdb :}Barbartand 
 
 gas-lamps. Let who will heed them, 
 but here on the open hill-top wc know 
 fresher and more wholesome delights. 
 Those feverish joys allure us not. Oh, 
 decadents of the town, we have seen 
 your sham idylls, your tinsel Arcadias. 
 We have tired of their stuffy atmos- 
 phere, their dazzling jets, their weary 
 ways, their gaudy dresses ; we shun 
 the sunken cheeks, the lack-lustre eyes, 
 the heart-sick souls of your painted 
 goddesses. We love not the fetid air, 
 thick and hot with human breath, and 
 reeking with tobacco smoke, of your 
 modern Parnassus, — a Parnassus whose 
 crags were reared and shaped by the 
 bounds of the stage-carpenter! Your 
 studied dalliance with your venal Muses 
 is little to our taste. Your halls are 
 too stifling with carbonic acid gas ; for 
 us, we breathe oxygen. 
 
^be 3Briti6b JBarbarians ig 
 
 And the oxygen of the*hill-tops is 
 purer, keener, rarer, more ethereal. It 
 is rich in ozone. Now, ozone stands 
 to common oxygen itself as the clean- 
 cut metal to the dull and leaden ex- 
 posed surface. Nascent and ever re- 
 nascent, it has electrical attraction ; it 
 leaps to the embrace of the atom it 
 selects, but only under the influence of 
 powerful affinities ; and what it clasps 
 once, it clasps for ever. That is the 
 pure air which we drink in on the 
 heather-clad heights — not the venom- 
 ous air of the crowded casino, nor even 
 the close air of the middle-class parlour. 
 It thrills and nerves us. How we 
 smile, we who live here, when some 
 dweller in the mists and smoke of the 
 valley confounds our delicate atmos- 
 phere, redolent of honey and echoing 
 the manifold murmur of bees, with that 
 
20 (Tbe .tSritisb ^Barbarians 
 
 stifling miasma of the gamblin<^ hell 
 and the dancing saloon ! Trust me, 
 dear friend, the moorland air is far 
 other than you fancy. You can wan- 
 der up here along the purple ridges, 
 hand locked in hand with those you 
 love, without fear of harm to yourself 
 or your comrade. No Bloom of Ninon 
 there, but fresh cheeks like the peach- 
 blossom where the sun has kissed it : 
 no casual fruition of loveless, joyless 
 harlots, but life-long saturation of your 
 own heart's desire in your own heart's 
 innocence. Ozone is better than all the 
 champagne in the Strand or Piccadilly. 
 If only you will believe it, it is purity 
 and life and sympathy and vigour. Its 
 perfect freshness and perpetual fount of 
 youth keep your age from withering. 
 It crimsons the sunset and lives in 
 the afterglow. If these delights thy 
 
tTbe 3Briti6b 3Barbarian6 21 
 
 mind may move, leave, oh, leave the 
 meretricious town, and come to the 
 airy peaks. Such joy is ours, unknown 
 to the squalid village which spreads its 
 swamps where the poet's silver Thames 
 runs dull and leaden. 
 
 Have we never our doubts, though, 
 up here on the hill-tops ? Ay, marry, 
 have we ! Are we so sure that these 
 gospels we preach with all our hearts, 
 are the true and final ones ? Who shall 
 answer that question ? For myself, as 
 I lift up my eyes from my paper once 
 more, my gaze falls first on the golden 
 bracken that waves joyously over the 
 sandstone ridge without, and then, with- 
 in, on a little white shelf where lies the 
 greatest book of our greatest philoso- 
 pher. I open it at random and consult its 
 sortes. What comfort and counsel has 
 Herbert Spencer for those who venture 
 
i^ Zbc JSritisb :©arbarian5 
 
 to see otherwise than the mass of their 
 contemporaries ? 
 
 " Whoever hesitates to utter that 
 which he thinks the highest truth, lest 
 it should be too much in advance of 
 the time, may reassure himself by look- 
 ing at his acts from an impersonal point 
 of view. Let him duly realise the fact 
 that opinion is the agency through 
 which character adapts external ar- 
 rangements to itself, — that his opinion 
 rightly forms part of this agency, — is a 
 unit of force, constituting, with other 
 such units, the general power which 
 works out social changes ; and he will 
 perceive that he may properly give full 
 utterance to his innermost conviction : 
 leaving it to produce what effect it may. 
 It is not for nothing that he has in him 
 these sympathies with some principles 
 and repugnances to others. He, with 
 
tTbc JBritisb JSarbartans -3 
 
 all his capacities, and aspirations, and 
 beliefs, is not an accident, but a pro- 
 duct of the time. He must remember 
 that while he is a descendant of the 
 past, he is a parent of the future, and 
 that his thoughts are as children born 
 to him, which he may not carelessly let 
 die. He, like every other man, may 
 properly consider himself as one of the 
 myriad agencies through whom works 
 the Unknown Cause ; and when the 
 Unknown Cause produces in him a cer- 
 tain belief, he is thereby authorised to 
 profess and act out that belief. For, to 
 render in their highest sense the words 
 of the poet : 
 
 Nature is made better by no mean, 
 But nature makes that mean ; over that art 
 Which you say adds to nature, is an art 
 That nature makes. 
 
 Not as adventitious therefore will the 
 
24 Zbc 3iSriti6b ^Barbarians 
 
 wise man regard the faith which is in 
 him. The highest truth he sees he 
 will fearlessly utter ; knowing that, let 
 what may come of it, he is thus playing 
 his right part in the world — knowing 
 that if he can efYect the change he aims 
 at — well : if not — well also ; though not 
 so well." 
 
 That passage comforts me. These, 
 then, are my ideas. They may be 
 right ; they may be wrong. But at 
 least they are the sincere and personal 
 convictions of an honest man, war- 
 ranted in him by that spirit of the age 
 of which each of us is but an automatic 
 
 mouthpiece. 
 
 G. A. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 T^HE time was Saturday afternoon ; 
 the place was Surrey ; the person 
 of the drama was Philip Christy. 
 
 He had come down by the early fast 
 train to Brackenhurst. All the world 
 knows Brackenhurst, of course, the 
 greenest and leafiest of our southern 
 suburbs. It looked even prettier than 
 its wont just then, that town of villas, 
 in the first fresh tenderness of its wan 
 spring foliage, the first full flush of lilac, 
 laburnum, horse-chestnut, and guelder- 
 rose. The air was heavy with the odour 
 of May and the hum of bees. Philip 
 paused awhile at the corner, by the ivied 
 
 cottage, admiring it silently. He was 
 
 25 
 
26 XLbc JGritisb JBarbarlana 
 
 glad he lived there, — so very aristo- 
 cratic ! What joy to glide direct, on the 
 enchanted carpet of the South Eastern 
 railway from the gloom and din and 
 bustle of Cannon-street to the breadth 
 and space and silence — and exclusive- 
 ness — of that upland village ! For 
 Philip Christy was a gentlemanly clerk 
 in Her Majesty's Civil Service. 
 
 As he stood there, admiring it all, 
 with roving eyes, he was startled after 
 a moment by the sudden and, as it 
 seemed to him, unannounced apparition 
 of a man in a well-made grey tweed suit, 
 just a yard or two in front of him. He 
 was aware of an intruder. To be sure, 
 there was nothing very remarkable at 
 first sight either in the stranger's dress, 
 appearance, or manner. All that Philip 
 noticed for himself in the new-comer's 
 mien, for the first few seconds, was a 
 
Zbc J6ritf0b Barbarfans 27 
 
 certain distinct air of social superiority, 
 an innate nobility of gait and bearing. 
 So much, at least, he observed at a 
 glance quite instinctively. But it was n't 
 this quiet and unobtrusive tone, as of 
 the Best Society, that surprised and 
 astonished him : Brackenhurst prided 
 itself, indeed, on being a most well-bred 
 and distinguished neighbourhood ; peo- 
 ple of note grew as thick there as heather 
 or whortleberries. What puzzled him 
 more was the abstruser question where 
 on earth the stranger could have come 
 from so suddenly. Philip had glanced 
 up the road and down the road just two 
 minutes before, and was prepared to 
 swear when he withdrew his eyes, not a 
 soul loomed in sight in either direction. 
 Whence, then, could the man in the grey 
 suit have emerged ? Had he dropped 
 from the clouds ? No gate opened into 
 
28 ^be JBritisb Barbadana 
 
 the road on cither side for two luiiuh'cd 
 yards or more, for Brackenhurst is one 
 of those extremely respectable villa 
 neighbourhoods where every house — an 
 Eligible Family Residence — stands in 
 its own grounds of at least six acres. 
 Now Philip could hardly suspect that so 
 well-dressed a man, of such distinguished 
 exterior, would be guilty of such a gross 
 breach of the recognised code of Brack- 
 en hurst i an manners as was implied in 
 the act of vaulting over a hedgerow. 
 So he gazed in blank wonder at the sud- 
 denness of the apparition, more than 
 half inclined to satisfy his curiosity by 
 enquiring of the stranger how the 
 dickens he had got there. 
 
 A moment's reflection, however, suf- 
 ficed to save the ingenuous young man 
 from the pitfall of so serious a social 
 solecism. It would be fatal to accost 
 
tTbe 3Brftlgb :(i3arbarian9 29 
 
 him. For, mark you, no matter how 
 gentlemanly and well-tailored a stranger 
 may look, you can never be sure nowa- 
 days (in these topsy-turvy times of sub- 
 versive radicalism) whether he is or 
 is n't really a gentleman. That makes 
 acquaintanceship a dangerous luxury. 
 If you begin by talking to a man, be it 
 ever so casually, he may desire to thrust 
 his company upon you, willy-nilly, in 
 future : and when you Ve ladies of your 
 family living in a place, you really cant 
 be too particular what companions you 
 pick up there, were it even in the most 
 informal and momentary fashion. Be- 
 sides, the fellow might turn out to be 
 one of your social superiors, and not 
 care to know you ; in which case, of 
 course, you would only be letting your- 
 self in for a needless snubbing. 'In fact, 
 in this modern England of ours, this 
 
30 XLbc JBrltisb 36arbarlan6 
 
 fatherland of snobdom, one passes one's 
 life in a sec-saw of doubt between the 
 Scylla and Charybdis of those two anti- 
 thetical social dangers. You 're always 
 afraid you may get to know somebody 
 you yourself don't want to know, or 
 may try to know somebody who does 
 n't want to know you. 
 
 Guided by these truly British princi- 
 ples of ancestral wisdom, Philip Christy 
 would probably never have seen any- 
 thing more of the distinguished-looking 
 stranger, had it not been for a passing 
 accident of muscular action over which 
 his control was distinctly precarious. 
 He happened, in brushing past, to catch 
 the stranger's eye. It was a clear blue 
 eye, very deep and truthful. It some- 
 how succeeded in riveting for a second 
 Philip's attention. And it was plain 
 the stranger was less afraid of speaking 
 
Xlbc JBrftlsb JSarbarlans 31 
 
 than Philip himself was. For he ad- 
 vanced with a pleasant smile on his 
 open countenance, and waved one 
 gloveless hand in a sort of impalpable 
 or half-checked salute, which impressed 
 his new acquaintance as a vaguely po- 
 lite continental gesture. This affected 
 Philip favourably ; the new-comer was 
 a Somebody then, and knew his place : 
 for just in proportion as Philip felt 
 afraid to begin conversation himself 
 with an unplaced stranger, did he re- 
 spect any other man who felt so per- 
 fectly sure of his own position that he 
 shared no such middle-class doubts or 
 misgivings. A duke is never afraid of 
 accosting anybody. Philip was strength- 
 ened, therefore, in his first idea that the 
 man in the grey suit was a person of no 
 small distinction in society, else, surely, 
 he would n't have come up and spoken 
 
32 Cbc JGriti^b JGart>ariaii6 
 
 with sucli cn<;agin<j frankness and case 
 o{ manner. 
 
 " I bci^ your pardon," the stranger 
 said, addressing him in pure and limpid 
 I^lnghsh, which sounded to PhiHp Hkc 
 the dialect of the Very Best Circles, yet 
 with some nameless difference of intona- 
 tion or accent which certainly was n't 
 foreign, still less provincial, or Scotch, 
 or Irish ; it seemed rather like the very 
 purest well of English undefiled Philip 
 had ever heard, — only, if anything, a 
 little more so : ''I beg your pardon, 
 but I 'm a stranger hereabouts, and I 
 should be so verjy much obliged if you 
 could kindly direct me to any good 
 lodgings." 
 
 His voice and accent attracted Philip 
 even more now he stood near at hand 
 than his appearance hat! done from a 
 little distance. It was impossible, in- 
 
^be JBritisb JBarbarians 33 
 
 deed, to say definitely in set terms, 
 what there was about the man that 
 made his personality and his words so 
 charming; but from that very first min- 
 ute, Philip freely admitted to himself 
 that the stranger in the grey suit was a 
 Perfect Gentleman. Nay, so much did 
 he feel it in his ingenuous way, that he 
 threw o£f at once his accustomed cloak 
 of dubious reserve, and, standing still 
 to think, answered after a short pause : 
 " Well, we Ve a great many very nice 
 furnished houses about here to let, but 
 not many lodgings : Brackenhurst 's a 
 cut above lodgings, don't you know : 
 it 's a Residential Quarter. But I should 
 think Miss Blake's at Heather Cliff 
 House would perhaps be just the sort 
 of thing to suit you." 
 
 " Oh, thank you," the stranger an- 
 swered, with a deferential politeness 
 
34 Cbc JBrltisb ^Barbarians 
 
 which charmed PhiHp once more by its 
 graceful expressiveness. ** And could 
 \'()u kindly direct me to them? I don't 
 know m\' way about at all, you see, as 
 )'ct in this country." 
 
 " With pleasure," Philip replied, quite 
 delighted at the chance of solving the 
 mystery where the stranger had dropped 
 from. " I 'm going that way myself, 
 and can take you past her door. It 's 
 only a few steps. — Then you 're a 
 stranger in England?" 
 
 The new-comer smiled, a curious, self- 
 restrained smile. He was both young 
 and handsome. '* Yes, I 'm a stranger in 
 your England," he answered, gravely, in 
 the tone of one who wishes to avoid an 
 awkward discussion. '* In fact, an Alien. 
 I only arrived here this very morning." 
 
 "From the continent?" Philip en- 
 quired, arching his eyebrows slightly. 
 
^be JBrftisb JBarbarians 35 
 
 The stranger smiled again. *' No, 
 not from the continent," he repHed 
 with provoking evasiveness. 
 
 ** I thought you were n't a foreigner," 
 PhiHp continued, in a blandly suggestive 
 voice. " That is to say," he went on, 
 after a second's pause, during which the 
 stranger volunteered no further state- 
 ment, '* you speak English like an Eng- 
 lishman." 
 
 '' Do I ? " the stranger answered. 
 " Well, I m glad of that. It '11 make 
 intercourse with your Englishmen so 
 much more easy." 
 
 By this time Philip's curiosity was 
 thoroughly whetted. '' But you 're not 
 an Englishman, you say ? " he asked, 
 with a little natural hesitation. 
 
 *' No, not exactly what you call an 
 Englishman," the stranger replied, as if 
 he did n't quite care for such clumsy 
 
3^^ Zbc JGritiBb JBaib»nri»ind 
 
 attempts to examine liis antecedents. 
 "As I tell you, I 'm an Alien. lUit \vc 
 always spoke English at home," he 
 added with an after-thought, as if ready 
 lo vouchsafe all the other information 
 that lay in his power. 
 
 '* You can't be an American, I 'm 
 sure," Philip went on, unabashed, his 
 eagerness to solve the question at issue 
 once raised, getting the better for the 
 moment of both reserve and politeness. 
 
 " No, I *m certainly not an .Vmerican," 
 the stranger answered with a gentle 
 courtesy in his tone that made Philip 
 feel ashamed of his rudeness in ques- 
 tioning 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 
 
ZTbe :(Briti6b JSarbarian^ 37 
 
 upon Philip the difficult task of con- 
 tinuing the conversation. 
 
 The member of Her Britannic Majes- 
 ty's Civil Service would have given 
 anything just that minute to say to him 
 frankly : " Well, if you 're not an Eng- 
 lishman, 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 re- 
 strained 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 
 
3^ ^be JScitldb JBarbariand 
 
 of the laburnum and the rich perfume 
 of the Hlac, 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 n't care to differ from him on 
 the abstract question of a qualifying 
 epithet. After all, there 's nothing posi- 
 tively insulting in calling a house quaint, 
 though Philip would certainly have 
 preferred, himself, to hear the Eligible 
 I'^uiiily Residences of that Aristocratic 
 Neighbourhood described in auctioneer- 
 
Cbe :©ritisb :©aibaviau6 39 
 
 ing 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 trous- 
 ers pocket. ** One more question," he 
 said, with that pleasant smile on his lips, 
 " if you '11 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, smil- 
 ing the genuine British smile of un- 
 feigned 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 
 
40 Zbc JGrlti^b .IGarbarian^ 
 
 louis, or would have debated as to the 
 precise commercial relation between 
 twenty-five cents and a cjuarter of a dol- 
 lar ; but then, those are mere foreign 
 coins, you see, which no fellow can be 
 expected to understand, unless he hap- 
 pens to have lived in the country they 're 
 used in. The others are British, and 
 necessary to salvation. That feeling 's 
 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 unfa- 
 miliarity with the absurd practices of 
 foreign nations. 
 
 The Alien, indeed, seemed to have 
 
Zbc :(iSritisb JGarbariana 41 
 
 learned beforehand this curious pecuh- 
 arity of the Hmited Engh'sh 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 intui- 
 tively 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 pieces with a 
 dubious air of distrust and uncertainty. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," Philip said, 
 drawing himself up very stiff, and 
 
42 Zbc JBritisb J6arbartan5 
 
 scarcely able to believe his ears (he 
 was an official of Her Britannic Majes- 
 ty'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 heart : but somehow it 
 did n't. '* Why, yes," the Alien went on 
 with imperturbable gentleness, "No or- 
 der or principle, you know. No rational 
 connection. A mere survival from bar- 
 baric 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 shil- 
 lings one pound. How very confusing ! 
 And then, the nomenclature 's so ab- 
 surdly difficult ! Wliicli of these is half 
 
tlbe 3iSriti6b 3i6arbariani3 43 
 
 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 ex- 
 plained them to him separately. The 
 Alien, meanwhile, received the informa- 
 tion with evident interest, — as a trav- 
 eller in that vast track that is called 
 Abroad might note the habits and 
 manners of some savage tribe that 
 dwells within its confines, — and solemnly 
 wrapped each coin in paper, as his in- 
 structor named it for him, writing the 
 designation and value outside in a pecu- 
 liarly beautiful and legible hand. '' It 's 
 so puzzling, you see," he said, in explana- 
 tion, 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 
 
44 ^bc JSritteb JGacbaciana 
 
 have n't for the most part their vaUies 
 marked in words or figures upon them." 
 '* Everybody knows what they are," 
 PhiHp answered Hghtly. Though for a 
 moment, taken aback by the novelty of 
 tlie idea, he ahiiost admitted in his own 
 mind that to people v/ho had the mis- 
 fortune to be born foreigners, there was 
 perhaps a slight initial difficulty in this 
 unlettered system. But then, you 
 can't expect England to be regulated 
 throughout for the benefit of foreign- 
 ers ! Though to be sure, on the one 
 occasion when Philip had visited the 
 Rhine and Switzerland, he had grum- 
 bled most consumedly from Ostend to 
 Grindelwald at those very decimal coins 
 which the stranger sOemed to admire so 
 much, and had wondered why the deuce 
 Belgium, Germany, Holland, and Switz- 
 lantl could n't agree among themselves 
 
XLbc :©riti6b JSarbarians 45 
 
 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 F'amilies 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 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, 
 
46 CTbc JBritidb JBarbartatid 
 
 unable any longer to restrain his amuse- 
 ment (everything in England was " of 
 course" to Philip). "You pay accord- 
 ing to the sort of accommodation you 
 require, the number of }'our rooms, and 
 the nature of the neighbourhood." 
 
 *' I see," the Alien replied, imperturb- 
 ably polite, in spite of Philip's conde- 
 scending manner. " And what do I pay 
 her for a room in this latitude and 
 longitude? " 
 
 For twenty seconds Philip half-sus- 
 pected 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 geo- 
 graphical bearings, Philip came to the 
 conclusion he must be either a sea-far- 
 ing man or an escaped lunatic. So he 
 answered him to the point. " I should 
 
^be :fi3ritl6b JBarbarlaui? 47 
 
 think," he said quietly, " as Miss Blake's 
 are extremely respectable lodgings, in a 
 first-rate quarter, and with a splendid 
 view, you '11 probably have to pay 
 somewhere about three guineas." 
 
 ** Three what ? " the stranger inter- 
 posed, with an enquiring 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 can't afford to pay for decent 
 rooms, they 've no right to invade an 
 aristocratic suburb, and bespeak the at- 
 tention of its regular residents. 
 
 " Oh, that 's not it," the Alien put in, 
 reading his tone aright. " The money 
 does n'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 th<; 
 
48 ITbe JlSrltidb JiSarbartand 
 
 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 mc see : 
 it 's twenty-one pounds to the guinea, 
 is n't it ? Then I m to pay about 
 sixty-three pounds a week for my lodg- 
 ings." 
 
 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 neces- 
 sary, to pay sixty-odd pounds a week 
 in rent. Now a man like that is the 
 proper kind of a man for a respectable 
 neighbourhood. He '11 keep a good 
 saddle-horse, join the club, and play 
 billiards freely. Philip briefly explained 
 to him the nature of his mistake, point- 
 ing out to him that a guinea was an 
 imaginary coin, unrepresented in metal, 
 
^bc JBrftisb JSarbarians 49 
 
 but reckoned by prescription at twenty- 
 one shillings. The stranger received 
 the slight correction with such perfect 
 nonchalance that Philip at once con- 
 ceived a high opinion of his wealth and 
 solvency, and therefore of his respecta- 
 bility 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 ac- 
 quaintance as a man of distinction. For 
 wealth and distinction are practically 
 synonyms in England for one and the 
 same quality — the 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 
 
50 ITbc JBritisb JBarbarfans 
 
 so forth ? That is," he went on, as 
 Philip's smile broadened, " is there any 
 taboo to be removed or appeased be- 
 fore I can take up my residence in the 
 apartments ? " 
 
 By this time Philip was reall}- con- 
 vinced 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 coun- 
 try, not among Australian savages. All 
 you '11 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 
 
Zbc Brltieb JBarbariane 51 
 
 mean solar time for that particular lon- 
 gitude. Then why had this young man 
 said so briskly, '' Good-morning " at 
 3.3P P.M., as if on purpose to deceive 
 him ? Was he laying a trap ? Was 
 this some wile and guile of the Eng- 
 lish medicine-men ? 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 ]\|EXT 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 Freda 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 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 ! 
 
 52 
 
tTbe JBritisb JBarbarians 53 
 
 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 Ingle- 
 dew." 
 
 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 gentle- 
 man 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 disconcert- 
 ing still, in the self-same grey tweed 
 home-spun suit he had worn last even- 
 
54 ^be JBritisb ^Barbarians 
 
 ing. Now nothing can be more gentle- 
 manly, 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 as- 
 sume in the ante-room at the office when 
 outsiders called and wished to interview 
 his chief " on important public busi- 
 ness." "■ To what may I owe the honour 
 of this visit?" For he did n't care to 
 be hunted up in his sister's house at a 
 moment's notice by a most casual ac- 
 quaintance whom he suspected of being 
 an escaped lunatic. 
 
 Bertram Ingledew, for his part, how- 
 ever, advanced towards his companion of 
 last night with the frank smile and easy 
 
trbc JSritisb JBarbarian^ 55 
 
 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 no- 
 body 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, 
 
56 Cbe JBritisb :fi3arbarian5 
 
 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? " 
 
 '*0h, Miss Blake told me who you 
 were and where you lived," Bertram re- 
 plied most innocently — his tone was 
 pure candour, — ''and when I went 
 round to your lodgings just now they 
 explained that you were out, and that I 
 should probably find you at Mrs. Mon- 
 teith's ; so of course I came on here." 
 
 Philip denied the applicability of that 
 naif '' 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 n't 
 be angry with him. One could only 
 smile at him, a superior cynical London- 
 bred smile, for an unsophisticated for- 
 
^be JSritisb JBarbartans 57 
 
 eigner. So the Civil Servant asked 
 with a condescending air, " Well, what's 
 your difficulty ? I *11 see if peradventure 
 I can help you out of it." For he re- 
 flected to himself in a flash that as 
 Ingledew had apparently a good round 
 sum in gold and notes in his pocket 
 yesterday, he was n't likely to come bor- 
 rowing money this morning. 
 
 " It 's like this, you see," the Alien 
 answered with charming simplicity. " I 
 have n't got any luggage." 
 
 '' Not got any luggage ! " Philip re- 
 peated, awe-struck, 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 n't a 
 lunatic then surely he must be this 
 celebrated Perpignan murderer, whom 
 everybody was talking about, and whom 
 
58 Cbc JSritisb :fi3arbarian3 
 
 the Frcncli police were just then en- 
 gaged in hunting down for extradition. 
 
 "No; I brought none witli me on 
 purpose," Mr. Ingledew replied, as inno- 
 cently as ever. '' I did n'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 tv?//-;- 
 meciinir ]5ertram Ingledew answered, 
 with a gracefully deprecator\' wave of 
 the hand, which Philip thought pretty 
 
Zbc iBvitieb JBarbarians 59 
 
 enough, but extremely foreign. " Be- 
 yond that, nothing. I felt it would be 
 best, you see, to set one's self 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 Lon- 
 don 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 docs n't possess any. As he prob- 
 
6o tCbc JGritisb JBarbarians 
 
 ably 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 con- 
 tinued, gazing earnestly at Philip, " the 
 
Zbc :fi5riti6b ^Barbarians 6i 
 
 good lady was afraid I would n'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 pain- 
 ful imputation. But when I offered to 
 let her have three weeks' rent in ad- 
 vance, I saw that was n't all ; there was 
 a taboo as well : she could n'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 fetish. 
 I was obliged at last, 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 ; 
 
62 Zbc aSrttisb ^Barbarians 
 
 for lie felt sure Bertram Ingledew must 
 have told Miss Blake it was /ic who 
 had recommended him to Heather Cliff 
 House for furnished apartments. 
 
