Arminell, Vol. 2

CHAPTER XXV

BAMBOOZLED

Lord Lamerton was that day engaged in distributing prizes at a ploughing match, about fifteen miles away from Orleigh.

“My dear,” said he to his wife before he started, “for goodness’ sake come with me into the avenue, and give me the heads of what I am to say.”

Report had it that his lordship got all his speeches from his wife, and report was not far wrong in so saying.

“I’ll run up to Eggins,” he said, “and get him to give me some wrinkles about ploughing. I know nothing concerning it.”

Thus primed, partly by one of his farmers and partly by his wife, his lordship started for the ploughing match; and on reaching the ground inspected the furrows with his glass to his eye, and repeated some of the scraps of information he had gathered from Eggins.

After that came the dinner, and after the dinner the prize distribution, and a speech from Lord Lamerton.

His lordship stood up, and coughed. He was not a fluent speaker, nor a ready speaker; indeed he could not speak at all unless he had been given time and opportunity to get primed. But he had a retentive memory, and when allowance was made for hesitation, and repetition, and occasional halts, his speeches were admitted to be not so bad as are the generality of such performances. They read well; only it was a little irritating to listen to them. The hearer never could be sure that his lordship would not break down altogether. Speaking made him and his audience hot. They perspired sympathetically. It made him uncertain what to do with his legs, and those listening to his words found their attention drawn away to his inferior members, and were kept in suspense as to what he would do next with his extremities. Sometimes he endeavoured to stand on one foot, and then he invariably lost his balance, and grabbed at the table-cloth, or a lady’s bonnet to stay himself from falling. On such an occasion he lost the thread of his discourse, and had to seek it in his pocket-handkerchief, whilst those listening good-naturedly stamped and rapped the table, and shrieked “Hear hear!”

Sometimes he curled one leg round the other in such a manner that to recover himself he was obliged to face about, and he found himself addressing the latter part of a sentence to the waiter and the tent wall behind him, instead of the audience at the table. It was said that once he put his foot into his plate on the table, but this was an exaggeration; he caught himself about to do it and desisted in time.

How is it that the Englishman is so poor a speaker? I believe that the language is partly the cause. The English tongue is so simple in its structure that it runs out of the mouth faster than the ideas it is supposed to express have taken shape in the brain. Consequently we males, sometimes women even, say things before we have thought them out, and then are embarrassed because the thought lags behind the word, like the thunder after the flash.

In such a language as the German, however, the mind has to formulate the sentence in all its ramifications and subsidiary articulations, before it is uttered. The idea is kneaded, and squeezed into a shape and then baked. A tap, and out of the buttered mould comes the sentence, compact and complete, whereas, in English, the idea is not given time to set, it is not even half baked, and then it is shaken out, and falls to pieces as it appears; or, like an ill-set jelly, resolves into an insipid wash.

When Lord Lamerton rose to his feet, he proceeded to blow his nose loudly, then he looked about him, and his face glowed redly. He caught the eye of the Rector of Orleigh, and he said to himself: “Deuce take the fellow, he will know whence I got this speech. He was discussing the matter with my lady the other day.”

He arranged his legs as best he could to support his superincumbent weight, and to make quite sure of not losing his balance laid his hand on the back of a chair. Then he put the other hand into his pocket.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I am not the sort of man you should have chosen to speak to you to-day, because – ”

Interruptions of “No, no!”

“Because, if you allow me, I am not in the best of moods. I have had an attack, a damned – I beg your pardon, a dastardly attack made on me in the public papers, and I have been – I have been represented – that is, represented as a monster of iniquity, one who is ruining the country, and driving trade out of it.”

“No, no!”

“I was never more astonished and shocked in my life. I did think, gentlemen and ladies, that, if there was one thing I cherished and loved, and strove to live for it was – that is to say – it was my country, and next to my country, my dear old – my dear old mother county.”

General emotion, and some of the ladies who had taken more than two glasses of sherry felt the tears rise into their eyes. Every gentleman kindled and stamped and said, “Hear, hear!”

