Arminell, Vol. 2
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“It is a pity,” pursued Mrs. Kite, “because if you hadn’t been seen by Mr. Macduff, I might have sworn you a famous alibi, and made out you was helping me to move my furniture. Thomasine also, she’d ha’ sworn anything in reason to do you a good turn. What a sad job it was that you didn’t chuck over Macduff as well. But there – I won’t blame you. We none of us, as the parson says, do all those things we ought to do, but leave undone what we ought. Thomasine and I’d swear against Mr. Macduff, but I doubt it would do no good, as Mrs. Macduff keeps a victoria and drives about in it, and we don’t, so the judge would have respect to the witness of Macduff and disregard ours. And yet they say there is justice and righteousness in the world! – when our testimony would not be taken and Macduffs accepted, along of a victoria.”
She caught Saltren’s arm again, and led him further into the wood, along a path that seemed to be no path at all for a man to walk, but rather a run for a rabbit. The bushes closed over a mere track in the moss.
“I reckon,” muttered Patience, “there’ll be a rare fuss made about the death of his lordship; but how little account was made of that of young Tubb. That was a cruel loss to Thomasine and me. My daughter and he were sweethearts. Captain Tubb was going to take the boy on as a hand at the lime quarry; he could not earn twenty shillings in a trade, so he would get fifteen as a labourer. Well – he could have married and kept house on that. Either he and my girl would have lived with me or with his father. Macduff and Lord Lamerton spoiled the chance for me and them. I owe them both a grudge, and I thank you for paying off my score on his lordship. Macduff may wait. In fall I will make a clay figure of him, and stick pins in it, and give him rheumatic pains and spasms of the heart. Whatever parsons and doctors may say, I can do things which are not to be found in books, and there is more learning than is got by scholarship.”
Mrs. Kite paused and looked round.
“You’ve not been about in the woods, creeping on all fours as I have, through the coppice. I know my way even in the dark. I can tell it by the feel of the stems of oak. Where there is moss, that is the side to the sou’-west wind and rain. The other side is smooth. So one can get along in the dark. What a moyle there will be over the death of his lordship all because he was a lord, and there was nothing made of the death of Arkie, because he was nobody. There is no justice and righteousness in the world, or Mr. Macduff would be wearing bracelets now and expecting a hempen necklace. Here we are at my cottage that he and his lordship tore down.”
They emerged suddenly on the glade where stood the ruins. No one was visible. It remained as it had been left, save that the fallen rafters and walls were blackened by the smoke of the up-flaming thatch.
Patience did not tarry at the hovel, but led the way to the quarry edge.
“Do you see here,” she said, “you take hold of the ivy ropes, and creep along after me. It is not hard to do when you know the way. Miss Arminell first led me to the Owl’s Nest. One Sunday she came here, and holding the ivy, got along to the cave, and then let go the rope. I went after her; and when my house was being pulled down about my head, then I remembered the cave, and went to it in the same way. Since then I have moved most of my things I want, and Thomasine has helped me. But she couldn’t come till her foot was better, along the edge where we shall go. What I cannot carry we let down from above by a rope, and I draw them in to me with a crooked stick. I shall have to pay no ground rent for that habitation, and I defy Mr. Macduff to pull the roof down on me. It is a tidy, comfortable place, in the eye of the sun. What I shall do in winter I cannot tell, but it serves me well enough as a summer house. If I want to bake, I have my old oven in the back-kitchen. Now lay hold of the ivy bands and come after me. I will show you where you can lie hid when there is danger at Chillacot.”
Saltren followed her, and in a few minutes found himself in the cave. She had hung an old potato sack half-way down the hollow, and behind this she had made her bed and stored her treasures.
“No one can visit me whom I do not choose to receive,” said Mrs. Kite. “If I should see a face come round the corner, the way we came, I’d have but to give a thrust, as that you gave his lordship, and down he would go. Now I will return. You remain here. See, I crook the ivy chains over this prong of rock when I am here. Whatever you do, mind and do not let the chains fall away. If you do, you’re a prisoner till I release you. That is how Miss Arminell was caught. I’ll run and see what is going on, and bring you word.”