 "Oh, dear no; nothinj^," l^ertram 
 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, catch- 
 ing 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 
 
^be JBritisb JSarbarlans 63 
 
 money. I want to go up to London at 
 once this morning and buy what I 
 require there." 
 
 *' Oh, a shop, you mean," PhiHp re- 
 phed, 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 72ot to-day. You 
 forget you 're in England, and this is 
 Sunday. On the continent it 's differ- 
 ent ; but you '11 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 the dim depths of his memorj'. 
 '' I ought to have remembered, of 
 course. Why, I knew that, long ago. 
 
64 XLbc JBritiBb ^Barbarians 
 
 I read it in a book on the habits and 
 manners of the EngHsh 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 o( the situa.tion. 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 
 respectabilise me." 
 
 We all have moments of weakness, 
 even the most irreproachable Philistine 
 among us ; and as Bertram said those 
 words in rather a piteous voice it oc- 
 curred to Philip Christy that the loan 
 of a portmanteau would be a Christian 
 act which might perhaps simplify mat- 
 
Zbc JBritisb :©arbarlan0 65 
 
 ters for the handsome and engaging 
 stranger. Besides, he was sure, after 
 all, — mystery or no mystery, — Bertram 
 Ingledew was Somebody. That name- 
 less charm of dignity and distinction 
 impressed him more and more the 
 longer he talked with the Alien. 
 "Well, I think perhaps I could help 
 you," he hazarded after a moment in a 
 dubious tone; though to be sure, if he 
 lent the portmanteau, 't would be like 
 cementing the friendship for good or 
 for evil ; which Philip, being a prudent 
 young man, felt to be in some ways a 
 trifle dangerous ; for who borrows a 
 portmanteau must needs bring it back 
 again : — which opens the door to end- 
 less contingencies. " I might be 
 
 able " 
 
 At that moment their colloquy was 
 
 suddenly interrupted by the entry of a 
 5 
 
66 Zbc JBritlsb ^Barbarians 
 
 lady who immediately riveted Bertram 
 Ingledew's attention. She was tall and 
 dark, a beautiful woman, of that riper 
 and truer beauty in face and form that 
 only declares itself as character de- 
 velops. Her features were clear-cut, 
 rather delicate than regular ; her eyes 
 were large and lustrous ; her lips not 
 too thin, but rich and tempting ; her 
 brow was high, and surmounted by a 
 luscious wealth of glossy black hair 
 which Bertram never remembered to 
 have seen equalled before for its silki- 
 ness of texture and its strange blue 
 sheen, like a plate of steel, or the grass 
 of the prairies. A gliding grace distin- 
 guished her when she walked. Her 
 motion was equable. As once the 
 sons of God saw the daughters of men 
 that they were fair, and straightway 
 coveted them, even so Bertram Ingle- 
 
Zbc JBritisb JBarbarlans 67 
 
 dew looked on Freda Monteith, and 
 saw at the first glance she was a woman 
 to be desired, a soul high throned, very 
 calm and beautiful. 
 
 She stood there for a moment and 
 faced him, half in doubt in her flowing 
 oriental or Mauresque robe (for she 
 dressed, as Philip would have said, 
 '' artistically "), waiting to be introduced 
 the while, and taking good heed, as she 
 waited, of the handsome stranger. As 
 for Philip, he hesitated, not quite cer- 
 tain in his own mind on the point of 
 etiquette — say rather of morals — 
 whether one ought or ought not to in- 
 troduce " the ladies of one's family " to 
 a casual stranger picked up in the 
 street, who confesses he has come on a 
 visit to England without a letter of in- 
 troduction, or even that irreducible 
 minimum of respectability, a portman- 
 
68 Zbc JGritieb JGarbariaud 
 
 tcau. Freda, however, had no such 
 scruples. She saw the youiiL^ man was 
 good-looking and gentleman!)', and she 
 turned to Philip with the hast}- sort of 
 glance that says as plainly as words 
 could say it, ''Now, then! introduce 
 me ! 
 
 Thus mutely exhorted, though with 
 a visible effort, Philip murmured half 
 inarticulately in a stifled undertone, 
 ** My sister, Mrs. Monteith — Mr. Ber- 
 tram Ingledew," — and then trembled 
 inwardly. 
 
 It was a surprise to Bertram that the 
 beautiful woman with the soul in her 
 eyes should turn out to be the sister of 
 the very commonplace young man with 
 the boiled-fish expression he had met 
 by the corner; but he disguised his 
 astonishment, and only interjected, as 
 if it were the most natural remark in 
 
tibe JBrltisb ^Barbarians 69 
 
 the world, " I 'm pleased to meet you. 
 What a lovely gown ; and how admira- 
 bly it becomes you ! " 
 
 Philip opened his eyes aghast. But 
 Freda glanced down at the dress with 
 a glance of approbation. The stranger's 
 frankness, though quaint, was really 
 refreshing. " I 'm so glad you like it," 
 she said, taking the compliment with a 
 quiet dignity, as simply as it was in- 
 tended. *' It 's all my own taste ; I 
 chose the stuff and designed the make 
 of it. And I know who this is, Phil, 
 without your troubling to tell me; 
 it 's the gentleman you met in the 
 street last night, and were talking 
 about at dinner." 
 
 ''You're quite right," Philip an- 
 swered, with a deprecating look (as 
 who should say, aside, "I really 
 could n't help it "). '' He— he 's rather 
 
Cbc ."Critieb .IGnrbaiiaii!? 
 
 ill a difficult}'." .\nd then he went on 
 to explain in a few luirried words to 
 I^'reda, with sundry shrugs and nods of 
 profoundcst import, that the supposed 
 lunatic or murderer or foreigner or fool 
 had gone to Miss Blake's without lug- 
 gage of any sort ; and that ** Perhaps," 
 — very dubitatively — " a portmanteau 
 or bag might help him out of his tem- 
 porary difficulties." 
 
 "Why," of course," Freda cried im- 
 pulsively, with prompt decision ; " Rob- 
 ert's Gladstone bag and my little brown 
 trunk would be the very things for 
 him. I could lend them to him at 
 once, if only we can get a Suncla\- c.il) 
 to take them." 
 
 ''Not before service, surely," Phili}") 
 interposed, scandalised. "If we were 
 to take them now, you know, he 'd meet 
 all the church-people. ' 
 
trbe JSrltisb JSaibarian5 71 
 
 '* Is it taboo, then, to face the clergy 
 with a Gladstone bag?" Bertram asked 
 quite seriously, in that childlike tone 
 of simple enquiry that Philip had no- 
 ticed more than once before in him. 
 ''Your bouzes object to meet a man 
 with luggage ? They think it unlucky ? " 
 
 Freda and Philip looked at one an- 
 other with quick glances and laughed. 
 " Well, it 's not exactly tabooed," Freda 
 answered gently ; " and it 's not so 
 much the rector himself, you know, as 
 the feelings of one's neighbours. This 
 is a very respectable neighbourhood, — 
 oh, quite dreadfully respectable, — and 
 people in the houses about might make 
 a talk of it if a cab drove away from the 
 door as they were passing. I think, 
 Phil, you 're right. He 'd better wait 
 till the church people are finished." 
 
 '' Respectability seems to be a very 
 
72 Zbc JGrltldb JSarbartatid 
 
 great object of worship in your village," 
 Bertram suggested in perfect good faith. 
 ** Is it a local cult, or is it general in 
 England ? " 
 
 Freda glanced at him, lialf puzzled. 
 ** Oh, I think it 's pretty general," she 
 answered, with a happy smile. ** lUit 
 perhaps the disease is a little more cpi- 
 demic about here than elsewhere. It 
 afTects the suburbs : and my brother 's 
 got it just as badly as anyone." 
 
 "As badly as anyone ! " Bertram re- 
 peated with a puzzled air. ** Then you 
 don't belong to that creed )'()urself? 
 Y(;u don't bend the knee to this cm- 
 bodied abstraction? It 's your brother 
 who worships her, I suppose, for tlie 
 family." 
 
 "Yes, he 's more of a devotee tliaii I 
 am," I'Veda went on, (luilc franklw but 
 not a little surprised at so much free- 
 
tlbe JGrftisb J6arbar(an6 73 
 
 dom in a stranger. '' Though we 're all 
 of us tarred with the same brush, no 
 doubt. It *s a catching complaint, I 
 suppose, respectability." 
 
 Bertram gazed at her dubiously. A 
 complaint, did she say ? Was she seri- 
 ous or joking? He hardly understood 
 her. But further discussion was cut 
 short for the moment by Freda good- 
 humouredly running up-stairs to see 
 after the Gladstone bag and brown 
 portmanteau, into which she crammed 
 a few useless books and other heavy 
 things to serve as make-weights for Miss 
 Blake's injured feelings. " You 'd bet- 
 ter wait a quarter of an hour after we 
 go to church," she said, as the servant 
 brought these necessaries into the room 
 where Bertram and Philip were seated. 
 *' By that time nearly all the church 
 people will be safe in their seats : and 
 
74 Cbc JSritieb .1i3arbarlnn6 
 
 Phil's conscience will be satisfied. You 
 can tell Miss Hlake you 've brouf^ht a 
 little of your luggage to do for to-da}-, 
 and the rest will follow from town to- 
 morrow morning." 
 
 "Oh, how very kind you arc," ]^cr- 
 tram exclaimed, looking down at her 
 gratefully. " I 'm sure I don't know 
 what I should ever have done in this 
 crisis without you." 
 
 He said it with a warnitli which was 
 certainly unconventional. Freda col- 
 oured and looked embarrassed. There 
 was no denying, he was certainly a most 
 strange and untrammelled person. 
 
 "And if I mii^ht venture on a hint," 
 Philip put in, with a hasty glance at his 
 compani(jn's cxtrcnul}' unsabbatical 
 costume, ** it wouKl be that )ou 
 should n't ti\' to L^o out nnich lo-day 
 in that suit }ou 're wearing; it looks 
 
Zbe JBritisb ^Barbarians 75 
 
 peculiar, don't you know, and might 
 attract attention," 
 
 ''Oh, is that a taboo too?" the 
 stranger put in quickly, with an anxious 
 air. " Now that 's awfully kind of you. 
 But it *s curious as well ; for two or 
 three people passed my window last 
 night, all Englishmen as I judged, and 
 all with suits almost exactly like this 
 one — which was copied, as I told you, 
 from an English model." 
 
 " Last night ; oh yes," Philip an- 
 swered. " Last night was Saturday ; 
 that makes all the difference. The suit 's 
 right enough in its way, of course, — 
 very neat and gentlemanly ; but no^ for 
 Sunday. You 're expected on Sundays 
 to put on a black coat and waistcoat, 
 you know, like the ones I 'm wearing." 
 
 Bertram's countenance fell. "And 
 if I 'm seen in the street like this," he 
 
76 Zbc JGritteb JGarbarian^ 
 
 asked, "will they do anything to mc ? 
 Will the guardians of the peace — the 
 police I mean — arrest me ? " 
 
 Freda laughed a bright little laugh of 
 genuine amusement. " Oh, dear, no," 
 she said merrily ; " it is n't an affair of 
 police at all; not so serious as that; 
 it 's only a matter of respectability." 
 
 " I see," Bertram answered. " Re- 
 spectability 's a religious or popular, not 
 an official or governmental taboo. I 
 quite understand you. But those are 
 often the most dangerous sort. Will 
 the people in the street, who adore 
 Respectability, be likely to attack me or 
 mob me for disrespect to their fetish?" 
 
 " Certainly not," T^reda replied, flush- 
 ing up. He seemed to be carrying a 
 joke too far. " This is a free country. 
 F.verybody wears and eats and drinks 
 just what he pleases." 
 
^be JBritlsb JBarbacfans 77 
 
 " Well, that 's all very interesting to 
 me," the Alien went on with a charming 
 smile that disarmed her indignation ; 
 '* for I Ve come here on purpose to col- 
 lect facts and notes about English taboos 
 and similar observances. I 'm secretary 
 of a Nomological Society at home, 
 which is interested in pagodas, topes, 
 and joss-houses ; and I Ve been travel- 
 ling in Africa and in the South Sea 
 Islands for a long time past, working at 
 materials for a History of Taboo, from 
 its earliest beginnings in the savage 
 stage to its fully developed European 
 complexity ; so, of course, all you say 
 comes home to me greatly. Your ta- 
 boos, I foresee, will prove a most valu- 
 able and illustrative study." 
 
 *' I beg your pardon," Phihp inter- 
 posed stiffly, now put upon his mettle. 
 *' We have no taboos at all in England. 
 
78 Zbc JGritt^b .1Gart>arian5 
 
 You *rc misled, no doubt, by a mere 
 playful fiKioii dc parlcr, which society 
 indulges in. England, you must re- 
 member, is a civilised country, and ta- 
 boos are institutions that belong to the 
 lowest and most degraded savages." 
 
 But Bertram Ingledew gazed at him 
 in the blankest astonishment. " No 
 taboos!" he exclaimed, taken aback. 
 " Why, I 've read of hundreds. Among 
 nomological students, England has al- 
 ways been regarded with the greatest 
 interest as the home and centre of the 
 highest and most evolved taboo devel- 
 opment. And you yourself," he added, 
 with a courteous little bow, " have al- 
 ready supplied me with quite half a 
 dozen. But perhaps you call them by 
 some other name among yourselves ; 
 though in origin and essence, of course, 
 they 're precisely the same as the other 
 
tlbe JBritisb ^Barbarians 79 
 
 taboos I 've been examining so long in 
 Asia and Africa. However, I 'm afraid 
 I 'm detaining you from the functions 
 of your joss-house. You wish, no 
 doubt, to make your genuflexions in 
 the Temple of Respectability." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 /^N the way to church, the Montciths 
 
 sifted out tlieir new accjuaiut- 
 ancc. 
 
 *'Wcll, what do you make of liini, 
 Freda?" Phih'p asked, leanin<^ back in 
 his place, with a luxurious air, as soon 
 as the carriage had turned the corner. 
 " Lunatic or sharper? " 
 
 Freda gave an impatient gesture with 
 her neatly gloved hand. " Vov ni\- 
 part," she answered a\ ithout a second's 
 hesitation, " I make him neither; I find 
 him simph' charming." 
 
 "That's because he praised your 
 dress," Philip replied, looking wise. 
 " Did ever \'ou know anything so cool 
 80 
 
^be :©rlti6b :fi5arbarians 
 
 in your life? Was it ignorance, now, 
 or insolence ? " 
 
 '' It was perfect simplicity and natu- 
 ralness," Freda answered with confi- 
 dence. ** He looked at the dress, and 
 admired it, and being transparently 
 7iaif, he did n't see why he should n't 
 say so. It was n't at all rude, I thought 
 — and it gave me pleasure." 
 
 ''He certainly has in some ways 
 charming manners," Philip went on 
 more slowly. '' He manages to impress 
 one. If he 's a madman, which I rather 
 more than half suspect, it 's at least a 
 gentlemanly form of madness." 
 
 " His manners are more than merely 
 charming," Freda answered, quite en- 
 thusiastic ; for she had taken a great 
 fancy at first sight to the mysterious 
 stranger. '' They 've such absolute 
 freedom. That 's what strikes me most 
 
 6 
 
S2 Zbc :fi3rttidb JSarbariaiid 
 
 in them. They 're like the best EngHsh 
 aristocratic manners, without the inso- 
 lence ; or the freest American manners, 
 without the roughness. He 's ex- 
 tremely distinguished. And, oh, is n't 
 he handsome ! " 
 
 ** He is good-looking," Philip assented 
 grudgingly. Philip owned a looking- 
 glass, and was therefore accustomed to 
 a very high standard of manly beauty. 
 
 As for Robert Monteith, he smiled 
 the grim smile of the wholly unfasci- 
 nated. He was a dour business man of 
 Scotch descent, who had made his 
 money in palm-oil in the City of Lon- 
 don ; and having married Freda as a 
 remarkably fine woman with a splendid 
 figure to preside at his table, he had 
 very small sympathy with what he con- 
 sidered her highflown fads and nonsensi- 
 cal fancies. He had seen but little of 
 
Zbc JBritisb JBarbarians 83 
 
 the stranger, too, having come in from 
 his weekly stroll or tour of inspection 
 round the garden and stables just as 
 they were on the very point of starting 
 for St. Barnabas : and his opinion of the 
 man was by no means enhanced by 
 Freda's enthusiasm. ''As far as I 'm 
 concerned," he said, with his slow 
 Scotch drawl, inherited from his father 
 (for though London born and bred, he 
 was still in all essentials a pure Cale- 
 donian)—" As far as I 'm concerned, I 
 have n't the slightest doubt but the 
 man *s a swindler. I wonder at you, 
 Freda, that you should leave him alone 
 in the house just now, with all that 
 silver. I stepped round before I left, 
 and warned Martha privately not to 
 move from the hall till the fellow was 
 gone, and to call up cook and James if 
 }ie tried to get out of the house with 
 
S4 Zbe JGrttidb JGarbariaiid 
 
 any of our property. But you never 
 seemed to suspect him. And to supply 
 him with a bag, too, to carr)- it all off 
 in ! Well, women are feckless ! Hullo 
 there, policeman ; — stop, Reece, one 
 moment — I wish you 'd keep an eye on 
 my house this morning. There 's a 
 man in there I don't half like the look 
 of. When he drives awa)' in a cab that 
 my boy 's going to call for him, just see 
 where he stops, and take care he hasn't 
 got anything my servants don't know 
 about." 
 
 In the drawing-room, meanwhile, 
 Bertram Ingledew was reflecting, as he 
 waited for the church people to clear 
 away, how interesting these English 
 clothes-taboos and day-taboos promised 
 to prove, beside some similar customs 
 he had met with or read of in his in- 
 vestigations elsewhere. He remem- 
 
trbe JiSritisb ^Barbarians 85 
 
 bered how on a certain morning of the 
 year the High Priest of the Zapotecs 
 was obHged to get drunk, — an act which 
 on any other day in the calendar would 
 have been regarded by all as a terrible 
 sin in him. He reflected how in Guinea 
 and Tonquin, at a particular period 
 once a twelvemonth, nothing is con- 
 sidered wrong, and everything lawful, 
 so that the worst crimes and misde- 
 meanours go unnoticed and unpunished. 
 He smiled to think how some days are 
 tabooed in certain countries, so that 
 whatever you do on them, were it only 
 a game of tennis, is accounted wicked ; 
 while some days are periods of absolute 
 licence, so that whatever you do on 
 them, were it murder itself, becomes fit 
 and holy. To him and his people, at 
 home, of course, it was the intrinsic 
 character of the act itself that made it 
 
S6 Zbc JBrittab JGSarbaciana 
 
 right or wrong, not the particular day 
 or week or month on which one hap- 
 pened to do it. What was wicked in 
 June was wicked still in October. But 
 not so among the unreasoning devotees 
 of taboo, in Africa or England. There, 
 what was right in May became wicked 
 in September, and what was wrong on 
 Sunday became harmless or even obli- 
 gatory on Wednesday or Thursday. It 
 was all very hard for a rational being to 
 understand and explain : but he meant 
 to fathom it all the same, to the very 
 bottom — to find out why, for example, 
 in Uganda, whoever appears before the 
 king must appear stark naked, while in 
 England, whoever appears before the 
 queen must wear a tailor's sword or a 
 long silk train and a head-dress of 
 ostrich feathers ; why, in Morocco, when 
 you enter a temple, you must take off 
 
{Tbe JSritisb ^Barbarians 87 
 
 your shoes and catch a violent cold, in 
 order to show your respect for Allah ; 
 while in Europe, on entering a similar 
 religious building, you must uncover 
 your head, no matter how draughty the 
 place may be, since the deity who pre- 
 sides there appears to be indifferent to 
 the danger of consumption or chest- 
 diseases for his worshippers ; why 
 certain clothes or foods are prescribed 
 in London or Paris for Sundays and 
 Fridays, while certain others just 
 equally warm or digestible or the con- 
 trary, are perfectly lawful to all the 
 world alike on Tuesdays and Saturdays. 
 These were the curious questions he 
 had come so far to investigate, for 
 which the fakirs and dervishes of every 
 land gave such fanciful reasons ; and he 
 saw he would have no difficulty in pick- 
 ing up abundant examples of his sub- 
 
88 tLbe 36riti53b JGarbarian^ 
 
 jcct-matter everywhere in England. As 
 the metropolis of taboos, it exhibited the 
 phenomena in their highest evolution. 
 The only thing that puzzled him was 
 how Philip Christy, an Englishman 
 born, and evidently a most devout 
 observer of the manifold taboos and 
 juggernauts of his country, should 
 actually deny their very existence. It 
 was one more proof to him of the ex- 
 treme caution necessary in all anthropo- 
 logical investigations before accepting 
 the evidence even of well-meaning 
 natives on points of religious or social 
 usage, which they are often quite 
 childishly incapable of describing in 
 rational terms to outside enquirers. 
 They take their own manners and 
 customs for granted, and they cannot 
 see them in their true relations or com- 
 pare them with the similar manners 
 and customs of other nationalities. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 \ 17 H ETHER Philip Christy Hked It 
 or not, the Monteiths and he 
 were soon fairly committed to a tolera- 
 bly close acquaintance with Bertram 
 Ingledew. For, as chance would have 
 It, on the Monday morning, Bertram 
 went up to town In the very same 
 carriage with Philip and his brother-in- 
 law, to set himself up In necessaries of 
 life for a six or eight months' stay In 
 England. When he returned that night 
 to Brackenhurst with two large trunks, 
 full of underclothing and so forth, he 
 had to come round once more to the 
 Monteiths', as Philip anticipated, to 
 bring back the Gladstone bag and the 
 
 89 
 
90 Cbc JiGritiab JGarbariana 
 
 brown portmanteau. lie did it witli so 
 much graceful and gracious courtesy, 
 and such manly gratitude for the favour 
 done him, that he left still more deeply 
 than ever on Freda's mind the impres- 
 sion of a gentleman. He had found out 
 all the right shops to go to in London, 
 he said, and he had ordered everything 
 necessary to social salvation at the very 
 best tailors, so strictly in accordance 
 with Philip's instructions that bethought 
 he should now transgress no more the 
 sumptuary rules in that matter made 
 and established as long as he remained 
 in this realm of England. He had com- 
 manded a black cut-away coat, suitable 
 for Sunday morning, and a curious gar- 
 ment called a frock coat, buttoned tight 
 over the chest, to be worn in the after- 
 noon, especially in London ; and a still 
 quainter coat, made of shiny broad- 
 
trbe :©ritl0b itSarbarians 91 
 
 cloth, with strange tails behind, which 
 was considered " respectable " after 
 seven P.M., for a certain restricted class 
 of citizens— those who paid a particular 
 impost known as income tax, as far as 
 he could gather from what the tailor 
 told him : though the classes who really 
 did any good in the state, the working 
 men and so forth, seemed exempted by 
 general consent from wearing it. Their 
 dress, indeed, he observed, was, strange 
 to say, the least cared for and evidently 
 the least costly of anybody's. 
 
 He admired the Monteith children so 
 unaffectedly, too— telling them how 
 pretty and how sweet-mannered they 
 were to their very faces, — that he quite 
 won Freda's heart; though Robert 
 did n't like it. Robert had evidently 
 some deep-seated superstition about the 
 matter ; for he sent Maimie, the eldest 
 
92 Ebc J6riti6b Ji3arbariaML> 
 
 j^irl, out of the room at once ; she was 
 four years old ; and he took little 
 Archie, the two-year old, on his knee, 
 as if to guard him from some moral or 
 social contagion. Then Bertram re- 
 membered how he had seen African 
 mothers beat or pinch their children till 
 they made them cry, to avert the evil 
 omen, when he praised them to their 
 faces ; and he recollected, too, that most 
 fetishistic races believe in Nemesis — that 
 is to say, in jealous gods, who, if they 
 see you love a child too much or ad- 
 mire it too greatly, will take it from 
 you or do it some grievous bodily harm, 
 such as blinding it or maiming it, in 
 order to pay you out for thinking your- 
 self too fortunate. He did n't doubt, 
 therefore, but that in Scotland, which 
 he knew by report to be a country ex- 
 ceptionally given over to terrible super- 
 
trbe JBritieb :fi3arbarian0 93 
 
 stitions, the people still thought their 
 sanguinary Calvinistic deity, fashioned 
 by a race of stern John Knoxes in their 
 own image, would do some harni to an 
 over-praised child, '' to wean them from 
 it." He was glad to see, however, that 
 Freda at least did n't share this degrad- 
 ing and hateful belief, handed down 
 from the most fiendish of savage con- 
 ceptions. On the contrary, she seemed 
 delighted that Bertram should pat little 
 Maimie on the head, and praise her 
 sunny smile and her lovely hair, " just 
 like her mother's." 
 