“But,” continued Lord Lamerton, re-adjusting his balance, by putting one foot between the rails of the chair, and the other on a hat of a gentleman, that was on the floor near him, and removing his hand from his trouser to his waistcoat pocket, “but, ladies and gentlemen, I will pass from personal matters to the subject in hand.” (Then, to himself, “Confound the rector, I can see by the twinkle of his eye that he knows what is coming.”) “But, ladies and gentlemen, we are here assembled on an august and interesting occasion, perhaps one of the most august and interesting that could have arisen – I mean, I mean, a ploughing-match. And this recalls me to the fact that one of our earliest English poets, William Langland, who lived in the reign of Richard II., wrote an entire poem on – what do you suppose? Ploughing. He entitled his poem, ‘The Vision of Piers the Ploughman.’ And, what would you think gentlemen and ladies, was the drift of this remarkable composition? We know that long before, centuries earlier, Virgil wrote his ‘Georgics,’ in praise of agriculture, but here, our English poet confined himself to one branch of agriculture, and that, ploughing. And the author represents all men – mark me —all men, as ploughmen, all, from the king on his throne and the parson in the pulpit, to the least among us all, as ploughmen set to make our furrows in the great field of the world. And, ladies and gentlemen, each has his own proper furrow to run, and he may make it well, or make it badly, plough deep, or merely skirt the soil, plough straight, or run a feeble, fluttering, irregular line, or he may even fold his hands, and take a snooze in the hedge, and make no attempt to plough.”

A pause: the gentleman whose hat had been converted into a footstool recovered the crushed article from under the foot of the speaker, and cast at him a melancholy, reproachful glance.

“I beg your pardon, ’pon my soul, I did not mean it. I did not observe it.” This was said aside to the sufferer. Then after a complete rearrangement of his attitude, with his legs very wide apart, like that of the Colossus of Rhodes, Lord Lamerton continued, “Ladies and gentlemen! I am much afraid that some of us – I will not say all – for I do not believe it is true of all – I say some of us, and God knows, I include myself, on looking back at our furrows do not find them as we should have wished; do not derive, I mean, much satisfaction in the retrospect; but – but – let me see. Yes!” He leaned both his hands on the table, so that his back was curved, and his position was far from elegant. “But, ladies and gentlemen, the broad fact remains, that we are all ploughboys together, and we must take a lesson from these hearty good fellows we have seen to-day, and in all we do and undertake, make our furrows straight, and drive them deep.”

“Hear! Hear! Hear!” and much thumping and stamping; in the midst of which Lord Lamerton sat down, and nearly missed his chair in so doing. Then he leaned over to the rector, and said, “All my lady’s; ’pon my soul, all. Never read a line of what’s-his-name in my life. She has – she reads everything.”

Lord Lamerton returned to Orleigh by an evening train. The station was at some distance from his place. Only when the new line was made would he have a station near at hand.

On reaching the Orleigh road station, the master told him what had occurred during his absence. His carriage was in waiting outside to take him home.

“Bless my heart!” exclaimed his lordship. “You don’t mean to tell me that Tubb’s son is dead, and that the old woman has not been found? Here – ” said he to the coachman, “set me down at the Chillacot turn, and drive on. I shall walk home, after I have made enquiries. Deuce take it! I wouldn’t have had this happen for all I am worth. Poor Tubb! He is a workman and will feel the loss of his son, though the fellow was not good for much – I know that I should be horribly cut up if anything were to happen to my cub.”

He threw himself into the carriage, and continued his exclamations of distress and wonder how it could have come about. “Macduff must have gone to work clumsily. Bless the man, he is a machine.”

The carriage stopped.

“Shall I attend you, my lord?” asked the footman at the door, as he held it.

“Attend me! What for? Me! I’m going to enquire about the matter, then I shall go on to Tubb’s cottage. Tell my lady not to wait dinner.”

He swung his umbrella, and walked away. He marched to the quarry where had been Patience Kite’s cottage. He thought it possible that some one might still be on the spot, and that there he would learn the latest, fullest and most authentic particulars. That the old woman had been seen crouched at her hearth, that the chimney had fallen upon her, and that she had not been exhumed from the ruins, was to him inexplicable. When he came out on the clearing where the ruins of the cottage stood, Lord Lamerton was surprised to find it occupied by a crowd. A lantern was slung to one of the principals of the roof, above the head of a speaker who occupied a table that had been drawn out of the cottage. That speaker was Mr. James Welsh. Lord Lamerton did not know him by sight, only by reputation.

As my lord appeared on the scene, those there assembled shrank aside, with a look of confusion and shyness. He listened for a moment to the orator, and then proceeded to push his way through the throng, which divided to allow him to pass; and, approaching the table, he said, “I beg your pardon, sir; I have not the honour of knowing your name; but you are making pretty free with mine. What is it all about?”

“You are Lord Lamerton, I presume?” said the orator, looking at the dismayed faces of those within the radiance of the lantern. “The saying goes that listeners hear no good of themselves. Perhaps it may be true in this case.”

