Delphi Collected Works of Ouida, page 662
“Again, I fail to follow you sir.”
“I mean that such an alternative destination for the property will enable me to decline it with a clear conscience.”
“Really, sir, your replies are wholly unintelligible.”
Bertram turns helplessly to Fanshawe. “Explain to this gentleman my views regarding property.”
“I am aware of some of them, sir,” replies the solicitor, sententiously.
“You read the Torch, Mr. Folliott, don’t you?” says the proprietor of the Torch.
“When my professional duties compel me, sir.”
“But the Torch is milk for lambs, Mr. Folliott, beside the Age to Come.”
The solicitor bows with an expression which indicates that he would prefer to remain unacquainted with the Age to Come.
“But pardon me,” continues Fanshawe, “is my friend here really so immensely in luck’s way?”
“He inherits under the Prince of Viana’s will all properties, both English and Italian,” replies the lawyer, with the cat’s expression more accentuated on his countenance. “And they are very large?”
“Very large. My late client was an only son, and though generous, never spendthrift.” Fanshawe touches Bertram’s arm. “Wake up, Wilfrid. Do you hear? Can’t you speak?” Bertram says wearily, “What am I to say? It is an unspeakably awful thing. I really cannot bring myself to believe in it.”
“If you will allow me,” says the solicitor, “to make you acquainted with some details of the—”
“To what end? Do the items of the contents of the pack interest the pack-horse to whose aching back the burden is offered?”
“Again I fail to follow you.”
“To follow him, Mr. Folliott,” says Fanshawe, “requires a long course of patient perusal of the Age to Come.”
“Quite so, quite so,” answers the solicitor, coldly, in a tone which intimates that he will not have that patience. “I have certainly never seen the announcement of an inheritance received in such a manner.”
“But why,” says Bertram—” why did this relative, whom I never knew, leave his property to me?”
“I cannot tell, sir. It was certainly not by the advice of our firm.”
“Are there any conditions attached to this extraordinary bequest?”
“None, sir. You can realise at once and invest everything in dynamite and pyretic acid,” replies the solicitor, with a rasping scorn showing through the velvet of his admirable manners.
“Oh, my dear sir! Can you fall into the vulgar error of confounding collectivism and altruism with anarchy? They are as far apart as the Poles. One is love; the other hatred.”
“I confess, sir, that such love nauseates me. I prefer of the two the hatred. But I am an old-fashioned person, and I know little of literature later than the ‘Sixties.”
“A most debased period in every form of production.”
“It may be so. Macaulay was alive in it and Tennyson But I did not come here to discuss the characteristics of generations. I came to inform you of an event which I immaturely concluded would appear to you both important and agreeable.”
“You did not know me, my dear sir.”
“I did not, sir.”
With a little cough and a little stately bow the old gentleman prepares to leave, with the cat’s glance at the bull terrier still more hostile and more scared.
“You will be so good, sir, as to call on us to-morrow morning, or to send some representative authorised by you. You must be aware that the law requires you either to accept the bequest or decline it.”
“I am criminal if I accept: I may be equally criminal if I reject it.”
“Again I fail to follow you, sir. But of course you are your own master; and in the event of your failure to call on us to-morrow morning you will be so good as to make us acquainted with your decision and intentions.”
“I will send you, Mr. Fanshawe,” replies Bertram.
The solicitor does not look everjoyed at the promise, but bows in silence, a very stiff and formal bow, and leaves the room without more words.
“I am afraid I was not very polite to him,” says Bertram, doubtfully, when the stuffs of the portière have fallen behind him.
“You certainly were not,” replies Fanshawe. “I think you could give hints to Whistler on the Gentle Art of making Enemies. But why did you talk all that rot? He only ridiculed you for it.”
“I merely said what I meant.”
“You mean to let this fortune go to Magdalen College?”
“Unless I change my present intentions very completely.”
“Oh, Lord! This is green sickness, moonstruck madness; Hamlet’s monomania was nothing to it. Are you absolutely insensible to the fact that you would be able to print ten million copies of the Age to Come every week and distribute them gratis all over Great Britain every week?”
