OF MISS ARKROYD AND HER AVIARY. HOW MR. CHALLIS WALKED IN THE GARDEN WITH HER. OF MR. TRIPTOLEMUS WRAXALL. AND OF HOW MR. CHALLIS WROTE TO HIS WIFE

It is bewildering to reflect on the number of avenues open to Society by which to approach its own final perfection. And disappointing, too, when a start has been made along some promising one, to come so soon to a parting of the ways, with never a signpost—not so much as a stray uncrucified Messiah for a guide—as the night falls over the land. For even so, each last new Theory of Perfectibility, each panacea for the endemics that afflict us, seems to pass from the glory of its dawn to the chill hours of its doubt; and its Apostles fall away and change their minds, and its subscribers discontinue their subscriptions, and it becomes out of date. And those who have not lain low, like Br'er Fox, but have committed themselves past all recall to its infallibility, are sorry because they cannot remind us that they said so all along, only they were never paid the slightest attention to.

It is possible that some such perceptions passed through Mr. Challis's reflective mind in the course of next day at Royd. He began to find out that he was in a sort of hornet's nest of Reformers, every one of them anxious to point out avenues of salvation for Society. For Sir Murgatroyd, who was the soul of liberality towards every doctrine, political, religious, or social, that he had no prejudice against, liked nothing better than to crowd his house full of reforming theorists. Was he not himself one, and the author of a pamphlet called "The Higher Socialism: An Essay towards a Better Understanding of the Feudal System"? He therefore welcomed with splendid hospitality every advocate of every doctrine that was undoubtedly new, only two conditions being complied with. One was that if it was a New Morality it should be possible to enter into its details without shocking—suppose we say—a hardened reader of Laurence Sterne; and the other that it should not countenance, palliate, advocate, encourage, support, or lend adhesion to his especial bÊte noire, the Americanization of our Institutions. On this particular occasion a fine bag of neo-archs—how apologize for such a word?—had been secured by him during his summer holiday; and when Mr. Challis made his appearance at the breakfast-table next morning, he was buttonholed away from its beautiful clean damask by a brace of Thinkers, each anxious to communicate his Thoughts, and, if possible, entangle the sympathies of a powerful pen "Titus Scroop" was known to possess.

It is annoying to be interrupted when you are making up your mind what you'll have; and then you take poached eggs when you want filleted plaice, or vice-versa. Mr. Challis showed intrepidity, saying to a disciple of the learned German reformer Graubosch: "I make a point of never listening to anything worth hearing at breakfast." It was a clever repulse; but committed him to capitulation to Graubosch later. He succeeded, but with a like reservation, in escaping from an advocate of a really formidable system of Assurance which would have widespread effects on Society, by saying—as though the first few words of its exponent had gone home to him—"You and I must talk that out over a game of billiards." The fact is this gentleman had not been sufficiently congratulated about his last book, so far, by the ladies of the family; and he felt a strong bias towards being flattered by Miss Arkroyd particularly, although in his letter to his wife he had spoken with coldness—ostentatious, and he knew it—of this young lady's fascinations. So he was already scheming in his heart to get her in a corner by herself, where she would be able to express her wonder at his insight into things no one else—except she and he, presumably—knew anything about. He was perceptibly conscious that the short interview between himself and this very good-looking young lady, the evening before, had lacked reference to his insight, and that recognition in that quarter would be pleasant.

It is a little difficult to saunter away from Thinkers who are convinced that you will be interested in their Thoughts, especially if you have given any of them the right to begin, "Referring to what we were saying yesterday, etc."; or, "I have been thinking over that apparent contradiction, etc." But it can be done, with tact. Mr. Challis had not a perfectly clear record of avoidance of Philosophy: his buttonholers of the morning could have pleaded justifications. So he felt diplomatic as he got into another coat because the sun was quite hot in the garden, and then came down the other stairs, where he was sure to meet nobody, and so through the kitchen-gardens to the Inigo Jones orangery that was now an aviary. That was where Miss Arkroyd had said she was going—not to him, but to someone else in his hearing. So clearly so that it was almost as good as if he hadn't heard, but had approached her by accident, when he came upon her out of a side-avenue of clipped hedges. By that time he was sauntering quite naturally, with a cigar in his mouth, just begun. This was as it should be.

"Have you seen my green parroquets?" said the lady.

"I haven't noticed any. Are they loose in the garden?" As though they would have been! But Mr. Challis wasn't in earnest.

"Not that I know of! Did you see any?" She had taken him quite seriously, and he had to explain.

"It was my ill-judged facetiousness," said he. "I meant I had been nowhere except in the garden."

