Upsidonia

Google

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for general ions on library shelves before il was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project

to make the world's books discoverable online.

Il has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often diflicult to discover.

Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the

publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parlies, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:

+ Make non-commercial use of the plus We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.

+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a b<x>k is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other

countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means il can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's hooks while helping authors ami publishers reach new audiences. You can search through I lie lull text of this book on I lie web
at |http : //books . qooqle . com/|

UPSIDONIA

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
the house or vekbilbeb

BXTONMANOB

THE ELDEST BOH

THE KHnSE-B DAUGHTEfi

THE HONOUR OF THE CUNTOHS

THE GREATEST OP THESE

THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH

WATEBMMADB

DPSIDOXIA

ABWOTON ABBET

TBI OKAFTOKB

HICHAM) BALDOCK

TBI CLINTONS AND OTHKM

UPS I DON I A

ARCHIBALD MARSHALL

Author of " Elton Manor," " The Honour of Um Clinton*,'

HEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1919

To tu Thus

Come Chuuotiu,
K, M, £ N.

503223

UFSIDONIA

CHAPTER I

I hid been walking for many days, carrying
my pack, enjoying myself hugely and spending
next to nothing. I had got into a wild hilly
country, where habitation was very sparse,
and had walked for hoars that morning along
a rough road without meeting a single human
being.

In the middle of the day I came to a moor-
side hamlet, where I got something of a meal,
and set out again almost immediately, mean-
ing to find some place where I could enjoy an
hour's sleep. For it was very hot, and I had
already walked over twenty miles.

But as I left the village, I was joined by a
gentleman of obliging manners but somewhat
unkempt appearance, who invited me to turn
aside and visit the old jet caves, which had
once been famous in this locality, though long
since disused.

For anything but a cave, I should have done
my best to shake him off, but I have a great
love of caves, especially of those which go

2" ' '"'' TJPglDONIA

mysteriously back into the bowels of the earth,
and no one knows their ending. They are fall
of romance, and call up all sorts of delightful
visions. From Eastern tales of magic and
treasure to brisk tales of smugglers, the en-
trance to a cave has always been the entrance
to regions of myBtery, in which anything may
happen. So I immediately accepted the invita-
tion to visit these caves, which were only a few-
hundred yards away from the main road.

At first sight they were a trifle disappoint-
ing. There were three of them, at the foot of
a high bank of shale, almost hidden by trees
and shrubs. The shale had nearly cloBed the
entrances, and one looked over a bank of it,
which left a hole hardly more than big enough
to creep through. Still, they were undoubtedly
caves, and not mere holes in the hillside. The
largest one was full of water, and little ferns
grew luxuriantly on the sides and roof, which
dripped continuously. One of the others waa
choked by a fall of earth a little way from the
entrance, and my guide told me that this had
happened quite recently, after a very wet spell.
The third was comparatively dry, and he said
that he had himself penetrated more than a
mile into it, with no signs of its ending.

TTPSIDONIA 3

Whether this was true or not, I could not
resist trying it. I had an electric torch, fully
charged, in my pack, and it was a great chance
to have a cave to explore with it. My friend
demurred a little at accompanying me. He
said that if the other cave had fallen in, after
so many years, this one was not unlikely to fall
in now at any time, and we should find our -
' selves in an awkward fix if it should fall in'
while we were exploring, and cut off our re-
treat. I had no wish for his company, and did
not press him; but when I got out the torch,
and flashed it, he thought he would come after
all. I think he had at heart the same sort of
feeling about caves and electric torches that I
had.

"We got over the mound on to the muddy floor
of the cave. The roof was high enough to
enable us to walk upright, and we went for-
ward singly, straight ahead into the darkness.

We had got in perhaps thirty or forty yards,
and I had just switched on the torch, when a
stone or something fell in front of us with a
noisy plump. My companion clutched me by
the arm. "I believe there's going to be a fall,"
he said.

I shook him off and continued, and again

4 TJPSIDONIA

something fell, that made still more noise.

"Come back!" he shouted. "Gome back!"

I turned round to see him ruining towards
the patch of sunlight, and then there was a
load roar in my ears, which, however, instantly
became dead silence.

For a moment I was confused, but went on,
forgetting all about my late companion. When
I turned round again he had disappeared, and
the patch of sunlight also. So I continued on
my way, and seemed to be always mounting
upwards, with the ground quite dry, and the
roof of the cave still some way above my head.

I had certainly now walked a mile when, to
my surprise, I saw a point of light in front of
me, which increased as I approached it, and
presently showed itself as a wide opening.

I came out into a place much like that at
which I had entered, except that it was still
more masked by shrubs, and found myself in
the clearing of a wood. It seemed to me that
I had come quite straight along the under-
ground passage, so that I must be on the way
in which I intended to go. The cave, as a cave,
had been disappointing, and there was nothing
to be gained by going back. I would take my
nap, and then find the road again.

TTPSIDONIA 5

I looked about for a place to lie down in,
and as I did so saw a very ragged dirty man
coining towards me.

I was rather annoyed at this. Having shaken
off one uninvited companion, I did not want
to be troubled with another.

There was something rather striking abont
his face, in spite of his unkempt hair and
beard — a look of self-possession, even of pride,
and, as he kept his eyes on me approaching
him, almost of arrogance.

However, he was poor enough, to all appear-
ances, and I thought that if I gave him some
money he would probably want to go away at
once and spend it. So I accosted him cheer-
fully and offered him a sixpence.

I had made no mistake about bis arrogance.
He drew himself up, and his eyes flashed at
me.

"How dare yout" he began. "I will ";

and he looked round as if to summon someone
to aid him in resenting an insult.

"Oh, all right," I said, pocketing the coin;

"if yon are as proud as all that ! But I

meant no harm, and I'm almost as poor as you
are."

"The more shame to you for behaving like

6 TJPSIDONIA

that," he said hotly. "I could forgive it, per-
haps, in one who was richer. I will not take
your money; and if you nse your superior
strength to force it on me, I warn you that you
will not hear the last of it."

I felt sorry for the poor creature. I took the
sixpence out of my pocket again, and held it
out to him.

"Come now, take it," I said. "Go and get
yourself a good meal, or a drink if you like.
You look as if it wouldn't do you any harm."

He was still more enraged. "You impudent
scoundrel!" he cried. "I'll have you arrested
for this." And he stalked off with his head
in the air, wrapping Ms rags around him.

He looked such an absurd figure that I sent
an involuntary laugh after him, which caused
him to turn round and shake his fist at me.
I had not meant him to hear, for I was sorry
for him; but I reflected before I had chosen my
mossy resting-place under a spreading oak,
that with so great a contempt for money and
what money represented in the way of bodily
comfort, he was not bo much in want of pity as
he seemed to be. Then I took off my knapsack,
and pillowing my head upon it was soon in a
deep sleep.

UPSIDONIA 7

As, after a long time, I began to regain con-
sciousness, I became aware of a touch on my
body about the region of my waist. It could
only have been a second or two before the
actuality disengaged itself from the stuff of my
dreams, and I suddenly awoke, and sprang up
into a sitting posture, to see a figure disappear-
ing among the trees. Feeling in my waistcoat
pocket, I found that my watch had disap-
peared.

I jumped up, and seizing my knapsack in
one hand and my stout walking-stick in the
other, gave chase.

I had not very far to go. When I got round
the tree behind which the thief had disap-
peared, I saw to my surprise that he was an
elderly, if not an old man, dressed in a frock
coat and a tall hat. He was stout, and ap-
peared to be grossly fed, for as I came up to
him he turned and put up his hands to warn
me off — my watch was in one of them; but he
was so winded by his few yards' run that he
was not able to speak. In his mouth was a
large and expensive-smelling cigar, and he
formed the oddest figure of a watch-snatcher
that could well be imagined.

I seized my watch out of his hand, and he

8 UPSIDONIA

found breath enough to bleat out: "What are
you doing! They're after you. Give me all
your money quickly, before they come."

' ' Ton old rascal I " I cried, and was going on
to give him a piece of my mind, when my at-
tention was distracted by a hullabaloo from
the road, which was only a few yards off, and
from which we could be plainly seen.

"There's the rascal! That's hunt" I heard
shouted, and saw a considerable concourse of
people advancing -towards me, headed by a
policeman, and the ragged man to whom I had
tendered the coin.

The presence of a policeman in that, as I had
thought, lonely spot, was a better piece of for-
tune than I could have hoped for. "Yes, here
he is," I said. "He stole my watch while I
was asleep, and ran off with it. Constable, I
give him in charge."

The policeman had leapt the ditch which
divided the wood from the road, and now came
straight towards me with a look of determina-
tion on his face.

"Take him!" shouted the ragged man; and,
to my utter astonishment, he seized me by the
collar, and said: "Now you come along with
me quietly, or it will be the worse for you."

UPSIDONIA 9

I shook him off roughly. I was young and
strong, and he was neither.

"What are yon doing!" I asked angrily.
"Here's the thief I Take hold of him."

The fat man turned away with a shrng of the
shoulders. "I wash my hands of it," he said.
"Ton can do what yon like with him."

I was so infuriated with his impudence that
I made a dash for him. But the policeman was
on me again, and with him several others from
the crowd. In spite of my struggles I was soon
overpowered.

"Are you all madf" I cried. "There's the
thief I Why don't you take hunt I've done
nothing."

They paid not the slightest attention to my
protestations. The ragged man had taken no
part in my capture, but stood aside, and di-
rected the others with an air of authority.
This was the more remarkable, because the
greater part of them were not like the ordinary
crowd that follows the police on an errand of
duty, but were well-dressed, and had all the air
of being well-to-do or even rich.

I appealed to them. "Do give a fellow a
chance," I said. "I'm on a walking-tour, and

10 UPSIDONIA

I dare say I look like a tramp. But I'm quite
respectable.'*

They out me short by dragging me towards
the road, where a smart Victoria was standing,
at a point towards which other carriages were
now driving.

The policeman said: "Yon 're charged with
trying to force money on this gentleman ; and
I warn yon that anything yon now say will be
used in evidence againBt you."

I saw it was no use protesting further. I
was either asleep and dreaming, in which ease
I should presently awake; or I was in the
hands of a set of lunatics, and mast wait until
I got again into the company of sensible men.

But it annoyed me to see the smug old thief
retiring with all the honours of war, while I
was being led off in ignominious captivity. He
was actually now stepping into the Victoria,
and the cockaded coachman on the box was
touching his hat to him.

"I warn you that you will be sorry for this,"
I said to my captors. "But, at any rate, take
that man too. I tell you that he stole my
watch, and wanted to take all my money before
you came up."

They took no notice of this appeal, except

UPSIDONIA 11

that one of two ill-dressed men amongst the
well-dressed ones said to the other: "Old Perry
is really rather overdoing it. He'll be had np
for tampering with justice if he's not careful."

"Then why don't yon get him taken up
now!" I asked.

Bat they looked at me coldly and turned
away.

"Mr. Perry," said the ragged man, "this is
a dangerous criminal. Will you let the consta-
ble drive him to the police station, and walk
back with ust"

The old humbug of whom this remarkable
request was made turned up a sanctimonious
face, and replied: "I am in my proper place
amongst the low and degraded. Let the pris-
oner drive with me."

There were murmurs of astonishment at this,
and one of the poor-looking men said to my
ragged one: "Oh, let him alone! Hell get
tired of it by and by."

I was then ordered into the carriage, and we
drove off at a foot's pace, the other carriages
turning back to accompany us, and the crowd
walking behind and on either side.

I was surprised to see that the country was
very different from what I bad imagined it to

12 UPSIDONIA

be when I had come through the cave. Be-
fore that, as I have said, there had been few
signs of human habitation; but now I had sud-
denly come into a populous country-side, and
seemed to be not far from a town of some size.

For we were passing large houses in large
gardens, villas, and cottages; and the road,
which had been of the roughest, was wide and
smooth, and there was a good deal of traffic on
it.

I could not make out in the least where I had
come to. I had known that I could not be many
miles off the village of Eppington, but could
think of no considerable town within a radius
of fifty miles of where I had spent the night ;
and I knew I could not have walked that dis-
tance. I might have put a question to my com-
panion ; but I was so annoyed that I could not
bring myself to address him.

It was he who first addressed me. He was
still ostentatiously smoking Ms rich cigar, and
looked at me out of a bilious, but impudently
benevolent eye, and said: "Young man, I would
have saved you if I could. I think yon must
now be convinced of that. It may be that in
the exercise of my charity I have overstepped
the mark, and have done wrong. It now only

UPSIDONIA 13

Teraains for you to show your gratitude by
keeping what has passed to yourself. If a
charge is brought against me, I look to you to
shield my good name, or my sphere of influence
may be much diminished."

My reply to this preposterous piece of cant
was a somewhat violent assurance that I should
see that he got the punishment he deserved.
He held up his fat hands in pained astonish-
ment, and thereafter kept silence.

CHAPTER H

By and by we came to a tramway terminus,
where an electric car was standing. The po-
liceman, who had been walking by the side of
the carriage, the ragged man, and many of oar
other followers, jumped on to it. The fat
rascal in whose carriage I was seated ordered
the coachman to drive on faster, and I was not
sorry to be relieved of most of onr escort. Bnt
the other carriages, of which there were per-
haps half a dozen, and some of them very
splendid equipages indeed, continued with as,
and my appearance was still rather more pub-
lic than I could have wished.

We presently passed into a busy street of
shops. I could not for the life of me imagine
what town it was that I had come to. It was
evidently a place of considerable importance
and a large population, which crowded the
streets, and frequently jeered at onr little pro-

Everything around me seemed usual. The

shops and buildings were like those of any

other large town, and the people much the

u

UPSIDONIA 15

same— a mixture of old and young, rich and
poor.

But there was just one thing that struck me
as a little strange. The poor people — even the
very poorest, like the man at whose hands I
had been so remarkably arrested — walked
amongst the rest with an air far more assured
than was customary; and the well-dressed peo-
ple seemed to have rather a hang-dog sort of
look. I might not have noticed this but for the
predicament in. which I found myself; but my
attention being fixed upon the point it was im-
possible to ignore it.

We drew up at the door of a police station,
and I was taken inside, where I lost no time in
making a somewhat violent protest to the ser-
geant in charge, and again invited him to take
the preposterous Mr. Ferry into custody.

As before, not the smallest notice was taken
of my indignant speech. I was told sharply to
hold my tongue, and the charge against me was
repeated in the same ridiculous form in which
it had first been made, and entered in the ser-
geant's ledger. The ragged man appeared be-
fore the formalities were concluded, and, to my
now painful bewilderment, was treated with
marked respect by the police, whom he ad-

16 UPSIDONIA

dressed with calm authority. His name was
entered as my accuser, and, upon the charge
being read over to me, I discovered him to be
"Lord Potter."

Well, if he was really a nobleman in disguise,
that perhaps accounted for the absurd sub-
serviency with which he was treated. But the
disguise was so complete that my indignation
was redoubled, and I made one more very
strong protest before I was led away.

"What place is this!" I asked, when I saw
that no more notice was going to be taken of
my protest than before.

Lord Potter stared at me with high disdain
on his dirty face, and Mr. Perry with a most
irritating air of grieved sympathy.

"Perhaps," I said, "I can find someone I
know, who will come to my assistance. I don't
know in the least what town I am in."

"Come along," said the constable who had
arrested me. "You'll only make it worse by
being impudent. You know well enough what
place you're in. Now are you coming quietly,
or shall I have to take you I"

I thought it best to go quietly. I was taken
through a door opposite to the one by which
we had entered, and rather to my surprise

UPSIDONIA 17

found myself in a carpeted passage. We
passed several other doors on either side, until
we eame to one which the policeman unlocked.

"By the look of your clothes," he said, as he
fumbled with the key, "you ought to be better
treated; but we're pretty fnll np, and you'll
only be here till to-morrow morning. You
must make the best of it. Here, take this."

He pushed half a crown into my hand, and
me through the door, which he immediately
stmt and locked after me, leaving me for the
first time in my life in a prison cell.

My surprise, at the extraordinary action of
a policeman in pressing a tip upon a prisoner,
was overcome by the fierce anger I felt at be-
ing locked up in a pitch dark cell, which could
not have been more than five or six feet square;
for as I put out my hands I found I could
touch the walls on all sides. What mad piece
of inhumanity was this, to add to the burlesque
charge on which I was to be tried 1 There was
not even a stool to sit down on. Was I really
to be confined in this dark hole until I could be
taken before a magistrate on the following
morning 1 I turned, and banged and kicked on
the door in uncontrollable rage, and shouted at
the top of my voice.

18 UPSIDONIA

But there was no answer, and presently I de-
sisted, determined to make the best of my
situation.

I began to feel round the walls, and imme-
diately came to a little obstacle, which with an
immense lift of relief I recognized as an
electric switch. I turned it, and the place was
flooded with light. Then I discovered that I
was not in a cell at all, but in a little lobby, in
all four wallB of which were doors.

I opened one, and found a deep cupboard,
with hooks in it, bnt nothing else. I shnt it
and opened the next, and fonnd myself on the
threshold of a small bnt comfortably furnished
parlour.

Opposite to the door was a window looking
on to a strip of garden gay with flowers; but
the window, which was of ordinary size, was
guarded by thick iron bars. It was this fact
that brought it home to me that, incredible as
it might appear, this room, with a comfortable
armchair by the window, with books on a shelf,
and pictures on the prettily papered walls, was
my prison cell, and not the narrow lobby into
which I had first come.

The third door in the lobby led into a well-
appointed bathroom, and leading out of the

TJPSIDONIA 19

parlour was a little bedroom, with the sheets
turned down on the bed, and a soft of pink
pyjamas laid ont all ready for its occupant.

It may be imagined that all this, following
on what had already happened, puzzled me not
a little; but since this convenient little self-
contained flat was mine to make myself at home
in until the following morning, I could, at any
rate, take advantage of its amenities.

I was dusty and footsore, and very glad of
a hot bath. As I lay steaming in it, I recalled
the words of the policeman, before he had
pressed the half-crown into my hand and shut
me into the lobby: "By the look of your clothes
you ought to be better treated."

Well, as for my clothes, they had certainly
been made by a good tailor, but they were of
well-nigh immemorial age, and were covered
with dust and travel-stains. I wore also an
aged green hat of soft felt, and a flannel shirt
with a low collar and a whisp of an old tie ; and
my boots, white with dust, were an easy but un-
lovely pair that I kept for these expeditions.
No, my clothes could not possibly have indi-
cated any exalted station in life, nor even the
moderate degree of gentility that was mine by

%0 TJPSIDONIA

birth and education. . The man must have been
sneering at me.

Bnt then, what could he have meant by re-
ferring to better treatment? I was lodged like
a coronation guest. Was it the habit of the
authorities of this extraordinary town, whose
identity puzzled me more and more, to house
their prisoners like potentates, since my quar-
ters were considered only fit to be apologized
for? I could only give up the problem, and
wait for what should happen next.

When I had had my bath, brushed the dust
off my clothes, and put on a clean shirt and
clean socks out of my pack, I began to feel hun-
gry; and such was the effect upon me of my
surroundings that I looked around me, almost
without intention, for a bell. There was one by
the mantelpiece, which I rang, and then waited
with some curiosity for what should happen.

Within a very short time I heard the outer
door being opened, and there came into the
room a waiter with a napkin over his shoulder.
Except that his clothes were seedy, and his
shirt-front rather crumpled, he had the appear-
ance of a servant at a would-be smart restau-
rant, ready to do what was wanted of him, but
having no very high opinion of the person from

UPSIDONIA 21

whom he received his orders. However, he
seemed to have anticipated my wants, for with-
out a word he held out to me a bill of fare, and
I accepted it with equal unconcern and looked
over it.

It was of a fairly elaborate description, and
as a precautionary measure, before making
any selection, I said: "I suppose I don't have
to pay for any of this?"

His lip curled as he replied : "Of course not.
Choose whatever you like and pnt a tick against
it."

Thas encouraged, I ordered a nice little din-
ner of clear soup, truite-au-bleu, lamb cutlets
with new potatoes, a slice of ham with madeira
sauce and spinach, a pecke Melba, angels on
horseback, and some strawberries to finish up
with. He took the order without flinching, and
asked: "Do yon want any wine?"

"Well, yes," I said, "if there's nothing to
pay for it."

He flushed angrily. "I don't want any of
your impudence," he said. "You will pay
nothing at all for anything you have as long
as you are here, and if you are not very care-
ful you will be here a good deal longer than
you bargain for."

22 UPSIDONIA

"I don't know that I should altogether ob-
ject to that," I said, and took the wine list
from him.

It was an excellent list, and under the cir-
cumstances I made excellent nse of it. I al-
lowed myself a glaBS of white Tokay, and
another of Chateau d'Yquem, a pint of Pom-
mery, 1900, and a bottle of '68 port to sit with
later on. He looked more contemptuous than
ever as he took the order, and asked disdain-
fully: "Don't you want a liqueur with your
coffee T"

"I had forgotten that for the moment," I
said. "Have yon any very old brandy T"

"We have some eighteen-fifteen," he said;
"but I need scarcely say we are very seldom
asked for it."

"Well, on the terms that yon have indicated,
you are asked for it now," I said. "And I
should like one or two really good cigars,
fairly strong — something like the one that Mr.
Perry was smoking this afternoon, if you can
get them."

He went out of the room without a word, and
carefully locked the outer door behind him.
However inexplicable my treatment, I was not,
at any rate, to forget that I was a prisoner.

UPSIDONIA 23

Tired with my long walk, and the somewhat
disturbing experiences I had been through, I
fell fast asleep in the easy chair by the open
window, through which came sweet wafts from
a patch of night-scented stock in the garden
outside.

I only awoke when the waiter brought in the
first course of my dinner. He had laid the
table without disturbing me, and had put a
vase of roses in the middle and four tall candles
at the corners, with rose-coloured shades.

"I'm sorry I haven't brought my evening
clothes," I said, as I took my seat.

He made no reply to this pleasantry, and
his air of high superiority began to annoy
me.

"Do you generally wait upon prisoners in
this way!" I aBked him, when he brought in
the fish.

"We do in the case of prisoners who look
like gentlemen and behave like pigs," was his
surprising reply, which I turned over in my
mind before I said: "This seems a topsy-
turvy place altogether, but I should really like
to know how I have behaved like a pig."

"You can wallow in your hoggishness as
much as you like," he said acidly, "but if you

24 UPSIDONIA

have the impudence to address any more re-
marks to me, 111 punch your head for you."

I looked round at him, standing attentively
behind my chair. He was a frail man, and
looEed hungry.

"You might find that two could play at
that game," I said, with my eye on him; and
he flushed, hut did not flinch.
"Is that a threat!" he asked. "Because if

it ig .» and he turned as if to leave the

room-
As I didn't know what, in the general re-
versal of things, might be the punishment here
for threatening to retaliate on a waiter who
proposed to punch one's head, and I wanted to
finish my dinner, I said: "If you're disinclined
for conversation you can have your own way."
We went through the rest of the menu in
silence, I enjoying the good things provided for
me, and he serving me with the readiest atten-
tion to the matter in hand. We did not address
another word to each other until he had care-
fully poured out from its basket-cradle a glass
of the wonderful port.

I sipped it, and thought it just in the very
least touched, and told him so. He took the
glass, sniffed at the wine, and tasted it. "It's

UPSIDONIA 35

absolutely right," he said, "but of courBe you
can have another bottle if you like."

"Thank you," I said, and began to wonder,
rather uneasily, as he was away fetching it, if
in some way I was not to pay pretty dearly for
the remarkable treatment I was undergoing.

The second bottle of port was beyond criti-
cism. When I had expressed my approval, the
waiter put it on a little table by the side of
the extremely easy chair, and indicated, but
without saying so, that he wished to clear
away. This he did, in complete silence; but be-
fore he finally left the room came over to
where I was standing, and, holding out half a
sovereign, said, still with the same inflection of
contempt: "That's for yourself."

I took the coin in my hand, and said, some-
what after the manner of a cabman who has
been offered twopence for a pour boire: "What
do you call thist"

He flushed again, took it back, gave me half
a crown instead, and then left the room..

My evening in prison had so far brought me
a dinner such as I seldom enjoyed, and five
shillings in money. Why, but for my last ques-
tion, it would have brought me seven and six-
pence more, I was quite unable to imagine.

CHAPTER IH

The cigars provided for me, if not of the exact
brand as those smoked by Mr. Perry, were very
good, and I had been enjoying one of them for
some little time when I heard the outside door
again being unlocked.

"Now," I thought, "I may get some ex-
planation of this extraordinary state of affairs,
and may possibly find myself wishing that my
entertainment had not cost the ratepayers of
this town quite so much money."

But I was in a state of such complete bodily
satisfaction that I did not much care what
should happen, and sat still until the door of
my room was opened and a young man
dressed in evening clothes came in.

He seemed to be under the influence of some
agitation, and as the reek of my cigar met his
nostrils, and his eyes fell upon my bottle of
port resting in its cradle, his jaw dropped.

He raised his eyes to mine, and said: "I
have come to make an appeal to you, sir."

"Well, sit down and make it," I said, iiidi-

UPSIDONIA 27

eating a chair. "Will you hare a glass of <
wine — I can recommend it — or a cigar 1"

He looked at me sternly. "I have brought
myself to come and ask a favonr of yon," he
said. "Yon look like a gentleman; yon can at
least try to behave as such."

I was in that comfortable state in which the
idiosyncrasies of other people occasion one
more amnsement than surprise. I was also
a little inclined to loquacity. I smiled at
him.

"I don't pretend to understand you," I said;
"but I am glad you think I look like a gentle-
man. I am one. My great-grandfather ruined
himself at Crockford's, and although one of my
great-uncles set np a shop, he never sold any-
thing, and died poor. I am poor myself, bat
none the less deserving."

Hie face brightened a little. "I thought you
were a gentleman," he said, "in spite of your
behaviour. So am I, and of course my father
too, although yon might not think it from our
appearance. Possibly you are engaged in the
same good work as we are."

"I am not engaged in any good work at
present," I said, "except that of making my-
self as comfortable as circumstances will per-

28 UPSIDONIA

mit. As for you, I think you look very gentle-
manlike; I don't think I have had the pleasure
of meeting your father."

"He is Mr. Perry," he said, "who tried his
utmost to save you from the results of your
jest — I don't believe it meant more than that —
with Lord Potter. As far as my father was
concerned it was an unfortunate jest; and I
might say the same as far as you are con-
cerned, to judge from your present serious
situation. In spite of his noble and self-sacri-
ficing life, my father is misunderstood by a
good many people; and Lord Potter, for one,
would like to see his career of usefulness
stopped. Now he has a handle against him.
He is to be called &b a witness when you come
up before the magistrate to-morrow morning;
and it rests with you whether that kind and
good old man, whose life is a lesson to us all,
shall be arrested himself and suffer the dis-
grace of a criminal trial. Surely you cannot
be so lost to all sense of gratitude as to bring
that about!"

I did not know in the least what he was talk-
ing about. His ideas seemed to be as topsy-
turvy as those of the rest of the people I had
so far met in this curious place. But I was in

UPSIDONIA 29

too lazy a mood to make much effort to get at
the bottom of all that was puzzling me.

"I should hate to get your father into trou-
ble," I said. "I don't understand why a pros-
perous-looking elderly gentleman should pinch
my watch and demand all my cash ; but I dare
say he did it all for the best, and as he didn't
get anything, I am prepared to be lenient with
him. Ill do what I can."

He thanked me profusely. "You have only
to stand on your dignity and refuse to answer
questions, and they can prove nothing against
him," he said.

"All right! Anything to oblige. You might
tell me what all this means, though; and to be-
gin with, what town this is; for I haven't the
slightest idea where I am."

At this quite ordinary question, he seemed to
be even more puzzled than I was. "I can't un-
derstand you," he said, and it was plain by the
expression on his face that he spoke the truth.
""Where do you come from?"

"I come from a little place called London,"
I said. "I don't know whether you have ever
heard of it."

"No, never," be replied. "What part of the
country is it int"

30 UPSIDONIA

"Do you ever happen to have heard of Eng-
land?" I asked; and again he said: "No,
never."

"Well, what country are we in now?" I
asked, willing to humour him.

"Why, in Upsidonia, of course."

"In what!"

"Upsidonia. Look here, I'm not what I seem
to be. Surely you can tell that from the way
I speak! Stop trying to play with me, and ex-
plain yourself."

"Tell me first what town this is."

"Culbut."

He said it is much the same tone as I might
have answered "Manchester" or "Birming-
ham," to anyone who should have asked me
the same question in either of those cities —
with a look of surprise and enquiry.

"Oh, Culbut!" I said. "Yes, of course.
And Culbut is in Upsidonia. I see. Well, in
London, England, where I come from, they
dont lock a person up for offering sixpence to
a tramp, even when the tramp tarns out to be
a lord; and if they do lock them up, it isn't
in a place like this."

He looked round the cosy little room with
some disgust.

UPSIDONIA 31

"It is disgraceful," he said. "My father
ought to know about it. I didn't know there
were any such places left You've a perfect
right to make trouble about this. It is a clear
ease for the Prisoners' Aid Society, and I'm
Bure, if you act properly, as you promised to,
for my father, he will take up the case."

"Thanks very much," I said. "I have no
particular complaint to make. The manners
and customs of — what's the name of the placet
— Culbut — are different from those I've been
accustomed to, but they don't seem to be en-
tirely objectionable. Can yon tell me what
they will do, by the by, supposing I am found
guilty of the charge brought against me —
whatever it is — to-morrowl"

"Oh, we'll try and get yon off. Your ap-
pearance is in yoar favour,"

"Thank you. But tell me what they will do
if I am found guilty."

"Well, there has been a good deal of it
lately, and the police are determined to stamp
it out. And Potter is rather high game to fly
at, yon must admit. He is determined to get
you a month, which is the limit without bodily
assault."

32 TJPSIDONIA

"Oh, a month I" I said, somewhat taken
aback. "With hard labour T"

"I think we ought to be able to manage that.
We'll try our beBt."

"That is very good of you indeed; but I
shouldn't like you to put yourselves out at
all."

" "I'll tell you what," he said, with a laugh,
"we will tell them that in the country you
come from it isn't a crime to give your money
away. Could you remember to stick to that
story t"

"I dare say I might," I said, "if I tie a knot
in my handkerchief. By the way, isn't it a
crime here to take money from people, and
watches, and bo onl"

"A crime! Of course not. We should call
that philanthropy."

"Oh, I see. Then your father is a phil-
anthropist."

"Of course he is; one of the best known in
Culbut. You don't really suppose he is the rich
man he appears to be, do youT"

"I should have thought he might be fairly
well off, if he has been practising philanthropy
for any length of time."

UPSIDONIA 33

"For a lifetime," he said reverentially.

"I will tell yoa my father's story."
"Do!" I encouraged him. "I should like to

hear it."
I lit another cigar. He cleared his throat

and began.

CHAPTEE IV

"Ottb family," said young Perry, "has held a
good position in Cnlbut for many generations.
My great-grandfather is said to have come
here as a boy with ten thousand pounds in his
pocket; but by diligence and sobriety he man-
aged to get rid of nearly all of it while he was
still a young man."

"How did he do it!" I asked.

"He got into the warehouse of a poor cloth-
merchant. He stuck to his work night and day,
and lost his employers so much money, that
they took him into partnership when he was
only twenty-one. Then he redoubled hiB ef-
forts, bought in the dearest markets and sold
in the cheapest, and decreased the trade of the
firm by leaps and hounds. He married his
master's daughter, and she brought him a con-
siderable number of debts. Before he was
thirty he had retired from business a very poor
man, and spent the rest of his life serving his
fellow citizens. He was Lord Mayor of Cul-
H

UPSIDONIA 35

but three times, and was offered a baronetcy,
which he refused.

"My great-grandfather and my grandfather
were both poor men, and my father was
brought np in the lap of indigence. Bnt when
he was quite a boy, he 8aw a sight that affected
his whole life.

"He was walking along the poor street in
which he lived, when he saw a carriage with
four horses and postillions coming along. In
it was seated a miserably rich-looking old man
swathed in furs, who was being taken off to
prison. My father hung on to the back of the
carriage — he was but a child — and was carried
inside the prison gates. There he saw the
treatment that was then considered good
enough for rich malefactors. They drove
through a large garden to a fine-looking house,
and when the carriage stopped at the door a
groom of the chambers came out, followed by
two footmen in powdered wigs and silk stock-
ings. The wretched creature was taken inside,
and before he went away my father learnt that
he would be treated with every refinement of
luxury. And what do you think his crime
wast"

"I haven't the least idea," I replied. "Prob-

36 tJPSIDONIA

ably making somebody a present of a for-
tune."

"No. His crime was that he had thrown a
pot of caviare into a provision shop."
"And you're not allowed to do that here!"
"You must remember that he was an ok 1
man, in the last stages of opulence, and actually
surfeited with food. Ab my father went back
to his happy home, which had always-lacked all
but the barest necessities of life, the contrast
between his lot and that of this unfortunate
creature, bred from his earliest years to the
burdens of wealth, took strong hold of his
youthful imagination. Then and there he
vowed his life to the Bervice of the unhappy
rich, and especially to the alleviation of the lot
of prisoners; and nothing ever turned him
from his purpose. When he grew up, he left
home, much against the wishes of his parents,
and went to live in one of the richest parts of
the town, so as to get to know the wealthy thor-
oughly, and to be able to help them when the
time came for him to do so. He even took their
money, and, so far as a man of education could,
became like them. Of course, there are many
who follow in his footsteps now, but most of
them live in settlements, and only come into

UPSIDONIA 37

actual contact with the people they are trying
to help by going in and ont amongst them in
their own homes. Bnt he was the first ; and he
really lived with them, in a house with twenty
bedrooms, luxuriously furnished, and with a
chef and a great many servants. I believe he
did actually nothing for himself for two whole
years, and, of course, he broke down under the
strain."

"Poor fellow!" I murmured sympatheti-
cally.

"He went back for a time to the life of
poverty in which he had been brought up. But
even then, he refused to live like the rest of
his family, and, as far as his enfeebled state
of health would permit, practised secret in-
dulgences, and never lost sight of his great
purpose in life.

"He made a convert of my mother, who was
the daughter of a farm-labourer, and of one
of the proudest and poorest families in Up-
sidonia. They started their married life in a
comfortable villa, with four indoor servants
and two oat — my father could not, of course,
expect his young wife to take the extreme
plunge that he had himself — and he has told
me that she acted like a heroine, and never

38 UPSIDONIA

grumbled at the life of strict affluence they laid
down for themselves. 1 was born, in that
house, and it was my mother's own wish that
we then moved to a larger one, where we have
lived ever since. We have all been brought np
to think nothing of wealth, and each of ns in
our several ways does his or her utmost to help
our parentB in their noble work. My eldest
sister has even married a stockbroker, and a
very good fellow he is, and it is wonderful how
he has overcome the defects of his upbringing.

"Well, I have been talking for a long time;
but I wanted to show you how dreadful it
would be if a man like my father should Buffer
disgrace for committing an error which only
arose from his eager desire to serve one whom
he saw to be in an unfortunate position."