“I have not been listening, but I have caught a sentence or two; and I have no idea of allowing anyone taking liberties with my name behind my back. If you have anything to say about me, say it to my face. What is all this about?”

“What is all this about?” repeated the orator. “His noble lordship, the Right Honourable Giles Inglett, Baron Lamerton, asks, What is all this about?” In a lower tone charged with oratorical irony, “What is all this about?” Mr. Welsh looked round on his audience. “Having shut up his manganese mine, and reduced a hundred men to destitution, broken up their homes, obliged them to wander over the face of the earth in quest of work, without houses of their own, without bread to put into the mouths of their children, forced to sell their poor sticks of furniture down to the baby’s cradle – he asks, What is all this about? After having torn down a house over the head of a poor widow, and bespattered her grey hairs with gore, he asks, What is all this about? After having deprived a father of his only child, and an orphan of her mother, he has the effrontery – yes – in the face of his lordship I repeat the word, I repeat it in the boldness which my righteous indignation gives me – the effrontery to ask, What is all this about? Possibly, when Cain saw his brother, his younger brother Abel, lying at his feet, with fractured skull and crushed limbs, he also asked, What is all this about? I will not pretend to know where his lordship has been all day; but I do say that, as an Englishman, as a Christian, as a man, when he was about to render desolate the heart of a father by taking the life of his only son, and of a child by bereaving her of her mother, when he was about to tear the roof off from over the head of the widow and the fatherless, he should have been here, yes, here and not far away – Heaven knows where – in what scene of riot and revelry, into which decent folk like us would not venture to look.”

“Now come,” said Lord Lamerton, “this is all rubbish. I have been at a ploughing match. I want to know what you are doing here. Who the deuce are you?”

“My lord,” said the orator, “I am – I rejoice to say it – one of the People, one of the down-trodden and ill-treated, the excluded from the good things of life. My heart, my lord, beats in the right place. Where yours is, my lord, it is not for me, it is for your own conscience to decide. But mine, mine – is in the right place. I am one of the people, and my lord, let me inform you that when you insult me, you insult the entire people of England; you bespatter not me only, but the whole of that enlightened, hearty, intelligent people, of whom I see so many noble, generous specimens before me – you bespatter them, I repeat, my lord, you bespatter them in the grossest and most unwarranted fashion – with dirt.”

“’Pon my soul,” interrupted Lord Lamerton, rapping on the table, “I can make no heads nor tails out of all this. If you have anything against me, say it out. If you want anything, tell it me plainly. I am not unreasonable, but I’m not going to stand here and listen to all this rigmarole.”

“Perhaps, my lord, you are not aware, that there are many grievances under which the Public, the Public, my lord, are groaning. Shall I begin with the lighter, and proceed to the graver, or reverse the process?”

“As you please. It is one to me.”

“Very well,” said Welsh. He looked round complacently on his audience, and rubbed his hands. “His lordship, in all simplicity of heart, wants to know what occasion he has given for this indignation. What occasion,” with a chuckle, and those who could see his face and catch his tone chuckled also. “What occasion,” with sarcasm, and his audience felt their gall rise. “What occasion,” in a hollow thrilling tone, and the crowd responded with a groan. “Shall we tell his lordship? We will, and we will begin with some of the lighter grievances, heavy in themselves, but light in comparison with the others. In the first place, what does he mean by throwing open the grounds on a Tuesday, a day when the public, as he knows, the hard-working public which needs relaxation and the sight of the beautiful, cannot enjoy the boon? Is that, I ask, a day when the shops are closed? Is it a day when the sons of toil in our cities can get away from their labours and admire the beauties of nature, and the charms of art? It is not. The grounds are thrown open on Tuesdays, with almost fiendish malevolence and the cunning of the serpent, that his lordship may obtain the credit of liberality, whilst doing nothing to deserve it. The true public are excluded by the selection of the day, but the gentle-folks, the parsons, the squires, and all the do-nothings, to whom one day is as another, they can see Orleigh Park on Tuesdays. If Lord Lamerton had in him any true humanity, any sympathy for the tradesman, for the clerk, for the milliner and the seamstress, he would open on – let us say Saturday.”

“Very well,” said Lord Lamerton, “I have no objection in the world, except that it will give the gardeners more to do, picking up the papers and scraps – henceforth the grounds shall be open to the public on Saturdays.”

“But, my lord, are the pictures and statuary and other works of art to be shown only to the aristocratic eye and are they to be carefully kept within closed doors from the profane gaze of what you contemptuously call – The Common People?”

