Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 701

'Yes; you were a little fellow when I first took you in hand as your governess, and you learnt to love me so well that your father asked me to be your mother.'

'Was that why you married him?' inquired the lad, as he brought her a cup of tea. 'Didn't you care for him for his own sake? You always seemed to.'

'Yes, since you could observe; but not at first, Fred – not at first. I had no heart for any one or anything just at that time but mayhap for a little child like yourself, who was motherless and needed tenderness. It was just such an uncared-for flower which alone could have saved me then, for I had gone through a bitter sorrow, born of my own caprice and foolishness; and through it I lost what could never be mine again. I must have died of despair, had I not set myself the task of working out my wrong-doing in atonement, if not to the person – that was impossible – at least to some one of God's creatures who might need me; and it was at that very time I took up the paper containing your father's advertisement for a governess. It served me for a suggestion and a field wherein I might find that for which I sought. I had never been a governess; but I determined to become one, notwithstanding the opposition of my family, who could not comprehend, and strongly disapproved of my taking such a step; but I carried my point through our doctor telling my mother she was wrong to oppose me, as my mind needed distraction after all I had gone through; and that my choice, so far from being reproved, ought rather to be commended, since I had preferred it to the injurious remedy of a round of amusements, so invariably prescribed for distraught spirits; which need instead the healthy medicine of some reasonable duty to restore them to their former mental composure. Thus I became free to answer your poor father's advertisement, and was accepted by him for the post, oddly enough. And that is how I became your mother, Fred. I have tried to fulfil my trust; perhaps that has atoned.'

'Atoned for what?'

'Ah, never mind! I was only a young girl then, vain and imperious, because I found I possessed a most dangerous power – the power of making whom I would love me – a precious gift, which I did not know how to value rightly until – But never mind. I hate recalling by-gones. Life is such a perpetual stumbling up hill with most of us, it is no use retarding our journey by useless retrospection; so when I am inclined to indulge in vain regrets, I always think of that heart-stirring line of the poet's, "Act, act in the living present;" and therefore, Fred, please to cut me another slice of bread and butter and give me another cup of tea, my child;' and she laughed at the application she had given to her words, which was commonplace enough to destroy all their poetry.

The way in which the boy watched and waited on her, and the look of quiet amusement and interest on his face as she spoke, shewed how thoroughly she had won his heart, and was indeed his mother, sister, friend, all in one. Yes; whatever might have been the fault of her girlhood, her subsequent years had fully atoned for it; she had used her gifts rightly in the case of her step-son, and his father, who had died about a year ago, blessing her for her unwearied devotion, and the happiness she had given him, leaving her the undisputed guardianship of his only child.

As soon as their meal was concluded she went into the adjoining room, divided by folding-doors from the one in which they had been sitting. It bore no traces of a previous occupant like the other, save for a few perfectly executed pictures which hung above the mantel-piece. She had her travelling bag in her hand as she entered, which she was about to deposit upon a table, when her eye caught sight of one of the pictures, and the bag fell to the ground as she started forward to examine the pencil-sketch.

'Impossible!' she exclaimed; and she gazed around the room helplessly, to see if she could by any means find aught therein that would throw a light upon the mystery before her; but all was void: tables, chairs, wardrobe, and dressing appliances were what met her gaze; while, like one fascinated, she continued standing before the sketch as if spell-bound.

'Are you coming soon?' inquired Fred, knocking, who, notwithstanding his disinclination to free converse, could never bear her long out of his sight when they were together.

'I will be with you in a moment,' she returned, recalling herself with no slight effort.

'What is the matter?' he exclaimed as soon as she joined him. 'You look as white as a ghost; you are over-tired, I suspect: had you not better get to sleep as soon as you can?' he inquired with concern, as he noticed that she was suffering from an amount of nervous exhaustion that alarmed him.

'It is nothing,' she returned: 'the journey was fatiguing;' and then her eye stole round the room with suppressed interest.

'Is that the pretty girl you wanted me to admire, Fred, just now when I was too hungry to oblige you?'

'Yes. Is she not a picture? What I should call a "stunner!"'

'When shall I ever knock the school-boy out of you, Fred?' she cried, laughing. 'You are a long way off from that refined phraseology I am labouring to inculcate. But you are right in this case. It is a beautiful picture, of what I should call a detestable character. She is, as you remark, a "stunner." There is not the least soul in her face; nothing but proud self-consciousness, as if she were saying: "I am a beauty, and I know it." Poor thing! she is to be pitied, if that is a true picture, and it looks as if it were.'

'How is she to be pitied? I don't see that at all.'

'Because you can't see yet, Fred, from your brief study of her face, that a girl like that may learn to feel at some time or another; and when she does, the lesson is generally such a painful one that few have the courage to rise above it. The artist who drew her was in no lenient mood; he could detect nothing in her but the stern facts which possibly made him suffer,' she added in an undertone, accompanied by a long-drawn sigh. – 'I wish we had a book to read; try the bookcase; it may be unlocked.'

