Lesbia Newman (1889)/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
A Luncheon Out.
On taking her bicycle to Frogmore, Lesbia found that the capacities of Mr Bummingby the ironmonger had not been overstated; he soon found out what was amiss, set it right, and showed her how to do so for herself another time. While they were standing in the shop-door, Lesbia suddenly exclaimed:—
‘What a glorious white bulldog! I wonder where that gentleman lives he’s following.’
‘It’s the new master of the hounds, miss,’ replied Mr Bummingby.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Sir Richard Robins.’
‘The dog’s?’
‘No, the gentleman’s, miss. The dog’s name is Whiting. They say as Sir Richard’s refused fifty pounds for that dog.’
Lesbia could think of nothing the rest of that day but the white bulldog. Her uncle had some time since promised her a dog of her own, when she should make up her mind as to the sort, and she had made it up now.
‘I should like one just like Whiting, Uncle Spines, a monster, all tusks and wrinkles, with his shoulders a yard apart and his nostrils flat between his eyes; ears uncut, of course.’
‘I much approve your choice, dear; a good bull is the dog for you. But I think it would be better to try and bring up a pup of good stock than to buy a full-grown animal; the bulls are very faithful and affectionate, and if you brought one up, you could form his character.’
‘I think the best way to form his character will be to provide that he shall hear sermons by the vicar of Dulham, replied his niece. ‘I have a saving faith that if he ever afterwards were to meet a gospel missionary, he’d take him by the—’
‘By the manner of his conversation to be an angel Lesbie, to be an angel. Well, if I’m not mistaken, there are some people, connections of Robins, of the name of Guineabush, who have taken a house on the other side of Frogmore—I met them the last time we were at Ruddymere—who have some pups of the same breed. I have a great mind to write and ask if they will sell us one.’
No sooner said than done; the next day, the vicar received a friendly reply from Blackthorne Lodge, the residence of Mr Arthur Guineabush and his wife, saying that they would gladly show our friends the pups if they would look in and stay luncheon on the following Friday. The invitation was gladly accepted, and about one p.m., Lesbia and her uncle arrived in the pony-carriage. Mrs Guineabush, guessing Lesbia’s impatience to see the pups, proposed that they should follow the pony-carriage to the stable.
‘Here are the pups,’ said the host. ‘They are the truly-begotten children of Whiting himself, the idol of your admiration.’
‘Oh, what sweet little monsters!’ exclaimed Lesbia, with rapture. ‘And one’s all white, like its father! May I take it up?’
As the young girl stroked and kissed the square block of skin and bone which did duty for a head to the little creature, Mrs Guineabush whispered to her husband,—
‘Couldn’t you let her have it, Arthur? she seems to have taken such a violent fancy to it.’
‘Well, Miss Newman,’ said he, ‘forasmuch as this pup will certainly be swallowed alive by you if I attempt to keep him in my possession, I therefore ask you and say, ‘Wilt thou take this pup, to have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, in health—joking apart, will you make him your constant companion all his life, and never part with him, even to your dearest friend?’
‘All this I steadfastly promise,’ responded Lesbia, but doubtful whether it was really meant.
‘Then I pronounce that you be mistress and dog together, in the name of the Three Graces.’
‘A gift! Really that is too good of you, Mr Guineabush,’ answered Lesbia, delighted. ‘It sha’n’t be for want of care on my part, if anything ever happens to the little darling.’
‘You don’t need me to tell you, by the way,’ said Mr Guineabush, ‘that a bulldog can never keep up with a bicycle. You have considered that point, I suppose?’
‘Certainly; for the matter of that, I don’t think a dog of any kind should habitually go out with a bicycle; they endanger both yourself and other bicyclists. He will be my companion when I’m not riding.’
They now went in to luncheon. As they crossed the flower-garden to the front door, the guests were startled at hearing a gruff voice call from an upper window,—
‘Kiss my claw! Kiss my claw!’
‘That absurd parrot!’ said Mrs Guineabush, while the others tittered. ‘He’s really a clever bird, Miss Newman—I suppose I may call you Lesbia now. Some of the things he says are so àpropos of the conversation around him, that I really believe he understands both what he hears and what he says. Will you sit there, facing the window, dear?’—as they entered the dining-room. ‘I should like to know your opinion about parrots, Mr Bristley. Is it possible, after all, that they understand human language?’
‘I believe they do,’ he replied, ‘to the same extent as a very young child does, that is, not grammatically or analytically, but connecting certain sounds with certain things.’
‘Exactly; that’s what I think,’ said Mrs Guineabush. ‘It seems to me there’s a great deal of twaddle talked about animal instinct and human reason: don’t you think so? It’s only our conceited ignorance that makes us draw such wide distinctions between ourselves and the lower animals.’
‘I quite agree with you,’ he answered. ‘Reason is nothing more than the analysed ingredients of instinct. Every act of instinct can be described as an act of rapid reasoning. For example, if I withdraw my hand in haste when about to touch a stinging-nettle, I do not deliberately argue, “when I have before touched plants of that class, I have been stung: what has occurred before will occur again, given exactly similar conditions: ergo, if I touch that nettle I shall be stung.” I say that I do not go and spell out all that to myself; but the act of withdrawing my hand in haste is equivalent to that argument gone through in a second of time.’
