“I’m very sorry,” I said; “but really it was impossible to bring them with me.” Here I most certainly meant to conclude the sentence: and it was with a feeling of utter amazement, which I cannot adequately describe, that I heard myself going on speaking. “—but they are to join me here in the course of the evening” were the words, uttered in my voice, and seeming to come from my lips.
“I’m so glad!” Lady Muriel joyfully replied. “I shall enjoy introducing them to some of my friends here! When do you expect them?”
I took refuge in silence. The only honest reply would have been “That was not my remark. I didn’t say it, and it isn’t true!” But I had not the moral courage to make such a confession. The character of a ‘lunatic’ is not, I believe, very difficult to acquire: but it is amazingly difficult to get rid of: and it seemed quite certain that any such speech as that would quite justify the issue of a writ ‘de lunatico inquirendo.’
Lady Muriel evidently thought I had failed to hear her question, and turned to Arthur with a remark on some other subject; and I had time to recover from my shock of surprise—or to awake out of my momentary ‘eerie’ condition, whichever it was.
When things around me seemed once more to be real, Arthur was saying “I’m afraid there’s no help for it: they must be finite in number.”
“I should be sorry to have to believe it,” said Lady Muriel. “Yet, when one comes to think of it, there are no new melodies, now-a-days. What people talk of as ‘the last new song’ always recalls to me some tune I’ve known as a child!”
“The day must come—if the world lasts long enough——” said Arthur, “when every possible tune will have been composed—every possible pun perpetrated——” (Lady Muriel wrung her hands, like a tragedy-queen) “and, worse than that, every possible book written! For the number of words is finite.”
“It’ll make very little difference to the authors,” I suggested. “Instead of saying ‘what book shall I write?’ an author will ask himself ‘which book shall I write?’ A mere verbal distinction!”
Lady Muriel gave me an approving smile. “But lunatics would always write new books, surely?” she went on. “They couldn’t write the sane books over again!”
“True,” said Arthur. “But their books would come to an end, also. The number of lunatic books is as finite as the number of lunatics.”
“And that number is becoming greater every year,” said a pompous man, whom I recognised as the self-appointed showman on the day of the picnic.
“So they say,” replied Arthur. “And, when ninety per cent. of us are lunatics,” (he seemed to be in a wildly nonsensical mood) “the asylums will be put to their proper use.”
“And that is——?” the pompous man gravely enquired.
“To shelter the sane!” said Arthur. “We shall bar ourselves in. The lunatics will have it all their own way, outside. They’ll do it a little queerly, no doubt. Railway-collisions will be always happening: steamers always blowing up: most of the towns will be burnt down: most of the ships sunk——”
“And most of the men killed!” murmured the pompous man, who was evidently hopelessly bewildered.
“Certainly,” Arthur assented. “Till at last there will be fewer lunatics than sane men. Then we come out: they go in: and things return to their normal condition!”
The pompous man frowned darkly, and bit his lip, and folded his arms, vainly trying to think it out. “He is jesting!” he muttered to himself at last, in a tone of withering contempt, as he stalked away.
By this time the other guests had arrived; and dinner was announced. Arthur of course took down Lady Muriel: and I was pleased to find myself seated at her other side, with a severe-looking old lady (whom I had not met before, and whose name I had, as is usual in introductions, entirely failed to catch, merely gathering that it sounded like a compound-name) as my partner for the banquet.
She appeared, however, to be acquainted with Arthur, and confided to me in a low voice her opinion that he was “a very argumentative young man.” Arthur, for his part, seemed well inclined to show himself worthy of the character she had given him, and, hearing her say “I never take wine with my soup!” (this was not a confidence to me, but was launched upon Society, as a matter of general interest), he at once challenged a combat by asking her “when would you say that property commence in a plate of soup?”
“This is my soup,” she sternly replied: “and what is before you is yours.”
“No doubt,” said Arthur: “but when did I begin to own it? Up to the moment of its being put into the plate, it was the property of our host: while being offered round the table, it was, let us say, held in trust by the waiter: did it become mine when I accepted it? Or when it was placed before me? Or when I took the first spoonful?”