 To Philip, this was all a rather serious 
 matter. He felt he was responsible for 
 having introduced the mysterious alien, 
 however unwillingly, into the bosom of 
 Robert Monteith's family. Now, Philip 
 was n't rich, and Freda was supposed 
 to have '' made a good match of it " — 
 
94 Cbc J&citldb JSarbariand 
 
 that is to say, she had married a man a 
 great deal wealthier than her own up- 
 bringing. So Philip, after his kind, 
 thought much of tlie Monteith connec- 
 tion. Me lived in lodgings at Bracken- 
 hurst at a highly inconvenient distance 
 from town, so as to be near their house, 
 and catch whatever rays of reflected 
 glory might fall upon his head like a 
 shadowy halo from their horses and 
 carriages, their dinners and garden par- 
 ties. He did n't like, therefore, to in- 
 troduce into liis sister's house anybody 
 that Robert Monteith, that moneyed 
 man of oil, in the West African trade, 
 might consider an undesirable acquaint- 
 ance. But as time wore on, and Ber- 
 tram's new clothes came home from the 
 tailor's, it began to strike the Civil Serv- 
 ant's mind that the mysterious alien, 
 though he excited much comment and 
 
Zbc JBrltlsb JBarbarians 95 
 
 conjecture in Brackenhurst, was ac- 
 cepted on the whole by local society as 
 rather an acquisition to its ranks than 
 otherwise. He was well off, he was 
 well dressed ; he had no trade or profes- 
 sion, and Brackenhurst, undermanned, 
 hailed him as a godsend for afternoon 
 teas and informal tennis parties. That 
 ineffable air of distinction as of one 
 royal born, which Philip had noticed at 
 once, the first evening they met, seemed 
 to strike and impress almost everybody 
 who saw him. People felt he was mys- 
 terious, but at any rate he was someone. 
 And then he had been everywhere, ex- 
 cept in Europe, and had seen every- 
 thing, except their own society ; and he 
 talked agreeably, when he was n't on 
 taboos : and in suburban towns, don't 
 you know, an outsider who brings fresh 
 blood into the fold — who has anything 
 
96 (Tbe JBritidb :ASarbariand 
 
 to say wc don't all know beforehand is 
 always welcome ! So Brackenhurst ac- 
 cepted Bertram Ingledew before loni^as 
 an eccentric but interesting and roman- 
 tic person. 
 
 Not that he stopped much in Brack- 
 enhurst itself. He went up to Town 
 every day, almost as regularly as Rob- 
 ert Monteith and I'hilip Christy. He 
 had things he wanted to observe there, 
 he said, for the Work he was engaged 
 upon, and the Work clearly occupied 
 the best part of his energies. Every 
 ni^rht he came down to Brackenhurst 
 with his note-book crammed full of 
 modern facts and illustrative instances. 
 He worked most of all in the East End, 
 he told Freda confidentially : there he 
 could see best the remote results of cer- 
 tain painful English customs and usages 
 he was anxious to study. Still, he often 
 
n:be JBrittsb JSarbarians 97 
 
 went west, too ; for the West End ta- 
 boos, though not in some cases so dis- 
 tressing as the East End ones, were at 
 times much more curiously illustrative 
 and ridiculous. He must master all 
 branches of the subject alike. He 
 spoke so seriously that after a time 
 Freda, who was just at first inclined to 
 laugh at his odd way of putting things, 
 began to take it all in the end quite 
 as seriously as he did. He felt more at 
 home with her than with anybody else 
 at Brackenhurst. She had sympathetic 
 eyes, and he lived on sympathy. He 
 came to her so often for help in his dif- 
 ficulties that she soon saw he really 
 meant all he said, and was genuinely 
 puzzled in a very queer way by many 
 varied aspects of English society. 
 
 In time the two grew quite intimate 
 
 together. But on one point Bertram 
 7 
 
98 Cbc JGriti^b JGarbarians 
 
 would never give liis new friend the 
 slightest information ; and that was the 
 whereabouts of that mysterious " home " 
 he so often referred to. Oddly enough, 
 no one ever questioned him closely on 
 the subject. A certain singular reserve 
 of his, which alternated curiously with 
 his perfect frankness, prevented them 
 from trespassing so far on his individu- 
 ality. People felt they must n't. Some- 
 how, when Bertram Ingledew let it once 
 be felt he did n't wish to be questioned 
 on any particular point, even women 
 managed to restrain their curiosity : 
 and he would have been either a very 
 bold or a very insensitive man who 
 would have ventured to continue ques- 
 tioning him any further. So, though 
 many people hazarded guesses as to 
 where he had come from, nobody ever 
 asked him the point-blank question ; 
 
tlbe JSrftisb JBarbarians 99 
 
 '* Who are you, if you please, and what 
 do you want here ? " 
 
 The Alien went out a great deal with 
 the Monteiths. Robert himself did n't 
 like the fellow, he said ; one never quite 
 knew what the deuce he was driving at; 
 but Freda found him always more and 
 more charming, — so full of information ! 
 — while Philip admitted he was excel- 
 lent form, and such a capital tennis 
 player ! So whenever Philip had a day 
 ofT in the country, they three went out 
 in the fields together, and Freda at least 
 thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated 
 the freedom and freshness of the new- 
 comer's conversation. 
 
 On one such day they went out, as it 
 chanced, into the meadows that stretch 
 up the hill behind Brackenhurst. Freda 
 remembered it well afterwards. It was 
 the day when an annual saturnalia of 
 
loo XLbc JSritisb JGarbariand 
 
 vulgar vice usurps and pollutes the open 
 downs at Epsom. Ikrtrani did n't care 
 to see it, he said, — the rabble of a great 
 town turned loose to desecrate the open 
 face of nature, — even regarded as a mat- 
 ter of popular custom ; he had looked 
 on at much the same orgies before in 
 New Guinea and on the Zambesi, and 
 they only depressed him ; so he stopped 
 at Brackenhurst, and went for a walk 
 instead in the fresh summer meadows. 
 Robert Monteith for his part had gone 
 to the Derby, — so they call that orgy, 
 — and Philip had meant to accompany 
 him in the dog-cart, but remained be- 
 hind at the last moment to take care 
 of Freda ; for l^^-eda, being a lady at 
 heart, always shrank from the pollution 
 of vulgar assemblies. As they walked 
 together across the lush green fields, 
 thick with campion and yellow-rattle, 
 
tTbe :fiSrftl6b :ft3arbarfan0 loi 
 
 they came to a dense copse with a rus- 
 tic gate, above which a threatening 
 notice-board frowned them straight in 
 the face, bearing the usual selfish and 
 anti-social inscription, " Trespassers will 
 be prosecuted." 
 
 '' Let 's go in here and pick orchids," 
 Bertram suggested, leaning over the 
 gate, "just see how pretty they are! 
 The scented white butterfly ! It loves 
 moist bogland. Now, Mrs. Monteith, 
 would n't a few long sprays of that 
 lovely thing look charming on your 
 dinner table ! " 
 
 '' But it 's preserved," Philip inter- 
 posed, with an awe-struck face. " You 
 can't go in there. It 's Sir Lionel Long- 
 den's, and he 's awfully particular." 
 
 " Can't go in there ? Oh, nonsense," 
 Bertram answered, with a merry laugh, 
 vaulting the gate like a practised ath- 
 
102 Cbc JBritlsb JDarbarfans 
 
 lete. ** Mrs. Monteith can get over 
 easily enough, I 'm sure. She 'sas Hght 
 as a fawn. May I help you over ? " 
 And he held one hand out. 
 
 " But it 's private," Philip went on in 
 a somewhat horrified voice, " and the 
 pheasants are sitting." 
 
 " Private ? How can it be ? There *s 
 nothing sown here. It 's all wild wood ; 
 we can't do any damage. If it was 
 growling crops, of course, one would 
 walk through it not at all, or at least 
 very carefully. But this is pure wood- 
 land. Are the pheasants tabooed then,- 
 or why may n't we go near them ? " 
 
 " They 're not tabooed, but they 're 
 preserved," Philip answered somewhat 
 testily, making a delicate distinction 
 with(nit a difference, after the fashion 
 dear to llic official intellect. '* This 
 land belongs to Sir Lionel Longden, I 
 
CTbe JBritisb JBarbadans 103 
 
 tell you, and he chooses to lay it all 
 down in pheasants. He bought it and 
 paid for it, and so he has a right, I 
 suppose, to do as he likes with it." 
 
 *' That 's the funniest thing of all 
 about these taboos," Bertram mused, as 
 if half to himself. '* The very people 
 whom they injure and inconvenience 
 the most, the people whom they hamper 
 and cramp and debar, don't seem to 
 object to them, but believe in them and 
 are afraid of them ! In Samoa, I re- 
 member, certain fruits and fish and ani- 
 mals and so forth were tabooed to the 
 chiefs ; and nobody else ever dared to 
 eat them. They thought it was wrong, 
 and said if they did some nameless evil 
 would at once overtake them. These 
 nameless terrors, these bodiless super- 
 stitions, are always the deepest. People 
 fight hardest to preserve their bogies. 
 
104 Cbc JGrttitfb JCarbarians 
 
 They fancy some appalling unknown 
 dissolution would at once result from 
 reasonable action. I tried one day to 
 persuade a poor devil of a fellow in 
 Samoa, who had caught one of these 
 fish, and who was terribly hungry, that 
 no harm would come to him if he 
 cooked it and ate it. But he was too 
 slavishly frightened to follow my advice ; 
 he said it was taboo to the god-de- 
 scended chiefs ; if a mortal man tasted 
 it, he would die on the spot ; so noth- 
 ing on earth would induce him to try 
 it. Though to be sure, even there, no- 
 body ever went quite so far as to taboo 
 the very soil of earth itself ; everybody 
 might till and hunt where he liked ; it 's 
 only in ICurope, where evolution goes 
 furthest, that taboo has reached that 
 last silly pitch of injustice and absurd- 
 ity. Well, we 're not afraid of the fetish, 
 
Zbc 3iSrit(6b JBarbariana 105 
 
 you and I, Mrs. Monteith ; jump up 
 on the gate ; I '11 give you a hand over ! " 
 And he held out one strong arm as he 
 spoke, to aid her. 
 
 Freda had no such fanatical respect 
 for the bogey of vested interests as her 
 superstitious brother, so she mounted 
 the gate gracefully — she was always 
 graceful. Bertram took her small hand, 
 and jumped her down on the other 
 side, while Philip, not liking to show 
 himself less bold than a woman in this 
 matter, climbed over after her, though 
 with no small misgivings. They strolled 
 on into the wood, picking the pretty 
 white orchids by the way as they went, 
 for some little distance. The rich 
 mould under foot was thick with sweet 
 woodruff and trailing loose-strife. Every 
 now and again as they stirred the lithe 
 brambles that encroached upon the 
 
io6 Zbc 3Brittdb JSarbariand 
 
 path, a plicasant rose frcMn the grtnuid 
 with a loud w hir-r-r before them. Philip 
 felt most uneasy. "You'll have the 
 keepers after you in a minute," he said 
 with a deprecating shrug. " This is 
 just full nesting time. They 're down 
 upon anybody who disturbs the pheas- 
 ants." 
 
 " But the pheasants can't belong to 
 anyone," Bertram cried, with a greatly 
 amused face. *' You may taboo the 
 land, — I understand that 's done, — but 
 surely you can't taboo a wild bird that 
 can fly as it likes from one piece of 
 ground away into another." 
 
 Philip enlightened his ignorance by 
 giving him offhand a brief and pro- 
 foundly servile account of the English 
 game laws, interspersed with sundry 
 anecdotes of poachers and poaching. 
 Bertram listened with an interested but 
 
Cbe JiSritisb ^Barbarians to; 
 
 gravely disapproving face. " And do 
 you mean to say," he asked at last, 
 " they send men to prison as criminals 
 for catching or shooting hares and 
 pheasants?" 
 
 " Why, certainly," Philip answered. 
 " It 's an offence against the law, and 
 also a crime against the rights of prop- 
 erty." 
 
 "Against the law, yes; but how on 
 earth can it be a crime against the rights 
 of property ? Obviously the pheasant 's 
 the property of the man who happens to 
 shoot it. How can it belong to him and 
 also to the fellow who taboos the par- 
 ticular piece of ground it was snared on ? " 
 
 "It does n't belong to the man who 
 shoots it at all," Philip answered, rather 
 angrily. " It belongs to the man who 
 owns the land, of course, and who 
 chooses to preserve it." 
 
io8 XLbc JSrittdb JSarbariane 
 
 " Oh, 1 see," Bertram replied. " Then 
 you disregard tlic rights of property al- 
 together, and only consider the privi- 
 leges of taboo. As a principle, that 's 
 intelligible. One sees it 's consistent. 
 But how is it that you all allow these 
 chiefs, — landlords, don't you call them ? 
 — to taboo the soil, and prevent you all 
 from even walking over it ? Don't you 
 see that if you chose to combine in a 
 body, and insist upon the recognition 
 of your natural rights, — if you deter- 
 mined to make the landlords give up 
 their taboo, and cease from injustice, 
 they 'd have to yield to you ? and then 
 you could exercise your native right of 
 going where you pleased, and cultivate 
 the land in common for the public 
 benefit, instead of leaving it as now, to 
 be cultivated anyhow, or turned into 
 waste, for the benefit of the tabooers?*' 
 
XLbe JBritisb JBarbarfans 109 
 
 '' But it would be ivrong to take it 
 from them," Philip cried, growing fiery 
 red, and half losing his temper; for he 
 really believed it. '' It would be sheer 
 confiscation : the land 's their own ; 
 they either bought it or inherited it 
 from their fathers. If you were to 
 begin taking it away, what guarantee 
 would you have left for any of the 
 rights of property generally?" 
 
 '' You did n't recognise the rights of 
 property of the fellow who killed the 
 pheasant, though," Bertram interposed, 
 laughing, and imperturbably good-hu- 
 moured. "■ But that 's always the way 
 with these taboos, everywhere. They 
 subsist just because the vast majority 
 even of those who are obviously 
 wronged and injured by them really 
 believe in them. They think they 're 
 guaranteed by some divine prescription. 
 
no Cbe JGritisb .IGarbarian^ 
 
 The fetish guards them. In Polynesia, 
 I recollect, some chiefs could taboo 
 almost anything they liked, even a girl 
 or a woman, or fruit and fish, ami ani- 
 mals and houses ; and after the chief 
 had once said, ' It is taboo,' everybody , 
 else was afraid to touch them. Of 
 course, the fact that a chief or a land- 
 owner has bought and paid for a par- 
 ticular privilege or species of taboo, or 
 has inherited it from his fathers, does n't 
 give him any better moral claim to it. 
 The question is, ' Is the claim in itself 
 right and reasonable ? ' for a wrong is 
 only all the more a wrong for having 
 been long and persistently exercised. 
 The Central Africans say, ' This is my 
 slave; I bought her and paid for her; 
 I 've a right, if 1 like, to kill her and eat 
 her.' The King of Ibo, on the West 
 Coast, had an hereditary right to offer 
 
Zbc :©rm6b JSarbartans m 
 
 up as a human sacrifice the first man he 
 met, every time he quitted his palace ; 
 and he was quite surprised audacious 
 freethinkers should call the morality of 
 his right in question. If you English 
 were all in a body to see through this 
 queer land-taboo, now, which drives 
 your poor off the soil, and prevents you 
 all from even walking at liberty over 
 the surface of the waste in your own 
 
 country, you could easily " 
 
 "Oh, Lord, what shall we do?" 
 Philip interposed in a voice of abject 
 terror. '' If here is n't Sir Lionel ! " 
 
 And sure enough, right across the 
 narrow path in front of them stood a 
 short, fat, stumpy, unimpressive little 
 man, with a very red face, and a Nor- 
 folk jacket, boiling over with anger. 
 
 '* What are you people doing here ? " 
 he cried, undeterred by the presence 
 
112 Xlbc 3QxiUob JQarbariant3 
 
 of a lady, and spcakini^ in tlic insolent 
 supercilious voice of I lie ICn^lish land- 
 K)rcl in tlefence of his pheasant pre- 
 serves. "This is private property. 
 ^^)U nuist have seen the notice at the 
 gate, 'Trespassers will be prosecuted.'" 
 
 "Yes, we did see it," Bertram an- 
 swered, with his unruffled smile, " and 
 thinking it an uncalled-for piece of 
 aggressive churlishness, both in form 
 and substance, — why, we took the lib- 
 erty to disregard it." 
 
 Sir Lionel glared at him. In that 
 servile neighbourhood, almost entirely 
 inhabited by the flunkeys of villadom, 
 it was a complete novelty to him to be 
 thus bearded in his den. lie gasped 
 with anger. " Do you mean to sa}'," 
 he gurgled out, growing pur[)lc to the 
 neck, " you come in here deliberately 
 to disturb my pheasants, and then 
 
^be JBdtisb :fiSarbar(aii0 113 
 
 brazen it out to my face like this, sir? 
 Go back the way you came, or I '11 call 
 my keepers." 
 
 " No, I will 7iot go back the way I 
 came," Bertram responded deliberately, 
 with perfect self-control, and with a 
 side glance at Freda. *' Every human 
 being has a natural right to walk across 
 this copse, which is all waste ground, 
 and has no crop sown in it. The 
 pheasants can't be yours ; they 're com- 
 mon property. Besides there 's a lady. 
 We mean to make our way across the 
 copse at our leisure, picking flowers as 
 we go, and come out into the road on 
 the other side of the spring. It 's a 
 universal right of which no country 
 and no law can possibly deprive us." 
 
 Sir Lionel was livid with rage. 
 Strange as it may appear to any reason- 
 ing mind, the man really believed he 
 
114 Zbc JQxitieb .tSarbarlans 
 
 had a natural right to prevent people 
 from crossing that strip of wood where 
 liis pheasants were sitting. PI is ances- 
 tors had assumed it from time imme- 
 morial, and by dint of never being 
 questioned, had come to regard their 
 absurd usurpation as quite fair and 
 proper. He placed himself straight 
 across the narrow path, blocked it up 
 with his short and stumpy figure. 
 " Now, look here, young man," he said 
 with all the insolence of his caste ; " if 
 you try to go on, I '11 stand here in 
 your way ; and if you dare to touch 
 me, it 's a common assault, and by 
 George, you '11 have to answer at law 
 for the consequences ! " 
 
 Bertram Ingledew for his part was 
 all sweet reasonableness. He raised 
 one deprecating hand. " Now, before 
 we come to open hostilities," he said 
 
^be Britisb JBarbariane 115 
 
 in a gentle voice, with that unfailing 
 smile of his, ** let 's talk the matter over 
 like rational beings. Let 's try to be 
 logical. This copse is considered yours 
 by the actual law of the country you 
 live in ; your tribes permit it to you ; 
 you 're allowed to taboo it. Very well, 
 then ; I make all possible allowances 
 for your strange hallucination. You 've 
 been brought up to think you had 
 some mystic and intangible claim to 
 this corner of earth more than other 
 people, even your Christians. That 
 claim, of course, you can't logically de- 
 fend, but failing arguments, you want 
 to fight for it. Would n't it be more 
 reasonable, now, to show you had some 
 rigJit or justice in the matter ? I 'm 
 always reasonable : if you can convince 
 me of the propriety and equity of your 
 glaim, I '11 ^o back as you wish by the 
 
ii6 XLbc JQntidb ISarbariaii^ 
 
 way I entered. If not, — well, there 's a 
 lady here, and I in bound, as a man, to 
 hel[) her safely over." 
 
 Sir Lionel almost choked. " I sec 
 what you are," he gasped out with dif- 
 ficulty. " I \e heard this sort of rub- 
 bish more than once before. You 're 
 one of these damned land-nationalisini; 
 Radicals." 
 
 " On the contrary," Bertram an- 
 swered, urbane as ever, with charmin<^ 
 politeness of tone and manner; "I'm 
 a born Conservative. I m tenacious to 
 an almost foolishly sentimental degree 
 of every old custom or practice or 
 idea; unless, indeed, it 's cither wicked 
 or silly — like most of your Englfsh 
 ones." 
 
 He raised his hat and made as if he 
 would pass on. Now nothing annoys 
 an angry savage or an uneducated per- 
 
Zbc JBritisb ^Barbarians 117 
 
 son so much as the perfect coolness of 
 a civiHsed and cultivated man, when he 
 himself is boiling with indignation. He 
 feels its superiority an affront on his 
 barbarism. So, with a vulgar oath. Sir 
 Lionel flung himself point-blank in the 
 way. '' Damn it all, no you won't, sir," 
 he cried. *' I '11 soon put a stop to all 
 that, I can tell you. You sha'n't go on 
 one step without committing an assault 
 upon me." And he drew himself up, 
 four square, as if for battle. 
 
 '' Oh, just as you like," Bertram 
 answered coolly, never losing his temper. 
 '* I 'm not afraid of taboos. I 've seen 
 too many of them." And he gazed at 
 the fat little angry man with a gentle 
 expression of mingled contempt and 
 amusement. 
 
 For a minute Freda thought they 
 were really going to fight, and drew 
 
ii8 Cbc JBritisb JGarbariniis 
 
 back in horror to await tlic contest. 
 But such a warlike notion never entered 
 the man of peace's head. He took a 
 step backward for a second and calmly 
 surveyed his antagonist with a critical 
 scrutiny. Sir Lionel was short, and 
 stout, and puffy; Bertram Ingledew 
 was tall and strong and well-knit and 
 athletic. After an instant's pause, dur- 
 ing which the doughty baronet stood 
 doubling his fat fists and glaring silent 
 wrath at his lither opponent, Bertram 
 made a sudden dart forward, seized the 
 little stout man bodily in his stalwart 
 arms, and lifting him like a baby, in 
 spite of kicks and struggles, carried him 
 a hundred paces to one side of the path, 
 where he laid him down gingerly, with- 
 out unnecessary violence, on a bed of 
 young bracken. Then he returned 
 quite calmly, as if nothing had hap- 
 
tTbe :terftfsb :l8arbadan^ no 
 
 pened, to Freda's side, with that quiet 
 Httle smile on his unruffled countenance. 
 Freda had n't quite approved of all 
 this small episode, for she, too, believed 
 in the righteousness of taboo, like most 
 other Englishwomen, and devoutly ac- 
 cepted the common priestly doctrine 
 that the earth is the land-lord's and the 
 fulness thereof ; but still, being a 
 woman, and therefore an admirer of 
 physical strength in men, she could n't 
 help applauding to herself the masterly 
 way in which her squire had carried his 
 antagonist captive. When he returned, 
 she beamed on him with friendly con- 
 fidence. But Philip was very much 
 frightened indeed. "You '11 have to 
 pay for this, you know," he said. '' This 
 is a law-abiding land. He '11 bring an ac- 
 tion against you for assault and battery, 
 and you '11 get three months for it." 
 
120 tTbc JBritfsb JBarbariatt^ 
 
 " I don't think so," Bertram answered, 
 still placid and unruffled. " There were 
 three of us who saw him ; and it was a 
 very ignominious position indeed for a 
 person who sets up to be a great chief 
 in the country. He won't like the little 
 boys on his own estate to know the 
 great Sir Lionel was lifted up against 
 his will, carried about like a baby, and 
 set down in a bracken-bed. Indeed, I 
 was more than sorry to have to do such 
 a thing to a man of his years ; but you 
 see he ivould have it. It 's the only 
 way to deal with these tabooing chiefs. 
 You must face them, and be done with 
 it. In the Caroline Islands, once, I had 
 to do the same thing to a cazique who 
 was going to cook and eat a very pretty 
 young girl of his own retainers. He 
 would n't listen to reason ; the law was 
 on his side ; so being happily not a law- 
 
tlbe :fiSriti6b 315arbadan6 i2t 
 
 abiding person myself, I took him up 
 in my arms and walked off with him 
 bodily, and was obliged to drop him 
 down into a very painful bed of sting- 
 ing plants like nettles, so as to give 
 myself time to escape with the girl clear 
 out of his clutches. I regretted having 
 to do it so roughly, of course ; but there 
 was no other way out of it." 
 
 As he spoke, for the first time, it re- 
 ally came home to Freda's mind that 
 Bertram Ingledew, standing there be- 
 fore her, regarded in very truth the 
 Polynesian chief and Sir Lionel Long- 
 den as much about the same sort of 
 unreasoning people — savages to be 
 argued with and cajoled if possible ; 
 but if not, then to be treated with calm 
 firmness and force, as an English officer 
 on an exploring expedition might treat 
 a wrathful Central African kinglet. And 
 
122 trbc JBritf^b JGarbarians 
 
 in a dim sort of way, too, it began to 
 strike her by degrees that the analogy 
 was a true one — that Bertram Ingledew 
 among the EngHshmcn with whom she 
 was accustomed to mix, was hke a civ- 
 ih'sed being in the midst of barbarians, 
 who feel and recognise but dimly and 
 half unconsciously his innate superi- 
 ority. 
 