‘I see,’ said Mr Guineabush, who had followed attentively. ‘Then according to that, Mr Bristley, you make instinct a superior quality to reason, in the sense, at least, that the whole is superior to its parts or processes.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ he replied.
‘Rather a triumph for us women,’ observed Mrs Guineabush, glancing at Lesbia; ‘we are always said to be more instinctive, men more rational.’
‘That’s nothing new, Mrs Guineabush,’ said she.
‘Every department of philosophy whatever,’ said her uncle, ‘if honestly gone into, must result in the triumph you refer to, Mrs Guineabush.
‘You have the reputation of being a champion of our sex, Mr Bristley,’ she replied.
‘And an honest one, I hope, Mrs Guineabush. I fear that species is not so plentiful as it should be. There’s lots of strutting ‘gallantry’ in the world, but it is better to be a straightforward woman-hater, than to be a champion of that sort. We want the men who are ready to give back to women all the privileges they themselves have usurped. The others may keep their blarney to themselves.’
‘But, Mr Bristley,’ pursued the hostess, who was not a frivolous person, ‘since you set so much store by the powers of instinct, do you believe that the lower animals have immortal souls?’
‘Before directly replying to your question, Mrs Guineabush, I must take exception to the word have. It is not a question of ‘having’ a soul as you may ‘have’ blue eyes or a striped shirt or the headache; it is not that I have a soul, but that I am a soul. It is a body that you have, a soul that you are.’
‘But at any rate,’ objected Mrs Guineabush, ‘the soul is dependent upon the body.’
‘As the body is upon its food and clothing,’ rejoined the vicar. ‘But ‘is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment’? Are you and I who talk together nothing more than the flesh and vegetables we have eaten and the animal and vegetable tissues we have worn as clothes? Would it not be ridiculous to say that such and such a book is the work of the food and drink and suits of clothes which made up its author? But it is equally foolish to say that it emanated from the author’s brain. It did not emanate from his brain, except in the sense in which it emanated from his pen. The pen and the brain alike are mere instruments guided by the soul, which is the man himself. He has a pen, he has a brain, he has a body, of which the brain and the hand are parts; but he is a soul.’
‘Yes, that’s clear,’ said Lesbia. ‘But, uncle, how do you regard disease of the body, especially of the brain, which hampers the soul’s action so much and so often?’
‘As I regard the walls of a gaol or the fetters which paralyse a prisoner’s action so much and so often,’ was the reply. ‘Is the prisoner no longer a man, because he is a man in irons? Is the soul no longer a soul, because its machine has got out of order and hampers it?’
‘But again,’ said Lesbia, ‘the body is temporary; it had a beginning we know and will have an end we know. May not the soul begin and end with it?’
‘This coat and trousers I am wearing,’ he replied, ‘had not only an ascertainable beginning and ending, but also can be, and every day are, put off and exchanged for other garments. But do I not still remain your Uncle Bristley, parson of Dulham, whether I am in coat, dressing-gown, or night-shirt? Why then shall I not be still the same person, when I shall have put off my suit of bones and muscles, etc., my earthly body?’
‘There seems to me a difference nevertheless,’ said Mrs Guineabush—‘kindly pass the mustard, will you?—that the body grows and decays. Are we to say the same of the soul?’
‘That question is more subtle, Mrs Guineabush,’ replied Mr Bristley, ‘but the answer is this:—The growth of the soul—that is, of the real person, need by no means end with the growth nor even with the death of the earthly body. Why should it? Do I not continue to live, even though I may have worn a shirt threadbare? I will go further, and say that it need not even have begun with the birth of the natural body. This body is but a vesture, soon made, soon destroyed, but I am not my body; I need neither begin with it nor end with it. I may have lived many previous lives, I may live many more hereafter. Still through all my potential changes, I am the same soul.’
‘Try this nutty brown sherry, Mr Bristley,’ said the host, passing it to him. ‘It’s old, but not so old as the doctrine of transmigration, in which you seem to be landing us.’
‘Thanks. The doctrine is old enough certainly, if that be a fault,’ he replied, ‘but on what other theory can you account for the diversified lower forms of life? That parrot upstairs, those puppies in the stable, how are we to account for their forms and their nature? It is the part of man not merely to see the world, but to account for it to himself. The transmigration theory does, to my mind, account for the zoological world. ‘The animals are souls like ourselves, all tending upward to or downward from the architype mankind. Some are in process of degradation, others in process of elevation, each according to the use or abuse of his preceding probation in the flesh, has earned his own reward or punishment in kind and degree. This is natural law in the spiritual world, the only kind of supernatural we need trouble ourselves about.’
‘I thought,’ said Mrs Guineabush, ‘that Darwin had sufficiently explained the origin of species by natural selection.’
