A Likely Story

by William De Morgan

CHAPTER VI

Follows Mrs. Euphemia Aiken to Coombe and Maiden. Proper pride. You cannot go back on a railway ticket, however small its price. One's Aunts. How Miss Priscilla Bax was not surprised when she heard it was Reginald. Of the Upas Tree of reputations—the Pure Mind. How Aunt Prissy worked her niece up. Of the late Prince Regent, and Tiberius. Never write a letter, if you want the wind to lull. Ellen Jane Dudbury and her mamma. Of Ju-jutsu as an antidote to tattle. Of the relative advantages of Immorality to the two Sexes. Of good souls and busy bodies, and of the Groobs. How that odious little Dolly was the Modern Zurbaran. But he had never so much as called. Colossians three-eighteen. Miss Jessie Bax and her puppy. Miss Volumnia Bax. The delicacy of the female character. Of the Radio-Activity of Space and how Mr. Adolphus Groob sat next to Mrs. Aiken. The Godfrey Pybuses. But they have nothing to do with the story. How Time slipped by, and how Mr. Aiken employed him till the year drew to an end.

Euphemia Aiken, be it understood, had not brought definition to bear on her motives for running away to her Aunt Priscilla at Coombe. It seemed the nearest handy way of expressing her indignation at her profligate husband's conduct—that was all.

By the time she had got to Clapham Junction her indignation had begun to cool. But no ruction would hold out for five minutes if it depended on legitimate indignation. Unfortunately, when that emotion gets up, it always awakens pride, with whom—or which—it has been sleeping. And pride, once roused—and she or it is not a sound sleeper—won't go to bed again on any terms, not even when indignation is quite tired out, and ready for another snooze. So when Euphemia got to Clapham Junction, it was not her drowsy indignation that made up its mind she should take a third-class single ticket, but her proper pride, which said peremptorily that even a weekly return would be absurd. Besides, there weren't any weekly returns. Besides, it was only threepence difference. Anyhow, she wasn't going to come back till she had given Reginald a severe lesson. Her condition of mind was no doubt the one her husband described by an expression obscure in itself, but too widely accepted to be refused a place in the language. He said that her monkey was up.

There is a sense of the irrevocable about the taking of a railway ticket. Even when it is only ninepence-halfpenny—the sum Euphemia paid to go third to Coombe and Maiden—one's soul says, as the punch bites a piece viciously out of it, that the die is cast. If you were to hear suddenly that bubonic plague had broken out at, for instance, Pegwell Bay, you having booked to Ramsgate, would not you feel committed to your visit, plague or no? Would not your wife say, "But we have taken our tickets"? Ours would. Was it any wonder that, with Pride at her elbow and her ticket inside her glove. Mrs. Reginald Aiken resisted a faint temptation to get out at Wimbledon and go back by the next up-train that would promise to stop at Clapham Junction? The story cannot pretend it is sorry she did not, because it would have lost much interest for the general reader by her doing so.

We ourselves believe that if it had not been for Miss Priscilla Bax, she might have returned to her husband next day. The human race has, however, to stand or fall by its Aunts, as it finds them, they being almost always faits accomplis when its component individuals are born. Miss Bax had been one some forty years when her niece Euphemia came on the scene, and one of the good lady's strong points was the low opinion she had of persons who married into her family. She was, however, a kind-hearted old lady, in spite of her disapproval of her niece's choice of a husband, and his choice of a profession; and had not only countenanced the marriage, but had allowed the couple, as above related, a hundred a year. Being the only well-off member of her family, she was expected to do this sort of thing. Like the well-off members of other families, she was only permitted to have property on condition that she did not keep it for herself.

When Euphemia's cab from the station drove her up to Athabasca Villa, her aunt's residence, this lady had got through her seven o'clock dinner, and couldn't imagine who that could possibly be. It was such a queer time for visitors. It must be a mistake. She was so satisfied of this that she inaugurated a doze, listening through its preamble for something to explain the mistake. She was betrayed by the doze, which might have had a minute's patience, and was roused from what it insidiously became by a voice saying groundedly: "Oh dear, I'm afraid I waked you up!"

"I was not asleep," said Miss Priscilla, with dignity, kissing the owner of the voice. "I was listening." However, it took time to wake quite up, and until that happened the old lady did not fully grasp the surprising character of so late a visit; and indeed, until she became aware that a box was being carried upstairs, had but dreamy impressions of the event. In time reality dawned, and she showed it by saying: "I suppose, Euphemia, you will want your bed made up."

As this was the case, and no human ingenuity could soften the fact, Mrs. Aiken only said: "I know it's very troublesome."

To which Miss Priscilla replied: "Nothing is troublesome, so long as you only say distinctly. Now, do you want anything to eat? Because dinner is taken away." Reviving decision, after sleep, became emphatic. Self-respect called for self-assertion.

Mrs. Aiken shuffled. She wasn't hungry, she said.

"Have you had dinner? Because if you have not had dinner, you must have dinner. Ring the bell twice, and Pemphridge will come."

Pemphridge came, and could warm the chicken. Pemphridge did warm the chicken, and Mrs. Aiken hardly touched it. After which she returned, looking extremely miserable, to her aunt in the drawing-room, who said majestically: "And now perhaps, Euphemia, you will tell me what all this means."