“He is a very argumentative young man!” was all the old lady would say: but she said it audibly, this time, feeling that Society had a right to know it.
Arthur smiled mischievously. “I shouldn’t mind betting you a shilling,” he said, “that the Eminent Barrister next you” (It certainly is possible to say words so as to make them begin with capitals!) “ca’n’t answer me!”
“I never bet,” she sternly replied.
“Not even sixpenny points at whist?”
“Never!” she repeated. “Whist is innocent enough: but whist played for money!” She shuddered.
Arthur became serious again. “I’m afraid I ca’n’t take that view,” he said. “I consider that the introduction of small stakes for card-playing was one of the most moral acts Society ever did, as Society.”
“How was it so?” said Lady Muriel.
“Because it took Cards, once for all, out of the category of games at which cheating is possible. Look at the way Croquet is demoralising Society. Ladies are beginning to cheat at it, terribly: and, if they’re found out, they only laugh, and call it fun. But when there’s money at stake, that is out of the question. The swindler is not accepted as a wit. When a man sits down to cards, and cheats his friends out of their money, he doesn’t get much fun out of it—unless he thinks it fun to be kicked down stairs!”
“If all gentlemen thought as badly of ladies as you do,” my neighbour remarked with some bitterness, “there would be very few—very few——.” She seemed doubtful how to end her sentence, but at last took “honeymoons” as a safe word.
“On the contrary,” said Arthur, the mischievous smile returning to his face, “if only people would adopt my theory, the number of honeymoons—quite of a new kind—would be greatly increased!”
“May we hear about this new kind of honeymoon?” said Lady Muriel.
“Let X be the gentleman,” Arthur began, in a slightly raised voice, as he now found himself with an audience of six, including ‘Mein Herr,’ who was seated at the other side of my polynomial partner. “Let X be the gentleman, and Y the lady to whom he thinks of proposing. He applies for an Experimental Honeymoon. It is granted. Forthwith the young couple—accompanied by the great-aunt of Y, to act as chaperone—start for a month’s tour, during which they have many a moonlight-walk, and many a tête-à-tête conversation, and each can form a more correct estimate of the other’s character, in four weeks, than would have been possible in as many years, when meeting under the ordinary restrictions of Society. And it is only after their return that X finally decides whether he will, or will not, put the momentous question to Y!”
“In nine cases out of ten,” the pompous man proclaimed, “he would decide to break it off!”
“Then, in nine cases out of ten,” Arthur rejoined, “an unsuitable match would be prevented, and both parties saved from misery!”
“The only really unsuitable matches,” the old lady remarked, “are those made without sufficient Money. Love may come afterwards. Money is needed to begin with!”
This remark was cast loose upon Society, as a sort of general challenge; and, as such, it was at once accepted by several of those within hearing: Money became the key-note of the conversation for some time; and a fitful echo of it was again heard, when the dessert had been placed upon the table, the servants had left the room, and the Earl had started the wine in its welcome progress round the table.
“I’m very glad to see you keep up the old customs,” I said to Lady Muriel as I filled her glass. “It’s really delightful to experience, once more, the peaceful feeling that comes over one when the waiters have left the room—when one can converse without the feeling of being overheard, and without having dishes constantly thrust over one’s shoulder. How much more sociable it is to be able to pour out the wine for the ladies, and to hand the dishes to those who wish for them!”
“In that case, kindly send those peaches down here,” said a fat red-faced man, who was seated beyond our pompous friend. “I’ve been wishing for them—diagonally—for some time!”
“Yes, it is a ghastly innovation,” Lady Muriel replied, “letting the waiters carry round the wine at dessert. For one thing, they always take it the wrong way round—which of course brings bad luck to everybody present!”
“Better go the wrong way than not go at all!” said our host. “Would you kindly help yourself?” (This was to the fat red-faced man.) “You are not a teetotaler, I think?”