“Even that alluring prospect cannot tempt me. My acceptance of a fortune would be as anomalous as Lord Rosebery’s creation of peers. Miserable creatures that we are, we are only tolerably respectable so long as we are commonly consistent.”
“Oh, Lord save us! You can’t possibly be serious?”
“I speak in entire sincerity.”
“A very dangerous thing to do at any time. People have such a shocking habit of taking one at one’s word! Old Folliott’s very shrewd too, though he’s a Tory.”
“What is his shrewdness to me?”
“Well, if you retain him as your man of business it may be a great deal. It is usual to retain the testator’s solicitors when they are as eminent and irreproachable as Folliott and Hake.”
Bertram grows impatient.
“Cannot you understand? I do not take this property. Do not dream of taking it for a single instant!”
“You can’t be such a transcendent ass! Excuse me, but—”
“I should have thought you would have looked at this matter as I do.”
“Dear boy, all property ought to be abolished, on that we are quite agreed, but whilst it still exists in this piggish world we are bound in duty to ourselves and our neighbours to make the best of it, and get as much as we can!”
“Then you are a mere sham? A humbug? A hypocrite?”
“You mean to be rude, but I take no offence. Everybody is insincere in civilised countries.”
“What an infamous theory! I have always thought that your Richmond villa, your house at Prince’s Gate, your swell garden parties, your blood horses, and all the rest of it, were ludicrously out of keeping with your political and literary declarations of opinion.”
“Not more so than your silver tea-set and your exemplary Critchett are with yours. Don’t let us quarrel, at least not until to-morrow. I want to see more of old Folliott. He is one of the worst enemies I have, and I do so delight in drawing the claws of an enemy with my bland and benign manners. Besides, I owe him a good deal. The Torch was in its infancy when he made its fortune and set it on its legs by his libel suits. Meet me in Hyde Park at eleven to-morrow. I’ll come out of my house through Albert Gate, and we’ll go down to his office together.”
“You can go, and take my written refusal with you.”
Fanshawe gives a gesture of irritated impatience, and looks at his watch.
“La nuit forte conseil. You will think differently in the morning. I am dining at Richmond. I can’t stay another moment, but for Heaven’s sake take till to-morrow to think it over Ta-ta!”
“Good-day.”
Bertram looks out of the window and watches Fanshawe’s private hansom flash down Piccadilly; he vaguely wishes that he too were going to dine at Richmond, and were not fettered by principle to a cheese omelette and a vol au vent of mushrooms.
It is a fine, breezy sunshiny morning on the morrow, good yachting weather, as some one says who is going down to Gravesend for the first cutter race of the season.
Bertram walks along Rotten Row under the trees with a mind so preoccupied that he narrowly escapes being knocked down by an ambassadress on a bicycle. He is repeating to himself what he said to the old duke, “fais ce que dois advienne que pourra,” and he is conscious that the injunction has its thorny side like most other virtuous things.
He has been unable to sleep all night for the tormenting visions evoked by Folliott’s visit and his dead cousin’s bequest.
Because you valorously resist a temptation it does not any the less sharply assail you. Because you limit yourself strictly to rice croquettes you do not the less painfully recall the forbidden flavour of a salmi of game. He considers it no more possible for him in common decency to accept this property than to embrace Mahomedanism or renounce clothing; but none the less is he haunted by the possibilities that its possession would bring with it.
He is human, and his heart is heavy as he walks along in the pleasant April wind. He realises that there are many charming things which he has renounced — voluntarily renounced, indeed; but, then, is it really more agreeable to kill oneself than to be killed? Anyhow, the result is the same; the grave is as deep and the sleep as eternal.
When he has arrived opposite the residential hotel which raises the colossal offence of its eleven stories between the elm-trees and their right to air and light he sits down, feeling rather limp and aimless; and lighting a cigarette, he awaits the coming of Fanshawe. There is a policeman close at hand; some children are near, with their nurses; and a respectable - looking, middle-aged, brisk woman, with some fine linen in a flat basket, is approaching. He raises his hat to her.
