Arminell, Vol. 2

This room did not command the street. It looked out at the mews, and beyond the mews at a row of brick houses, seen above the wall enclosing the back premises. In the mews yard were some carriages being washed, and grooms with their braces discharged from their right shoulders, brushing and combing their horses. Over the stables were the windows of the dwellings of the cabdrivers and their wives, and of the ostlers; and there were sickly attempts at flower gardening in some of them. Out of others hung articles of clothing to be aired or dried. A multitude of dingy sparrows hopped about in the yard, and also a considerable and apparently inexhaustible number of equally dingy children.

Beyond the wall of the backyard of a house in the row was a gaunt Lombardy poplar, trunk and branches sable as the stalks of maidenhair fern. What a pretty view had been that which Arminell had commanded from her bed-room window at Orleigh! The sweeps of green turf in the park, the stately trees, the cedars, and the copper beech, and the silver birch! How the birds had sung in the morning about her window! How sweet had been the incense of the wisteria trusses of lilac flowers entering at the open casement!

What would her father say at her departure? Into what a predicament had she put him? She had forced him into one from which he could not escape without publishing his own dishonour, without allowing his wife, and the parish, and the county, and society generally to know that once on a time he had behaved in a manner unworthy of a gentleman to a poor servant girl. He to whom every one in the place, in the county, looked up as a spotless and worthy John Bull, was to be proclaimed an impostor, and made the talk of idle and malicious tongues.

“If a man has done wrong,” she said to justify herself, “he must bear the consequences. It is cowardly to try and hide the act, evade what it entails, and base to appear before the world under false pretences. Let him acknowledge the wrong he has done, and men will then respect him because he is open, and does not shrink from those consequences a wrong act brings on the wrong-doer.”

But this did not satisfy her. It might be true, it was true, that this was the only right and honourable course for one to take who had erred, but – was she, his daughter, the proper person to force her father into the course and out of the road he had elected to pursue? Was it for her hand to rip up old wounds, and drag into the light the dark secrets he strove to bury out of sight? Was it for her to reveal a stain which disfigured the whole house? Was it for her to shock her step-mother, and disturb her trust? To mar the domestic unity and mutual esteem which had been so perfect?

Lady Lamerton had her weaknesses, but she had also her strength, and her strength was the rectitude of her heart, which made her do her duty with all her power. In pursuance of this sense of duty, Lady Lamerton had been unfailingly kind to Arminell. The girl, looking back, saw this now, and was stung with self-reproach, because in return for this treatment she cast the apple of discord between her father and mother, and broke what to her ladyship was the most precious jewel she possessed – her reverence for my lord.

And how – when it pleased Arminell to return home after all the disturbance she had caused, the pain and humiliation she had occasioned – how would she be received again by those she had wronged and hurt? She had no doubt upon this point. She knew that she would be received with open arms, and without a word of reproach from one or the other.

Then Arminell began to sob, and she saw no more the ostler curricombing his horse, nor the woman shaking a table-cloth out of a window, nor the sparrows quarrelling for the crumbs, nor the back of a maid seated outside a house on a window ledge cleaning the glass, or she saw these things through a watery film.

She was roused by a tap at her door. She hastily dried her eyes, and stood up, with her back to the light, that her discomposure might be unobserved, and called to the person without to enter.

A waiter opened the door and announced that a gentleman had called, and was below in a private sitting-room. He extended a tray, and Miss Inglett took from it a card, and read, “Mr. James Welsh.”

“I will come down directly,” she said.

The waiter bowed and closed the door.

Arminell tarried for a moment only, to recover herself, and then descended. She expected to see Jingles with his uncle, but he was not in the room.

“At your service, Miss Inglett. I am the uncle of Hansel who has run away with Grethel. You find that you have not come to the cottage of almond rock, with windows of barley sugar. You are not, I suppose, interested in politics?”

“No, or only slightly. Social subjects – ”

“Neither in Monday’s paper. Never in my life saw one with less of interest in it, no news, nothing but a Temperance Demonstration at Exeter Hall, presided over by the Reverend Jowles. It is not worth your while looking into a paper to-day.”

“Is Mr. Saltren returned?” asked Arminell.

“Damped off,” replied Welsh. “That is a process whereby an amateur loses a good many cuttings and seedlings. Hansel came to me with any amount of young hopes and ambitions and cockscombs – especially, and I have damped them all off. Expected to make a fortune in literature, wanted to tread the walks of political journalism – as well try to tread the tight rope without previous education. Miss Inglett, you will see no more of him. So what is Grethel to do without her Hansel?”

He paused for a minute but received no answer, not, perhaps, that he expected one, but he allowed time for what he had said to soak into her mind before he went on.