“Indeed but I am!” he replied, as he pushed on the bottles. “Nearly twice as much money is spent in England on Drink, as on any other article of food. Read this card.” (What faddist ever goes about without a pocketful of the appropriate literature?) “The stripes of different colours represent the amounts spent on various articles of food. Look at the highest three. Money spent on butter and on cheese, thirty-five millions: on bread, seventy millions: on intoxicating liquors, one hundred and thirty-six millions! If I had my way, I would close every public-house in the land! Look at that card, and read the motto. That’s where all the money goes to!”
“Have you seen the Anti-Teetotal Card?” Arthur innocently enquired.
“No, Sir, I have not!” the orator savagely replied. “What is it like?”
“Almost exactly like this one. The coloured stripes are the same. Only, instead of the words ‘Money spent on,’ it has ‘Incomes derived from sale of’; and, instead of ‘That’s where all the money goes to,’ its motto is ‘That’s where all the money comes from!’”
The red-faced man scowled, but evidently considered Arthur beneath his notice. So Lady Muriel took up the cudgels. “Do you hold the theory,” she enquired, “that people can preach teetotalism more effectually by being teetotalers themselves?”
“Certainly I do!” replied the red-faced man. “Now, here is a case in point,” unfolding a newspaper-cutting: “let me read you this letter from a teetotaler. To the Editor. Sir, I was once a moderate drinker, and knew a man who drank to excess. I went to him. ‘Give up this drink,’ I said. ‘It will ruin your health!’ ‘You drink,’ he said: ‘why shouldn’t I?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but I know when to leave off.’ He turned away from me. ‘You drink in your way,’ he said: ‘let me drink in mine. Be off!’ Then I saw that, to do any good with him, I must forswear drink. From that hour I haven’t touched a drop!”
“There! What do you say to that?” He looked round triumphantly, while the cutting was handed round for inspection.
“How very curious!” exclaimed Arthur, when it had reached him. “Did you happen to see a letter, last week, about early rising? It was strangely like this one.”
The red-faced man’s curiosity was roused. “Where did it appear?” he asked.
“Let me read it to you,” said Arthur. He took some papers from his pocket, opened one of them, and read as follows. “To the Editor. Sir, I was once a moderate sleeper, and knew a man who slept to excess. I pleaded with him. ‘Give up this lying in bed,’ I said, ‘It will ruin your health!’ ‘You go to bed,’ he said: ‘why shouldn’t I?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but I know when to get up in the morning.’ He turned away from me. ‘You sleep in your way,’ he said: ‘let me sleep in mine. Be off!’ Then I saw that to do any good with him, I must forswear sleep. From that hour I haven’t been to bed!”
Arthur folded and pocketed his paper, and passed on the newspaper-cutting. None of us dared to laugh, the red-faced man was evidently so angry. “Your parallel doesn’t run on all fours!” he snarled.
“Moderate drinkers never do so!” Arthur quietly replied. Even the stern old lady laughed at this.
“But it needs many other things to make a perfect dinner!” said Lady Muriel, evidently anxious to change the subject. “Mein Herr! What is your idea of a perfect dinner-party?”
The old man looked round smilingly, and his gigantic spectacles seemed more gigantic than ever. “A perfect dinner-party?” he repeated. “First, it must be presided over by our present hostess!”
“That, of course!” she gaily interposed. “But what else, Mein Herr?”
“I can but tell you what I have seen,” said Mein Herr, “in mine own—in the country I have traveled in.”
He paused for a full minute, and gazed steadily at the ceiling—with so dreamy an expression on his face, that I feared he was going off into a reverie, which seemed to be his normal state. However, after a minute, he suddenly began again.
“That which chiefly causes the failure of a dinner-party, is the running-short—not of meat, nor yet of drink, but of conversation.”
“In an English dinner-party,” I remarked, “I have never known small-talk run short!”
“Pardon me,” Mein Herr respectfully replied, “I did not say ‘small-talk.’ I said ‘conversation.’ All such topics as the weather, or politics, or local gossip, are unknown among us. They are either vapid or controversial. What we need for conversation is a topic of interest and of novelty. To secure these things we have tried various plans—Moving-Pictures, Wild-Creatures, Moving-Guests, and a Revolving-Humorist. But this last is only adapted to small parties.”