"Oh, you need not fear anything of that
sort after what you have told me," I assured
him. "I would rather go to prison myself —
even such a prison as I am in now — than that
he shoold."

"It is very good of you indeed to say so,"
he said gratefully. "But you need have no
fear of this sort of prison. My father would
exert his influence to have yon sent to Pank-
hurst, where, chiefly by his efforts, everything

UPSIDONIA 39

is as it should be, and a real attempt is made
to raise prisoners. Even in the first division,
you would be permitted to do something use-
ful, such as breaking stones, and you would not
be expected to eat more than two meals a day,
and those quite meagre ones."

"Well, to tell you the truth," I said, "one
of my hobbies is to study conditions of prison
life in the various countries I visit. I am very
glad to have had the opportunity of judging
for myself in this way, and though I don't want
to go to prison myself any longer, if it can be
avoided, yon would be conferring a real benefit
upon me if yon could get me sent to the most
luxurious penal establishment you possess, sup-
posing I am found guilty."

"Do you really mean that?" he asked.

"Yes, I really do. I know it must seem odd
to you, but I am like that."

He rose and shook hands with me. "I can't
tell you how I admire your spirit," he said.

I drank half a glass of port and rose to still
greater heights of self-abnegation. I was
anxious to show myself worthy of his praise.
"As long as I remain in Upsidonia," I said,
"I should like to live entirely amongst the
very rich, and just as if I were rich myself.

40 UPSIDONIA

Could you manage that for me, do you think,
in return for what I am going to do for your
father t"

He laughed. "If you really mean it," he
said, " there won't he the slightest difficulty.
And we are the right people to help you.
They might not show themselves as they really
are to a Stranger, for they stick to one another
wonderfully, and the more respectable among
them hide their riches as much as possible.
Some of the tragedies of wealth one comeB
across are heart-breaking. But I mustn't be-
gin on that subject, or I should never end. If
you can see your way to relieving a few of the
rich in Culbut of a little of their load of
misery, you will be doing a great work."

"I shall quite hope to be able to do that,"
I said. "I might be able to take away a con-
siderable sum of money."

Again he shook hands with- me, but his emo-
tion did not permit of much speech. "You will
have your reward," he said simply.

"I quite hope so," I replied. "What, muBt
you be going f Are you sure you won't take
— I mean are you sure you are quite wrapped
up enough 1 The night air is a little chilly."

"Thank you, I shall walk home," he said.

UPSIDONIA 41

"Well, I am very much obliged to you for what
70a have promised to do. ¥e shan't forget
it, and anything we can do for you in return,
as long as you remain in TJpsidonia, you may
be sure we shall do."

CHAPTER V

Thby seemed to keep early hours in Upsi-
donia.* A cap of tea was brought to me at
half-past seven, and I was told that 1 must
breakfast not later than a qnarter-past eight,
for the court sat at nine.

It was not unlike what a police court in Lon-
don might have been, but the magistrate sat in
his shirt sleeves, for it was a hot day, and wore
corduroy trousers. There was a crowd of well-
dressed loafers at the back of the court, and
amongst them some richly attired women.
Lord Potter, looking as if he had not washed
or taken off his clothes since the day before,
occupied a seat on the bench. Mr. Perry and
his son were in the well of the court

I gave my name, which I had withheld the
night before, as John Howard, but refused to
say where I came from or what my occupation
was. Apparently, this was not unusual, for I
wsb not pressed in any way.*

The policeman who had arrested me deposed
that from information received he had pro-

■See Note*.

UPSIDONIA 43

ceeded to a certain place and taken me into
custody, not without difficulty, for I had shown
violence and had tried to get him to arrest
another person instead.

Asked whether he saw that person in that
court, he indicated Mr. Perry, who looked very
uncomfortable, and I said at once: "That was
all a mistake, your worship. I had been fast
asleep, and hardly knew what I was doing. I
mistook that gentleman for somebody else."

My interruption rather scandalised the court,
but I managed to get it out before I was
stopped, and I could see that the magistrate
was relieved at my having spoken.

"There is no charge against our respected
fellow-townsman, " he said, bowing towards
Mr. Perry; and there were murmurs of appro-
bation from the back of the court.

Lord Potter looked black. "The prisoner
accused him of taking away his watch," he
said, "and trying to get his money. Of coarse,
if nothing had been found on the prisoner the
charge wonld have fallen through. It is quite
evident that Mr. Perry wanted to make it ap-
pear that I was lying when I said that this man
had tried to press money on me." *
■See Note.

44 TJPSIDONIA

He spoke with great indignation, bnt the
magistrate said firmly: "There is no charge
against Mr. Perry," and added: "He could not
have taken away the prisoner's watch, because
it was found on him when he came to the police
station, and his money too. He would hardly
have taken it back, if someone had been kind
enough to relieve him of it, would he?"

This was said with a smile to Lord Potter,
who grunted angrily, but said no more until he
was asked to tell his story, which he did quite
truthfully, except that he gave the impression
of my having acted violently towards him, and
pressed money on him with threats.

Then I was asked if I had anything to say
in my defence.

I said that the whole episode had been an
ill-timed joke, which I now much regretted. I
cross-examined Lord Potter as to his implica-
tion of violence, and made him admit that I
had used none, and threatened none.

"And didn't I tell you I was almost as poor
as you werel" I asked.

This he also admitted. I treated him with
somewhat exaggerated respect, and ended up
by saying that I acknowledged it was a foolish
prank to play on a man of his eminence, and

TJPSIDONIA 45

that, whatever the result of the charge, I
begged to apologise for it. This softened him
a little, though not much, but when the mag-
istrate and his clerk had conferred with him in
whispers, he seemed to give way, and the mag-
istrate then turned to me and addressed me
thus:

"John Howard, although yon have refused
to give any information about yourself, it is
evident from your general appearance that
you are a young man of good if not exalted
station. But yon must not go away with the
impression that there is one law for the poor
and another for the rich here. It is not on ac-
count of your appearance of poverty that I
shall deal leniently with you. I believe that
yon have committed this gross offence against
a distinguished man out of mere youthful folly
and bravado, and you may consider yourself
fortunate that I have decided not to send you
to prison for it. You have been confined for
the night in surroundings that have probably
caused you considerable distress, and I have
taken that into account. I shall fine you ten
pounds, with the option of a month's imprison-
ment, and let this be a lesson to you to leave
off playing practical jokes that are likely to

46 UPSIDONIA

bring you within the reach of the law. Next
case."

I left the dock in some perturbation, for I
had not got ten pounds on me. Bat I was im-
mediately led to the clerk's table, and he said
in a business-like way: "Sign that, pleaBe,"
and handed me a little pile of sovereigns and
a form of receipt.

I signed the receipt and put the money into
my pocket, and was now free. Mr. Perry and
his son joined me, and wringing me warmly by
the hand led me out into the open air. They
were both dressed in shabby suits, I suppose
out of respect to the court, and, although the
young man did not look any the worse, I
thought that his father seemed more of an oily
old humbug than before.

But there seemed to be no doubt about the
reality of his gratitude to me, and his son was
equally cordial. They both pressed me to come
at once to their house, and to stay as long as
I could.

"If you can put up with our way of living,"
said Mr. Perry, ' ' which is the reverse of sim-
ple, we shall be very pleased indeed to have
you so long as you care to Btay. Or, if you
are afraid of luxury, as so many young men

UPSIDONIA 47

are nowadays, we could recommend you to an
hotel where you could be as uncomfortable as
you please, and we will still do all we can to
help you in your social studies, which, I am
glad to hear from my son, yon are anxious to
pursue."

"If you will be good enough to put me up,"
I said, "nothing could suit me better; and as
for luxury, I assure you I shan't grumble at
anything. As I told your son, I should like to
pass as a rich man as long as I stay here."

This reply pleased Mr. Perry, and he pro-
posed that we should go to his house at once.
"I shall take a tram," be said; "but I dare say
you and Edward would prefer to walk."

At this point Lord. Potter came out of the
police court. Two young men in smart clothes,
with silk hats and patent leather boots, were
standing on the steps smoking cigarettes, and
did not notice him. He stopped at the top of
the steps, and said in a tone of contempt:
"Will you kindly get out of my wayt"

TEe two young men looked round hurriedly
and slunk aside, taking off their hats as Lord
Potter walked down the steps, ostentatiously
holding his rags together to avoid contact with

48 UPSIDONIA

"It is that apirit," said Mr. Perry, who had
observed the scene, "that is responsible for
so much of the class-hatred that is now rife.
Yon can hardly wonder at the rich hating the
poor, when they are treated in that way."

Lord Potter passed on with his nose in the
air, but when he had gone another two or three
steps, turned round and said to Mr. Perry:
"Ton have had a locky escape, sir. Yoor
method of life is bringing you down pretty
low, and if you are wise you will give up all this
nonsense, and return to the quite respectable
class in which you were born."

Then he turned to me. "As for you, young
man," he said, "I shall make it my business
to know more about you. I don't believe you
are what yon pretend to be."

As he walked away with his dirty head in the
air, Mr. Perry spluttered indignantly: "The
respectable ■ class in which I was born! He
knows very well that I am of a good family—
as good as his own. Really, the arrogance of
the dirty set is getting past all bearing I"

"He makes you feel as if your clothes fitted
you," said young Perry. "But never mind
>iiT»i ) father. He can't touch as."

CHAPTER VI

We saw Mr. Perry into his tram, and started
to walk through the town.

My observation as to the behaviour and apt
pearanoe of the well-dressed people was con-
firmed. The men slouched along with their
hands in their pockets, and the women, al-
though they wore fine clothes, had a very un-
graceful bearing. The most expensively dressed
were the worBt in this respect, and the poorer
sort of people hustled them off the pavements
and treated them with every mark of contempt.

As we were going through a narrow street
between two wide ones, a stout old lady,
covered with jewels, and dressed in heliotrope
velvet, with some beautiful lace on her gown
and enormous ostrich feathers in her hat,
walked in the gutter by my side, and said in
the hoarse whine of a beggar: "Do take a
sovereign from a rich woman, kind gentleman.'
I 'aven't lef ' off eating for two days, and the
larder's full at 'ome."

I was about to comply with her request, for

50 UPSIDONIA

I have no prejudices against indiscriminate
charity, but young Perry told her to be off, or
he'd give her in charge. She slunk away to
where a carriage with two fine horses and a
coachman and footman was standing at the end
of the street, and drove off.

"These beggars are becoming a regular
pest," said Perry. "It is because we have old
clothes on. There are some compensations in
going about lite a rich man."

"Could I buy a few clothes cheap T" I asked
him. "I want to do the thing thoroughly
while I am with you."

He laughed at me. "I don't know why you
should want to buy them cheap," he said.
"But, of course, you can get what you want.
Do you really mean you would like to be
dressed like a rich man?"

"Yes, I should," I said. "I should like to
have quite a large new wardrobe."

"I think you're splendid!" he said admir-
ingly. "I only hope you won't regret it when
you come to experience actual wealth."

"I hope not," I said modestly. "But what-
ever it costs me I am prepared to carry it
through, and I should like to begin at once."

"Well, you might get what you want to play

UPSIDONIA 51

your part at the Stores. Then, if you want to
do the thing thoroughly, later on you can go
to a good tailor and bootmaker, and so on, and
have things made for you."

I said the Stores would do for the present.
I was not quite clear in my mind as yet how
the question of payment would work out, but
it did not seem to be difficult to get hold of
money in Culbut.

However, as a precautionary measure, I
asked the price of the first article shown me,
which was a ready-made flannel suit — dark
green with a purple stripe in it, quite smart-
1 looking.

The shopman looked at a secret mark on the
label, and said: "Three pounds."

"Oh, come now!" said Perry at once.
"We're not paupers, you know. You can't
treat us in that way."

The man explained that the material wore
exceptionally badly for that class of goods ; but
to us he would make it three pounds ten.

"Not a penny less than four pounds," said
Perry, and I confounded his ofliciousness.

"I'll pay his price," I said. "I hate hag-
gling."

"No," said Perry. "I'm not going to see

52 UPSIDONIA

70a bestowed upon. He'll have to let yon pay
four pounds for it."

The man said he would go and see the
manager, and when he had left the counter
Perry said: "Don't you give way to him.
'These people are always open to a bargain, al-
though they profess to sell dear. Why, that
suit would last you for ever so long ! If we
hadn't come in like this he would have let us
pay six pounds for it."

"Do they give credit f" I asked.

"They think themselves very lucky if they're
allowed to," he said, with a laugh. "I shouldn't
trust them too far, if I were you; they might
forget to send in their bill." *

"Ob, 111 see to that all right," I said. "I
think III get a lot of things. "What would hap-
pen if I didn't pay for them at all!"

"Well, you would be conferring a benefit on
the shareholders of this company which they
would thank you for pretty heartily. The
business lost only ten per cent last year, and
it used to lose twenty when it first started.
This new manager is no good. You'll see, hell
give way about this."

He was right. I was allowed to owe four
*Bm Not*.

TJPSIDONIA 53

pounds for the flannel suit, and when I had
been through all the departments, and set my-
self up thoroughly, with several suits, and with
hats, boots, hosiery, and everything I could
possibly want for some time to come, I was in
debt to the Stores for something considerably
over a hundred pounds. But under the cir-
cumstances that did not trouble me, and I de-
termined to do a little more shopping on credit
in Culbut, but without young Perry, who was
always trying to beat things up, and telling me
that I didn't need this, and could do quite wall
'without that.

We each took a parcel, and left the rest to
be forwarded to Mr. Perry's house.

As we walked on through the streets I asked
Perry to point me out any people of note
whom we might meet, and as I spoke he lifted
his hat to a woman who passed us.

"That is Lady Eumborough, a cousin of my
mother's," he said.

I should not have picked out Lady Bum-
borough from a crowd as being anyone in
particular, although she was a good-looking
woman, and held herself well. She was dressed
in a print gown, and wore a hat of plain black
Straw. She carried a string bag bulging with

54 UPSIDONIA

packages, and had a large lettuce under her

arm.

"Is Lady Rumborough a leader of society?"
I asked.

"Well, she is in a way," he said, "although
she is not very poor. Lord Rumborough is a
greengrocer in a fair way of business, and they
hate the dirty set and all their ways."

He then explained that the dirty set was in-
clined to usurp the lead in the aristocratic so-
ciety of Culbut. Aristocrats of extreme pov-
erty, such as Lord Potter, belonged to it, but
it was largely recruited from amongst those
who were nobodies by birth and had not infre-
quently risen from the opulent and leisured
classes. They made a parade of their poverty,
and were ashamed to be thought to possess the
smallest thing, even a cake of soap.

We next passed a cheerful active young man
in an old but well-cut serge suit who went by
in a great hurry.

"That," said Perry, "is Albert "White, the
great newspaper proprietor. He has made
himself a most extraordinary career."

It seemed that Mr. Albert White was the
son of a man of good family, but one possess-
ing considerable wealth. At an early age,

UPSIDONIA 55

when other young men in hiB position were pre-
paring for a life of doll idleness, he decided
that he would raise himself to a high position
amongst the workers. He started a weekly
paper which few people could read, and lost a
good deal of money over it. Using this as a
stepping-stone, he started other papers, each
more unreadable than the last. He developed
a positive genius for discovering what the peo-
ple didn't want, and in a very few years had
lost more than any other newspaper proprietor
had dropped in a lifetime. Now he was one of
the poorest men in Upsidonia, and had made
his family, and many others whom he had
picked out to help him, poor too.

"Others have since followed in his foot-
steps," said Perry, "but none have had the
success that he has. His daily paper has by
far the smallest circulation of any in Up-
sidonia. People refuse to read it in enormous
numbers, and it is the worst advertising
medium in journalism."
"Why?" I asked. "What is its character!"
"It is mostly written by very learned men.
White does not mind how little he pays to get
the right people. He makes a frank appeal to
the literate, and, of course, there are fewer of

66 UPSIDONIA

them than of any class. The odd thing is that
nobody ever seems to have realised before
what a great field for newspaper enterprise
there is amongst those who will have the best
and nothing but it White has taught ns that
you can drop more money over it, and in a
shorter time, than with almost anything else."

"I suppose your learned men are amongst
the poor!" I asked.

"Yes. Aren't yours!"

"We keep them fairly poor as a rule."

"It is the only possible way. The mind is
of much more importance than the body, and
it cannot do fullest justice to itself if it is ham-
pered by the distractions of wealth, or clogged
by luxury. For that reason, I take it, in both
countries, we keep our learned men poor, and
strive after what knowledge we can."

"I cant say that in my country we oW strive
after it," I said. "We don't like to let our
learned men feel that we are cutting them out."

"Ah, I think that is a mistake; but perhaps
it is not a bad one. If there is one thing that
our upper classes lack, it is humility. I sup-
pose, though, that all your people do earnestly
desire the best gifts in life — knowledge, high
character, and so on!"

TJPSIDONIA 57

"Most of us, of course. But there are some
who Beem to prefer to be merely well off."

"Ah, I'm afraid that there will always be
those; but I rather gather from things that
you have let fall that you don't despise them
quite as much as we do."

"Possibly a shade less. We are charitable in
that respect."

"Then you are always ready to relieve a
rich man of his wealth, I suppose!"

"There are quite a large number of people
amongst us who are anxious to do so."

"My dear Howard, what a happy state of
things 1 Your country must be a Utopia. Do
you see that man over there! That is John
De Montmorency, the popular actor-manager."

He pointed to a very seedy-looking unkempt
man who, however, held his head high, and
gazed around him as he walked for admiring
looks, which he got in plenty, especially from
the young girls.

"They say," said Perry, "that his dresser
once pressed a crease into the trousers in
which he was to play a lord, out of revenge for
some slight, and he went on to the stage in
them without noticing. It took him a long
time to recover from the blow."

58 UPSIDONIA

"Am I to believe," I asked when Mr. De
Montmorency had passed us, "that in Up-
sidonia the chief things that are desired are,
as yon say, high character and knowledge and
poverty?"

"There can be no difficulty in believing that,
can there? Those are the best things in life,
and everyone naturally desires the best things.
"Well, of course, poverty in itself isn't one of
the best things; it is only a means to an end.
Still, we are none of ua perfect, and I don't
deny that there are many who desire poverty
for its own sake. I am interested to learn that
among you there is not the fierce race for it
that we have here."

".Why should anybody desire it for itself?"
I asked.

"My dear fellow, if you had seen as mnch of
the grinding bitterness of wealth as I have,"
he said, "you would not ask that question.
To be at the mercy of your possessions, never
to be free from the deadening weight of idle-
ness, never "

"But surely," I interrupted, "your rich
people can amuse themselves. They needn't
be idle. Don't they play games, for instance?"

"Yes, the young do. We make them. But

TJPSIDONIA 59

how terrible to have to kill time with cricket
and golf and lawn-tennis, and when the game
is finished to feel that nothing has been done
to further the good of mankindl"

""Why do you make them play, then!"

"To keep them in health. We have the
Upsidonian race to think of. We can't afford
to deteriorate bodily as a nation."

"And do you mean to say that the rich and
healthy young man really dislikes exercising
his body and amusing his mind by playing
gameB, simply because nothing cornea of it!"

"Not, perhaps, when he is quite young.
But to look forward to a life of it — ! Besides,
he can seldom afford to do even that for long."

"Can't afford it!"

"No. It isn't expensive enough. He has to
set about his business of spending money,
sometimes — if his parents are very rich — at an
early age, and the desire for healthy exercise
soon leaves him. Why, after a day of idleness
it is sometimes as much aa he can do to drag
himself to bed, and then very often he can't
sleep."

"But surely there is nothing very difficult
about spending money, if yon really set oat to

60 UPSroONIA

do it! In my country rich men buy fine pic-
tures, and things of that sort"

"Well, unless the fine pictures in your coun-
, try cost more than the poor ones, I don't see
how that's to help them."

"They do cost more. They cost enormous
sums."

"Yours seems a very funny sort of country,
and I shouldn't say too much about it if I were
you, or people will think you are romancing.
Everything here that is worth having is cheap,
and everything that isn't is dear. The rich
aren't educated up to appreciating the good
things."

"'What do they learn in their schoolst"*

"The education is good as far as it goes. In
fact, some old-fashioned people say it is too
good, and unfits the rich for the serious busi-
ness of their lives, which is to spend money
that the poor earn; although, of course, they
would not put it in that way. There was a good
deal of grumbling when the last government
permitted science to be taught in the public
schools. It was felt that the children of rich
parents would be much better employed in
learning expensive habits, so as to fit them for

•See Note.

UPSIDONIA 61

their station in life. But I, for one, should cer-
tainly not give in to that view."

"Well then, couldn't the rich get rid of
some of their wealth by building hospitals, or
endowing research, or something of that sort V

"Endowing research?" he repeated in a puz-
zled way. "How could they do that! Only the
poor can endow research — by relieving suit-
able men of the wealth that might hamper them
in their work."

"Well then, building hospitals, or picture
galleries, public works — anything!"

"But the state does all that. Of course, the
rich contribute their share of the rates and
taxes, and there is a good deal of grumbling
amongst them at present, because the party
that was lately elected to bring about profu-
sion has turned out more economical than the
party it defeated. No; it is the overplus of.
wealth that makes the social difficulty. It must
be used, of course, and there must, unless we
limit supply,* be a submerged class on whose
shoulders rests the burden of using it."

"I still don't see why it shouldn't be wasted,
or merely hoarded. Don't the rich men hoard
their wealth!"

62 UPSIDONIA

"How could they! The Government audi-
tors would be down on them at once."

"How would they know!"

"Well, everybody has to keep accounts, and
the auditors are quite sharp enough to stop
any serious defalcation.""

"But why take all this trouble to see that
wealth isn't wasted! It is wasted if it keeps
a large class of people in idle luxury, when the
state has made up its mind that idle luxury is
a bad thing for mankind."

"Ah, my dear Howard! There you sum up
the selfishness of human nature. As long as
the poor have power they will put their bur-
dens on the rich."

"Yes, the burdens of wealth. But why
should they object to the rich getting rid of the
overplus of wealth in any way they please! It
wouldn't make any difference to their own en-
joyment of work and poverty."

"It ought not to, perhaps, considering what
an evil riches are. But what is it that makes
the chief satisfaction of work! Surely, that
you are producing something — something use-
ful to mankind. If you knew that a considera-
ble proportion of what you produced would be

•See Note.

UPSIDONIA 63

thrown away, why yon might just as well work
a treadmill, or play golf, instead of plough-
ing or sowing, or making useful things, such
as clothes or furniture. The dignity of labour
would disappear."

"Still, if the overplus of food, for instance,
makes eating and drinking hateful, as it seems
to do here, and the overplus of other things be-
comes a burden to a large proportion of the
people, the result would seem to be about the
same as actual waste." *

"Well, it is worse, of course, for the rich.
But, unfortunately, the poor do not consider
that enough. In your happy country, where
the upper classes, from what you tell me, act
as much for the benefit of the lower classes as
for themselves, you escape these problems.

"But we will discuss these things further,
and you shall see for yourself. Here we are at
Magnolia Hall; allow me to give you a warm
welcome to our rich abode."

CHAPTER VII

We had long since left the business streets of
the city behind, and had come, first through a
district of mean-looking houses occupied chiefly,
as Perry told me, by the aristocrats of Culbut,
then through a more spacious suburb of large
and small villas, where he said those of a
decent degree of poverty resided. The tram-
line had borne us company to the edge of this
quarter, and we bad walked for the best part
of a mile along a country road, bordered by
walls or fences enclosing the gardens of larger

We now turned in at a pair of gates flanked
by a pretty lodge, and went along a winding
drive banked on either side with rhododen-
drons, now in full flower, until we came
out into a beautiful and open garden, whose
verdant lawns were ringed by a great variety
of flowering shrubs and trees. This charming
garden seemed a suitable setting for the long
two-storied white-painted house, with its deep
eaves, old-fashioned bow windows, and creeper-

UPSIDONIA 65

grown verandah. A giant magnolia, delicately
flushed with pink, was in full flower over the
front of the house. The still summer air
brooded peacefully over all, and the tinkle of
water from a fountain in a yew-enclosed rose-
garden opening out of the drive fell gratefully
on the ear.

"And this," I exclaimed, "your educated
classes despise, and prefer to coop themselves
up in those wretched little houses we passed!"

He looked at me in surprise. "Oh, you don't
understand in the least," he said.

There was no time for further explanation,
for we had now reached the front door, which
stood hospitably open, affording a glimpse be-
yond the lobby of a cool spacious hall, paved
with black and white marble.

We did not, however, enter at once. Perry
rang the bell, and we waited until a butler and
a footman in livery * appeared, who relieved
us of the parcels we carried and showed us into
a pleasant morning-room, beautifully furnished
and full of flowers.

"Mr. John Howard and Mr. Edward Perry,"
said my friend to the butler, and we were left
to ourselves.

66 UPSIDONIA

"Excuse my asking," I Baid, "but do you
have to observe strict formalities in your own.
house I"

"Oh, yes," he said. "No good servants
would engage us unless we undertook to give
them plenty of work. It is one of the many
penalties of wealth."

At this point Mr. Perry came into the room,
dressed as I had first seen him, and having
shaved since we had parted. He renewed his
welcome warmly, and introduced me to his
wife, a comely grey-haired lady with agreeable
manners, who said that she was delighted to
see me, and to hear that I was ready to take
them as I found them. I was also introduced
to Miss Miriam Perry, whom I took to at once,
as she was exceptionally pretty, and had a very
frank and pleasing way with her. There was
also a younger sister, Mollie, a pretty child of
thirteen or so, and Tom, a boy of about a year
older, who alone of the family was dressed in
old and shabby clothes. But he had a merry
freckled face and excellent manners.

"Here," said Mr. Perry, "you see us all, ex-
cept my married daughter; and I hope you will
like us."

UPSIDONIA 67

I liked them already, with one exception, and
I thought it possible that I might even come
to like Mr. Perry himself in time, for he Bhowed
to better advantage surrounded by his family
and in his own beautiful home than he had
done outside.

"Mr. Howard," said Edward, "wants to live
as we do while he is with us, and to study the
conditions of wealth from the inside. He has
even bought a great many clothes, and perhaps
he would like to put some of them on before
luncheon."

This announcement, I could see, brought
gratification to my hosts, but Tom looked
rather disgusted. He was being educated at a
day school, I learnt afterwards, where many of
his companions were the sons of very poor
men, and he was not yet of an age to sym-
pathise deeply with the family taste for philan-
thropy.

Edward took me np to my room, and apolo-
gised for its air of comfort. The footman was
unpacking the parcels we had brought, and it
was possibly for his benefit that Edward said :
"We keep one or two barely furnished attics
for people like yourself who come to see us;
but I thought that as you wanted to live for a

68 TTPSIDONIA

time as the rich do, you would put up with this.

We can always move you."

I said that certainly under the circumstances
I preferred this room to an attic. It had a
wide view of the largest slope of lawn and a
well-wooded landscape beyond. There was a
big bed in it, a well-furnished writing-table,
and an easy chair by the window, through
which the open flowers of the magnolia outside
wafted a sweet perfume.

"Well then, I will go and change my
clothes," said Edward. "Lord Arthur will
show you the bathrc cm, and where my room is,
if you want to come in to me at any time."

He went out, and I took a closer look at the
footman, who seemed to have been indicated as
Lord Arthur.

He was a handsome, rather disdainful-look-
ing young man, and when Edward had left the
room he said familiarly: "Then you're one of
us, ehl Why do yon want to rig yourself out
in this sort of kit? Which will you wearT I
should recommend the white flannel, if yon
want to do the thing thoroughly."

"The white flannel will do very well," I
said. "I am studying social conditions, and,
as you say, want to do it thoroughly."

UPSIDONIA 69

"Well, I think you're rather a fool," he said.
"You can see all you want of the rich by tak-
ing service with them as I have done. You
needn't live like them."

"I rather like making myself comfortable," I
said tentatively.

His lip curled. "Is your mind comfortable ,
when your body is comfortable 1" he asked. '

"It is more likely to be so," I replied.

"There are a good many people with low
tastes in the world," he said, "but they don't
generally acknowledge them in that unblushing
way. If you want a life of comfort because you
like it, why don't you say sot You'll find
plenty of Bwabs * in your own class to join in
with, who don't pretend to be social students."

"I was only chaffing," I said. "Have you
got a good place here?"

"Well, it's rather a bore to have to mix
socially with your employers, although the ■
Perrys are very nice people really, and if it
weren't for all this philanthropic nonsense as
good as anybody. Still, you can't treat them
exactly as you would other rich people, and we
often have to do ourselves a good deal better
than we want to in the servants' hall, simply

70 TJPSIDONIA

because we can't foist all the beat food on to
them and see that they get through it them-
selves. We're really helping them all the time
in their silly experiment, and although the be-
tween maid and the head coachman and one or
two more are reformers, most of us aren't, and
simply want to be let alone to live a hard life,
as we should anywhere else."

"Yes, I see. I suppose most of you are of
good family and that sort of thing t"

"One of the undergardeners is a baronet,
but he's got more hard work to do than yon
can get indoors. I'm the only other fellow
with a title, but I was never very strong. All
my brothers are navvies, and it's hard luck
that I was pilled in my medical examination.
Oh, yes, we're a pretty good lot on the whole.
Still, domestic service isn't what it used to be.
It is so crowded as a profession that it's diffi-
cult to get a place where there's enough work
to do. The women are better off, because they
can go out as generals. But for men it is get-
ting more and more difficult, owing to the
spread of education amongst the lower classes.
The masters and mistresses are often so inde-
pendent that if you don't let them live as
poorly as yon do yourselves they'll just give

UPSIDONIA 71

yon notice. Well, I think that's all. The bath-
room is just opposite. I'll go and turn on the
water."
"Thanks," I said. "Quite cold, please."
An indulgent smile illumined Lord Arthur's
aristocratic features. "It's plain that you've
never learnt how to treat servants," he said.
"If you weren't a gentleman, I should turn
you on a stewing hot one for that, and see that
yon got into it."

CHAP TE R VXH

Thk luncheon to which! we presently sat down
was everything that it should have been from
my point of view. It is true that Mrs. Perry
had thoughtfully provided some large hunks of
bread and cold bacon, with some beer in a tin
can, for my especial benefit; but I made it quite
clear that I wanted no difference made on my
account. My request to be treated as one of
themselves made an excellent impression on all
of them except Tom, who made a frugal meal of
bread and cheese, and went off to school before
we were halfway through. I thought it rather
remarkable that a boy of his age should be able
to refuse all the delicacies provided, apparently
without flinching, but there was no mistaking
his look of pained disgust when I refused the
cold bacon*

I noticed that all the rest of the family ate
sparingly, except Mr. Perry, who asked for
second supplies of omelette, asparagus, and
strawberries, on the ground that he must do

•See Note.

UPSIDONIA 73

his duty. They left a good deal on their plates,
while making it look as little as possible, and
for every fruit that was not quite perfect they
rejected at least three, saying that they were
bad. This was done with an eye on the serv-
ants, who took their share in the conversation,
and whose business it appeared to be to see
that everyone ate and drank as much as pos-
sible. I was hungry, and did what I could to
oblige them. But I could see that I waa not
really pleasing them, for both butler and foot-
man treated my handsome appetite as an in-
delicate thing, while doing all they conld to
satisfy it.

Towards the end of luncheon, the butier,
whose name was Blother, said' to Mrs. Perry:
"Duff has sent in to say that the carriage
horses want exercise, and you had better pay
a good long round of calls this afternoon."

Mrs. Perry's face fell. "I rather wanted to
stay at home this afternoon," she said. "It is
very hot, and I thought I would read a book in
the garden. Can't Mr. Duff have the horses
exercised by one of the grooms this after-
noon!"

"I'm afraid not, Mrs. Perry," said Blother.
"He says he gave you an afternoon off yester-

74 UPSIDONIA

day, and two last week. It iB not fair to refuBe
him employment. He is in rather an excited
state about it. I should go if I were yon."

"I suppose I must," she said with a sigh.
"What are you going to do, Samuel t"

"I thought of having a little nap," said Mr.
Perry piously. "One must not let one's little
luxuries drop, or one loses sympathy with the
rich. At half-past three I have a committee
meeting of the Society for the Belief of Com-
pany Promoters, and at five o'clock I am to in-
troduce a deputation of brewers * to the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer. I shall go to the club
after that for an hour, and I thought, perhaps,
Mr. Howard would like to join me there."

I said I should like to do so, and it was set-
tled that I should be driven into Culbut to join
Mr. Perry at half -past five.

"That will make three carriages then,
Blother," said Mr. Perry. "There needn't be
any grumbling in the stables this afternoon, at
any rate."

Mrs. Perry retired to dress for her after-
noon's occupation, Mr. Perry Bought the seclu-
sion of the library, and Mollie went off to her
governess. This left Edward and Miss Miriam,

* See Note.

UPSIDONIA 75

and I rather hoped that Edward might have
some work to do.

My hopes were realised. He had a strenu-
ous programme marked out. He was to in-
struct a class of millionaires' sons in the prin-
ciples of breeding and running race-horses for
loss, to audit the accounts of the Orchid-Grow-
ers' Defence Association, and to prepare a lec-
ture he had undertaken to deliver at a meeting
of the Young Poker-Players' Mutual Improve-
ment Society on "A Good Prose Style." This
would take him all the afternoon, and I begged
Mm earnestly not to vary his plans on my ac-
count.

He seemed obviously relieved. "If I had
known you would be here," he said, "I should
not have set myself so much to do; but you will
find plenty of improving books in the library,
and some uncomfortable chairs, and I am sure
that Miriam will talk to you if you wish to con-
verse, or play lawn-tennis with you if you
would like to do that."

Miriam then offered, with a charming frank-
ness, to make herself responsible for my enter-
tainment for the afternoon, and I was quite
pleased to have it so.*

76 TJPSIDONIA

"Would you like to play tennis T" she asked
me, "or shall we talk on the verandah! If you
really want to suit yourself to your surround-
ings you can smoke."

"We might sit on the verandah for a bit,"
I said, "and I will certainly smoke. After that
I should like to see the garden, if you will show
me round. . And then I shall be quite ready for
lawn-tennis."

For some reason, which I did not understand,
she blushed when I asked her to show me the
garden, and turned her head away; but she
only said: "Come along, then," and led the
way on to the shady verandah, from the roof
of which hung long trusses of wistaria, and
from which the beautiful garden could be seen
spread in front of us with all its colour and
cool verdure.

CHAPTER IX

These were basket chairs on the verandah, and
I took the most comfortable of them, after
Miriam had chosen hers, which I should have
said was the least comfortable of all.

"This is very delightful," I said. "After
all, there are some compensations in being
rich."

I cast a glance at her as I said this. In her
pretty cool white dress, which fitted her beau-
tifully, and with her abundant fair hair, care-
fully and becomingly braided, she looked just
like any other girl, the daughter of well-to-do
parents, who had been brought up to a life of
wealth and ease. For my part I like to see
young girls having a good time, and am not
averse to sharing it with them. I was inclined
to wonder how far this very charming young
girl was permitted to enjoy naturally the good
things provided for her, and how far she was
affected by the economic curiosities that sur-
rounded her.