"It's Reginald," said Euphemia.

"I am not surprised," said her aunt.

"But you don't know yet."

"I know nothing whatever. But I am not surprised. Is it reasonable, Euphemia, to expect me to be surprised? After what I have so frequently had occasion to say. But I am quite prepared to hear that I have said no such thing. Pray tell me anything you like. I will not contradict you." Aunt Priscilla assumed a rigid continuousness, as of one who forms to receive aspersions. Truth will triumph in the end; meanwhile there is no harm in portending that triumph by an aggressive stony patience.

"Only you don't know what it is, Aunt Prissy," said her niece. No more she did, speaking academically. She was, however, quite prepared for every contingency.

"I do not think you are the person to say that to me, Euphemia, seeing that you have told me nothing—absolutely nothing! But I can wait." She waited. As she lay face upwards on the sofa—the nearest approach to an Early Victorian recumbent effigy that the Nature of Things permits—she presented the appearance of a deserving person floating on her back in a sea of exasperation. Unless this image justifies itself, it must be condemned. Nothing in literature can excuse it.

Mrs. Euphemia was so used to her aunt, with whom she had lived since the death of her parents fifteen years since, that she knew she might never get a better moment than this for telling the story of her passage of arms with her husband. She therefore embarked on a narrative of the events we know, and contrived to get them told, in spite of interruptions, the nature of which, after the foregoing sample of Aunt Priscilla, we can surmise. Neither need be repeated.

Thereafter followed a long conversation, the substance of which has already been given. Its effect was to try Mrs. Euphemia's faith in her husband—which still existed, mind you!—very severely. Have you ever noticed—but of course you have—that when Inexperience testifies to the sinfulness of the human race passim, Average Experience hides her diminished head, and does not venture on whatever there is to be said on behalf of the culprit. A shocking race, no doubt, but scarcely so bad as pure minds paint it! Old single ladies have pure minds, as often as not, and wield them with a fiendish dexterity, polishing off Lancelot and Galahad, Mordred and Arthur himself, all in a breath. Which of us dares to try a fall with a pure-minded person, in defence of his sex, or anyone else's? Miss Priscilla, having a pure mind and getting the bit in her teeth in connexion with her nephew-in-law's shortcomings, bolted, and dragged her niece after her through an imaginary Society compounded of London in the days of the Regency and Rome in the days of Tiberius, with a touch of impending Divine vengeance in the bush, justifying reference to Sodom and Gomorrah. She succeeded in making the young woman thoroughly uncomfortable, and causing the quarrel to assume proportions—which is what things that get bigger are understood to do nowadays—such as it never dreamed of at first. For Mrs. Euphemia's scheme of life allowed for everlasting bickerings, never-ending recriminations, last words ad libitum, short tiffs, long tiffs, tempersomeness and proper spirit—all, in fact, that makes life drag in families—but always under chronic conditions that precluded a crisis. If her worthy aunt's suggestion that this incident of Sairah was the merest spark from ignes suppositos cineri, and that her husband had never been even as good as he should be—if this indicated a true view of his character, she for one wasn't going to put up with such conduct. Corinthians or no! This was a crisis, only it was one that never would have come about but for Miss Priscilla. So, as we mentioned some time since, Mrs. Euphemia cried herself to sleep, and next day, galled by ill-considered moral precepts about the whole duty of Woman, wrote an infuriated letter to her dear Reginald—not her dearest; she might have any number of dearer Reginalds on draught—stating at a very high figure the amount of penance she would make a necessary condition of reconciliation, and even then it would never be the same thing underlined. She was, however, so completely the slave of a beautiful disposition, that no course was open to her but forgiveness, subject only to a reduction of some ninety-per-cent. at the dictation of a rarely sensitive consciousness of obligation to Duty, which she gave him to understand was her ruling passion. The letter demanded the assimilation of an amount of humble-pie outside practical politics—so Mr. Aiken said to a friend after reading it; the phraseology is his. He hadn't done anything to deserve the character imputed to him in language he could identify by the style as Aunt Priscilla's, shorn of much of its Scriptural character. It incensed him, and caused him to write a letter which widened the breach between them. Then she wrote back, and the breach fairly yawned. There is nothing so effective as correspondence to consolidate a quarrel.

She had been at all times since her marriage a frequent visitor enough at Athabasca Villa for the inquisitiveness of her Aunt's circle of friends to remain unexcited; for a week or so, at any rate. But that good lady's unholy alacrity in disclaiming all knowledge of her niece's domestic affairs stimulated a premature curiosity. When the Peter Dudburys called, Aunt Priscilla might quite easily have said, in reply to Mrs. Peter Dudbury's "And how is the Artist?" that she believed the said Artist was enjoying good health. Instead of which she was seized with a sort of paroxysm, exclaiming very often: "Don't ask me! I know nothing whatever about it. Nuth, thing-what, ever!" and shaking her head with her eyes tight shut. Whereupon Ellen Jane Dudbury said, "Shishmar!" and stamped cruelly on her mother's foot. Now really that amiable woman had only expanded into her gushy inquiry after Mr. Aiken because she knew that she and her three daughters had asked more than once after everyone else. She felt hurt, and resolved to have it out with Ellen Jane, and indeed began to do so as soon as they were out of hearing.