“There is a story,” continued Welsh, who purposely spun out what he had to say, knowing it was an unpleasant dose, and therefore to be mixed with jam. “There is a story by a classic author, whom I have read only in English, concerning a young man named Lucius who once saw a woman smear herself with an unguent, whereupon she flew out at the window, transformed into a bird. Lucius got hold of the unguent and applied it to himself and found himself to have become – not a bird by any means – simply an ass. Our good friend has been going through the same experience. You, Miss Inglett, have spread your wings, and Giles comes trotting after with a bray. You need not be afraid – he will not show himself again. He has looked on himself in a mirror, and is hiding his ears.”

“Do you mean, Mr. Welsh, that your nephew has deserted me?”

“The ass is just now so ashamed of himself, that he is in hiding. But no more about him. What about yourself? I place myself unreservedly at your disposal. I will reconduct you to Orleigh, by the next train, and telegraph for the carriage to meet us at the station.”

“I cannot go back – just now.”

“Have you a relation, a lady, in town who could receive you?”

“Lady Hermione Woodhead – my aunt.”

“Then I will take you to her at once.”

“I cannot go to her.”

“Then Mrs. Welsh will be happy to accommodate you. She is without a cook, but that don’t matter. She can make good pastry. Come along with me to Shepherd’s Bush. There will be rissoles for dinner to-day as we had joint yesterday; and we will buy a pair of soles on our way.”

“I cannot understand,” said Arminell. “I came here with your nephew. I suppose you are aware that he is my half-brother.”

“Half-fiddlesticks,” exclaimed Mr. Welsh. “My dear young lady, you have been carried off your feet by romantic fancies, which at a certain ingenious age inflate the head as carburetted hydrogen does a goldbeaterskin bag. Giles has been in the same condition, but I have pricked the bag and let out the nonsense. Now his head is in a condition of collapse. That which you were told about his parentage is all nonsense.”

“Do you mean – ” Arminell did not finish the sentence, she was interrupted by Welsh.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “I know all the circumstances. I know more about them than my sister Marianne supposes. Marianne is an utter liar, has a physical infirmity, I suppose, which prevents her tongue from being straight. It describes as many curls as a corkscrew on the St. Gothard line. She has about as keen a sense of truth as a Russian diplomatist, and as much bounce as General Boulanger. Now then – as you see from which direction the wind blows, and where lie the reefs, perhaps you will allow a pilot to come unsignalled on board, and turn your head off the breakers.”

“I have made a mistake – a fatal mistake,” was all that Arminell could say, dropping her hands at her sides.

“Those are precisely my nephew’s words – literally the same; which is not to be wondered at, because you have both fallen together into the same error. Come, I must help you out of your difficulties. What will you do? Go to your aunt? Return home? Or come to Shepherd’s Bush to rissoles and a pair of soles, fried or boiled as you prefer?”

“But where is Mr. Saltren? I ought to see him.”

“He will not show his face again. He is at the present moment like blancmange from which the isinglass has been omitted, in a condition of mental and moral imbecility.”

A tap at the door, and without waiting for an answer Giles Inglett Saltren entered, erect with firm step, and a resolute face.

CHAPTER XXXVI

A RALLY

Giles Inglett Saltren had left the cab at Cumberland Gate, when the momentary faintness had passed. He wished to be alone, in the fresh air, and with his own thoughts. His uncle had detained the cab till he saw that his nephew was better. He left him on a bench in the park and bade him remain there till his return from the interview with Arminell.

The young man felt the relief of being alone. The vibration of the carriage, his uncle’s voice, his own self-reproach, had, combined with the shock of the news of his lordship’s death, brought about the slight fit of unconsciousness. He was in that overwrought condition of nervous tension in which another touch would be insupportable; and Welsh’s finger was not light, he twanged the fibres in his nephew’s heart, not as if he were playing a harp with finger-balls, but as if he were performing on a zither with his nails. The air was cool; the bench on which Jingles was seated had not another occupant. The great open space in Hyde Park devoted to political meetings was sparsely peopled at that time in the morning; he was not likely to be disturbed, and the rumble of vehicles along Uxbridge Road and Oxford Street produced a soothing effect rather than the contrary.

A Frenchman was walking along the path before his bench with a walking-stick; he had found a bit of slate in the way, and with his cane he flipped it along a few feet, then stopped, and flipped it on to the grass; went upon the turf and flipped it back into the path. Then he sent it forward, past Jingles on his bench, and so on as far as Cumberland Gate, where the young man lost sight of Monsieur, and was unable to see whether he continued to drive the scrap of slate before him up Oxford Street in the direction of his haunts in Leicester Square, or whether he left it under the arch.