She did not reply directly to my endeavours
to draw her out. "It 1b very kind of you to

77

78 UPSIDONIA

make the best of us," she said a little coldly.

"Please don't be offended at my ignorance
of the way things go here," I said. "I have
lived all my life in different surroundings, and
it is all quite new to me."

This speech did nothing to alter her slight
air of coolness. "We don't live in this way for
fun," she said; and I made haste to explain
further.

"I don't mean that at all," I said. "I mean
that the whole life of Upsidonia is new to me,
poor as well as rich. In my country things are
different altogether."

"How do you mean — in your country!" she
asked with a puzzled air.

"I come from England," I said. "It is very
much like Upsidonia in some ways; in others
it is quite different."

She received my information in the same way
as Edward had done. "England!" she re-
peated. "Where is that! I thought I was
rather good at geography ; I took a prize in it
at school. But I have never heard of England.
What direction is it in, and how did you come
here?"

"I walked over the moors," I said. "I have
been walking for some days. I found myself

TTPSIDONIA 79

yesterday evening in a wood jnst the other side
of Culbut."

A light seemed to break in on her. "Oh, I
seel" she exclaimed. "Yon came over the
hills. Yon are a Highlander ! That is very in-
teresting. No wonder yon look down a little on
us Colbntians 1 Bnt what made yon leave that
paradise to come heret And why didn't yon
tell us before that yon were a Highlander! I
am snre my father and mother would have been
very flattered."

She seemed quite excited, and regarded me
with cariosity not unmixed with reverence.*

"Well, I have never called myself a High-
lander, exactly," I said. "In England we call
the Scotch Highlanders."

"England! Scotch!" she repeated. "How
extraordinary it is I I must get yon to show it
to me on a map."

"Yes, I should like to see a map," I said.
"You see, everything is very different with
ns."

"Oh, I know it is. You are the moBt for-
tunate people in the world. All this must seem
very extraordinary to you, and I'm afraid
rather painful. I wonder you take it all as

-SmHoU.

80 UPSmONIA

naturally as yon do. I suppose yon have never
seen a honse like this before!"

"It is certainly a very charming honse," I
said, "bot it is not altogether unlike the one I
was brought up in near London."

Her air of bewilderment returned. "Lon-
don!" she said. "I have never heard of any
of the places yon mention. Is England a dis-
trict!"

"Yes; a pretty large one."

"There are many districts. in the Highlands
that we know very little of, but I had no idea
that there were houses like this anywhere. I
thought you all lived so very simply, and were
spared all the difficulties that our rich have to
undergo."

"In some parts of the Highlands that may
be so. But in England it is different. People
who lived in a house like this would be consid-
ered very fortunate, and they would certainly
prefer it to a little house in a street."

"How very extraordinary I " she said again.
"Bat wouldn't they be looked down upon!"

"Not at all. The people who live in the lit-
tle houses are apt to be looked down upon."

"But don't the upper classes all live in lit-
tle houses!"

UPSIDONIA 81

"No, they live mostly in the bigger ones,
some of them in much bigger ones than this;
and the bigger they are the better they like
them."

She became more and more interested. "I
never heard anything lite that before," she
said. "I should think it must be rather nice,
if all of them do it. Does the dirty set live
in big houses? Oh, bnt I forgot, yon don't
have a dirty set in the Highlands."

"We do in England," I said. "But we don't
kow-tow to them as people seem to do here. If
Lord Potter were to show his face there he
would be liable to be locked up. "We consider
dirt a disgrace."

"Oh, so do we," she said hastily. "My
aunt, Lady Blueberry, who is really a great
lady, won't have anything to do with the dirty
set. My Uncle Blueberry says that the old
tradition of TJpsidonia was hot even extreme
poverty, but only just so much as to escape the
horrible burdens of wealth."

"Is your uncle !"

"He is the Earl of Blueberry. He is a post-
man."

"Well, in England he would not be likely to
be that. At least, he might be Postmaster-

82 XJPSIDONIA

General. Oar nobility is for the most part rich,
and they live in the finest houses, although
some of them are obliged to work for their liv-
ing.' *

"Obliged!" she echoed. "Don't they all ex-
ercise their right to workT"

"It is a right that has somewhat fallen into
abeyance, but some of them do. Others prefer
to amuse themselves. In fact, to make a clean
breast of it, we all like to have plenty of money
in England, so that we can live in nice houses,
and go about and enjoy ourselves, and wear
nice clothes, and eal and drink nice things."

A shade of disgust crossed her face. "How
very different it all is to what I have been
told!" she said. "But I am glad you told me
about the eating and drinking. I thought you
did what you did at lunch to please Mrs.
Lemon, our cook."

I was a trifle disturbed at this speech. "Well,
of course, that was partly the reason," I said.
"And you mustn't run away with the idea that
we encourage greediness. But surely, now,
you must like living in a pretty house like this,
with this lovely garden, better than being
cooped up in a street!"

"Perhaps, if all one's friends did it," she

UPSIDONIA 83

said thoughtfully. "Don't your upper classes
live in towns at all? Oh, but I forgot, there are
no towns in the Highlands."

"There are in England. There is London.
It is rather a big town. Our upper classes live
there part of the year, if they can afford it.
Some of them have country houses and town
houses as well."

"At what time of the year do they go to their
town houses?"

"Late spring and early summer are the
times when things are at their gayest"

"But that is when the country is at its love-
liest. What do they do with their country
houses!"

"They shut them up — leave a few servants
in them."

"Ah I I suppose they have to consider their
servants. Otherwise it seems absurd for peo-
ple who like the country to leave it when it is
at its best."

"There are very pretty parks in London."

"So there are here. So we are not so very
different in onr tastes, you see."

"Tell me truthfully," I said, leaving this
point; "don't you like wearing pretty clothes!"

She blushed, and laughed. "Perhaps I

84 UPSIDONIA

shonld if all my friends did," she said, but
added a little primly: "You can be prettily
dressed when yon are poor, and you don't have
to change your clothes two or three times a day
to please your maid."

"You wouldn't have to please your maid in
England," I said. "She would have to please
you, and if she didn't you would get rid of her
and have another one."

She looked at me incredulously. "That is
the most extraordinary thing you have told me
yet," she said. "Servants here are the great-
est nuisance in the world. They won't let you
do a thing for yourself if they can possibly stop
yon, and yon can't call your life your own.
How I envy my cousins sometimes, who can go
where they like and do what they like without
for ever being obliged to think of finding work
for a lot of disagreeable superior servants 1"

"But can't you do what you liket" I asked.
"Aren't you and I going to do what we like
this afternoon! Your servants haven't both-
ered us much so far."

"Our servants are very kind to us. Of
course it is not as though we really belonged to
the rich. But I must say that I am rather aur-

UPSEDONIA 83

prised at their having left us alone for so
long."

As if in answer to her, the butler, Mr.
Blother, and the footman, Lord Arthur, came
out of the house at that moment, carrying a
tray on whieh was a large jug of iced cup of
some sort, and a dish of strawberries and
cream.

"Oh, Mr. Blother!" exclaimed Miriam.
"Ton can't be so cruel as to expect us to eat
and drink any more now!"

"My dear Miriam," said Mr. Blother, in a
fatherly manner, "you must eat a few straw-
berries, or what is the good of the gardener
picking them? I will let you off the hock cup
until you have had a set or two; but I thought
that both you and Mr. Howard would be able
to drink it after you had got hot. It is quite
time you began to play. Arthur and I are
ready to field the balls now, and we want some
exercise out of doors badly."

He and the footman bustled away to put up
the net, and I went upstairs to put on a pair of
tennis shoes. When I came down again the net
was up and the racquets and balls were ready
for us.

Lord Arthur looked at me with some dis-

86 UPSIDONIA

pleasure. "I don't know why you couldn't
have asked me to fetch your shoes," he said.
"You and I will fall out if you bring your airs
of poverty and independence here."

"I'll give you some work to do, if that is
what yon want," I said. "I'm not very good
at this game, and I am a hard and rather wild
hitter."

But it was Mr. Blother who fielded the balls
behind Miriam, and it pleased me to see him
running about here and there in his swallow-
tail coat, and getting into a terrible state of
perspiration and breathlessneas.

When we had played a couple of sets it was
Mr. Blother who stopped us.

"I think you have done enough for the pres-
ent," he said, wiping his heated brow. "Thank
you very much, Mr. Howard, for playing so
badly. I have seldom enjoyed a game more.
Now I think you can both manage to polish off
some of that hock cup."

I was quite ready to do so. I rather spoilt
the good impression I had made on Mr. Blother
by asking if he did not feel inclined for a drink
himself. He withered me with his eye, and
stalked off indoors, followed by the indignant
Lord Arthur, who said to me as he passed:

UPSIDONIA 87

"You seem to have brought very queer ideas
of behaviour with you, wherever you have
come from."

Miriam too looked at me doubtfully when wo
were ouce more left alone together. "I know
you only meant it for fun," she said, "but Mr.
Blother is so kind and good that it is a shame
to tease him."

"But don't you think he would like a drink T"
I asked. "Ton saw how awfully hot he was."

"Of course he would like it," she said.
"That is why I think it is too bad to teaBe
him."

I enjoyed my own drink a good deal. Mr.
Blother was a king of cup-makers.

Miriam sipped only half a glass, and I was
careful not to press her to drink any more. I
was quite capable of emptying the rest of the
jug myself, and poured out a second glass, with
the remark that I had not meant to offend Mr.
Blother, and I would now try to make it up to
him.

This pleased her, and she said, with her de-
lightful frank and friendly smile: "You are
really awfully good, and I am sure the serv-
ants will adore you. We do our best to treat
them well, but I am afraid we do grumble a

88 UPSIDONIA

lot, and you seem to do things to please them
quite naturally."

"We are brought up to be unselfish in Eng-
land," I said modestly, and filled a third glass,
emptying the jug.

"Are yon ready to play again T" Miriam
asked. "We might get two of the maids to
field the balls. They would be pleased if we
were to ask them."

"I have had a good deal of exercise lately,"
I said, "and it is very hot. What I should
really like to do would be to sit here a little
longer, and then have a wander round the gar-
den. I am very fond of gardens, and I should
like to see this one, which looks lovely."

Again, to my great surprise, Miriam blushed
deeply. She rose from her chair, and said,
looking away from me: "I am going in now.
Mollie will be out in a minute, and she will take
you round the garden if yon want to see it."

Then she went indoors, leaving me to wonder
what on earth I had said to cause her such
confusion.

CHAPTER X

I was not left alone long. Mollie came out of
the house, and greeted me in friendly childish
fashion.

"Lessons over for the day," she said, throw-
ing herself into a chair. "I snppoBe you will
be awfully shocked if I say that I am glad of
it."

She shook her thick mass of curls at me, with
a challenging laugh.

"I am not Bhocked in the least," I said. "I
think lessons on a hot afternoon must be a
great bore for little girls."

"What an awful thing to say I I am afraid
you are a very wicked man, but, of course, you
don't mean it. Miriam is rather tired of talk-
ing to you, and asked me to come and take her
place. What shall we dot "

I was rather disturbed at the information so
frankly delivered, and said boldly: "I want to
see the garden. Will you take me round t"

The request, which had driven Miriam away,
seemed to make no disagreeable impression on

90 UPSIDONIA

Mollie. She jumped up at once and said:
"Yes, eome along; and after that we will play
tennis, unless you're too tired. Tom won't
play with me,* and I hardly ever get a
game."

We went round the garden, which was beau-
tifully laid out and beautifully kept. We came
across three or four gardeners, all toiling as if
for their lives, and one of them, I supposed,
was the baronet of whom Lord Arthur had told
me, although none of them looked in the least
like a baronet.

There was a lovely rose-garden, in a corner
by itself, and as roses were rather a hobby of
mine I examined each of the beds with some
care. In one of them I stooped down to pick
up a weed. It was the first I had seen any-
where.

"Oh, yon mustn't do that," said Mollie, with
round eyes expressive of horror. "Thank
goodness none of the gardenerB saw you!
Can't yon plant it again to look as if it had not
been pulled upt"

I replanted the weed as if it had been some-
thing rare.

"That looks all right," said Mollie, with he?

■See Note.

UPSIDONIA 91

head on one side. "Let's go and find Mr.
Hobbs and tell him."

We went in search of the head gardener,
whom we found digging in a corner of the
vegetable garden. He was an austere man, and
drew himself up with displeasure when Mollie
told him that we had found a weed in the bed
of white roses.

"White roses!" he repeated. "What white
roses!"

"The big ones," said Mollie. "I don't know
their name."

"Don't know their name!" exclaimed Mr.
Hobbs in a withering tone. "That's a nice
thing to acknowledge ! What is your brain for
unless you learn the names of things? The big
white rose ia a Fran Karl Druschki, and don't
you forget it. But you are a good girl to come
and tell me about the weed. What weed was
it now!"

"It was a dandelion," said Mollie promptly.

But as we went away she confided to me that
she only hoped it was a dandelion.* "I don't
know anything about flowers," she said, " and
don't want to. I shan't have to bother about

92 TJPSIDONIA

all that sort of thing until I get older, and have
to have a garden of my own."

"Haven't you got a garden of your own!"
I asked her.

She looked at me with eyes full of surprise.
"Why, I'm only twelve," she said.

Something in her expression, and the mem-
ory of Miriam's look when I had mentioned
the garden, warned me not to pursue the sub-
ject. There was some mystery here — it would
almost seem some mystery of sex. I must re-
serve my enquiries for Edward.

We came to a large pool in the lower part
of the garden. It was bordered with irises and
reeds and other water-loving plants.

"I say!". exclaimed Mollie, "would you like
to fish!"

I thought the suggestion a good one. I
wanted to get some information out of Mollie,
and I could not expect a child of her age to sit
down in a chair and talk, even if the servants '
should permit us to do so undisturbed.

"Ill go and ask Sir Herbert to get us some
worms and rods," she said, and ran off on her
active black-stockinged legs.

She came back presently with the under-
gardener, who carried a couple of rods and a

UPSIDONIA 93

tin of bait, and looked at me a little (sus-
piciously as he said: "Now, Mollie, if you catch
anything, youVe got to eat it. There's to be
no throwing back of fish into the pond."

Mollie promised that we would eat anything
that we might catch, and Sir Herbert went back
to his work.

"When we were fairly settled, watching our
floats, I said: "This is rather jolly, isn't it!
Do your cousins, who are poor, have such a
good time as you dot"

"Oh, much better," she replied. "They can
go and fish in the parks if they want to, with
their schoolfellows. I wish mother would let
me go to school. Tom does, and I don't see why
I shouldn't."

"But you can have your friends to play with
you here, can't you!"

"I do sometimes. But they are not allowed
to come very, often; their mothers don't like
it."

"Why not!"

"Oh, they think they might get to like
luxury!"

She said this with an air of scorn, such as
children use towards ideas of their elders which
strike them as absurd.

94 UPSIDONIA

"But they don't get to like luxury," I
hazarded.

"As if they would! Fancy liking to be al-
ways changing your clothes, and having to keep
them clean I * Why, they tease me about it,
and offer to take away my toys!"

"Take away your toys!"

"Just as if I were really the child of rich
parents, and they had to be charitable to me I"

"But don't you like having toys of your own,
Molliet"

"Not too many of them. Think of the rich
little children whose nurses make them play
with hundreds of dolls, when they only want
to play with one ! and are always telling them
how sad the doll-makers would be if they saw
them crying at having to play with the dolls
they had taken such pains to make!"

She said this in imitation of a nurse's re-
buke, of which she had evidently had experi-
ence.

"But I'm sure little girls like to have some-
thing of their very own," I said. "And they
like new toys sometimes."

"Perhaps they may when they are very
young. But they soon get tired of it when they

* See Note,

UPSIDONIA 95

know what it means. Why, Cynthia,* my
cousin, once said that she would like to he rich,
and have as many toys as she wanted, and her
mother simply filled the house with expensive
toys, and she had to play with them all. By
the time she had worn them out she was jolly
glad to get hack to her old wooden doll, which
she could dress just as she liked, and always
take to hed with her. She was very careful not
to say anything more about wanting to be rich
after that."

Sa that was the system! Children were
shown the satiety that comes from wealth, and
taught early to shun it.

"It's such a bore having to be charitable,"
Mollie went on to confide in me. "When I go
visiting with mother I always have to bring
home something that some rich child or other

has got tired of. Still, if it pleases them 1

Oh, look I I've got a bite I"

But it was only a nibble.

I tried again. "Have you got a pony!" I
asked.

' ' Yes ; he 's a dapple-grey ; his name is Bobby.
I will show him to you."

"Thank you. I like looking at ponies. I

* See Nate.

96 UPSIDONIA

suppose your cousins haven't got ponies to
ride."

"They can ride in butchers' and bakers'
carts. That's much more fun. Besides, they
have ponies in the parks for poor children.

"Of course I love Bobby," she went on, as
I digested this piece of information. "But it
is rather hard not to be allowed to ride the
park ponies, or to go and play in the parks at
all, just because you have a garden and a pony
of your own."

"Oh, you are not allowed to go into the
parks! " •

"Not unless I go to tea with somebody. I do
wish mother and father would leave off pre-
tending to be rich."

"Then you would have to leave this pretty
house and garden and go and live in a street."

"I should like that. There would be lots of
other girls and boys to play with. I say, what
time is it?"

(When I looked at my watch and told her it
was ten minutes past five, she jumped up in
consternation, and exclaimed: "Oh, come along
quickly. I didn't know it was five yet."

We hurried up through the garden, and met

UPSIDONIA 97

Mr. Hobbs, who stopped us, and said severely :
"Didn't you hear the clock strike!"

"No," said Mollie. "We were busy talking.
I'm so sorry, Mr. Hobbs, I won't be late
again."

"You said that yesterday," said Mr. Hobbs.
"And laBt week I caught you out here when it
was nearly sis. The next time it happens I'll
give you a great big box of chocolate creams,
and see that you eat them all."

The explanation of this awful threat, as I
learnt later, was that the gardens of the rich
were given up to those who looked after them,
and their friends, after certain hours, and it
was not permitted to their owners to enter
them.

As we went across the lawn, Sir Herbert was
stringing up the tennis net, and two of the
maids were standing talking to him. All three
of them looked at us with displeasure as we
scuttled by, and Mollie said: "I shall catch it
for this when I get in."

CHAPTEB XI

It was quite time for me to go and get ready
to join Mr. Perry. Indeed, it was more than
time, as I found when I went upstairs, and was
greeted by Lord Arthur with the remark that
if I wasn't in the hall ready for the carriage
when it came round I should hear about it.

But I found him a good deal more anxious
to be friendly than before, and presently dis-
covered that the reason for this was that it had
got about in the household that I was a "High-
lander." I did not contradict the report, but
refrained from giving him any information
about where I really had come from, for one
thing because I didn't think he would believe
me, and for another because I thought it might
not be a bad thing to be looked upon as the
altogether superior being which the dwellers
in that remote part of TJpsidonia were evi-
dently considered to be.

Fortunately, I was just ready to step into the
carriage when it came round, and thus escaped

UPSIDONIA 99

an expression of censure from the coachman,
who drove off quickly towards CtUbut.

We picked up Mr. Perry, and as we drove on
to his club I managed to bring into the con-
versation a reference to the Highlands. He
expressed considerable surprise to bear that
I was an inhabitant of that region, which was
not altogether gratifying. But he explained
that, having first met me on the opposite side
of the city, it had not occurred to him that I
was a Highlander, otherwise he would cer-
tainly have guessed it from my perfect man-
ners.

We arrived at the club very well pleased
with one another. It was a large building,
luxuriously furnished, but in very bad taste.
There were some atrocious pictures on the
walls, and the decorations were garish.

The big room into which we first went was
full of opulent-looking gentlemen, lounging in
easy ehairs, drinking and smoking and talking
to one another. We joined a group of them,
and Mr. Perry introduced me to one or two, ad-
dressing them in a genially patronising man-
ner. He did not tell them that I was a High-
lander, and I suppose they took me for one of

100 UPSIDONIA

themselves, for their greeting was not cere-
monious.

However, one of them was good enough to
ask me what I would take, and I said a small
whisky and soda. ThiB was brought ■ by a
haughty-looking servant in a powdered wig and
crimson plush breeches, who held out his
salver, not to my entertainer but to me, and I
paid for my drink and his as well, as it seemed
to be expected of me.

The talk was all about money. One gentle-
man with thick lips and a hooked nose said that
he had done good business that afternoon. He
had bought ten thousand Northern Railways,
having received private information that the
men had decided to strike for an all-round de-
crease in wages, and they had fallen three
points when the news had become public. He
had dropped quite a tidy little sum.

Another man said that that sort of business
was too risky for him. He believed in doing a
steady safe business. If he lost fifteen per
cent on his capital every year he was quite
satisfied.

Another said he had been looking all his life
for a safe investment that would, lose ten per

UPSIDONIA-. : ::;- : .;;- ;101.;.
cent without your having to worry ahout it,
and he didn't believe it was to be found.

All these men talked in quite an uneducated
way, and their manners were not attractive.
They wore a good deal of heavy jewellery, and
clothes that looked as if they were new, but not
one of them looked or spoke like a gentleman.

Mr. Perry, who had taken his part in the con-
versation, and had been treated with some
deference, drew me away towards another
group, saying as we crossed the room that he
wanted me to see all sorts, and I must try to
make myself as much one of them as possible.
I should now be introduced to some racing
men.

But before we reached them, Mr. Perry was
hailed in a cheery but somewhat vinous voice
by a man who was reclining in the depths of
an easy chair by an open window, with a table
at his side on which was a bottle of Maras-
chino half empty, and a good-sized glass of the
same half full. His appearance was not
markedly different from that of dozens of
elderly men whom you may see after lunch at
any London club, taking their ease, and per-
haps their little nap, and never far removed in
point of time or space from refreshment of a

-. 102; ••; . .•;.; ; : .• UPSIDONIA
spirituous nature. He was sleek and well-
groomed, and the tint of his face was only a
trifle more plum-coloured than might betoken
abstemious living.

"Well, old Perry," said this cheerful gentle-
man in his mellow voice, but without shifting
his semi-recumbent position, "what are you go-
ing to do to raise us this afternoon? Come and
help me buzz this bottle, and show your sym-
pathy with the rich."

Mr. Perry seemed to look at the speaker, the
bottle, and me, all at the same time, but with
a different expression for each.

"Allow me," he said, "to introduce my
young friend, John Howard, who comes from
the Highlands* — Lord Charles Delagrange. He
is anxious to see something of life amongst the
rich, and I am showing him round. Naturally,
he has never been in a place like this before,
and "

"And we must behave ourselveB, ehf" inter-
rupted Lord Charles. "Come now, old Perry,
don't' pretend to be above your company. You
don't like poverty any more than I do. Sit
down and make yourself comfortable, and
touch that bell for another glass — two more
glasses, if Mr. Howard will join us."

UPSIDONIA 103

Mr. Perry touched the bell, as requested,
aud said with an agreeable smile: "You will
have your little joke, Lord Charles. You know
very well that all self-indulgence is extremely
distasteful to me; but in this place I do not
wish to put myself on a pedestal."

"You put yourself in that chair, old Perry,"
said Lord Charles, indicating one only a little
less deep and easy than his own, "and don't
be a humbug. Well, Mr. Howard, this must
be an agreeable change to you from the High-
lands. You live on porridge and Plato there,
I believe. You did well to put yourself into the
hands of old Perry. Hell do you top notch —
nobody knows how to better than he — and send
you home to spread the gospel of high living
and plain thinking among the benighted toilers
with whom you have been brought up."

"I hope," said Mr. Perry, "that Mr. Howard
will go back with no such lesson. If you are
going to try to persuade him that my efforts
to uplift the wealthy classes are a cloak for
vicious desires of my own, Lord Charles, I
shall not shrink from holding you up to him as
an example of what to avoid."

Lord Charles hoisted himself up in his seat
to pour out three glasses of the liqueur. "Fire

104 UPSIDONIA

away, old Perry," he said. "Tell him my
awful story. But get outside this first; it will
do you a world of good."

Mr. Perry got outside it, and began :

"Lord Charles is a younger son of the late
Duke of Trumps, a man respected and beloved
for his many virtues."

' ' A fine old boy, my governor, • ' Lord Charles
agreed, "and the best hedger and ditcher to be
found in Upsidonia. But he liked his glass of
beer, old Perry; don't forget that. Don't for-
get that he liked his glass of beer."

"I have no doubt that his Grace permitted
himself moderate relaxation after the labours
of the day were over," said Mr. Perry. "But
it would have shocked him deeply to know that
a son of his would ever sink to the level of
glorying in a life of ease and sloth."

"I dare say it would," said Lord Charles
indulgently. "I dare say it would. You're
not smoking, old Perry. Try one of these
weeds; they're in very good condition. Ill do
the same by yon some day."

Mr. Perry accepted a cigar, lit it, and con-
tinued :

"Lord Charles, here, was brought up to an
agricultural career, which is a tradition in his

UPSIDONIA 105

family. There are no better farm-labourers in
Upsidonia than the Delagranges, and his
brother, the present Duke of Trumps, who is
a carter, has several times taken the first prize
at the May Day parade of cart-horses. But
Lord Charles grew tired of that simple, uplift-
ing life."

"Have you ever tried uplifting hay on to a
stack all through a long summer day!" asked
Lord Charles, "or getting up at five o'clock on
a winter's morning to look after somebody
ehe's horsesf Yes, I got tired of it."

"His temptation came," said Mr. Perry,
"when he went on to a farm on the Downs,
near Pepsom, and attended his first race-
meeting."

"Never touched a winner all day," said Lord
Charles, "and came away with a pot of
money."

"Which, of course, he had to spend," said
Mr. Perry. "It is often the beginning of such
a downfall as his. He allowed himself to take
a pleasure in surreptitious spending, and when
his father, the duke, died, he threw up his situa-
tion and became a man about town."

"Haven't a care in the world," said Lord
Charles, "except the confounded inspectors.

106 UPSIDONIA

But they are never hard on a man of my birth,
and I manage to escape accumulating more
than I can conveniently spend. The fact is, Mr.
Howard, I hate work, and I like making my-
self comfortable. There are plenty of others
*\ like me. Old Perry is one of them, but, of
course, he has a family, and must keep up ap-

"Mr. Howard already knows me too well not
to believe that all I do is dictated by humani-
tarianism," said Mr. Perry. "Lord Charles is
cut off from the society of his equals. His
family has disowned him. At first they com'
bined to take small sums of money from him,
and tried to help him out of the morass into
which he had sunk. But they have long since
given it up. He now, as you see, wallows — ab-
solutely wallows — in his degradation, and I
fear he is past all hope."

"Not a bit," said Lord Charles, again hoist-
ing himself in his chair. ' 'I am hoping to have
a very good dinner to-night, and another one
to-morrow. Now I am going to play bridge. I
don't know whether you would care for a rub-
ber, Mr. Howard!"

For some reason Mr. Perry seemed to desire
me to accept this invitation. He said he had

UPSIDONIA 107

some important business to think over, and we
might leave him where he was.

"Old Perry can't put away the liquor he
used to," said Lord Charles, as we went out
of the room. "He's had too much of it. He
wants a little nap now. He's a nice old fellow,
and you'll have a good time at Magnolia Hall
as long as you stay there."

CHAPTER SH

The card-room was well occupied. We cut
into a table with two other men, one of whom
was the stockbroker who had made the lucky
coup that afternoon, and the other was a dis-
agreeable sort of fellow who, I learnt after-
wards, had inherited a great deal of money and
had done little all his life to diminish it. His
name was Brnmmer; he had the manners of a
costermonger, and not of one in the higher
walks of that calling, if there are such.

Lord Charles treated both of them with a
careless good-nature which seemed to subdue
somewhat the exuberance of their vulgarity;
but I thought that before we made up our table
they looked about as if they would rather have
joined another one. And it was evident that
they suspected me of being what Brummer

called contemptuously "a philanthropist,"

when the stockbroker told him I had come into
the club with Mr. Perry.

Lord Charles was my partner, and I took the

UPSIDONIA 109

precaution of asking him what the points were
to be, before we began.

"Oh, club points — a sovereign," he said, in
an off-hand manner, and I could only hope that
my luck would stand good, for they were much
higher than I was accustomed to.

However, I had over ten pounds in my pocket
and did not suppose that there would be much
difficulty in getting more in Upsidonia if I
wanted it. So I sat down with no particular

It was a long rubber, but it ended in Lord
Charles leaving the declaration to me, and my
declaring "do trumps," with four aces and a
long suit of diamonds.

"When he had expressed his satisfaction, and
Brummer had sworn heavily at our luck, I
leant back in my chair to watch him play the
hand.

He was just about to begin, when there was
some commotion in the room, and I looked up
to see two men in blue uniforms coming
towards us with notebooks in their hands.

Brummer let out a violent oath, and muttered

something about the inspectors. Lord

Charles looked up at them and said: "Hullo!
Come for a drink!"

110 UPSIDONIA

They ignored this pleasantry, and the su-
perior of them asked what stakes we were play-
ing for.

"Club stakes, of course," said Brummer.
"Pound points, and a hundred on the rubber."

This was a most unpleasant shock to me, un-
til I reflected that the rubber was certainly ours
by the cards on the table, and I need not play
another one. So I was enabled to give my at-
tention to the inspector, who enquired if I was
a member of the club, and, when I said that I
was a visitor, asked the name of my introducer.

Then he looked at the table and said: "None
of you are drinking' anything. When did you
last imbibe?"

"A good idea!" said Lord Charles. "Let's
have drinks all round. .What's yours, In-
spector T"

The inspector smiled indulgently, and went
away to another table. Brummer and the other
man immediately became violently abusive.

"They wouldn't dare put their noses into a
poor man's club," said Brummer; and the
other man asked: "Why should we be forced
to drink, if we don't want to!"

"I always do want to," said Lord Charles.
"I want a whisky and soda now as much as I

UPSIDONIA 111

ever wanted anything in my life. Yon 11 join
me, Mr. Howard?"

Bat I declined. There were limits.

"Why do they insist npon your drinking!"
I asked.

"Oh, because it's a clnb, and the wine-mer-
chants have been kicking up a row lately.
They say the supply is 'beginning to exceed the
demand;* that we're getting abstemious, but
I'm sure I don't know where they get their in-
formation from. Now then — you've led a
spade, Brummer. Very good. I -put on the
ace. I play out Dummy's seven diamonds and
his two other aces ; put myself in with a small
club, and make my king, queen, and knave —
grand slam."

He put his cards down on the table, and
Brummer and his partner, after looking at
them suspiciously, accepted the inevitable, and
proceeded to add up the score.

"We had won two hundred and thirty-four
points, and quite a pleasant feeling came over
me as I contemplated receiving that number of
pounds.

But my satisfaction was short-lived. To my
unspeakable borror, I saw Lord Charles cheer-

112 UPSIDONIA

folly handing over bank notes and gold to the
stockbroker, and realised that I was expected
to do the same to the odious Brnmmer. I
ought to have anticipated it. If you won at
anything in Upsidonia, of course, yon paid out
money; if you lost, you received it.

What was I to dot In my distress I mum-
bled something about having thought that the
points were a pound a hundred, and then a
gleam of relief came to me when it struck me
that Brununer would be better pleased than
anything at my omitting to pay him, especially
as he had bitterly complained at his want of
luck in losing the rubber, as ill-bred players al-
ways do, and had made himself intensely dis-
agreeable to his partner for losing a possible
trick at an earlier point of the game.

But unfortunately, Brummer took mj evi-
dent unwillingness to pay up as an offensive
mark of patronage.

"We don't want none of your blooming
charity here," he said. " 'Oo the something,
something are you, to come 'ere crowing over
ns? If you win a rubber in this 'ere club, you
fork out same as if you was playing with the
nobs."

UPSIDONIA 113

"Oh, yes, Howard," said Lord Charles, "you
needn't be shy. Brummer don't mind taking
it a bit. Why, it's a fleabite to him. He's got
a hnndred thousand sitting on bis chest at
home."

"But I tell you I haven't got it," I said.
"I've only got about, fifteen pounds in the
world."

"Well, then, what do you want to come pok-
ing yourself in 'ere for in that rig out!" en-
quired Brummer with more oaths. "We ain't
a wild beast show, are wef I thought there
was something fishy about you when Perry
first brought you in."

"What's this! What's this!" exclaimed a
voice at my elbow. "I say, Brummer, my man,
don't forget yourself, you know. No language I
It's one of the rules of the club, to which we
have all subscribed."

I looked round to see standing behind me an
athletic-looking young man in the dress of a
curate.*

' ' Ah, Thompson 1" said Lord Charles.

"Come to see we're all behaving ourselves,

eh! It's all right. Brummer was just going

to write out a IT. 0. Me to give to Mr. Howard.

• Sm Nob.

114 TJPSIDONIA

Here's a fountain pen, Brummer. Yon can
write it on the back of the score."

Brummer scrawled "U. 0. Me £234" and
signed his name to it in an execrable fist, and
I put it in my pocket, wondering what I was
to do about it. Then Brummer and the stock-
broker got up and left the table.

Lord Charles introduced me to Mr. Thomp-
son, and then drifted off himself, with a sort
of determined carelessness.

Somewhat to my surprise, Mr. Thompson
gripped me affectionately by the arm just
above the elbow, and led me out of the room.
"Very pleased to make your acquaintance, old
fellow," he said heartily. "You and I must
get to know each other better. Some night,
when you've got nothing better to do, yon
must come round to my digs and have a yarn,
and a cup of coffee. Now, what have you been
doing with yourself all day?"

I was led into the big room again, and de-
posited in a chair, from which I could see Mr.
Perry slumbering by the window in the evening
sunlight, while the curate took one next to me,
in which he sat upright, with his legs crossed,
and his thumbs in the armholes of his waist-
coat.

TJPSIDONIA 115

"After all," he said, looking at me with
manly but somewhat embarrassing tenderness,
"smoking and drinking and playing cards
aren't everything in the world, are they! You
feel that yourself, I know. It 's so jolly to feel
you've done something with your day — some-
thing to raise a pal."

I muttered something to the effect that it was
rather jolly; but he did not seem to want me
particularly to help in the conversation.

"Do you take any interest in Coleopterat"
he asked, and proceeded, clasping his hands
and cracking their joints : ' ' Coleoptera is larks.
A few fellows come round to me every Tuesday
evening, and we teach each other something
about the beggars. How would you like to join
us to-night?"

"I don't know where it ia," I said.

He gave me the address of his rooms, with
a half-concealed air of eagernesa.

"I mean I dont know where Coleoptera is,"
I said. "I never could tackle geography."