 By the time they had reached the 
 gate on the other side of the hanger, 
 Sir Lionel overtook them, boiling over 
 with indignation. " Your card, sir," he 
 gasped out inarticulately to the calmly 
 innocent Alien ; " you must answer for 
 all this. Your card, I say, instantly." 
 
 l^ertram looked at him with a fixctl 
 gaze. Sir Lionel, having had good 
 proof of his antagonist's strength, kept 
 his distance cautiously. " Certainly 
 not, my good friend," Bertram replied, 
 
XLbc JSrttisb JBarbarfans 123 
 
 in a firm tone. ** Why should /, who 
 am the injured and insulted party, as- 
 sist j'ou in identifying me ? It was you 
 who aggressed upon my free individu- 
 ality. If you want to call in the aid of 
 an unjust law to back up an unjust and 
 irrational taboo, you must find out for 
 yourself who I am, and where I come 
 from. But I would n't advise you to 
 do anything so foolish. Three of us 
 here saw you in the ridiculous position 
 into which by your obstinacy you com- 
 pelled me to put you ; and you would n't 
 like to hear us recount it in public, 
 with picturesque details, to your brother 
 magistrates. Let me say one thing 
 more to you," he added after a pause, 
 in that peculiarly soft and melodious 
 voice of his. '* Don't you think on re- 
 flection, — even if you 're foolish enough 
 and illogical enough really to believe in 
 
124 trbc JBritisb JSarbarians 
 
 the sacredness of the taboo by virtue of 
 which you try to exclude your fellow- 
 tribesmen from their fair share of enjoy- 
 ment of the soil of England, — don't 
 you think you might, at any rate, ex- 
 ercise your imaginary powers over the 
 land you arrogate to yourself with a 
 little more gentleness and common 
 politeness ? How petty and narrow it 
 looks to use even an undoubted right, 
 far more a tribal taboo, in a tyrannical 
 and needlessly aggressive manner ! How 
 mean, and small, and low and churlish ! 
 The damage we did your land, as you 
 call it, — if we did any at all, — was cer- 
 tainly not a ha'penny worth. Was it 
 consonant with your dignity as a chief 
 in the tribe, to get so hot and angry 
 about so small a value ? How grotesque 
 to make so much fuss and noise about a 
 matter of a ha'penny ! We, who were 
 
Zbc JBritisb ^Barbarians 125 
 
 the aggrieved parties^ we, whom you at- 
 tempted to debar by main force from 
 the common human right to walk freely 
 over earth wherever there 's nothing 
 sown or planted, and who were obliged 
 to remove you as an obstacle out of our 
 path, at some personal inconvenience" — 
 (he glanced askance at his clothes, 
 crumpled and soiled by Sir Lionel's un- 
 seemly resistance), '' zve did n't lose our 
 tempers, or attempt to revile you. We 
 were cool and collected. But a taboo 
 must be on its very last legs when it 
 requires the aid of terrifying no ces at 
 every corner in order to preserve it ; 
 and I think this of yours must be well 
 on the way to abolition. Still, as I 
 should like to part friends "—(he drew 
 a coin from his pocket and held it out 
 between finger and thumb with a court- 
 eous bow towards Sir Lionel) — ''I 
 
126 Zbc JGriti^b JCarbariane 
 
 gladly tender you a ha'penny in com- 
 pensation for an\' supposed liarni we 
 may possibly have clone your inia<^inar\' 
 rights by walking through the wood 
 here." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 COR a day or two after this notable 
 encounter between tabooer and 
 taboo-breaker, Philip moved about in a 
 most uneasy state of mind. He lived in 
 constant dread of receiving a summons 
 as a party to an assault upon a most 
 respectable and respected landed pro- 
 prietor who preserved more pheasants 
 and owned more ruinous cottages than 
 anybody else (except the Duke) round 
 about Brackenhurst. Indeed, so deeply 
 did he regret his involuntary part in 
 this painful escapade that he never men- 
 tioned a word of it to Robert Monteith ; 
 nor did Freda either. To say the truth, 
 husband and wife were seldom confi- 
 127 
 
128 Zbc J6ritii5b JGarbarians 
 
 dential one with the other. But to 
 PhiHp's surprise, Bertram's prediction 
 came true; they never heard another 
 word about the action for trespass or 
 the threatened prosecution for assault 
 and battery. Sir Lionel found out that 
 the person who had committed the 
 gross and unheard-of outrage of lifting 
 an elderly and respectable English land- 
 owner like a baby-in-arms on his own 
 estate was a lodger at Brackenhurst, 
 variously regarded by those who knew 
 him best as an escaped lunatic, and as 
 a foreign nobleman in disguise fleeing 
 for his life from a charge of complicity 
 in a Nihilist conspiracy. He wisely 
 came to the conclusion, therefore, that 
 he would n't be the first to divulge the 
 story of his own ignominious defeat, 
 unless he found that damned radical 
 chap was going boasting around the 
 
^be JBritisb :i6arbarian6 129 
 
 country-side how he had balked Sir 
 Lionel. And as nothing was further 
 than boasting from Bertram Ingledew's 
 gentle nature, and as Philip and Freda 
 both held their peace for good reasons 
 of their own, the baronet never at- 
 tempted in any way to rake up the 
 story of his grotesque disgrace on what 
 he considered his own property. All 
 he did was to double the number of 
 keepers on the borders of his estate, 
 and to give them strict notice that who- 
 ever could succeed in catching the 
 " damned radical " in flagrante delicto^ 
 as trespasser or poacher, should receive 
 most instant reward and promotion. 
 
 During the next few weeks, accord- 
 ingly, nothing of importance happened, 
 from the point of view of the Bracken- 
 hurst chronicler ; though Bertram was 
 
 constantly round at the Monteiths' gar- 
 9 
 
I30 Cbc JBnti^b .tGnibariana 
 
 den for afternoon tea or a game of lawn- 
 tennis. He was an excellent player; 
 hiwn-tennis was most popular "at 
 home," he said, in that same mysteri- 
 ous and non-committing phrase he so 
 often made use of. Onlv, he found the 
 racquets and balls (very best London- 
 make) rather clumsy and awkward, he 
 wished he had brought his own along 
 with him when he came here. Thili^j 
 noticed his style of service was particu 
 larly good, and even wondered at times 
 he did n't try to go in for the All Eng- 
 land Championship. But Bertram sur- 
 prised him by answering with a quiet 
 smile that, though it was an excellent 
 amusement, he had too man\' other 
 things to do with his time to make a 
 serious pursuit of it. 
 
 One day towards the end of June, 
 the strange youn<^r man liad gone round 
 
^be JBrltisb Barbarians 131 
 
 to The Grange, — that was the name of 
 Freda's house, — for his usual relaxation 
 after a very tiring and distressing day 
 in London, '* on important business." 
 The business, whatever it was, had evi- 
 dently harrowed his feelings not a little, 
 for he was se^jsitively organised, Freda 
 was on the tennis-lawn. She met him 
 with much lamentation over the un- 
 pleasant fact that she had just lost a 
 distant sister-in-law whom she had never 
 cared for. 
 
 "Well, but if you never cared for 
 her," Bertram answered, looking hard 
 into her lustrous eyes, " it does n't 
 much matter." 
 
 " Oh, I shall have to go into mourn- 
 ing all the same," Freda continued 
 somewhat pettishly, "and waste all my 
 nice new summer dresses. It 's suc/i a 
 nuisance ! " 
 
132 Zbc J6ritl6b .tGarbariaui 
 
 "Why do it, then?" Bertram sug- 
 gested, watch Jul; her face \ cr\' nar- 
 rowly. 
 
 " Well, I suppose because of what 
 you would call a fetish," Freda an- 
 swered laughing. " I know it 's ridicu- 
 lous. But everybody expects it, and I'm 
 not strong-minded enough to go against 
 
 the current of what evxTybody expects 
 
 f»» 
 me. 
 
 '* You will be by and bye," Bertram 
 answered with confidence. " Thoy 're 
 queer things, these death-taboos. Some- 
 times people cover their heads with 
 filth and ashes ; and sometimes they 
 bedizen it with crape and white stream- 
 ers. In some countries, the sur\'i\'ors 
 are bound to shed so man\' tears, to 
 measure, in memory of the departed ; 
 and if they can't bring them up natu- 
 rally in sufficient quantities, the\- have 
 
ZTbe JBrftisb JBarbarfana 133 
 
 to be beaten with rods, or pricked with 
 thorns, or stung with nettles, till they Ve 
 filled to the last drop the regulation 
 bottle. In Swaziland, too, when the 
 King dies, — so the Queen told me, — 
 every family of his subjects has to lose 
 one of its sons or daughters, in order 
 that they all may truly grieve at the 
 loss of their sovereign. I think there 
 are more horrible and cruel devices in 
 the way of death-taboos and death-cus- 
 toms than anything else I 've met in 
 my researches : indeed, most of our 
 nomologists at home believe that all 
 taboos originally arose out of ancestral 
 ghost-worship, and sprang from the 
 craven fear of dead kings or dead rela- 
 tives. They think fetishes and gods and 
 other imaginary supernatural beings 
 were all in the last resort developed out 
 of ghosts, hostile or friendly ; and from 
 
134 ^bc .1i3ritlt5b .16aibarian3 
 
 what I see abroad, I incline to agree 
 with them. But this mourning super- 
 stition, now — surely it must do a great 
 deal of harm in poor households in 
 England. People who can very ill af- 
 ford to throw away good dresses, must 
 have to give them up, and get new black- 
 ones, and that often at the very mo- 
 ment when they 're just deprived of the 
 aid of their only support and bread- 
 winner. I wonder it does n't occur to 
 them that this is absolutely wrong, and 
 that they ought n't to prefer the mean- 
 ingless fetish to clear moral duty." 
 
 " They 're afraid of what people 
 would say of them," Freda ventured to 
 interpose. " You see, we 're all so fright- 
 ened of beating through an established 
 custom." 
 
 ** Yes, I notice that always, wherever 
 I go in England," Bertram answered. 
 
Zbc JiSritieb JSavbariand 135 
 
 " There 's apparently no clear idea of 
 what 's right and wrong at all, in the 
 ethical sense, as apart from what 's 
 usual. I was talking to a lady up in 
 London to-day about a certain matter 
 I may perhaps mention to you by and 
 bye, when occasion serves, and she said 
 she 'd been * always brought up to 
 think so-and-so. It seemed to me a 
 very queer substitute indeed for think- 
 ing." 
 
 '' I never thought of that," Freda an- 
 swered slowly. *' I 've said the same 
 thing a hundred times over myself be- 
 fore now ; and I see how irrational it is. 
 But, there, Mr. Ingledew, that *s why I 
 always like talking with you so much : 
 you make one take such a totally new 
 view of things." 
 
 She looked down and was silent a 
 minute. Her breast heaved and fell. 
 
136 tTbe JBritleb :(6arbariani? 
 
 She was a beautiful woman, very tall 
 and queenly. Bertram looked at her 
 and paused ; then he went on hurriedly, 
 just to break the awkward silence : 
 *' And this dance at Exeter, then ; I 
 suppose you won't go to it ? " 
 
 *' Oh, I cant^ of course," Freda an- 
 swered quickly. '' And my two other 
 nieces — Robert's side, you know — who 
 have nothing at all to do with my 
 brother Tom's wife, out there in India 
 — they '11 be so disappointed. I was 
 going down to take them down to it. 
 Nasty thing! How annoying of her! 
 She might have chosen some other 
 time to go and die, I 'm sure, than just 
 when she knew I wanted to go to 
 Exeter! " 
 
 "Well, if it would be any con- 
 venience to you," l^ertram put in with 
 a serious face, " I 'm rather busy on 
 
Zbc :Br(ti6b JBarbarfan^ 137 
 
 Wednesday ; but I could manage to 
 take up a portmanteau to town with my 
 dress things in the morning, meet the 
 girls at Paddington, and then run down 
 in time by the evening express to go 
 with them to the hotel you meant to 
 stop at. They 're those two pretty 
 blondes I met here at tea last Sunday, 
 are n't they? " 
 
 Freda looked at him, half incredu- 
 lous. He was very nice, she knew, and 
 very quaint and fresh and unsophisti- 
 cated and unconventional ; but could 
 he be really quite so ignorant of the 
 common usages of civilised society as 
 to suppose it possible he could rundown 
 alone with two young girls to stop by 
 themselves, without even a chaperon, at 
 an hotel at Exeter ? She gazed at him 
 curiously. '' Oh, Mr. Ingledew," she said, 
 " now you 're really ^00 ridiculous." 
 
138 Zbe JGrttieb JGarbarians 
 
 Bertram coloured up like a boy. If 
 she had been in any doubt before as to 
 his sincerity and simplicity, she C(^uld 
 be so no longer. " Oh, I forgot about 
 the taboo," he said. " I 'm so sorry I 
 hurt you. I was only thinking what a 
 pity those two nice girls should be 
 cheated out of their expected pleasure 
 by a silly question of pretended mourn- 
 ing, where even you yourself, who have 
 got to wear it, don't assume that }'ou 
 feel the slightest tinge of sorrow. I 
 remember now, of course, what a lady 
 told me in London the other day : 
 your young girls are n't even allowed 
 to go out travelling alone without their 
 mothers or brothers, in order to taboo 
 them absolutely beforehand for the 
 possible husband who may some day 
 marry them. It was a pitiful tale. I 
 thought it all most painful and shocking." 
 
tTbe :fi3riti6b JSarbarfans 139 
 
 *' But you don't mean to say," Freda 
 cried, equally shocked and astonished 
 in her turn, '^ that you 'd let young 
 girb go out alone anywhere with un- 
 married men ? Goodness gracious, how 
 dreadful ! " 
 
 "Why not?" Bertram asked, with 
 transparent simplicity. 
 
 " Why, just consider the conse- 
 quences ! " Freda exclaimed, with a 
 blush, after a moment's hesitation. 
 
 *' There could n't be a7tj' conse- 
 quences, — unless they both liked and 
 respected one another," Bertram 
 answered in the most matter-of-course 
 voice in the world ; " and if they do 
 that, we think at home it *s nobody's 
 business to interfere in any way with 
 the free expression of their individuality, 
 in this the most sacred and personal 
 matter of human intercourse. It 's the 
 
I40 tTbc JBritieb JGarbartaiii? 
 
 one point of private conduct about 
 which we 're all at home most sensi- 
 tively anxious not to meddle, to inter- 
 fere, or even to criticise. We think 
 such affairs should be left entirely to 
 the hearts and consciences of the two 
 persons concerned, who must surely 
 know best how they feel towards one 
 another. But I remember having met 
 lots of taboos among other barbarians, 
 in much the same way, to preserve the 
 mere material purity of their women — 
 a thing we at home would n't dream of 
 ever questioning. In New Ireland, for 
 instance, I saw four girls confined for 
 four or five years in small wickerwork 
 cages, where they 're kept in the dark, 
 and not even allowed to set foot on the 
 ground on any pretext. They 're shut 
 up in these prisons when they 're about 
 fourteen, and there they 're kept, 
 
Zbc 3Bviti6b 36arbarfan0 141 
 
 strictly tabooed, till they 're just going 
 to be married. I went to see them my- 
 self ; it was a horrid sight. The poor 
 creatures were confined in a dark close 
 hut, without air or ventilation, in that 
 stifling climate, which is as unendura- 
 ble from heat as this one is from cold 
 and damp and fogginess ; and there 
 they sat in cages, coarsely woven from 
 broad leaves of the pandanus tree, so 
 that no light could enter ; for the 
 people believed that light would kill 
 them. No man might see them, be- 
 cause it was close taboo ; but at last, 
 with great difficulty, I persuaded the 
 chief and the old lady who guarded 
 them to let them come out for a minute 
 to look at me. A lot of beads and 
 cloth overcame these people's scruples ; 
 and with great reluctance they opened 
 the cages. But only the old woman 
 
142 Cbc JBriti^b JBaibaiian^ 
 
 looked ; tlic chief was afraid, and 
 turned his head the other way, mum- 
 bhni^ charms to his fetish. Out tliey 
 stole, one by one, poor souls, ashamed 
 and frightened, hiding their faces in 
 their hands, thinking I was going to 
 hurt them or eat them, — just as your 
 nieces would do if I proposed to-day to 
 take them to Exeter ; — ^and a dreadful 
 sight they were, cra^iiped with h^ig 
 sitting in one close position, and their 
 eyes all blinded by the glare of the sun- 
 light after the long darkness. I 've 
 seen women shut up in prett\' much the 
 same way in other countries, but I never 
 saw quite so bad a case as this of New 
 Ireland." 
 
 " Well, you can't say we 've anything 
 answering to that in England," Ereda 
 put in, looking across at him with her 
 frank open countenance. 
 
Zbc JBritisb JBaibailans 143 
 
 " No, not quite like that, in detail, 
 perhaps, but pretty much the same in 
 general principle," Bertram answered 
 warmly. " Your girls here are not 
 cooped up in actual cages, but they 're 
 confined in barrack schools, as like 
 prisons as possible ; and they 're re- 
 pressed at every turn in every natural 
 instinct of play or society. They 
 must n't go here or they must n't go 
 there ; they must n't talk to this one or 
 to that one ; they must n't do this, or 
 that, or the other ; their whole life is 
 bound round, I 'm told, by a closely 
 woven web of restrictions and restraints, 
 which have no other object or end in 
 view than the interests of a purely 
 hypothetical husband. The Chinese 
 cramp their women's feet to make them 
 small and useless : you cramp your 
 women's brains for the self-same pur- 
 
144 ^be JGriti^b JGaibaiiaiii? 
 
 pose. Even light 's excluded ; for they 
 must n't read books that wcjuld make 
 them think ; they must n't be allowed 
 to suspect the bare possibility that the 
 world may be otherwise than as their 
 priests and nurses and grandmothers tell 
 them, though most even of your own 
 men know it well to be something quite 
 different. Why, I met a girl at that 
 dance I went to in London the other 
 evening who told me she was n't allowed 
 to read a book called Tess of the D' 
 UrbcrvilleSy that I 'd read myself, and 
 that seemed to me one of which every 
 young girl and married woman in 
 England ought to be given a cop\'. It 
 was the one true book I had seen in 
 your country. And another girl w as n't 
 allowed to read another book which 
 I 've since looked at, called Robert 
 Elsmerc, — an ephemeral thing enough 
 
Zbc JBi'ltisb JBacbarfane 145 
 
 in its way, I don't doubt, but pro- 
 scribed in her case for no other reason 
 on earth than because it expressed 
 some mild disbeUef as to the exact lit- 
 eral accuracy of those Lower Syrian 
 pamphlets to which your priests attach 
 such immense importance." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Ingledew," Freda cried, 
 trembling, yet profoundly interested, 
 " if you talk like that any more I sha'n't 
 be able to listen to you." 
 
 *' There it is, you see," Bertram con- 
 tinued, with a little wave of the hand. 
 '* You 've been so blinded and bedimned 
 by being deprived of light when a girl 
 that now when you see even a very faint 
 ray it dazzles you and frightens you. 
 That must n't be so. It need n't, I 
 feel confident. I shall have to teach 
 you how to bear the light. Your eyes, 
 I know, are naturally strong ; you were 
 
146 Zbc JGritteb JGarbaiians 
 
 an eagle born : you 'd soon get used to 
 it." 
 
 Freda lifted them slowly, those 
 beautiful eyes, and met his own with 
 genuine pleasure. " Do you think so ? " 
 she asked, half whispering. In some 
 dim and instinctive way she felt this 
 strange man was a superior being, and 
 that every small crumb of praise from 
 him was well worth meriting. 
 
 "Why, Freda, of course I do," he 
 answered, without the least sense of im- 
 pertinence. ** Do you think if I did n't 
 I 'd have taken so much trouble to try 
 and educate you ? " For he had talked 
 to her much in their walks on the hill- 
 side. 
 
 Freda did n't correct him for his bold 
 application of her Christian name, — 
 though she knew she ought to. She 
 only looked up at him and answered 
 
Zbc JBritisb JBarbarians 147 
 
 gravely, " I certainly can't let you take 
 my nieces to Exeter." 
 
 '' I suppose not," he replied, hardly 
 catching at her meaning. " One of the 
 girls at that dance the other night told 
 me a great many queer facts about your 
 taboos on these domestic subjects ; so I 
 know how stringent and how unreason- 
 ing they are. And indeed, I found out a 
 little bit for myself ; for there was one 
 nice girl there, to whom I took a very 
 great fancy ; and I was just going to 
 kiss her as I said good-night, when she 
 drew back suddenly, almost as if I'd 
 struck her ; though we 'd been talking 
 together quite confidentially a minute 
 before, I could see she thought I really 
 meant to insult her. Of course I ex- 
 plained it was only what I' d have done 
 to any nice girl at home under similar 
 circumstances : but she did n't seem to 
 
mS ^bc J6riti6b J6arbarian9 
 
 believe inc. And the oddest part (^f it 
 all was that all the time we were danc- 
 ing I had my arm around her waist, as 
 all the other men had theirs round their 
 partners ; and at home we consider it a 
 much greater proof of confidence and 
 affection to be allowed to place your 
 arm round a lady's waist than merely to 
 kiss her." 
 
 Freda felt the conversation was be- 
 ginning to travel beyond her ideas of 
 propriety, so she checked its excursions 
 by answering gravely : '' Oh, Mr. Ingle- 
 dew, you don't understand our code of 
 morals. But I 'm sure you don't find 
 your East End young ladies so fearfully 
 particular." 
 
 "They certainly have n't quite so 
 many taboos," Bertram answered quiet- 
 ly. ** But that 's always the way in 
 tabooing societies. These things are 
 
Zhc :liSrltisb ^Barbarians mq 
 
 naturally worst among the chiefs and 
 great people. I remember when I was 
 stopping among the Ot Danoms of Bor- 
 neo, the daughters of chiefs and great 
 sun-descended families were shut up at 
 eight or ten years old, in a little cell or 
 room, as a religious duty, and cut off 
 from all intercourse with the outside 
 world for many years together. The 
 cell 's dimly lit by a small single win- 
 dow, placed high in the wall, so that 
 the unhappy girl never sees anybody or 
 anything, but passes her life in almost 
 total darkness. She may n't leave the 
 room on any pretext whatever, not even 
 for the most pressing and necessary 
 purposes. None of her family may see 
 her face : but a single slave woman 's 
 appointed to accompany her and wait 
 upon her. Long want of exercise 
 stunts her bodily growth, and when at 
 
150 Cbc .IGriti^b JGarbariaiiiJ 
 
 last she becomes a woman and emerges 
 from licr prison, her complexion has 
 grown wan and pale and wax-like. The}- 
 take her out in solemn guise, and show 
 her the sun, the sky, the land, the 
 water, the trees, the flowers, and tell 
 her all their names, as if to a new-born 
 creature. Then a great feast is made, 
 a poor crouching slave is killed with a 
 blow of the sword, and the i;irl is 
 solemnly smeared with his reeking 
 blood, by way of initiation. 1-^ut this 
 is only done, of course, with the daugh- 
 ters of wealthy and powerful families. 
 And I find it pretty much the same in 
 England. In all these matters, your 
 poorer classes are relatively pure and 
 simple and natural. It 's \-()ur richer 
 and worse and more selfish classes 
 among whom sex-taboos are strongest 
 and most unnatural." 
 
^bc J6i-iti6b JBarbarlans 151 
 
 Freda looked up at him a little plead- 
 ingly. " Do you know, Mr. Ingledew," 
 she said in a trembling voice, " I 'm 
 sure you don 't mean it for intentional 
 rudeness, but it sounds to us very like 
 it, when you speak of our taboos, and 
 compare us openly to these dreadful 
 savages. I 'm a woman, I know ; but 
 I don't like to hear you speak so about 
 my England." 
 
 The words took Bertram fairly by 
 surprise. He was wholly unacquainted 
 with that rank form of provincialism 
 which we know as patriotism. He 
 leant across towards her with a look of 
 deep pain on his handsome face. '* Oh, 
 Mrs. Monteith," he cried earnestly, " if 
 you don't like it, I '11 never again speak 
 of them as taboos in your presence. I 
 did n't dream you could object. It 
 seems so natural to us — well — to de- 
 
152 ^bc :i6ritt6b JBarbarians 
 
 scribe like customs b\- like names in 
 every case, l^ut if it gives you pain — 
 why sooner than do that, I 'd never 
 again say a single word while I live, 
 about an English custom ! " 
 
 His face was very near hers, and he 
 was a son of Adam, like all the rest of 
 us, not a being of another sphere, as 
 Freda was sometimes half tempted to 
 consider him. What might next liave 
 happened he himself hardly knew, for 
 he was an impulsive creature, and Fre- 
 da's rich lips were full and crimson — 
 had not Philip's arrival w^ith the two 
 Miss Hardys to make up a set diverted 
 for the moment the nascent possibility 
 of a leading incident. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IT was a Sunday afternoon in full 
 July, and a small party was seated 
 under the spreading mulberry tree on 
 the Monteiths' lawn. General Claviger 
 was of the number, that well-known 
 constructor of scientific frontiers in 
 India and Africa ; and so was Dean 
 Chalmers, the popular preacher, who 
 had come down for the day from his 
 London house to deliver a sermon on 
 behalf of the Society for Superseding 
 the Existing Superstitions of China and 
 Japan by the Dying Ones of Europe. 
 Philip was there, too, enjoying himself 
 thoroughly in the midst of such good 
 company ; and so was Robert Monteith, 
 153 
 
154 Cbc .IGritieb JSarbarians 
 
 bleak and grey as usual, but deeply in- 
 terested for the moment in dividing 
 metaphysical and theological cobwebs 
 with his friend the Dean, who, as a 
 brother Scotsman, loved a good discus- 
 sion better almost than he loved a good 
 discourse. General Claviger, for his 
 part, was congenially engaged in de- 
 scribing to Bertram his pet idea for a 
 campaign against the Mahdi and his 
 men in the interior of the Soudan. 
 Bertram rather yawned through that 
 technical talk : he was a man of peace, 
 and schemes of organised bloodshed in- 
 terested him no more than the details 
 of a projected human sacrifice, given by 
 a Central African chief with native 
 gusto, would interest an average Euro- 
 pean gentleman. At last, however, the 
 General happened to sa)- casually : " I 
 forget the exact name of the place 1 
 
trbe JBritisb ^Barbarians 155 
 
 mean, I think it 's Malolo : but I have 
 a very good map of all the district at 
 my house down at Wanborough." 
 
 " What, Wanborough in Northamp- 
 tonshire ? " Bertram exclaimed, with 
 sudden interest. " Do you really live 
 
 there ? " 
 
 '* I 'm lord of the manor," General 
 Claviger answered, with a little access of 
 dignity. " The Clavigers or Clavigeros 
 were a Spanish family of Andalusian 
 oriein who settled down at Wanborough 
 under Philip and Mary, and retained 
 the manor no doubt by conversion to 
 the Protestant side, after the accession 
 of Elizabeth." 
 
 " That 's interesting to me," Bertram 
 answered, with his frank and fearless 
 truthfulness, " because my people came 
 originally from Wanborough before — 
 well, before— they emigrated." (Philip, 
 
156 Zbc :fi3riti5b Barbarians 
 
 listening askance, pricked up liis ears 
 eagerly at the tell-tale phrase ; after all 
 then, a colonist !) " But they were n't 
 anybody distinguished — certainly not 
 lords of the manor," he added hastily, 
 as the General turned a keen eye on 
 him. "Are there any Ingledews living 
 now in the Wanborough district ? One 
 likes, as a matter of scientific heredity, 
 to know all one can about one's ances- 
 tors and one's country and one's collat- 
 eral relatives." 
 