"Wellmar," said Ellen Jane, "what is one to do when you won't take the slightest notice?" She went on to explain that any person of normal shrewdness would have seen, the moment Mrs. Aiken made excuses and went upstairs, that there was something. You could always see when there was anything if you chose to use your eyes. It was no use telling her—Ellen Jane, that is—that there was nothing. She knew better. It was complimentary to Ellen Jane's penetration that her mother and sisters hoped aloud at the next house where they called, and captured the tenants to inquire after them, that there really was nothing between young Mrs. Aiken and her husband, and most likely it was all fancy, because there was nothing whatever to go upon, and such absurd stories did get about.

To our thinking it is clear that the receptivity of the Peter Dudburys was caused by that paroxysm of Aunt Priscilla's. An adoption of a like attitude with other visitors tended to enrich the gossip of Coombe and Maiden at the expense of Mrs. Euphemia Aiken.

Miss Priscilla did not have paroxysms of this class in her niece's presence, so of course the latter had the less chance of guessing that the cause of her visit to Athabasca Villa had become common property. She did, however, wake up to the fact that Coombe and Maiden were commiserating her. The impertinence of those neighbourhoods! She would have liked to knock their heads together. The worst of it was that no one put commiseration into a concrete form, such as "How is dear Mr. Aiken's infidelity going on?" or "We are so shocked to think how your most sacred affections are being lacerated." Then she might have flown at such like sympathizers with a poker, or got them down and cricked their joints by Ju-jutsu. This practice of talking about everyone else's private affairs to every-other else, never to their proprietor, is good for our father the Devil, but bad for his sons and daughters. Amen.

The truth is that, for some unexplained reason, a lady who runs away from her husband gets no sort of credit or glory by doing so, but only puts herself in an uncomfortable position; unless, indeed, she takes up with some other male, preferably a reprobate. Then an unhallowed splendour envelops her, and protects her from the cards of respectability, which has misgivings about her possible effect on its sons and husbands. We wonder, is this what is meant when one hears that some lady is living under the protection of Duke Baily or Duke Humphy? Are those—is one of them, we mean—protecting her from Mrs. Peter Dudbury? Honour to his Grace, whichever he is, if he acts up to his description!

With the nobler sex the reverse is the case. Whether deserting or deserted, he is rather looked up to by his more securely anchored male friends as the subject of a wider and more illuminating experience than their own. Of course, the forsaken example does not shine with the radiance of a self-supporting inconstancy. It may be that he comes off best in the end, if he is a man of spirit, and finds consolation elsewhere. For then he can not only crow, farmyard-wise, but he has the heartfelt satisfaction of being an ill-used man into the bargain. If he cottons to someone else's ill-used wife, he has nothing left to wish for.

Nothing of all this has any application in this story, unless it attaches to the fact that Mr. Aiken found some consolation in the company of his friends, while his wife found none in that of her acquaintances. As both parties were perfectly blameless in the ordinary sense of the word—geese are most blameless birds—none of the numerous advantages of wickedness were secured by either. Their interests in Belial never vested. Mrs. Aiken never meant not to go back in the end, as soon as she had made her husband knuckle down, and confess up. And he was consciously keeping his home unsullied by anything too Bohemian, in order that when Euphemia came back—as of course she would—no memory of the interregnum should clash with the Restoration.

Euphemia had the worst of it; but then she was the weaker party. If weaker parties take to expecting the emoluments of stronger parties, what shall we come to next? This feeling of the unfairness of things in general and Destiny in particular, tended towards exasperation and intensification; and the South Cone—metaphors may be fetched from any distance—remained up in the districts of Coombe and Maiden. Time passed and Mrs. Euphemia had perforce to endure the commiseration of those districts.

The neighbourhood of Athabasca Villa might be classed as a congested district, and its population as consisting, broadly speaking, of good souls and busy bodies. Every resident was both, be it understood.

"Oh yes!" said Euphemia to her aunt, one breakfast-time. "Of course the Groobs are goodness itself. But why can't they mind their own business?" For although it may appear incredible, a family residing in the neighbourhood was actually named Groob.

"My dear," said Miss Priscilla, "do not be unreasonable and violent. Mr. Latimer Groob is, I understand, a wine-importer in quite a large way of business, with more than one retail establishment; and his son, Mr. Adolphus Groob, has, I am told, talent. He has had several pictures on the line, somewhere, and comes down to see his family on Saturdays, and to stop till Monday."

"Well, then!" said Euphemia. "It wasn't the Peter Dudburys this time. At least, it needn't have been, for anything I can see."

"Why not? ... Do take care of the tablecloth! Anne has put one of the best out by mistake. I must speak to her.... Why not the Peter Dudburys this time?"

"I am not cutting the cloth. The knife is miles off. Why not the Peter Dudburys? Why, because I know that odious little Dolly Groob. He's a friend of Reginald's, and comes to the Studio. I can see. I'm not a baby. Of course, Reginald has been talking to him." Mrs. Euphemia bit her lips, and was under the impression that her eyes flashed. But they didn't really—eyes never do; it's a façon de parler.

