ON FLOWER-POTS.
Saltren moved with his mother to London, and went with her into
lodgings. Mrs. Saltren had insisted on taking Thomasine with her, and
incurred accordingly the additional expense of maintaining her where she
was not wanted. Thomasine was not likely to be of use till the Saltrens
got a house of their own, and Giles did not choose to take one till he
had got into a situation and was able to see what his prospects were
likely to be. As lady’s-maid to Mrs. Saltren, Thomasine was, of course,
no good at all, or likely, to employ that serviceable Yorkshire word
again, “to frame” as one.
“Whatever you do,” said Mrs. Saltren, “mind that we live in the West
End. Why don’t you go to Shepherd’s Bush, near the Welshes? A man of my
brother’s political and literary position must have hosts of
distinguished acquaintances, and a woman of Tryphœna’s accomplishments
and beauty must have the _entrée_ into the highest circles. If we lived
near them we might get good introductions. If we don’t get settled to my
liking shortly in a fashionable quarter of town, I do not know but that
I may return to Orleigh.”
“Return to Orleigh!” echoed the son, “why, mother, I thought that your
desire had been to leave it. Besides, we have not a house there any
more.”
“I know we have not,” answered his mother, “but what _we_ may be
without, it is possible that _I_ might secure.”
“I do not understand,” said Jingles.
“I think,” said Mrs. Saltren, “that it is proper the money paid by the
railway company for Chillacot should be put into the bank in my name and
not in yours.”
“I have already told you, mother,” said Giles, “that I will not touch it
myself. I consider it yours, not mine.”
“But I have not the disposal of it.”
“Indeed, mother, you have; it is entered in your name, not in mine,
already. I have no account at the bank at all.”
“How can you talk nonsense,” said Mrs. Saltren; “you have all your
savings—quite a fortune—which you got at the Park whilst tutor to young
Giles.”
“My dear mother, I had not the time to accumulate a fortune. I was tutor
there for eighteen months and what I saved was a hundred and twenty-five
pounds, and that sum is already disposed of.”
“Disposed of! What have you done with it?”
“I have purchased an annuity for some one.”
“For whom? for me?”
“No, mother, not for you. You have the purchase money of Chillacot.”
“For whom then? I insist on knowing.”
“For a man who has been crippled, and is unable to earn his livelihood.”
“What nonsense! What absurd fit of heroic charity has come over you?
Since you went to town in that strange, hurried fashion at the time of
your father’s death, you have been altered from what you were before, as
different as canister beef from that which is fresh from the ox.”
Giles said nothing in self-defence.
“But I insist on knowing on whom you have thrown this money away.”
“I do not wish to tell—on a man who has the nearest of claims on me.”
Mrs. Saltren considered, then coloured, looked mortified, and did not
prosecute her inquiries. “Well,” she said petulantly, “a fool and his
money is soon parted. I am very glad I insisted on having the Chillacot
purchase money removed from your fingering. Please to ring for my
lady’s-maid.”
“Lady’s-maid, mother?”
“For Thomasine. I want to speak to her. You may leave the room. Here we
have been in town a week and the Welshes have not called. If we are to
be more solitary here than we were at Chillacot, I shall go back to
Orleigh. Ring for my lady’s-maid.”
Mrs. Saltren was, indeed, becoming tired of London. Her opportunities
for boasting were confined to talks with her landlady and her landlady’s
visitors.
It did her soul good, said the woman of the lodgings, to hear of lords
and ladies; it was as comforting and improving as the words that dropped
from the lips of the Reverend Hezekiah Bumpas. She felt it down to her
toes.
Mrs. Saltren indulged her in this particular to her heart’s content. She
knew many persons of distinction. Lady Hermione Woodhead, who lived in
Portland Place, had once been her intimate friend, till they differed
about Lord Lamerton’s marriage. What had made them differ? It did not
become her to speak, but his lordship had set his affections elsewhere,
she could not name in what direction, and had been inveigled by the
Woodheads into an alliance with their family. It was a mistake, an
entanglement managed by designing women.
Lord Lamerton was ill after his engagement, so was another person who
must be nameless. When Lady Lamerton died, then his first flame had
married—without love, and in his desperation he married again. Of course
after that first estrangement she and Lady Hermione never spoke.
She—Marianne Saltren—had passed the Earl of Anstey’s family repeatedly
without recognition. If her landlady doubted her word, let her accompany
her to Hyde Park, and when the Anstey family drove by, she would see
that they took no notice of each other. After what had happened it could
not be otherwise. But though Mrs. Saltren could talk what nonsense came
into her vain head to the lodging-house keeper, she was disappointed
that she could not to a larger circle, disappointed at the little notice
she attracted in town. It was most strange that the Welshes took no
notice of her. She feared that they were going to treat her with
coldness and not introduce her to the distinguished circle of
acquaintances in which they moved.