 " Well, there are some Ingledews just 
 now at Wanborough," the General an- 
 swered, with some natural hesitation, 
 surveying the tall handsome young man 
 from head to foot not without a faint 
 touch of soldierly approbation ; " but 
 they can hardly be your relatives, how- 
 ever remote. They 're people in a most 
 humble sphere of life. Unless indeed, 
 
JLbc :fi5ritl9b :J6arbarian6 157 
 
 — well, we know the vicissitudes of 
 families : — perhaps your ancestors and 
 the Ingledews that I know drifted apart 
 a long time ago." 
 
 " Is he a cobbler ? " Bertram inquired, 
 without a trace of viauvaise Jionte. 
 
 The General nodded. " Well, yes," 
 he said politely ; *' that 's exactly what 
 he is ; though as you seemed to be ask- 
 ing about presumed relations, I did n't 
 like to mention it." 
 
 '' Oh, then he's my ancestor," Bertram 
 put in, quite pleased at the discovery. 
 " That is to say," he added, after a curi- 
 ous pause, '' my ancestors' descendant. 
 Almost all my people, a little way 
 back, you see, were shoemakers or cob- 
 blers." 
 
 He said it with dignity, exactly as he 
 might have said they were dukes or lord 
 chancellors ; but Philip could n't help 
 
ISO 
 
 Cbc JGvitis'b JGaibaviaiiy 
 
 pitying him, not so much for being 
 descended from so mean a lot, as for 
 being fool enough to acknowledge it on 
 a gentleman's lawn at Brackcnhurst. 
 Why, with manners like his, if he had n't 
 given himself away, one might easily 
 have taken him for a descendant of the 
 Plantagenets ! 
 
 So the General seemed to think, too, 
 for he added quickly, ** But you 're very 
 like the Duke, and the Duke 's a Ber- 
 tram. Is he also a relative ? " 
 
 The young man coloured slightly. 
 " Ye-es," he answered, hesitating ; 
 " but we 're not very proud of the Ber- 
 tram connection. They never did much 
 good in the world, the Bertrams. I bear 
 the name, one may almost say, by acci- 
 dent, because it was handed down to me 
 by my grandfather Ingledew who had 
 Bertram blood, but was a vast deal bet- 
 
^be JBritisb JBarbartans 159 
 
 ter man than any other member of the 
 Bertram family." 
 
 " I '11 be seeing the Duke on Wednes- 
 day," the General put in with marked 
 politeness, " and I '11 ask him, if you like, 
 about your grandfather's relationship. 
 Who he was exactly, and what was his 
 connection with the present man or his 
 predecessor?" 
 
 *' Oh, don't, please," Bertram put in, 
 half pleadingly, it is true, but still with 
 that same ineffable and indefinable air 
 of a great gentleman that never for a 
 moment deserted him. ''The Duke 
 would never have heard of my ancestors, 
 I 'm sure ; and I particularly don't want 
 to be mixed up with the existing Ber- 
 trams in any way." 
 
 He was happily innocent and ignor- 
 ant of the natural interpretation the 
 others would put upon his reticence, 
 
i6o Zbc JQxiUeb JGarbarians 
 
 after the true English manner; but still, 
 he was vaguely aware, from the silence 
 that ensued for a moment after he 
 ceased, that he must have broken 
 once more some important taboo or 
 offended once more some much-revered 
 fetish. To get rid of the awkwardness, 
 he turned quietly to Freda. " What tlo 
 you say, Mrs. Monteith," he suggested, 
 " to a game of tennis ? " 
 
 As bad luck would have it, he had 
 floundered from one taboo headlong 
 into another. The Dean looked up, 
 open-mouthed, with a sharp glance of 
 enquiry. Did Mrs. Monteith, then, 
 permit such frivolities on the Sunday ? 
 "You forget what day it is, I think," 
 Freda interposed gently with a look of 
 warning. 
 
 Bertram took the hint at once. ** So 
 I did," he answered quickly. "At home, 
 
^be JBritl3F3 JGarbarfans i6i 
 
 you see, we let no man judge us of days 
 and of weeks and of times and of sea- 
 sons. It puzzles us so much. With us, 
 what 's wrong to-day can never be right 
 and proper to-morrow." 
 
 '' But surely," the Dean said bristling 
 up, " some day is set apart in every civil- 
 ised land for religious exercises." 
 
 '' Oh no," Bertram replied, falling in- 
 cautiously into the trap. *' We do right 
 every day of the week alike, and never 
 do poojah of any sort at any time." 
 
 *' Then where do you come from ? " 
 the Dean asked severely, pouncing 
 down upon him like a hawk. " I Ve 
 always understood the very lowest 
 savages have at least some outer form 
 or shadow of religion." 
 
 " Yes, perhaps so : but we 're not 
 savages, either low or otherwise," Ber- 
 tram answered, cautiously, perceiving 
 
i62 Cbc :JSrttf3b JGarbarlans 
 
 his error. **And as to your other point, 
 for reasons of in\' own, I prefer for the 
 present not to say where I come from. 
 You wouldn't beheveme, if I told you 
 — as you did n't, I saw, about my remote 
 connection with the Duke of East 
 Anglia's family. And we 're not accus- 
 tomed, where I live, to be disbelieved 
 or doubted. It 's perhaps the one 
 thing that really almost makes us lose 
 our tempers. So, if you please, I won't 
 go any further at present into the de- 
 batable matter of my place of origin." 
 
 He rose to stroll off into the gardens, 
 having spoken all the time in that 
 peculiarly grave and dignified tone that 
 seemed natural to him whenever any- 
 one tried to question him closely. No- 
 body save a churchman would have 
 continued the discussion. But the 
 Dean was a churchman, and also a Scot, 
 
Cbe JBrttieb JBarbarians 163 
 
 and he returned to the attack, un- 
 abashed and unbaffled. *' But surely, 
 Mr. Ingledew," he said in a persuasive 
 voice, '' your people, whoever they are, 
 must at least acknowledge a creator of 
 the universe." 
 
 Bertram gazed at him fixedly. His 
 eye was stern. '' My people, sir," he 
 said slowly, in very measured words, 
 unaware that one must n't argue with a 
 clergyman, '^ acknowledge and investi- 
 gate every reality they can find in the 
 universe — and admit no phantoms. 
 They believe in everything that can be 
 shown or proved to be natural and true ; 
 but in nothing supernatural, that is to 
 say, imaginary or non-existent. They 
 accept plain facts; they reject pure 
 phantasies. How beautiful those lilies 
 are, Mrs. Monteith ; such an exquisite 
 colour! shall we go over and look at 
 them?" 
 
i(>4 ^bc JGritisb .IGarbariani? 
 
 " Not just now," Freda answered, re- 
 lieved at the appearance of Martha with 
 the tray in the distance; "here 's tea 
 coming." She was glad of the diver- 
 sion, for she liked Bertram immensely, 
 and she could n't help noticing how 
 hopelessly he had been floundering all 
 that afternoon right into the very midst 
 of what he himself would have called 
 their taboos and joss-business. 
 
 But Bertram was n't well out of his 
 troubles yet. Martha brought the 
 round tray — oriental brass, finely chased 
 with flowing Arabic inscriptions — and 
 laid it down on the dainty little rustic 
 table. Then she handed about the 
 cups. Bertram rose to help her. 
 " May n't I do it for you ? " he said, as 
 politely as he would have said it to a 
 lady in her drawing-room. 
 
 " No, thank you, sir," Martha an- 
 
XLbc Mvitieb JiSarbartang 165 
 
 swered, turning red at the offer, but 
 with the imperturbable solemnity of the 
 well-trained English servant. She 
 ''knew her place," and resented the in- 
 trusion. But Bertram had his own 
 notions of politeness, too, which were 
 not to be lightly set aside for local class 
 distinctions. He could n't see a pretty 
 girl handing cups to guests without in- 
 stinctively rising from his seat to assist 
 her. So, very much to Martha's embar- 
 rassment, he continued to givG his help 
 in passing the cake and the bread and 
 butter. As soon as she was gone, he 
 turned round to Philip. ''That 's a 
 very pretty girl and a very nice girl," 
 he said simply, " I wonder now, as you 
 have n't a wife, you 've never thought 
 of marrying her." 
 
 The remark fell like a thunderbolt on 
 the assembled group. Even Freda was 
 
166 XLbc JBritieb JBarbariand 
 
 shocked. Your most open-minded 
 woman begins to draw a line when you 
 touch her class prejudices in the matter 
 of marriage, especially with reference to 
 her own relations. " Why really, Mr. 
 Ingledew," she said, looking up at him 
 reproachfully, *' you can't mean to say 
 you think my brother could marry the 
 parlour-maid ! " 
 
 Bertram saw at a glance he had once 
 more unwittingly run his head against 
 one of the dearest of these strange peo- 
 ple's taboos ; but he made no retort 
 openly. He only reflected in silence to 
 himself how unnatural and how wrong 
 they would all think it at home that a 
 young man of Philip's age should re- 
 main nominally celibate ; how horrified 
 they would be at the abject misery and 
 degradation such conduct on the part 
 of half his caste must inevitably imply 
 
tbe JBrftisb JBarbarfan^ 167 
 
 for thousands of innocent young girls 
 of lower station, whose lives, he now 
 knew, were remorselessly sacrificed in 
 vile dens of tainted London to the sup- 
 posed social necessity that young men 
 of a certain class should marry late in 
 a certain style, and " keep a wife in the 
 way she 's been accustomed to." He 
 remembered with a checked sigh how 
 infinitely superior they would all at 
 home have considered that wholesome, 
 capable, good-looking Martha to an 
 empty-headed and useless young man 
 like Philip ; and he thought to himself 
 how completely taboo had overlaid in 
 these people's minds every ethical idea, 
 how wholly it had obscured the prime 
 necessities of healthy, vigorous, and 
 moral manhood. He recollected the 
 similar though less hideous taboos he 
 had met with elsewhere ; — the castes 
 
i68 Zbc JBritisb aSarbarians 
 
 of India, and the horrible pollution 
 that would result from disregarding 
 them ; the vile Egyptian rule, by which 
 the divine king, in order to keep up the 
 so-called purity of his royal and god- 
 descended blood, must marry his own 
 sister, and so foully pollute with mon- 
 strous abortions the very stock he be- 
 lieved himself to be preserving intact 
 from common or unclean influences. 
 His mind ran back to the strange and 
 complicated forbidden degrees of the 
 Australian Blackfellows, who arc di- 
 vided into cross-classes, each of which 
 must necessarily marry into a certain 
 other, and into that other only, regard- 
 less of individual tastes or preferences. 
 He remembered the profound belief of 
 all these people that if they were to 
 act in any other way than the one pre- 
 scribed, some nameless misfortune or 
 terrible evil would surely overtake them. 
 
tTbe JBritieb :fiSarbarfan6 169 
 
 Yet nowhere, he thought to himself, 
 had he seen any system which entailed 
 in the end so much misery on both 
 sexes, though more particularly on 
 the women, as that system of closely 
 tabooed marriage, founded upon a 
 broad basis of prostitution and in- 
 fanticide, which has reached its most 
 appalling height of development in 
 hypocritical and puritan England. The 
 ghastly levity with which all English- 
 men treated this most serious subject, 
 and the fatal readiness with which even 
 Freda herself seemed to acquiesce in 
 the most inhuman slavery ever devised 
 for women on the face of this earth, 
 shocked and saddened Bertram's pro- 
 foundly moral and sympathetic nature. 
 He could sit there no longer to listen 
 to their talk. He bethought him at 
 once of the sickening sights he had 
 seen the evening before in a London 
 
t7o ^be JBritlsb :<6arbariand 
 
 music-hall ; of the corrupting mass of 
 filth underneath, by which alone this 
 abomination of iniquity could be kept 
 externally decent, and this vile system 
 of false celibacy whitened outwardly to 
 the eye like oriental sepulchres : and 
 he strolled off by himself into the 
 shrubbery, very heavy in heart, to hide 
 his real feelings from the priest and the 
 soldier, whose coarser-grained minds 
 could never have understood the en- 
 thusiasm of humanity which inspired 
 and informed him. 
 
 Freda rose and followed him, moved 
 by some unconscious wave of instinctive 
 sympathy. The four children of this 
 world were left together on the lawn 
 by the rustic table to exchange views 
 by themselves on the extraordinary be- 
 haviour and novel demeanour of the 
 mysterious Alien. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A S soon as he was gone, a sigh of re- 
 lief ran half unawares through the 
 little square party. They felt some un- 
 earthly presence had been removed 
 from their midst. General Claviger 
 turned to Monteith. '' That 's a curious 
 sort of chap," he said, slowly, in his 
 military way. *' Who is he, and where 
 does he come from ? " 
 
 ** Ah, where does he come from ? — 
 that 's just the question," Monteith an- 
 swered, lighting a cigar, and puffing 
 away dubiously. " Nobody knows. 
 He 's a mystery. He poses in the role, 
 you 'd better ask Philip ; it was he who 
 brought him here." 
 171 
 
172 Cbc JBiitieb 3Gnrbarian5 
 
 " I met him accidcntall}' in the street," 
 Phihp answered with an apologetic 
 shrug, by no means well pleased at be- 
 ing thus held responsible for all the 
 stranger's moral and social vagaries. 
 " It 's the merest chance acquaintance. 
 I know nothing of his antecedents. I 
 — er — I lent him a bag, and he 's fast- 
 ened himself upon me ever since, like a 
 leech, and comes constantly to my sis- 
 ter's ; but I have n't the remotest idea 
 who he is or where he hails from. He 
 keeps his business wrapped up from 
 all of us in the profoundest mystery." 
 
 " He 's a gentleman, anyhow," the 
 General put in with military decisive- 
 ness. " How manly of him to acknow- 
 ledge at once, about the cobbler being 
 probably a near relation ! Most men, 
 you know, Christy, would have tried to 
 hide it; Jic did n't for a second. He 
 
XLhc JBvitieb Barbarfane 173 
 
 admitted his ancestors had all been 
 cobblers till quite a recent period." 
 
 Philip was astonished at this verdict 
 of the General's, for he himself, on the 
 contrary, had noted with silent scorn 
 that very remark as a piece of supreme 
 and hopeless stupidity on Bertram's 
 part. No fellow can help having a cob- 
 bler for a grandfather, of course; but 
 he need n't be such a fool as to volun- 
 teer any mention of the fact spontane- 
 ously. 
 
 ''Yes, I thought it bold of him," 
 Monteith answered, '' almost bolder 
 than was necessary ; for he did n't seem 
 to think we should be at all surprised 
 at it." 
 
 The General mused to himself. 
 •* He 's a fine soldierly fellow," he said, 
 gazing after the tall retreating figure. 
 *' I should like to make a dragoon of 
 
174 Ebc J6riti6b :fi3arbarlan3 
 
 him. He's the very man for a saddle. 
 Ilc'd dash across country in the face 
 of heavy ^uns any day with the best of 
 them." 
 
 *' He rides well," Philip answered, 
 '' and has a wonderful seat. I saw him 
 on that bay mare of Wilder's in town 
 the other afternoon, and I must say he 
 rode much more like a gentleman than 
 a cobbler." 
 
 '* Oh, he 's a gentleman," the General 
 repeated with unshaken conviction ; " a 
 thorough-bred gentleman." And he 
 scanned Philip up and down with his 
 keen grey eye as if internally reflecting 
 that Philip's own right to criticise and 
 classify that particular species of hu- 
 manity was a trifle doubtful. " I should 
 much like to make a captain of hussars 
 of him. He 'd be splendid as a leader 
 of irregular horse : the very man for ^ 
 
Zbc JBritisb JBarbarfans 175 
 
 scrimmage ! " For the General's one 
 idea when he saw a fine specimen of 
 our common race was the Zulu's or the 
 Red Indian's — what an admirable per- 
 son he would be to employ in killing 
 and maiming his fellow-creatures ! 
 
 " He 'd be better engaged so," the 
 Dean murmured reflectively, *' than in 
 diffusing these horrid revolutionary and 
 atheistical doctrines." For the church 
 was as usual in accord with the sword ; 
 theoretically all peace, practically all 
 bloodshed and rapine and aggression : 
 and anything that was n't his own opin- 
 ion envisaged itself always to the Dean's 
 crystallised mind, as revolutionary and 
 atheistic. 
 
 *' He 's very like the Duke, though," 
 General Claviger went on, after a 
 moment's pause, during which every- 
 body watched Bertram and Freda dis- 
 
i7^> ^bc 3i3rili{?b JCarbariaiid 
 
 appearing down the walk round a clump 
 of syrini^as. ** Very like the Duke. 
 And you saw hv admitted some sort of 
 relationship, though he did n't like to 
 dwell upon it. ^'ou ma}' be sure he \s 
 a by-blow of the famil\' somehow. One 
 of the Bertrams, perhaps the old Duke, 
 who was out in the Crimea, may have 
 formed an attachment for one of these 
 Ingledew girls — the cobbler's sisters : I 
 dare say they were no better in tlieir 
 conduct than they ought to be — and 
 this may be the consequence." 
 
 " I 'm afraid the old Duke was a man 
 of loose life and doubtful conversation," 
 the Dean put in, ^\■ith a tone of prc^- 
 fcssional disapprobation for the inevi- 
 table transgressions of the great and 
 the high-placed. " He did n't seem to 
 set the example he ought to have done 
 to his j)()()rer brethren." 
 
^be 3Briti0b JBarbarlans 177 
 
 " Oh, he was a thorough old rip, the 
 Duke, if it comes to that," General 
 Claviger responded, twirling his white 
 moustache. ** And so 's the present 
 man — a rip of the first water. They 're 
 a regular bad lot, the Bertrams, root 
 and stock. They never set an example 
 of anything to anybody — bar horse- 
 breeding — as far as I 'm aware, and 
 even at that their trainers have always 
 fairly cheated 'em." 
 
 " The present Duke 's a most exem- 
 plary churchman," the Dean interposed 
 with Christian charity, for a nobleman 
 of position. " He gave us a couple of 
 thousand last year for the cathedral 
 restoration fund." 
 
 " And that would account," Philip 
 put in, returning abruptly to the pre- 
 vious question which had been exercis- 
 ing him meanwhile, " for the peculiarly 
 
 X2 
 
I7S Zbe :fi6riti6b JI3arbarian6 
 
 distinguished air of birth and breeding 
 this man lias about him." For Phih'p 
 respected a Duke from the bottom of his 
 heart and cherished the common Bri- 
 tannic delusion that a man who has 
 been elevated to that highest degree in 
 our barbaric rank system must acquire 
 at the same time a nobler type of 
 physique and countenance, exactly as 
 a Jew changes his Semitic features for 
 the European shape on conversion and 
 baptism. 
 
 ** Oh, dear, no," the General answered 
 in his most decided voice. '' The Ber- 
 trams were never much to look at in 
 any way ; and as for the old Duke, he 
 was as insignificant a little monster of 
 red-haired ugliness as ever you 'd see in 
 a day's march anywhere. If he had n't 
 been a Duke, with a rent-roll of forty 
 ydd thousand a year, he 'd never h^VQ 
 
^be JBritlBb ^Barbarians 179 
 
 got that beautiful Lady Camilla to con- 
 sent to marry him. But bless you, 
 women '11 do anything for the straw- 
 berry leaves. It is n't from the Ber- 
 trams this man gets his good looks. It 
 is n't from the Bertrams. Old Ingledew's 
 daughters are pretty enough girls. If 
 their aunts were like 'em, it 's there your 
 young friend got his air of distinction." 
 
 " We never know who 's who nowa- 
 days," the Dean murmured softly. 
 Being himself the son of a small Scotch 
 tradesman, brought up in the Free 
 Kirk, and elevated into his present ex- 
 alted position by the early intervention 
 of a Balliol scholarship and a student- 
 ship of Christ Church, he felt at liberty 
 to moralise in such non-committing 
 terms on the gradual decay of aristo- 
 cratic exclusiveness. 
 
 " J don't see that it matters inuch 
 
i8o Zbc JBritidb 3BSarbariand 
 
 wliat a man's family was," the General 
 said st(nitly, "so long as he's a fine, 
 well-made soldierly fellow, like this 
 Ini^ledew body, capable of fighting for 
 his (jueen and country. He 's an Aus- 
 tralian, I suppose. What tall chaps 
 they do send home, to be sure ! Those 
 Australians are going to lick us all round 
 the field presently." 
 
 *' That *s the curious part of it," 
 Philip answered. " Nobody knows what 
 he is. He does n't even seem to be a 
 British subject. He calls himself an 
 Alien. And he speaks most disrespect- 
 fully at times — well, not exactly per- 
 haps of the Queen in person — but at 
 any rate of the monarchy." 
 
 ** Utterly destitute of any feeling of 
 respect for any power of any sort, 
 human or divine," the Dean remarked 
 with clerical severity. 
 
XLbc :fi3rlt(0b :fi5arbarian0 iSi 
 
 " For my part," Monteith interposed, 
 knocking his ash off savagely, " I think 
 the man 's a swindler ; and the more I 
 see of him, the less I like him. He 's 
 never explained to us how he came 
 here at all or what the dickens he came 
 for. He refuses to say where he lives 
 or what 's his nationality. He poses as 
 a sort of unexplained Captain Hauser. 
 In my opinion these mystery-men are 
 always impostors. He had no letters 
 of introduction to anybody at Bracken- 
 hurst ; and he thrust himself upon 
 Philip in a most peculiar way ; ever 
 since which, he 's insisted upon coming 
 to my house almost daily. I don't like 
 him myself, it 's Mrs. Monteith who in- 
 sists upon having him here." 
 
 " He fascinates me," the General 
 said frankly. " I don't at all wonder 
 the women like him. As long as he 
 
iS2 Cbc JGritiBb JBarbarians 
 
 was by, though I don't agree with one 
 word he says, I could n't help looking 
 at him and listening to him intently." 
 
 '* So he does me," Philip answered, 
 since the General gave him the cue. 
 And I noticed it 's the same with people 
 in the train. They always listen to 
 him, though sometimes he preaches the 
 most extravagant doctrines — oh, much 
 worse than anything he 's said here this 
 afternoon. He 's really quite eccen- 
 trie. 
 
 " What sort of doctrines ? " the Dean 
 enquired with languid zeal. " Not, I 
 hope, irreligious." 
 
 " Oh, dear, no," Philip answered. 
 *' Not that so much. He troubles him- 
 self very little, 1 think, about religion. 
 Social doctrines, don't }ou know ; such 
 very queer views. About women and 
 so forth." 
 
tS^bc Ji^dtisb :©arbarian5 1B3 
 
 ''Indeed?" the Dean said quickly, 
 drawing himself up very stiff ; for you 
 touch the ark of God for the modern 
 cleric, when you touch the question of 
 the relations of the sexes. " And what 
 does he say? It 's highly undesirable 
 men should go about the country in- 
 citing to rebellion on such fundamental 
 points of moral order in public railway 
 carriages." For it is a peculiarity of 
 minds constituted like the Dean's (say 
 ninety-nine per cent, of the population) 
 to hold that the more important a sub- 
 ject is to our general happiness, the less 
 ought we all to think about it and dis- 
 cuss it. 
 
 " Why, he has very queer ideas," 
 Philip went on, slightly hesitating: he 
 shared the common vulgar inability to 
 phrase exposition of a certain class of 
 subjects in any but the crudest and 
 
i84 Zbc JBrltisb JBarbarlans 
 
 ugliest phraseology. "He seems to 
 think, don't you know, the recognised 
 forms of vice — well, what all young 
 men do — you know what I mean — of 
 course it 's not right, but still they do 
 them." The Dean nodded a cautious 
 acquiescence. " He thinks they 're 
 horribly wrong and distressing ; but he 
 makes nothing at all of the virtue of 
 decent girls and the peace of families." 
 
 ** If I found a man preaching that 
 sort of doctrine to my wife or my 
 daughters," Monteith said savagely, '* I 
 know what /'d do; — I'd put a bullet 
 through him." 
 
 " And quite right too," the General 
 murmured approvingly. 
 
 Professional considerations made the 
 Dean refrain from endorsing this open 
 expression of murderous sentiment in 
 its fullest form ; a clergyman ought al- 
 
trbc 3Brftl6b :©arbar(an6 1S5 
 
 ways to keep up some decent semblance 
 of respect for the Gospel and the ten 
 commandments — or at least the greater 
 part of them. So he placed the tips of 
 his fingers and thumbs together in the 
 usual deliberative clerical way, gazed 
 blankly through the gap, and answered 
 with mild and perfunctory disapproba- 
 tion. *' A bullet would perhaps be an 
 unnecessarily severe form of punish- 
 ment to mete out ; but I confess I 
 could excuse the man who was so far 
 carried away by his righteous indigna- 
 tion as to duck the fellow in the nearest 
 horse-pond." 
 
 '^Well, I don't know about that," 
 Philip replied, with an outburst of un- 
 wonted courage and originality ; for he 
 was beginning to like and he had from 
 the first respected Bertram. " There 's 
 something about the man that makes 
 
i86 tbc JBritisb 3Barbarian0 
 
 mc feel, even when I differ from him 
 most, that he beheves it all, and is 
 thoroughly in earnest. I dare say I 'm 
 wrong; but I always have a notion he 's 
 a better man than I in spite of all his 
 nonsense, — higher and clearer and dif- 
 ferently constituted — and that if only I 
 could climb to just where he has got, 
 perhaps I should see things in the same 
 light that he does." 
 
 It was a wonderful speech for Philip ; 
 a speech above himself; but all the 
 same, by a fetch of inspiration, he ac- 
 tually made it. Intercourse with Ber- 
 tram had profoundly impressed his 
 feeble nature. But the Dean shook his 
 head. *' A very undesirable young man 
 for you to see too much of, I 'm sure, 
 Mr. Christy," he said with marked dis- 
 approbation. For, in the Dean's opinion, 
 it was a most dangerous thing for a 
 
Zbc :fiSriti6b JiSarbariana 187 
 
 man to think especially when he 's 
 young ; thinking is so likely to unsettle 
 him ! 
 