"Oh, I see! You quite frightened me. They are such nice little people. Come in and look at them." But Mr. Challis felt that he would have to practise a certain discretion in his accustomed modes of speech, one of which was a perverse gravity over an obvious absurdity. But he had long given up expecting insight into this from Marianne, the impossible wife. Why should he, then, from this young woman, to whom he and his ways were quite a novelty? Besides, we had to consider the individualities of that strange creature, the human Toff. Mr. Challis reflected that absurd tropes and inversions, without a smile, are the breath of life to cab and bus men. Perhaps William the Norman never put his royal tongue in his cheek: it may have been contrary to the Feudal System.

The little parroquets didn't wait for their proprietor and this new gentleman to come into their palace. The moment they heard them they came with a wild rush into an outside cage. But, being out, they took no notice of their disturbers—none whatever! They conversed about them, clewed side by side on a long perch, with a stunning and unhesitating volubility that made the brain reel; a shrill, intolerable prestissimo of demisemiquavers on one note that pierced the drum of the ear like a rain of small steel shot. They had come to so exactly the same conclusion, so it seemed, as they all repeated it at once, first to right, then to left—had so precisely the same opinion about their visitors, that it was hardly necessary to dwell upon it so long, Mr. Challis thought.

"Are they sweet, or are they not?" was what his companion said.

Challis admitted the sweetness—or possible sweetness—of their dispositions. But he took exception to their voices. He would have preferred these to be more like Cordelia's. The nice little people kept up such a fire of comment, although Miss Arkroyd was now supplying them with cherries, that Challis could hardly hear what she was saying. But he gathered that it was eulogy of the way in which he had referred to the voice of Cordelia and King Lear's description of it, in one of his novels. Only it seemed to him that she was putting the saddle on the wrong horse—ascribing the passage to the wrong book, for she mentioned the "Spendthrift's Legacy," the first work that introduced him to his public. As is frequently the case, this book continued to be the one he was most connected with by non-readers of his works, for all that many more recent ones had had a much larger circulation.

"Are you sure it isn't in 'The Epidermis'?" he asked.

"What isn't?"

"'Gentle and low, an excellent thing in women'—or parrots—what you referred to just now...."

"What's 'The Epidermis'? Who's it by? I mean—I've seen it. But I didn't know it was yours." Whereat Mr. Challis felt crushed. Fancy anybody not knowing whom "The Epidermis" was by! If it had only been not having read it yet, that could have been softened by confession of intense yearning to do so, unfairly frustrated by anÆmic Circulating Libraries. But not to know whom it was by!

"Name of my last book. Fidgetts and Thrills. Six Shillings net." Mr. Challis affected a light joking tone. But he was mortified. However, Miss Arkroyd was under obligation to invent something of a palliative nature, and in the effort Cordelia's voice lapsed.

"Oh yes-s-s-s!" said she, dwelling on the "s" to express a mind momentarily bewildered, but awaiting a light that was sure to come, if she made the hiss long enough, and then cutting sharply in with an interruption to it. "I was thinking of another book. Quite another!" And then closed the subject for good, but as one that might have been pursued had she been thinking of a book that was rather another, but not quite.

You see, the fact was that this young woman had read none of this author's works, though it seemed she yearned to do so. She had had no time for reading, and the book had always got sent back to Mudie's before she had read it, and so on. Well!—we can all sympathize, can't we? But, then, she shouldn't have pretended she had, because that was fibs. At most she had read a quotation from one of his stories—she couldn't say which—in a review.

Mr. Challis suspected all this, and was too much a man of the world to commit the blunder of proving that a lady had told fibs, however insignificant. He was rather glad the little green birds kept in such good voice, for though they usually dropped their cherries and wanted another, they never dropped their subject. They helped the position, and Challis felt he ought to help, too. His vanity was a little wounded; but, then, how jolly comfortable that bed was, and what a lovely cold douche that was after a real hot bath and what a choice cigar this was, just recently supplied by this lady's brother! No!—he would be generous, and help.

"How charmingly your sister draws! I was looking at her landscapes last night."

"She's Prong's favourite pupil."

"She's very clever?"

"Oh yes!—she can do anything she turns her hands to. We differ on many points. But it's impossible to deny her cleverness. Poor Sibyl!—I suppose she can't help it."

"Can't help what?"

"Well!—rubbing me up the wrong way. But we all do that." Challis began to feel that he was in the bosom of the Family. He might ask questions freely, and did so as soon as the quiet of a retired walk in the garden allowed freedom of speech. The parroquets dropped the subject abruptly as soon as they found themselves alone.

"What's the Great Idea? I heard Lady Arkroyd talking of it to Lord Felixthorpe. It was her idea, wasn't it?"

