It was after we had been back in Fern-bank for an hour or more – our own cold repast nearly over – that Mrs Albert thought of something. She laid down her fork with a gesture of annoyance. “It has just occurred to me,” she said; “we never went to that Mr Whistler’s, whose pictures are on exhibition in Bond Street. Everybody’s talking about him, and I did so want not to miss his studio.”
“I don’t think he has a Show Sunday,” I said. “I never heard of it, if he has.”
“O no, it is only these last few weeks that anybody has heard of him,”
Mrs Albert replied. “I read the first announcement about his beautiful pictures in The Daily Tarradiddle only the other day.”
“Whistler? Whistler?” put in Uncle Dudley. “Why, surely he’s not new. Why – I remember – he was mixed up in a law-suit, wasn’t it, years ago?”
“O no, Dudley,” responded Mrs Albert; “I was under that same impression, till Lady Wallaby set me right. It seems that was another man altogether – some foreign adventurer who pretended to be able to paint and imposed upon people – don’t you recall how The Tarradiddle exposed him? – and Mr Burnt-Jones had him arrested, or something – O, quite a dreadful person. But this Mr Whistler is an Englishman. I read in The Illustrated London News that he represented modern British Art. That alone would make it quite clear it was a different man. I did so want to see him! Lady-Wallaby tells me she has heard he is extremely amusing in his conversation – and quite presentable manners, too.”
“Why don’t you ask him to dinner?” said Mr Albert Grundy. “If he’s amusing it’s more than most of the men you drum up are.”
“You seem to think everybody can be asked to dinner, Albert,” the lady of the house replied. “Artists don’t dine – unless they are in the Academy, of course. Tea, yes – or perhaps supper; but one doesn’t ask people to meet them at dinner. It’s like actors – and – and non-commissioned officers.”
Affording a Novel and Subdued Scientific Light, by which divers Venerable Problems may be Observed Afresh
It is my opinion,” said Uncle Dudley, stretching out his slippered feet, and thrusting his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat – “it is my opinion that women are different from men.”
“Several commentators have advanced this view,” I replied. “For example, it has been noted that the gentle sex cross a muddy street on their heels, whereas we skip over on our toes.”
“That is interesting if true,” responded Uncle Dudley. “What I mean is that all this talk about the human race is humbug. There are two human races! And they are getting wider apart every few minutes, too!”
“Have you mentioned this to any one?” I asked.
Uncle Dudley went on developing his theme. “I daresay that for millions of years after the re-separation of the sexes this difference was too slight to be noticed at all. The cave man, for instance – the fellow who went around hunting the Ichthyosaurus with a brick tied on the end of an elm club, and spent the whole winter underground sucking the old bones, and then whittling them up into Runic buttons for the South Kensington Museum: I suppose, now, that his wife and sister-in-law, say, didn’t strike him as being specially different from himself – except, of course, in that they only got plain bones and gristle and so on to eat, whereas all the marrow and general smooth-sailing in meats went his way. You, can’t imagine him saying to himself: ‘These female people here are not of my race at all They are of another species. They are in reality as much my natural enemies as that long-toed, red-headed, brachycephalous tramp living in the gum-tree down by the swamp, who makes offensive gestures as I ride past on my tame Ursus spelous’ – now, can you?”
I frankly shook my head. “No, I don’t seem to be able to imagine that. It would be almost as hard as to guess off-hand where, when, and how you caught this remarkable scientific spasm.”
Uncle Dudley smiled. He rose, and walked with leisurely lightness up and down in front of the chimney-piece, still with his palms spread like little misplaced wings before his armpits. He smiled again. Then he stopped on the hearth-rug and looked down amiably upon me.
“Well – what d’ye think? There’s something in it, eh?”
“My dear fellow,” I began, “what puzzles me is – ”
“O, I don’t mean to say that I’ve worked it all out,” put in Uncle Dudley, reassuringly. “Why, I get puzzled myself, every once in a while. But I’m on the right track, my boy; and, as they say in Adelaide, I’m going to hang to it like a pup to a root.”
“How long have you been this way?” I asked, with an affectation of sympathy.
Uncle Dudley answered with shining eyes. “Why, if you’ll believe me, it seems now as if I’d had the germs of the idea in my mind ever since I came back to England, and began living here at Fernbank. But the thing dawned upon me – that is to say, took shape in my head – less than a fortnight ago. It all came about through being up here one evening with nothing to read, and my toe worse than usual, and Mrs Albert having been out of sorts all through dinner. Somehow, I felt all at once that I’d got to read scientific works. I couldn’t resist it. I was like Joan of Arc when the cows and sheep took partners for a quadrille. I heard voices – Darwin’s and – and – Benjamin Franklin’s – and – lots of others. I hobbled downstairs to the library, and I brought up a whole armful of the books that Mrs Albert bought when she expected Lady Wallaby was going to be able to get her an invitation to attend the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn’s Biological Conversaziones. Look there! What do you say to that for ten days’ work? And had to cut every leaf, into the bargain!”
I gazed with respect at the considerable row of books he indicated: books for the most part bound in the scarlet of the International Series or the maroon of Contemporary Science, but containing also brown covers, and even green “sport” varieties.
“Well, and what is it all about?” I asked. “Why have you read these things? Why not the reports of the Commission on Agricultural Depression, or Lewis Morris’s poems, or even – ” but my imagination faltered and broke.
“It was instinct, my boy,” returned Uncle Dudley, with impressive confidence. “There had been a thought – a great idea – growing and swelling in my head ever since I had been living in this house. But I couldn’t tell what it was. As you might say, it was wrapped up in a cocoon, like the larvæ of the lepidoptera – ahem! – and something was needed to bring it out.”
“When I was here last you were trying Hollands with quinine bitters,” I remarked casually.
“Don’t fool!” Uncle Dudley admonished me. “I’m dead in earnest. As I said, it was pure instinct that led me to these books. They have made everything clear. I only wanted their help to get the husk off my discovery, and hoist it on my back, us it were, and bring it out here in the daylight. And so now you know what I’m getting at when I say: Women are different from Men.”
“That is the discovery, then?” I inquired.
Uncle Dudley nodded several times. Then he went on, with emphasised slowness: “I have lived here now for four years, seeing my sister-in-law every day, watching Ermyntrude grow up to womanhood and the little girls peg along behind her, and meeting the female friends who come here to see them – and, sir, I tell you, they’re not alone a different