"Oh, I see!" he said, cot turning a hair, for
which I respected him. "No, you've got it
wrong, old chap. Coleoptera is beetles, you
know. The fact is that I wanted to get up some
subject that would give fellows like you a taste

116 TJPSIDONIA

for science. There 's a good deal to be lost over
it, you know. Have you ever heard of Profes-
sor Gregory! He began just like that, reading
with a parson fellow who took an interest in
him — I mean, took an interest in science.
Gregory was the son of a ground landlord, you
know, and if he could raise himself to what he
is now, anybody could. Why don't you try it,
old chap? I'm sure you look intelligent
enough."

I looked as modest as possible under the
circumstances, and he seemed to regard me
more closely. "What's your line?" he asked.
"What are you doing to scare off the oof-
birdt"*

I don't know what I should have replied to
this question, but at that moment Mr. Perry,
whom I had observed gradually waking up,
came over to us and said: "Ah, Howard, I see
you're in good hands, but I think we must be
going off now. The carriage is at the door, and
my good Thomas won't like to be kept wait-
ing."

The curate looked at me again, with a slightly

different expression, and Mr. Perry said to him :

"We don't often get a Highlander here, do we,

•See Note.

UPSIDONIA 117

Thompson! Mr. Howard is making social en-
quiries. I dare say he has learnt quite a lot
from you."

The curate suddenly laughed. "I am afraid
I have put my foot in it, air," he said. "If yon
come among us disguised as a rich man, you
can't complain of being treated like one." *

He was a good fellow, and we shook hands
warmly as we parted.

CHAPTER XHI

We arrived home in time to dress for dinner.
Lord Arthur had laid out my evening clothes,
and was still in the room, evidently ready for
a little conversation.

"Well, I suppose you met some pretty low-
down swabs at old Perry's club," he began
"What did you do there!"

"I played bridge," I said, "and lost — I
mean won — two hundred and thirty-four
pounds. I have accepted a U. O. Me for it.
What do you do if you haven't got the
money t"

"Why, wait till you get landed with some,
and swop it off. You're jolly lucky I It's a
dangerous game. Why, you might have had to
receive it I Who did you play with I"

"Lord Charles Delagrange was my partner.
Do you know himt"

His face changed. "He's my uncle, I'm
Borry to say," he said stiffly. "But if I were
to meet him in the street I should look the
other way. He's a swab of the first water."

UPSIDONIA 119

"He seems cheerful enough," I said, "and
enjoys his life thoroughly, to all appearances."

"I dare say he does. But there must he
times when he asks himself whether the com-
pany he keeps is worth the price he pays for
it. He can't get any other. I shouldn't think
there's a servants' hall in the country that
would be open to him now."

"I suppose the best society in the place is to
be found in the servants' hall."

"Of course it is — the best female society.
Yon mast come and dine with us one night
here. We'll give you a very poor dinner."

"Thank you. You are very kind."

"Not at all. Of coarse, it's a little different
in this house. We have to keep up the farce,
and we don't like to put people like the Perrys
out. We generally choose a night for our
parties when they are dining out. In other
houses you can just tell them upstairs that
there won't be any regular dinner for them,
when you think of having guests of your own."

At that moment Edward came into the room,
and Lord Arthur left us, saying that he must
go and help Mr. Blother with the table.

Edward seemed a trifle disturbed. "I say,"

120 TJPSIDONIA

he said, "what is all this about your being a

Highlander 1"

"Well, Miss Miriam and I settled it between
ourselves that England must be in the High-
lands somewhere," I explained.

He looked at me with some suspicion. "It's
all very well to have a joke," he said, ' 'and the
story you made up to me was certainly very in-
genious and amusing, though highly absurd.
But I don't think you ought to want to keep it
up any longer. It amused Miriam, but there's
always the danger, where a young girl lives in
such surroundings as these, that she may get a
taste for luxury. Yon ought not to make it out
to her that people could live anywhere in the
way you pretend without disgrace. It is apt to
confound right and wrong."

"My dear fellow," I said, "I quite see your
point. But Miss Miriam is so level-headed
that I am sure she would never be affected in
that way."

"PerhapB not," he said. "Still, I think it is
time yon dropped it Of course, I shouldn't
dream of aBking you where you really do come
from, if you don't want to tell me. It is quite
obvious that you are well-born and well-edu-
eatedj and that is enough for me."

UPSIDONIA 121

"My dear Edward, if you will let me call
yon bo, I appreciate your delicacy. All I have
told you is time, but I have not the slightest
wish to publish it abroad if you think it would
be better that I shouldn't."

"I think it is much better that you shouldn't,
unless you wish to lie under the suspicion of
being touched in the head."

"No, I don't wish that at all. As I am al-
ready supposed to be a Highlander, suppose we
keep to that."

"Well, if you like," he said unwillingly.
"But if yon are supposed to have come from
the Highlands, you ought to be more than a lit-
tle learned. I wonder you haven't already
been asked what your subject is. Is there any
branch of learning in which you are an ex-
pert?"

"I took a First Class in the Classical Schools
of my university, and am a Fellow of my Col-
lege, if you know what that means."

His face brightened.* "Of course, you are
a Highlander," he said, with a smile. "I don't
know why you want to make such a mystery of
it; I suppose it is out of modesty. "Well, I
won't bother you any more; I must go and

"See Note.

122 UPSIDONIA

dress. My married sister, by the by, is com-
ing to dine with her husband. He is a very
good fellow, and I am sure you will get on with
him. He is striving hard to overcome the de-
fects of bis birth. Yon remember that I told
yon my sister had married into the Stock Ex-
change."

I found the family assembled in the drawing-
room. I was quite pleased to see Miriam again.
I thought she looked very sweet in her white
frock. She had a lovely neck and shoulders,
and her hair was very soft and fair. She
smiled at me as I came in, in a friendly fashion,
and seemed quite to have forgotten that a
slight cloud had hong over ns when we had last
parted. I remembered that I had not yet
pumped Edward about the mystery of the
garden.

I was introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Eppstein.
Mr. Perry's eldest daughter must have been
some years older than Miriam. She was good-
looking, but wore a prim pinched up expres-
sion. Her husband looked nervous. He was a
youngish dark man, with a small moustache
and hot hands. He said: "I am very pleased
to make your acquaintance, sir," when we were
introduced.

UPSIDONIA 123

I took in Mrs. Perry, and had Miriam on the
other side of me. Owing to the smallness of
the party, Mr. and Mrs. Eppstein sat next to
one another, on the other side of the table.

Curiously enough, the question I had been
meaning to ask of Edward was answered for
me during the conversation with which we
began.

"I have a piece of news for you," said Mrs.
Eppstein, to the company generally. "They
say that Lady Grace Perkins has asked Sir
Hugo Merton into her garden."

Everyone expressed that sort of interest
with which the news of an unexpected engage-
ment is received.

"Hugo Merton!" exclaimed Lord Arthnr,
who was handing round the soup. "Why, I
thought he was always hanging round little
Eosie Fletcher's gate."

"She wouldn't give him the invitation he
wanted," said Mr. Blother, "and I suppose he
got tired of waiting for it. A glass of sherry,
Edward?"

"No thank you," said Edward. "Didn't
Lady Grace ask John Hardy into her garden
last summer?"

"Yes," said Mrs, Eppsteinj "it was he who

124 TJPSroONIA

told Herman." She turned to her huBband.
"The large spoon, pet," she whispered, and
then asked alond: "Didn't he Bay that her
garden was very badly kept, deart"

Mr. Eppstein blushed awkwardly. "He said
it wasn't so tyesty as some he'd been in," he
said.

ThiB reply caused some slight embarrass-
ment, which Mr. Perry sought to dissipate by
saying: "John Hardy has certainly received
invitations from a good many ladies. No
doubt he has a way with him."

"It is quite time he asked for a key," said
Mrs. Perry somewhat severely. "It is not fair
on nice girls that he should go from one gar-
den to another as he does. And it is very ill-
bred to talk about them to others."

"I didn't arst 'im abaht it," said Mr. Epp-
stein.

" 'Ask,' pet, not 'arst,' whispered his wife.

Mr. Eppstein accepted the correction. "I
didn't ask him," he said. "I fancy he was up-
set like at getting the chuck, and wanted to sye
somethink narsty."

"Very likely that was it," said Mr. Perry,
covering Mrs. Eppstein's further corrections.
"Well, I am sure I hope Lady Grace and Sir

UPSmONIA 128

Hugo will be happy together, and that it will
end in his asking her for a key. He wants a
wife, and a home of his own. Our friend, Sir
Hugo, is employed in a large drapery establish-
ment, Mr. Howard, where they have the system
of living in. Ton don't know anything about
that over the mountains."

"And you don't know anything about my
lady's garden, either," said Edward, leaning
forward to address me across his sister. "I
suppose you hardly understand what we have
been talking about!"

"I have gathered something of what it
means," I said, glad to be able to avow my ig-
norance, for Miriam's benefit, "but I didn't
know before. I suppose if a lady asks a man
into her garden, it means that she — she likes
lumT"

"She would not do it," said Mrs. Perry,
"unless he had first shown that he liked her,
and would be glad to have the invitation."

"Bather a delicate subject for conversation
at the dinner-table, isn't it!" pat in Mr.
Blother, from the carving-table, where he was
slicing the salmon. "Why not let the men ex-
plain it when the ladies have left the room!"

This suggestion was acceded to, and w©

126 UPSIDONIA

talked on other subjects as long as the ladies
were with us.

Mrs. Eppstein seemed anxious that I should
understand that, although she had married be-
neath her, she had not done it for fun, so to
speak. She talked a great deal about lifting
the richer classes, and her husband seemed
quite to fall in with her views upon the sub-
ject. I noticed that as dinner progressed he
drank considerably more wine than Edward
did, though not so much as Mr. Perry, and was
inclined to take a larger share in the conversa-
tion than at the beginning.

The subject of the servants * was introduced
over dessert, and Eppstein waxed eloquent and
indignant at being expected to give up the use
of his library after dinner, because the house-
maid was reading up for matriculation at tha
Cnlbut University, and wanted a quiet room to
work in.

"Well, of course, we can ait in the drawing-
room," said Mrs. Eppstein, "I don't mind
that so much. But what I really had to put
down my foot about the other day was the new
parlour-maid objecting to Herman and me talk-
ing together at meals. I said, 'It may be quite

"See Note.

UPSIDONIA 127

reasonable to impose silence upon the usual
rich and vulgar family, but I should never
think of submitting to such a rule myself.' And
then she had the impudence to say that she
didn't mind my talking, and I could talk to her
if I liked, but the master's accent was so dis-
agreeable that it unfitted her for her work. I
told her that my huBband and I were one, and
that if I could put up with it she could."

"Domestic servants are not what they
were," said Mrs. Perry. "There used to be
something like friendship between them and
their mistresses. I know many ladies, who
went out to service as girls, who still visit their
old mistresses, and even ask them to their own
houses. But that kindly feeling is getting rare
nowadays. I do not think it is all the fault of
the mistresses, either, although with the spread
of education, they are certainly getting very
uppish."

"I think that it is entirely the fault of the
servants," said Edward. "The rich are not
content now to be mere drudges, and to spend
their lives on being .waited on hand and foot.
And it is not right that they should he. Serv-
ants are really a parasitical class, and it is un-
fair that the burden of providing them with

128 XJPSIDONIA

work should be put upon the rich, when they
are ao overburdened already with having to
consume more than their fair share of the prod-
uce of the country."

"There'll be a strike some day," said Epp-
stein rather excitedly. "You mark my words.
If the rich was to combine together and say
they wouldn't eat no more than they wanted to,
and all was to agree to chuck the food they
didn't want away, p'raps the poor would think
twice about piling it up on them."

"That would be a serious day for the coun-
try," said Mr. Perry. "We must work by
legitimate means, not anarchy. The solution of
the problem of over-production can only come,
I feel sure, by more individual members of the
community sympathising with the rich, and
sharing their lives, as we try to do here. It is
not easy, I know. I have spent my own time
in a humble endeavour to lead the way, but
sometimes I am rather inclined to sink under
the burden. I have my moments of dejection.
There are times when I feel as if I positively
cannot face the prospect of another rich
meal."

He sat at the foot of the table with his shirt-
front crumpled and eyes slightly glazed, and

UPSIDONIA 129

it was not difficult to believe that this was one
of the moments he had so feelingly alluded to,
in which his philanthropic efforts sat heavily
on him.

But Edward, who had been as abstemious as
had been permitted him, leant forward and put
his hand on his father's. "Cheer up, dad," he
said. "You are doing a noble workj you must
not faint under it."

"I do feel rather faint," said Mr. Perry.
"I wish Blother would bring the brandy."

The ladies left us at this point, and Edward,
who was in a mood of harangue, went into this
question of food, which counted for so much in
the economic problems of Upsidonia.

"You see, it must all come down to that in
the end," he said. "Agricultural and pas-
toral pursuits are so much sought after that
the over-prodnction of food is the most serious
item in the general over-production of the
country. The cry of 'back to the towns' is all
very well, but people won't live in artificial sur-
roundings if they have once tasted the pleasure
and excitement of hard bodily toil; and you
can't make them."

"Well, you wouldn't like it yourself for
long," said Eppstein, "not if you know when

130 UPSIDONIA

you're well off. 'Ow did you get 'ere from the
'Ighlands? WalkT Tell us abaht it."

"We were going to tell Howard about my
lady's garden," said Edward. "You see, How-
ard, in the country there is room for every-
body, and the young men and young girls
can go courting in a natural way, in lanes with
briar hedges and nightingales and the moon,
and all that sort of thing. They can secure the
necessary privacy. But in towns there is so
little privacy. It is the one thing in which the
rich are really better off than the poor, because
they have large houses and gardens of their
own."

"Which seem to belong more to their serv-
ants than to them," I said.

"Well, of course, the servants have to be
considered. I am not an extremist, and I do
not advocate, as some do, that property should
carry no disadvantages other than those obvi-
ously inherent in it. If the rich, for instance,
were allowed to surround themselves with the
gracious things of life — space, freedom, flow-
ers, art, leisure for study and self-improve-
ment — without the checks that a wise State has
imposed upon the abuse of those things, the
incentive to break loose from the bonds of

UPSIDONIA 131

property would be lessened. Don't you agree
with me, Herman I"

"It's a bore, sometimes, to 'ave to eat too
much," Eppstein corroborated him.

"Quite so!" said Mr. Perry, awakening sud-
denly ont of a species of trance. "Quite so,
Herman! Then why eat too much! I ask you
— why eat too much!"

" 'Cos the State makes you," said Eppstein.

"Ah!" said Mr. Perry, wagging his head
with an expression of deep wisdom. "But
now you're talking politics." He then re-
lapsed into his former air of aloofness.

"Well, to come back to my lady's garden,"
said Edward. "It is generally acknowledged
that it is a good thing for young girls to be
alone sometimes, and in beautiful surround-
ings, so that they may feed their minds on
beautiful thoughts. So every girl in the towns,
when she reaches a certain age, has a garden
of her own given to her, which she has to look
after entirely herself. She can retire into it
whenever she pleases, and nobody may break
in on her privacy. When she accepts the at-
tentions of a man, she invites him into her
garden, and if the intimacy between them stands
the test, by and by he asks her for a key. If

132 UPSIDONIA

she consents to give him one, he has the right

to enter her garden whenever he pleases."

"A very pretty notion," I said, thinking all
the time how dreadfully forward I must have
seemed to Miriam in asking her to show me the
garden — which she must naturally have taken
to mean her garden — after about an hour's
acquaintance, and wondering how soon I could
get her to ask me to see if of her own accord.

Eppstein laughed rather vulgarly. "You
should Bee the old maids standing with their
garden gates wide open," he said.

"Oh, not all of them, Herman," expostulated
Edward. "And some of the old maids' gar-
dens are as beautifully kept as any young
girl's, and it is quite a privilege to be invited
into them. You are not expected to ask for a
key, and if you did they wouldn't give you
one."

"Oh, wouldn't they!" exclaimed Eppstein.
"Yon try, my boy. Now look 'ere, I'll tell you.
■When I was courtin' Amelia "

But he did not continue his reminiscences,
for Mr. Perry, suddenly emerging from his
gloomy trance, sang with a happy smile:

"When I married A-me-li-ar, Eum-ti tumti
turn," — and then laughed consumedly.

UPSIDONIA 133

We all shared in his hilarity, and when he
had relapsed once more into his solemn and
even dejected mood, with the same sudden-
ness as he had emerged from it, I asked: "Do
they give up their gardens when they marry T"

"Seldom at once," said Edward. "They
need not give them up at all, and there are
cases of old men and women still keeping up
the gardens in which they first made love to
one another, and retiring to them frequently.
But in practice they are generally given up
within a year or so. They haven't the time to
look after them."

At this point Mr. Perry said that he felt
rather giddy. He thought he had done rather
too much during the day, and would be better
in bed. So Mr. Blother was summoned to help
hiTrt upstairs, and we went into the drawing-
room without him.

"We talked, and Miriam played to us. It was
delightful to sit by the open window, looking
out on to the lovely garden, which lay mys-
terious under a sky of spangled velvet, and
listen to the sweet music she made.

By and by I felt that I did not want to talk
any more, and fortunately I was left to myself
for a time, where I could see the garden, and

134 UPSIDONIA

by turning my head could also see Miriam, her
fair hair irradiated by the shaded lamp that
stood by the piano.

Soft thoughts began to steal over me — very
soft thoughts, and very sweet ones. I thought
how delightful it would be to sit every evening
like this and listen to Miriam playing; and still
more delightful if there should come a time
when she would shut the piano and come across
the room and put her hand on my shoulder,
and look out on to the moonlight lawn and the
dark shrubs and the starry sky with me; and
neither of ua would want to speak, but only to
feel that the other was there.

And the night before I had spent in prison,
and had not even known that there was such a
girl as Miriam 1

CHAPTER XIV

It was about a week after I had been welcomed
into the Perry family that we were all asked to
take high tea at the house of Mrs. Perry's sis-
ter, the Countess of Blueberry.

The most important thing that had happened
in the meantime was that I had fallen deeply
in love with Miriam. We had been much to-
gether, and our conversations had largely con-
cerned themselves with the curious state of
things obtaining in the country from which I
had come. Miriam was deeply interested in
what I told her, but I had to be very careful.
In some respects she became more and' more
inclined to approve of a country in which
wealth might be used to lessen care, instead of
increasing it, and in which even the richest
were under no clond of inferiority. The pic-
tures I painted of English life under conditions
of monetary ease appealed alike to her natural
tastes, of which in Upsidonia she had to be
ashamed, if she were to show right feeling, and
to the philanthropic ideals in which she had

136 TJPSIDONIA

been brought up. She could never get it out
of her mind that we showed great nobility of
behaviour in treating rich people with a total
absence of contempt, and I did not desire that
she should, although I insisted upon the fact
itself.

But every now and again I came up against
a painful shrinking. I had to be extraor-
dinarily careful how I dealt with the subject of
food, for instance, and I think that if I had
ever described to her a city banquet, or even a
college feast, I should have wiped out at a
stroke all the admiration she was inclined to
show for the habits and customs of my beloved
country.

But short as had been the time since I had
come to Magnolia Hall, I had already adapted
myself somewhat to the Upsidonian point of
view — indeed, a good deal more than I should
have thought possible.

In the matter of food and drink, I was now
inclined to despise the delicate living that I had
at first taken such pleasure in. I can only say
on my own behalf — if I have seemed to repre-
sent myself as greedier than I will confess to
being — that I had been living a hard active life
for some weeks past, and was in the most

UPSIDONIA 137

abounding physical health ; also that Mrs.
Lemon, the Perrys' cook, was a supreme
artist." After all, my usual life was neces-
sarily abstemious, and it had happened to me
before to get very tired of luxurious living,
when I had been staying with friends accus-
tomed to it, and to go back to my own moderate
habits with relief.

So I now ate and drank sparingly at Mag-
nolia Hall, and was inclined to feel the same
disgust towards those who did neither as was
commonly expressed around me. And it did
not any longer seem curious to me that con-
tempt for luxury should be a general and
genuine feeling in Upsidonia. It was en-
couraged by constant expression, and those
who might be temperamentally inclined to-
wards what is called "doing themselves well,"
were ashamed of indnlging their inclinations
out of respect for public opinion.*

In the matter of clothes I had also somewhat
changed my point of view. It is gratifying to
feel one's self well-dressed, if everyone is well-
dressed around one; but if one is not suitably
dressed as well, the gratification disappears.
It was not long before I began to feel, walking

" See Notei.

138 UPSIDONIA

about the streets of Culbut, in the excellent
clothes for which I still owed money to the
Universal Stores, that I waB not in the fashion.
It was rather as if I had turned out to shoot,
amongst a crowd of men in tweeds and woollens,
wearing a shiny silk hat, varnished boots, and
striped trousers with creases down them. I
discovered that it was only in the most exclu-
sive set, of which Lord Potter was one of the
leaders, that it was the fashion to go ragged
and dirty. The ordinary members of the edu-
cated classes were as clean as we are. But
they liked old clothes, and didn't want to he
bothered with large collections of them, or of
anything else. Those who spent the day in
bodily toil always changed in the evening,
wearing the newer of their two suits, which
took the place of the other one when that was
entirely worn out.

The mention of Lord Potter reminds me of
an encounter I had with that nobleman a few
days after I had hoped I had seen the last of
him , in the police court.

I was walking along the road from Culbut to
Magnolia Hall, and had reached the point at
which the villas were beginning to get larger
and to stand in gardens of some extent, when

UPSIDONIA 139

I saw a filthy-looking tramp crossing the road
from one gate to the other, and recognised him
as I passed as Lord Potter.

He did not look at me, but when I had gone
on a few yards, he called out: "Hi, you fel-
low!" in an authoritative voice.

I took no notice, and he called out again
more loudly, so I turned round to see what he
wanted.

"Didn't yon hear me call?" he asked angrily.
"Which is Hoggenschlick's housef"

"I don't know," I said.

"Well, just run in and ask if Hoggenschlick
lives here, and tell him that Lord Potter wants
to see him. I think this is the house. If it
isn't, it is the one across the road."

"Don't you think you might find out which
it is for yourself!" I asked. "I'm not your
servant."

His face changed as he recognised me. "Oh,
it's you!" he exclaimed disagreeably; "and
dressed like the cad I knew you were when I
first saw you. If you give me any of your im-
pudence you'll find yourself in trouble again,
and I'll take care you don't get off this time.
I shall keep my eye on you, .Where are you
living!"

140 UPSIDONIA

"Where I can get a wash sometimes," I re-
plied. "You don't seem to be bo fortunate."

Then I turned round and walked on, leaving
him very angry.

But to return to Miriam. England, and Eng-
lish life, was a little secret between us; I did
not talk about them to anybody else, and asked
her not to do so. The fact that she entered
willingly into this understanding, which I
found so agreeable, being in that state of mind
in which any understanding with her would
have pleased me, was very gratifying, as tend-
ing to show that she had something of the same
feeling about it as I had. Oh, we were getting
on very well ! But she had not yet invited me
into her garden.

CHAPTER XV

The Earl of Blueberry was, as I have said, a
suburban postman, and as it was his month for
making an evening round he was not present at
Lady Blueberry's tea-party. And their only
son, the Young Viscount Sandpits, had just
been commissioned to one of the smart gangs
of navvies in which, the aristocratic youth of
Culbut were delighted to serve, if they were of
good enough physique. He, also, was on a
night shift, and I did not see him at that time.
But the young Ladies Susan and Cynthia
Masted were there, and extremely nice and
well-mannered children they were, and very
pretty too. They wore clean print frocks,
hand-knitted worsted stockings, and service-
able shoes.

Mrs. Perry, Miriam, and Mollie also wore
clothes suitable for the occasion. Edward had
on a suit of threadbare serge, which he had
told me, coming along, that he reserved for
such occasions as this; and I wore again the
clothes in which I had come into Upsidonia.

142 UPSIDONIA

We were the only men of the party. Tom
was playing cricket, and Mr. Perry had said
that he was not feeling very well, and would
dine quietly at his club.

Lady Blueberry received us most graciously
in her charming kitchen, from which we
went into the parlour, where the table was
spread.

Blueberry House was typical of those in the
aristocratic quarters of Culbut. You entered
by way of the scullery and kitchen, which, with
a small yard, were in front of the house. But
immediately behind these was a large room oc-
cupying the whole breadth of the house, and
looking out on to a peaceful park.*

"We were left for a few minutes in the par-
lour, while Lady Blueberry took the scones out
of the oven and made the tea, and the Ladies
Susan and Cynthia, with Mollie's help, brought
plates and the teapot to the table.

The parlour was cool and airy, with well-
polished floor-boards, but no carpet. The walls
were whitewashed and hung with family por-
traits, some of which seemed to me to be very
fine. There was an equestrian portrait of the
first Earl of Blueberry in the dresa of a royal

* See Note.

UPSIDONIA 143

stableman, that looked to me like a Vandyke,
which, of course, it could not have been; and
another of an eighteenth century countess car-
rying a milkpail, which I should have sworn
was a Sir Joshua if I had seen it anywhere else.
A charming group of Lady Blueberry and her
two daughters, with their own kitchen as a
background, was by the famous Upsidonian
artist, Corporal, who had also painted Lord
Blueberry with his letter-bag, and the gallant
young Sandpits, in corduroys, with his pick and
shovel.

Lord Blueberry was a dignified figure of a
man in this picture, and I thought as I looked
at it that I should have felt some hesitation
in offering him a tip at Christmas time. But
if I had been a resident in Culbut, he, no doubt,
would have given me one, and I should not have
dared to refuse. Young Lord Sandpits was ex-
tremely handsome, and stood up boldly, with
his muscular arms bare to the elbows, the pic-
ture of virile youth. The artist had got some
wonderful lines into this picture, especially in
the hang of the trousers, which were strapped
below the knee.

The furniture in Lady Blueberry's parlour
all seemed to be old, but there was very little

144 UPSIDONIA

of it. There were no easy chairs, and, indeed,
no upholstery at all, or anything that detracted
from the air of severe simplicity that was the
note of the room, and attracted strongly by its
restfulness. With the exception of the family
portraits, there was no ornament whatever.
The tea-table was set with crockery of the
cheapest description, but all the shapes were
good, and the colour was pleasing. A grand
piano in a corner of the room seemed a some-
what incongruous feature, but Miriam told me
as I looked at it that her cousin Susan was ex-
ceptionally gifted musically, and she would get
her to play for me after tea.*

Lady Blueberry presided most graciously at
the tea-table. She had that perfectly natural
air of courtesy combined with dignity which is
the mark of a great lady anywhere. She was
formed in a classical mould, which the severe
lines of her afternoon-gown of black alpaca, re-
lieved with touches of white at the neck and
wrists, suited admirably. Her abundant hair
was brushed back from her broad and placid
brow, and knotted simply on the nape of her
neck. There were marks of toil on her beau-
tifully shaped hands, which, according to

UPSIDONIA 145

Upsidonian ideas, became them better than
jewels.

We talked about a step-sister of Lord Blue-
berry's — a Mrs. Claude Chanticleer — who was
a prominent member of the dirty set. Mrs.
Perry had asked about her, and Lady Bine-
berry's calm face had been somewhat over-
shadowed as she told us that Tricky, as they
called her, bad been causing her family con-
siderable anxiety.

"She is always going in for some new ex-
travagance," she said. "She and Claudie gave
up their two rooms, as you know, about a year
ago, when Mrs. Chetwynd-Jones died of pneu-
monia, and took possession of her railway
arch."

"But they only use that for a town residence,
don't theyt" asked Mrs. Perry.

""Well, of course they went out of town for
the hop-picking, and went from one barn party
to another through the rest of the autumn ; but
they were in town for the whole of the winter,
and I am quite sure that Tricky must have suf-
fered a good deal from exposure."

"She leads such a rackety life, too," said
Edward. "I was coming home from my Lads'
Club very late one night in January, and I saw

146 UPSIDONIA

Claudie and Mrs. Claudie and a lot of others
round a watchman's shelter. None of them
were speaking a word, and they all looked as
if they would die of cold before the morning."

"And they call that pleasure!" said Lady
Blueberry.

"Do they really persuade themselves that it
is pleasure!" I asked.

"They say that endurance is the highest
form of pleasure," said Lady Blueberry.
"And of course it is so in a way. At least, no
sensible person would leave endurance of hard-
ships ont of their life altogether. But the
dirty set, as they call them, are so eager for
new sensations that they never use any method
of life moderately, and would just as soon
throw it over altogether, whether it was help-
ful or not, if anybody started some new craze."

' ' Susan and I saw Auntie Tricky in the gal-
lery of the opera," said Lady Cynthia, "the
night that Aunt Maude took us. Uncle Claudie
wasn't there. Auntie Tricky was with Lord
Hebron. And we saw them supping together
at the whelk stall in Paradise Bow when we
were coming home."

"That will do, dear," said Lady Blueberry,
with calm authority. "Lord Hebron is an old

UPSIDONIA 147

friend of Uncle Claudie's, and no doubt he had
asked him to look after Auntie Tricky for the
evening."

"It is a good thing, at any rate," said Ed-
ward, "that they got through the winter in
their railway arch. It would not be so bad
now. And I suppose they will soon be off to
the strawberry fields T"

"I am not sure," said Lady Blueberry.
"Tricky came to see me the other day, and told
me she thought of going in for the complicated
life this summer. It seems to me a perfectly
insane idea. After the privations she has gone
through her digestion will not stand it. But
there it is ! It is a new idea ; others are taking
it up, and, of course, Tricky must be in the
movement."

"Besides," said Edward, "the complicated
life, as it is practised by the dirty set, is such
a sham. If they lived it seriously, as we do,
year in and year out, and really did live it with
all its drawbacks, they would very soon get
tired of it."

"Of course they would," Baid Lady Blue-
berry. "It is not the same thing at all."

"How do they live it?" I enquired.

"They make up a party," said Lady Blue-

148 UPSIDONIA

berry, "and descend upon some large house in
the country, where they live a life of ease and
luxury as long as it amuses them. I think my-
self that to play at being rich in that way is
extremely immoral. It has already been known
to give some of the younger people who have
practised it a taste for luxury that has led them
into a life of degradation. I believe young
Bertie Pilliner has been quite ruined by it. I
heard the other day that he had acquired a
motor-car, and joined a golf club. And he used
to be such a nice boy. He was in Sandpit's
gang, but, of course, he had to be requested to
go."

"What becomes of the people whose houses
they descend upon!" I enquired. "Do they
live with them as their guests!"

Lady Blueberry laughed pleasantly. "That
would not suit them at all," she said. "They
choose their house — generally the most elabo-
rate one they can find — and write and tell the
owners that they are to leave it by a certain
date. Then they take possession of it, and live
just as if they were rich themselves, but, as Ed-
ward says, they suffer none of the incon-
veniences. They refuse to do the least little
thing that the servants tell them, and as they

UPSIDONIA 149

are not among their own possessions they do
not feel the burden of them. It is only because
the servants like to have people they can as-
sociate with, instead of their masters and
mistresses, and the owners of the houses are
glad to have somebody to consume their stores
while they can go away for a holiday, that the
system is possible at all."

"It is a very dangerous game to play at,"
said Edward, "and goes directly against all
our work. If the movement spreads to any ex-
tent it will prove to be an immense temptation
to those whose principles are not firmly fixed.
They will see the complicated life in an entirely
false aspect, and think that it is always like
that, and, perhaps, even that it is preferable to
the simple life. Then the very foundations of
society will be undermined, and we shall have
such a revolution as it makes me tremble to
think of."

He spoke so earnestly that the young Lady
Cynthia, who was of a sympathetic disposition,
burst into tears, and implored her mother not
to let Auntie Tricky lead the complicated life
any more.

Lady Blueberry soothed her tenderly, and
said that she would do what she could to pre-

150 UPSIDONIA

vent it, and soon afterwards we rose from the

table.

Mrs. Perry stayed in the house to help her
sister wash up, and, no doubt, to have a little
intimate conversation with her; and Edward
went off with apologies, to some engagement in
the way of self-improvement. The rest of us
adjourned to the park, and when we had seen
the children happily amusing themselves in the
pony paddocks, where there were hurdles, and
a little water-jump, I had the delight, which I
had hoped all along might come to me, of wan-
dering alone with Miriam through the bosky
shades of that beautiful pleasance.

Miriam seemed at first a little nervous, but
we soon fell into easy converse, which gradu-
ally drifted, with possibly a little urging on
my part, into one of a more confidential nature.
I will not repeat any of it; perhaps it is not
worth repeating. I said things that come
easily to the lips of any lover, and she received
them with a sweet modesty that made me think
them almost inspired.

It was a lovely quiet evening; the retired
walks in which we strolled amongst the trees
and flowers might have been deep in the coun-
try, instead of in the heart of a city; and if we

UPSIDONIA 151

met, as we did sometimes, other pairs of lovers,
who had fled to these comparative solitudes,
they only seemed to justify our own emotional
condition. It soon became wooing in dead
earnest with me, but I knew that I must not
pass a certain point in my declarations until
Miriam gave me to understand that I had
leave to do so.

At last, when once or twice she had turned
from me, twisting her handkerchief in her lit-
tle ungloved hands, and pausing as if about to
say something which she could not make up her
mind to say, I cried: "Oh, this heavenly gar-
den! I shall never forget walking here with
you this evening as long as I live."

Then she turned towards me, and smiled and
blushed and dropped her eyes again, and said :
"Would you like to walk with me in my gar-
den! "

At these words I forgot all about Upsidonia,
and the possibility of shocking her by ac-
celerating its etiquette. Hang etiquette at so
sweet a moment! I took her in my arms and
kissed her.

And apparently etiquette was the same at
this stage in Upsidonia as everywhere else.
Or else she forgot all about it too.

CHAPTEE XVI

I am not going to describe Miriam's garden. I
will only say that of all the gardens I have ever
seen, large or small, it remains in my memory
as the qnietest, the most retired and the most
beautiful. It waB not long before I asked for
a key, and Miriam gave me one ; and I was free
of that enchanted spot, and of all the sweet in-
tercourse it brought me.

When, on that evening, we hurried away
from the comparative solitude of the park, to'
enfence ourselves in the complete solitude of
Miriam's garden, and left Mrs. Perry and
Mollie to come home by themselves, the only
excuse that we could offer was the true one.
Before the evening was out it was known to all
the occupants of Magnolia Hall that Miriam
had asked me into her garden.

Dear Mrs. Perry smiled on us and kissed us
both. She was an unworldly woman, and only
desired her daughter's happiness. Mollie
showed a gratifying excitement at the unex-
pected news ; Tom eyed me rather suspiciously,

UPSIDONIA 153

and, while not witholding his congratulations,
said enigmatically that it was my white flannel
snit, bnt he supposed he should get used to it
in time. Edward expressed some doubts. I
had to have it out with Edward. But that was
later. "When he came home that night I had
already interviewed Mr. Perry.

Mr. Perry was as kind as possible, but, as
was only natural, wanted to know something
about my circumstances.

"You are aware," he said, "of the great work
in which my life is spent. I am not able to do
as much for my daughters as I should look to
doing, if I lived as my neighbours do. But I
will do what I can. You shall allow me three
hundred pounds a year, and I will get rid of
it as best I can. At five per cent interest, that
would be tantamount to a settlement of sis
thousand pounds; and I should charge my
estate with it, so that you would not suffer in
the event of my death."