 The General, on the other hand, nod- 
 ded his stern grey head once or twice 
 reflectively. " He 's a remarkable young 
 fellow," he said after a pause ; ^' a most 
 remarkable young fellow. As I said 
 before, he somehow fascinates me. I 'd 
 immensely like to put that young fel- 
 low into a smart hussar uniform, mount 
 him on a good charger of the Punjaub 
 breed, and send him helter skelter pull- 
 devil, pull-baker, among my old friends 
 the Duranis on the North-west fron- 
 tier. 
 
w 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 IIILE the men talked thus, Ber- 
 tram Ingledew's ears ought to 
 have burned behind the bushes. But 
 to say the truth, he cared httle for their 
 conversation ; for had he not turned 
 aside down one of the retired gravel 
 paths in the garden alone with Freda. 
 
 *' That 's General Claviger of Herat, 
 I suppose," he said, in a low tone, as 
 they retreated out of ear-shot beside the 
 clump of syringas. " What a stern old 
 man ho is, to be sure, with what a stern 
 old face! He looks like a person cap- 
 able of doing or ordering all the strange 
 things I \ e read of him in the papers." 
 
 " Oh, yes," Freda answered, mis- 
 
 i8S 
 
XLbc :(6rlti6b JSarbarians 189 
 
 understanding for the moment her 
 companion's meaning. " He 's a very 
 clever man, I beheve, and a most dis- 
 tinguished officer." 
 
 Bertram smiled in spite of himself. 
 " Oh, I did n't mean that," he cried 
 with that same odd gleam in his eyes 
 Freda had so often noticed there. '* I 
 meant, he looked capable of doing or 
 ordering all the horrible crimes he 's 
 credited in history with. You remem- 
 ber, it was he who was employed in 
 massacring the poor savage Zulus in 
 their last stand at bay, and in driving 
 the Afghan women and children to die 
 of cold and starvation on the mountain 
 tops after the taking of Kabul. A ter- 
 rible fighter, indeed ! A terrible his- 
 tory ! " 
 
 " But I believe he 's a very good man 
 in private life," Freda put in apologetic- 
 
iqo Cbc J3nti6b JSarbartane 
 
 ally, feeling compelled to say the best 
 she could for her husband's guest. *' I 
 don't care for him much myself, to be 
 sure, but Robert likes him. And he 's 
 awfull)' nice, everyone says, to his wife 
 and step-children." 
 
 " How can he be very good," Bertram 
 answered in his gentlest voice, "if he 
 hires himself out indiscriminately to kill 
 or maim whoever he 's told to, irrespec- 
 tive even of the rights and wrongs of the 
 private or public quarrel he happens to 
 be employed upon ? It *s an appalling 
 thing to take a fellow-creature's life, 
 even if you 're quite, quite sure it 's just 
 and necessary ; but fancy contracting 
 to take anybody's and everybody's life 
 you 're told to without any chance even 
 of enquiring whether they ma) not be 
 in ihc right after all, and \(nir own par- 
 ticular king or people most unjust and 
 
tTbc :fiSritl6b JJSarbarians 191 
 
 cruel and bloodstained aggressors? 
 Why, it 's horrible to contemplate. Do 
 you know, Mrs. Monteith," he went on, 
 with his far-away air, *^ it 's that that 
 makes society here in England so dif- 
 ficult to me. It 's so hard to mix on 
 equal terms with your paid high-priests 
 and your hired slaughterers, and never 
 display openly the feelings you enter- 
 tain towards them. Fancy if you had 
 to mix so yourself with the men who 
 flogged women to death in Hungary, 
 or with the governors and jailors of 
 some Siberian prison. That 's the worst 
 of travel. When I was in Central Af- 
 rica, I sometimes saw a poor black 
 woman tortured or killed before my 
 very eyes ; and if I 'd tried to interfere 
 in her favour, to save or protect her, I 'd 
 only have got killed myself, and proba- 
 bly have made things all the worse in 
 
192 ilbc JBritldb :t3arl)ariand 
 
 the end for her. And yet it 's hard, in- 
 deed, to have to look on at or listen to 
 such horrors as these without openly 
 displaying one's disgust and disappro- 
 bation. Whenever I meet your famous 
 generals, or your judges and your bish- 
 ops, I burn to tell them how their acts 
 affect me ; yet I 'm obliged to refrain, 
 because I know my words could do no 
 good and might do harm, for they could 
 only anger them. My sole hope of do- 
 ing anything to mitigate the rigour of 
 your cruel customs is to take as little 
 notice of them as possible in any way 
 whenever I find myself in unsympa- 
 thetic society." 
 
 ** Then you don't think vie unsympa- 
 thetic?" Freda murmured, with a glow 
 of pleasure. 
 
 " Oh, Freda," the young man cried, 
 bending fcjrward and looking at her ; 
 
Zbc JBritisb JBarbarians 193 
 
 '* you know very well you 're the only 
 person here I care for in the least or I 
 have the slightest sympathy with." 
 
 Freda was pleased he should say so ; 
 he was so nice and gentle : but she felt 
 constrained, none the less, to protest, 
 for form's sake at least, against his call- 
 ing her once more so familiarly by her 
 Christian name. ''Not Freda to you, 
 if you please, Mr. Ingledew," she said, 
 as stiffly as she could manage. " You 
 know it is n't right. Mrs. Monteith, 
 you must call me." But she was n't 
 as angry, somehow, at the liberty he had 
 taken as she would have been in any- 
 body else's case ; he was so very peculiar. 
 Bertram Ingledew paused and checked 
 himself. 
 
 ^' You think I do it on purpose," he 
 
 said, with an apologetic air ; '' I know 
 
 you do, of course ; but I assure you I 
 13 
 
104 tlbc .IBrttieb .ISarbarians 
 
 don't. It 's all pure forgetfulncss. 
 The fact is, nobody can possibly call to 
 mind all the intricacies of your English 
 and European customs at once unless 
 he 's to the manner born, and carefully 
 brought up to them from his earliest 
 childhood, as all of you yourselves have 
 been. He may recollect them after an 
 effort when he thinks of them seriously ; 
 but he can't possibly bear them all in 
 mind at once every hour of the day and 
 night by a })ure tour dc force of mental 
 concentration. You know it 's the 
 same with your people in other bar- 
 barous countries. Your own travellers 
 say it themselves about the customs of 
 Islam. They can't learn them and re- 
 member them all at every moment of 
 their lives, as the Mohammedans do ; 
 and to make one slip there, is instant 
 death to them," 
 
^bc JBritlsb JBarbarians 195 
 
 Freda looked at him earnestly. " But 
 I hope," she said with an air of depre- 
 cation, pulling a rose to pieces, petal 
 by petal, nervously, as she spoke, '* you 
 don't put us on quite the same level as 
 Mohammedans. We 're so much more 
 civilised, so much better in every way. 
 Do you know, Mr. Ingledew," and she 
 hesitated for a minute, ^' I can't bear 
 to differ from you or blame you in any- 
 thing, because you always appear to 
 me so wise and good and kind-hearted 
 and reasonable ; but it often surprises 
 me and even hurts me when you seem 
 to talk of us all as if we were just so 
 many savages. You 're always speak- 
 ing about taboo and castes and poojah 
 and fetishes, as if we were n't civilised 
 people at all, but utter barbarians. 
 Now, don't you think — don't you ad- 
 mit, yourself, it 's a wee bit unrea- 
 
196 ttbc .TGritit?h .fGarbariana 
 
 sonabic, or^ at any rate, impolite of 
 you ? " 
 
 Bertram drew back witli a really 
 pained expression on his handsome 
 features. " Oh, Mrs. Monteith ! " he 
 cried, — " Freda, — I 'm so sorry if I 've 
 seemed rude to you. It 's all the same 
 thing, — pure human inadvertence : in- 
 ability to throw myself into so unfa- 
 miliar an attitude. I forget every 
 minute that you don't recognise the 
 essential identity of }'our own taboos 
 and poojahs and fetishes with the 
 similar and often indistinguishable 
 taboos and poojahs and fetishes of 
 savages generally. They all come from 
 the same source, and often retain to 
 the end, as in your temple superstitions 
 and }()ur marriage superstitions, the 
 original features of their savage begin- 
 nings. And as to }'()ur being com- 
 
^be :(iSriti6b JBarbarfaii5 197 
 
 paratively civilised, I grant you that at 
 once; only it does n't necessarily make 
 you one bit more rational — certainly 
 not one bit more humane or moral or 
 brotherly in your actions." 
 
 " I don't understand you," Freda 
 cried, astonished. " But there ! I often 
 don't understand you ; only I know 
 when you 've explained things, I shall 
 see how right you are." 
 
 Bertram smiled a quiet smile. *'You 
 're certainly an apt pupil," he said with 
 brotherly gentleness, puUing a flower as 
 he went and slipping it softly into her 
 bosom. ''Why, what I mean is just 
 this. Civilisation, after all, in the stage 
 in which you possess it, is only the 
 ability to live together in great organised 
 communities. It doesn't necessarily 
 imply any higher moral status or any 
 greater rationality than those of the 
 
i<)& Zbc JGriti^b .TGarbarian^ 
 
 savage. All it iini)lics is grciilcr cohe- 
 sion, more unitw liiL^hcr division of 
 functions. l^ut the functions them- 
 selves, like those of your priests, judges, 
 and soldiers, may be as barbaric and 
 cruel, or as irrational and unintelligent, 
 as any that exist among the most 
 primitive peoj)les. Advance in ci\ilisa- 
 lion does n't necessarily involve either 
 advance in real knowledge of one's rela- 
 tions to the universe, or advance in 
 moral goodness and personal culture. 
 Some highly civilised nations of historic 
 times have been more cruel and barbar- 
 ous than many (juite uncidtivated ones. 
 J-'or example, the Romans, at the heiL;ht 
 of their civilisation, went mad drunk 
 uilli blood at their L;ladiatori.il sliows ; 
 the Athenians, of the a^e of Teiicles ami 
 Socrates, offered uj) luinian s.icrifices at 
 the Thargelia, like the veriest savages; 
 
^be JJ8riti6b JBarbarian6 199 
 
 and tlie Phoenicians and Carthaginians, 
 the most civilised commercial people of 
 the world in their time as the English 
 are now, gave their own children to be 
 burnt alive as victims to Baal. The 
 Mexicans were far more civilised than 
 the ordinary North American Indians 
 of their own day, and even in some re- 
 spects than the Spanish Christians who 
 conquered, converted, enslaved, and 
 tortured them ; but the Mexican reli- 
 gion was full of such horrors as I could 
 hardly even name to you. It was based 
 entirely on cannibalism as yours is on 
 Mammon. Human sacrifices were com- 
 mon — commoner even than in modern 
 England, I fancy. New-born babies 
 were killed by the priests when the corn 
 was sown ; children when it had sprout- 
 ed ; men when it was full grown ; and 
 very old people when it was fully ripe." 
 
200 Cbc JCrittdb JSarbariand 
 
 "How horrible!" I^Vcda exclaimed. 
 
 *' Yes, horrible," Bertram answered, 
 " like your own worst customs. It 
 did n't show either gentleness or ra- 
 tionality, you '11 admit, but it showed 
 what 's the one thing essential to civi- 
 lisation, great coherence, high organi- 
 sation, much division of function. 
 Some of the rights these civilised Mexi- 
 cans performed would have made the 
 blood of kindly savages run coltl with 
 horror. They sacrificed a man at the 
 harvest festival by crushing him like the 
 corn between two big flat stones. Some- 
 times the priests skinned their victim 
 alive, and wore his raw^ skin as a mask 
 or covering, and danced hideous dances, 
 so disguised, in honour of the hateful 
 deities whom their fancy had created, 
 — deities even more hateful ami cruel, 
 perhaps, than tlu- worst of your own 
 
tTbc JSdtisb JBarbartans 201 
 
 Christian Calvinistic fancies. I can't 
 see, myself, that civilised people are 
 one whit the better in all these respects 
 than the uncivilised barbarian. They 
 pull together better ; that 's all, but war, 
 bloodshed, superstition, fetish-worship, 
 religious rites, castes, class distinctions, 
 sex-taboos, restrictions on freedom of 
 thought, on freedom of action, on free- 
 dom of speech, on freedom of know- 
 ledge, are just as common in their midst 
 as among the utterly uncivilised." 
 
 ''Then what you yourself aim at," 
 Freda said, looking hard at him, for he 
 spoke very earnestly — '* what you your- 
 self aim at, is — ? " 
 
 Bertram's eyes came back to solid 
 earth with a bound. " Oh, what we at 
 home aim at," he said, smiling that 
 sweet, soft smile of his that so capti- 
 vated Freda, " is not mere civilisation, 
 
202 Che JGrit(t?b aSnrbnrlan^ 
 
 (^thouj^h of course wc value that too, in 
 its meet degree, because without civil- 
 isation and co-operation no great thing 
 is possible) but rational it}' and tender- 
 ness. We think reason the first good, 
 — to recognise truly your own place in 
 the universe, to hold your head up like 
 a man, before the face of high heaven, 
 afraid of no ghosts or fetishes or phan- 
 toms ; to understand that wise and 
 right and unselfish actions arc the great 
 requisites in life, not the service of non- 
 existent and misshapen creatures of the 
 human imagination. Knowledge of 
 facts, knowledge of nature, knowledge 
 of the true aspects of the world wc li\e 
 in, — these seem to us of first import- 
 ance. After that, w i- prize next, rea- 
 sonable and reasoning goodness: for 
 mere rule-of-iliumb goodness which 
 comes by rote, and might so easil)' de- 
 
trbe JSrltfeb :Barbarlan5 203 
 
 generate into formalism or superstition, 
 has no honour among us, but rather 
 the contrary. If anyone were to say 
 with us (after he had passed his first 
 infancy), that he always did such and 
 such a thing because he had been told 
 it was right by his parents or teachers, 
 — still more because priests or fetish- 
 men had commanded it, — he would be 
 regarded, not as virtuous, but as feeble 
 or wicked, — a sort of moral idiot, un- 
 able to distinguish rationally for himself 
 between good and evil. That 's not the 
 sort of conduct we consider right or be- 
 fitting the dignity of a grown man or 
 woman, an ethical unit in an enlight- 
 ened community. Rather is it their 
 prime duty to question all things, to 
 accept no rule of conduct or morals as 
 sure till they have thoroughly tested 
 it." 
 
204 tTbc .HSritlgb JGarbariaiu^ 
 
 " Mr. Inglcdcw," Freda exclaimed, 
 " do you know, when you talk like that, 
 I always long to ask you where on 
 earth you come from, and who are 
 these your people you so often speak 
 about. A blessed people : I would like 
 to learn about them. And yet I 'ni 
 afraid to. You almost seem to me like 
 a being from another planet." 
 
 The young man laughed a quiet little 
 laugh of deprecation, and sat down on 
 the garden bench beside the yellow rose- 
 bush. ** Oh, dear no, Freda," he said, 
 with that transparent glance of his. 
 " Now don't look so vexed ; I shall call 
 you Freda if I choose ; it 's your name, 
 and I like you. Why let this funny 
 taboo of one's own real name stand in 
 the way of reasonable friendship? In 
 many savage countries a woman 's never 
 allowed to call her husband b}' his 
 
^be JBritisb ^Barbarians 205 
 
 name, or even to know it, or for the 
 matter of that to see him in the day- 
 Hght. In your England, the arrange- 
 ment 's exactly reversed : no man is 
 allowed to call a woman by her real 
 name unless she 's tabooed for life to 
 him, — what you Europeans call married 
 to him. But let that pass ; if one went 
 on pulling oneself up short at every one 
 of your customs, one 'd never get any 
 further in any question one was discuss- 
 ing. Now don't be deceived by any 
 nonsensical talk about living beings in 
 other planets. There are no such creat- 
 ures. It 's a pure delusion of the or- 
 dinary egotistical human pattern. When 
 people chatter about life in other 
 worlds, they don't mean life, — which, 
 of a sort, there may be there : they mean 
 human life, a very different and much 
 less important matter. Well, how 
 
2o6 Cbc JBritiBh .USarbariand 
 
 could there possibly be human beings, 
 or anything like them in other stars or 
 planets? The conditions are too com- 
 plex, too peculiar, too exclusively mun- 
 dane. W'c arc things of this world, and 
 of this world only. Don't let 's magni- 
 iy our importance ; we 're not the whole 
 universe. Our race is essentially a de- 
 velopment from a particular t)pe of 
 monkey-like animal, — the Andropithe- 
 cus of the Upper Uganda Eocene. 
 This monkey-like animal itself, again, 
 is the product of special antecedent 
 causes, filling a particular })lace in a 
 })articular tertiary fauna and flora, and 
 impossible even in the fauna and flora 
 of our own earth and our o\\ n tropics 
 before the evolution of those succulent 
 fruits and grain-like seeds for feeding 
 on which it was specially adapted. 
 Without edible fruits, in short, there 
 
XLbc JBritlsb JBarbarian6 207 
 
 could be no monkey; and without 
 monkeys there could be no man." 
 
 *' But may n't there be edible fruits 
 in the other planets?" Freda enquired, 
 half timidly, more to bring out this 
 novel aspect of Bertram's knowledge, 
 than really to argue with him ; for she 
 dearly loved to hear his views of things, 
 they were so fresh and unconventional. 
 
 " Edible fruits? Yes, possibly ; and 
 animals or something more or less like 
 animals to feed upon them. But even 
 if there are such, which planetoscopists 
 doubt, they must be very different 
 creatures in form and function from any 
 we know on this one small world of 
 ours. For just consider, Freda, what 
 we mean by Hfe. We mean a set of 
 simultaneous and consecutive changes 
 going on in a complex mass of organ- 
 ised carbon-compounds. When most 
 
2o8 ubc J3riti5b JGarbanan^ 
 
 people say ' life,' however, — especially 
 here with }'ou. where etlucation is un- 
 developed, — they are n't thinking of 
 life in general at all, (which is mainly 
 vegetable,) but only of animal, and 
 often indeed of human life. Well, then, 
 consider, even on this planet itself, how 
 special are the conditions that make life 
 possible. There must be water in some 
 form, for there 's no life in the desert. 
 There must be heat up to a certain 
 point, and not above or below it, for 
 fire kills, and there *s no life at the poles, 
 (as among Alpine glaciers,) or what 
 little there is depends upon the inter- 
 vention of other life wafted from else- 
 where, — from the lands or seas, in fact, 
 where it can really originate. In order 
 to have life at all, as zvt' know it at least, 
 (and I can't sa\' whether anything else 
 could be fairly called life by any true 
 
Ubc JBritisb JBarbariane 209 
 
 analogy until I 've seen and examined 
 it,) you must have carbon, and oxygen, 
 and hydrogen, and nitrogen, and many 
 other things under certain fixed condi- 
 tions : you must have liquid water, not 
 steam or ice ; you must have a certain 
 restricted range of temperature, neither 
 very much higher nor very much lower 
 than the average of the tropics. Now 
 look, even with all these conditions ful- 
 filled, how diverse is life on this earth 
 itself, the one place we really know — 
 varying as much as from the oak to the 
 cuttle-fish, from the palm to the tiger, 
 from man to the fern, the sea-weed, or 
 the jelly-speck. Every one of these 
 creatures is a complex result of very 
 complex conditions, among which you 
 must never forget to reckon the previ- 
 ous existence and interaction of all the 
 
 antecedent ones. Is it probable, then, 
 14 
 
2IO Cbc JSriti^b J}arbariand 
 
 even a priori, that if life or anything 
 like it exists on any other j)lanet, it 
 would exist in forms at all as near our 
 own as a buttercup is to a human being, 
 or a sea-anemone is to a cat or a j)ine 
 tree? *' 
 
 "Well, it doesn't look likely, now 
 \-ou come to put it so," Freda answered 
 thoughtfully: for though English she 
 was not wholly impervious to logic. 
 
 "Likely? Of course not," Bertram 
 went on with conviction. " Planeto- 
 scopists are agreed upon it. And above 
 all, why should one suppose the living 
 organisms or their analogues, if an)' such 
 there are, in the planets or fixed stars, 
 possess any such purely human and ani- 
 mal faculties as thought and reason? 
 That 's just like our common human 
 narrowness. \\ we were oaks, I sup- 
 pose, we would only interest ourselves 
 
^be JBritisb JBarbaiians 211 
 
 in the question whether acorns existed 
 in Mars and Saturn." He paused a 
 moment : then he added in an after- 
 thought, '' No, Freda ; you may be sure 
 all human beings, you and I alike, and 
 thousands of others a great deal more 
 different, are essential products of this 
 one wee planet, and of particular times 
 and circumstances in its history. We 
 difTer only as birth and circumstances 
 have made us differ. There is a mystery 
 about who I am, and where I come from ; 
 I won't deny it ; but it is n't by any 
 means so strange or so marvellous a 
 mystery as you seem to imagine. One 
 of your own old sacred books says, (as 
 I remember hearing in the joss-house I 
 attended one day in London,) ' God 
 hath made of one blood all the nations 
 of the earth.' If for God in that pas- 
 sage we substitute common descent^ it 's 
 
212 Che .IGritirh .iCnrbnrianB 
 
 perfectly true. \Vc are all of one race; 
 ami I confess, when 1 talk tn you. every 
 day I feel our unity more and more 
 profoundly." He bent over on the 
 bench and took her tremulous hand. 
 ** Freda," lie said, looking deep into her 
 speaking dark eyes. ** don't }()U your- 
 self feel it?" 
 
 lie was so strange, so simple-niincitd, 
 so different in every way from all other 
 men, that for a moment Freda almost 
 half forgot to be angr\' with him. In 
 point of fact, in her heart, she wasn't 
 angry at all : she liked to feel the soft 
 pressure of his strong man's hand on 
 her dainty fingers; she liketl to feel 
 the gentle wa)' he was stroking her 
 smc^oth arm with that delicate white 
 palm of his. It gave her a certain im- 
 mediate and unthinking pleasure to sit 
 by his side, and know he was full of her. 
 
trbc :Brltisb :©arbarfan6 213 
 
 Then suddenly, with a start, she re- 
 membered her duty ; she was a married 
 woman, and she ougJit 11 1 to do it. 
 Quickly, with a startled air she with- 
 drew her hand. Bertram gazed down 
 at her for a second, half taken aback 
 by her hurried withdrawal. " Then 
 you don't like me ! " he cried, in a 
 pained tone ; '' after all you don't 
 like me I " One moment later a ray 
 of recognition broke slowly over his 
 face. " Oh, I forgot," he said, lean- 
 ing away ; *' I did n't mean to annoy 
 you. A year or two ago, of course, 
 I might have held your hand in mine 
 as long as ever I liked. You were still 
 a free being. But what was right then, 
 is wrong now, according to the kaleido- 
 scopic etiquette of your countrywomen. 
 I forgot all that in the heat of the mo- 
 ment. I recollected only we were two 
 
314 Cbc 13rttidb Xarbacianc^ 
 
 human beings of tlic same race and 
 blood, with hearts that beat, and hands 
 that hiy together. I remember now, 
 you must liide and stifle your native 
 impulses in future ; you 're tabooed for 
 life to Robert Monteith ; I must neeils 
 respect his seal set upon you ! " And 
 he drew a deep sigh of enforced resig- 
 nation. 
 
 Freda sighed in return. "These 
 problems are so hard," she said. 
 
 Bertram smiled a strange smile. 
 " There nri- no problems," he answered 
 confidently. "You make them your- 
 selves. \'()U surround life with taboos, 
 and then — you talk despairingly of the 
 problems with which Nour own taboos 
 alone ]i.i\c sadtlled you." 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A T half-past nine the same evening, 
 Bertram was seated in his sitting- 
 room at Miss Blake's lodgings, making 
 entries, as usual, on the subject of 
 taboo in his big black note-book. It 
 was a large, bare room, furnished with 
 the customary round rosewood centre 
 table and decorated by a pair of green 
 china vases, a set of wax flowers under 
 a big glass shade, and a picture repre- 
 senting two mythical beings, with 
 women's faces and birds' wings, hover- 
 ing over the figure of a sleeping baby. 
 Suddenly a hurried knock at the door 
 attracted his attention. *' Come in," he 
 said softly, in that gentle and almost 
 215 
 
2i6 cbc JGriti^b JGarbariane 
 
 deferential voice which he used alike to 
 his equals and to the lodging-house serv- 
 ant. The door opened at once — and 
 Freda entered. 
 
 She was pale as a ghost, and she 
 stepped light with a terrified tread, 
 l^ertram could see at a glance she was 
 l)r()f()undly agitated. For a moment 
 he could hardly imagine the reason 
 why; then he remembered all at once 
 the strict harem rules by which married 
 women in England are hemmed in and 
 circumvented. To visit an unmarried 
 man alone by night is contrary to tribal 
 usage. lie rose, and advanced towards 
 his visitor with outstretched arms. 
 **VVhy, Freda," he cried, "—Mrs. Mon- 
 teith,- -no, Freda, — what 's the matter? 
 What has happened since I left ? You 
 look so pale and startled." 
 
 Freda closed the door cautiously, 
 
XLbc :^ritf6b J6arbarians 217 
 
 flung herself down into a chair in a de- 
 spairing attitude, and buried her face in 
 her hands for some moments in silence. 
 "Oh, Mr. Ingledew," she cried, at last, 
 looking up in an agony of shame and 
 doubt, " Bertram, — I know it 's wrong ; 
 I know it 's wicked. I ought never to 
 have come. Robert would kill me if 
 he found out. But it 's my one last 
 chance ; and I could n't bear not to say 
 good-bye to you — just this once — for 
 ever ! 
 