He did as she bade him; and shook his head negatively as he went first to the bookcase and then to the piano.

'"The gentleman," as our landlady calls him, is a cautious man evidently,' said Mrs Arlington. 'Well, we must not find fault with him, for his amiability towards his landlady has secured us a night's repose. I wonder if he is the artist of these pictures? I am ashamed of my curiosity, but I have a wish to know. Could you be diplomatic, Fred, and find out for me?'

'Why not ask the landlady straight out?'

'I dislike to appear so inquisitive, as it is of no moment to us who he is.'

'I don't know that. If he is an artist, he would no doubt be much obliged to us for asking. Act on that presumption. You admire the pictures, and may possibly wish to order some, or to sit for your portrait.'

'How magnificent you are, Fred! We look a likely pair – don't we? – to order pictures or sit for portraits! A hundred guineas or so are nothing to us; are they, my poor boy? Rein in your fancy. I am afraid of you in this respect, when you are once fairly launched on your own resources, as I cannot always be at your elbow, to control your lavish ideas, and our means are not large.'

'Well, I was only suggesting, you know, a ready mode of solving your difficulty about finding out who is the artist of these pictures,' said the boy as he wished her good-night.

As soon as he was gone, Mrs Arlington went cautiously round the room making a minute survey of every article, with a look of intense interest in her face, as though she were searching for a clue she could not find. Every vase on the mantel-piece she subjected to a close scrutiny, to see if possibly a card or old envelope lay concealed therein. But everything was dumb, and refused to bear the least witness as to the name or calling of the previous occupant. Quite foiled, she sat down and fell into a profound reverie, which continued until the landlady knocked at the door, and entered to inquire if there was anything more she wanted, and when she would like her breakfast in the morning.

'Thank you; nothing more to-night; and breakfast at nine. By the way, have you any other lodgers in the house?'

'Yes, ma'am; the first floors are taken by a lady and gentleman for a month, leastways so they told me when they came; but the lady has got a maid who is that vexing I can't abear her; and I would be glad to give them notice to go if I could be sure of another party for the same time; but you see, ma'am, we who live by letting can't afford to have our rooms empty.'

'You cannot let me have these rooms, you say, beyond a couple of days?'

'No, ma'am. Mr Meredith – the gentleman – takes them by the year on the condition that they are always to be ready for him when he writes; and only this afternoon he sent me a letter to say he would be here on Wednesday.'

'Mr Meredith, did you say, was his name? An artist, I suppose? if I may judge by the pictures and the easel.'

'Dear, no, ma'am!' exclaimed the landlady, as if a discreditable imputation had been cast upon the character of her lodger by the question. 'He's got no call to earn his living, not he! He's got a place in the country, which he has let for I don't know how many years, and he keeps himself free to come and go as he likes. Such a fine noble-looking gentleman as he is! He took these rooms of me some eight years back, when I first married and set up housekeeping, because he said he liked the quiet of the place; and he keeps them by the year; but he lets me take in lodgers when he is away, so long as I don't bring children into the rooms. He has been here for a whole year at a spell; and then again he is off, and maybe we won't see him for months at a time. He is a most excellent lodger as ever was; and his man a nice civil, handy fellow, with none of them airs and graces as these minxes of girls give themselves; but then, "Like master, like man," say I, and I've always found it so.'

'And your first floors, you tell me, you would be glad to re-let, were you sure of another tenant?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'Very well then; as I have no maid likely to disturb you, I will take them for a month certain, if I can have them on Wednesday morning; and I will further pay you the week's rent you will have to forfeit by giving the present lodgers notice to quit summarily; but remember I only take them on this one condition. It is now Monday night, and I must move in on Wednesday morning.'

'I'll manage it for you, ma'am, even if I get a summons for it.'

'You shall be no loser in any case; I will pay all expenses;' and she drew out her purse to deposit a week's rent in advance.

'Never mind it, ma'am; you look a lady as one may trust, and I'll see that you are in the rooms on Wednesday morning. I can easily put the blame on Mr Meredith, if they become very unpleasant, by saying he takes the rooms by the year; they are not to know whether he may not want the first floors this time.'

Mutually satisfied with their bargain, landlady and lodger parted for the night. On the face of the latter could be discerned a compression of the lips, which bespoke a sudden resolve she was bent upon carrying out, even though it failed in the end to prove successful.

MYSTICAL PLANTS

Human cunning and human credulity have dowered with mystery certain plants which are worthy of being considered the most beautiful and passive of created objects. One plant at least has been said to utter shrieks on being torn from the earth, and to have avenged the violence by causing the death of him who removed it. This plant was the mandragora of the poets, the mandrake of Scripture, a species of the Solanæ or Nightshade tribe; the belief in whose qualities as a sedative or a charm was as old as the days of the childless Rachel. Indigenous to the East, where probably its uses as an anodyne and soporific were early known to the initiated, it may be that in order to enhance the wonder of its effects, and prevent the extirpation of the root by its too common use, miraculous powers were imputed to it, and superstition hedged it round with fabled terrors.