“Let us have it in four separate Chapters, please!” said Lady Muriel, who was evidently deeply interested—as, indeed, most of the party were, by this time: and, all down the table, talk had ceased, and heads were leaning forwards, eager to catch fragments of Mein Herr’s oration.
“Chapter One! Moving-Pictures!” was proclaimed in the silvery voice of our hostess.
“The dining-table is shaped like a circular ring,” Mein Herr began, in low dreamy tones, which, however, were perfectly audible in the silence. “The guests are seated at the inner side as well as the outer, having ascended to their places by a winding-staircase, from the room below. Along the middle of the table runs a little railway; and there is an endless train of trucks, worked round by machinery; and on each truck there are two pictures, leaning back to back. The train makes two circuits during dinner; and, when it has been once round, the waiters turn the pictures round in each truck, making them face the other way. Thus every guest sees every picture!”
He paused, and the silence seemed deader than ever. Lady Muriel looked aghast. “Really, if this goes on,” she exclaimed, “I shall have to drop a pin! Oh, it’s my fault, is it?” (In answer to an appealing look from Mein Herr.) “I was forgetting my duty. Chapter Two! Wild-Creatures!”
“We found the Moving-Pictures a little monotonous,” said Mein Herr. “People didn’t care to talk Art through a whole dinner; so we tried Wild-Creatures. Among the flowers, which we laid (just as you do) about the table, were to be seen, here a mouse, there a beetle; here a spider,” (Lady Muriel shuddered) “there a wasp; here a toad, there a snake;” (“Father!” said Lady Muriel, plaintively. “Did you hear that?”) “so we had plenty to talk about!”
“And when you got stung——” the old lady began.
“They were all chained-up, dear Madam!”
And the old lady gave a satisfied nod.
There was no silence to follow, this time. “Third Chapter!” Lady Muriel proclaimed at once, “Moving-Guests!”
“Even the Wild-Creatures proved monotonous,” the orator proceeded. “So we left the guests to choose their own subjects; and, to avoid monotony, we changed them. We made the table of two rings; and the inner ring moved slowly round, all the time, along with the floor in the middle and the inner row of guests. Thus every inner guest was brought face-to-face with every outer guest. It was a little confusing, sometimes, to have to begin a story to one friend and finish it to another; but every plan has its faults, you know.”
“Fourth Chapter!” Lady Muriel hastened to announce. “The Revolving-Humorist!”
“For a small party we found it an excellent plan to have a round table, with a hole cut in the middle large enough to hold one guest. Here we placed our best talker. He revolved slowly, facing every other guest in turn: and he told lively anecdotes the whole time!”
“I shouldn’t like it!” murmured the pompous man. “It would make me giddy, revolving like that! I should decline to——” here it appeared to dawn upon him that perhaps the assumption he was making was not warranted by the circumstances: he took a hasty gulp of wine, and choked himself.
But Mein Herr had relapsed into reverie, and made no further remark. Lady Muriel gave the signal, and the ladies left the room.
When the last lady had disappeared, and the Earl, taking his place at the head of the table, had issued the military order “Gentlemen! Close up the ranks, if you please!”, and when, in obedience to his command, we had gathered ourselves compactly round him, the pompous man gave a deep sigh of relief, filled his glass to the brim, pushed on the wine, and began one of his favorite orations. “They are charming, no doubt! Charming, but very frivolous. They drag us down, so to speak, to a lower level. They——”
“Do not all pronouns require antecedent nouns?” the Earl gently enquired.
“Pardon me,” said the pompous man, with lofty condescension. “I had overlooked the noun. The ladies. We regret their absence. Yet we console ourselves. Thought is free. With them, we are limited to trivial topics—Art, Literature, Politics, and so forth. One can bear to discuss such paltry matters with a lady. But no man, in his senses—” (he looked sternly round the table, as if defying contradiction) “—ever yet discussed WINE with a lady!” He sipped his glass of port, leaned back in his chair, and slowly raised it up to his eye, so as to look through it at the lamp. “The vintage, my Lord?” he enquired, glancing at his host.
The Earl named the date.
