The British Barbarians | Page 8

the road
just two minutes before, and was prepared to swear when he withdrew
his eyes not a soul loomed in sight in either direction. Whence, then,
could the man in the grey suit have emerged? Had he dropped from the
clouds? No gate opened into the road on either side for two hundred
yards or more; for Brackenhurst is one of those extremely respectable
villa neighbourhoods where every house--an eligible family
residence--stands in its own grounds of at least six acres. Now Philip
could hardly suspect that so well dressed a man of such distinguished
exterior would be guilty of such a gross breach of the recognised code

of Brackenhurstian manners as was implied in the act of vaulting over a
hedgerow. So he gazed in blank wonder at the suddenness of the
apparition, more than half inclined to satisfy his curiosity by inquiring
of the stranger how the dickens he had got there.
A moment's reflection, however, sufficed to save the ingenuous young
man from the pitfall of so serious a social solecism. It would be fatal to
accost him. For, mark you, no matter how gentlemanly and
well-tailored a stranger may look, you can never be sure nowadays (in
these topsy-turvy times of subversive radicalism) whether he is or is
not really a gentleman. That makes acquaintanceship a dangerous
luxury. If you begin by talking to a man, be it ever so casually, he may
desire to thrust his company upon you, willy-nilly, in future; and when
you have ladies of your family living in a place, you really CANNOT
be too particular what companions you pick up there, were it even in
the most informal and momentary fashion. Besides, the fellow might
turn out to be one of your social superiors, and not care to know you; in
which case, of course, you would only be letting yourself in for a
needless snubbing. In fact, in this modern England of ours, this
fatherland of snobdom, one passes one's life in a see-saw of doubt,
between the Scylla and Charybdis of those two antithetical social
dangers. You are always afraid you may get to know somebody you
yourself do not want to know, or may try to know somebody who does
not want to know you.
Guided by these truly British principles of ancestral wisdom, Philip
Christy would probably never have seen anything more of the
distinguished-looking stranger had it not been for a passing accident of
muscular action, over which his control was distinctly precarious. He
happened in brushing past to catch the stranger's eye. It was a clear blue
eye, very deep and truthful. It somehow succeeded in riveting for a
second Philip's attention. And it was plain the stranger was less afraid
of speaking than Philip himself was. For he advanced with a pleasant
smile on his open countenance, and waved one gloveless hand in a sort
of impalpable or half- checked salute, which impressed his new
acquaintance as a vaguely polite Continental gesture. This affected
Philip favourably: the newcomer was a somebody then, and knew his

place: for just in proportion as Philip felt afraid to begin conversation
himself with an unplaced stranger, did he respect any other man who
felt so perfectly sure of his own position that he shared no such middle-
class doubts or misgivings. A duke is never afraid of accosting anybody.
Philip was strengthened, therefore, in his first idea, that the man in the
grey suit was a person of no small distinction in society, else surely he
would not have come up and spoken with such engaging frankness and
ease of manner.
"I beg your pardon," the stranger said, addressing him in pure and
limpid English, which sounded to Philip like the dialect of the very best
circles, yet with some nameless difference of intonation or accent
which certainly was not foreign, still less provincial, or Scotch, or Irish;
it seemed rather like the very purest well of English undefiled Philip
had ever heard,--only, if anything, a little more so; "I beg your pardon,
but I'm a stranger hereabouts, and I should be so VERY much obliged
if you could kindly direct me to any good lodgings."
His voice and accent attracted Philip even more now he stood near at
hand than his appearance had done from a little distance. It was
impossible, indeed, to say definitely in set terms what there was about
the man that made his personality and his words so charming; but from
that very first minute, Philip freely admitted to himself that the stranger
in the grey suit was a perfect gentleman. Nay, so much did he feel it in
his ingenuous way that he threw off at once his accustomed cloak of
dubious reserve, and, standing still to think, answered after a short