The old woman unhooked sufficient strands of ivy to support herself, and went lightly and easily along the face of the rock.
Saltren remained standing. He had his hands linked behind his back, and his head projecting. He had not recovered balance of mind; his thoughts were like hares in poachers’ gate-nets – entangled, leaping, turning over, and working themselves, in their efforts after freedom, into more inextricable entanglement. But one idea gradually formed itself distinctly in his mind – the idea that he had not been wronged by Lord Lamerton in the way in which he had supposed, and that, therefore, all personal feeling against him disappeared. But, in the confusion of his brain, he carried back this idea to a period before he discovered that he had been deceived by his wife into feeling this grudge, and he justified his action to himself; he satisfied himself that there could have been no private resentment in his conduct to his lordship when he lifted his hand against him, because twenty minutes later he discovered that there were no grounds for entertaining it. This consideration sufficed to dissipate the first sense of guilt that had stolen over him. Now he knelt down in the cave, at its entrance, and thanked heaven that no taint of personal animosity had entered into his motives and marred their purity. It was true that Lord Lamerton had thrown Saltren out of employ – he forgot that. It was true also that, as chairman of the board of directors of the railway, he had sought to force him to surrender his house and plot of land – he forgot that. It was true that at the time when he confronted Lord Lamerton, he believed that his domestic happiness had been destroyed by that nobleman – he forgot that also. He concluded that he had put forth his hand, acting under a divine impulse, and executing, not personal vengeance, but the sentence of heaven.
When a camel, heavy laden, is crossing the desert, the notion sometimes occurs to it that it is over-burdened, that its back is breaking, and it sullenly lies down on the sand. No blows will stir it – not even fire applied to its flanks; but the driver with much fuss goes to the side of the beast, and pretends to unburden it of – one straw. And that one straw he holds under the eye of the camel, which, satisfied that it has been sensibly relieved, gets up and shambles on. Our consciences are as easily satisfied when heavy burdened as the stupid camel. One straw – nay, the semblance, the shadow of a straw – taken from them contents us; we rise, draw a long breath, shake our sides, and amble on our way well pleased.
Lord Lamerton had been doomed by heaven for his guilt in the matter of Archelaus Tubb. Was it not written that he who had taken the life of another should atone therefor with his own life? Who was the cause of the lad’s death? Surely Lord Lamerton, who had ordered the destruction of the cottage. If the cottage had been left untouched, the chimney would not have fallen. Mr. Macduff was but the agent acting under the orders of his lordship, and the deepest stain of blood rested, not on the agent, but on his instigator and employer. Saltren had been on the jury when the inquest took place, and he had then seen clearly where the fault lay, and who was really guilty in the matter; but others, with the fear of man in them, had not received his opinion and consented to it, and so there had been a miscarriage of justice.
If a bell-pull be drawn, it moves a crank, and the crank tightens a wire, and that wire acts on a second lever, and this second crank moves a spring and sets a bell tingling. The hand that touches the bell-rope is responsible for the tingling of the bell, however far removed from it. So was Lord Lamerton responsible for the death of Archelaus, though he had not touched the chimney with his own hand.
Saltren was, moreover, deeply impressed with the reality of his vision, which had grown in his mind and taken extraordinary dimensions, and had assumed distinct outline as his fancy brooded over it. But it did not occur to his mind that fancy had deceived him, for to Saltren, as to all mystics, the internal imaginings are ever more real than those sensible presentiments which pass before their eyes.
Now he knelt in the cave, relieved of all sense of wrong-doing, and thanked heaven for having called him to vindicate its justice on the man whom human justice had acquitted.
CHAPTER XXXIII
NOTHING
Mr. James Welsh occupied a small, respectable house in a row in Shepherd’s Bush. The house was very new; the smell of plaster clung about it. Before the row were young plane trees, surrounded with wire-netting to protect their tender bark from the pen-knives and pinching fingers of boys. Far in the dim future was a prospect of the road becoming an umbrageous avenue; accordingly, with an eye to the future, those who had planned and planted the row entitled it The Avenue.
Up this avenue of wretched, coddled saplings walked Mr. Giles Inglett Saltren, in the best of spirits, to visit his uncle, the Monday morning after his arrival in town.