“Not at all,” said Lord Lamerton. “I will order that the state apartments be opened on Saturdays – though, Lord knows, above a questionable Van Dyck, there are no great shakes in the way of pictures there. Is that all?”

“That is not all,” proceeded Mr. James Welsh. “Lord Lamerton innocently – I will not say, sheepishly – asks, Is that all? No, I reply, and I reply as the mouth-piece of all present, as the shout of the democracy of England. It is not all. It is very far from being all. Is that all? he asks, standing before you, out of whose mouths he has snatched the crust of bread, the staff of life. Is that all? When he closes the manganese mine, and throws almost the entire population of Orleigh out of employ, and scatters them everywhere, hungry, homeless, forlorn.”

“Now, this is a trifle too extravagant,” said Lord Lamerton. “The mine would have gone under my house and brought it down. Why, it would have cost me twenty thousand pounds to rebuild the house.”

“You hear that! Twenty thousand pounds which might have been spent in Orleigh is refused the people. Twenty thousand pounds! How many able-bodied men are there in Orleigh? About two hundred. What might you not have done with a hundred pounds each? What comforts might you not have provided yourselves with? But his lordship buttons up his pockets. Look upon yourselves, each of you, as defrauded of a hundred pounds. My lord will bank his twenty thousand. He does not want it. He hoards it. He fossilizes it. There is a fable about a dog in the manger which snarled at the horses that wanted to eat out of that manger which was of no use at all to the hound.”

Then Lord Lamerton raised his voice, and said, “My good friends, I don’t believe you are so weak as to be gulled by these fallacies. Why should I allow my house to be undermined and rattled down about my ears, if I can help it?”

A voice from the throng shouted, “Good for trade.”

“Some one has said,” continued Lord Lamerton, “some one has remarked that it would be good for trade. I dispute this. I deny it energetically. I say that it would cost me twenty thousand pounds to rebuild the place, but I do not say that – if ousted by the manganese mine, I would rebuild it. Why should I? If I built on any rock, how could I tell but that some vein of metal would again be found under it, and then I might be driven away once more. Or if I built on clay, some company might insist on exploring the clay for aluminium; or if I built on gravel, it might be insisted on to under-dig me for coprolites, for the formation of artificial manure. Why, I say, should I risk my twenty thousand pounds when my very foundations are no security for the outlay? I would say to myself: As there is no security any where, I will spend my twenty thousand pounds in amusing myself on the Continent, on personal jewellery – or God knows what selfish luxuries. Security of property, unassailability of right of property, that is the basis of all prosperity in trade. Touch property, and down goes trade with it. Look at the Jews in past times. They had no security, so they hoarded, and never spent a farthing they could not help. They did nothing for trade with their wealth. Touch property, and no one with money will do other than did the Jews. Touch property, and down goes trade.” Lord Lamerton thumped the table. “Now look here, I don’t want to be hard on any one. I have lost a great deal of money already on the manganese, which has not paid for these five years, but has been worked at a dead loss. I don’t see my way to lose more, and to endanger, moreover, the walls of my house. That is plain sense. But as I say, I won’t be hard on any one. If the miners cannot get work elsewhere, I’ll set them road-making. They can cut a new road as soon as ever it is settled where the station is to be, and hedge and stone it. That will cost me a thousand pounds, if it will cost me a penny.”

“Just listen to this proposal,” shouted Welsh, who found that the plain sense of Lord Lamerton was producing some effect. “You hear his lordship’s magnanimous offer. He will take you honest, hearty, active mining fellows and debase you to stone-breakers by a road-side. He has had such experience in heart-breaking, that he thinks to set you a job that commends itself to his fancy – stone-breaking. But let us pass from this. I have not done with my noble lord yet. Not by any means. The last of his misdeeds is not yet quite exhausted. I want to ask the Right Honourable Baron Lamerton how it is that he is so sensitive about the tumbling down of his own house, and so ready by the hands of his Macduffs and other minions to tear down the walls of the widow’s cottage? I ask him that. See – he is confounded, he cannot answer.” Welsh looked round triumphantly. “Nor is that all,” he pursued; “I have another question to put, to which also, I have no doubt, I shall meet with silence only as an answer. His lordship who is so touchy about the rights of property is, I suspect, only touchy about the rights of his own property. I have it on the best possible authority that he is threatening to dispossess a man whom we all esteem, Captain Saltren, to dispossess him of his house and land, a house built by his father and repaired and beautified by himself. I believe I am not wrong in saying that he has threatened to employ law against our valued friend, Captain Saltren.”