I thanked him suitably, and, gathering my
wits about me, offered to settle upon Miriam
Mr. Brunner's U. O. Me for two hundred and
thirty-four pounds, and my account with the
Universal Stores of a hundred pounds odd.

"I am sorry to say that those are the only

154 UPSIDONIA

debts I have in the world," I said, "but on the
other hand I do not earn much money."

"Excuse my asking the question," said Mr.
Perry diffidently, "but what is your occupa-
tion!"

"I will make a clean breast of it to you,"
I said. "I am a University Extension lecturer,
and am also employed in editing educational
works."

"A very honourable occupation," said Mr.
Perry. "A scholar is always a respectable per-
son, and his calling is not a lucrative one."

"I hope," I said, "that there will never be
any doubt about my being able to support
Miriam in the poor way in which a daughter
of yours ought to live."

Mr. Perry sighed pensively. "I will not
deny," he said, "that I should have liked a
larger settlement. I have already sacrificed
one daughter to my passion for the ameliora-
tion of mankind, and although Herman Epp-
stein's character is irreproachable I suffer
somewhat from the remarks of my friends as
to that marriage. I should have liked Miriam
to make what the world calls a good match, and
to be placed beyond all risk of wealth. Still,
with what I can do for you, you will start your

UPSIDONIA 155

married life in embarrassed circumstances,
and we must hope that no unforeseen accidents
will occur. If you keep to your comparatively
ill-paid work, and avoid the temptation that so
many young men fall into, of trying to get poor
quick, all will go well. It is something, at any
rate, to have a daughter marrying into a High-
land family, and my friends can hardly re-
proach me with another misalliance in that
respect."

He said this with an agreeable smile, and I
left him, feeling that I had got through the in-
terview more easily than I could have hoped
for.

I had the congratulations of Lord Arthur.
He himself was in the stage of walking out, or
rather of walking in her garden, with a house-
maid from a neighbouring establishment— one
of the prettiest of the debutantes of the season
— and was inclined towards sympathy with my
state of mind. He said that the earlier a fel-
low settled down in life the better it was for
him, and directly he and his fiancee could find
a situation as butler and housekeeper to an
amenable married couple without encum-
brances, their wedding would take place. He
talked more about his own love affair than

156 UPSIDONIA

about mine, and made it plain — although I am
sure that he did not intend to— that my engage-
ment was but a moderate affair beside his.
His father was a Marquis, and would largely
decrease his younger son's allowance upon his
marriage; and his prospective father-in-law
was a Dean of aristocratic lineage, who was
prepared to settle on his daughter the whole
debt for repairing the West front of his
cathedral.

Edward's attitude was a mixture of pleasure
and anxiety. He said he liked me personally,
and there was no one to whom he would rather
see his sister married if he saw no difficulties in
the way. "You won't tell us where you come
from," he said rattier peevishly. "No one can
call me curious about my neighbours' affairs —
I have far too many and important ones of my
own to occupy me — but if you are going to
marry my sister I should like to know some-
thing more about you. How did you come
heret If you walked from the Highlands, you
couldn't have come into Culbut on the side on
which my father first saw you."

"I have already told you how I came," I
said. "I walked over the moors, and came
through an underground passage into the wood

UPSIDONIA 157

where your father found me. I don't profess
to understand it; but that is exactly how it
happened."

He looked at me suspiciously. "My dear
fellow," he said, "you are playing with me.
My father found you asleep in a little copse
that you have to pass through to get to the Fe-
male Penitentiary, which he was visiting that
afternoon. Beyond that there is at least a mile
of suburb; it is on the high-road to the town
of Somersault, and the country is well popu-
lated all the way."

"I am not surprised to hear it," I said. "I
told you that I did not understand what had
happened. But I have given you the facta as I
remember them."

"Then it is very plain," said Edward, "that
you must have suffered in your brain, and have
escaped from some lunatic asylum. Tour be-
haviour when we first met would seem to point
to that; and the wildness of the ideas which
you disclosed to me was more like what one
would expect to exist in the brain of a maniac
than anything else. I think it is very likely
that you do come from the Highlands; or why
should you have mentioned that region at allf
Your appearance is good, and it la evident that

158 TJPSIDONIA

you have come from some place where you have

filled a poBition of dignity."

"I am glad that it strikes you like that," I
said. "But I don't feel in the least like a
lunatic. In fact, I am quite sure that I am as
sane as you are."

"I think you are, now," said Edward; "and
I don't see any reason why you shouldn't re-
main so. If that ia really the solution of your
eccentricities, then all my difficulties are done
away with, and I can welcome you, my dear
fellow, cordially as a brother-in-law."

"Oh!" I said, somewhat taken aback. "Ton
don't think that I might break out again!"

"I should think it is unlikely; but if you did,
we could easily have you put away for a time.
The great advantage would be that Miriam
could always get a divorce on the ground of in-
sanity of partner, whenever she wished it."

"Is that a ground for divorce in Upsi-
doniat"

"TeB; the passing of that law has been a
great boon. People under suspicion of weak
intellect have become much more marriageable
than they were before."

"I shouldn't like to begin married life with
the idea of a divorce hanging over me."

UPSIDONIA 159

"I don't say that Miriam would allow herself
to count on a divorce at present ; and if I were
you I should not tell her that yon have suffered
from brain trouble."

"I won't," I Baid.

"No; and I won't, either. But one never
knows what may happen in married life, and it
would be a comfort to know that Miriam would
not be tied to yon for life if you turned out
badly."

"Well, supposing we leave it at that," I said.
"I think you're wrong about my brain trouble,
but if your idea comforts you at all, keep it by
all means; but keep it to yourself."

CHAPTEE XVII

It is not customary, at least in England, to
undertake the responsibilities of married life
without a probability of being able to carry
them out, and at the time I had come into Up-
sidonia I had not been in what is called a posi-
tion to marry. In that country my position
was quite satisfactory in this respect, but I did
not propose to spend the rest of my life in
Upsidonia.

So I now had to think seriously about ac-
quiring that independence which would sweeten
the existence that I looked forward to, with
dear Miriam as my life-long companion. I was
as happy as a king in her garden, but having
achieved the step of being invited into it, I now
looked forward eagerly to the next Btep, which
was to get out of Upsidonia by the way I had
come, and to take her with me.

She was quite ready to go, after our mar-
riage. Indeed, the Highlands, where it was
supposed that we should settle down, was so
cut off from communication with the rest of

UPSIDONIA 161

TTpsidonia that a separation was taken for
granted, both by herself and her family.*

"Tell me aboat the sort of house we shall
live in," said Miriam, as we sat together on a
seat in her garden, under the shade of a sweet-
smelling lime.

"My dear," I said, "we shall be able to live
in any sort of house we want to. It is delight-
ful to think of. All the beautiful places in the
world are open to us, and we need be tied to
none of them."

"I don't want more than one house," said
Miriam. "I can't get it out of my head, in
spite of everything you have told me, that
more than one would be a bother. Besides, you
wouldn't know which to call your home."

"Quite right," I said. "Even with us, more
than one house might quite well be a bother;
and to enjoy your possessions you want to have
them all around you."

"I suppose I shall get to enjoy possessions,"
she said dubiously. "But I don't want too
many of them, John dear."

"You shall have just as many, or just as
few, as you please. We shall enjoy ourselves
immensely in acquiring them."

* Bee Note.

162 UPSTDONIA

"Do yon think we shall! I shall try and like
what you like. Bnt it is a little difficult."

"You shall have some beautiful frocks, Mir-
iam. I know you will like that."

She laughed. "How wicked it sounds!" she
said. "Don't tell mother that I shall like hav-
ing beautiful frocks. Are yon sure that other
girls — other married women — won't look down
on me if I am well-dressed! I shouldn't like
to be looked down upon, for your sake."

' ' My dear, get all that ont of your head. The
more you spend the less likely you are to be
looked down upon."

"It sounds so funny. But it sounds rather
nice too. Of course, it isn't really wrong to
like apending money, rather, if everybody else
does it."

"Not a bit. Not if you've got it to spend.
And we shall have. I am going to see about
that. Well, shall we live in the country!"

"That would be rather nice, John. In a dear
little house with a pretty garden, and no
labour-saving appliances."

"I don't think you will want to live in a lit-
tle house when yon get to England. I thought,
perhaps, we might find some very delightful
old-fashioned country house, in a beautiful

UPSIDONIA 163

part of the country, with a few thousand acres
of land, good shooting, and a model home f arm,
which I could tackle myself."

"Do yon know anything about farming!"

"Not much; but I should rather like to try
it."

"Isn't it rather dangerous! Mightn't you
make a lot of money over it!"

"I think I conld escape the danger. How
would you like an old red-brick house, with a
moat, and beautiful carving and plastering and
all that sort of thing inside! I know of one
near where I was born that we might be able
to get."

"Is it in a village, with nice people
in it!"

"It is near a charming village, which would
belong to us. There aren't any other big houses
very near."

"Would the other people call on us, and be
friendly I"

"Oh, yes. There are a lot of good houses
all about. The neighbours would all call on
us."

"Yes, the rich neighbours. But the people
in the village! "Would' the vicar's wife call on
us, if we lived in a house like that!"

164 UPSIDONIA

"I expect she would, if the vicar has a wife,
of which I am not sure."

"And the labourers' wives — would they
call!"

"Probably not. No, I don't think the
labourers' wives would call."

"Then shouldn't we feel rather out of
it?"

"You could call on them if you wanted to.
They would be very pleased to see you. Any
body would be pleased to see you."

"Dear old boy I" she said affectionately.
"You think far too much of me. But I like
you to. Somehow I don't think I should like
to live in a house like that, John. For one
thing, I shouldn't like to be always going to
see people who wouldn't come and see me.
Couldn't we live somewhere among our own
sort of people — the people who are well-off, and
yet well-educated, that you told me about —
well, like we should be!"

"You don't want to live in London, do you!"

"That's where you live, isn't it!"

"Only because my work makes it con-
venient."

"But you wouldn't give up yonr work?"

"I should give up some of it, that I do at

UPSIDONIA 165

present. I don't say I should give np all
work."

*'Oh no, you couldn't do that."

"But I Bhouldn't have to live in London in
order to work. I would much rather live out
of it, and have it to go to." ,

"That is what I really feel about Culbut. If
we could live here, juBt as we do, without feel-
ing that we were different from other people,
I should like it better than living in Culbut it-
self. Do they look down on the rich people liv-
ing in the suburbs near London, as they do
here!"

"There is a tendency that way," I admitted.
"How would you like to live at Cambridge? I
should be amongst friends, and there would be
plenty to do there."

"I think it would be delightful from what
you have told me about it. You could do your
work there, couldn't youl"

"Yes, I could do a lot of work, if I wanted
to; and I could always get a game of some
sort."

"I thought it was only the undergraduates
who played games. You couldn't row in the
boat, could you!"

"I could row you in a boat. We could get a

166 UPSIDONIA

lot of fun in Cambridge, and we could always
go to London when we wanted to."

"And we could get a pretty house there —
not too big*"

"Yes, we could get that. I think perhaps
you're right about the big house. Whoever
loves the golden mean will avoid a palace as
much as a hovel. Horace says that, or some-
thing like it, and what is good enough for
Horace is good enough for me, also for my
sweet Upsidonian bride. Miriam, I adore you,
and it is at least a quarter of an hour since I
had a kiss."

So we settled to live in Cambridge when we
got to England, in the prettiest house we could
find, with the prettiest garden, and I prided
myself greatly on the moderation of my de-
sires, while Miriam wondered whether we were
not laying up trouble for ourselves, when I said
that we should want at least four servants in
the sort of house I had in my mind.

CHAPTER XVni

A day or two after Miriam had first invited me
into her garden the invitation was made pub-
lic in the fashionable intelligence of the Culbut
newspapers, and she and I were the recipients
of many congratulations from the numerous
friends and relations of the Perrys.

We were entertained by not a few of them.
We went to Sunday mid-day dinner. with the
Earl and Countess of Eumborough, in the par-
lour behind their shop, over which an aroma
of jaded cauliflower lay more in evidence than
is customary in the mansions of the great. We
drank tea again with the Earl and Countess of
Blueberry, and this time the head of the house
was present, and treated me with a stately
courtesy that impressed me a good deal with
the dignity of the family with which I was about
to connect myself. I also dined with the Vis-
count Sandpits, at the mess of his gang, sitting
on a plank in the middle of one of the busiest
streets in Culbut, and drinking beer out of a tin
can.* A married sister of Mr. Perry's, not

•See Note.

168 UPSIDONIA

bitten with philanthropic ideas, gave a theatre
party for as, and we sat in the front row of thu
pit, after an agreeable wait of an hour outside
the door, and ate oranges between the acts. And
we conferred a much-appreciated honour on a
rich relation of Mr. Perry's by accepting an in-
vitation to a dinner-party at her house. Her
husband had been unfortunate in the coal bus-
iness, and had sunk from a clerkship in a col-
liery company to owning the whole concern.
Most of our fellow gueBts were melancholy and
rather subservient people who had made a sim-
ilar mess of their lives, and were pathetically
envious of the bright prospects that were open-
ing out before Miriam and me.

And finally, Mrs. Clandie Chanticleer, who
had turned up one morning at Magnolia Hall,
in a bedraggled and hectic state, to take away a
few scrapB from the dustbin, invited as to a pic-
nic in the country, to meet all that was smartest
and dirtiest in the exclusive set of which she was
an ornament.

We were a little doubtful about accepting
this invitation, gratifying as it was. It was Mr.
Perry who pressed ns to do so. He said that
he hated the dirty set and all their ways* It was

UPSIDONIA 169

not through. Buch as they that the regenera-
tion of Upsidonian society would come. At the
same time, they included amongst them some of
the most aristocratic families in the country,
and it would give us a cachet to have our names
in the papers as having taken part in one of
their entertainments. When we still demurred,
he pointed out that my social investigations
conld not be considered complete unless I mixed
with all classes of the community. So at last
we accepted the invitation.

Mr. Perry refused it for himself, as he said
he had a touch of rheumatism and was afraid of
the damp grass; but Edward accepted, saying
that he had been working very hard lately and
wanted recreation; and Mrs. Perry went to
chaperon Miriam. Mrs. Eppstein, who had seen
the announcement of the coming function in the
papers, came round to hear all about it, and
said that she had not for a moment expected
that Tricky Chanticleer would have asked her,
although they had been at school together, and
in those days nobody thought anything of
Tricky, who had always had a red nose.

Most of us walked to the place appointed for
the picnic, which was on a stretch of grass be-
side a high-road ; and we were the dirtiest and

170 UPSIDONIA

most disreputable-looking company I have ever
been in. But Mrs. Perry, and some of the older
ladies, went in the Duchess of Somersault's
caravan, which was hung round with baskets
and brooms and wicker chairs ; and there were
a few donkey carts as well, and an organ barrow
for the younger children who could not be left
behind. Mrs. Claudie brought what was neces-
sary for the picnic in an old perambulator,
which she wheeled herself.

We were accompanied all the way by a crowd
of rich sightseers, and a favourite amusement
of the younger and sprightlier members of our
party was to get a ride behind the carriages, and
for the others to cry "Whip behind!" and to
shriek with laughter at them.

The food consisted of scraps wrapped up in
pieces of newspaper, but tea was made in an old
tin pot over a fire of sticks, and everyone had
brought what they wanted in the way of mugs
and utensils for themselves. I must confess
that if one didn't eat, or only ate the eggs and
fruit which Borne of the young bloods had
raided from the farmhouses that we passed on
the way, the entertainment was amusing
enough. It was rather annoying to be sur-
rounded by a crowd of gaping sightseers, bat

UPSIDONIA 171

the company seemed to be used to it, and, in-
deed, to prefer it to seclusion, or they would
not have fixed upon so public a spot. News-
paper reporters were a good deal in evidence,
and cameras were directed on us from all sides,
as we sat on the grass and enjoyed ourselves.

There were many quite intelligent people
there. The company, ragged and filthy as it
was, was superior to that which I had met in
Mr. Perry's club, or to the people I had come
across in the large houses in which I had gone
slumming with Mrs. Perry.

I happened to sit on the grass next to a travel-
ling tinker, who told me that he had been Mas-
ter of a college at Coxford, but had given it up
because he wanted to see more of life.

"I have often been accused of being a snob,"
he said, "especially by those who are envious
of the fine company I keep. It is true that my
birth would not entitle me to a place in this
brilliant society, but I consider that my learning
ought to gain me an entrance into any society,
and it has as a matter of fact gained me an en-
trance into this. I consider that this is' the best
society that can be had, not because it is aristo-
cratic and exclusive, but because it opens up
larger vistas of life. Purely learned society

172 UPSIDONIA

does not do that, and after spending over thirty
years of my life in Coxford, I grew tired of it,
and set out to play my part in the great world."

Finding himself possessed of a sympathetic
listener, he expatiated further on the advan-
tages of his present life. He had not seen his
way to denuding himself of all property. He
had acquired his tinker's outfit because his pre-
vious life had unfitted him for the purest form
of idleness. "One has to be born and brought
up to that," he said, "and, as I told you, I do
not pretend to have had the advantages of some
of our friends about us here."

"But isn't work a good thing?" I asked; for
here he seemed to be denying one of the basic
principles of Upsidonian philosophy.

"It is not one of the best things in itself,"
he said, "although for the great mass of man-
kind it is necessary. Freedom and knowledge
are the best things ; and freedom is even better
than knowledge."

"I shouldn't have thought that all the people
about us here were remarkable for their love
of knowledge," I said.

"Not perhaps of knowledge to be learnt from
books," he said, "though a good many of them
are not lacking in that. But in knowledge that

UPSIDONIA 173

comes from going about in the world, and seeing
human nature denuded of all its trappings,
there is hardly any one of those you see around
you who is not superior to the most learned
scholars of the universities. They know the
simple facts of life, as none who do not enjoy
the freedom of extreme poverty can possibly
know them ; and the simple facts of life are the
great facts of life."

"Do you consider poverty to be an end in
itself I" I asked, mindful of the criticisms I
had heard directed against the dirty set.

"It is so near to being an end," he said,
"that there is no harm in considering it so.
It is only by denuding yourself of everything
that you can possess everything — beginning
with yourself, which is the only possession
really worth anything, and the only one which
those foolish people who cannot make up their
minds to do without some form of property
never can attain to. "Why should I want more
than the whole earth f It is mine, if I do not
shut myself up in one little corner of it and put
a fence round me. The moment I do that I lose
all the rest. I have exchanged the world for a
building plot. "With every possession I permit
myself, I gouge out a weak place in my armour;

174 UPSIDONIA

I am vulnerable at that point. Possessing noth-
ing, I am impervious to attack."

"You can't possess absolutely nothing," I
said. "You must have clothes, for instance."

"You must, as society is at present consti-
tuted ; and you are vulnerable, as I said, at that
point. If anybody takes away my clotheB, I
lose my freedom. I cannot go about till I have
found some more. And if anybody takes away
my tinker's barrow, I lose the work that my
training has unfitted me to be without. It is
not, strictly speaking, the barrow that I am
vulnerable over, because if I could do without
it I should have practically my only burden re-
moved ; it is the habits I have acquired that are
the unfortunate possession there. And that is
why book-learning would be considered an evil
in a purer state of society. Books themselves
are, of course, the most odious form of bondage,
and even in my tied-down days I never would
acquire them for myself, but borrowed those
I could not do without, and committed what was
necessary to memory."

"Why should book-learning be considered an
evil!" I asked.

"Because it is an acquisition. You are vul-
nerable in your memory, in which you have

UPSIDONIA 175

stored it. The only knowledge that is worth
having is that which impresses itself on the col-
lective mind of mankind. Nobody can take that
away from you, because you share it with all
the rest. It is all about you."

"Excuse my touching upon a possibly deli-,
cate subject," I said, "but do you object to the
name that is commonly fastened on to you?"

"The dirty sett Not at all. Why should
IT Cleanliness is only a habit, and a very bind-
ing and inconvenient one. If you can break
yourself of that one habit alone, you are well on
the way to realise what freedom means. You
have broken the chain that keeps you circling
round in the narrow orbit of the soap-dish and
the water- jug, and can wander where the spirit
leads you. I have not taken a bath since I left
Coxford, and all desire to do so has now left
me."

The fact had obtruded itself upon me to such
an extent that the desire on my part to leave
him now became insistent, and as there came a
general movement at the moment towards the
cocoanut shies, put up by Sir Sigismund Rosen-
baum, I withdrew myself from his Bociety.
But he was an interesting man, and had given
me something to think over.

CHAPTER XIX

It was at this point that Lord Potter came npon
the scene. He had, I believe, refused Mrs.
Claudie'B invitation, but whether he could not
bear to be left out of any important society-
function, or whether he had made up his mind
to take this opportunity of making himself
publicly unpleasant to me, he came shuffling
along the road, with his toes sticking out of his
boots, and was greeted with acclamations by the
distinguished company.

I happened to be standing next to Mrs.
Claudie when he came up to her, and he favoured
me with an indignant and contemptuous glare
before he showed me his shoulder, shook hands
with her, and said in a loud voice: "And where
is the fortunate gentleman from the Highlands I
I should like to be introduced to him."

Mrs. Claudie indicated me. "This is Mr,
Howard," she said. "Let me introduce yon to
Lord Potter."

Lord Potter affected an air of intense aston-
ishment. "This fellow I" he exclaimed. "My

176

UPSIDONIA 177

dear lady, yon have been victimised. This is
an impudent adventurer, who spent his first
night in Culbut in a gaol. He may be good
enough company for Mr. Perry, but I am more
surprised than I can say to find him here."

There was an awkward silence, which I broke
by saying: "I am just as surprised to see Lord
Potter here as he can he to see me. He knew
perfectly well who I was. He could have
stopped away if he didn't want to meet me."

Lord Potter ignored this speech. "I am very
sorry to have to cast a cloud over your pleasant
party, Mrs. Chanticleer," he said, "but this
fellow is not what he pretends to be. He is no
more a Highlander than I am. When I get back
to town I shall put the police on fo him. I ex-
pect it will be found that he has absconded from
some big house and has left a lot of money be-
hind him. He is masquerading as a poor man,
but he will certainly get into trouble over it. I
should advise you to pack him off, and have no
more to do with him."

Fortunately, Miriam was not near ns at the
time, but I saw Edward shouldering his way
through the group of puzzled and rather scan-
dalised people who surrounded us. Nobody
seemed inclined to say anything, and I had had

178 UPSIDONIA

time during Lord Potter's Bpeech to reflect
that he could not know that I was not a High- 1
lander, and that he had put a weapon into my
hands by his affectation of not knowing who
I was.

"I will certainly leave your party if you
wiBh me to, Mrs. Chanticleer," I said. "Lord
Potter and I have come up against one another
before. It is true that when I first came into
Culbut he managed to get me arrested for play-
ing rather a foolish practical joke upon him,
which he does not seem able to forget. But
when he tells yon he is sorry to disturb your
party, he is not speaking the truth, because he
can't have come here for any other purpose.
He knew that he would find me here, and has
not scrupled to break m on your brilliant and
memorable gathering, with the object of ruining
its success by his absurd charges."

There were murmurs among the aristocratic
dames who were gathered about us. Although
Lord Potter was the dirtiest of the dirty, and
held a high position among the men of the set,
I heard afterwards that he was not popular
among the ladies, not only because of his arro-
gance, but because, being a most eligible bach-

UPSIDONIA 179

elor, he had omitted to marry so many of their
daughters. Besides, Mrs. Claudie's party had
gone with such a swing so far that it was felt
to be too bad of him to come in in this way and
try to spoil it.

Bnt Mrs. Clandie showed herself full of tact
and resource. She laughed lightly. "I really
can't be expected to settle a silly quarrel be-
tween two men," she said. "I have all my own
quarrels to settle, and most of my women
friends ' besides. Come and have a shy at Siggy
Rosenbaum's nuts, Lord Potter; and, Mr.
Howard, you go and find Miriam and take her
to have a few s'rimps."

Perhaps Lord Potter would have allowed
himself to hold over his account with me for
the time being, and I certainly had no wish to
carry it on then or at any time. But unfortu-
nately Edward had by this time arrived fully
on the scene, and with all his excellent qualities
he was a trifle too weighty for a situation that
wanted delicate handling.

"Mr. Howard is a guest in my father's
house," he said, his face pale and determined
from the stress of the moment, "and I cannot
allow him to be insulted."

"Oh, my dear Edward, nobody wants to in-

180 UPSIDONIA

suit anybody," said Mrs. Claudie. "Please let

ns go to the cocoanuts."

But Lord Potter's temper had been aroused
by the challenge. "I have nothing to do with
yon or your father," he said disagreeably.
"Ton have both unclaased yourselves. You can
keep what company you please, as far as I am
concerned. But when you take into your house
a highly suspicious character, you ought to keep
him to yourselves, and not foist him on to re-
spectable company."

Edward was about to reply hotly, but I didn't
want to leave my case in his hands; he knew
too much about me, and might give it away in
his unthinking annoyance.

"How do you know I am staying with Mr.
Perry t" I asked quickly. "You pretended
just now to be surprised to find I was that Ho-
ward. And yet you heard my name when we
first met, and you saw me go away with Mr.
Perry."

"I will settle with you later, sir," he said
furiously. "You have been going about in ex-
pensive clothes, and I have reason to believe
you are an impostor, and are wanted by the
police."

"Oh, do leave off and come to the cocoanuts,"

UPSIDONIA 181

cried poor Mrs. Claudie, desolated at the pros-
pect of a disturbance. But the situation was
now beyond her.

"Perhaps you will say that my father and I
are impostors, because we go about in clean
clothes," said Edward angrily. "Mr. Howard
is studying social conditions, as we are. He is
a gentleman, as anyone can see, whatever he
chooses to wear."

Perhaps it is rather conceited of me to men-
tion it, but there were murmurs of approval
here. In my old Norfolk jacket and weather-
• beaten hat, I must have appeared all that was
desirable in the matter of fashionable attire,
according to Upsidonian standards.

Encouraged by these murmurs, I stuck to my
point with Lord Potter. "Will you answer a
plain question J " I asked him. ' ' Did you know
who I was when you came and tried to break up
this delightful party, or did you tell Mrs. Chan-
ticleer a lief"

It was not much of a point, but it settled him.
There were more murmurs, and Mrs. Claudie
said reproachfully: "You know you did refuse
my invitation, Lord Potter. And if you did
know who Mr. Howard was, it is not very

182 UPSIDONIA

friendly of yon to come after all, and try to

spoil our fun."

The Duchess of Somersault, who was a great
enough lady not to stand in awe of anybody,
and had already married off all her daughters,
now intervened:

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Heze-
kiah Potter," she said in a loud clear voice.
"Anybody would think this was a reception by
the wife of a millionaire by the way you poke
yourself in on it and try to Btart a vulgar brawl.
I shall he very pleased to welcome Mr. Howard
at any time to my van, and I am not in the habit
of receiving adventurers there."

Such a bold, and, to me, almost overwhelm-
ing, offer of recognition from so great a lady
naturally turned the tables completely in my
favour. Lord Potter shrugged his shoulders,
one of which could be plainly seen through the
discoloured cloth of his filthy jacket, muttered
something into his ragged beard, and shuffled
off in the- dust towards Culbut. Mrs. Claudie
instantly collected a party of young people to
throw at Sir Sigiamund's cocoanuts; and the
Incident appeared to be completely at an end.

But I could see that people were talking about
it for the rest of the afternoon, and as we made

UPSIDONIA 183

our way homewards later on, and I very much
fear that Mrs. Olandie Chanticleer wept tears-
of disappointment when she retired to her rail-
way arch that night, over this unfortunate in-
terruption of what would otherwise have been
the most talked-of assembly of the now waning
season.

As far as I was concerned, I was made to feel
that I had come out of my engagement with
Lord Potter with credit. I had stood up to a
great man, and he had been driven off the field
by a great lady. I was even something of a
Hon for the rest of the afternoon, and if I had
wished could have taken my place then and
there as a popular addition to the dirty set,
and enjoyed all the advantages of that enviable
condition.

But Edward's gloomy brow, as he ranged
apart with his hands in his pockets, warned me
that there was trouble ahead, and I had not been
too busily engaged with Lord Potter to miss
the spectacle of excited newspaper reporters
edging in amongst the spectators and busily
taking down all that was said in their note-
books.

"What was quite certain was that I could no
longer expect to be able to hide such light as I

184 UPSIDONIA

might give forth under a bushel. It would be
known all over the country to-morrow that I
had been denounced aa an adventurer, and ac-
cused of representing myself as coming from
a place which I had never seen.

A nice young reporter, more enterprising
than the rest, who had hurried off on their bi-
cycles to hand in their copy, did try to interview
me, and I wished I had been in a position to
give him the information for his paper that he
asked for. It was only for my address in the
Highlands, and a statement of why and how I
had come to Culbut, and wonld have settled the
matter for me, if I had really been the com-
pletely misunderstood person that I was sup-
posed to be.

But I had to send him away empty, and I am
sorry to say that he was annoyed with me, and
hinted in his account of the fracas that there
was more in Lord Potter's charges than ap-
peared on the surface.

I was also somewhat disturbed by a conversa-
tion I had with the Dnchess of Somersault,
sitting proudly on the tail-board of her van, in
sight of everybody.

She said that she had never crossed the moun-
tains in her wanderings, but had been pretty

UPSIDONIA 185

close to them, and she mentioned the names of
several members of the Highland aristocracy
with whom she was acquainted. She seemed a
little disappointed when I showed myself ignor-
ant of all of them, bnt was not, I think, suspi-
cious, as she might have been. She talked, dur-
ing most of my visit to her, in a full-bodied
voice that was evidently music in her own ears,
and though she plied me with questions she pro-
vided most of the answers to them herself. She
wore a magenta gown, a violently checked
shawl, and an enormous feathered hat, and
sat with her knees wide apart and her elbows
on them, smoking a clay pipe, while she talked
to me. She waB of massive form and highly
equiline features, and looked every inch of her
a grandame.

"I met Lord McQillicuddy the last time the
Duke and I were up north," she said. "Of
course yon know him. A grand old man, is he
not? The Master of McQillicuddy is on his
way to Culbut now, with a flock of sheep, and if
he arrives before we go out of town I shall ask a
few friends to meet him, and I hope you will
make one of the party, Mr. Howard. And, of
course, dear Miriam too. If he does not arrive
in time we shall no doubt meet him. for we take

186 UPSIDONIA

the north road this summer, I am happy to say.
There is always a great demand for wicker
cradles on it ; in the north they are more pro-
lific than we are — as of course you know. I shall
certainly tell him what a pleasure it has been
to meet you, and get him to look you up. He
will be able to support you if you have any more
trouble with that tiresome Hezekiah Potter,
who seems to think he can behave exactly as he
pleases, and must, I am afraid, have given you a
poor opinion of our pleasant little society
here."

I assured her Grace, as seemed to be expected
of me, that she herself had dissipated any un-
fortunate ideas I might have formed on that
subject. She dismissed me with an agreeable
smile, and an assurance of her continued sup-
port, for whatever it might be worth.

Miriam returned in the Duchess' van. She
was a favourite with the Duke, who asked her
to sit up beside him, while he drove his old
toastrack of a horse.

I walked with Edward, who was much dis-
turbed in his mind over what had happened.
He said that Potter's insolence was beyond all
bearing, and he had been seriously considering
whether it was not his filial duty to seek him out

UPSIDONIA 187

with a horsewhip and give him a sound thrash-
ing.

"To think that my dear good old father
should be subjected to the foul insults of such
a man as that!" he said. "It positively makes
my blood boil. On the one side you have a man
whose whole being radiates self-sacrifice and
benevolence, and on the other a wretched cur
snarling at his heels. "What am I to do, How-
ard t I don't want to be sent to prison, but upon
my word I feel inclined to risk it for the pleas-
ure of assaulting that Bcoundrel."

"I should treat him with the contempt he
deserves," I said. "It is a case of dignity and
impudence. Sorely, your father's noble life
speaks for itself! Nothing that you could do
to such a contemptible person as Potter would
make it shine with brighter effulgence."

He turned to me and wrung me warmly by the
hand. The tears were in hia eyes, and he was
too much moved to speak for the moment.
"Thank you for those words," he said pres-
ently, in a low voice. "I am sure they were
spoken from the heart, and I shall not forget
them. There are few who are blessed with such
fathers as mine, and I have the pleasure of
feeling that he will soon be your father too, and

188 UPSLDONIA

that you will revere him as he deserves. Tell
me, Howard, didn't that count with yon, when
you made up your mind to propose to my
sister t"

"Well, perhaps I waB thinking more about
her at the time," I said. "But naturally I con-
gratulate myself on the prospect of having such
a father-in-law."

Edward was so taken up with the insult
offered to his father that he did not notice as
we came to the tramway terminus, from which
the road to Magnolia Hall branched off, a news-
paper placard on which were displayed the
lines:

Disgraceful Bkawl at Society Gathering.

Wbll-Known Names Involved.

Who is Mb. John Howabd?

Well, if that question was going to interest
the inhabitants of Upsidonia, it seemed about
time for me to be making arrangements for the
modest competency that would enable me to
leave the country.

CHAPTER XX

I work op the next morning without that sense
of something delightful about to happen to me
to which I had grown accustomed since my ar-
rival in Upsidonia, bnt soon brightened again
as I laid my plans for acquiring an easy and
immediate fortune. I knew that a rich man in
Upsidonia would present me with twenty or
thirty thousand pounds as readily as a poor
man in England would allow me to present him
with it, and wonld thank his lucky stars at
finding a fool big enough to take it. I only had
to find the rich man.

It seemed to me that I already knew who to
apply to. I had made the acquaintance of a
very rich man indeed, when I had gone district
visiting with Mrs. Perry. His name was Hob-
son, and he had not always been as rich as
he was at present. Mining speculations had
ruined him. He could not touch a thing that
turned out right. So sure as he bought shares
in a mine that was supposed to have no gold in
it, it turned out to be one of the richest ever

190 TJPSIDONIA

heard of. And even silver played him false;
he had come his biggest cropper over a worked-
ont silver mine, in which antimony or some such
metal was discovered the moment the shares
seemed to be worth nothing, with the conse-
quence that they had jumped up again to on-
heard-of altitudes.

When the crash had come Mr. HobBon had
put a bold face on it, and his wife had behaved
nobly. She had given up the confined home in
which she had been so happy without a mur-
mur, and had bought every stick of furniture
that she could cram into a large house. She had
bought silks and laces, furs and jewels, for her-
self, and clothed her young children in the rich-
est attire ; and she had given up without flinch-
ing the household work in which she had taken
such a delight, and engaged a large staff of serv-
ants. All Mr. Hobson's debtors had been al-
lowed to pay him in full, and he and his family
had retired to their mansion, with a name free
of all reproach, it is true, but to such misery as
only people of refinement could experience from
such a change in their surroundings.