Now Giles Inglett Saltren was about to begin his career as a journalist, as a politician, as a man of letters. He had broken away from the position which had degraded and enslaved him, which had cramped his genius, and suppressed his generous emotions.
He had not, indeed, heard from Welsh since he had written to him, but youth is sanguine. He could rely on his uncle finding him work, and he knew his own abilities were of no ordinary quality. He had essayed his powers on several political questions. He had written articles on the Eastern Embroglio, the Madagascar Policy of the French Republic, Port Hamilton, the dispute about the Fisheries, and Irish dissatisfaction. Very vigorous they were in style, and pulverising in argumentative force.
He had not sent them to his uncle, but he brought them with him now in a hand-bag. He came early to ensure finding Mr. Welsh at home and to allow time for reading his articles to him, and discussing the terms on which he was to be taken upon the staff of the paper with which his uncle was connected. He figured to himself the expression of the face of Welsh changing, as he listened, from incredulity to pleased surprise and rapt ecstasy, and the clasp of hands when the lecture was over, the congratulation on success, and the liberal offer of remuneration that would ensue.
There was one telling passage on Port Hamilton which to Jingles’ mind was so finely turned, so rich and mellow in its eloquence, that he repeated it twice to himself as he walked from Shepherd’s Bush station to his destination.
“It is really well put,” mused Jingles; “and I think if it comes under the eye of the Ministry, that it must materially affect their policy, and, perhaps, decide the question of the retention or surrender of the station. More wonderful things have happened than that it should lead to my being offered a colonial appointment. Not that I would accept a post which was not influential. I am not going to be shelved as a foreign consul. I intend to be where I can put my mark on my times, and mould the destinies of the people. It would not be surprising were the Conservative Government to endeavour to silence me by the offer of some governorship which would take me from home, and corner me where my influence would be powerless. But I intend to keep my eyes open. I am not one of the men who submit to suppression. Ah! here is Uncle James’ door.”
He opened the little iron gate. A servant was on the steps, kneeling and scrubbing the threshold. She had managed to kneel on her apron, and tear it out of the gathers. Her slippers exposed a split over the toe, showing stocking, and the stocking was split over the heel, showing skin. She put her scrubbing-brush to her head to smooth the hair that had fallen forward, over the fringe.
“Is Mr. Welsh at home?”
“Yes’ir. Your card, please?”
She looked at her fingers; they were wet, so she put them beneath her apron, and extended her hand thus covered to receive the card, and nipped it through the integument of coarse linen, then turned and went in, leaving Saltren on the doorstep with the bucket. The soap she had prudently removed within, lest, while she was presenting the card, he might make off with the square. She was up to the dodges of such chaps. So, also, she shut the door behind her, lest he should make off with an overcoat or umbrella. A servant cannot be too careful in the suburbs of London. Presently she returned, re-opened the door, and asked Saltren to kindly step into the master’s study.
Mr. James Welsh was just engaged in unfolding his morning’s paper preparatory to reading, or, rather, skimming it, when Jingles entered.
“Hallo, young shaver!” exclaimed the uncle, laying aside the newspaper somewhat reluctantly. “This is sharp work, dropping in on me before I have had time allowed me to answer your letter. I only came home last night. It is like crossing the frontier simultaneously with declaration of war. If you had waited for my answer you would have saved yourself trouble and the cost of your ticket.”
“There were reasons which made it necessary for me to leave at once.”
“My dear boy, reasons are like eggs in a recipe for a pudding. The pudding is best with them; but it is good without. You wanted to come, and you enrich your coming with reasons. That is the sense of it.”
“But, Uncle James, I have long felt a decided vocation for a political and literary life, and I have long chafed at the restraints – ”
“Young shaver, in the ministerial world – I mean the world of ministers of religion – there are also calls; but, curiously enough, only such are listened to when the call is from a salary of fifty to a hundred and fifty. I never yet heard of a pastor who listened to a call to leave one of a hundred for one of half that amount. But they jump like frogs when the call is t’other way. You should have learned wisdom from those apostles of light. You have, I fear, thrown up a lucrative situation for nothing. Like the dog in the fable dropped the piece of meat to bite at a shadow.”