"Do you mean Mamma's?" Judith asked. Mr. Challis had not, and hesitated a moment. Should he say, "Miss Sibyl's"? Surely no! Sunday citizens would say that. Very well, then! Should it be "Sibyl's" or "Your sister's"? He almost wished the young females of this landed family were ladyships: it comes so much handier for outsiders. He risked the point, and said, "Sibyl's," but softened the offence by adding, "Your sister's, I mean." If the fine eyelids were offended, they concealed it remarkably well. So much so that Mr. Challis said to himself that no doubt the Normans Christian-named more than the Saxons. Or, were those eyelids lenient towards his personal self? He was a married man, certainly; only, then!—a married man may feel flattered, look you! But this is not our affair at present. How about the Great Idea?

"Sibyl's idea, of course." The speaker accepted the Christian name; she could have said "My sister's" stiffly. "It's a perfectly mad one. A sort of new Factory, or perhaps I ought to say Institution. Everything is to be made there, only nobody is to be allowed to work there who is qualified to do anything else."

"Anything else than what?"

"Why—don't you understand? Arts and crafts. Enamels and lace and tapestry and hammered brass and copper. Not manufactures—mediÆval things...."

"Oh, ah!—I know."

"All that sort of thing. Well!—the Great Idea is to take either some premises of the proper sort, or a piece of land and build a Factory, with studios for herself and Lady Betty Inglis; she must be in it to make Sir Spender Inglis, who's enormously rich, find half the capital. I've done my best ... to prevent it. But it's no use my saying anything. Will keeps her up to it."

"Your brother?"

"Yes. You see, he's been looking into the question of building, and is certain he could build at half the usual cost. So he wants to try his hand on the Factory."

"Poor Sir Spender!"

"That's what I say. And poor Papa! However, that's not Will's only reason. He wants to build some workshops for himself to carry out experiments in wireless high-tension currents and aerostation. I don't understand these things."

"Your brother seems a universal genius, too?"

"Yes. But then, he took a very high degree at Cambridge. He always has that excuse. Sibyl has no degree, and ought to know better."

"What exactly is going to be done at the Factory? And are all the hands to be ladies? Or how?"

"Very much 'how?' I should say. The idea is, to employ no one who can do anything else anywhere else. People with one hand or one eye. Colour-blind guards who can't get places on railways. Deaf and dumb people that can read the Scriptures aloud automatically and never be any the wiser, don't you know?"

"Was that what your brother was talking about to your sister"—in this exact context "Sibyl" would hardly have worked in—"last night? About a blind chap he told her of. She thought he might be taught to model."

"Did they talk about him? I didn't hear them. A blind beggar-man in a street where I slum—sells matches, or pretends to. They won't get him to work for ten shillings a week."

"Why not?"

"Because he's earning ten shillings a day, probably, and putting by money. They do. Isn't that somebody calling me?... Yes.... I'm coming."

And then the young lady, with a parting benediction to her hearer for the amusing talk they had had, vanished in response to some summons which she had distinguished as intended for herself. He for his part thought it necessary to propose to himself, and to carry unanimously, a vote of confidence in the great advantage to the brain it was to get away from one's surroundings now and again, and get a complete change. He had the hypocrisy to add that the said surroundings stood to derive benefit also, in ways not precisely specified. He felt stimulated and braced, confirmed in the image he treasured of his own identity. His interview with Miss Arkroyd had been like having the hair of his soul brushed by machinery, and called for classification. It was necessary to protest against a remark something somewhere had made, that his own home need not suffer by contrast. He indignantly repudiated the necessity for discussing the matter, as he threw away a cigar he had taken some time to smoke.

Still, he did not feel so sure on the point as not to be glad to be finally pinioned by a gentleman with a theory, whom he had provisionally escaped from at breakfast, an hour before. This was Mr. Triptolemus Wraxall, the Apostle of Universal Security, whose belief that policies and premiums were remedies for all this world's evils had taken possession of him while discharging the duties of visiting inspector to a Fire Insurance Office. In the intervals of his inspections, the object of which was to detect risks of fire in order that no policies should be issued where any such risks existed, he had evolved from his inner consciousness a number of systems, all practicable in the highest degree—almost self-acting, in fact. At least, they were none of them foolish, like the Rejected Proposal Insurance (Matrimony), which we believe fell through in consequence of the dishonest connivance of the parties, renewed proposals being frequently accepted within twenty-four hours of the payment of the sum assured. It was even reported that young ladies had advanced the first year's premium in some cases, in return for a commission of seventy-five per cent. at settlement; and that the Office was dissuaded with difficulty by its solicitors from commencing proceedings for conspiracy. An absurd scheme!