I knew a young girl who was given lessons in oil-painting before she had
learned how to draw, and a somewhat similar inversion of order went on
in the instruction of Thomasine Kite, whom Marianne Saltren began to
train to be a lady’s-maid before the girl knew the elements of domestic
service, having previously been a farm-maid, feeding pigs and scouring
milk-pails.
Thomasine did not take readily to instruction, least of all could she
acquire deference towards her mistress; and Mrs. Saltren was irritated
at the freedom with which the girl accosted her, and at the laughter she
provoked in Thomasine when she, Marianne, assumed her grand manner.
Moreover, she discovered that her landlady had been questioning the girl
in private as to the circumstances and former position of her mistress,
and Mrs. Saltren was afraid that the revelations in the kitchen might
cause some of her stories to be discounted. Fortunately for her, the
broad dialect of Thomasine was almost unintelligible to the landlady,
and the girl had the cunning of the uneducated, which leads them to
evade giving a direct answer to any question put to them.
Giles Inglett Saltren was unaware till he came to town that Arminell was
settled in the house of the Welshes. He knew that his uncle had
undertaken to arrange matters of business for her, and to look out for a
house and companion for her, but he had refrained from asking questions
about her, from motives of delicacy. Indeed, he had scarcely written to
Mr. Welsh since his return to Orleigh. He was resolved not again to seek
his assistance on his own behalf, but to find a situation for himself.
When, however, he came to town, and met his uncle at an office in the
city, he learned from him where Arminell was, and at once urged on Mr.
Welsh the mischief which would ensue should Mrs. Saltren discover that
Miss Inglett was alive and their lodger. Welsh saw that, and undertook
to prevent his wife from calling on Mrs. Saltren, and promised to keep
his eye open for an opportunity of placing Arminell elsewhere. Marianne
Saltren shared the prevailing opinion that Miss Inglett was dead and
Giles was specially anxious lest she should discover that this was not
the case. If she were to see Arminell, would it be possible to control
her tongue? Would she not be eager to publish the fact that the
Honourable Miss Inglett was a guest of her brother and sister-in-law?
It had been Saltren’s intention to keep away from Arminell, but under
this alarm he felt it his duty to see her and precipitate her departure
from Shepherd’s Bush. His mother could not be kept indefinitely away
from her brother’s house. One word from his mother might frustrate
Arminell’s intention, upset her plans. From Mrs. Saltren the report
would rapidly spread. Mrs. Cribbage had ears like those of the trusty
servant on the Winchester escutcheon, and without the trusty servant’s
padlock on the tongue. If once the truth got wind, to what difficulties
would the Lamerton family be put, now that they had accepted and
published the death of the girl!
The author of this novel was involved many years ago in an amateur
performance of “Macbeth,” but the sole part he took in the tragedy was
to sit in the midst of the witches’ cauldron, and ignite the several
coloured fires which were destined to flame, as scale of dragon, tooth
of wolf, liver of blaspheming Jew, were cast in. But when, to Locke’s
lovely music, the imps and witches danced around the vessel, then it was
his function to explode a so-called flower-pot, which is a roaring,
spirting composition of fire-work. Unfortunately, at the first chorus
and circular dance, the blazing flower-pot tumbled back upon the author,
concealed within the depths of the cauldron, and, to save himself from
an _auto-da-fé_ end, he enveloped the flower-pot in a rug, and screwed
it up tight and sat on it. So the scene ended, and, believing that the
fire-work was completely extinguished, he then unfolded the rug. No
sooner, however, did the air reach the smothered fire-work, than it
bounced, and roared, and blazed with doubled vigour. It threw out
sheaths of flame, it shot off Roman candles, it ejected a score of
crackers, and filled the entire stage with smoke, and very nearly burnt
down the theatre.
Saltren dreaded something of this sort happening now. The fire-work of
scandal had, indeed, been muffled up and smothered, when first it began
to fizz; but—who could tell?—if it got air again, even through a
pin-hole, it would burst into furious conflagration and defy all efforts
made to suppress it.
The writer of this story takes this occasion of apologising—if apology
be necessary—for the introduction, on more than one occasion, of his own
adventures, his own opinions, and, if you will it, his own prejudices
into the course of his narrative. He will be told that the author should
disappear as a personality, just as the actor merges his individuality
in that of the character he represents. He must treat himself as a
flower-pot and wrap himself up in the _garde-robe_ of his _dramatis
personæ_. I might, of course, have told that story of the flower-pot in
the cauldron as having happened to Jingles at Orleigh, but then I could
never have told that story again at a dinner-party, for my guest, next
but one, would say, “Ah! that happened to my brother, or to my uncle, or
to an intimate friend;” and how can I deny that Jingles did not stand in
one of these relations to him?