“Is that you, Mrs. Brown? I never saw you in the Park before.”
“No, sir, I don’t often come nigh fine folks,” answers Mrs. Brown. “But I’ve got to go to Prince’s Gate, number fifteen, and I turned in ’ere ‘cos the traffic’s that crowded on the ‘igh-road; ’is ‘Ighness is agoin’ down to ‘Ounslow.”
“Oh, to be sure. How are your people this morning?”
“My pore legs, sir, be as bad as ever — but there, we pore folks can’t stop for aches and pains, or we’d never do naught in this ’ere world; ’twasn’t made for the likes of us.”
“That is a sad reflection. But pray don’t say ‘sir’ to me.”
“It comes nat’ral, sir. I hev alius been one as did my humble duty to the quality.”
“Oh, I know! It is this terrible servility which has entered like blood-poisoning into the very marrow of the people.”
The policeman standing near listening grins behind his white-gloved hand.
“You are so used to stoop and cringe that you have lost the power to stand upright when you are invited to do so,” says Bertram, impatiently. “Where is your daughter?”
“Annie’s at Ealing, sir. It’s Primrose Day to-morrow.”
“And what is your opinion of Primrose Day, Mrs. Brown?”
“Well, sir, it’s got ’em lots o’ votes, but it do seem to me a pack o’ folly. No offence.”
“And the Primrose Dames, Mrs. Brown?”
“Well, sir, they’re a pretty spry lot o’ ladies, and they come and talk, talk, talk, and me at the mangle, and I wish ’em anywheres; and one o’ ’em promised to have my kitchen boiler looked to, but, Lord! that’s three months ago come Monday was a week, and nobody’s come to the boiler.”
“The Conservative party always forgets the boilers; and are extremely astonished when the neglected boilers blow up.”
“My boiler was no business o’ theirs,” says the good woman, hotly; “but if they said they’d send, they hought to hev sent. But there! that’s them ladies all over, in and out, and to and fro, and it’s how’s my soul? and how’s my dust-bin? and hev I faith? and hev I a patent kitchener? and do I read my Bible? and do I keep the traps on my drains? and do I see the blessin’s o’ eddication? and do I keep my sink flushed? and am I an abstainer? and do I use carbolic acid? Such a pack o’ nonsense, and in they comes without rappin’; and if they sees a bit o’ dust in a corner ’tis ‘Lord, Mrs. Brown, don’t ye know as dust is microbes, and microbes is sartain death?’ And I says, says I, ‘No, marm, my leddy, my granny lived to ninety-six, and on her ninetieth birthday she walked four miles to market at Winchester and back, and she alius said to all o’ us as dust was wholesome, and cobwebs too, and shouldn’t ne’er be interfered with—’”
She stops, out of breath, and the listening policeman smiles again.
“People were more robust in those days, Mrs. Brown,” remarked Bertram.
“Yes, sir, there weren’t so many doctors all over the place. When I was a gal, in our village there weren’t a doctor within twenty mile; and nobody never was ill. Nowadays young and old is alius talking about their livers and lights till they fret theirselves into sickness.”
“That is very possible. Science is much to blame for teaching humanity to concentrate the mind on the body. There I wholly agree with you.”
Mrs. Brown picks up her load of linen, which she has momentarily rested on the back of the bench.
“Well, sir, you’ll please excuse me, but I can’t stand chatterin’ here. We pore has got our work to do. That’s what I says to them ladies when they come botherin.’ I says, says I, ‘We pore has our work to do, and when ’tis done we want to sit still, and put our feet up, and take a cup o’ tea, and doze like; we don’t want to go strammarkin’ about to your concerts, and your read-in’s, and your mothers’ meetin’s, and all them rubbishes, and see a duchess playin’ a banjo or hear a duke sing “Hot Codlins.” ‘Let ’em keep in their place, and we’ll keep in ours.
That’s what I says, sir, and I bring up my children to say it arter me.”
“Oh, I am aware, Mrs. Brown, you and those who resemble you, are a terrible stumbling-block to progress.”