“I have no doubt,” said Jingles gravely, “that at first I shall not earn much; but I have some money laid by which will serve my necessities till I have made myself a name, and got an assured income.”
“Made yourself a name! That is what no journalist ever does. Got an assured income! That comes late. You have not been through the mill.”
“I have in my bag some articles I have touched off, leaders on important matters, of absorbing interest to the public.”
“As what?”
“Port Hamilton.”
“The public don’t care a snap about that.”
“The Eastern Question.”
“About which you know nothing.”
“The Irish Land Question.”
“On which you are incompetent to form an opinion.”
“Will you look at my articles?”
“I can’t say. I can tell what they are like without your opening the bag. I know exactly the style of these schoolboy productions. If you particularly desire it, I will run my eye over them; but I tell you beforehand, they are good for nought. Mind you, I don’t expect that a writer of a leader knows any more of his subject than do you; but he does know how to affect a knowledge he does not possess, and disguise his ignorance; and he has a certain style that belongs to the business. It is with journalism as with acting. An amateur proclaims himself in every sentence. The ass’s ears project from under the lion’s skin. There are little tricks of the trade, a margin for gag, that must be employed and utilised, and only a professional is at his ease, and has the familiar tricks at his disposal, and gag at the end of his tongue. Can you manage shorthand?”
“Shorthand! No.”
“Pity that. I might have got you some reporting jobs.”
“But I do not want reporting jobs.”
“Then you will get nothing.”
Jingles was rather offended than cast down.
“I see what it is, Uncle Welsh,” he said in a tone of irritation, “you journalists are a close corporation, and you will not admit an intruder. You are jealous of an invasion within your circle, just as a parcel of commercials resent the entry of any but a commissioned bagman into their coffee-room.”
“Not a bit; but we do object to a raw bumpkin who has not gone through his apprenticeship giving himself airs, and pretending to an equality with us who have drudged at the trade till we have mastered its technicalities.”
“I presume that a good education and brains qualify a man to write.”
“Not necessarily – certainly not to write leaders. I dare say we might hand over to you the reviewing of children’s books. That would come within your range.”
“It is an insult to offer such a thing.”
“Indeed! You know little of literature or you would not say so. Formerly, when education was scarce, there were but a few writers, and they were well paid. Now education is universal, and every one who can handle a pen thinks he can write, even if he be imperfectly acquainted with spelling. Education now is as common, as general, as pocket-handkerchiefs. Both were luxuries fifty years ago. Literature is glutted with aspirants; brain is as common as æsthetic colours, as embroidered sunflowers, and Japanese lacquer. What is rare is muscle. Learn some mechanical art, and you will find biceps pays better than brain.”
“You know very well I have not the health to adopt the trade of an artisan.”
“Then become a preacher; and here let me give you advice. If you want to become a popular preacher, and a power in the pulpit or on the platform, tear down. It is thankless work to build up; that takes time, demands patience, and does not command immediate popularity and ready applause. You appeal to no passion when constructive. Passion is your ready assistant in destruction. Every man has so much of the savage in him that he likes the war-path and the taste of blood. You appeal to what you know is in all, when you give a war-whoop, and brandish a tomahawk. There is some picturesqueness and a sense of power, in whooping and whirling the axe; there is only prose in smoking calumets of peace.”
“I have no fancy for the pulpit; but I should like to become a political speaker.”
“We can try you at some village meeting; but the pay is not much. Take my advice and return to Orleigh.”
“That is impossible. I have burnt my ships. I can never recross the threshold of the house till I am recognised.”
“What – as a literary lion? As a stump orator?”
“No, uncle, as Lord Lamerton’s son.”
“As – as his – what?”
Mr. James Welsh burst into a fit of laughter, and when he was exhausted, exploded, in spite of exhaustion, into a second peal.
Jingles maintained his gravity. His brow contracted. He folded his arms across his breast, and stood sternly waiting till this unseemly ebullition of merriment had subsided, in the attitude in which Napoleon appears in Horace Vernet’s celebrated picture, on Saint Helena, looking at the setting sun.
“You must excuse me,” said he at last, “if I say that this is not the way in which I expected to be received. First you scoff at my honourable ambition to be a man of letters, and then you explode into indecent laughter when I mention the fact of my parentage with which you are perfectly familiar, though it is not known to the world at large.”