Miss Priscilla ignored this petulance. "You had better let me pour you out some fresh coffee," she said. "Yours is getting cold. I cannot say, my dear, that I think 'that odious little Dolly Groob' is at all the way to speak of an artist who has had pictures on the line. And his father, now I think of it, is in Paris also. Besides, I see he is distinguishing himself by his connexion with something."

"With what?"

"It was in yesterday evening's paper. Perhaps Anne hasn't burned it. Anyhow, I do not think the expression 'odious little' well chosen.... Oh yes—that's it! Give it to Miss Euphemia." That is to say, Anne the parlourmaid, not having burned yesterday's evening paper, had produced it as by necromancy, in response. The way Aunt Priscilla spoke of her niece was an accident, not a suggestion that Mr. Aiken was cancelled. It caused "Miss Euphemia," however, a slight twinge of an indescribable discomfort. Possibly, if this is ever read by any lady who has ever been in exactly the same position, she will understand why.

The story knows of it because, when Anne had left the room, Mrs. Aiken looked up from the newspaper, where she had found what she was looking for, to say: "I think, Aunt Prissy, you might be more careful before the servants."

Her aunt replied with dignity: "What you are referring to, my dear Euphemia, I cannot profess to understand." Of course she did, perfectly well. What she meant was, "I know you cannot get a conviction, so I can tell a fib." Mankind, securely entrenched, fibs freely.

"Why—'Miss Euphemia,' of course!" said the niece, quoting incisively. "But I know it's no use my asking you to pay the slightest attention." She became absorbed in her paper.

"I think you are nonsensical, my dear," said the aunt. She retired behind something morally equivalent to the lines of Torres Vedras; but was still audible outside, saying: "I think you might say whether you have, or have not, found about Mr. Adolphus Groob."

The niece made no response for a moment, but continued reading; then said, as one who, coming up from diving, speaks without quite locating his audience: "Oh yes—there's about Mr. Groob here. I can't read it all, there's such a lot. Is there some coffee left? ... Three-quarters of a cup, please!"

Please observe that, although this aunt and niece always conversed more or less as if each was straining the patience of the other past endurance, no sort of ill-will was thereby implied on either part. It may be that it was only that they emphasized the ordinary intercourse of British families. Perhaps you know how much the average foreign family nags, en famille. We do not.

Mrs. Aiken read the newspaper paragraph aloud, skipping portions. What she read described the formation of the New Modernism, the Artistic Society about which so much was being said among well-informed circles of the Art World, with the reservation that nothing must be accepted as official. The Editor was breaking confidence in telling so much; but then he really was unable, with that pitiful heart of his, to bear the yearning faces and heartrending cries for information of his reading public. The only course open to him was to put aside all conscientious scruples, and divulge what had reached him, as it were, under the seal of confession. Such a thirst must be satiated, or worse might come of it. The object of this Society was to develope its promoters' ideas, and exhibit their works in Bond Street. The underlying theory of their new Gospel of Art appeared to be—only the writer did not express it so coarsely—that success in pictorial effort, in the future, must turn on the artist never having learned to draw, and not knowing how to paint. What was wanted was clearly his unimpaired Self, unsoiled by the instruction of the Schools. The near future was entitled to liberation from the stilted traditions of the remote past, not only in Painting, but in Sculpture, Music, Poetry, the Drama—what not? Here was an opportunity to make a beginning, seized by a brilliant coterie of talented young men, whom a rare chance had brought together under one roof. If the writer was not much mistaken, Pimlico Studios stood a fair chance of becoming the Mecca of the Art World.

"I can't read all this," said the niece. "I don't see where Mr. Groob comes in. Oh yes—it's here! 'The Modern Zurbaran.'..." This gentleman was, of course, the Artist familiarly spoken of as "Dolly" at the Pimlico Studios. Mrs. Aiken went on reading to herself, and then said suddenly: "I do hope Reginald won't be a fool, and make himself responsible for anything."

"Mr. Adolphus Groob would be able to tell us all about it," said Miss Priscilla. "His sister Arethusa is almost sure to call this afternoon, and you can ask her to find out."

"I shall do nothing of the sort, and I beg you won't say anything to her. I particularly dislike Mr. Groob, and just now nothing could be more unpleasant to me. Please no Mr. Groob on any account!"

"You need not be so testy, Euphemia. Nothing is easier than for me to make no reference to Mr. Groob, who has never so much as called. His sister Arethusa is, of course, not the same thing as he is himself, but no doubt she may know something about this Society."

"I thought her an odious girl. Anyhow, I don't want to know anything at all about the Society, and it's no concern of mine. Reginald must go his own way now, and put his name down for subscriptions just as he likes.... Oh yes, I shall answer his last letter, but only to say that, if he wants me to read his next one, the tone must be very different."

Her aunt said, as one with whom patience is habitual, and tolerance a foregone conclusion: "It is perfectly useless for me to repeat, Euphemia, what I believe to be your duty as a Christian towards your lawful husband, which Reginald is and continues to be, however disgracefully he may have behaved; and you acted with your eyes open in the face of warnings of his lawless Bohemian habits. He—is—your—HUSBAND, and your obvious duty is..."