“Please don’t call me names, sir. I’m a pore workin’ woman, but I’m one as hev alius kep’ my head above water. You’re in one speer, and we’re in another, as I hev alius told ye, but all the same I choose to be respecket.”
“My dear creature, no one can respect you more profoundly than I do.”
But Mrs. Brown is not appeased by this assurance; walks away in high dudgeon; there is meanwhile a great noise of yelling and shouting in the distance near the statue of Achilles.
“What are they doing?” Bertram asks of the constable, who, touching his helmet, answers:
“Well, sir, the Salvationists have got new banners, ‘Glory’ on one side, and ‘Eternal Fire’ on t’other; and the pop’lace don’t like ’em. Pop’lace very queer and touchy, sir. Never knows what it wants.”
“That is a hasty condemnation to pass on those who form the bulwarks of a nation.”
“Bulwarks, is it, sir? Not when they’ve got any beer in ’em.”
The uproar in the distance grows very loud indeed; some children are alarmed; the nurse who is with them asks the policeman if there is any danger of a riot.
He replies cheerfully, “No fear, mum. They’re round
Hachilles; the Salvationists are on one side, a rum chap hollering against property on the other. He’s one o’ them Communists, and the pop’lace don’t cotton to them ideas; pop’lace likes gentlefolks. Lord! see ’em run to stare at the carriages o’ Drawing Room days!”
“What is the use,” thinks Bertram, “of trying to save sheep who carry their own fleeces obstinately to the shearers?”
“This is the impression,” he asks of the policeman, “which years on the London pavement gives you of the London populace?”
Policeman answers, drily, “Yessir. All the force’ll tell ye the same. London populace likes the nobs. Some on ’em yell a lot o’ revolutionary nonsense when they gets in Trafalgar Square, but, Lord bless ye, they don’t mean it.”
“They will mean it one day.”
“Well, sir, if they ever run short o’ liquor, on account of them total habstainers, they will.”
“What a view of the sovereign people!” says Bertram, who in the Age to Come advocates voluntary total abstinence.”
“Sovereign, is it, sir? Ever seen ’em o’ Derby Day, sir?”
“Yes,” replies Bertram, curtly. He perceives that the constable is a satirist.
In sight at that moment appears a struggling form being violently propelled by two officers of the law, and followed by some yelling roughs and capering boys.
Bertram cannot believe his senses.
“Good gracious! That is Hopper!” he says to the satirical policeman at his side. “What are they doing to him? Why is he arrested?”
Policeman replies politely, but with slightly veiled contempt: “Seem to be running him in, sir. Is he a protegy of yours?
Bertram goes up to the prisoner: “Why, Hopper, is that you? What has he done? Why do you collar him like that?”
The constables, who are dragging Hopper between them, reply with curt contempt: “Disorderly; drunk and disorderly, that’s what he is, sir, and incitin’ to crime.”
“Drunk?” repeats Bertram. “Hopper? Impossible! He has touched nothing but lemonade and mineral water for three! years!
“Is that so, sir? Well, there’s an excuse for him, then, poor devil!”
The prisoner whines and weeps, “Is that you, Mr. Bertram? You’ll speak for a pore honest man — for a pore honest man — not a drop hev Hopper took — not a — not a — not a drop. Hark’ee, Mister — Hopper was a-tellin’ folks — good tidings — proputty’s pison — proputty’s thievin’ — proputty’s root o’ all evil — said so yerself, mister. Hopper used yer werry words. And Hopper’s run in, and ye stand there — yah! Blackgud.”
“I am ashamed of you, Hopper,” says Bertram, sternly. “But,” he adds to the constables, “if you arrest this man for having taken stimulants, I cannot oppose the measure, he may deserve arrest; but if you consider him guilty because he has merely striven to disseminate the doctrines which I myself hold, I ought in common justice to accompany him and be locked up as well.”
The first policeman, who has a satiric vein, smiles rather cynically: “Well, sir, I don’t say as you shouldn’t, but we can’t run you in, sir; you aren’t disorderly.”
Marlow, who is sauntering past, stops, and laughs: “His opinions are very disorderly. Half an hour in Bow Street might be a seasonable douche.”
