SHEPHERD’S BUSH.
“Here we are,” said Mr. Welsh, “The Avenue—the most stylish part of
Shepherd’s Bush, as it is of New York. You sit still in the fly whilst I
go in and make an explanation to her ladyship. I’ll take that bottle of
Noyeau you have been nursing; I have the canister of prawns in my
coat-pocket; I am sorry before purchasing it that I forgot to ask you if
you preferred Loch Awe salmon. What is your favourite tipple? You will
hear from my wife that we have no cook. The last we got became
inebriated, and we had to dismiss her. We have been without one for a
fortnight. Tryphœna—that is, her ladyship—upon my word I have been so
mixed up with aristocrats of late, that I find myself giving a title to
every one I meet. What was I saying? Oh! that her ladyship has all the
cooking to do now? You sit quiet. No fumbling after your purse; I pay
the cabby because I engaged him. We of the Upper Ten, under present
depression, do not keep our own carriages and livery servants—we hire as
we want.”
Under all Welsh’s rollicking humour lay real kindness of heart. Arminell
felt it, and drew towards this man, so unlike any other man with whom
she was acquainted, or whom she had met. She knew that he was perfectly
reliable, that he would do everything in his power to serve her, and
that a vast store of tenderness and consideration lay veiled under an
affectation of boisterousness and burlesque.
How is it that when we do a kindness we endeavour to minimise it? We
disguise the fact that what we do costs us something, that it gives us
trouble, that it draws down on us irksome responsibilities? It is not
that we are ashamed of ourselves for doing kindnesses, that we think it
unmanly to be unselfish, but rather that we fear to embarrass the person
who receives favours at our hands.
Mr. Welsh had really sacrificed much that day for Arminell. He was to
have met an editor and arranged with him for articles for his paper. He
had not kept his appointment; that might possibly be resented, and lead
to pecuniary loss, to some one else being engaged in his room. Editors
are unforgiving. “Yes,” said Mr. Welsh that same afternoon, when he
found that what he dreaded had occurred, “a Domitian is possible still
in our costume, but the tyrants confine their ferocity to aspirants
after literary work. They cut off their heads, they put out their eyes,
and they disjoint their noses wholesale.”
Presently Welsh put his head to the cab door and said cheerfully, “All
right, I’ve broken it to her ladyship. She don’t know all. You are a
distant and disowned relative of the noble house of Lamerton. That is
what I have told her; and I am your guardian for the time. I have
explained. Come in. The maid-of-all-work don’t clean herself till the
afternoon, and is now in hiding behind the hall door. She spends the
morning in accumulating the dirt of the house on her person, when no one
is expected to call, and she scrubs it off after lunch.” He opened the
cab door, and conducted her into the house. “I will lug the slavey out
from behind the door,” he said, “if you will step into the dining room;
and then she and I will get the luggage from the cab. Your room is not
yet ready. Go in there.” He opened the door on his left, and ushered
Arminell into the little apartment.
“Excuse me if I leave you,” he said, “and excuse Mrs. Welsh for a bit.
She is rummaging somewhere. We have, as she will tell you presently, no
cook. The last—” he made pantomimic signs of putting a bottle to his
lips. Then he went out, and for a while there reached Arminell from the
narrow front passage, somewhat grandly designated the hall, sounds of
the moving of her luggage.
A moment later, and a whispered conversation from outside the door
reached her ears.
“It’s no use—there are only scraps. How can you suggest rissoles? There
is no time for the preparation of delicacies. If we are to have them, it
must be for dinner. I did not expect you at noon, much less that you
would be bringing a visitor. Your telegram arrived one minute before
yourself.”
“Not so loud,” whispered James Welsh, “or she will hear. You must
provide enough to eat, of course. Send out for steak.”
“Nonsense, James; it is lunch time already. She must manage with scraps,
and them cold scraps are wholesome. What doesn’t poison fattens.”
“You couldn’t, I suppose, have the scraps warmed, or”—somewhat louder,
with a flash of inspiration—“or converted into a haricot?”
“How can you talk like this, James? Go on, suggest that they shall be
made into a mayonnaise next. To have hot meat means a fire, and there is
none to speak of in the kitchen.”
“Only dead scraps! My dear Tryphœna, she belongs to a titled family, a
long way off and disowned, you understand, but still—there is a title in
the family and—scraps!”