"Oh, do shut up with Corinthians!" was the rude, impatient, and indeed irreligious interruption. "If you mean that a woman is bound to put up with anything and everything, no matter what her husband says or does ... What?"

"My dear Euphemia, if I have told you once, I have told you fifty times, that it is not Corinthians, but Colossians—Colossians three eighteen. Besides, I'm sure there was a ring at the bell."

There was, and therefore the chronic guerilla warfare—for this sort of thing always went on until visitors stopped it—was suspended until the next opportunity.

The ring at the gate-bell was—or was caused by—Miss Jessie Bax, another niece, who was shy and seventeen. She began everything she said with "Oh!" The first words she uttered were, "Oh, I mustn't stop!" But she had previously said to Anne, at the gate, "Oh, I mustn't come in!" and when overcome on this point by Euphemia, who came out and kissed her, not without satisfaction—because she was that sort—she only just contrived to say, "Oh, I only came to bring these from Volumnia. It's to-morrow night at the Suburbiton Athenæum, where the Psychomorphic meets till the new rooms are ready, and she hopes you'll come."

Miss Jessie explained that she was, strictly speaking, an emanation from her sister Volumnia. That young lady was thirteen years her senior, and was a powerful individuality. She entered into inquiries, and advocated causes. Miss Jessica, on the contrary, flirted.

Was it, this time, advocating causes, or entering into inquiries? Mrs. Aiken, fearing the former, was consoled when she found it was the latter. She would look at the Syllabus tendered, whatever it was, and wouldn't detain Miss Jessie, whose anxiety not to come in need not have been laid so much stress on. It presently appeared that this wish to stop out was not unconnected with Charley Somebody, who was playing with a puppy on the other side of the road. A suggestion that Charley Somebody should come in too was met with so earnest a disclaimer of intention to disturb any fellow-creature anywhere, at any time, that it would have been sheer downright cruelty to press the point. So the young lady and Master Charley, whoever he was, escaped, and were heard whistling for the puppy, who was getting quite good, and learning to follow beautifully.

"What is it?" said Aunt Priscilla.

"Oh, some reading papers and nonsense," said her niece. "I never have any patience with that sort of twaddle. It only irritates me."

It suited Miss Priscilla to take up a tone of superiority to such childish petulance, combined with an enlightened attitude of open-mindedness, and a suggestion of being better informed than most people about what is doing. To this end she picked up the prospectus her niece was ostentatiously neglecting, and read it aloud in an atmosphere above human prejudices, specially designed for her own personal use. It related to a lecture "On the Attitude of Investigation towards the Unknowable," with magic-lantern slides, and a discussion to follow. "It does not say," said Aunt Priscilla, "who is the Medium." It is possible that the good lady had in her own mind confused something with something else. One does sometimes.

"I'm not sure that I shan't go, if it isn't the Suffrage," said Euphemia. She took the prospectus, and seemed reassured on re-reading it. Yes, she might go if there were pictures on a sheet. But not if it was to be Women's Rights.

"With your peculiar, new, advanced views, my dear," said her aunt, "it certainly seems to me that you ought to sympathize with your cousin."

This, however, was because of Miss Priscilla's exceptional way of looking at Social and Political subjects. She divided all the world—the thoughtful world, that is—into two classes, the one that went in for Movements and things, and the one that consisted of Sensible Persons. The latter stayed at home and minded their own business, sometimes going for a drive when it held up, and, of course, to Church on Sundays, and having hot crossed buns on Good Friday, and so on. She made no distinction between Agitators on the score of the diversity of their respective objects. Could she be expected to differentiate between shades of opinion that would now be indicated by the terms—then uninvented—of Suffragettes and Anti-Suffragettes?

Volumnia Bax would have belonged to the latter denomination. Women, that young lady said, were not intended by an All-wise Providence to mix in public life. Their sphere was the Home. She belonged to a League whose chief object was to prevent women becoming unfeminine. If it was not Woman's own duty to make a stand against these new-fangled American notions, which could only end in her being completely unsexed, whose was it? If she did not exert herself to avert this calamity, who would? So this League consisted entirely of women, pledged to resist, by violence if necessary, but in any case by speaking out at meetings, and getting up petitions, and so on, these insidious attempts to destroy the delicacy of the female character, which from time immemorial had been its principal charm. This was the point on which Aunt Priscilla certainly failed in discrimination, for she drew no distinction between the various shades of political impulse. She objected to anyone leaving the groove, even with the motive of pushing others back into it. Her niece Euphemia shared her views to a great extent, and when she used the expression "Women's Rights," it was probably in a sense much less circumscribed than its usual one. "But," said she to Miss Priscilla, justifying her determination to go on Saturday evening to this lecture, or whatever it was, "it can't be minutes and resolutions and jaw, jaw, jaw, if there's a magic-lantern. So do come, Aunty dear!"

Miss Priscilla gave way, and consented to accompany her niece, but not without a misgiving that she might be compelled to come away in the middle of the entertainment. A re-perusal of the Syllabus had engendered in her mind a doubt whether it was quite. That is how she worded it. The story only chronicles; it takes no responsibilities. Euphemia assured her that it could not be otherwise than quite, seeing that so respectable an Athenæum as the Suburbiton would be sure to be most careful. Besides, it was Metaphysical.