 Bertram gazed at her in astonish- 
 ment. Long and intimately as he had 
 lived among the various devotees of 
 divine taboos, the whole world over, it 
 was with difficulty still he could recall 
 each time each particular restriction of 
 the various systems. Then it came home 
 to him with a rush. He removed the 
 poor girl's hands gently from her face, 
 
2i8 Zbe JBritidb JSarbariand 
 
 wliich she had buried once more in 
 them for pure, pure shame, and held 
 them in his own. *' Dear Freda," he 
 said tenderly, stroking them as he 
 spoke : " why, what does all this mean ? 
 What 's this sudden thunderbolt? 
 Vou Ve come here to-night without 
 your husband's leave, and you 're afraid 
 he '11 discover you ? " 
 
 Freda spoke under her breath, in a 
 voice half choked with frequent sobs. 
 '* Don't talk too loud," she whispered. 
 '* Miss Blake does n't know I 'm here. 
 If she did, she *d tell on me. I slipped 
 in (juietly through the open back door. 
 Hut I felt I j^iust. I really, really ;/rust. 
 I could nt stop away. I could }f t help 
 it." 
 
 Bertram gazed at her, distressed. 
 Her tone was distressing. Horror and 
 indignation for a moment overcame 
 
Zbc JSritisb :©arbarians 219 
 
 him. She had had to slip in there like 
 a fugitive or a criminal. She had had 
 to crawl away by stealth from that 
 man, her keeper! She, a grown woman 
 and a moral agent, with a will of her 
 own, and a heart and a conscience, was 
 held so absolutely in serfdom as a par- 
 ticular man's thrall and chattel, that 
 she could n't even go out to visit a 
 friend without these degrading subter- 
 fuges of creeping in unperceived, by a 
 back entrance, and talking low under 
 her breath, lest a lodging-house crone 
 should find out what she was doing! 
 And all the world of England was so 
 banded in league with the slave-driver 
 against the soul he enslaved, that if 
 Miss Blake had seen her she could 
 hardly have come in ; while, once in, 
 she must tremble and whisper and steal 
 about with muffled feet, for fear of dis- 
 
220 Zbc J8dti0b JlSarbariand 
 
 coven' ill this innocent adventure. He 
 held his breath with stifled wrath. It 
 was painful and degrading. 
 
 But he had no time just then to 
 think much of all this ; for there sat 
 Freda, tremulous and shivering before 
 his very eyes, trying hard to hide her 
 beautiful white face in her cjuivering 
 hands, and murmuring over and over 
 again, in a very low voice, like an 
 agonised creature, " I could n't />i(ir 
 not to be allowed to say good-bye to 
 you for ever." 
 
 Bertram smoothed her check gently. 
 She tried to prevent him, but he went 
 on in spite of her with a man's strong 
 persistence. Notwithstanding his gen- 
 tleness, he was always virile. " Good- 
 bye ! Why on earth, ' good-bye,' Freda? 
 When I left )'ou before dinner you 
 never said one word of it to me." 
 
(Tbe JBrltlsb ^Barbarians 221 
 
 " Oh, no," Freda cried, sobbing. 
 " It 's all Robert, Robert ! As soon as 
 ever you were gone, he called me into 
 the library, — which always means he 's 
 going to talk over some dreadful busi- 
 ness with me ; — and he said to me : 
 ' Freda, I 've just heard from Phil that 
 this man Ingledew, who 's chosen to 
 foist himself upon us, holds opinions 
 and sentiments which entirely unfit him 
 from being proper company for any 
 lady. Now, he 's been coming here a 
 great deal too often of late. Next time 
 he calls, I wish you to tell Martha 
 you 're Not At Home to him ! ' " 
 
 Bertram looked across at her with a 
 melting look in his honest blue eyes. 
 '* And you came round to tell me of it, 
 you dear thing ! " he cried, seizing her 
 hand and grasping it hard. " Oh, 
 Freda, how kind of you ! " 
 
222 Cbc JBriti^h JCarbarlans 
 
 Freda trembled from head to foot. 
 The blood throbbed in her j)ulse. 
 " Then you 're not vexed with me," she 
 sobbed out, all tremulous with glad- 
 ness. 
 
 '* Vexed with you ? Oh, Freda, how 
 could I be vexed ? You poor child ! 
 I 111 so pleased, so glad, so grateful I " 
 
 Freda let her hand rest unresisting in 
 his. ** But, Bertram," she murmured, 
 '* I must call you Bertram, — I couldn't 
 help it, you know. I like you so much, 
 I could n't let you go for ever without 
 just saying good-bye to you." 
 
 " You do7it like me ; you love me," 
 Bertram answered with masculine con- 
 fidence. ** No, you need n't blush, 
 Freda ; you can't deceive me. 
 My darling, you love me, and you know 
 I love you. Why should we two make 
 any secret about our hearts any long- 
 
^be JBritlsb JiSarbarlane 223 
 
 er?" He laid his hand on her face 
 again, making it tingle with joy. 
 " Freda," he said solemnly, ''you don't 
 love that man you call your husband. 
 . . . You have n't loved him for 
 
 years. . . You never really loved 
 
 h» > > 
 im. 
 
 There was something about the mere 
 sound of Bertram's calm.voice that made 
 Freda speak the truth more plainly and 
 frankly than she could ever have spoken 
 it to any ordinary Englishman. Yet 
 she hung down her head even so, and 
 hesitated slightly. " Just at first," she 
 murmured, half inaudibly, " I used to 
 t/nnk I loved him. At any rate, I was 
 pleased and flattered he should marry 
 me." 
 
 ^' Pleased and flattered ! " Bertram 
 exclaimed, more to himself than to 
 her, '' Great heavens, how incredible ! 
 
224 Che ."IGritt^h .fGarbnrland 
 
 Pleased and flattered by that man ! 
 One can liardly conceive it ! Ikit 
 \()u '\e never loved hini since, Freda. 
 You can't look nie in the face and tell 
 nie you love him." 
 
 " No, not since the first few months," 
 Freda answered, still hanging her head. 
 " Hut, l^ertram, he 's my husband, and 
 of course I must obey him." 
 
 '* You must do nothing of the sort," 
 Bertram cried authoritatively. " You 
 don't love him at all, and )'ou must n't 
 pretend to. It 's wrong ; it 's wicked. 
 Sooner or later — " he checked himself. 
 '* Freda," he went on, after a moment's 
 pause, *' I won't speak to }'ou of what I 
 was going to say just now. I '11 wait a 
 bit till }'ou 're stronger and better able 
 to understand it. lUit there must be 
 no more silly talk c^f farewells between 
 us. I won't allow it. You 're mine 
 
^be JSritisb JBarbarians 225 
 
 now, — a thousand times more truly 
 mine than ever you were Monteith's ; 
 and I can't do without you. You must 
 go back to your husband for the pres- 
 ent, I suppose, — the circumstances 
 compel it, though I don't approve of it : 
 but you must see me again . . . and 
 soon . . . and often, just the same as 
 usual. I won't go to your house, of 
 course; the house is Monteith's; and 
 everywhere among civilised and rational 
 races the sanctity of the home is rightly 
 respected. But j^otc yourself he has no 
 claim or right to taboo ; and if / can 
 help it he sha'n't taboo you. You may 
 go home now to-night, dear one, but 
 you must meet me often. If you can't 
 come round to my rooms, — for fear of 
 Miss Blake's fetish, the respectability of 
 her house, — we must meet elsewhere, 
 till I can make fresh arrangements," 
 
226 ^bc JBrltlsb JGarbanans 
 
 Freda gazed up at him in doubt. 
 " But will it be rigJit, Bertram ? " she 
 murmured. 
 
 The man looked down into her big 
 eyes in dazed astonishment. '' Why, 
 Freda," he cried, half pained at the ques- 
 tion, " do you think if it were wrong 
 I 'd advise you to do it ? I 'm here 
 to help you, to guide you, to lead you 
 on by degrees to higher and truer life. 
 How can you imagine I 'd ask you to 
 do anything on earth unless I felt per- 
 fectly sure and convinced it was the 
 very most right and proper conduct? " 
 
 His arm stole round her waist and 
 drew her tenderly towards him. Freda 
 allowed the caress passively. There 
 was a robust frankness about his love- 
 making that seemed to rob it of all taint 
 or tinge of evil. Then he caught her 
 boldly in his arms like a man who has 
 
Zbc J6r(ti6b JBarbarians 227 
 
 never associated the purest and noblest 
 of human passions with any lower 
 thought, any baser personality. He 
 had not taken his first lessons in the 
 art of love from the wearied lips of joy- 
 less courtesans, whom his own kind had 
 debased and unsexed and degraded out 
 of all semblance of womanhood. He 
 bent over the woman of his choice and 
 kissed her with chaste warmth. On the 
 forehead first ; then, after a short inter- 
 val, twice on the lips. At each kiss, 
 from which she somehow did n't shrink, 
 as if recognising its purity, Freda felt 
 a strange thrill course through and 
 through her. She quivered from head 
 to foot. The scales fell from her eyes. 
 The taboos of her race grew null and 
 void within her soul. She looked up 
 at him more boldly. ''Oh, Bertram," 
 3he whispered, nestling close to his side 
 
228 Cbc .tSriti^b JBarbarian^ 
 
 and buryiiii^ licr blushing face in the 
 man's curved bosom, " I don't know 
 what you 've done to me, but I feel quite 
 different — as if I 'd eaten the fruit of 
 the tree of knowledge of good and evil." 
 
 " I hope you have," Bertram an- 
 swered, in a very solemn voice, " for, 
 Freda, you will need it." He pressed 
 her close against his breast; and Freda 
 Monteith, a free woman at last, clung 
 there many minutes with no vile in- 
 herited sense of shame or wrongfulness. 
 " I can't bear to go," she cried, still 
 clinging to him and clutching him tight. 
 *' I 'm so happy here, Bertram : oh, so 
 happy, so happy ! " 
 
 ** Then why go away at all ? " Ber- 
 tram asked, quite simply. 
 
 Freda drew back in horror. " Oh, I 
 must," she said, coming to herself ; " I 
 must, of course, because of Rob^rti' 
 
tTbe JSrltisb :fi3arbarfan6 229 
 
 Bertram held her hand, smoothinp- it 
 all the while with his own, as he mused 
 and hesitated. "Well, it 's clearly 
 wrong to go back," he said, after a 
 moment's pause. ''You ought never, 
 of course, to spend another night with 
 that man you don't love and should 
 never have lived with. But I suppose 
 that 's only a counsel of perfection ; too 
 hard a saying for you to understand or 
 follow for the present. You 'd better 
 go back, just to-night, and as time 
 moves on, I can arrange something else 
 for you. But when shall I see you 
 again ? for now you belong to me. I 
 sealed you with that kiss. When will 
 you come and see me ? " 
 
 '' I can't come here, you know," 
 Freda whispered, half terrified, " for if 
 I did. Miss Blake would see me." 
 
 Bertram smiled a bitter smile to him- 
 
230 Zbc JkSriti6b JBarbarian^ 
 
 self. " So she would," he said, musing. 
 " And though she 's not the least inter- 
 ested in keeping up Robert Monteith's 
 proprietary claim on your life and free- 
 dom, I 'm beginning to understand now 
 it would be an offence against that 
 mysterious and incomprehensible entity 
 they call respectability if she were to 
 allow me to receive you in her rooms. 
 It 's all very curious. But of course, 
 while I remain, I must be content to 
 submit to it. By and bye, perhaps, 
 Freda, we two may manage to escape 
 together from this iron generation. 
 Meanwhile, I shall go up to London 
 less often for the present, and )'ou can 
 come and meet me, dear, in the Middle 
 Mill Fields at two o'clock on Monday." 
 She gazed up at him with perfect 
 trust in those luminous dark eyes of 
 hers. " I u ill, Bertram," she said firmly. 
 
tCbe JBritisb JSarbarlan5 231 
 
 She knew not herself what his kiss had 
 done for her; but one thing she knew ; 
 from the moment their Hps met she had 
 felt and understood in a flood of vision 
 that perfect love which casteth out fear, 
 and was no longer afraid of him. 
 
 '' That 's right, darling," the man 
 answered, stooping down and laying his 
 cheek against her own once more. 
 " You are mine, and I am yours. You 
 are not, and never were, Robert Mon- 
 teith's, my Freda. So now, good-night. 
 Till Monday at two, beside the stile in 
 Middle Mill Meadows ! " 
 
 She clung to him for a moment in a 
 passionate embrace. He let her stop 
 there, while he smoothed her dark hair 
 with one free hand. Then suddenly, 
 with a burst, the older feelings of her 
 race overcame her for a minute ; she 
 broke from his grasp and hid her head, 
 
232 Cbc JGritisb JGarbanaiit? 
 
 all crimson, in a cushion on the sofa. 
 One second later, again, she lifted her 
 face unabashed. The new impulse 
 stirred her. *' I 'm proud I love you, 
 Bertram," she cried, with red lips and 
 flashing eyes ; '* and I 'm proud you 
 love me ! " 
 
 With that, she slipped quietly out, 
 and walked, erect and graceful, no 
 longer ashamed, down the lodging- 
 house passage. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 Al/HEN she returned, Robert Mon- 
 teith sat asleep over his paper in 
 his easy chair. It was his wont at night 
 when he returned from business. Freda 
 cast one contemptuous glance as she 
 passed at his burly, unintelligent form, 
 and went up to her bedroom. But all 
 that night long she never slept. Her 
 head was too full of Bertram Ingledew. 
 Yet, strange to say, she felt not one 
 qualm of conscience for their stolen 
 meeting. No feminine terror, no flut- 
 tering fear, disturbed her equanimity. 
 It almost seemed to her as if Bertram's 
 kiss had released her by magic, at once 
 and for ever, from the taboos of her 
 233 
 
234 Cbe :fi3riti6b JGarbariand 
 
 nation. She had slipped out from 
 home unperceived that night, in fear 
 and trembling, with many sinkings of 
 heart and dire misgivings, while Robert 
 and Phil were downstairs in the smok- 
 ing-room. She had slunk round, 
 crouching low, to Miss Blake's lodgings, 
 and she had terrified her soul on the 
 way with a good woman's doubts and 
 a good woman's fears as to the wrong- 
 fulness of her attempt to say good-bye 
 to the friend she might now- no longer 
 mix with. But from the moment her 
 lips and Bertram's touched, all fear and 
 doubt seemed utterly to have vanished. 
 She lay there all night in a fierce ecstasy 
 of love, hugging herself for strange de- 
 light, thinking only of Bertram, and 
 wondering what manner of thing was 
 this promised freedom whereof her love 
 had spoken to her so confidently. She 
 
tbc JiSritisb 36arbanan6 235 
 
 trusted him now ; she knew he would 
 do right, and right alone ; whatever he 
 advised, she would be safe in following. 
 Next day, Robert went up to town 
 to business as usual. He was immersed 
 in palm oil. By a quarter to two Freda 
 found herself in the fields. But early 
 as she went to fulfil her tryst, Bertram 
 was there before her. He took her 
 hand in his with a gentle pressure, and 
 Freda felt a quick thrill she had never 
 before experienced course suddenly 
 through her. She looked around to 
 right and left, to see if they were ob- 
 served. Bertram noticed instinctively 
 the instinctive movement. " My dar- 
 ling," he said in a low voice, ^' this is in- 
 tolerable, unendurable. It 's an insult 
 not to be borne that you and I can't 
 walk together in the fields of England 
 without being subjected thus to such a 
 
236 Zbc JSritisb JDarbarians 
 
 many-headed espionage. I shall have 
 to arrange something before long so 
 as to see you at leisure. I can't be 
 so bound by all the taboos of your 
 country." 
 
 She looked up at him trustfully. *'As 
 you will, Bertram," she answered, with- 
 out a moment's hesitation. " I know 
 I 'ni yours now. Let it be what it may, 
 I can do what you tell me." 
 
 He looked at her and smiled. He 
 saw she was a pure woman. He had 
 met at last with a sister soul. There 
 was a long deep silence. 
 
 Freda was the first to break it with 
 words. '' Why do you always call them 
 taboos, Bertram ? " she asked at last, 
 sighing. 
 
 "Why, Freda, don't you sec?" he 
 said, walking on through the deep grass. 
 " Because they ^iri' taboos ; that 's the 
 
XLbe JSritisb JSarbarians 237 
 
 only reason. Why not give them their 
 true name ? We call them nothing else 
 among my own people. All taboos 
 are the same in origin and spirit, 
 whether savage or civilised, eastern or 
 western. You must see that now : for 
 I know you are emancipated. They 
 begin with belief in some fetish or bogy 
 or other non-existent supernatural be- 
 ing ; and they mostly go on to regard 
 certain absolutely harmless, — nay, 
 sometimes even praiseworthy or mor- 
 ally obligatory acts, as proscribed by 
 him and sure to be visited with his con- 
 dign displeasure. So South-Sea Island- 
 ers think, if they eat some particularly 
 luscious fruit tabooed for the chiefs, 
 they '11 be instantly struck dead by the 
 mere power of the taboo in it ; and 
 English people think if they go out in 
 the gountry for a picnic on d. tabppcd 
 
238 Cbc J6riti6b JGarbariana 
 
 day, or use certain harmless tabooed 
 names and words, or enquire into the 
 historical validity of certain incredible 
 ancient documents, accounted sacred, 
 or even dare to think certain things that 
 no reasonable man can prevent himself 
 from thinking, they '11 be burned for- 
 ever in eternal fire for it. The common 
 element is the dread of an unreal sanc- 
 tion. So in Japan and West Africa, 
 the people believe the whole existence 
 of the world and the universe is bound 
 up with the health of their own par- 
 ticular king, or the safety of their own 
 particular royal family ; and therefore 
 they won't allow their Mikado or their 
 Chief to go outside his palace, lest he 
 should knock his royal foot against a 
 stone, and so prevent the sun from 
 shining and the rain from falling. In 
 other places, it 's a tree or a shrub with 
 
^be JSritisb JBarbarians 239 
 
 which the stability and persistence of 
 the world are bound up ; whenever that 
 tree or shrub begins to droop or wither, 
 the whole population rushes out in 
 bodily fear and awe, bearing water to 
 pour upon it, and crying aloud with 
 wild cries as if their lives were in dan- 
 ger. If any man were to injure the 
 tree, which, of course, is no more valu- 
 able than any other bush of its sort, 
 they 'd tear him to pieces on the spot, 
 and kill or torture every member of his 
 family. And so, too, in England. Most 
 people believe, without a shadow of 
 reason, that if men and women were 
 allowed to manage their own personal 
 relations, free from tribal interference, 
 all life and order would go to rack and 
 ruin ; the world would become one vast 
 and horrible orgy ; and society would 
 dissolve in som^ incredible fashion. Tq 
 
240 Zbc JGritlsb JCarbarians 
 
 prevent this imaginary and impossible 
 result, they insist upon regulating one 
 another's lives from outside with the 
 strictest taboos, like those which hem 
 round tlic West African kings, and 
 punish with cruel and relentless heart- 
 lessness every man, and still more 
 every woman, who dares to transgress 
 them." 
 
 " I think I see what you mean," Freda 
 answered, blushing. 
 
 " And I mean it in the very simplest 
 and most literal sense," Bertram went 
 on, most seriously. " I 'd been among 
 you some time before it began to dawn 
 on me that you English did n't regard 
 your own taboos as essentially identical 
 with other people's. To me, from the 
 very first, they seemed absolutely the 
 same as the similar taboos of Central 
 Africans and South Sea Islanders, All 
 
^be JiSrftfsb Barbarians 241 
 
 of them spring alike from a common 
 origin, the queer savage belief that 
 various harmless or actually beneficial 
 things may become at times in some 
 mysterious way harmful and dangerous. 
 The essence of them all lies in the 
 erroneous idea that if certain contin- 
 gencies occur, such as breaking an 
 image or deserting a faith, some terri- 
 ble evil will follow to one man or to 
 the world, which evil, as a matter of 
 fact, there 's no reason at all to dread 
 in any way. Sometimes, as in ancient 
 Rome, Egypt, Central Africa, and Eng- 
 land, the whole of life gets enveloped 
 at last in a perfect mist and labyrinth 
 of taboos, a cobweb of conventions. 
 The Flamen Dialis at Rome, you know, 
 might n't ride or even touch a horse ; 
 he might n't see an army under arms, 
 nor wear a ring that was n't broken ; 
 
 10 
 
243 Zbc JCrttit^b .tGarbariaud 
 
 nor have a knot in any part of his cloth- 
 ing. He might n't cat whcatcn flour 
 or leavened bread ; he might n't look at 
 or even mention by name such unlucky 
 things as a goat, a dog, raw meat, hari- 
 cot beans, or common ivy. I Ic might n't 
 walk under a vine : the feet of his bed 
 had to be daubed with mud ; his hair 
 could only be cut by a free man, and 
 with a bronze knife ; he was encased 
 and surrounded, as it were, by endless 
 petty restrictions and regulations and 
 taboos — just like those that now sur- 
 round so many men, and especially so 
 many young women, here in England." 
 
 " And you think they arise from the 
 same causes?" Freda said, half hesita- 
 ting : for she hardly knew whether it 
 wasn't wicked to say so. 
 
 " Wh\'. of course they do," Bertram 
 answered confidently. " That *s not 
 
Zbe JiSrlti6b :©arbarian6 243 
 
 matter of opinion now ; it 's matter of 
 demonstration. The worst of them all 
 in their present complicated state are 
 the ones that concern marriage, and the 
 other hideous sex-taboos. They seem 
 to have been among the earliest human 
 abuses ; for marriage arises from the 
 stone-age practice of felling a woman 
 of another tribe with a blow of one's 
 club, and dragging her off by the hair 
 of her head to one's own cave as a 
 slave and drudge ; and they are still 
 the most persistent and cruel of any, 
 so much so that your own people, as 
 you know, taboo even the fair and free 
 discussion of this the most important 
 and serious question of life and morals. 
 They make it, as we would say at home, 
 a refuge for enforced ignorance. For 
 it 's well known that early tribes hold 
 the most superstitious ideas about the 
 
244 Cbc JBrittdb IGarbartane 
 
 relation of men to \v<3men, and dread 
 the most ridiculous and impossible 
 evils resulting from it ; and these ab- 
 surd terrors of theirs seem to have been 
 handed on intact to civilised races, so 
 that for fear of I know not what ridicu- 
 lous bogy of their own imaginations, 
 or dread of some unnatural restraining 
 deity, men won't even discuss a matter 
 of so much importance to them all, but 
 rather tlian let the taboo of silence be 
 broken, will allow such horrible things 
 to take place in their midst as I have 
 seen with my eyes for these last six or 
 seven weeks in )'our cities. Oh, Freda, 
 you can't imagine what things — for I 
 know they hide them from you — cruel- 
 ties of lust and neglect and shame such 
 as you could n't even dream of; women 
 dying of foul disease in want and dirt 
 deliberately forced upon them by the 
 
trbe JSdtieb :fi8arbarian5 245 
 
 will of your society ; destined before- 
 hand for death, a hateful lingering 
 death, a death more disgusting than 
 aught you can conceive — in order that 
 the rest of you may be safely tabooed, 
 each a maid intact for the man who 
 weds her. It 's the hatefullest taboo 
 of all the hateful taboos I Ve ever seen 
 on my wanderings, the unworthiest of 
 a pure or moral community." 
 
 He shut his eyes as if to forget the 
 horrors of which he spoke. They were 
 fresh and real to him. Freda did n't 
 like to question him further. She knew 
 to what he referred, and in a dim vaeue 
 way (for she was less wise than he, she 
 knew) she thought she could imagine 
 why he found it all so terrible. 
 
 They walked on in silence awhile 
 through the deep lush grass of the July 
 meadows. At last Bertram spoke again. 
 
24(> Cbc JBritidb JGarbartana 
 
 ** I-'rcda," he said with a trembling 
 quiver, *' I did n't sleep hist niglit. I 
 was thinking this thing over — this ques- 
 tion of our relations." 
 
 ** Nor did I," Freda answered, thrilling 
 through, responsive. *' I was thinking 
 the same thing . . . and, Bertram, 't 
 was the happiest night I ever remem- 
 ber." 
 
 Bertram's face flushed rosy red, that 
 native colour of triumphant love ; but 
 he answered nothing. He (>nl\' looked 
 at her with a look more eloquent b\- far 
 than a thousand speeches. " Freda," 
 he went on at last, *' I 've been think- 
 ing it all over; and I feel, if only you 
 can Cf)me away with me for just seven 
 days, I could arrange at the end of that 
 time to take you home with nic." 
 
 Freda's face in turn waxed rosy red ; 
 but she answered only in a vcr\' low 
 voice, " Thank >'ou, l^ertram." 
 
^be JSritisb JiSarbarian^ 247 
 
 *' Would you go with me ! " Bertram 
 cried, his face aglow with pleasure. 
 '' You know, it 's a very, very long way 
 off ; and I can't even tell you where it 
 is or how you get there. But can you 
 trust me enough to try ? Are you not 
 afraid to come with me ? " 
 
 Freda's voice trembled slightly. 
 " I 'm not afraid, if that 's all," she 
 answered in a very firm tone. " I love 
 you, and I trust you, and I could follow 
 you to the world's end — or, if needful, 
 out of it. But there 's one other ques- 
 tion, Bertram, ought I to ? " 
 
 She asked it more to see what answer 
 Bertram would make to her than from 
 any real doubt ; for ever since that kiss 
 last night, she felt sure in her own mind 
 with a woman's certainty, whatever 
 Bertram told her, was the thing she 
 ought to do ; but she wanted to know in 
 what light he regarded it. 
 