“What else will you have, James? Had you been home yesterday for dinner,
there would have been joint, roast; but as you were not, I ate cold
meat. Now there are only scraps.”
“Perhaps if you were to turn out the Noyeau jelly in a shape, Tryphœna,
it would give the lunch a more distinguished look.”
“Scraps of cold boiled mutton and Noyeau jelly! No, that won’t do. The
jelly must be warmed and melted into the shape, and take three hours to
cool.”
“I wish I had taken her to the Holborn Restaurant,” groaned Welsh; “what
difficulties encumber domestic arrangements!”
“Without a cook—yes,” added his wife.
“Do go in and welcome her,” urged Mr. Welsh.
“I cannot in this condition. You know I have no cook, and must attend to
everything. The girl has been impudent this morning, and has given me
notice.”
Whilst this discussion was being carried on, Arminell tried not to
listen, but the whispers were pitched so high, and were so articulate
that scarce a word escaped her.
Then Mr. Welsh whispered, “Do lower your voice, Tryphœna,” and the pair
drifted down the passage to the head of the kitchen steps, and what was
further discussed there was inaudible.
Arminell looked round the room. Its most prominent feature was the
gas-lamp with double burner and globes—the latter a little smoked,
suspended from the ceiling by a telescopic tube that allowed just
sufficient gas to escape at the joints to advertise itself as gas, not
paraffin or electric fluid. This room was the one in which, apparently,
Mrs. Welsh sat when she had a cook, and was not engrossed in domestic
affairs. Her workbox, knitting, a railway novel, bills paid and unpaid,
and one of Mr. Welsh’s stockings with a hole in the heel, showed that
she occupied this apartment occasionally.
The door opened, and Mrs. Welsh entered, followed by her husband. She
was a stout lady with a flat face, and a pair of large dark eyes, her
only beauty. Her hair was not tidy, nor were all the buttons and hooks
in place and performing their proper functions about her body.
“How do you do?” she said, extending her hand; “I’m sorry to say I have
no cook; nothing is more difficult than to find cooks with characters
now-a-days; ladies will give such false characters. What I say is, tell
the truth, whatever comes of it. My last cook had a glowing character
from the lady with whom she lived in Belgrave Square. I assure you she
was in a superior house, quite aristocratic—carriage people; but I could
not keep her. I did not myself find out that she drank. I did not
suspect it. I knew she was flighty—but at last she went up a ladder,
sixty feet high, and could hardly be got down again. It was in an
adjoining builder’s yard. The ladder leaned against nothing, it pointed
to the sky, and she went up it, and though a stout and elderly woman,
looked no bigger than a fly when she had reached the top. Won’t you sit
down? or stay—let me take you up to the parlour. We will have the table
laid directly for lunch. Mr. Welsh does not generally come home at this
time of day, so I was unprepared, and I have no cook. The ladder began
to sway with her, for she became nervous at the top, and afraid to come
down; quite a crowd collected. Do take off your things. Your room will
be ready presently. In the meantime you can lay your bonnet in the
drawing-room. I am short of hands now. The steps are rather narrow and
steep, but I will lead the way. I’ll see to having water and soap and a
towel taken to the best bed-room presently, but my servant is now making
herself neat. None of the police liked to go up the ladder after my
cook. The united weights at the top, sixty feet, would have made it sway
like a bulrush, and perhaps break. This is the drawing-room. Do make
yourself comfortable in it and excuse me. My father and mother were
carriage people. There he is in his uniform, between the windows, taken
when he was courting my mother. You will excuse me, or the girl will
spread a dirty instead of a clean tablecloth for lunch. Dear me, the
blinds have not been drawn up!”
Then Mrs. Welsh departed. All men and women trail shadows behind them
when the sun shines in their faces, but some women, in all conditions of
the heavens, drag behind them braid. It would seem as if they had their
skirts bound to come undone. As in the classic world certain females
were described as being with relaxed zones, so are there females in the
modern world in a perpetual condition of relaxed bindings. If Mrs. Welsh
had lived in a palæozoic period, when the beasts that inhabited the
globe impressed their footprints on the pliant ooze, what perplexity her
traces would now produce among the palæontologists, and what triumph in
the minds of the anthropologists, who would conclude that these were the
footprints of the _homo caudatus_, the missing link between the ape and
man, and point in evidence to the furrow accompanying the impressions of
the feet; and Mrs. Welsh always did wear a tail, but the tail was of
black binding, sometimes looped, sometimes dragging in ends. As Arminell
followed Mrs. Welsh up the stairs, she had to keep well in the rear to
avoid treading on this tail.