So they had the fly from Dulgrove's—as it appears, and we think we know what is meant—and Dulgrove's representative touched one of its hats, which was on his own head, and promised upon the honour of both to return at half-past ten to reimpatriate the two ladies at Athabasca Villa, which is two miles from Coombe proper.

Though Mr. Groob's sister Arethusa did not happen to call, as Miss Priscilla anticipated, Mrs. Reginald Aiken was destined to be brought in contact with her odious brother, the Artist, who was acquainted with her husband. It happened that Miss Bax was desirous that another brother of Arethusa's should come to the lecture. This gentleman, Mr. Duodecimus Groob, had a clear head, and a cool judgment, and belonged, moreover, to a class which is frequently referred to, but whose members cannot always be differentiated with certainty, the class of persons who are not to be sneezed at. Others may be, without offence or injustice.

Now, it chanced that Miss Jessica Bax had been employed by her sister as a species of bait to induce this gentleman to accompany his sister Arethusa—who, of course, was coming to the lecture—by sending her to be driven over in the Groob brougham, she herself accepting a lift from the Peter Dudburys, who had no room for more than one. Miss Volumnia, you see, intended to speak at the discussion, and was naturally anxious that Mr. Groob should bring his clear head and cool judgment to hear and appreciate the powerful analysis she intended to make of the lecturer's first exposition of the subject.

It is impossible in this story to enter at length into the intricate and difficult questions touched upon; but it may be noted that Miss Volumnia, who had read the typed manuscript of this lecture, was prepared to combat its main argument, to take exception to its author's fundamental standpoint, to scrutinise fearlessly his pretensions to Scientific accuracy, and to lay bare its fallacies with a merciless scalpel. She was naturally anxious that a B.Sc., London—for Mr. Duodecimus Groob was so designate—should hear her do it, being so close at hand; and when she said to Jessica, "Tell Arethusa I expect her to bring a brother," she did so with a shrewd insight into the souls of brothers whose sisters very pretty girls accompany to even the humblest entertainments—penny readings and what not. This Mr. Groob came, and what was more, Mr. Adolphus, whom we saw en passant at Pimlico Studios, accompanied him. Both had come to stay till Monday at their father's residence—where there were bronzes and Dresden china in the drawing-room, and ruins by Panini all round the dining-room, and a Wolf Hunt, Snyders, in the entrance-hall. We repeat that both came, although there was hardly room in the small brougham, and Mr. Adolphus had to go on the box and wrap up. And our belief is that if it had been an omnibus, and there had been young men enough to fill it, they would all have gone to that lecture.

Insignificant as this visit to the Suburbiton Athenæum may seem, it has its place in this story, and that place is given to it by its most unimportant details. As you can scarcely be expected to turn back to it, please note now what it was that really happened.

In the lobby, when Mrs. Aiken and her Aunt arrived, Miss Volumnia Bax was, as it were, marshalling Europe. She was a leading mind, overlooking gregariousness through a pince-nez. Gregariousness was shedding its fleeces and taking little cardboard tickets in exchange.

"You know Mr. Adolphus Groob," said Miss Volumnia to her cousin, sternly, almost reproachfully.

"Yes—you know my brother," said Miss Arethusa Groob confirmatorily. And Miss Priscilla—oh dear! one's unmanageable Aunts!—must needs, as it were, go over to the enemy, saying in honeyed tones, with a little powdered sugar over them:

"You know Mr. Adolphus Groob, Euphemia."

It was quite the most dastardly desertion on record. There was nothing for it before such an accumulation of testimony but to plead guilty. What can, anybody do with such treachery in the camp? Euphemia admitted grudgingly that she knew Mr. Adolphus, who had long hair and was like our idea of a German Student. He, for his part, was horribly frightened and got away. For, you see, he knew all about the row between Aiken and his wife; and although in the absence of that unearthly sex, the female one, he was ready to lay claim to a deep and subtle knowledge of its ways, he was an arrant coward in the presence of a sample.

"I say, Bob," said he aside to his brother Duodecimus, using a convenient, if arbitrary, abbreviation of that name.

"What's the fun, Dolly?" said Bob, who was a chap who always made game of everything.

"Why, look here! When a customer you know quarrels with his wife, and she does a bunk..."

"She what's?"

"Hooks it, don't you know! Well, when she runs away, and you come across her, and you know all the story about the shindy, being in the beggar's confidence, don't you see?—and she knows you know it, only, mind you, there's nothing exactly to swear by, and you know she knows you know it, and she knows you know she knows—up and down and in and out—intersectitiously, don't you see...?" But the heroic effort to express a situation we have all had a try at and failed over was too much for Mr. Adolphus, and his sentence remained unfinished. Consider that he had supplied an entirely new word, and be lenient!

"Want'n'er for yourself, Dolly?" said that frivolous, superficial beast, Bob. "Don't you, that's my advice! She's a head and shoulders taller than you. You'll look such an ass!" Whereupon Mr. Adolphus, not without dignity, checked his brother's ill-timed humour, pointing out that he had done nothing to deserve the imputation of personal motives, and hinting that his well-known monastic bias should have saved him from it.