“By Jove, Giles, I did not suppose you were such a fool.”
“I do not understand you.”
“I may say, Giles, that I do not understand you. Do you mean seriously to assure me that you give credence to that cock-and-bull tale?”
“Uncle Welsh, I believe my mother’s word.”
“Far be it from me to say anything to a son disrespectful of his mother; and in this case I merely point out to you the richness and exuberance of your mother’s fancy. Penelope embroidered by day, and by night unpicked her day-work. My dear boy, it is, perhaps, a matter of regret that my sister contents herself with embroidery, and does not complement her work by unpicking the fantastic and highly-coloured figures that needle, her tongue, has elaborated. She is like a magic-lantern projecting pictures upon smoke, sheets, or blank walls, making those surfaces alive with forms and faces. You really would suppose that the man in bed was actually swallowing the rats that ran into his mouth, and that Blue Beard in very truth rolled his eyes and cut off his wife’s head, and that the cabbage was converted into Snip the Tailor. But, my dear nephew, they are phantasms. Go up to them, touch, observe, there is only smoke or whited wall. I have the highest respect for my sister’s genius. I bow before her imagination, and adore it; but remember what Paley said of the imagination – that it is the fertile mother of error. My good sister’s delusive faculty seems to have become mamma to an extravagant blunder, which you are lovingly nursing.”
“Then you place no reliance on my mother’s account?”
“Wait a moment.” Mr. Welsh went to the bookcase. “Here is a peerage. Turn up ‘Lamerton, Baron,’ and see where his lordship was at that time that you were begun to be thought about. He was not in England – had not been there for two or three years. I knew that as well as the author of the peerage, perhaps better; for I was at Orleigh at that time, a fact my sister Marianne forgot when she exhibited to me her magic-lantern slides. I was not then what I am now. I was then thankful for a bit of literary work, and did not turn up my nose at reviewing children’s books. I was as glad then to get a chance of putting pen to paper as I now am of getting a holiday from pen and paper.”
“And,” said Jingles, somewhat staggered by the evidence of the peerage, “you mean to tell me that my mother said – what – what – what was false?”
“Young shaver,” said Mr. Welsh, “I read ‘Herodotus’ in Bohn’s translation. I don’t even know the letters of the Greek alphabet. I read for professional purposes. I observe that when the father of history comes to a delicate and disputed question, he passes it over with the remark, ‘I prefer not to express my own opinion thereon.’ When you ask me whether what your mother said was true or a lie, I answer with Herodotus, ‘I prefer not to express my own opinion thereon.’”
Giles Inglett looked down on the carpet. His lips quivered.
“Young shaver,” pursued Mr. Welsh, cheerily, rubbing his hands together, and taking up his newspaper, as a hint to his nephew to be gone, “you had best return to your inn, and begin to pull out the threads of that elaborate and gorgeous piece of Gobelin your mother has furnished you with. Believe me, under the coloured worsted and floss silk, you will come on very vulgar canvas. It is a sad pity that you should have learned that you are not the son of Stephen Saltren. You might well have been left to share the common belief. Perhaps it was inevitable that you should discover the flaw in your nativity. Some women cannot hold their tongues. I am not sure that the Babylonians acted unwisely when on the occasion of their revolt against Darius, they strangled every woman in the city except their cooks, for, they argued, men can get along without the sex in every other capacity.”
The young man was profoundly disturbed. He looked up, and said in a voice that expressed his emotion —
“Uncle, do not jest with me in this matter. To me it is one of deadly earnest. I entreat you speak the truth, for – good heavens! If I am not what I supposed myself to be, I have made a terrible mistake.”
“You are no more a son of Lord Lamerton than I am. Marianne – I mean, your mother – thinks I am ignorant of the real facts, but I never was, though I said nothing at the time or after.”
“Then you know who my father was.”
“Yes, I do – but I am not disposed to tell you.”
“I insist on knowing.”
“You ought never to have been told that you were not what you and the world supposed. Now don’t attempt to lift the embroidered veil your good mother has cast over the mystery. The veil is handsomer than what it conceals.”