‘By all means,’ replied Mr Bristley. ‘But who or what, after all, is the selecting nature? Nature, in the abstract, is but a name for Design in the universe, and the laws of nature are the sequences which form essential parts of that design. But we cannot conceive of Design without a Designer, which means a designing soul or mind. Thus we arrive at the great first principle which is the basis of philosophy, that soul or mind is the reality of existence, inert matter or body its image and instrument merely.’
‘Then, uncle,’ said Lesbia, ‘since you make every living being a soul, not a body, you exclude and deny the rule of the laws of matter—those of chemistry and physiology, for instance.’
‘Laws of matter, my dear girl! Matter has no laws; how can it have any? We know nothing of matter; we cannot demonstrate its existence but as the matter of our cognisance, the medium of our consciousness. Matter is immeasurably divisible and augmentable and removable; it is, if you please, the medium of everything, but it is the substance of nothing. In the last resort, it is simply the mode or modes of thought and feeling, and however much you may alter the modes and shift them about, you can never get behind that of which they are the modes. You can never get behind the fact that the laws of nature, chemistry, physiology, what you please, are the laws of our perceptions. The world of thought and sensation is the real world; the matter of which it is composed is a mere condition, not a reality. Science is simply self analysis; mathematics, for instance, do but illustrate the structure of the mind. Its structure limits its view of the world to two classes of operations—analysis, wherein the universe appears as diverse; synthesis, wherein the diversity of the world appears as the universe. But in all other cases alike there is but the one reality, the Mind; Matter has no existence but as the matter of mind. Is that clear to you now?’
‘I gather the idea,’ said his niece, ‘but it is a slippery one to hold, because it contravenes one’s habits.’
‘Man is put in these earthly conditions in order to contravene his habits and form better ones,’ replied her uncle.
After some desultory conversation on other topics the company left the luncheon table, and as they entered the drawing-room a basket-carriage, drawn by a small Shetland, drove up to the hall door. It was occupied by two young ladies, one of whom Lesbia recognised as her friend Rose Dimpleton, the other was a stranger, an American, whom the sequel of this story will show in closer acquaintance with our heroine than anyone else, for the simple reason that she was better capable of understanding her. The acquaintance between Miss Letitia Blemmyketts and Rose Dimpleton was certainly not one of intellectual affinity; it arose merely from the fact that both young ladies were devoted to painting on china, and had already made some little profits by their respective talents, and on this occasion they had brought a jar to exhibit to the Guineabushes, whom they had met at one of Lady Humnoddie’s garden parties, the American being indebted to that lady for her introduction into such county society as the neighbourhood afforded. Miss Dimpleton lived at Wisprill, near Frogmore, of which her father was clergyman, while Miss Blemmyketts, the daughter of a wealthy merchant of New York, had for some time past taken up her residence at Breakdown Villa, Pasteboard Row, New Scampings, an outskirt of the town of Frogmore which had lately sprung up, handy for the railway station.
No sooner were they introduced than our heroine found she had met something of a kindred spirit in the American, who, however, was several years her elder. Mrs Guineabush having the quickness to observe this, proposed to the two girls to take a saunter down the shrubbery together, which they both were wishing at the moment. It will suffice to give the last bit of their conversation as they returned, a reply of Letitia’s to a question of Lesbia’s as to the use of making oneself a martyr to advanced ideas.
‘How then,’ said the American, ‘did any notions in the world ever get a start? How were the to-day triumphs of civilisation won? My dear girl, the reformers of the world have never gained their ends by, Shall I succeed? but by I will succeed. It’s the set purpose and resolve before which the inert mass of social stagnation sooner or later gives away. Besides, if you don’t martyr yourself to a good cause, you'll only be martyred by a bad one. I guess the trials of life are not to be given the slip by just hiding your light in order not to be eccentric. Won’t you be hunted down by small worries and ignoble sufferings after you have turned tail and cut your mission? Why, the young lady who hasn’t the courage to stick up for women’s rights, is just the one to be made spiteful and miserable for weeks because Count Alamode took her sister down to the ball-supper instead of herself.’
‘“A Daniel come to judgment!”’ exclaimed Lesbia, regarding her new friend with genuine and sympathetic admiration.
‘Well, act on the judgment, dear,’ answered the other. ‘Now I guess we mustn’t keep Rose and the little beast waiting any longer.’
The Vicar and his niece took their leave soon after the others, and during the drive home, which was rather windy and cold, she was in high spirits. She had got just such a bull pup as her fancy pictured; she had been much interested by the conversation at luncheon; above all, she had met for the first time with one of her own sex who could understand her views and back up her endeavours. All this combined to make her feel happy that afternoon; but most of our pleasures in this world have their drawback of one kind or another, beforehand or afterwards; and this happy day was not to end without its contretemps.
A trifling one occurred, even on the way home. As they passed out of Frogmore under the railway bridge, the Happy-golucky Express from London to Northeasterton thundered over it at sixty miles an hour; and the old pony, usually imperturbable, took fright and made a dash which grazed the enamelled panel of the carriage against the brick wall.
‘Jib, you old fool!’ scolded Mr Bristley, lashing him up, ‘what do you see to shy at on the way, that makes you, behave like that ass of Balaam’s, eh?’