Montaigne, the essayist, was a sad sinner in the introduction of himself
into his prose. The essay on which he was engaged might be on the
history of Virgil, or Julius Cæsar, but there was certain to creep into
it more of Montaigne than of either. The younger Scaliger rebuked him
for it, and, after having acquainted the world with the ancestry of
Montaigne, he adds, “His great fault is this, that he must needs inform
you, ‘For my part I am a lover of white wines or red wines.’ What the
Devil signifies it to the public,” adds Scaliger, “whether he is a lover
of white wines or red wines?” So, but with more delicacy, and without
the introduction of that personage whose name has been written with a
capital D, the reader may say to the author, What the blank does it
signify what you think, what you like, what you did, whether you ever
sat in a cauldron, whether you ever had a flower-pot fall on your head,
whether you sought to extinguish it by sitting on it?—go on with your
story.
But a man’s personality—I mean my own—is like that piece of pyrotechnic
contrivance, a flower-pot. He wraps it up, he smothers it under fold
after fold of fiction; but, fizz! fizz! out it comes at last—here,
there, on all sides, and cannot be disguised. There is, to be sure, that
subterfuge, the use of the first person plural in place of the first
person singular, but is it not more vainglorious to talk of We, as if we
were royalties, instead of plain and modest I?
When Giles Saltren arrived at the house in the Avenue, Shepherd’s Bush,
Arminell flushed with pleasure, sprang from her seat, and with
outstretched hand started to receive him; then she checked herself, and
said, “I am glad to see you. Oh, Mr. Saltren, I hear nothing of Orleigh,
of dear, dear Orleigh! I have the heartache for news. I want to hear my
own tongue wag on the subject nearest my heart, and to listen to tidings
about the people I knew there. I am like a departed soul looking back on
familiar scenes, and unable to visit them and old friends, and unable to
communicate with them. I am Dives, and Orleigh is to me Paradise. You
have come thence with a drop of fresh news wherewith to cool my thirsty
tongue.”
“I am Lazarus indeed,” said Saltren, “but out of Paradise. Ask me what
you will about Orleigh, and I will answer what I can.”
“There is one matter that teases me,” she said; “I promised a poor
fellow, before I left, that he should have employment at a small wage,
and I do not suppose he has had what I undertook to give him.”
“Do you mean Samuel Ceely? He is provided for.”
“How so?”
“He has come in, unexpectedly, for a little money, wherewith an annuity
has been purchased.”
“I am glad of that. And—my mother and Giles, have you seen them?”
“Yes, I called to say farewell to both. Lady Lamerton looks worn and
sad, and your dear brother is out of spirits; but this could not be
otherwise.”
Arminell’s eyes filled, and she went to the window and dried her tears.
“Miss Inglett,” said the young man, after she had been given time to
recover herself, “I have only ventured to call on you for one reason,
that I might impress on you the necessity of leaving this house. My
mother is in town, and she must not be allowed to know or even suspect
that you are alive and here.”
Arminell did not speak for some time. Presently she said, “Do not let us
talk about anything at present but Orleigh. I am parched for news. I
daresay there is nothing of tremendous importance to relate, but I care
for little details. How was the house looking? Were the trees turning to
their autumn tints? The Virginian creeper, was that touched with
crimson? How are Mr. and Mrs. Macduff? I could not abide them when I was
at Orleigh; I could be thankful now for a sound of their delightful
Scotch brogue. What is Giles going to do? dear little boy! I would give
a week’s sunlight for a kiss from his moist lips—which formerly I
objected to. And mamma—has she been to the Sunday School since—since—?”
Then Arminell’s tears flowed again.
After another pause, during which the young man looked through the
photographic album on the table, Arminell recovered herself, and said,
“Do not suppose for a moment that I regret my decision. My conscience is
relieved. I am beginning to acquire fresh interests. I am now making a
frock for baby. I am godmother to Mrs. Welsh’s child, and have come to
be very fond of him. But there—tell me something about Orleigh, and
Giles, and my mother—about any person or animal, or shrub or tree there.
And, oh! can you obtain for me some photographs of the place? I should
cherish them above everything I have. I dream of Orleigh. I think of
Orleigh, and—I shall never see dear Orleigh again.”
“I will come another day, Miss Inglett, and tell you all that I can, but
to-day I must urge on you the vital necessity of at once leaving this
house.”
“Your aunt can hardly get on without me.”
“She managed formerly without you, she must do the same again.”
“But there was no baby in the house then. And, besides, the new cook who
was to have come has failed. The last went up a ladder sixty feet high,
and it took several constables and a sergeant to get her down.”
Arminell laughed through her tears.
“Miss Inglett, consider what the difficulty would be in which her
ladyship would be placed should it become known—”
“Mrs. Saltren and her lady’s-maid!”
The door was thrown open by the maid of-all-work, and she ushered into
the drawing-room the person of all others—except perhaps Mrs.
Cribbage—whom it was desired to keep from the house, and she was
followed by Thomasine Kite.
Verily, the flower-pot was not smothered. It was about to fizz and puff
again.