"Very well, then!—let her alone!" said Bob.

"But it's very embarrassing, you must admit," said Dolly.

"H'm!—don't see why."

"The position is a delicate one."

"Can't see where the delicacy comes in. You keep out of her way. She won't tackle you."

This was just about the time when the disengagement of their fleeces had enabled a congestion of the flock to pass on towards the lecture-hall, leaving access clear to Miss Priscilla, her niece, and others. Euphemia's fleece was one that gave trouble; she said it always got hooked. It certainly did so this time, and Mr. Adolphus, passing on after his colloquy with his brother, was able to render squire's service, unhooking it as bold as brass. Whereupon the lady and her aunt gushed gratefully, as in return for life saved. Their rescuer passed on, feeling internally gratified, and that he had shown presence of mind at a crisis—was, in short, a Man of the World. But he did not know that from thenceforward he was entangled in a certain perverse enchantment—a sort of spell that constantly impelled him to dally with the delicate position he was so conscious about. He must needs go and stick himself four seats off Mrs. Aiken, in the two-shilling places, the intervening three seats being vacant.

Now, if only lean men, operating edgewise, had attempted to pass into these seats, things might have gone otherwise. Fate sent a lady over three feet thick all the way down, and apparently quite solid, to wedge her way into one or more of these seats. Mr. Adolphus shrank, for all he was worth, but it was a trying moment. The lady was just that sort the Inquisition once employed so successfully; one with spikes, that drew blood from anyone that got agglutinated with her costume. She might, however, have got through without accident—you never can tell!—if the trial had been carried out. It was suspended by a suggestion from Mrs. Aiken that Mr. Adolphus Groob should come a little farther along and make room; and when he complied, to the extent of going one seat nearer to her, a second suggestion that he should come nearer still, to which he assented with trepidation. Resistance was useless. A galaxy of daughters had already filled in the whole row behind the stout lady, and were forcing her on like the air-tight piece of potato in a quill popgun, only larger. So in the end Mr. Adolphus Groob found himself wedged securely between the stout lady and Mrs. Euphemia Aiken, quite unable to speak to the former, for though they had certainly met—with a vengeance—they had never been introduced. This really was a very delicate position. Mrs. Aiken might at least have said, "You know Mrs. Godfrey Pybus, I think?" That was the stout lady's name. Then he could have avoided talking with Mrs. Aiken, by becoming absorbed in Mrs. Pybus, and shouting round her to her nearest daughters beyond. As it was, he was fairly forced to make careful remarks to his other neighbour, scrupulously avoiding allusion to husbands, wives, quarrels, Studios, Chelsea, London, servant-girls, picture-cleaning ... this is only a handful at random of the things it would never do to mention in such delicate circumstances. He held his tongue discreetly about every one of these in turn, and talked of little but the weather.

Do not run away with the idea that anything interesting or exciting grew out of this chance meeting, in the story. The introduction of it, at such length, is only warranted by the fact that, without its details, it would have absolutely no relevance at all. Whatever it has will, we hope, be made clear later.

A little conversation passed between the two, but it was of no more importance than the sample which follows.

"Do you know what the lecture is about?" said Mrs. Aiken.

"Couldn't say," was the reply. "Never know what lectures are about! I'm an Artist, don't you know! My brother Bob could tell you. He's a scientific chap—knows about Telephones and things that go round and burst."

"Is there anything that goes round and bursts in the lecture, I wonder?"

"Shouldn't be much surprised. Here's the Syllabub—I mean Syllabus." Mr. Adolphus handed his information to his neighbour. Caution made him uncommunicative. Naturally, he was of a more talkative disposition.

Mrs. Aiken studied the heads of the lecture. "What is meant, I wonder, by the Radio-Activity of Space?" said she. Now in asking this question she was deferring to the widespread idea that Man understands Science, and can tell Woman all about it. He doesn't, and can't.

Observe, please, that Mr. Groob was under a mixed influence. He happened to have been rather disgusted because Miss Jessica Bax, instead of appreciating his self-sacrifice in riding outside and wrapping up, had shown a marked preference for a flirtation with his brother. Slightly miffed by this, he had become the victim of a mysterious spell or fascination connected with that hook-and-eye accident, which had caused him—not to sit down beside its victim; he never would have presumed to do that—but to hover near her, and in doing this to be remorselessly forced into her pocket by the dead weight of Mrs. Godfrey Pybus. Things being so, what could he do but rejoice at the Radio-Activity of Space, as a topic surely removed from any wives that had bolted from any husbands? What could be safer as a resource against embarrassing reference to the painful status quo?

He accepted the position of instructor his sex conferred on him. "It's got somethin' to do with Four Dimensions," he said. "Can't say I've gone much into the subject myself, but I've talked to a very intelligent feller about it. Did you ever see any Radium?"

"Me? No. My husband saw some, though. He looked through a hole."

"That's it. It destroys your eyesight, I believe, and loses decimal point something of its volume in a hundred thousand years. There is no doubt we are on the brink of great discoveries."