Till the Frenchman had disappeared, Giles Saltren did not begin to consider his own trouble. He could not do so till the bit of slate was gone beyond his range, with Monsieur after it. Watching the man was a sensible relief to him. When one has run, a pause allows the recovery of breath, and abates the pulsations, so did this diversion of attention serve to relieve Jingles, to lull the agony of remorse, and enable his mind to regain something of evenness and tone.

When a man has been struck on the head by a hammer, he falls. Jingles had received three stunning blows, and recovery could not be immediate. His sanguine hopes of living by his pen had been upset, and that was a blow to his self-esteem. Then his belief in his noble parentage had been knocked over. And lastly he had heard of Lord Lamerton’s death – and whether that were accidental or not, he could hardly doubt that he had brought it about, for his lordship would not have left his guests to go to Chillacot, had he not been impelled to do so by learning of the elopement.

There are moments in the lives of most of us when we come on new scenes that are epoch-making in our life’s history. I shall never forget as such my first view of Mont Blanc, from the Col de Balme, and of a portion of the moon’s surface through the Cambridge Observatory telescope, or the first sight of death. Some of these first sights are invested with pleasure unutterable, others with infinite pain; and of such latter are often those peeps within ourselves which we sometimes obtain.

What atmospheric effects, what changing lights, all beautiful, invest the outer landscape with magic, even where the scenery is tame. How rarely is it unpleasing to the eye. And it is the same when we turn our eyes inwards, and contemplate the landscape of our own selves, what glories of light flood all, what richness of foliage clothes all, how picturesque are the inequalities! How vast the surface to the horizon! And yet, it sometimes happens, not often, and not even to all, that a shadow falls over the scene and blots out all its comeliness, and then ensues a flare, a lightning flash, and we see all – no longer beautiful, but infinitely ghastly.

Saint Theresa, in one of her autobiographical sketches, says that she was shown her own self, on one occasion of introspection, not as she was wont to view it, but as it was in naked reality, and she could never after recall the vision without a shudder.

Who sees himself as he is? Who wishes to do so? Who would not be offended were you to exhibit to his eyes a picture of himself as he is? No one likes his own photograph, for the sun does not flatter. But no photographs have yet been taken of man’s interior self; if they were, no one would consent to look on his own; he would spend all his fortune in buying up the copies and destroying the plates.

We are accustomed to view ourselves as those do who stand on the Brocken, magnified a thousand fold, with rainbow haloes about our heads. I have known a little fellow, who reached my elbow, strut with infinite consequence and gesticulate with tragic dignity on the Brocken, before his own shadow projected on a cloud, nimbus-girded, and vast as the All-Father of Norse mythology. A breath of wind passed, and the phantom vanished. But we carry our Brocken shadow about with us everywhere, and posture to it, and look up to it with an awe and admiration that slides into worship; and very rarely does the cold east wind sweep it away. But there remains this consolation to the Brocken shadow worshipper, that when the phantom form disappears, nothing remains behind, and it is a satisfaction, a poor one, but still a satisfaction, when the blast has dispelled our ideal self before which we have bowed, to discover behind it simple nonentity. There would be disenchantment indeed, and a graver walk, and a more subdued voice, and a less self-asserting tone, but there would not be that exquisite, that annihilating horror that ensues when the scattering of the vapour discloses a reality the reverse at every point of what we had imagined.

In the Egyptian temples hung purple curtains embroidered with gold, and censers perpetually smoked before the veil, and golden lamps, ever burning, diffused a mellow light through the sacred enclosure. What was behind that pictured spangled veil, within the holy of holies? Sometimes a hippopotamus wallowing on straw – or a chattering crane – sometimes Nothing. We are engaged all our lives in the erection of magnificent temples about ourselves, and in embroidering gold-besprent curtains, and in the burning of frankincense, and in the kindling and feeding of lamps, in these tabernacles; and what is behind the veil? Do we know? Do we ever look? We paint and plate with gold ideal representations of the god within on the propylæum of our temple, but what resemblance does this figure bear to the reality? Do we know? Do we care to know? Will we not rather put out our eyes than compare them? If, by chance, a sudden gleam of sun, a puff of pure air, stir the curtain and reveal the mystery, with what haste we fly to duplicate the veils, to blind the windows, to nail the curtains to the gilded sideposts, and weight them with lead. How we redouble our prostrations, and make more dense the cloud of incense; how we elaborate our ceremonial, and when the hippopotamus within yawns, or the ibis chatters, we clash our symbals, boom our drums, peal our trumpets to drown the utterance of the god.