“So I had supposed. But one likes to be certain. The tint is, perhaps, slightly pale. But the body is unquestionable. And as for the bouquet——”
Ah, that magic Bouquet! How vividly that single word recalled the scene! The little beggar-boy turning his somersault in the road—the sweet little crippled maiden in my arms—the mysterious evanescent nurse-maid—all rushed tumultuously into my mind, like the creatures of a dream: and through this mental haze there still boomed on, like the tolling of a bell, the solemn voice of the great connoisseur of WINE!
Even his utterances had taken on themselves a strange and dream-like form. “No,” he resumed—and why is it, I pause to ask, that, in taking up the broken thread of a dialogue, one always begins with this cheerless monosyllable? After much anxious thought, I have come to the conclusion that the object in view is the same as that of the schoolboy, when the sum he is working has got into a hopeless muddle, and when in despair he takes the sponge, washes it all out, and begins again. Just in the same way the bewildered orator, by the simple process of denying everything that has been hitherto asserted, makes a clean sweep of the whole discussion, and can ‘start fair’ with a fresh theory. “No,” he resumed: “there’s nothing like cherry-jam, after all. That’s what I say!”
“Not for all qualities!” an eager little man shrilly interposed. “For richness of general tone I don’t say that it has a rival. But for delicacy of modulation—for what one may call the ‘harmonics’ of flavour—give me good old raspberry-jam!”
“Allow me one word!” The fat red-faced man, quite hoarse with excitement, broke into the dialogue. “It’s too important a question to be settled by Amateurs! I can give you the views of a Professional—perhaps the most experienced jam-taster now living. Why, I’ve known him fix the age of strawberry-jam, to a day—and we all know what a difficult jam it is to give a date to—on a single tasting! Well, I put to him the very question you are discussing. His words were ‘cherry-jam is best, for mere chiaroscuro of flavour: raspberry-jam lends itself best to those resolved discords that linger so lovingly on the tongue: but, for rapturous utterness of saccharine perfection, it’s apricot-jam first and the rest nowhere!’ That was well put, wasn’t it?”
“Consummately put!” shrieked the eager little man.
“I know your friend well,” said the pompous man. “As a jam-taster, he has no rival! Yet I scarcely think——”
But here the discussion became general: and his words were lost in a confused medley of names, every guest sounding the praises of his own favorite jam. At length, through the din, our host’s voice made itself heard. “Let us join the ladies!” These words seemed to recall me to waking life; and I felt sure that, for the last few minutes, I had relapsed into the ‘eerie’ state.
“A strange dream!” I said to myself as we trooped upstairs. “Grown men discussing, as seriously as if they were matters of life and death, the hopelessly trivial details of mere delicacies, that appeal to no higher human function than the nerves of the tongue and palate! What a humiliating spectacle such a discussion would be in waking life!”
When, on our way to the drawing-room, I received from the housekeeper my little friends, clad in the daintiest of evening costumes, and looking, in the flush of expectant delight, more radiantly beautiful than I had ever seen them before, I felt no shock of surprise, but accepted the fact with the same unreasoning apathy with which one meets the events of a dream, and was merely conscious of a vague anxiety as to how they would acquit themselves in so novel a scene—forgetting that Court-life in Outland was as good training as they could need for Society in the more substantial world.
It would be best, I thought, to introduce them as soon as possible to some good-natured lady-guest, and I selected the young lady whose piano-forte-playing had been so much talked of. “I am sure you like children,” I said. “May I introduce two little friends of mine? This is Sylvie—and this is Bruno.”
The young lady kissed Sylvie very graciously. She would have done the same for Bruno, but he hastily drew back out of reach. “Their faces are new to me,” she said. “Where do you come from, my dear?”
I had not anticipated so inconvenient a question; and, fearing that it might embarrass Sylvie, I answered for her. “They come from some distance. They are only here just for this one evening.”
“How far have you come, dear?” the young lady persisted.
Sylvie looked puzzled. “A mile or two, I think,” she said doubtfully.
“A mile or three,” said Bruno.
“You shouldn’t say ‘a mile or three,’” Sylvie corrected him.
The young lady nodded approval. “Sylvie’s quite right. It isn’t usual to say ‘a mile or three.’”