The evil reputation of the plant procured it subsequently the name of Atropa mandragora, by which our oldest botanists distinguish it; a name borrowed from the most terrible of the Fates, Atropos, and since transferred to its relative Atropa belladonna (Dwale, or 'Deadly Nightshade'). So potent and valuable were the medical uses of the root at a time when few anodynes were known, that the ancient Romans made it the subject of a weird ritual, without which they would have deemed it impious to have taken it from the earth. The operator stood with his back to the wind, drew three circles round the root with the point of a sword, poured a libation on the ground, and turning to the west, began to dig it up.

The root of the mandrake, a plant with a tap-root, frequently forked, as we see that of the radish, and covered with fibrous rootlets, was easily convertible into a grotesque likeness of the human form. In the times of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, little images made of mandrake roots, called abrunes, were imported in large numbers from Germany, and found a ready sale in England. The fable of the wondrous powers of these vegetable idols was easily accepted by our superstitious ancestors; and the pedlers who travelled about from place to place with cases of them drove a brisk trade. Sir Francis Bacon had them in his mind's eye when he wrote: 'Some plants there are, but rare, that have a mossy or downy root, and likewise that have a number of thread-like beards, as the mandrake, whereof witches and impostors make an ugly image, giving it the form of a face at top of the root, and leave those strings to make a broad beard to the foot.' It is to the credit of the old herbalists Gerard and Turner, that they both essayed, without fear of consequences, to dig up and examine for themselves the dreaded mandrake, and lost no time in publishing the fallacy of the weird stories told of it.

Saturnine and poisonous plants were those most affected by necromancers and witches – plants dwelling in shady groves like that described by Dryden in Œdipus:

Nor tree nor plant
Grows here but what is fed with magic juices,
All full of human souls, that cleave the bark
To dance at midnight by the moon's pale beams;

or on wild heaths, like the potent moonwort, which opened locks and unshoed horses; or amidst solitary churchyards and old ruins, like the deadly nightshade and fetid henbane, hound's-tongue, and digitalis. Plants with dusky or sad-green leaves, and lurid-coloured flowers for the most part, and an ill-favoured soporific scent. Nature herself distinguishes hemlock from all others of the umbelliferous tribe by the pink or purplish spots with which its tall smooth stem is variegated. It grows by hedgerows and in waste places; its large-winged, finely-cut leaves and white umbels of flowers give no indication of its dangerous nature; but its speckled cuticle betrays it, and prevents its being rashly meddled with by rustic herb-gatherers and children.

Wolf's-bane or monk's-hood, a herb of Saturn, sacred to Hecate, and which has since figured in the floral calendar of witchcraft, had its first name from the use the Anglo-Saxons made of the juice, in which they dipped their arrows, and literally kept the wolf from the doors of their wattled huts. It was and is a brave herb for all evil purposes. Its root resembles the tail of a scorpion; its flowers, of lurid purple, have the form of a helmet; features sufficiently significant for those who sought such dangerous simples. The very scent of the flowers on some sensitive persons has produced swooning and loss of sight for several days; others it has deprived of speech; and there are instances on record of persons who have eaten of the root being seized with all the symptoms of mania. Imagine such powers in the hands of a reputed witch, malevolent enough to exercise them for reward or malice, in days when medical science itself was not without faith in magic! Dreadful as are its proved effects, the monk's-hood is a common plant in cottage gardens, where we have seen it flourishing three feet in height, crowned with its handsome spikes of purplish flowers, and little children playing with them.

Black hellebore had also a place in the category of mystical plants; the Romans removed the root with the same ceremonies as were observed in taking up the mandrake, with this distinction, that prayers were humbly offered to Apollo and Æsculapius for permission, and the operator turned to the east instead of to the west, on commencing to dig it up.

No wayside plant is more simple in appearance than the vervain, the 'holy herb' of so many nations. Its pale lilac spike of minute flowers scarcely attracts attention, except from those who know its ancient history and uses. In the sun-worship of the ancient Persians, their magi carried branches of vervain in their hands when approaching the altar. So did the pagan priests of ancient Greece and Rome; and ages subsequently, the Druids in the forest temples of Gaul and Britain. With the Greeks and Romans, it was never absent from their religious rites. The plant was long considered to be good against witchcraft and the bites of venomous creatures; and being under the dominion of Venus, was a great beautifier; and when used in the baths of delicate women, made a fair face and took away freckles. It were 'perhaps well,' as Lord Bacon would say, to notice the agreement between various writers as to the cephalic virtues of the plant, and its remedial efficacy in taking away headache, and the 'pin and web,' or clouds and mists which darken the optic nerve. From medical to magical uses was but a step in those days, sometimes a very short one; and accordingly we find a spray of vervain used as a charm to keep houses and persons from harm, and especially from evil spirits and witchcraft. A relic of the later superstition lingers in the rhyme —