The scheme Mr. Wraxall was anxious to lay before Mr. Challis was at least (said its inventor) worthy of serious consideration. It was a simple System of Assurance in which unborn legitimate male children would, by payment of a premium, secure to themselves the full advantages of a University education. Of course, he did not rely on their personal application—that was to be done on their behalf by their proposed parents—but it was not only ladies and gentlemen who had substantial guarantees for the appearance of these undergraduates, but any lady and gentleman whatever were to be at liberty to take out Policies of Assurance, the premiums getting less and less in proportion as the improbability of the couple ever having lawful issue became greater and greater. The modest sum of fifty pounds was to cover a claim for the possible son of an engaged couple (as bashfully alluded to in marriage settlements); while a full hundred was required for an infant of unknown sex awaiting advertisement in the birth column of the Times. On the other hand, where there was very little chance of the courtship having a successful issue (as in the case of extreme youth of the parties) the premium went down contemptuously to a sovereign. Children in arms betrothed by their parents were to enjoy all the advantages of the institution for two shillings and sixpence. But the lowest figure on the list, nine decimal point ought-six pence, was the sum for which any married gentleman could secure its benefits for the not necessarily impossible son, born in lawful wedlock of himself and any lady, also married elsewhere, provided that the couple were of different nationalities and each resident at home. It was thought necessary, said Mr. Wraxall, to bar cases of murder by the policy-holder, of whichever sex.

"I can't see the necessity," said Challis. "The Office could not refuse to carry out the bargain because of suspicion of murder; and in case of conviction the chance of a family goes down to almost nil, because of the hanging. See?"

"Quite so, as a rule. But cases might occur of conviction and hanging deferred for months, even years. It might even happen that an insured son had become a bÉnÉficiare to the extent of a complete University education before either of his parents was arrested for murder. Such an event would have to be provided against, or due allowance made in fixing the amount of the premium. But without going so far as that, we should meet with instances of murderers under this arrangement getting married while out on bail. A posthumous son could not be fairly branded as illegitimate because his father was hanged and his mother sentenced to penal servitude before his birth. Holy Matrimony is all that legitimacy demands."

"Couldn't you raise the premium, so as to cover all possible cases? Distaste for murder, on its merits, would tend to keep the number low. Make it eighteenpence."

"Pardon me, Mr. Challis, you do not understand Human Nature. The passing from pence to shillings marks a crucial point of its susceptibilities. For one man who will go over a shilling to provide against a defined contingency you will meet with a million who will invest pence on some chance they almost deny the existence of, simply because, if it did come to pass, the benefit would be so out of all proportion to the sum risked to obtain it. If an investment of one halfpenny could be shown to connect itself with a possible gain of ten million pounds, the whole population of the world would plunge to that extent. There can be no reasonable doubt that, however improbable it may seem to any married man that he should marry the widow of a particular foreigner, quite unknown, still, the advantage of having their son's education provided at a cost of nine point-ought-six pence would be an irresistible argument in favour of its outlay. Nothing short of mathematical certainty that no such son was possible would...."

"I understand perfectly. That is my own view. I draw the line at a shilling. To go beyond it opens up a world of immoral extravagance...." The speaker felt in danger of yawning, and, to avoid it and break loose from his persecutor, had to fall back on the time-honoured expedient of inventing a neglected duty elsewhere. He drew his watch suddenly from its pocket with the verve of an angler landing a fish, and exclaimed with sudden deep conviction: "I really must run!"

And Mr. Alfred Challis ran, and found that letters for the Post had to be ready at eleven forty-five. He had come away from home with the best intentions of writing a line every day to his wife, and, indeed, had meant to write long humorous letters with satirical descriptions of the British Toff at Home, all the points of which would make good copy after, as it was only Marianne. It wasn't like repeating a published article. But this time it would have to be a line, or at most a sheet of note-paper; and it was accordingly.

When one has arrived at the time of life when one weighs beforehand each sentence one writes, even to an intimate friend—instead of dashing recklessly on, as in one's glorious youth—how glad one sometimes is to be put under compulsion about the contents of a letter! Challis wouldn't acknowledge his obligation to the coercion of the Postal limit—not he! But he felt it all the same. For he couldn't have filled out his letter with Universal Security. Marianne wouldn't have understood a word of it. It wasn't her line. And as for his long talk with Judith Arkroyd ... well, now!—why on earth couldn't he just write that he had had one, and that she had told him a lot about the family, and he would write a long letter about it next time, but really this was only a line to catch the Post. Why not, indeed? Yes, of course, that was the proper thing to write. He wrote it, and denied the pause, to his own satisfaction. But he was grateful to the Post for being so coercive and superseding and cancelling all considerations of—of what? He denied that there was anything to cancel, and directed the letter.