And that was not the worst. Mr. Hobson
was a kind husband and an affectionate father.
But he had the gambler's fever in his blood, and

TJPSIDONIA 191

Hie hard lesson be had received bad not sufficed
to pnrge him of it. Since bis downfall be had
continued to speculate, but with no greater suc-
cess than before, and it was much to be feared
that unless some help came to him, not only he,
but his blameless wife and his innocent young
children, would sink into yet deeper depths of
degradation, and be obliged at last to go to the
playhouse.

Mrs. Perry had come home one afternoon
from a round of her district, full of the troubles
of the HobBons. Mr. Hobson had broken out
again, and had risked a small fortune, not this
time in mining, but in a patent for increasing
the amount of petrol to be used in motor-cars.
His excuse was that he had some mechanical
knowledge, and bad spotted an error in the in-
vention which he thought would make it useless.
But, unfortunately, he had mentioned his dis-
covery to others, the errors had been pointed
ont to the patentees, and they had succeeded
in putting them right. Or, as was darkly
hinted, there had been no error at all, and Mr.
Hobson had fallen into a trap. But, in any case,
he had had to realise at a high figure, and had
come out of the deal more overloaded with
wealth than ever.

192 UPSIDONIA

We had all sympathised deeply over the pic-
ture of misery that Mrs. Perry had drawn. Mr.
Hobson, she said, was overcome with remorse,
and like a man distracted. He had sat in his
overfnrnished dining-room with his head in his
hands, while his wife, scintillating with dia-
monds, though it was early in the afternoon,
had tried to comfort him, her face pale but full
of courage. It had been almost insupportable
to hear the children crying at the table loaded
with provisions, and to think that the father,
the bread-loser of the family, was powerless to
help them.

"Cannot we do something for them, Sam-
uel?" Mrs. Perry cried.

But her husband shook his head sadly, and
said he was afraid not. "Hobson has himself
to thank for it, " he said, ' ' and I fear he is incor-
rigible. If we were to take the burden of this
mistake on our shoulders he would only make
another one. The fact is, he is unfitted for bus-
iness affairs. You can lose more money in the
city than anywhere else, but you have to get
up very early in the morning to do it, and the
men who are successful at it, and lose large for-
tunes, are a good deal cleverer than poor Hob-
son."

UPSIDONIA 193

I had offered then and there to look into the
case and see if I could do anything to help.
But although everybody said that it was very
generous of me, they all tried to dissuade me
from risking the small number of debts I al-
ready possessed. Edward did more. He rather
annoyed me by taking me aside and telling me
that my duty was now towards Miriam, and
that it would not be right for me to be chari-
table at her expense, which was what it would
come to if I tried to straighten oat the Hobsons'
badly involved affairs.

But I had now made up my mind that noth-
ing should stand in the way of my charitable
instincts. I was not in a position to do much.
I could not set the unfortunate Hobson on his
feet again as a poor man. But I could go and
see him, and come away leaving him a good
deal poorer than he was before.

My heart glowed as I thought of the blessings
I should call down upon my head from him and
his sorely tried family. I should be almost in
the position of a walking miracle, bringing re-
lief that must have been despaired of. The
warm gratitude of that unfortunate family
would follow me wherever I went, even if I
went out of Upsidonia, as I fully intended to do,

194 UPSIDONIA

after having relieved Mr. Hobson of part of his
burden.

As I jumped out of bed I had already made
up my mind. I would go and see him that very
morning. When one has decided upon an er-
rand of mercy one should lose no time in setting
about it

CHAPTER XXI

I got downstairs earlier than usual, and found
Tom roaming abont, with ten minutes or so on
his handB before he went off to school.

He greeted me affably, for we were now very
good friends. I had taught him to bowl "goog-
lies," which were unknown in Upsidonian
cricket before my arrival, and he had got into
the first eleven of his school on the strength of
it. He was properly grateful to me, and
had quite forgiven me for my white flannel
suit.

"I say, old boy," he said, "you've been go-
ing it ! Biffed old Potter in the eye yesterday,
didn't you t"

"I didn't biff him in the eye, Tom," I replied.
"I rather wish I had. How do you know about
it?"

"I read it in the paper. I can't show it to
you because old Blother has taken it off into his
pantry. But it Baid that Potter and you had had
a scrap, and he Baid you were a fraud ; and they

196 UPSIDONIA

don't think you come from the Highlands at

all."

"Where do they think I come from?"

"They don't know, but they're going to find
out. They think it may have been yon who com-
mitted the burglary."

"The burglary! "What burglary ?"

"Why, it was at Muffin's Rents, about a fort-
night ago, just before you came. The people
woke up and found a lot of family plate in the
dining-room. A burglar had broken in in the
night and left it there. A cheeky beggar he was
too, for he had lei't tiiem a bottle of Bass and
half a game pie as well. I thought it was just
the sort of sporting thing that you would have
done."

"My dear Tom, I assure yon I didn't. Why
did they think it might have been me?"

"Well, they seemed to think you might have
cleared out from some big house or other, be-
cause yon were fed np with it, and got rid of
your plate in that way."

"What a ridiculous ideal"

"Yes, it is rather. But I say, old boy, I won-
der where you do come from."

I stared at him.

"Of course, I know you were a bit barmy

UPSIDONIA 197

before you came here, and don't remember any-
thing about it," he went on to say. "It's a
rummy thing altogether. ' '

It seemed to me a very rummy thing that Tom
should have any idea that I was supposed to
have been what he called barmy.

""Who told you that!" I asked him.

"Oh, I heard them talking about it."

"Heard who talking about itt"

"Edward and old Blother. Old Blother said
you Beemed to be a very respectable young fel-
low, but he wasn't quite easy in his mind about
your marrying Miriam, and he wanted to know
more about you. He said you didn't talk like
a Johnny from the Highlands. So then Edward
said you didn't really remember where you had
come from, and told him that you bad been a
bit touched in the upper story, but you were all
right now."

"Well, I hope that satisfied Mr. Blother," I
said, mentally confounding his impudence, and
furious with Edward for publishing his silly
idea, which I had only allowed him to hold be-
cause I thought he would keep it to himself.

"Oh, yes," said Tom. "He said if that was
it, he supposed it was all right, and be shouldn't
interfere unless he saw any further reason."

198 UPSIDONIA

"Very kind of him indeed I Does anybody
else know about this ridiculous idea of Ed-
ward's? "

"Oh, yes, everybody knows."

"What, Miriam!"

"Yes, she knows all right. I don't think she
minds. I expect she thinks it's rather a lark.
But, I say, I must be getting off. Good-bye, old
boy! don't forget you promised to bowl to me
this afternoon."

When I went into breakfast Miriam greeted
me aa usual, and showed none of that shrinking
that might have been expected from a girl in the
face of a lover whom she had discovered to have
been at one time what Tom called barmy ; I was
greatly relieved at this, though determined to
have it out with Edward at the first opportun-
ity.

When Mr. Blother had shaken hands with us
all, and asked ns how we had slept— little at-
tentions which he never omitted — he expressed
himself with great indignation at the line taken
by the newspaper over the occurrence of the
day before.

Apparently, Edward's explanation of any ec-
centricities of mine that had disturbed him had
been quite satisfactory. Mr. Blother and I had

UPSIDONIA 199

always got on well together, and I was pleased
to remember that only a few days before I had
demanded of him a handsome tip, saying that
I had been in the honse for some time and was
afraid that I had not given hijn mneh trouble.
He was quite on my side, and expressed him-
self strongly about the impertinence of the
newspaper in throwing doubt upon me.

"We Bhall have to announce the truth," he
said, as he bustled about while the rest of the
family took their seats. "Our young friend
here set out to walk to Culbut, and either had
a touch of sunstroke, or else forgot himself and
became intoxicated — which would be reprehen-
sible, but not altogether inexcusable in one of
his youth — and cannot give an account of him-
self. No doubt his memory will come back, but
until it does we must all stand together and pro-
tect him from these suspicions. If there is one
thing that is quite clear, it is that he has never
been a rich man. Although his accent is not
quite what one would expect from a Highlander,
I believe myself that he is one, because it was
quite plain from the first that he had never seen
a servant in his life, and had no idea of how to
treat them. Now if you are all sure that you

200 TJPSIDONIA

have everything that you want, I will go and
get on with my work. Don't leave quite so much
on your plates as you did yesterday, please —
I don't mean you, Perry. And it is quite
time that this ham showed more signs of
wear."

With a cheery laugh Mr. Blother left the
room, and Edward came in as he did so. He
was generally up early, and had already been in
to Culhut that morning.

He was in a state of considerable excitement,
but not over the affair that was in all our minds,
which he put aside as of no account.

"Oh, that will all blow over," he said.
"There is something far more serious now to
engage people's attention."

We all looked at him expectantly. He was
much agitated, and seemed at first incapable of
speech. But when he had gulped down a little
tea, he said in a voice vibrant with emotion:
"This day will never be forgotten in Upsidonia,
The social revolution has commenced."

We all looked towards Mr. Perry. It rested
with him— the head of the family, and a man
with a whole life of benevolent wisdom behind
him — to indicate the line to be taken in face of
this startling intelligence.

UPSIDONIA 201

He kept his eyes fixed on his plate, but looked
very grave, and shook his head slowly.

There was a moment's silence, and then he
said: "It is an extraordinary thing that with
all the improvements in communication we
never can get our fish perfectly fresh. Mollie,
will you take this away and give me some kid-
neys and bacon. I beg your pardon, Edward —
you were saying ?"

Edward launched himself into an almost vio-
lent flood of speech. ' ' I have felt it coming for a
long time," he said, "I have done what I could
to stem the tide, and to confine it in safe chan-
nels, such as I knew you, dear father, would ap-
prove of. But the torrent has been too strong.
It has broken through all the puny obstacles I
have set up. We are now launched on its full
flood, and heaven help those who are not to be
found on the right side."

"My dear Edward, tell us what has hap-
pened," said Mrs. Perry. "You are keeping
us on tenterhooks."

Edward calmed himself a little and said: "It
is Mr. and Mrs. Bolster who have put the
match to the powder. I am proud to call them
friends of mine. The name of Bolster will ring
through the ages as that of people who did not

202 TJPSIDONIA

shrink from taking a foremost place in the hat-
tie of freedom. And I trust that the name of
Perry will go down with it."

" Bolster is a very respectable fellow," said
Mr. Perry. "I have nothing whatever to say
against Bolster, except that he has always been
rather a grumbler. But I do not want our name
to ring through the ages with his, Edward.
Bolster and Perry ! It would not Bound well.

""What have they done, Edward V asked Mrs.
Perry. ' ' Nothing foolish, I hope. ' '

"Last night," said Edward, consenting at
last to be drawn into a plain story, "Bolster
came home to find that the inspectors had paid
his house a visit. It seems that the cook had
given information that the housekeeping bills
had not been kept up to the level that the Bol-
sters are assessed upon. They made a scene
with Mrs. Bolster, and refused to accept her ex-
planation that her son, to whom she chiefly
looked to help them in their meals, was away at
Coxford, and the servants had all along refused
to consume their proper share. The inspectors
went away, and directed all the Bolsters' trades-
people to supply the house with double the quan-
tity of goods ordered until further notice."

"They had no right to do that," said Mr.

UPSIDONIA 203

Perry. "They ought to have told Mrs. Bolster
to do it, and left an inspector there to see that
the goods were consumed. They have acted
against the law."

"What do they care about the lawf" ex-
claimed Edward bitterly. "The law in Upsi-
donia is for the poor, not for the rich. Bolster
has taken the law into his own hands, and I am
glad of it. I respect and honour him for his no-
ble stand. When he came home and learnt what
had happened, he threw every ounce of food in
the house out into the garden. He did more than
that. He is a big man, as you know, and he
forced his butler to get up all the wine out of his
cellar and pour it down the stable drains. The
servants were in a terrible state of anger, but
they could do nothing with him. He turned
them out of the house neck and crop, and told
them they could go and complain to the police.
He didn't care where they went or what they
did. He stood up to them all, men and women.
Then he barricaded all the doors and windows j
but before he did so he threw out all the money
in the house and all the plate. He is now shut
up with Mrs. Bolster and quite prepared to
stand a siege. I hope that thousands will fol-
low his example. It will be the end of this sti-

204 UPSIDONIA

fling tyranny. The rich will be able to breathe
once more, and the selfish poor will have to
shoulder their burdens and learn what misery
they have inflicted so callously on their unfor-
tunate fellow creatures."

"I am afraid Bolster will get into trouble,"
said Mr. Perry calmly. "I should not mix my-
self up with it, Edward, if I were you. We must
go on quietly in our own way, without setting
class against class. The methods of anarchy
are not for such as us. My dear, another cup of
tea, if yon please."

Edward choked down his emotion, and suc-
ceeded in making a fair breakfast. But I
thought that in this matter he did not see eye
to eye with his father. In his opinion the time
for anarchy had come, and he was nerving him-
self to take a more prominent part in the strug-
gle he saw coming than the more cautious and
experienced Mr. Perry would approve of.

However, he gave ub no hint of any intentions
he may have formed while we were together,
and directly he had finished his meal left the
room.

CHAPTER XXII

I followed Edward as soon as I could, for I
had a crow of my own to pick with him.

But I found him quite unable to discuss any-
thing but the startling and courageous behav-
iour of his friend, Mr. Bolster. He was going
to his house at once, and I said that I would go
with him.

Mr. Bolster lived in a large house not far
from Magnolia Hall, and as we walked there I
insisted upon Edward listening to my com-
plaint.

"Well, what do you want me to dot" he
aBked impatiently. "You don't know where you
come from, and I don't know either. My ex-
planation is almost certainly the right one, and
you must have some explanation of yourself
ready. What are you complaining about?"

"I'm complaining of your having told Miriam
that I am an escaped lunatic."

"My dear fellow, I'm pretty certain she sus-
pected it. It was the nonsense you talked to her
when you lirst came that made me tell her the

206 UPSIDONIA

truth. Now that she has the explanation she
doesn't mind. No sensible girl would. She
knows yon are all right at present, and she'll see
that yon don't go wrong again."

I had to leave it at that. There was no
satisfaction to be got out of the officious
Edward.

Mr. Bolster's house was a pretentious build-
ing in the Italianate Gothic style, with Byzan-
tine and other features. It stood in an ex-
tremely ugly garden, with asphalt paths, and
stretches of graBs cut up into beds of the shape
of crescents, triangles, starfishes, Prince of
Wales' feathers, interrogation marks, all elabo-
rately planted to imitate carpets or rugs of the
worst possible design. Wherever there was
room for it, there was a large glass-bouse, and
apparently Mr. Bolster had employed some of
the hours of his self-imposed incarceration in
throwing things at them j for there was hardly
a pane within range that was left intact, and the
ground about them was littered with lumps of
coal and with the smaller articles of household
furnishing, with which be, and possibly Mrs.
Bolster, had missed their aim. The things with
which they had been more fortunate were inside
the glass-houses, which presented a picture of

UPSIDONIA 207

destruction that showed the seriousness of the
battle now being waged.

Scattered about on the flower-beds, and on the
grass near the house, was a curious assort-
ment of articles, which included joints of meat,
silver epergnes, brocaded cushions, cooking
utensils, wearing apparel, pictures, clocks, and
indeed every article of luxury that such a house
as this might contain.

We were not the only people who had come to
gaze at this extraordinary scene. There was a
well-dreBsed ill-mannered crowd hanging about
and looking up at the shuttered windows ; and
more were driving up every minute. Many of
them gathered round Edward, who was gen-
erally recognized, and gave him such items of
news as they thought might interest him.

"You'll see 'im in a minute," said one ex-
cited gentleman. " 'E put 'is 'ead out of that
window just now. 'Ad a cock-shy at one of the
bobbies, wiv a boot-tree. There it is."

"Have the police been here I" asked Edward.
"Where are they now?"

"Gorn off to git some more. Lor lumme!
it ain't 'arf a circus, is itT"

The opulent-looking overfed ladies and gen-
tlemen around us seemed more amused than im-

208 UPSIDONIA

pressed with what was going on. But Edward's
face was very grave. "Poor creatures I" he
said aside to me. "They are hardly capable of
taking anything seriously. They lead such ter-
rible lives that anything is a distraction to
X them. When a chance of emancipation comes,
they are too sunk in misery to take it."

They did not appear to me to be precisely
sunk in misery, and but for their fine clothes and
the smart-looking equipages in which they had
arrived, and which were now gathered round the
gates waiting to take them away again, they
were exactly like a. careless, rather noisy Lon-
don crowd, come out to see some fun.

Aa Edward was speaking there was a shont,
and, looking up at a sort of Florentine balcony
stuck on to a crenellated tower, I saw the now
notorious Mr. Bolster, standing with his arms
folded, surveying the crowd. He was in shirt-
sleeves, and had not brushed his hair. Possibly
he had thrown all the brushes in the house at
the conservatories.

The crowd cheered him, and he bowed re-
peatedly with an air of self-satisfaction, but
presently held up his hand to command silence,
and then made a short speech.

"Fellow men and fellow women," he said.

UPSIDONIA 209

"I've begun, and.now it's for you to carry on.
Down with servants! Down with luckshry!
Down with the pore!"

The renewed cheers with which this stirring
address was received caused Edward's eyes to
brighten. "Their hearts are in the right place,"
he said. "They only want a leader." Then he
raised his voice and shouted: "Three cheers
for Bolster and his noble wife I"

The cheers were given, and Mrs. Bolster, at-
tired in what I believe is called a peignoir, ap-
peared by the side of her husband and acknowl-
edged them with him. Then both of them re-
tired from the balcony.

Edward now set himself to turn the enthu-
siasm of the crowd in a practical direction. He
did not address them collectively, but spoke to
one here and there, and presently had round him
a number of people who showed that they also
recognized that Mr. Bolster's demonstration
had sprung from a state of affairs intolerable to
them as well as to him.

"Look 'ere, what do yer think of this?"
asked one man. "Me and the missus was going
to the theaytre, and my second coachman was
adrivin' of us. "Well, 'e took us round to where
a old aunt of the cook's lived, and there we 'ad

210 UPSIDONIA

to Bet in the kerridge for 'alf an hour, while 'e
yarned with 'er ladyship about a dinner-party
they were giving in the servants* 'all, and 'oo
was to be invited, and all sneh things as them.
And 'er taking no more notice of ns than if we
wasn't there!"

"Tubs, it's just like 'em," said another. My
groom of the chambers 'auled me over the coals
the other day for not nsin' up the stationery
quicker. Blarst 'im and 'is stationery, I sez,
and I'd a good mind to tell 'im so."

""Why didn't you?" asked Edward. "If you
were all to make a stand against this tyranny to
which yon are subjected, you could end it to-
morrow. See what Bolster has donel It isn't
all talk with himj it's action."

But, much as they no doubt approved of Bol-
ster 'b bold stand, they seemed to shriek from
taking any steps to follow his lead. Edward,
who now began to go round among them with a
note-book to take the names of those who were
ready for concerted action, got more refusals
than promises of support.

"What's the good?" asked one man. "They'll
git 'old of Bolster all right, you'll see, and 'e'll
be worse off than 'e was before. I ain't agoing
to risk my luxurious 'ome, and run myself into

UPSIDONIA 211

trouble, not till I see a lot more of 'em chuck-
ing things about. It's all very well for Bolster.
'E ain't got a lot o' kids depending on 'im. A
pretty thing if I was to leave mine to get
through all the grub by themselves, while I was
sent to chokey! 'Cos they don't let you order
in no leBa, I've got a good appetite so far, and
I can stand it better nor what they can."

That was the trouble with most of these long-
suffering people. They were fighting their daily
battle against profusion, not for themselves
alone, but for dear ones dependent on them;
and I could not find it in my heart to blame them
for shrinking from throwing themselves into
Edward's campaign.

But now there came a diversion. A butcher's
cart drove up to the house, driven by an aristo-
cratic-looking young man in a blue coat. Mr.
Bolster appeared again on the Florentine bal-
cony, and let down a basket, into which was put
a large assortment of fleshy delicacies. These
he hauled up. When he had collected them all
around him, he held up four lamb cutlets for ub
to see, and handed them to his wife. Then he
began to bombard the butcher with the rest of
the lamb cutlets, sweetbreads, lumps of suet, and
everything else that he had so carefully taken

2J2 UPSIDONIA

from him ; and so accurate was his aim that the
young man swung off down the drive, shielding
his well-greased head with his arm, and exhibit-
ing every sign of resentment. "When he was out
of range, he pulled up and addressed Mr. Bol-
ster most injuriously, threatening him with all
sorts of penalties. But the crowd, heartened by
the exhibition, jeered at him, and presently he
drove away. ,

He had no sooner gone than the performance
was repeated with a grocer, then with a poul-
terer, and at intervals with other tradespeople.
Mr. Bolster kept the minimum of sustenance
for himself and his wife, and nsed everything
else as a projectile ; and I think he must have
gone rather short afterwards, for he was evi-
dently enjoying himself, and seemed to keep
back very little.

Whilst the various tradespeople were thus be-
ing ignominiously driven off the field, the coach-
men and footmen and chauffeurs, who were
waiting in full view of what was happening,
not only took no part in the fray, but affected to
ignore it completely.* They showed, however,
a mild degree of interest, and there was a con-
siderable stir amongst the now rapidly increas-

•See Note.

UPSIDONIA 213

ing crowd, as a squad of police marched on to
the ground, and with them Beven or eight men
and women in the dress of indoor servants. It
presently appeared that these had come, not
to insist npon being taken back again, or to de-
mand their wages, which, no donbt, they were
pleased to go without, but to get such clothes as
they wanted from the house.

But Mr. Bolster was ready for them. "When-
ever they congregated somewhere to make an
entrance, he appeared at a window above them,
and poured down water on their heads. And
the police, who had evidently come to put an end
to the whole business, were no more successful
in forcing a way into the house. The lower part
was built to resemble a medieval, prison, and
stout iron bars and massive oak met them every-
where and defied their efforts.

At last they marched off, drenched to the
skins to get reinforcements; bat the inspector
in charge of them remained, and in an authori-
tative voice ordered the crowd to disperse.

The crowd, now greatly encouraged by Mr,
Bolster's determined resistance, refused to do
so, though it showed a disposition to avoid the
inspector's eye; and he got angry, and threat-
ened to make arrests when his men returned.

214 TJPSIDONIA

He came up to Edward and said: "I would
advise you not to mix yourself up in this, Mr.
Perry. I mean business, and if you are here
when my men come back, it will be my duty to
arrest you first of all. ' '

Edward hesitated a moment, and then turned
abruptly on his heel and walked off. I followed
him, and he said as we went down the drive:
"I shan't shirk being arrested when the time
comes, but it will be for something more serious
than refusing to move on when I am told to."

As we left the garden I turned back and saw
Mr. Bolster showering from an upper window
articles of feminine apparel, which, floating am-
ply down the breeze, roused the crowd to re-
newed merriment.

chapter yym

As we walked away, Edward said contemptu-
ously: "Isn't that jnst like the race of servants
all over? To come back for their things I Des-
picable race of parasitical humbugs ! If I were
ever so poor I should be ashamed of going out
to service. I would sooner be the man who can
hardly rise from his chair through over-feeding,
than the man who busies himself in seeing that
he consumes more than his share. The one is
at any rate trying to do his duty, with all the
forces of poverty and oppression ranged against
him ; the other merely wants to live in rich sur-
roundings without undergoing any of the disad-
vantages."

"I have rather suspected that," I said.
"Still, they do live simply, as far as I have
observed. They are not like Lord Charles Dela-
grange, and that sort of person, who likes lux-
ury for its own sake."

"I am not at all sure that some of them
don't," said Edward. "But, at any rate, they
all enjoy the contrast between their state and

216 UPSIDONIA

that of their masters and mistresses. Yon have
no idea what servants are, Howard, by only
knowing them at Magnolia Hall. Would you
lite to come with me to a few houses where, I
think, I tnay get recruits for this movement T
You will see then what the servants of the rich
are really like."

It was still early in the morning, and I did not
want to call on Mr. Hobson until later, so I ac-
cepted Edward's invitation. "But I hope you
are not going to run yourself up against the
law," I said. "Your father won't like that, nor
any of your family."

"My dear Howard," said Edward obsti-
nately, "I am a reformer. Now the oppor-
tunity has come I must not be found want-
ing."

The first house we called at was a smaller one
than either Magnolia Hall or Mr. Bolster's pal-
ace-prison-fortress. Edward told me that it
was the home of a Mr. and Mrs. Slabb, who
suffered much under the tyranny of a houseful
of female servants. He had strong hopes that
they could be worked up to revolt.

As we walked up the garden path, we ob-
served some of the furniture grouped awk-
wardly round the front door, and had to pick

UPSIDONIA 217

our way through a barricade of chairs before
we reached it, and rang the bell.

It was answered by an elderly maid, with her
head tied up in a duster, and a broom in her
hand. She did not look at all pleased to see us,
and Baid at once: "We can't admit any callers
to-day. The downstairs rooms are being turned
out."

Then she recognized Edward, and said more
amiably : "Oh, it's you, Mr. Perry 1 If you have
come district-visiting, I dont so much mind.
They're in bed. We can't have them about
when we are busy. Perhaps you and your friend
would like to go up and sit with them for half
an hour. Poor things, they'll be glad of a little
company. We can't expect them to enjoy these
turning-out days as much as we do."

She led the way upstairs, and Edward threw
an expressive look at me as we were shown into
a large bedroom, where Mr. and Mrs. Slabb
were lying Bide by side in a large bed, with a
breakfast tray on a table by their side.

"Here is Mr. Perry come to see you, with a
friend, ' ' said the maid. ' ' You '11 be glad to have
a little chat. We're getting on very well down-
stairs, but I'm afraid you won't be able to get

218 UPSIDONIA

op to-day, as we have decided to have all the
carpets beaten, and I'm not certain we shan't
have the sweep in to-morrow. Bnt I mustn't
stand here talking."

She took the breakfast tray and went out of
the room, and the old lady and gentleman
brightened up a good deal as Edward sat down
and began to talk to them.

"We do so 'ate these days in bed," said Mrs.
Slabb pathetically, "and they won't even let us
'ave no books to read, because Augusta likes to
arrange them all in colours on the shelves down-
stairs, and she won't 'ave 'em took out. It do
seem rather 'ard, don't it?"

When I heard of this "turning-out" process
taking place regularly twice a week — once for
the downstairs rooms and once for the upstairs
— and that each floor took one whole day, and
sometimes more, I thought it was rather hard.
Mr. and Mrs. Slabb kept four maids, all demons
for cleanliness and order. Sunday was the only
day on which they could count, with certainty,
on not being kept in bed or confined to one
room downstairs; and even then they were only
allowed to Bit on certain chairs, and might not
amuse themselves in any way, for the four maids
were strict Sabbatarians.

UPSIDONIA 219

Bat in spite of their much-hampered life
neither Mr. nor Mrs. Slabb received with any
favour Edward's invitation to them to dismiss
the whole of their household and join the re-
volt of the masters and mistresses. Their faces
grew longer and longer as he described the bat-
tle already joined.

"They are very good to us on the 'ole," said
Mrs. Slabb. "We are more like friends than
mistress and servants — not like some. Some-
times they even asks us to sit with them in the
kitchen on Sunday evenings and sing 'ymns. I
shouldn't like to do nothink to offend them.
And Augusta's 'ad trouble, too. Her 'uBband
took and run off with 'is master's daughter,
when they was butler and cook together in a big
'ouse. No, Mr. Perry; I shouldn't like to seem
ungrateful to them. And, after all, it is nice to
'ave your 'onse lookin' as clean as a new pin,
always, ain 't it T It 's worth givin ' up somethink
for."

"P'raps they'll let us get up for a little this
afternoon and 'ave a walk in the garden," said
Mr. Slabb hopefully. "The carpets was beat
only las' week, and they can't take so long.
We'd be careful not to get in the way."

220 UPSIDONIA

As Edward said afterwards, what could you
do with people like that? They hugged their
chains.

In one of the houses we visited we came across
a man who had suffered a great disappoint-
ment. He had seen an advertisement of some-
body's self-digesting food, and had ordered in
a large supply of it. But his idea that it would
digest itself if you left it alone long enough had
turned out to be erroneous, and his servants
were forcing him to go through the preliminary
process of swallowing it.

He joined Edward's league.

It was in the larger houses that Edward
gained the few adherents that were the meagre
result of the morning's visiting. Most of these
houses were so crammed with furniture and
foolish and tasteless ornaments that it was al-
most impossible to move in them, for their own-
ers were compelled to go on buying. I noticed
that Edward's mention of Mr. Bolster's glori-
ous breaking of glass had more effect than any
of his arguments. I would mark the eyes of the
man — it was nearly always a man to whom he
was BpeaMng— brighten, as he looked furtively
round the room, and fed his imagination on one

UPSIDONIA 221

glorious crowded ten minutes, in which he would
demolish, every detested article around him.
And indeed one gentleman, in a vast saloon con-
taining several hundreds of China and glass
ornaments, began then and there. We left him
whooping with joy as he made a determined on-
slaught on them with a poker.

Edward was frankly disappointed at the re-
sult of his campaign. "What is the good of try-
ing to help them?" he asked. "They will not
help themselves. I sometimes ask myself if
most of them really desire to be poor, and to
gain all the benefits of character that come from
poverty."

"Probably not," I replied. "If you were to
take away the obligation of over-stuffing them-
selves with food and their houses with furni-
ture, and give them servants they could order
about, I should think they would consider them-
selves well-off."

"I am afraid you are right," said Edward,
with a sigh. "I verily believe that if we had
offered to take money from all the people we
have visited, instead of asking them to bestir
themselves to gain their own freedom, our morn-
ing would have been a triumphant success."

222 UPSIDONIA

"Well, shall we try!" I suggested. "There
is still time."

But Edward scoffed at the idea of mere in-
discriminate charity. "It would only be tinker-
ing at the disease," he said. "I want to cure
it"

CHAPTER XXTV

Edwabd now announced his intention of going
in to Culbut to call on a Cabinet Minister of ad-
vanced Radical views.

"I have great hopes of him," he said. "The
poor hate him, because they say he is trying to
foist property on to them by removing their
taxes one after the other, and piling them on the
rich, and that if he goes on in this way much
longer he will wreck the Constitution, and that
that is really what he wishes to do. They say
he is on the side of capital because he has none
himself; but, as a matter of fact, he has sprung
from the rich, and has a very tender heart for
their sufferings ; I have often heard him say so.
If he will put himself at the head of this move-
ment its success will be assured."
I I wished Edward good luck, and when I had

seen him safely round the corner set out to find
Mr. Hohson's house.

According to Upsidonian ideas, this unfortu-
nate man had certainly been brought to a pass
of great misery. He lived in a large and hand-

224 UPSIDONIA

some mansion surrounded by some acres of
ground, and kept up an imposing establishment.

I was shown into a library very richly fur-
nished, but in far better taste than any of the
rooms I had been in on my visits that morning.
The effect was somewhat spoiled to my eye by a
plain deal-topped table and three or four "Wind-
sor chairs, which were mixed up with the rest
of the furniture; but tears came into my eyes
— or should have done — when I reflected that
these were probably the few articles that Mr.
Hobson had been able to save from the wreck of
his fortunes, and must be very dear to him as
reminders of his former simple and happy life.
Probably they would have to go soon, for he
would not be able to take up room with them
which might be filled with more expensive ar-
ticles.

I was sitting in one of the Windsor chairs
when Mr. Hobson came into the room. He was
a dejected-looking man of middle age, with re-
fined features and courteous manners, and my
heart leapt as I thought of the solace I was
about to bring to his over-burdened mind.

"Mr. Hobson," I said, coming at once to the
point, "I have heard your sad story, and I have
come to offer you some small relief. I am pre-

TJPSIDONIA 225

pared to accept from you the sum of twenty
thousand pounds, and I hope that with this as-
sistance you will be able to make a fresh start
and get free of your difficulties."

His thin face, already beginning to fill out
from the course of high feeding to which he had
been brought, flushed eagerly, and his eyes
brightened, but sank immediately to their pre-
vious unhappy dullness.

"You are very kind, Mr. Howard," he said,
"but I am beyond help, I fear. I could not hold
out any hope of asking you to repay me. My
spirit is broken. Nothing goes right with me.
A week ago I might have accepted such relief,
and promised to take back the money when
times were brighter. But they will never he
brighter for me. I could not even use the in-
terest you would pay me for a sum of twenty
thousand pounds."

"Bat I don't want to pay the money back, and
I don't want to pay any interest," I assured
him. "I am not a money borrower. I have a
good deal less than I know what to do with, and
nothing will give me greater pleasure than to
receive twenty thousand pounds, or even thirty
thousand, as a free gift from you. "We should
keep the transaction entirely to ourselves, and

226 UPSIDONIA

nobody outside need know anything about it

at all."

He stared at me in amazement, and then
suddenly broke down altogether, and sobbed.
"Oh, it is too muchl" he cried. "Who are you,
that you come as a messenger of hope, when
nothing but ruin and darkness seemed to sur-
round me I And why do you do it t "

These were rather awkward questions.
"Never mind that," I said. "Everybody has
his own axe to grind, and I assure you that yon
will oblige me as much as I shall oblige you by
presenting me with twenty thousand pounds,
or even thirty thousand, as I said. Yes, we will
make it thirty thousand. You shall write me a
cheque at once — to bearer — and I will go
straight to the bank and get the money."

When I had overcome his resistance, which
wasted a lot of time, he told me that he could not
write me a cheque as every penny that came in
was reinvested at once, in a mad effort to lose
it. "But if you are really serious," he said, "I
can give you stocks and shares to the amount
you so generously mention, and you can realize
on them, or keep them on the chance of going
down if you like, which they might do for you
but will never do for me."

UPSIDONIA 227

I was a little disappointed, but it made it
easier for me in one way, for I could pretend
that I hoped the securities would show a down-
ward movement ; and it also made it easier for
him. Before we had completed our business,
Mr. Hobson had almost persuaded himself that
he was doing me a good turn in presenting me
with the shares, which he said were bound to
lose me a large fortune if I could hold on to
them long enough ; and I encouraged him to be-
lieve that I should hold on to them with that
end in view.

It ended in my accepting thirty-five thousand
one pound shares in the Mount Lebanon gold
mine, the purchase of which had been the chief
cause of Mr. Hobson 's downfall.

"I bought them at a low figure," he said.
"I had been told that the reef would peter out
immediately. But I had no sooner bought them
than they found another still richer one, and
they have been paying forty per cent ever
since. They now stand at about eighty shillings,
but I do believe that the end is in sight, and
they may come down with a run any day. If
only I could have stuck to them t But, oh, Mr.
Howard, how can I ever thank yout With this

228 UPSIDONIA

burden removed, I shall be able to right myself

by degrees. I shall be a new man."

He looked it already. His eyes sparkled, and
be held his head erect. Bat when he suggested
calling his wife to thank me for all I had done,
I rose and said I must be going.

"Now it is understood that nobody knows
about this," I said. "And please don't thank
me any more. I know what I am doing, and I
assure you I am very pleased to have these
Mount Lebanons."

