indifferently. It was of the usual stamp of lodging-house apartment,
furnished according to the taste and means of those who take to letting
for a livelihood. A dismal horse-hair suite were the chief articles of
furniture, supplemented by others which stood out in contrast against
the horse-hair background--a good piano, an harmonium, a bookcase with
glass doors filled with a choice selection of the best works, and an
easel. On the walls hung several good paintings, one of which was the
portrait of a beautiful young girl.
'Some artist must live here, I imagine,' said the lad, as he went from
picture to picture examining them, finally stopping before the portrait
of the young girl, that hung immediately over the chair in which Mrs
Arlington sat.
'I daresay,' she replied weariedly, as though it were a speculation
which could not possibly concern her; and too glad of repose to be
roused to any sense of curiosity upon the subject.
'Just look at this, mother; it is so pretty.'
'I cannot, Fred; I am too exhausted to turn round. I cannot possibly
think of or look at any thing until I have had a cup of tea.--Ah! here
it comes. Go and pour it out for me, and never mind the picture. But I
forget. I am unfeeling and unnatural to tell you not to mind, for you
are just at an age when young girls are beginning to possess a powerful
attraction for you; but you must put the pleasing delusions out of your
head until you have passed your examination for Sandhurst; that is the
move-in-chief towards which all your energies must now be directed. I
long to see your poor father's wishes fulfilled; and shall not feel
quite contented until you are gazetted into the army; then my trust
will have been accomplished. How many years is it now, Fred, since you
first became my child?'
'Ten.'
'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--
Vervain and dill hinder witches of their will.
St John's wort, by virtue of its dedication to the saint, whose
birthday, according to the religious calendar, is the anniversary
of the summer solstice, was said to have the power of putting to
flight ghosts, demons, and even Satan himself. Jeremy Taylor, in his
_Dissuasions from Popery_, enumerating certain specifics used by the
priests to discover the presence of the evil one, adds, 'and specially
St John's wort, which therefore they call "Devil's Flight,"' which is
an anglicised rendering of the old pagan name _Fuga Demonium_, which
Pliny tells us it received from its property of scaring demons; and
retained in more modern times in allusion to its supposed virtues
in the cure of distraction and melancholy. The Irish peasant at the
present day firmly believes in the powers of St John's wort which
his Church originally endorsed; and on the vigil of the saint's day,
gathers bunches of the bright yellow, starry, almost scintillating
flowers, and after sprinkling them with holy water, hangs them at the
bed's head, and over the door, with a firm faith in the potency of the
plant to preserve him and his household from evil spirits, fairies, and
witchcraft. Armed with this floral charm, the wanderer through the most
solitary places is as safe as on the fire-lit hill, amidst the youth of
a whole village, who are dancing and making merry, and leaping through
the fire to Moloch--without an idea that the revels of the sainted
summer's night once meant the worship of the sun-god Belus. In days
when the occult powers of certain plants were universally believed, it
made part of the champion's oath, that he carried not about him any
_herb_, spell, or enchantment, by which he might procure the victory.
Nowadays, the mistletoe generally affects old crab and apple trees,
and the boughs of beech and ash; but in so-called Druidical times it
appears to have flourished in the oak-groves, which these strange
worshippers are said to have made their temples, and under the name of
the 'All-heal plant,' was, we are told, severed from these trees with
solemn ceremonies. The mystery of its appearance--its aërial place of
growth--the pale green antlered branches putting forth their pearly
berries in honour, as it were, of the high festival of the winter
solstice, 'the mother of the nights'--probably conduced to render it
a miraculous plant. Long after Druidism was but a name, the plant
retained its healing and protective properties for the populace, whose
teachers strengthened their superstitious reverence for it, by calling
it _Lignum Sanctæ Crucis_ (wood of the holy cross). Amulets were made
of it, and worn round the neck, to defend the wearer from enchantment
and other dangers; and in more modern times, as a charm against the
falling-sickness and the plague.
The yew, like the oak, was sacred to the Druids. Branches of it were
anciently carried by the mourners at funeral processions, and were
thrown into the grave before the coffin was lowered. The awe in which
it was originally held is traceable in the traditions yet extant of
its dangerous and even deadly properties. The beautiful crimson drupes
scattered amongst its dark-green linear leaves were reputed poisonous
if eaten. In clipping the tree, the greatest care was necessary that
the operator might not inhale its dangerous fumes; while to sleep under
the shade of its widespread branches, ragged and dusky as a raven's
wing, was to risk sickness and even death.