"How very interesting! I wish the lecturer would begin. Oh—here he is!"

"Very bald feller! He ought to use petrol. You have to rub it in and keep out of the way of artificial light. This chap's first cousin lost the use of both legs through investigatin'. It was X-rays, I believe. You may depend on it we've got a deal to learn." And so on.

Upon the honour of the narrative this sample is a fair one of what passed between this lady and gentleman on this occasion. There was more, but it was exactly the same sort.

In due course the lecture was begun and ended; then the discussion followed, and Mrs. Godfrey Pybus and her six daughters didn't stop to hear Miss Volumnia Bax's analysis and refutation, but went away in the middle and made a noise on purpose. It was just like them, and they were perfectly odious people.

It is most extraordinary how Time will slip away when the catching hold of his forelock depends on ourselves. Each morning may bring that forelock again within reach, and each morning the same apathy that made us yesterday too languid to stretch out a hand and grip the old scamp and employ him for our own advantage keeps us in the same stupid abeyance, and we lose the chance for another twenty-four hours. Every postponement makes a new precedent, and every new precedent stiffens the back of inaction.

It was so with Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Aiken. Not a morning passed without an unfulfilled impulse on either part to cross the gulf between them, and terminate their idiotic separation, bridged by correspondence which really did more harm than good. There is one precept which it is quite impossible for the human race to observe too closely—Never write letters! If only those words could replace Little Liver Pills and so forth on those atrocities that flank the railways and hide the planet, its inhabitants would be the gainers. Mr. Reginald had an extraordinary faculty for undoing in a postscript any little concession he had made at the outset, and Mrs. Euphemia, for her part, was becoming quite a proficient in sarcasm—three-line whips of scorpions describes her style, or the style she aimed at. For a superficial literary education did not help her up to its perfection.

"Very good, Mrs. Hay!"—thus, on receipt of a letter, would run her husband's commentary, embodying transposed quotation in its text, "'Pray go my own way'—that's it, is it?—'On no account give the slightest consideration underlined to the wishes of your underlined wife.' Oh, very well—I won't. 'If my Conscience with a big C didn't turn a deaf ear to the pleadings of my Better Self with a big B and a big S'—what's all this? can't read it—oh! I see—yes, at least I see what it comes to!—I should come to my sences—spelt wrong—and overcome the ridiculous false pride that stands between me and something or other underlined—h'm! h'm!—'consult my own dignity'—h'm, h'm—something's something else I can't make out in the truest sence of the word, underlined. I dare say. I know what all this rot comes to in the end. I'm to go and ask forgiveness and show contrition, and I shouldn't wonder if I was expected to beg Aunt Priscilla's pardon. And be taken to Church, as like as not! I say, Stumpy, that would be rather jolly, wouldn't it? Fancy the Wicked Man turnething away from his Wickedness and Aunt Priscilla taking care visibly not to look at your humble servant, so as not to hurt his feelings!"

"I tell you what, Crocky,"—thus Mr. Hughes, on the occasion the above is chosen from, some time in November—"I tell you what: if I was you, I shouldn't be an Ass. Just you mozey off to Athabasca Villa and make it up. I believe Mrs. Gapp's right."

"That old sot been talking? Parples was the best of the two. I'll have Parples back." For Mrs. Gapp had taken Mrs. Parples' place, under pretence of greater accomplishments and better training.

"At my invitation, Mr. Aiken," said Mr. Hughes with some show of dignity—"at my invitation, observe!—Mrs. Gapp, who has buried three husbands and really ought to know a good deal about connubiosity—conjugosity—what the dooce is the word?..."

"Well—married life, anyhow! What did old boozey say?"

"She had great faith in a spirit of mutual conciliation. That is not precisely the way she put it. Her exact expression was 'A good 'ug's the thing, Mr. Stumpy' .... Yes—that is what Mrs. Gapp calls me, misled by your example.... I must say I think the course she indicated has much to recommend it."

Mr. Aiken looked moody, and did not reply at once. Then he said: "That's all very fine, Stump, my boy. But—Sairah! Sairah's the point. Now, mind you, I'm not suggestin' anythin'. But just you look at it this way. There was a rather nice lookin' gyairl, with a bird's wing in her hat, came for the place, and Euphemia wouldn't hear of her, don't you know! Suppose it had been her!—puts the matter on a more human footin', shouldn't you say?"

Mr. Hughes reflected, and spoke as one whose reflections had borne fruit. "Not being a married beggar myself, I can't say. Speaking as a single cuss, my recommendation to you would be—speaking broadly—not to make an Ass of yourself. See what I'm driving at?"

"That means," said Mr. Aiken, "that you consider I ought to go and beg Euphemia's gracious pardon, and take the blame of the whole how-do-you-do on my own shoulders, and as like as not have to go to Church with Aunt Priscilla. Well—I won't, and there's an end of it!"

And Mr. Aiken didn't, and prolonged his uncomfortable circumstances quite to the end of the year. But it is only right to say that his wife contributed all her share to their extension and consolidation. In fact, if this story has achieved the wish of its compiler, ourself, it should be clear to its reader that Mr. Reginald and Mrs. Euphemia Aiken were precisely six of the one and half a dozen of the other.