I shook hands with him, and got out of the
house as quickly as he and the servants would
let me.

I was a little frightened by what I had done.
After intending to accept only twenty thousand
pounds, I had promised to take over shares
worth about seven times that amount, if I real-
ised on them at their present figure; and I knew
that I should be considered to have committed
an act of sheer lunacy if it came to the ears of
Mr. Perry or Edward. Besides, I could hardly
get used to the idea all at once that I had sud-
denly become a rich man, and feared some
stroke of fate that would, after all, deprive me
of my well-gotten wealth.

I had had to give Herman Eppstein 's name as

TJPSIDONIA 229

the stockbroker who would arrange the trans-
fer, as he was the only one I knew. There
was some risk that he would give me away, hut
I thought I should be able to impose secrecy on
him, as he had not struck me as a man of much
independence of character. At any rate, I must
risk it. I decided to call on him that afternoon,
and now made my way bade to Magnolia Hall
for luncheon.

CHAPTER XXV

An unpleasant surprise awaited me. I was in-
formed by Mr. Blother, who came in answer to
my ring at the bell, while I waited by the open
door,* that Lord Potter had called while I was
out, with an inspector of police, for the pur-
pose of taking my finger-prints, and would re-
turn sometime in the afternoon.

"What infernal impndence!" I said, as Mr.
Blother Bhowed me into the morning-room, pre-
paratory to informing Mrs. Perry that I had re-
turned. "I certainly shan't stay in."

"Oh, but you must," he said, "or they can
have you up. Potter is dying to get at you. I
gave him a piece of my mind this morning, but I
can't say that it made much impression on him. '
I know Potter of old ; we were at the university
together. He is arrogance personified. He pre-
tended not to know me this morning, and asked
me a lot of questions about my master and mis-
tress — as to how they, spent their money, and
whether there was any difficulty about keeping
up the household billB to the proper figure. I

* See page 86.
SJ8Q

UPSDDONIA 231

told him plainly that if he had taken on the job
of an inspector he had no right to come without
his uniform, and if he hadn't the accounts of
this house were no affair of his. The impudence
of his pretending that he thought the Perrys
were ordinary rieh people whose house he could
go in and out of just as it pleased him ! I would
not even take his name into them, and he went
away without having got much change out of
me. You atand up to him when he comes this
afternoon. Satisfy the police that you had
nothing to do with the burglary, and don't let
him see that you are annoyed with him for put-
ting them on to you. You will score off him
best if you ignore him altogether. Well, I
will tell Mrs. Perry that you are here. Mr.
Howard, is it not? I don't think you gave me
a card."

When the necessary formalities had been gone
through, and I had taken my place at the lunch-
eon-table, I asked what right Lord Potter had to
accompany the police in their duties, and to
make himself obnoxious to anyone whom he
happened to dislike.

"None," said Mr. Perry emphatically.

But Mrs. Perry said: "Well, he is a member
of the House of Lords. As such, he might con-

232 UPSIDONIA

Bider it hia duty to look into anything that he

thought waa going wrong."

"As a member of the Honse of Lords," said
Mr. Perry didactically, "he has a share in mak-
ing laws which we all have to obey. It is not
part of his duty to administer them."

"I beg your pardon," said Lord Arthur. "I
don't like Potter, but I must stand ap for hi™
there. It is his duty as a member of the ruling
class to interest himself in public behaviour.
The House of Lords has been shorn of much of
its powers, but the influence of its members re-
mains."

"As the bod of a peer, my dear Arthur," said
Mr. Perry, "you are quite right to stand up for
your order, and if every peer were like your
father there would be no objection to their
claiming such rights as Lord Potter, for in-
stance, claims — to have free entry into every
house, in order that he may satisfy himself that
its occupants are behaving themselves as they
should do. But we are a democratic country,
and, as things stand now, such a claim as that
must be resisted, however reasonable it may
have been a hundred years ago."

"I don't know that I altogether agree with
you there, Perry," said Mr. Blother. "I admit

TJPSIDONIA 233

that it is intolerable that such a man as Potter
should force an entrance into your house, how-
ever you may choose to live. But you would
hardly object to a peer entering the establish-
ment of a man, let us Bay, like Bolster — an ad-
mitted member of the lower classes."

"Edward would," said Tom. "He said the
other day that however rich a man was he ought
to be free from interference in his own house."

"Oh, but Edward is an advanced Socialist,"
said Lord Arthur. "He would deny that a peer
was any better than anybody else."

"Yon would not go so far as to say, I sup-
pose," said Mr. Blother, still addressing Mr.
Perry, and at the same time handing him a may-
onnaise of salmon, "that the House of Lords
did not know what waB good for the people — the
common people, I mean — better than they know
themselves!"

"I should deny," said Mr. Perry, "that each
member of the peerage knew better than each
member of the proletariat what was best for
him."

"If that is the case," said Lord Arthur, in
some excitement, "I beg to give you a month's
notice, Mr. Perry. I can cope with Edward,
but if you are going to preach revolutionary

234 TJPSIDONIA

views it is time I looked oat for another situa-
tion. I only took service here because my father
said that your political views were sound at
bottom, although you went farther than he ap-
proved of in many ways."

"Oh, dear Lord Arthur!" said Mrs. Perry in
her pleasant sensible voice, "you know that you
mustn't take everything that my husband says
literally. I am sure that he only means that
peers who have no official position should be
careful how they exercise their rights over other
people."

"Quite so," said Mr. Perry, and went on to
explain that noblemen like Lord Blaeberry,
who accepted a post under Government, even
if it were not actually one of inspection, were
going the right way to work."

"As a postman," he said, "Victor Blueberry
gains entrance to all the houses on his round in
a way that cannot upset anybody, and none of
those whom he visits can object to hiB making
any investigations that he may wish to make,
in the course of his duty, on their way of living.
And the same is true of Hugh Bumborough,
when he takes round their greens, although he is
not in so strong a position because he iB not an
official. I only say that with the onward march

UPSIDONIA 235

of democracy it is no longer wise for a peer
to pursue his investigations harshly."

ThiB seemed to satisfy Lord Arthur, who
withdrew his notice, and left the room for a
time to compose himself.

Later on, when Mr. Blother had also left us
to ourselves, Mr. Perry said: "Of course one
has to be careful how one expresses one's self
before Arthur. He doesn't see that what may
be unobjectionable in certain cases would be in-
defensible if it were acted upon everywhere. At
one time a peer of the realm had the right to
make his will prevail over everybody beneath
his own rank ; but the right has fallen into dis-
use, and is now only exercised in the case of
those who are not in a position to resent it. Ar-
thur would, no doubt, admit that it would be an
intolerable state of affairs if any peer took to
interfering with any commoner, whatever posi-
tion he might hold ; and that if it were done to
any extent, the right would have to be taken
away. It is only by exercising it carefully, and,
as I say, on those who are not in a position to
resent it, that the peers can expect to keep it at
all."

"Then I understand," I said, "that Lord
Potter, as a peer, really has the right to come

236 TJPSIDONIA

and interfere with me, although he holds no
official position."

"If you refuse to acknowledge his right,"
said Mr. Perry, "as / certainly do, if he tries to
force himself into this honse he will not find any
tribunal in the country that will punish you for
it."

Miriam and I went into her garden after
luncheon. When we had shut the gate and were
alone together in that green and shady retreat,
I took her sweet face between my hands and
kissed it.

"They have been saying all sorts of things
about me," I said. "Do you believe them I"

She looked me straight in the eyes, and
laughed. "What, that you are not quite right
in your headt" she asked.

"Well, that was Edward's idea. Blother in-
clines to the opinion that I was drunk."

"Mr. Blother is a very silly old man," said
Miriam, "and dear old Edward is so taken up
with his own affairs that one need never pay
much attention to what he says. But, John —
truly now— you are not teasing me about Eng-
land? You can find your way there and it is
as nice as you say it is?"

"Of course I can find my way there. I only

UPSIDONIA 237

wish I could go and find it now, this minute,
and take you with me."

She sighed. We were now sitting on the gar-
den-seat. "I almost wish you could," she said.
"I should like to get off all the bother of the
wedding. I dread that more than anything."

"Why I" I asked, in some surprise. "I
thought everything was going to be as simple
as possible."

"Well, father says now that he thinks we
must have a rich wedding, and ask all our
friends amongst the lower classes. I should
like them to come, of course, because a lot of
them are real friends ; bat I do hate the idea
of a regular rich wedding."

"Why does your father think we ought to
have onet" I asked. "He seemed to be pleased
that I wasn't a man like Eppstein, and that you
were marrying into your own class."

"Yes, but he says there will be such a lot of
talk if we only have our poor friendB. People
are always saying that he isn't really in sympa-
thy with the rich at all. Of course it isn't true,
but if we had a rich wedding, and invited all
the rich people and gave them presents, it would
show that he does think more of them than just
of pleasing our poor relations."

238 UPSIDONIA

"Should we have to give them presents— ex-
pensive ones?"

"Yes. They are awfully good. Lots of the
women in mother's district have promised to
take jewels. They are quite excited about my
marriage, and would like to see me settled as
poorly provided for as possible. Perhaps it
wouldn't be fair to disappoint them. But I do
hate it so."

"Well, so do I," I said. "And I should hate
to give away a lot of presents to people who had
never done me any harm. ' '

"Dear old boy!" she said affectionately.
"Mother rather hates the idea of it too. But
she feels, perhaps, that we ought to think of our
rich friends at a time like this."

"Miriam," I said boldly, "we can't face it.
Let us go away together and get married
quietly when we get to England."

The idea Beemed to strike her as something
rather dreadful and rather pleasing at the same
time. She blushed, but her eyes were bright.

"Oh, we couldn't," she said.

"Yes, we could. Let us go away in a week's
time, before all the fuss begins, and escape it."

"It really would be rather funl" She was
half joking, half in earnest, but, at any rate, she

UPSIDONIA 239

had admitted the idea into her mind, and gradu-
ally as I pressed her, making light of all difficul-
ties, she began to waver towards acquiescence,
in earnest. What her mother would think was
the chief obstacle.

"I am sure she would be just as relieved as
we should at escaping all the bother," I said.
"You could leave her a letter."

"I could come back and see her after we were
married."

"Yes, of course. "We would come back to
Upsidonia whenever we wanted some more — I
mean whenever you wanted to. Oh, Miriam,
say yes I"

She did not say yes at once, but she did a little
later. She had a great sense of adventure, and
became even excited at the prospect, when she
had once consented to it. We decided to go
away together very early in the morning in a
week's time.

CHAPTER XXVI

As long as I remained in Miriam's garden, I
was safe from interruption. If the police had
been waiting to arrest me for a crime, they could
not have got at me, or even summoned me from
outside, but must have waited until I chose to
appear.

But when we had made our plans together, I
thought I had better go and see if they had
called again, and, if they had, give them my
finger-prints and get it over.

When Miriam and I left her garden and shut
the gate behind us, the first thing we saw was
the ragged figure of Lord Potter, who was
shuffling about with bis shoulders hunched np
and his hands in his pockets, looking at the
flower-beds. Hovering about at some little dis-
tance from him was Mollie, who made excited
signs in our direction when she saw ub.

Lord Potter saw us at the same time, and
came across the lawn with a very disagreeable
expression on his dirty face. "The police are
waiting for yon np at the house, sir," he said.

UPSIDONIA 241

"It i8 just like you to take refuge in a lady's
garden. But if you think you are going to es-
cape me this time you are much mistaken. Off
with you at once ! I am not in a mood to be kept
waiting any longer."

He held out his hand towards the house with
a commanding gesture, and I was just about to
reply to him, not altogether pacifically, when
Miriam's clear young voice broke in.

"Mollie!" she called, and when Mollie came
to her, she said: "Bun at once and fetch Mr.
Hobbs and Sir Herbert. Tell them that there
is someone in the garden who has no right to
be here."

Mollie ran off, and Lord Potter's face dark-
ened. "Do you know who I am, Miss Perryt"
he asked haughtily. "But of course you do.
What is the meaning of this strange behav-
iour?"

Miriam turned her shoulder to him, and tak-
ing my arm led me towards the house.

Lord Potter shuffled after us, and said an-
grily: "Answer me, please! What do you mean
by treating me in this way t"

He was on the other side of Miriam, and his
unsavoury presence was nearer to her than I

242 UPSIDONIA

cared for. I let go of her arm, and pushed in
between them.

"Keep your distance," I said, and trod by
mistake — at least — well, trod will do — on his toe.

My boots were new and strong, and hiB were
in the last stages of consumption. "With a cry
of rage and agony, he took the damaged foot
in bis hand, and hopped about on the other,
while he vented on me a flood of violent abuse.

At that moment Mr. Hobbs and Sir Herbert
appeared on the scene. Miriam stopped and
said : "My father has refused to have this man
in the house, and we have just found him walk-
ing about in the garden. Will you please put
him outside the gate?"

Lord Potter faced them. "If you dare lay a
finger on me, ' ' he began

But Mr. Hobbs, who thought there was no-
body in the world like Miriam, and would have
turned an emperor out of the garden if she had
asked him, laid a large hand on his shoulder, and
Baid: "I don't know who you are, but you get
out of my garden."

Sir Herbert laid his hand on the other shoul-
der, and between them they shifted Lord Pot-
ter towards the drive, faster than was alto-
gether convenient to him.

UPSIDONIA 243

He was so taken aback by this treatment that
at first he could only expostulate violently. But
as it continued he began to resist, and then Sir
Herbert, who was an athletic young man, took
him by the collar with one hand and the seat of
his trousers with the other, and ran hint forcibly
across the lawn.

The sight was so comic that I burst out laugh-
ing. Mollie did the same, jumping and clapping
her hands with delight, and Miriam was not
long in following suit. I was delighted to think
that Lord Potter could not possibly help hearing
us. The crowning point of the scene was when
Tom, who had a half -holiday that afternoon, ran
out of the house with a hand camera, and suc-
ceeded in taking two snapshots of the progres-
sion before it ended at the gate.

Sir Herbert came back grinning, and said:
"I have owed his lordship one for a long time.
When I was a boy at school, he got me a swish-
ing for pea-shooting at him."

As for Lord Potter, he went off down the
Gulbut Road, without once turning back; and if
ever a man looked like making mischief, he did.

The affair with the police was soon over. I
put on a dignified air, and did all that they
asked me to do without making any difficulty

244 UPSIDONIA

about it. They were actually apologetic be-
fore they left, and I was not surprised when
they told me that they had already found
and arrested the man who had committed the
burglary, and that it was only because Lord Pot-
ter had insisted that they had worried me over
the matter at all. They had been quite sure all
along that I could have had nothing to do with
it

"Lord Potter knew that as well as you did," I
said. "I rather wonder — if I may be permitted
to say so — that you should have lent yourselves
to pay off his scores."

They looked a litfle foolish at that, and one of
them said : ' ' We shall not act on his instructions
again. Lord Potter is, no doubt, a very im-
portant personage, but he must not think that
he can make use of our service for his private
ends."

"I have just seen him doing the frog's march
out of the garden," I said, "and I expect when
yon get back you will find him there, wanting to
have some arrests made for assault. He looked
like that, as far as I could judge from his back.
You might tell him that photographs were taken
of him, in a position not calculated to add lustre
to his, name, if they came to be published. It

UPSIDONIA 245

might be worth his while not to take any further
steps."

The policemen laughed and went away.
Whether they gave Lord Potter the hint or not,
neither Mr. Hobbs nor Sir Herbert heard any-
thing further of their treatment of him.

Later in the afternoon I called on Herman
Eppstein at his office, and arranged for the
transfer of the Mount Lebanon shares. He
looked grave when I told him what a large block
of them I had taken over, and said that there
had been a distinct upward movement in Mount
Lebanons during the last few days.

"I'm afraid yon have bought at a very bad
time," he said. "I wish you had consulted me
first. I could 'ave put yon on to a better spec
than that. You may get badly 'it. And what-
ever made you take all your eggs out of one bas-
ket T Why, you'll make a fortune if these 'ere
shares do go up, and what 11 the family say to
that, eht"

"I know what I'm doing," I said stiffly.

"And I'll ask you to remember that I'm con-
salting you professionally, and in confidence. I
should naturally not have come to you if I had
had any fear that yon would so far forget your-
self as to blab of business outside your office.

246 UPSIDONIA

No gentleman would allow himself to do such a

thing."

That tonched him. "Well, I 'ope I know 'ow
to be'ave like a gentleman," he said in an in-
jured voice. "Nothing that's said in this room
by a client goes outside it."

"Oh, I knew I was safe enough with you,
really," I said carelessly. "I have proved that
by coming here."

Then I gave him my instructions about sell-
ing the shares on a certain date, speaking as if
I had information as to some favourable move-
ment likely to take place before then; and im-
pressed him somewhat with my air of inside
knowledge. I left him fairly confident that he
would not give me away.

The day I had fixed on for selling was the day
before Miriam and I had arranged to leave the
country together. I should realise my comfort-
able fortune, and Herman Eppstein might say
what he liked about it afterwards.

CHAPTER XXVH

We eat down to dinner that evening without Ed-
ward, but nobody expressed any anxiety about
him, as his philanthropic enterprises often de-
tached him from the family circle. I said noth-
ing about our visits of the morning, as I thought
that Mr. and Mrs. Perry would be disturbed if
they knew that he was taking part in fanning the
agitation amongst the masters and mistresses
of Cnlbut.

The evening papers were full of it. Mr. and
Mrs. Bolster were still in a state of siege, and it
seemed unlikely that they would be dislodged
unless the authorities prevailed on their various
tradespeople to stop their supplies. Consider-
ing Mr. Bolster's treatment of them, I should
have thought this would not be difficult, but it
was explained to me that if they did not supply
a customer with goods ordered by him, they not
only had those goods left on their hands, but
had to receive payment for them as well. Con-
sequently, they would not consent to starve out
Mr. and Mrs. Bolster unless they were indemni-

246 UPSIDONIA

fied agaiziBt gain by the police; bat probably
that would be done in a day or two. In the
meantime, Mr. Bolster was having the time of
bis life, and providing splendid copy for the
papers.

I learnt, from the papers that Mr. Perry had
brought home, and from his reports of what he
had heard, that the movement had gathered a
good deal more way than I should have thought
possible from my experiences of the morning.
Quite a number of rich people had followed Mr.
Bolster's example, had turned out their serv-
ants, shut themselves up in their houses, and
thrown things out of the windows. In some
cases the servants had successfully resisted
thorn, and had turned them out of their own
houses. But it was doubtful whether this was
altogether a wise step on their part, because,
in the first place, it was an illegal action, and
gave the masters and mistresses a legitimate
grievance, and in the second it left them free to
go about and stir up further trouble.

Mr. Perry shook his head over the whole
business. "It is the result," he said, "of last
year's phenomenal harvest. There has been
great distress amongst the rich ever since. Food
has dropped in price, and many families axe

UPSIDONIA 249

feeling the pinch of prosperity who have got
along very well bo far. Unfortunately, this
year seems likely to be an even more prosperous
one than last. I much fear that we are at the
commencement of a prolonged period of social
unrest. But it is a bad look-out if it is going to
be met in this way. The people who are taking
the law into their own hands will not really
better themselves in the long run, and they will
get many more into trouble who are innocent of
all offence."

"I cannot find it in my heart to blame them
much," said Mrs. Perry. "No one who has not
gone about amongst them as I have can form
any idea of what they have to suffer. One
would have to have a hard heart not to wish to
help them."

"There are many of as who are trying to help
them," said Mr. Perry. "If everybody in the
country would live only half as well as we do,
there would be no problem of wealth at all."

"And you have proved," I Baid boldly, "that
one can live in easy surroundings without los-
ing anything in character, and without depriv-
ing one's self of any legitimate pleasure in life."

But this statement was received well by no-
body. Mr. Perry said that I had probably been

260 UPSIDONIA

deceived by the cheerfulness with which he con-
fronted the trials of his life, and asked me if
I really thought he enjoyed the luxuries to
which he subjected himself. Mrs. Perry said
quietly that I did not know how much their way
of living cut them off from their friends.
Miriam said nothing, but looked at me warn-
ingly, as if I were in danger of letting out our
' secret. Mr. Blother said that I didn't know
what I was talking about. And Lord Arthur
Baid pointedly that when people stayed in rich
houses, and were always trying to sneak their
work from the servants by doing things for
themselves, it was only natural that they
should hold silly viewB on the question.

"This preposterous movement," said Mr.
Blother, "ought to have been nipped in the bud.
I think, before we see the end of it, Perry, you
will be rather sorry that you have taken such
pains to improve the treatment of prisoners.
Give all these lunatics a year or two's dose of
such luxury as they have never dreamt of, and
they will be glad enough to get back to their
own homes, and settle down quietly to do what
their servants tell them."

"If you were to shoot a few of them it wonld

UPSIDONIA 251

be more to the point," said Lord Arthur vin-
dictively. ' ' Brutes ! ' '

Edward did not return until late that night,
and came into my room to tell me what had
happened. He was so exalted that he could not
sleep without unburdening himself, and what he
had to tell was interesting enough to keep me
awake for as long as he liked to stay talking.

The movement was fairly launched. The
Cabinet Minister upon whom he had called had
told Edward that he was then and always on
the aide of the rich, but there were reasons,
which he would not waste valuable time by re-
counting, why he could not put himself at their
head in the present revolt. So they had had to
do without him, but had been so successful that
his leadership would hardly be missed.

"He will come in all right by and by, when
he sees how strong the agitation is," said Ed-
ward, "but not as leader. He has missed that
chance, and will be sorry for it. "We have done
an immense amount of work already. We have
formed a Masters' and Mistresses' Union, and
have already got a surprising number of ad-
herents. To-morrow we expect to more than
double our figures, and before the week ib out
I believe we shall be strong enough to resort to

252 UPSIDONIA

peaceful picketing. Some of the younger men,
who have not yet lost their muscle through
luxurious living, will be told off for that pur-
pose, and it will be surprising if they cannot
induce many to join us who are still timidly
holding off."

"Are the servants going to take united ac-
tion t" I asked.

"They look to the Government to help them,"
said Edward. "It came in a year ago on the
cry of 'Work for All,' and their view is that
it is bound to see that they get work. They
are at present merely scandalised at finding
that their victims are determined to throw off
the yoke, and, moreover, are strong enough to
do it. They will be more scandalised still, to-
morrow, and very soon there will be so many
of them without situations that they will be
forced to take some steps. But in the mean-
time we shall organise — organise; and by the
time they wake up to do the same we shall be
too strong for them. My dear fellow, you have
come to Culbut at a glorious moment. The vile
structure of tyranny is tottering to its base,
and before you are many days older you will
see it topple over and sink into the dust, never
more to be revived."

UPSIDONIA 253

"That will be very interesting," I said.
"You don't think that the police will be strong
enough to scotch the movement, before it
grows T"

"It has grown beyond that already. They
can't even get at Bolster. If they had been able
to arrest him at the start, they might have in-
timidated the rest. But there must be some
scores of people who have barricaded them-
selves into their houses to-night, and thrown
all their surplus goods out of the window.
They can't deal with them all; there aren't
enough of them to do it. No ; we have already
got to the point at which we can make terms.
Very soon we shall be strong enough to dictate
them. Ob, my dear Howard, I can't tell you
what I feel about it. I feel inclined now, at
this moment, to throw every article of value in
this room out of the window."

"Oh, I shouldn't do that if I were you," I
said, with an eye on the silver-backed brushes
I had acquired at the Universal Stores. "There
is nothing to complain of in this house."

"Not much, perhaps, but there is the princi-
ple. Still, our servants here are our friends.
Blother often spanked me as a child, and
Arthur and I played fives together at school.

254 UPSIDONIA

I don't want to make trouble here. I think,

considering what we have done to help the

rich, nobody can call us disloyal for standing

outside."

"I am sure your father would much prefer
it"

"Has he talked about it at all?" Edward
asked a little anxiously. "What are his views
of the movement!"

"I think he feels that it is a little too upset-
ting altogether. He showed no disposition to
throw his dinner out of the window this eve-
ning."

"That would, perhaps, be too mneh to ex-
pect of him," eaid Edward. "Twenty years
ago I am sure he would have been the first to
do it."

"I am not so sure about that," I said. "He
seems to have taken his own quiet line from the
beginning. He has forced himself rigidly into
a life of luxury, and, as far as I have observed,
has never flinched from it."

"No," said Edward. "He has led a noble
and beautiful life of self-sacrifice, and it some-
times crosses my mind that it has rewarded him
by making him happier living as a rich man
than as a poor man."

UPSIDONIA 255

"The same idea has occasionally crossed my
mind," I said. "I shouldn't drag him into it,
if I were you."

"I think perhaps you are right. I should not
like to distract his mind hy trying to persuade
him to take a leading part in this great fight
for freedom. Let him go on in his quiet un-
selfish way. He has really been fighting for us,
and preparing the way for this all his life."

When Edward had told me all that had hap-
pened, and a great deal of what he hoped would
happen, he became rather pensive.

"Do you know," he said, "I believe this is
the last night I may sleep in my own peace-
ful home, which, for all its drawbacks of wealth
and ease, is still very dear to me. It may be
weeks, or even years, before I may come back
to it."

"Why do you think that!" I asked.

"To-morrow we demonstrate. We march
through the streets of Culbut with banners. I
shall be at the head of the procession, with
others, of course, but at any rate in a promi-
nent position. I shall be a marked man."

Legitimate pride in the thought of this dis-
tinction seemed to be struggling in Edward's
mind with the melancholy that was fast steal-

256 UPSIDONIA

ing over him. He paused, and then added with

a sigh: "Very likely I shall be arrested."

"Oh, well," I said, "if you put your head
in the lion's mouth you must be prepared for
hie biting. I wish to goodness yon would take
it out before it is too late — for the sake of your
family, if not for your own."

But Edward would not do that ; he said that
he must go on with his work, wherever it led
him. The only encouragement I could give him
was that they would probably treat his as a
political offence, for which they would only im-
prison him in the first division, in which, as he
had once assured me, they would give him
plenty of manual labour, and feed him chiefly
on bread and water.

This cheered him somewhat, and he left ine
to prepare himself for the morrow.

CHAPTER XXVHI

The parade of the newly formed Masters' and
Mistresses' Union duly took place, and was at-
tended by no immediately unpleasant results
as far as Edward or the other leaders were
concerned.

It was quite an orderly demonstration, and
its organisers had been astnte enough to dis-
associate themselves from the anarchical pro-
ceedings of Mr. Bolster, and those who had
followed his lead, I discovered that Edward
had given me an over-coloured account of the
importance that these outbreaks had had in the
movement, and possibly of his own share in
directing it. He carried a banner in the pro-
cession, on which had been emblazoned, rather
hurriedly, the words: "We Want to Make our
own Beds," and marched, surrounded by the
mistresses, about halfway down the line. If
the police had made any arrests, I doubt if they
would have picked him out, or even if they
would have noticed him.

All would have gone well if Edward had now

258 UPSIDONIA

been content to work on these safe and con-
stitutional lines. There were stronger heads
than his directing affairs, and with such suc-
cess that they were able to throw over those
who had been responsible for quickening the
unrest into life. They even encouraged the
police to take active steps against those who
had put themselves into a stage of siege. The
tradespeople were forced to stop their sup-
plies, and they were all starved out within a
week. When they got them under lock and key
they dealt leniently with them, for public opin-
ion was largely on their side. . But Edward was
so furious with the cynical way in which his
fellow progressives had repudiated these noble-
spirited pioneers that there was no holding
him, and at last he achieved that crown of
martyrdom for which he had thirsted, and was
arrested, as he was leaving a meeting of the
Super- Assessed Employers' Protest League.

I went to the court to hear him tried, and
met one of the policemen who had come to take
my finger-prints. He told me that I had nearly
been arrested too, as I had been seen with Ed-
ward in Mr. Bolster's garden when he had been
persuading people to throw things out of their
own windows, in imitation of that hero, bat the

UPSIDONIA 259

authorities had refused to prosecute me. With-
out actually saying so he gave me to under-
stand that Lord Potter was at the bottom of
it, but that the case against Edward was so
strong that they could not refuse to take it up
when once the information bad been laid.

Lord Potter pushed bis way into the court as
we were speaking together, and when he saw
me glared with fury, but said nothing, not even
when I asked him politely if he would like any
more prints of Tom's photographs.

These had turned out well, and created much
amusement in the family circle. Unknown to
Mr. Perry, who might have objected, a print of
each had been sent to Lord Potter, and had
probably pleased him less than the rest of us;

Edward stood up in the dock like a man, ac-
knowledged all that was alleged against him,
glorified in it, and made a speech to the effect
that a day would come.

The magistrate listened to him indulgently,
and said he was sorry to see a young man of
his character and parentage in such a position.
He would not be doing his duty if he over-
looked the offence, but on account of Edward's
hitherto blameless record, and the purity of his
intentions, would sentence him to a month's

260 UPSIDONIA

imprisonment in the first division. He hoped
that this very lenient punishment, for an of-
fence that was graver than he seemed to recog-
nise, would encourage him for the future to con-
fine his efforts for the amelioration of the rich
to more legitimate channels.

I shook Edward by the hand as he was led
away to undergo his punishment, and he told
me to tell his family not to grieve for him.
Nothing would daunt his spirit, and, if he sur-
vived his punishment, he should come out of
prison more determined to carry on his work
than when he went in.

Edward's conviction cast a gloom over us at
Magnolia Hall. Mr. Perry was particularly
east down by it, and did not seem to be able
to take any comfort from the fact that Edward
was to be treated as a prisoner of the first
class.

"They are sending them to work under-
ground in the coal mines now," he said, "and
they feed them chiefly on skilly. These were
reforms that were long since overdue, and I
have perhaps had more to do with them than
anybody. But, even with those alleviations, im-
prisonment is a terrible thing, and it goes to
my heart that a son of mine should be treated

UPSIDONIA 261

in this way, after all I have done. I some-
times wonder whether it has been worth it, and
whether I should not have done better for
those dear to me if I had kept to the life to
which I was born."

Mrs. Perry and Miriam both assured him
that he would not, and presently managed to
assuage the sharpness of his grief.

"You are one and all of you wonderful sup-
ports to a man who has taken up a thankless
and difficult task," he said. "When I see you
so cheerfully ready to bear your share of the
burden, I must not shrink from doing my part.
I am still whole-hearted in my sympathy with
the rich. Blother, old friend, bring up a bottle
of champagne — two bottles. I must not falter.
I cannot go to prison, but I can and will con-
tinue to play my part in the great work."

Blother brought the champagne. He waa
much moved, and put all the trouble down to
the malignity of Lord Potter.

"No one would have taken any notice of Ed-
ward's foolish little game if Potter hadn't
forced them to," he said. "It is well known
that Edward is a quite harmless crank, and for
your sake, Perry, they ought to have left him
alone. But don't take on about it. You won't*

262 UPSIDONIA

find yourself any the less regarded because of
this, and when young Edward comes back to
us, we mast try to keep him in better order."

Mr. Blother was right in saying that no one
thought the worse of Mr. Perry for the blow
that had been dealt him. He received many
tokens of sympathy from both public and pri-
vate sources, and soon came to regard Ed-
ward's imprisonment with complete equanimity.

"I think this trial must have been sent to me
for my good, ' ' he said to me two days later. ' ' I
am experiencing a wonderful calm of spirit in
spite of it. I shall use the period of my poor Ed-
ward's incarceration as a breathing space, and
shall give up as many of my activities as pos-
sible for the next month. When he returns to
us, I think I shall persuade him to travel for
a time, and after that we shall be able to re-
turn to our work together with renewed zest,"

CHAPTER *xry

Two days after Edward's conviction, when we
were all getting a little accustomed to his loss,
Miriam and I had spent an hoar of the after-
noon in her garden, laying plans for onr now
fast-approaching elopement, and had just left
it when Mollie came running towards us with
the news that Herman and Amelia had come to
tea, and wanted to see us both.

I always felt a little nneasy at the thought
of Herman Eppstein, and as in two days' time
he was to sell my holding in Mount Lebanons,
I thought that he might have come to say some-
thing to me about them.

I was determined, however, that he should
not say it in the drawing-room, if I could pos-
sibly help it. Directly we went in, I began to
talk about Edward, and about the exciting
things that were happening generally, and so
infected the rest with my loquacity that they
all became loquacious too, and we made an ani-
mated party. Mr. Perry was there, which was
somewhat unusual, but since Edward's depar-

264 UPSIDONIA

ture he had been about the houee a good deal,
and seemed to find it restful.

I saw very plainly, though, that Eppstein
was dying to bring out some news, and only
awaited a lull in the conversation to do so. I
was also doubtful whether his wife did not
know as much about Mount Lehanons as he
did, for her eye was often fixed upon me with
a curious expression. She took her full share
in the conversation, but I could see that she
would make no effort to prolong it if it flagged
of its own accord. I tried to make signs to
Eppstein, bat he either couldn't or wouldn't
understand them, and presently I had to resign
myself to some ultimate revelation.

Just as I thought, and the Eppsteins must
also have thought, that this time had come,
there was a diversion. I heard a ring at the
front door bell, and heard Blother and Lord
Arthur go across the hall to answer it. I ex-
erted myself to give the talk another fillip, until
the caller, if there was one, should arrive, and
breathed again when the door was flung open
and Mr. Blother 's sonorous voice announced a
name. But when I heard that name my spirit
sank again.

The visitor was Mr. Hobson, and he came

UPSIDONIA 265

into the room with a wild and disordered air,
which changed to one of menace as, without
even greeting Mrs. Perry, he pointed at me and
cried: "Deceiver! Yon are not what you pre-
tend to be I"

Few deceivers are; and my conscience was
not wholly clear. Bat I was, at any rate, nn-
conscious of having done Mr. Hobson any harm,
and asked him, in some surprise, what com-
plaint he had against me.

It was Herman Eppstein who took up the
question, and dealt with it with a resource
which I ^should hardly have expected of him.

"I know all about it, Mr. 'Obson," he said,
"and yon 'aven't nothing to grumble at. Mr.
'Oward took over your shareB at market price,
and did you a very good turn. If you'd a
fcnowed you could do better by 'anging on to
them, why did you let 'em got"

Mr. Hobson sank into a chair, and buried his
face in his hands, rocking his body to and fro.

' ' I might have known it, ' ' he said. ' ' Nothing
I ever do goes right. If I had kept those
shares, I should have been a poor man once
more. And I should have kept them, if he
hadn't come and pretended to be doing me a
good turn."

266 UPSIDONIA

He lifted op his head, and hissed the word
"Viper!" at me, and then subsided onee more
into his state of misery.

"What is it all about, Herman) What has
happened ?" asked Mr. Perry.

I also wanted to know what had happened.
I was not feeling at all comfortable, and no
longer wished to prevent Eppstein from telling
his story.

"Mr. 'Oward took over thirty-five thousand
Monnt Lebanon shares from Mr. *Obson. It
was all in order, and Mr. 'Obson must 'ave been
precious glad to get rid of them. Mr. 'Oward
'olds them now, and I take this opportunity of
congratulating him. Still, I do think, as 'e is
almost a member of this family and you might
say, 'e might 'ave let some of the rest of us into
the know, instead of keeping all the good luck
to 'imself."