“It would be usual—if we said it often enough,” said Bruno.
It was the young lady’s turn to look puzzled now. “He’s very quick, for his age!” she murmured. “You’re not more than seven, are you, dear?” she added aloud.
“I’m not so many as that,” said Bruno. “I’m one. Sylvie’s one. Sylvie and me is two. Sylvie taught me to count.”
“Oh, I wasn’t counting you, you know!” the young lady laughingly replied.
“Hasn’t oo learnt to count?” said Bruno.
The young lady bit her lip. “Dear! What embarrassing questions he does ask!” she said in a half-audible ‘aside.’
“Bruno, you shouldn’t!” Sylvie said reprovingly.
“Shouldn’t what?” said Bruno.
“You shouldn’t ask—that sort of questions.”
“What sort of questions?” Bruno mischievously persisted.
“What she told you not,” Sylvie replied, with a shy glance at the young lady, and losing all sense of grammar in her confusion.
“Oo ca’n’t pronounce it!” Bruno triumphantly cried. And he turned to the young lady, for sympathy in his victory. “I knewed she couldn’t pronounce ‘umbrella-sting’!”
The young lady thought it best to return to the arithmetical problem. “When I asked if you were seven, you know, I didn’t mean ‘how many children?’ I meant ‘how many years——’”
“Only got two ears,” said Bruno. “Nobody’s got seven ears.”
“And you belong to this little girl?” the young lady continued, skilfully evading the anatomical problem.
“No, I doosn’t belong to her!” said Bruno. “Sylvie belongs to me!” And he clasped his arms round her as he added “She are my very mine!”
“And, do you know,” said the young lady, “I’ve a little sister at home, exactly like your sister? I’m sure they’d love each other.”
“They’d be very extremely useful to each other,” Bruno said, thoughtfully. “And they wouldn’t want no looking-glasses to brush their hair wiz.”
“Why not, my child?”
“Why, each one would do for the other one’s looking-glass, a-course!” cried Bruno.
But here Lady Muriel, who had been standing by, listening to this bewildering dialogue, interrupted it to ask if the young lady would favour us with some music; and the children followed their new friend to the piano.
Arthur came and sat down by me. “If rumour speaks truly,” he whispered, “we are to have a real treat!” And then, amid a breathless silence, the performance began.
She was one of those players whom Society talks of as ‘brilliant,’ and she dashed into the loveliest of Haydn’s Symphonies in a style that was clearly the outcome of years of patient study under the best masters. At first it seemed to be the perfection of piano-forte-playing; but in a few minutes I began to ask myself, wearily, “What is it that is wanting? Why does one get no pleasure from it?”
Then I set myself to listen intently to every note; and the mystery explained itself. There was an almost-perfect mechanical correctness—and there was nothing else! False notes, of course, did not occur: she knew the piece too well for that; but there was just enough irregularity of time to betray that the player had no real ‘ear’ for music—just enough inarticulateness in the more elaborate passages to show that she did not think her audience worth taking real pains for—just enough mechanical monotony of accent to take all soul out of the heavenly modulations she was profaning—in short, it was simply irritating; and, when she had rattled off the finale and had struck the final chord as if, the instrument being now done with, it didn’t matter how many wires she broke, I could not even affect to join in the stereotyped “Oh, thank you!” which was chorused around me.
Lady Muriel joined us for a moment. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she whispered, to Arthur, with a mischievous smile.
“No, it isn’t!” said Arthur. But the gentle sweetness of his face quite neutralised the apparent rudeness of the reply.
“Such execution, you know!” she persisted.
“That’s what she deserves,” Arthur doggedly replied: “but people are so prejudiced against capital——”
“Now you’re beginning to talk nonsense!” Lady Muriel cried. “But you do like Music, don’t you? You said so just now.”
“Do I like Music?” the Doctor repeated softly to himself. “My dear Lady Muriel, there is Music and Music. Your question is painfully vague. You might as well ask ‘Do you like People?’”
Lady Muriel bit her lip, frowned, and stamped with one tiny foot. As a dramatic representation of ill-temper, it was distinctly not a success. However, it took in one of her audience, and Bruno hastened to interpose, as peacemaker in a rising quarrel, with the remark “I likes Peoples!”