248 Cbc :ft3riti6b :fi3nrbar(an5 
 
 Bertram gazed at her hard. ** Why, 
 Freda," he said, it 's right, of course, to 
 go. The thing that 's ivrong is to stop 
 with that man one minute longer than 's 
 absolutely necessary. You don't love 
 him. You never loved him. Or if you 
 ever did, you 've long since ceased to do 
 so. Well, then, it 's a dishonour to 
 yourself to spend one more day with 
 him. How can you submit to the hate- 
 ful endearments of a man you don't love 
 or care for? How wrong to yourself, 
 how infinitely more wrong to your still 
 unborn and unbegotten children ! 
 Would you consent to become the 
 mother of sons and daughters by a man 
 whose whole character is utterly repug- 
 nant to you ? Nature has given us this 
 divine instinct of love within to tell us 
 with what persons we should spontane- 
 ously unite ; will )'ou fl\' in her face and 
 
ttbe 3Briti6b :Saibadan5 240 
 
 unite with a man whom you feel and 
 know to be wholly unworthy of you ? 
 With us, such conduct would be con- 
 sidered disgraceful. We think every 
 man and woman should be free to do as 
 they will with their own persons ; for 
 that is the very basis and foundation of 
 personal liberty. But if any man or 
 woman were openly to confess they 
 yielded their persons to another for any 
 other reason than because the strongest 
 sympathy and love compelled them, we 
 should silently despise them. If you 
 don't love Monteith, it 's j^our duty to 
 him, and still more your duty to your- 
 self and your unborn children, at once 
 to leave him ; if you do love me, it 's 
 your duty to me and still more your 
 duty to yourself and our unborn chil- 
 dren, at once to cleave to me. Don't 
 let any sophisms of taboo-mongers come 
 
25^ tbc JCriti^b JCarbariautf 
 
 in to obscure that plain natural duty. 
 Do right first ; let all else go. For one 
 of yourselves, a poet of your own, has 
 said truly, * Because right is right, to fol- 
 low right were wisdom in the scorn of 
 consequence.' 
 
 Freda looked up at him with admira- 
 tion in her big black eyes. She had 
 found tlic truth, and the trutli liad 
 made her free. " Oh, l^ertram, " slie 
 cried with a tremor, " it 's good to be 
 like }'()u. 1 felt from the very first how 
 infinitely you differed from the men 
 about me. You seemed so much greater 
 and higher and nobler. I low grateful 
 I ought to be to Robert Monteith for 
 having spoken to me yesterday, and 
 forbidden me to see you — {or if he 
 liad n't, \'<)U might nc\'cr ha\e kissed me 
 last niixht, and then 1 might never have 
 seen things as I see them at present." 
 
the JBritisb :fi$arbadan0 251 
 
 There was another long pause, for the 
 best things we each say to the other are 
 said in the pauses. Then Freda re- 
 lapsed once more into speech. " But 
 what about the children ? " she asked 
 rather timidly. 
 
 Bertram looked puzzled. " Why, 
 what about the children ? " he repeated 
 in a curious way. " What difference 
 on earth could that make to the chil- 
 dren ? " 
 
 " Can I bring them with me, I mean ? " 
 Freda asked, a little tremulous for the 
 reply. '' I could n't bear to leave them. 
 Even for you, dear Bertram, I could 
 never desert them." 
 
 Bertram gazed at her, dismayed. 
 " Leave them ! " he cried. *' Why, 
 Freda, of course you could never leave 
 them. Do you mean to say anybody 
 would be so utterly unnatural, even in 
 
KnLjland, as to separate a mother from 
 her own children ? " 
 
 *' I don't think Robert would let me 
 keep them," TVeda faltered with tears 
 in her eyes ; and if he did n't. the law, 
 of course, would take his side against 
 me. 
 
 '* Of course ! " Bertram answered, with 
 grim sarcasm in his face. "Of course! 
 I might have guessed it. If there is an 
 injustice or a barbarity possible, I might 
 have been sure the law of England 
 would make haste to perpetrate it. But 
 you need n't fear, Freda. Long before 
 the law of England could be put in 
 motion, I '11 have completed my ar- 
 rangements for taking you — and them 
 too — with nic. There are advantages 
 sometimes even in the barbaric delay 
 of what >'<)ur la\v\-cTs are facetiously 
 plea.sed to call justice." 
 
^be JSritisb :©arbarian5 253 
 
 " Then I may bring them with me?" 
 Freda cried, flushing red. 
 
 Bertram nodded assent. " Yes," he 
 said, with grave gentleness. " You may 
 bring them with you. And as soon as 
 you like, too. Remember, dearest, 
 every night you pass under that crea- 
 ture's roof, you commit the vilest crime 
 a woman can commit against her own 
 purity." 
 
ciL\rri:K xi. 
 
 NT FIVER in licr life li.ui l^'rcd.i enjoyed 
 any tiling so much as those first 
 four happy days at IKynioor. She liad 
 come a\va\' with Bertram exactly as 
 licrtram himself desired her to do, 
 without one thought of anything on 
 eartii except to fulfil the higher law of 
 lier own nature ; and she was happ\' in 
 her intercourse with the one man who 
 could understand it. the one man who 
 hat! waked it to its fullest pitch, and 
 could make it resound sympathetically 
 to his touch in e\ei\- chord and every 
 fibre. They had come to a lovely spot 
 on a heatherclad moorland, where she 
 could stroll alone with Bertram among 
 
(Tbe JSrltisb ^Barbarians 255 
 
 the gorse and ling, utterly oblivious of 
 Robert Monteith and the unnatural 
 world she had left for ever behind her. 
 Her soul drank in deep draughts of the 
 knowledge of good and evil from Ber- 
 tram's lips ; she felt indeed it was a 
 privilege to be with him and listen to 
 him ; she wondered how she could ever 
 have endured that old bad life with the 
 lower man who was never her equal, 
 now she had once tasted and known 
 what life can be when two well-matched 
 souls walk it together, abreast, in holy 
 fellowship. 
 
 The children, too, were as happy as 
 the day was long. The heath was 
 heaven to them. They loved Bertram 
 well, and were too young to be aware 
 of anything unusual in the fact of his 
 accompanying them. At the little inn 
 on the hill-top where they stopped to 
 
25^ ubc JSrill^b .fGnrbariaiiB 
 
 lodge, nobody asked any compromising 
 questions; and Bertram felt so sure he 
 could soon complete his arrangements 
 for taking h'reda and the children 
 '* home " as he still always phrased it, 
 that Freda had no doubts for their 
 future happiness. As for Robert Mon- 
 tcith, that bleak C(^ld man, she hardly 
 even remembered him ; Bertram's first 
 kiss seemed almost to have driven the 
 very memory of her husband clean out 
 of her consciousness. She only regret- 
 ted, now she liad left him, the false and 
 mistaken sense of duty which had kept 
 her so long tied to an inferior soul she 
 could never love, and did wrong to 
 many. 
 
 And all the time, what strange new 
 lessons, what beautiful truths she learnt 
 from Bertram ! As they strolled togeth- 
 er, those sweet August mornings, hand 
 
^be :fi3rlti6b JBarbartane 257 
 
 locked in hand, over the breezy upland, 
 what new insight he gave her into men 
 and things; what fresh impulses he 
 supplied to her keen moral nature. The 
 misery and wrong of the world she 
 lived in came home to her now in deeper 
 and blacker hues than ever she had 
 conceived it in : and with that conscious- 
 ness came also the burning desire of 
 every wakened soul to right and redress 
 it. With Bertram by her side, she felt 
 she could n't even harbour an unholy 
 wish or admit a wrong feeling ; that 
 vague sense of her superiority, as of a 
 higher being, which she had felt from 
 the very first moment she met him at 
 Brackenhurst, had deepened and grown 
 more definite now by closer intercourse ; 
 and she recognised that what she had 
 fallen in love with from the earliest 
 
 beginning was the beauty of holiness 
 17 
 
258 Cbc JGntidb JCacbarlaiid 
 
 shining clear in liis countenance. She 
 liad clioscn at last the better part, and 
 she felt in her soul that, come what 
 mis^ht, it could not be taken away from 
 her. 
 
 In this earthly paradise of pure love, 
 undefiled, she spent three full days, and 
 part of another. On the morning of 
 the fourth, she sent the C()untr\- L;irl 
 they had engaged to take care of the 
 children, out on the moor, with the 
 little ones, while she herself and Ber- 
 tram went off alone, past the barrow 
 that overlooks the Devil's Saucepan, 
 and out on the open ridge that stretches 
 with dark growth of heath and bracken 
 far away into the misty blue distance of 
 Hampshire. Bertram had just been 
 speaking to her, as they sat on the dry 
 sand, of the buried chieftain whose 
 bones still lay hid under that grass- 
 
<Lbc JBritisb JBarbariaiii? 259 
 
 grown barrow, and of the slaughtered 
 wives whose bodies slept beside him, 
 massacred in cold blood to accompany 
 their dear lord to the world of shadows. 
 He had been contrasting these hideous 
 slaveries of taboo-ridden England, past 
 or present, with the rational freedom of 
 his own dear country, whither he hoped 
 so soon, with good luck, to take her, 
 when, suddenly, Freda raised her eager 
 eyes from the ground, and saw some- 
 body or something coming across the 
 moor from eastward in their direction. 
 
 All at once, a vague foreboding of 
 evil possessed her. Hardly quite know- 
 ing why, she felt this approaching ob- 
 ject augured no good to their happiness. 
 " Look, Bertram," she cried, seizing his 
 arm in her fright, ''there's somebody 
 coming." 
 
 Bertram raised his eyes and looked, 
 
26o Cbc J6riti0b IGarbanaud 
 
 Then he shaded them w itli his hands. 
 '* How strange ! " he said simply, in his 
 candid way, " it looks for all the world 
 just like the man who was once your 
 husband ! " 
 
 Freda rose in alarm. " Oh, what can 
 we do?" she cried, wringing her hands. 
 "What ever can we do? It's him! 
 It's Robert!" 
 
 " Surely he can't have come on pur- 
 pose! " Bertram exclaimed, taken aback. 
 " When he sees us, he '11 turn aside. He 
 must know of all people on earth he 's 
 the one least likely at such a time to be 
 welcome. He can't w ant to disturb the 
 peace of another man's honeymoon ! " 
 
 But Freda, better used to the savage 
 ways of the world she had always lived 
 in, made answer, shrinking and crouch- 
 ing, " He 's hunted us down, and he 's 
 come to fight you." 
 
Zbc :(Briti6b ^Barbarians 261 
 
 '' To fight me ! " Bertram exclaimed. 
 " Oh, surely not that ! I was told by 
 those who ought to know, you English 
 had got far beyond the stage of private 
 war and murderous vendetta." 
 
 '' For everything else," Freda an- 
 swered, cowering down in her terror of 
 her husband's vengeance, not for herself 
 indeed so much as for Bertram. '* For 
 everything else, we have ; but not for a 
 woman." 
 
 There was no time, just then, how- 
 ever, for further explanation of this 
 strange anomaly. Monteith had singled 
 them out from a great distance with his 
 keen, clear sight, inherited from genera- 
 tions of Highland ancestors, and now 
 strode angrily across the moor, with 
 great wrathful steps, in his rival's direc- 
 tion. Freda nestled close to Bertram, 
 to protect her from the man to whom 
 
2f)2 Cbe :fi3riti5b 3Garbarian5 
 
 her country's laws and the custom of 
 licr tribe would have handed her over 
 blindfold. Bertram soothed her with 
 his hand, and awaited in silence, with 
 some dim sense of awe, the angry bar- 
 barian's arrival. 
 
 He came up very quickly, and stood 
 full in front of them, glaring with fierce 
 eyes at the discovered lovers. For a 
 minute or two his rage would n't allow 
 him to speak or even to act ; he could 
 but stand and scowl from under his 
 brows at Bertram. But after a long 
 pause, his wrath found words. " You 
 infernal scoundrel ! " he burst forth ; 
 ** so at last I 've caught you ! How dare 
 you sit there and look me straiglit in 
 the face? You infernal thief, how dare 
 you ? how dare you ? " 
 
 Bertram rose and confronted him. 
 His own face, too, fliishcd slightly with 
 
Zbc JBrltlsb :fiSarbarian6 263 
 
 righteous indignation ; but he answered, 
 for all that, in the same calm and meas- 
 ured tones as ever. " I am not a scoun- 
 drel, and I will not submit to be called 
 so even by an angry savage. I ask you 
 in return, how dare you follow us ? 
 You must have known your presence 
 would be very unwelcome. I should 
 have thought this was just the one mo- 
 ment in your life and the one place on 
 earth where even you would have seen 
 that to stop away was your imperative 
 duty. Mere self-respect would dictate 
 such conduct. This lady has given you 
 clear proof, indeed, that your society and 
 converse are highly distasteful to her." 
 
 Robert Monteith glared across at 
 him with the face of a tiger. ''You 
 infamous creature," he cried, almost 
 speechless with rage, '' do you dare to 
 defend my wife's adultery? " 
 
264 tbc J6riti6b Ji3arbariana 
 
 Bertram gazed at him with a strange 
 look of mingled horror and astonish- 
 ment. " You poor wretch," he answered, 
 as calmly as before, but with evident 
 contempt, " how can you dare, such a 
 thing as you, to apply these vile words 
 to your moral superiors ? Adultery it 
 was, indeed, and untrutli to her own 
 higher and purer nature, for this lady to 
 spend one night of her life under your 
 roof with you ; what she has taken now 
 in exchange is holy marriage, the only 
 real and sacred marriage, the marriage 
 of true souls, to which even the wiser 
 of yourselves, the poets of your nation, 
 would not admit impediment. If you 
 dare to apply such base language as 
 this to my lady's actions, ycni must 
 answer for it to me, her natural pro- 
 tector, for I will not permit it." 
 
 At the words, quick as lightning, 
 
tTbe JBritisb :JSarbarian5 265 
 
 Monteith pulled from his pocket a 
 loaded revolver and pointed it full at 
 his rival. With a cry of terror, Freda 
 flung herself between them, and tried 
 to protect her lover with the shield of 
 her own body. But Bertram gently 
 unwound her arms and held her off 
 from him tenderly. '^ No, no, darling," 
 he said slowly, sitting down with won- 
 derful calm upon a big, grey sarsen- 
 stone that abutted upon the pathway ; 
 "■ I had forgotten again ; I keep always 
 forgetting what kind of savages I have 
 to deal with. If I chose, I could snatch 
 that murderous weapon from his hand 
 and shoot him dead with it in self- 
 defence — for I am stronger than he is. 
 But if I did, what use? I could never 
 take you home with me. And after all, 
 what could we either of us do in the end 
 in this bad, wild world of your fellow- 
 
266 Zbc 3i3riti6b JSaibariana 
 
 countrymen ? They would take mc 
 and liang me, and all would be up with 
 you. For your sake, Freda, to shield 
 you from the effects of their cruel 
 taboos, there 's but one course open — 
 I must submit to this madman. He 
 may shoot me if he will. Stand free, 
 and let him ! " 
 
 But with a passionate oath, Robert 
 Monteith seized her arm and flung her 
 madly from him. She fell, reeling, on 
 one side. His eyes were bloodshot with 
 the savage thirst for vengeance. He 
 raised the deadly weapon. Bertram 
 Ingledew, still seated on the big, round 
 boulder, opened his breast in silence 
 to receive the bullet. There was a 
 moment's pause. For that moment, 
 even Monteith himself, in his maniac 
 mood, felt dimly aware of that mysteri- 
 ous restraining power all the rest who 
 
tXbe :{8riti6b JBarbarians 267 
 
 knew him had so often felt in their 
 deahngs with the AHen. But 't was 
 only for a moment. His coarser nature 
 was ill adapted to recognise that inef- 
 fable air as of a superior being that 
 others observed in him. He pulled the 
 trigger and fired. Freda gave one loud 
 shriek of despairing horror. Bertram's 
 body fell back on the bare heath 
 behind it. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 /V A AD as he was with jealousy, that 
 lowest and most bestial of all the 
 vile passions man still inherits from the 
 ape and tiger, Robert Monteith was yet 
 quite sane enough to know in his own 
 soul what deed he had wrought, and in 
 what light even his country's barbaric 
 laws would regard his action. So the 
 moment he had wreaked to the full his 
 fiery vengeance on the man who had 
 never wronged him, he bent over the 
 body, with strangely eager eyes, ex- 
 pecting to see upon it some evidence 
 of his guilt, some bloody mark of the 
 hateful crime his own hand had com- 
 mitted. At the same instant, h^eda, 
 268 
 
Zbc JBrlttBb JSarbarians 269 
 
 recovering from his blow that had sent 
 her reehng, rushed frantically forward, 
 flung herself with wild passion on her 
 lover's corpse, and covered the warm 
 lips with hot despairing kisses. 
 
 One marvellous fact, however, im- 
 pressed them both with a vague sense 
 of the unknown and the mysterious 
 from the very first second. No spot or 
 trace of blood marred the body any- 
 where. And, even as they looked, a 
 strange perfume as of violets or of 
 burning incense began by degrees to 
 flood the moor around them. Then 
 slowly, while they watched, a faint blue 
 flame seemed to issue from the wound 
 in Bertram's right side and rise lambent 
 into the air above the murdered body. 
 Freda drew back and gazed at it, a 
 weird thrill of mystery and unconscious 
 hope beguiling for one moment her 
 
270 Cbc ai3nti5b JBacbanans 
 
 profound pang of bereavement. Mon- 
 teith, too, stood away a pace or two, in 
 doubt and surprise, the deep conscious- 
 ness of some strange and unearthly 
 power overawing for a while even his 
 vulgar and commonplace Scotch bour- 
 geois nature. Gradually, as they gazed, 
 the pale blue flame, rising higher and 
 higher, gathered force and \'olume, and 
 the perfume as of violets became dis- 
 tinct on the air, like the savour of a 
 purer life than this centur\' wots of. 
 Bit by bit, the wan blue light, flickering 
 thicker and thicker, shaped itself into 
 the form and features of a man, even 
 the outward semblance of Bertram 
 Ingledew. Shadowy, but transfigured 
 with an ineffable glory, it hovered for 
 a minute or two above the spot on the 
 moor where the corpse liad lain : for 
 now they were aware that as the flame^ 
 
tTbc JBritisb JGarbarians 271 
 
 shape formed, the body, that lay dead 
 upon the ground beneath, dissolved by 
 decrees and melted into it. Not a trace 
 was left on the heath of Robert Mon- 
 teith's crime ; not a dapple of blood, 
 not a clot of gore : only a pale blue 
 flame and a persistent image repre- 
 sented the body that once was Bertram 
 Ingledew's. 
 
 Again, even as they looked, a still 
 weirder feeling began to creep over 
 them. The figure, growing fainter, 
 seemed to fade away piecemeal in the 
 remote distance. But it was not in 
 space that it faded ; it appeared rather 
 to become dim in some vaguer and far 
 more mysterious fashion, like the 
 memories of childhood or the aching 
 abysses of astronomical calculation. As 
 it slowly dissolved, Freda stretched out 
 her hands to it with a wild cry like the 
 
272 Cbc 36ritl6b JGarbaiians 
 
 cry o{ a mother for her first-born. *' Oh, 
 Bertram.*' she moaned, ** where are you 
 going? Do you mean to leave me? 
 Won't you save me from this man ? 
 Won't you take me home with you ? " 
 
 Dim and hollow, as from the womb 
 of time unborn, a calm voice came back 
 to her across the gulf of ages. "Your 
 husband willed it, Freda, and the cus- 
 toms of your nation. You can come to 
 me ; but I can never return to }'ou. In 
 three days longer your probation would 
 have been finished. But I forgot with 
 what manner of savage I had still to 
 deal. And now I must go back once 
 more to the place whence I came — to 
 THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY." 
 
 The voice died away in the dim re- 
 cesses of the future. The pale blue 
 flame flickered forward and \anished. 
 The shadowy shape melted through 
 
Zbe :©riti6b :flSarbaiian6 273 
 
 an endless vista of to-morrows. Only 
 the perfume as of violets or of a higher 
 life still hung heavy upon the air, and a 
 patch of daintier purple burnt bright 
 on the moor, like a pool of crimson 
 blood, where the body had fallen. Only 
 that, and a fierce ache in Freda's tor- 
 tured heart ; only that, and a halo of 
 invisible glory round the rich red lips, 
 
 where His lips had touched them. 
 18 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CREDA seated herself in her misery 
 on the ice-worn boulder where 
 three minutes earlier Bertram had been 
 sitting. Her face was buried in her 
 bloodless hands. All the world grew 
 blank to her. 
 
 Monteith, for his part, sat down a 
 little way off, with folded arms, on 
 another sarsen-stonc, fronting her. 
 The strange and unearthly scene they 
 had just passed through impressed him 
 profoundly. For the first few minutes 
 a great horror held him. But his 
 dogged Scottish nature still brooded 
 over his wrongs, in spite of the terrible 
 sight he had so unexpectedly evoked, 
 274 
 
tTbe :(Brltisb JBarbadans 275 
 
 In a way, he felt, he had had his re- 
 venge ; for had he not drawn upon his 
 man, and fired at him, and killed him ? 
 Still, after the fever and torment of the 
 last few days, 't was a relief to find, 
 after all, he was not, as this world would 
 judge, a murderer. Man and crime were 
 alike mere airy phantoms. He could 
 go back now to the inn and explain 
 with glib tongue how Mr. Ingeldew 
 had been hurriedly called away to town 
 on important business. There was no 
 corpse on the moor, no blabbing blood 
 to tell the story of his attempted mur- 
 der ; nobody anywhere, he felt certain 
 in his own stolid soul, would miss the 
 mysterious Alien who came to them 
 from beyond the distant abyss of cen- 
 turies. With true Scotch caution, in- 
 deed, even in the midst of his wrath, 
 Robert Monteith had never said a word 
 
276 Cbc 3i3ritl5b JGarbarian^ 
 
 to anyone at Brackenhurst of how his 
 wife had left him. He was too proud 
 a man, if it came to that, to acknowledge 
 what seemed to him a personal dis- 
 grace, till circumstance should abso- 
 lutely force such acknowledgment upon 
 him. He had glossed it over meanwhile 
 with the servants and neighbours by 
 saying that Mrs. Monteith had gone 
 away with the children for their accus- 
 tomed holiday, as always in August. 
 Freda had actually chosen the day ap- 
 pointed for their seaside journey as the 
 fittest moment for her departure with 
 Bertram ; so his story was received 
 without doubt or enquiry. He had 
 bottled up his wrath in his own silent 
 soul. There was still room, therefore, 
 to make all right again at home in the 
 eyes of the world — if but Freda were 
 willing. So he sat there long, staring 
 
tibe JBuitieb :fi3art)arian6 277 
 
 hard at his wife in speechless debate, 
 and discussing with himself whether or 
 not to make temporary overtures of 
 peace to her. 
 
 In this matter, his pride itself fought 
 hard with his pride. That is the wont 
 of savages. Would it not be better, 
 now Bertram Ingledew had fairly dis- 
 appeared forever from their sphere, to 
 patch up a hollow truce for a time at 
 least with Freda, and let all things be 
 to the outer eye exactly as they had 
 always been ? The bewildering and 
 brain-staggering occurrences of the last 
 half hour, indeed, had struck deep and 
 far into his hard Scotch nature. The 
 knowledge that the man who had stolen 
 his wife from him (as he phrased it to 
 himself in his curious belated mediaeval 
 phraseology) was not a real live man of 
 flesh and blood at all, but an evanes- 
 
27d Kxbc JQtitieb JSarbariand 
 
 cent phantom of the Twenty-Fifth Cen- 
 tury, made him all the more ready to 
 patch up for the time being a nominal 
 reconciliation. His nerves, — for even 
 /if had nerves, — were still trembling to 
 the core with the mystic events of that 
 wizard morning ; but clearer and clear- 
 er still it dawned upon him each mo- 
 ment that if things were ever to be set 
 right at all they must be set right then 
 and there, before he returned to the inn, 
 and before Freda once more went back 
 to their children. To be sure, it was 
 Freda's place to ask for forgiveness 
 first, and make the first advances. But 
 Freda made no move. So after sitting 
 there long, salving his masculine vanity 
 with the flattering thought that after 
 all his rival was no mere man at all, 
 but a spirit, an avatar, a thing of pure 
 imagination — he raised his head at 
 
tTbe JBrftisb 36arbar(an5 279 
 
 last and looked enquiringly towards 
 Freda. 
 
 " Well ? " he said slowly. 
 
 Freda raised her head from her hands 
 and gazed across at him scornfully. 
 
 " I was thinking," Monteith began, 
 feeling his way with caution, but with 
 a magnanimous air, " that perhaps — 
 after all — for the children's sake, 
 Freda^ " 
 
 With a terrible look, his wife rose up 
 and confronted him. Her face was red 
 as fire ; her heart was burning. She 
 spoke with fierce energy. '* Robert 
 Monteith," she said firmly, not even 
 deigning to treat him as one who had 
 once been her husband, " for the chil- 
 dren's sake, or for my own sake, or for 
 any power on earth, do you think, poor 
 empty soul, after I Ve spent three days 
 of my life with HIM, I 'd ever spend 
 
28o Cbe J6riti6b JCarbariana 
 
 three hours again with yo7( ? If you 
 do, then this is all ; murderer that you 
 arc, you mistake my nature." 
 
 And turning on her heel, she moved 
 slowly away towards the far edge of the 
 moor with a queenly gesture. 
 
 Monteith followed her a step or two. 
 She turned and waved him back. He 
 stood glued to the ground, that weird 
 sense of the supernatural once more 
 overcoming him. For some seconds 
 he watched her without speaking a 
 word. Then at last he broke out. 
 ** What are you going to do, Freda?" 
 he asked, almost anxiously. 
 
 Freda turned and glanced back at 
 liim with scornful eyes. Her mien was 
 resolute. The revolver with which he 
 had shot Bertram Ingledew lay close 
 by her feet, among the bracken on the 
 heath, where Monteith had flung it. 
 
Ubc :fi5rftfsb :JSarl)arlans 2S1 
 
 She picked it up with one hand, and 
 once more waved him backward. 
 
 '' I 'm going to follow him," she an- 
 swered solemnly, in a very cold voice, 
 ''where 7^2/ have sent him. But alone 
 by myself; not here, before you." And 
 she brushed him away, as he tried to 
 seize it, with regal dignity. 
 
 Monteith, abashed, turned back with- 
 out one word, and made his way to the 
 inn in the little village. But Freda 
 walked on by herself, in the opposite 
 direction, across the open moor, and 
 through the purple heath, towards 
 black despair and the trout-ponds at 
 Broughton. 
 
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