"What has happened?" asked Mr. Perry
again.

" Arst 'im. 'Ell tell yon," said Eppstein.

"I would rather you did," I said. "Ton can
put it more lucidly."

"Well, they've been rocky for a long time,"
explained Eppstein,. "but they bulled them up,
and never let on that they'd come to the end

UPSIDONIA 267

of their lode. But this afternoon the news
come that there's been no gold for a long time,
and they've been paying interest ont of capital.
And that ain't all. There's never been more
than five shillings a share paid on them.
They're calling up another five shillings at the
end of a month, and they'll call up the rest at
three months' intervals, and then they'll wind
up. 'Oward, I don't bear no malice — you've
got the bulge on all of us this time — and I
should like to shake 'ands with you."

I Bhook hands with him, my brain in a tumult,
then with his wife, and finally with Mr. Perry,
who had by this time taken in the full meaning
of Eppstein's announcement, which was a good
deal more than I had.

It was Hobson who brought home to me the
appalling reality.

"He came to me," he said accusingly, "and
offered to take twenty or thirty thousand
pounds from me as a free gift. He led me up
to offering him all my holding in Mount Leb-
anons. If I had kept them I should have stood
to lose over £140,000 now, and should have
been entitled to pay up another £26,000 in calls
—nearly £170,000 in all. And now he has lost

268 UPSIDONIA

all that, and I say it isn't fair. He has swin-
dled me."

There followed an altercation between him and
Eppstein and Mr. Perry. Mr. Perry rebnked
him for the unfounded accusations he had
made against me, and Eppstein told him that
he was the swindler if he expected to lose it
both ways. But still, he kept on repeating his
reproaches, and finally I took a bold resolution,
and generously offered to let him have his
shares back again.

But neither Eppstein nor Mr. Perry would
hear of this, and I was not in a position to press
it. After all, Hobson had already lost the full
value of his shares, and could only stand to gain
by the amount he would have had to pay up on
the calls.

When this was pointed out to him, he ac-
knowledged that he had never been mnch of a
business man, apologised to me for his be-
haviour, and went away somewhat comforted,
leaving me to the congratulations of the family.

I accepted them, I hope, modestly. I was al-
most paralysed by the blow. Instead of being
able to leave Upsidonia with a comfortable for-
tune, I should leave it under an appalling bur-
den of debt. I had lost a hundred and seventy

UPSIDONIA 269

thousand pounds, and could only comfort my-
self with the resolution never again as long as
I lived to put my finger in the Stock Exchange
pie. But it was cold comfort enough, and I
broke away as soon as I could from the delight
of Mr. Perry, who now saw in me a most eligi-
ble son-in-law, and from the ill-concealed
jealousy of Mrs. Eppstein. I took Eppstein
into the library with me on the plea of business.
I wanted time to think before I had another
talk with Miriam, who, I could see, had been
deeply puzzled by the foregoing conversation,
and whose due it was to have all the explana-
tion I could offer.

CHAPTER YYY

' ' My dear, ' ' 1 said, when Miriam and I had once

more sought the seclusion of her garden, and
she had asked me what it all meant, "you don't
understand English ways yet. It is not to he
expected that you should, with your upbring-
ing. But it is absolutely necessary to have
some money in England, when you marry, and
I thought I would do Hobson a good turn by
getting what I wanted from him. It is most
unfortunate that it has turned out as it
has."

But she could not bring herself to this view.
"I am sure that however you may try to hide
it," she said, "you really only did it because
you were sorry for the poor Hobsons. I love
and honour you for it, and I am glad you have
been rewarded as you have, though I do hope
you won't do it again, because now you have
me to think of, you know, and, after all, it is
very risky."

"Miriam," I said, "I am not going to sail
under false colours with you. I wanted Hob-

UPSIDONIA 271

son's money, and I don't know what on earth
to do now I haven't got it."

"Why, do just what we had arranged to do,"
she said. "I am ready to come with yon, and
if it means that we shan't have to live in the
rich way we have talked abont, I shall be all
the better pleased. It has always been rather
a weight on my spirits, and I am very re-
lieved to think that we shall be poor after
all."

"My dearest of girls, I am afraid you won't
like being poor in England."

"I should like it anywhere. And I believe
you have only been making up all that you have
told me, so as to test me."

"Test you I What do you meant"

She took my arm, and laid her fair head on
my shoulder. "I think you must have been a
little doubtful about me," she said, "always
seeing me in these unnatural surroundings.
You must have thought that I couldn't be
brought up in a place like this all my life with-
out being affected by it. You wanted to see
how much I cared for luxury for its own sake.
Truly, John, I don't want it at all. I only want
yon."

272 UPSIDONIA

What was I to Bay to this touching confes-
sion f

What I did say caused her to continue: "The
picture yon drew of liking to have things for
the sake of having them was rather like a night-
mare to me. Think of a life in which one could
never belong to one's self, or to one another,
because one was always bowed down by the
weight of possessions! And as we got older
they would accumulate more and more, until we
became stifled by them. Why, one might even
come to take no pleasure in any beautiful
things that didn't belong to one. One might
even envy other people what they had. Why
should anybody want to burden themselves in
that way?"

"Well, of course," I said, "one can do
all right without a lot of things around
one."

"Oh, yes j one would be bo much happier.
Beatrice Coghill, a friend of mine, married
about a year ago, and they took a little farm in
the country. I went to stay with them there.
It was just large enough for them to do all the
work themselves. They live in the open air all
day long, and work hard, and never have a care
in the world. She makes her little home so

UPSIDONIA 273

sweet for her husband, and she told me she was
always thinking about it, and about him when
he is out working in the fields. In the evenings
they read, and she plays to him. They don't
mind the long winters because they are always
together, and do what they like doing indoors.
And in the summer they have their garden, and
their walks about the quiet fields. Sometimes
they take a little holiday, and come into Culbut
to see their friends, and to hear some music,
but they are always glad to get back to their
happy little home. They never have any of the
annoyances that we go through here every day
of our lives, and they can look forward to grow-
ing old together, and keeping all their simple
happiness to the end."

"My darling, "I said. "That is a very pretty
picture."

And, indeed, it seemed to me, as painted by
Miriam, the prettiest sort of picture. If I could
make her happy, and myself happy with her, by
living a life of bodily toil in the open air, which
is the best sort of toil, and feeding the demands
of the brain in the hours that seem set apart
by nature for such pursuits, then a little farm,
by all means.

But a farm in England, however little, wants

274 UPSIDONIA

money to bay, money to stock, and not infre-
quently money to carry on. It was only in Up-
aidonia that one could acquire it, stock it, work
it without any previous experience, and live off
it without any anxiety, as well as contribute
three hundred pounds a year towards the in-
come of somebody else, with no capital behind
one. No English Parliament Act that I am
aware of holds out any such prospects to the
small holder. It did cross my mind that it
might be worth while considering whether it
would not be better to give up all idea of leav-
ing Upsidonia now or at any time. One could
live more comfortably in that country owing a
hundred and seventy thousand pounds than in
any other that I know of. But I was already
getting a little tired of Upsidonia, and was look-
ing forward keenly to taking Miriam away with
me. Besides, there was always that question of
the newspaper placard — ''"Who is Mr. John
Howard?" — hanging over me. If I stayed in
Upsidonia, that would have to be answered
sooner or later, and for all I knew might be ripe
for an answer at that very moment. No;
curiosity about me seemed to have died down
for the time, but I was not in the safest of

UPSIDONIA 275

positions ; and the sooner I got ont of the coon-
try, with Miriam, the better.

"We can't very well live on a farm in Eng<-
land," I said. "There are many reasons
against it. Bnt would yon be content to live
with me in the simplest possible kind of way,
while I worked for yon in the way I have
learnt I I could just manage it, and / don't
want anything more than a tiny little house,
with yon in it, if you don't."

She said that she didn't — that she loved the
idea of being poor with me, and that if I had
really been nsed to living in luxury, although
this she could hardly believe, then she would
show me how little luxury made for happiness.
She removed all my unworthy fears, and made
me qnite ashamed of having had designs on Up-
sidonian pockets. I would leave the country
not a penny richer than when I came into it, ex-
cept for the few items I have already men-
tioned. I felt much more comfortable in mind
when I had taken this decision, and if along
with it there went the prospect of also freeing
myself from the immense load of debt I had
contracted, by leaving it behind me, I can
hardly be blamed for that nnder prevailing con-
ditions.

276 UPSIDONIA

Miriam and I left her garden that evening in
the most complete accord with one another, both
rather excited by onr fast-approaching depar-
ture, bnt both convinced that we should lead a
life of such happiness together as had never
yet fallen to the lot of a married conple.

CHAPTER XXXI

On the last evening bat one, before Miriam and
I were to go away together, we were sitting
round the tea-table in the verandah. Mrs.
Eppstein was with us, and Mr. Perry had said
that he would be home at five o'clock, but had
not yet appeared. But we heard the wheels of
the carriage just as Mr. Blother had brought
out the kettle, with the intimation that we had
better begin now; and Mr. Perry came out to us
directly, still wearing his tall hat, which
Lord Arthur usually relieved him of in the
hall.

It was evident that he had news for us, and
to judge by his face, on which sat an expres-
sion combined of jubilance and modesty, it was
good news.

1 ' Blother, old friend, ' * said Mr. Perry,
"don't go. I have something to tell you."

Then he went up to Mrs. Perry, took her
hand in his, kissed it, and said: "Good evening,
my lady."

Mrs. Perry exclaimed at this form of ad-

OT7

278 UPSLDONIA

dress, and after a short pause, daring which
Mr. Perry removed his hat and looked rather
sheepish, Mr. Blother said joyfully: "Ah, I see.
At last they have recognised your value, and
have knighted yon. Three cheers for Sir
Samuel and Lady Perry!"

Mr. Perry held up his hand, and the cheers
died on our lips. "You are on the right track,
Blother," he said, "but you have not gone far
enough. You should have said: 'Three cheers
for Lord and Lady Magnolia 1 ' which is the title
I have decided to adopt, subject to her lady-
ship's approval. My dear, a great and unex-
pected honour has been conferred on me. They
have offered me a peerage, contingent on my
accepting or refusing it at once. I have ac-
cepted, thinking you would wish it for the sake
of the children, and my patent was handed to
me this afternoon."

We all congratulated the new peer heartily,
concealing our surprise at the honour having
been conferred on him, and saying that it was
only what ought to have been done long
ago.

When Mr. Blother had left us to carry the
news into the servants' quarters, Mr. Perry, or
rather Lord Magnolia, told us all about it.

UPSIDONIA 279

"It is the reward of my lifelong service in
the cause of the downtrodden," he said, "and
dear Edward will be gratified to know that the
punishment so harshly inflicted upon him has
bad something to do with it. I was given to
understand that the Government mnch regrets
the necessity of having had to prosecute him,
and, as a good deal of feeling has been aroused
against them in conseqnence of that action, they
hoped that this honour, conferred npon me so
promptly, might remove some of that feeling,
as showing that, whatever may be thought of
them, they are really on our side. Therefore,
in one way, I may be said to be doing as much
for them aB they are doing for me, which made
it, perhaps, easier to accept the unlooked-for
honour. I did not do so without some demur.
I Bald that I should not consent to be a mere
puppet peer,* and they assured me that noth-
ing of' the sort was intended. They also as-
sured me in the handsomest way that the offer
of a peerage to me had long been under con-
sideration, and the only difficulty about it had
been that my way of living might bring ridicule
on the nobility generally. I told them at once
that my work was far too dear to me to be

* See Note.

280 UPSIDONIA

given up, and that if the stipulation was that
I should leave my friends amongst the rich, and
go hack to live amongst the poor, I could not
consent to it. They said that no such stipula-
tion would he made, and that removed my last
objection."

What his other objections had been, Lord
Magnolia did not tell us. It was obvious that
he had not had the least idea of such an honour
ever being conferred on him, and was quite
agreeably Btirred by it.

"I only wish that dear Edward were here to
share our gratification," he said, "but it will
not be long now before we have him with ns
again. My dear, I think you might write him
a note to tell him what has happened. To-mor-
row will be his day for receiving letters, and
do not forget to address him as the Honourable
Edward Perry."

"I must go home at once and tell Herman,"
said Mrs. Eppstein. "It was a step up for him
to marry me, but he little thought that he would
be marrying into the peerage."

"Shall I he Lady Mollie, like Susan and Cyn-
thia 1" enquired Lord Magnolia's younger
daughter.

"Ton will be the Honourable Mollie, my

TJPSIDONIA 281

love/' replied that nobleman. "Yon are all
now the Honourable. But yon must not think
too much of that. These distinctions are noth-
ing in themselves, and yon must not forget that
it is worth that counts, and that titles are
usually given as a reward to those who are the
last to desire them for themselves. It is so in
this case. Nothing will be changed here, and
we shall still go on in our qniet way, trying to
live for our fellow creatures, continuing to
share in their joys and in their sorrows,
and living like the richest and humblest of
them."

At this moment, all the household, led by Mr.
Blother and Mrs. Lemon, came filing out on to
the verandah, to congratulate their master on
the honour that had been conferred upon
him.

Lord Magnolia received their felicitations
with heartfelt gratitude, and then Mr. Blother
made a little speech.

"It is quite a new situation," he said, "for
a domestic staff to find themselves in the serv-
ice of a peer of the realm, and it is a matter
of congratulation to one and all of ns that the
already unusual circumstances under which we
have all lived together here — some of us for a

282 UPSIDONIA

number of years — hare been bo happy that no
awkwardnesB has been felt anywhere. Per-
haps we, in the servants' hall, can take some of
the credit for that, for I think we can all say
that we have borne some of the burdens of
wealth, and have not let them fall entirely upon
the shoulders of the excellent master and mis-
tress with whom we have lived in such friendly
relations. If any of ns have ever seemed to
press too hardly upon the younger members of
the family, it has only been because we did not
wish them to succumb to the temptations of
wealth, as they might have done if they had
been allowed to forget that servants are
usually in a far superior position to those
whom they serve. For it would never do for
them to grow up thinking that life amongst
the rich was so pleasant as I think we servants
may pride ourselves on having made it at
Magnolia Hall.

"However, I need say no more about that.
What I am going to say, on behalf of myself
and all my colleagues, is that we wish to mark
this happy occasion by an act of self-sacrifice.
However my old friend, Lord Magnolia, may
wish to conduct his life in the future, we feel
that for this evening, at least, we should not

UPSIDONIA 283

like to see him and her ladyship occupying an
inferior situation to our own. We propose that
the household staff should take their places at
the dinner-table, and be waited upon by Lord
Magnolia and his family, who will also cook the,
dinner, and wash up afterwards."

It would be impossible to describe the emo-
tion with which Lord Magnolia met this touch-
ing offer of self-surrender, so handsomely
acquiesced in by the whole company before
him. He said a great many things in reply, but
what he said most insistently, and repeated so
that it could not possibly be misunderstood, was
that nothing would induce him to accept it.
Nothing was to be changed, he said. It would
take away all his gratification in the honour
that had been done to him, if it was to be
thought that it would for a moment put him
on the level of those whom he had always been
glad to call his friends. Let them keep their
proud position, and let those who thought and
acted with him keep their humble one. If they
would do him that honour, let them all come in
after dinner and drink a glass of wine— such
of them as were not teetotallers — with him and
his family. More than that he could not ac-

284 UPSIDONIA

cept from them, if they begged him on their
bended knees.

So it was settled. Lord Magnolia drank sev-
eral glasses of wine that evening, and went op
to bed in as happy a frame of mind as that of
any peer in Upsidonia.

CHAPTER yXYTT

My last day in Upsidonia had arrived, and the
time was fast approaching when I waa about to
rob that country of its brightest jewel. To-
wards the evening, feeling restless, I set ont for
a walk. Miriam was with her mother, and as
there was no one else whose company I desired
at that time I went alone.

I thought I might as well see exactly how
long it would take to walk to the other side of
Cnlbnt so as to run no risk of meeting many
people when I should take the same road with
Miriam, very early the next morning.

When I got into the busier part of Culbut, I
bought an evening paper, and running my eye
idly over its columns, came upon one headed:
"The Truth about John Howard at Last. Ar-
rest Shortly Expected. New Peer 'Victimised."

I took refuge upon the top of a tram-car, and
read the column through. It stated that the
Master of McGillicuddy, the son of the re-
spected Highland Baron of that ilk, had been
brought to the office of the paper by another

286 UPSIDONIA

highly respected nobleman — in whom I had no
difficulty in recognising Lord Potter — and had
authorised them to announce, for the protection
of all honest people, that there was a danger-
ous criminal in their midst, whom they would
do well to beware of.

A prisoner undergoing a term of penal servi-
tude for representing himself as a professor of
dead languages, and practising a long series of
cruel f rands on young students, many of whom
had lost places in the monthly examinations
owing to his empirical methods of tuition, had
escaped from gaol some weeks before. He was
known to have gone south, no doubt with the
idea of practising the same frauds on the less
sophisticated scholars of Upsidonia. There
was no doubt whatever that the person already
arrested on his arrival in Culbut for a gross in-
sult to a highly respected personage was this
escaped prisoner, masquerading under another
name. The police, who had hithero failed to
trace the escaped convict, had been notified,
and, by the time these words were in print,
would no doubt have got him once more safely
under lock and key.

Unless the paper was mistaken in this last
statement, I had probably passed the police on

UPSIDONIA 287

my way into Culbut, and they were now at Mag-
nolia Hall awaiting my return. According to
the descriptions given by the Master of Mc-
Gillicuddy of the escaped prisoner, he might
have been my twin brother dressed up in my
own clothes.

I need not reproduce the scorn with which the
journal, which was that chiefly read by the
members of the dirty set, expressed itself about
the newly created peer, who had been taken in
by this un scrupulous criminal, and had even
allowed him to become engaged to his daughter.
It pained me greatly, and would certainly pain
Lord Magnolia no less when he should come to
read it.

The blow was a stunning one. If there was
such a criminal at large as had been described
by the Master of McGillicuddy, which I had no
reason to doubt, it would be very difficult to
persuade the police that I was not that criminal.
Indeed, how could I expect to persuade them of
anything? I could give no account of myself
that would satisfy them that they were arrest-
ing an innocent person, and even if the High-
land police eventually disclaimed me, I knew it
would take some time to get them to Culbut, and
in the meantime I should certainly be kept in

288 UPSIDONIA

custody. It was quite certain that the moment
I returned to Magnolia Hall I should be ar-
rested, even if I got so far, and at dawn the
next morning, when Miriam and I ought to have
been starting on the happiest of journeys to-
gether, I should be most comfortably housed in
prison.

The more I thought of it, the more angry I
became at this most unkind stroke of fate, and
the more angry with the preposterous Lord
Potter, who had undoubtedly brought it upon
me. I could not get at Miriam to tell her to
start alone and join me somewhere on the road.
I could do nothing. I was robbed of all I
had hoped for as it seemed just within my
grasp.

I walked on and on, trying to form some plan.
I walked right through Culbut, with my eyes
mostly on the ground.

By and by, something caused me to lift them,
and I found myself passing a little wood,
which, with a start of surprise, I recognised
as the one from which I had made my first entry
into Culbut.

It was, as Edward had said, and as was now
quite plain to me, part of the grounds of a large
institution, and looked, from 'this side, quite

TTPSIDONIA 289

unlike what I had taken it to be when I had
entered it from the other.

Still, in spite of Edward's description of the
kind of country that lay beyond, I had certainly
entered this wood from the cave, in the way I
have described, and I had not the smallest
doubt but what I could return by the same way.

I thought that I might as well satisfy myself
of the exact whereabouts of the cave, so that I
should be able to lead Miriam directly to it, if
I should succeed in getting her away. The
only plan that seemed to me possible was to
keep away from Magnolia Hall until nightfall,
and then try in some way to communicate with
her, and boldly carry her off under cover of
darkness. Very likely the house Would be
watched, and we might be followed, even if we
escaped. I did not want to run any risk by
groping about in the wood, when possibly time
would be of value.

I found the trees and the bushes without the
least difficulty, just as I remembered them, and
pushed through them to the dark aperture of
the cave.

I went in a short distance, not meaning to go
very far, but just to satisfy myself that the way
was clear.

290 UPSIDONIA

I am sure that I had not penetrated more
than fifty yards, for the light still held faintly,
when suddenly the same roar was in my ears
as had frightened the man who had entered the
cave with me from the other end. I was aware
of something odd in my head, which may have
been a heavy blow, although it did not feel like
one.

Then I lost consciousness completely.

I came to, to find myself lying in bed, in a lit-
tle room lit by a lattice window, through which
was a view of rolling purple moor. I felt very
weak, and when I tried to move, found that my
body was heavily bandaged and my head
swathed. The movement caused a sharp pain
to shoot through me, and again I lost conscious-
ness.

This was nearly six weeks ago. I am now
sitting in a little slip of a garden behind the
inn, with the moor coming right up to it. I can-
not walk yet, for both my legs were broken by
the subsidence of the cave, as well as a few
other comparatively unimportant bones in my
body. But my head has been clear for a long
time, and I have employed my enforced leisure
in writing this account of what befell me.

UPSIDONIA 291

I cannot, even now, make out exactly what
happened. The kind folk who rescued me, and
have looked after me ever since, stoutly aver
that the fall of earth happened on this side of
the cave, almost directly I and my companion
entered it; that he gave the alarm immediately,
and I was extricated within an hour.

If this is true, what becomes of Upsidonia?

It cannot be true. But I no longer talk of
Upsidonia to them, for when I did so, after I
began to mend, they looked askance at me and
were obviously hiding something. Even the
doctor, who rides over the moors from Epping-
ton on a shaggy pony, told me that I should not
get well as long as I clung to such delusions.

Delusions! Is Miriam a delusion, I should
like to know! Can a man fall in love with a de-
lusion!

No. These people must know perfectly well
of the existence of Upsidonia, but for some rea-
son of their own they wish to keep it dark.
Perhaps I shall know why when I get well
again.

But I don't much care what their reasons
are. The cave is blocked up now, but from
where I sit I can see a tall rampart of rock
about a mile to the north across the moor. It

292 UPSIDONIA

looks inaccessible, but there must be some way
over it, or round it. "When I can walk again I
shall find a way. For beyond it lies Upsidonia,
and Upsidonia contains Miriam.
Wherever Miriam is, I am going to find her.

NOTES

P. 42. — A Daylight Saving Bill had been passed
some years before, by which an hour was borrowed in
April to be paid back in October. The necessity, how-
ever, of getting up an hour earlier than usual had
made the whole populace so cross that the Government
which had passed the Bill was forced to resign, and
the next Government repealed the law immediately
upon coming into office. They omitted, however, to
allow for the repayment of the borrowed hour, and aa
no Government had since cared to touch the question,
Upsidonian time had remained an honr earlier ever
since.

P. 42. — It was held in Upsidonia that private knowl-
edge of any fact was the possessor's own property,
and, as no one was willing to acquire property if they
could help it, questions of this sort were never pressed.
It had even been laid down in the courts that a person
too ready with information could be indicted for
forcing property on his hearers. Vide Cope on "The
Bore in Law."

P. 43. — I might also have been arrested for sleeping
out with visible means of substance, which had been
in Mr. Perry's mind when he had imperilled himself
by his kindly action, as he told me afterwards.

294 NOTES— continued

P. 52. — They did not forget to send in their bill,
but I forgot to pay it.

P. 60. — The public schools, of which there were a
good number in Upsidonia, were attended exclusively
by the rich, as were the two older universities. Lux.
uriouB habits were encouraged in these establishments,
and learning was at a discount, although this was
never acknowledged. The poor attended council
schools, and the newer universities. But even from
a school like Seton, where the sons of the worst
families were educated, there was a ladder to the more
serious seats of learning, and many rich scholars had
raised themselves by their own efforts to a position
from which they could look down on the families from
which they had sprung.

P. 61. — There were two schools of economic re-
formers in Upsidonia. The one which was supported
by the Perrys wished to limit production by law, but
I am inclined to think that Mr. Perry did not wish it
very much. Edward, however, was strongly in favour
of legislation. He thought that the many would bene-
fit at the expense of the few, or so he said.

The other school believed in freedom of consump-
tion, or rather of non-consumption. I never met any
of its adherents while in Upsidonia, and only heard
them called names.

P. 62. — There was said to be a good deal of corrup-
tion in this service. The Government auditors were

NOTES— continued 295

too well paid to make them altogether trustworthy.
Edward was going to see that this was altered when
he had time.

P. 63.— This was well said on my part, and I do not
regard Edward's reply as convincing.

P. 65. — Buff with canary facings.

P. 69. — Upeddonian word of unknown derivation, <
signifying a degraded being; one who had lost caste.

P. 72. — I learnt afterwards that it was a matter of
"form, 1 " and that those amongst Tom's schoolfellows
who betrayed a liking for good things were designated
"Guts."

P. 74. — A Bill was then before Parliament which
would have burdened brewers in perpetuity with the
licences of the public-houses owned by them. Mr.
Perry regarded this proposal as an intolerable oppres-
sion of a deserving body of men. The Bill was after-
wards amended, and the brewers relieved of a great
anxiety.

P. 75. — I had already taken a fancy to her. See
page 66.

P. 79. — The Highlanders were much looked up to
by dwellers in other parts of Upaidonia. They were
a thrifty hard-living race of fine physique, who had

296 NOTES— continued

kept very much to themselves, owing largely to the in-
accessibility of the country they inhabited ; they sel-
dom visited any other part of Upaidonia, or welcomed
visitors to their own. They had no rich among them,
and seemed to have solved all the economic problems
that were so disturbing in and around Culbut, for in-
stance. There were no towns in the Highlands; every-
body lived on the land, and as the soil was very poor
they had a hard struggle for existence, which brought
out the best that was in them. Luxury was absolutely
unknown amongst them, but learning flourished.
Living so far north, they had long dark winters,
which they spent in close study. Their chief form of
relaxation was the holding of competitive examina-
tions, for which they all entered. Those who came out
first were examiners next time.

P. 90. — He said that he didn't like playing with
girls.

P. 91. — It was a plantain.

P. 94. — The contempt for pretty clothes amongst
the girl' children of Culbut was a question of form.
See page 52.

P. 95.— The Lady Cynthia Maxted, younger
daughter of the Earl of Blueberry by his marriage
with Sarah, daughter of Giles Ploughshare, Esq..

P. 96. — The publio parks of Culbut, as well as the
semi-private ones (see chapter xiv), were entirely

NOTES— continued 297

closed to the rich. This had not always been so, but
an agitation had been made by the mothers of the
poor children who played there some years before,
and the Municipality had legislated in their favour.
Edward Perry considered this a very bad business.

P. 111. — When I discussed this with Edward, he
asked indignantly why those in the liquor trade should .
be assisted in this way, when other traders in a like -
predicament would get no help from the Government,
but would have to put up prices. I could give him no
answer.

P. 113.— The club to which Mr. Perry had intro-
duced me wonld have corresponded to a working
man's clnb with us, and was under some sort of cler-
ical control. Its members set this, along with the an-
nual subscription, as against advantages enjoyed.

P. 116. — Upsidonian expression for getting rid of
your money.

P. 117. — The clergy in TJpsidonia were accustomed
to treat the rich in a slightly different manner from
that in which they treated the poor.

P. 121. — They possessed all the Greek and Latin
Classics in Upsidonia, but had not learnt to treat
them as living languages. Their greatest scholars had
decided that although they were made up of words,
or what looked like words, they had not, and never

298 NOTES— continued

had had, any consecutive meaning. At one time a
school had arisen which held them to be mathematical
symbols, and a certain Professor Pottinger had
claimed to have proved that they referred to the
movements of the heavenly bodies. He had predicted,
oat of Propertias, the arrival of a hitherto unknown
comet, but the comet had failed to make its ap-
pearance, and the influence of his school had dwindled.

Another advanced school, led by a Professor of a
Highland University, taught that the words did have
an actual mesning. By picking out all those that are
known to-day, such as "omnibus," "miles," "tan-
dem," " tjmerm," and the like, and rearranging them,
this school professed to. have translated a good deal.
But as each student rearranged them differently, the
results were not altogether satisfactory, even to them-
selves.

I was told of a don in ths University of Culbut who
had been struck with the number of words whieh did
not seem to correspond with any pronunciation, how-
ever corrupt, with which Upsidonians were ac-
quainted; and who even went so far as to say that
classical words that were not known might not be
those words themselves, but symbolical, as it were, of
quite • different words. The word ' ' hoc, ' ' for in-
stance, he did not believe to be a mis-spelling of the
wine of that name, or even to stand for "hook," as
some scholars maintained. And there had always
been a dispute as to whether the word "et," which
occurred so frequently in both languages, should be
read as "ate," or as "Et," with a capital, short for

NOTES— continued 299

"Etta," or "Henrietta." This man boldly pro-
claimed that it was neither, but from the frequency of
its occurrence, was probably intended to represent the
word "and." He was, however, unable to explain
why people who wished to write "and" should pre-
fer to write "et"; and although his views had
aroused some interest in learned circles, he was com-
monly regarded as a crank.

The great mass of Upsidonian classical scholars
were content to employ themselves usefully in exam-
ining the different collocations of words in various
authors, and in the schools a great deal was learnt
by heart. The classics were considered a most valu-
able exercise of the faculties, and the conservative
teachers and men of learning held that it would be a
thousand pities to drop them, simply because they
did not help the learner to lose money.

P. 126. — This was a favourite subject of conversa-
tion with ladies in Upsidonia.

P. 137. — She was also an extremely nice woman —
the widow of a well-known musician, and herself no
mean performer, on the harp.

P. 137. — The same sort of thing holds amongst us,
in matters of art, for instance. Perhaps the majority
of us prefer chatty pictures with a strong love inter-
est to the works of Holbein and Rembrandt; bnt we
should not make the same fuss if there were a danger
of their being taken out of the country.

300 NOTES— continued

P. 142. — This park was one of the most beautiful
of the many in Culbut, and of something like twenty
acres in extent. It was not really a public park, al-
though it was called so, and was kept up with public
money. It was used exclusively by the inhabitants
of the houses abutting on to it; the Ladies Susan and
Cynthia might play all over it without any risk of
infection, mental or physical, from rich children ; and
if Lord and Lady Blueberry took a walk there in the
cool of the evening they would meet none but those
whom it might be agreeable to them to meet

P. 144. — Genuine aristocrats, like the Blueberrys
and the Rumboroughs, never hesitated to acquire such
possessions as seemed necessary for a well-balanced
life, or for legitimate pleasure. In the matter of
music, all poor children were taught some instrument
at first, but only those who showed considerable apti-
tude for it were allowed to go beyond a certain point.
And they were never allowed to practise at home, even
where there was a piano. But on reaching the age
of fourteen, if they could pass a rather stiff examina-
tion, their parents submitted to the annoyance of
acquiring another piece of property, such as a piano,
or a violin, for the Bake of the pleasure they could
gain from their children's performance.

As a consequence of these wise provisions, there
were no girls to be found in Upsidonian homes, at
least among the poor, who, as the result of a long
and expensive education, could play one piece and

NOTES— continued 301

three hymn tones indifferently, and did so whenever
they felt inclined.

P. 161.- Even in the case of a marriage between
families living respectively in town and country the
separation was more complete than with us. There
were few railways in Upsidonia, and even motor-
cars were looked upon with suspicion, and only used
by the rich. The poor preferred to drive, or still
more to walk. But as the population of Upsidonia
was divided between those who liked to live in the
country and those who liked to live in towns, there
was not so much going and coming as with us.

P. 167. — Sandpit's Gang wbb a very smart one.
Its members could shift more stuff in an hour than
ordinary gangs in two. It was one of the sights of
the town to see them running to and fro with heavily
loaded barrows, over a plank so narrow that it seemed
as if they must fall off and hurt themselves'.

P. 212. — It would not have been etiquette for them
to show any interest whatever in the doings of their
masters and mistresses, or to unbend in any way
while on duty. The second coachman whom we had
just heard about was behaving unprofeaaionally in
talking to his own friends from the box, although his
fellow-servants would not blame him for inconvenienc-
ing his master and mistress by so doing.

P. 279. — In one sense, all the members of the Up-
sidoniau Upper House were puppet peers. Their

302 NOTES— continued

chamber was the oldest building in Culbut, and one
of which the inhabitants of that city were justly
proud. But it lacked accommodation. It had been
built at a time when there were only twelve peers in
the whole of Upsidonia, and as it had been reckoned
that never more than half of them would be present
at a debate, it had been designed to hold only six
people.

But, according to the system on which the Upper
House worked, this was ample. All the business was
done by five peers — the Lord Chancellor, and two
representing each party. As there were no facilities-
for reporting debates, they held none. In fact,
speeches had reduced themselves in the course of
years to three formula;. These were: (1) "Let it
go"; (2) "I think not"; and (3) "Try again."

Two peers made a quorum, and as a matter of
convenience business was usually left to the Lord
Chancellor and one peer, who represented the Gov-
ernment when one side was in office, and the Opposi-
tion when the other side was in office.

But it must not be supposed that this ancient
House had been denuded of all its powers. Far from
it Parliamentary business was much less contentious
than with us, and this simple procedure was found
to suffice for the bills of most sessions. It worked
perhaps better for one party than the other, but as
most of the peers belonged to the larger party it was
considered only fair that it should do so.

But when a really controversial measure was sent
up to the House of Lords, there was a very different

NOTES— continued 303

state of affairs. Then all the peers in the country
were entitled to vote, and the full Committee sat for
a week, while the papers were coming in.

It was usually a struggle between the ' ' Let it go 's, ' '
and the "I think nots"; but the "Try agains" were
sometimes in the majority, and the Bill was sent
down to the Lower House for amendment. The peers
had no machinery for amending it themselves, and
no direct means of indicating the amendments they
wished made. With the common-sense that was a
feature of so many Upsidonian institutions, it was
taken for granted that the House of Commons would
know perfectly well what was expected of them, and
would put it into their Bill if they wanted it passed
when it was sent up a second time.

The great body of peers — men for the most part
who had other things to think of — seldom made any
objection to announcing which way they intended to
vote. If they didn 't, they were liable to be constantly
worried by people coming to them to find out, when
they wanted to get on with their work.

If the Government was particularly annoyed at
the rejection of a Bill, they would send it up again,
and, to avoid any further fuss, the peers would usu-
ally fall back upon a fourth formula, which provided
for this contingency. This was: "Settle it for your-
selves ' ' ; and it meant that the Bill would go to the
House of Lords Committee again in the usual way,
and would be passed.

The system worked well on the whole, and it had
never happened that a Bill had gone more than three

304 NOTES— continued

times to the whole body of peers. They always broke
down on the third canvass, even if it was on a question
that affected themselves adversely. They could not
stand the nuisance of being continually interrupted
and annoyed ; and many of them turned against their
own party for the sake of getting it all over, and being
allowed to settle down quietly again.

i

Sas-st*, IIHMOQ26T

VvffiT

>f