Arthur laid a loving hand on the little curly head. “What? All Peoples?” he enquired.
“Not all Peoples,” Bruno explained. “Only but Sylvie—and Lady Muriel—and him—” (pointing to the Earl) “and oo—and oo!”
“You shouldn’t point at people,” said Sylvie. “It’s very rude.”
“In Bruno’s World,” I said, “there are only four People—worth mentioning!”
“In Bruno’s World!” Lady Muriel repeated thoughtfully. “A bright and flowery world. Where the grass is always green, where the breezes always blow softly, and the rain-clouds never gather; where there are no wild beasts, and no deserts——”
“There must be deserts,” Arthur decisively remarked. “At least if it was my ideal world.”
“But what possible use is there in a desert?” said Lady Muriel. “Surely you would have no wilderness in your ideal world?”
Arthur smiled. “But indeed I would!” he said. “A wilderness would be more necessary than a railway; and far more conducive to general happiness than church-bells!”
“But what would you use it for?”
“To practise music in,” he replied. “All the young ladies, that have no ear for music, but insist on learning it, should be conveyed, every morning, two or three miles into the wilderness. There each would find a comfortable room provided for her, and also a cheap second-hand piano-forte, on which she might play for hours, without adding one needless pang to the sum of human misery!”
Lady Muriel glanced round in alarm, lest these barbarous sentiments should be overheard. But the fair musician was at a safe distance. “At any rate you must allow that she’s a sweet girl?” she resumed.
“Oh, certainly. As sweet as eau sucrée, if you choose—and nearly as interesting!”
“You are incorrigible!” said Lady Muriel, and turned to me. “I hope you found Mrs. Mills an interesting companion?”
“Oh, that’s her name, is it?” I said. “I fancied there was more of it.”
“So there is: and it will be ‘at your proper peril’ (whatever that may mean) if you ever presume to address her as ‘Mrs. Mills.’ She is ‘Mrs. Ernest—Atkinson—Mills’!”
“She is one of those would-be grandees,” said Arthur, “who think that, by tacking on to their surname all their spare Christian-names, with hyphens between, they can give it an aristocratic flavour. As if it wasn’t trouble enough to remember one surname!”
By this time the room was getting crowded, as the guests, invited for the evening-party, were beginning to arrive, and Lady Muriel had to devote herself to the task of welcoming them, which she did with the sweetest grace imaginable. Sylvie and Bruno stood by her, deeply interested in the process.
“I hope you like my friends?” she said to them. “Specially my dear old friend, Mein Herr (What’s become of him, I wonder? Oh, there he is!), that old gentleman in spectacles, with a long beard?”
“He’s a grand old gentleman!” Sylvie said, gazing admiringly at ‘Mein Herr,’ who had settled down in a corner, from which his mild eyes beamed on us through a gigantic pair of spectacles. “And what a lovely beard!”
“What does he call his-self?” Bruno whispered.
“He calls himself ‘Mein Herr,’” Sylvie whispered in reply.
Bruno shook his head impatiently. “That’s what he calls his hair, not his self, oo silly!” He appealed to me. “What doos he call his self, Mister Sir?”
“That’s the only name I know of,” I said. “But he looks very lonely. Don’t you pity his grey hairs?”
“I pities his self,” said Bruno, still harping on the misnomer; “but I doosn’t pity his hair, one bit. His hair ca’n’t feel!”
“We met him this afternoon,” said Sylvie. “We’d been to see Nero, and we’d had such fun with him, making him invisible again! And we saw that nice old gentleman as we came back.”
“Well, let’s go and talk to him, and cheer him up a little,” I said: “and perhaps we shall find out what he calls himself.”
The children came willingly. With one of them on each side of me, I approached the corner occupied by ‘Mein Herr.’ “You don’t object to children, I hope?” I began.
“Crabbed age and youth cannot live together!” the old man cheerfully replied, with a most genial smile. “Now take a good look at me, my children! You would guess me to be an old man, wouldn’t you?”