On reaching the drawing-room, Arminell laid her bonnet and cloak on the
sofa, and looked round the room as she looked about that below. The
latter had been dreary to the eyes, the former had the superadded
dreariness of pretence.
Houses that are uninhabited are haunted by ghosts, and unoccupied rooms
by smells. The carpet, the curtains, the wall-paper, the chintz covers,
the cold fire-place, send forth odours urgent to attract attention, as
soon as the door opens. They are so seldom seen that they _will_ be
smelt.
The drawing-room in the Avenue was small, with two narrow windows to it;
the walls were papered with an æsthetic dado of bulrushes and water
weeds, on a pea-green base; above that ran a pattern picked out with
gold, a self-assertive paper. Above the marble mantelshelf was a
chimney-piece of looking-glasses and shelves, on which stood several
pieces of cheap modern china, mostly Japanese, such as are seen outside
Glaves in Oxford Street, in baskets, labelled, “Any of this lot for 2d.”
Against the wall opposite the windows were two blue Delft plates, hung
by wires. Between the windows was the miniature of the father of Mrs.
Welsh, once a carriageman, but not looking it, wearing the uniform of a
marine officer, and the languishment of a lover. He was represented with
a waxy face, a curl on his brow, and either water or wadding on his
chest.
Upon the table were books radiating from a central opal specimen glass
that contained three or four dry everlastings, smelling like corduroys;
and the books in very bright cloth had their leaves glued together with
the gilding.
Unhappy, occupied with her own trouble though Arminell was, yet she
noted these things because they were so different from that to which she
was accustomed. Perhaps the rawness of the decoration, the strain after
impossible effect, struck Arminell more than the lack of taste. She had
been accustomed to furniture and domestic decoration pitched in a key
below that of the occupants, but here everything was screwed up above
that of such as were supposed to use the room. Elsewhere she had seen
chairs and sofas to be sat on, carpets to be walked on, books to be
read, wall papers to be covered with paintings. Here even the sun was
not allowed to touch the carpet, and the chairs were to be made use of
gingerly, and the fire-irons not to be employed at all, and the grate
most rarely. After Arminell had spent half-an-hour in this parlour, the
whole house reverberated with the boom of a gong; and next moment Mrs.
Welsh came in to say that lunch was ready. She had in the meantime
dressed herself to do the honours of the meal; had changed her gown,
then brushed her hair, and put on rings. Nevertheless she lacked finish.
The brooch was not fastened, and threatened to fall, and her dress
improver had not been accurately and symmetrically fitted to her person.
“Welsh,” she said, “has departed. He is very sorry, but business calls
must be attended to. Never mind, I’ll do what I can to entertain you. I
will tell you the end of the story of my cook up a ladder. Ah!” she
exclaimed on reaching the foot of the stairs—“is that your umbrella
fallen on the floor? You stuck it up against the wall, no doubt. The
gong has done it, shaken it down with the vibration.”
The lunch was plain, but the good lady had made an effort to give it the
semblance of elegance. She had sent out for parsley to garnish the cold
mutton, and for a dish of lettuce and another of watercress, and had set
a just uncorked bottle of Castle A Claret on the table beside Arminell’s
plate.
“You’ll excuse if we help ourselves and dispense with the girl,” said
Mrs. Welsh. “Have you had much to do with servants? I have applied to
the registry offices for a cook and can’t get one; they object to
Shepherd’s Bush, or else want to redeem their characters at my expense.
I have applied at the hospital for a convalescent, but if I get one, she
will not be up to much work, and besides will have been so pampered in
hospital, that she will not accommodate herself to our fare, and will
leave as soon as she is well. If we were carriage people, it would be
different. Servants won’t remain in a situation where a carriage and
pair are not kept. They think it immoral. Were your parents carriage
people? And did your mother have much trouble with her servants? And, if
I may ask, where did she go to for her cooks?”
“My mother died shortly after my birth, and my father recently.”
Arminell spoke with a choke in her voice. “I have not had time to get
mourning. I must do some shopping this afternoon.”