At first sight, though his face had reminded me so mysteriously of “the Professor,” he had seemed to be decidedly a younger man: but, when I came to look into the wonderful depth of those large dreamy eyes, I felt, with a strange sense of awe, that he was incalculably older: he seemed to gaze at us out of some by-gone age, centuries away.
MEIN HERR’S FAIRY-FRIENDS
“I don’t know if oo’re an old man,” Bruno answered, as the children, won over by the gentle voice, crept a little closer to him. “I thinks oo’re eighty-three.”
“He is very exact!” said Mein Herr.
“Is he anything like right?” I said.
“There are reasons,” Mein Herr gently replied, “reasons which I am not at liberty to explain, for not mentioning definitely any Persons, Places, or Dates. One remark only I will permit myself to make—that the period of life, between the ages of a hundred-and-sixty-five and a hundred-and-seventy-five, is a specially safe one.”
“How do you make that out?” I said.
“Thus. You would consider swimming to be a very safe amusement, if you scarcely ever heard of any one dying of it. Am I not right in thinking that you never heard of any one dying between those two ages?”
“I see what you mean,” I said: “but I’m afraid you ca’n’t prove swimming to be safe, on the same principle. It is no uncommon thing to hear of some one being drowned.”
“In my country,” said Mein Herr, “no one is ever drowned.”
“Is there no water deep enough?”
“Plenty! But we ca’n’t sink. We are all lighter than water. Let me explain,” he added, seeing my look of surprise. “Suppose you desire a race of pigeons of a particular shape or colour, do you not select, from year to year, those that are nearest to the shape or colour you want, and keep those, and part with the others?”
“We do,” I replied. “We call it ‘Artificial Selection.’”
“Exactly so,” said Mein Herr. “Well, we have practised that for some centuries—constantly selecting the lightest people: so that, now, everybody is lighter than water.”
“Then you never can be drowned at sea?”
“Never! It is only on the land—for instance, when attending a play in a theatre—that we are in such a danger.”
“How can that happen at a theatre?”
“Our theatres are all underground. Large tanks of water are placed above. If a fire breaks out, the taps are turned, and in one minute the theatre is flooded, up to the very roof! Thus the fire is extinguished.”
“And the audience, I presume?”
“That is a minor matter,” Mein Herr carelessly replied. “But they have the comfort of knowing that, whether drowned or not, they are all lighter than water. We have not yet reached the standard of making people lighter than air: but we are aiming at it; and, in another thousand years or so——”
“What doos oo do wiz the peoples that’s too heavy?” Bruno solemnly enquired.
“We have applied the same process,” Mein Herr continued, not noticing Bruno’s question, “to many other purposes. We have gone on selecting walking-sticks—always keeping those that walked best—till we have obtained some, that can walk by themselves! We have gone on selecting cotton-wool, till we have got some lighter than air! You’ve no idea what a useful material it is! We call it ‘Imponderal.’”
“What do you use it for?”
“Well, chiefly for packing articles, to go by Parcel-Post. It makes them weigh less than nothing, you know.”
“And how do the Post-Office people know what you have to pay?”
“That’s the beauty of the new system!” Mein Herr cried exultingly. “They pay us: we don’t pay them! I’ve often got as much as five shillings for sending a parcel.”
“But doesn’t your Government object?”
“Well, they do object, a little. They say it comes so expensive, in the long run. But the thing’s as clear as daylight, by their own rules. If I send a parcel, that weighs a pound more than nothing, I pay three-pence: so, of course, if it weighs a pound less than nothing, I ought to receive three-pence.”
“It is indeed a useful article!” I said.
“Yet even ‘Imponderal’ has its disadvantages,” he resumed. “I bought some, a few days ago, and put it into my hat, to carry it home, and the hat simply floated away!”
“Had oo some of that funny stuff in oor hat today?” Bruno enquired. “Sylvie and me saw oo in the road, and oor hat were ever so high up! Weren’t it, Sylvie?”
“No, that was quite another thing.” said Mein Herr. “There was a drop or two of rain falling: so I put my hat on the top of my stick—as an umbrella, you know. As I came along the road,” he continued, turning to me, “I was overtaken by——”