“I can show you where you can get things very cheap. You take a ’bus
along Goldhawk Road; it costs but twopence if you walk as far as
Shepherd’s Bush Station, otherwise it comes to threepence. I suppose you
have kept home for your father? Did you meet with impertinence from
servants? But I dare say you kept your carriage. If you don’t do that
they regard you as their equals. They divide mankind into castes—the
lowest keep no conveyances, the middle have one-horse traps, and the
superior and highest of all keep a pair and close carriage. My parents
were carriage people—indeed, my father was an officer in her Majesty’s
service. My husband will some day, I trust, have his equipage. His
sister is very intimate with people of distinction. I don’t mean
carriage people only, but titled persons, the highest nobility. She was
a bosom friend of the dowager Lady Lamerton, she told me so herself. I
almost expect the Lamerton family to call on me. Should they do so
whilst you are here, I shall be happy to introduce you. By the way—your
name is Inglett, you must be a distant connexion of the family. James
said you were related to a noble family, but that they did not receive
you. In the event of a call, perhaps you would prefer to remain in the
dining-room. My husband’s nephew is called after his lordship, Giles
Inglett, because my lord stood godfather to him at the font. I assure
you the intimacy between Marianne and the family is most cordial. I
wonder what Mrs. Tomkins over the way will say when their carriage stops
at my gate! What a pity it is that the British nobility should be the
hotbed of vice.”
“Is it?” asked Arminell listlessly.
“Indeed it is. I know a great deal about the aristocracy. My
sister-in-law moves in the highest circles. I read all the divorce cases
in high life, and I have an intimate friend who is much in great
houses—in fact, she nurses there. Persons of good family when reduced in
circumstances become trained nurses. This lady has nursed Sir Lionel
Trumpington, and I could tell you a thing or two about his family she
has confided to me—but you are not married. She had the charge of chief
Justice Bacon’s daughter, who was a dipsomaniac, and so had the _entrée_
into the best families, and has told me the most extraordinary and
shocking stories about them.”
After lunch, Mrs. Welsh said, “There now, go up to the parlour, and sit
there an hour, till I am ready. I must see that the girl does your room,
after which I will put on my walking clothes. I will take you where you
can get crape, just a little crumpled and off colour, at half-price. We
will walk to the railway arch and so save a penny.”
Arminell sat by herself in the drawing-room; the sun was streaming in,
but Mrs. Welsh allowed the blinds to remain undrawn. She stood
hesitatingly with hand raised to draw them, but went away, leaving them
rolled up, a concession to the presence of a visitor.
Arminell’s mind turned from her own troubles to the consideration of the
life Mrs. Welsh and those of her social grade led. How utterly
uninteresting, commonplace, aimless it seemed; how made up of small
pretences, absurd vanities, petty weaknesses, and considerable follies!
A few days ago, such a revelation of sordid middle-class triviality
would have amused her. Now it did not. She saw something beside all the
littleness and affectation, something which dignified it.
Everywhere in life is to be observed a straining after what is above;
and the wretched drunken cook scrambling up a ladder that led to
nothing, blindly exemplified the universal tendency. As among the plants
in a garden, and the trees of a plantation, there is manifest an upward
struggle, so is it in the gardens and plantations of humanity. The
servant, as Mrs. Welsh had said, is not content to serve where no
servant is kept, and changes to a situation where there is a
pony-chaise; then feels a yearning in her that fills her with unrest
till she has got into a sphere where there is a one-horse brougham, and
deserts that again for the house that maintains a landau and pair. In
the lower class an effort is made to emulate the citizens of the middle
class, in dress and arrangement of hair, and mode of speech; and in the
middle class is apparent protracted effort to reach the higher; or if it
cannot be reached, to hang on to it by a miniature and a sister-in-law,
and a trained nurse friend. Is this ridiculous? Of course it is
ridiculous to see cooks scrambling up ladders that reach nowhere, but it
is infinitely better that they should do this than throw themselves into
the gutter. And so thought Arminell now. Mrs. Welsh may have been
absurd, but behind all her nonsense beat a true and generous heart, full
of aspiration after something better, and a cheerful spirit of
hospitality and self-sacrifice. No. Arminell saw the struggle in the
woman’s face about the blinds, and respected her. But when she was gone,
the girl stood up, went to the windows, and drew down the blinds, to
save from fading Mrs. Welsh’s new gaudy carpet.