INTRODUCES THE READER TO VERY ARISTOCRATIC COMPANY.
It so happened that what servants call "a good place" was not so
difficult to find when Sally went to seek it, as it had been some years
before. The growing wealth of a portion of the nation was telling every
year with increased force on the demand for domestic servants; and at
the same time manufacturers were everywhere drawing more and more of the
female population into employments in the great industrial centres of
the Midlands. In any case, therefore, Sally Wanless would probably soon
have found a place of some kind in a gentleman's family; but, unknown to
herself, her good looks had already been working in her behalf. She had
attracted the attention of the housekeeper at the Grange one day that
the two had chanced to meet in a grocer's shop in Warwick. When Sally
went out the housekeeper asked after her, and told the grocer that she
was just in want of "a still-room maid," whatever that may be. The
grocer gave Sally a good character as far as he knew her, and said
further that he believed the girl wanted a new place. What the
housekeeper heard elsewhere also pleased her; and in due time Sally was
engaged at the, to her, fabulous wages of L10 per annum. Perhaps, had
Lady Harriet Wiseman known that the pretty girl who thus entered her
house in the humble capacity of still-room maid, was the daughter of
"that seditious old poaching scamp, Wanless," as the squires called
Sally's father, she might have vetoed her housekeeper's action. But that
finely-distilled aristocrat did not condescend to notice such trivial
matters as the coming and going of menials. She barely knew the names of
some of the oldest servants about the place, and when she had occasion
to speak to any of them--a thing she avoided as much as possible--gave
all alike the name of Jane. She viewed her domestic world from afar. She
was of the gods, and her menials were of the sons and daughters of men.
To her their lives were unknown; of their hopes and feelings she knew
less than she did of the varied dispositions of her dogs. They were
there to minister to her every want and whim, to bend the knee, bate the
breath, and lower the eye before her when she crossed their path, and if
they did these things silently as machinery, it was well. Her sole duty
was to find them food and wages, and she kept her contract. But if they
failed in one iota they were dismissed.
It would be unfair to suppose that Lady Harriet was an exceptionally
hard woman, because this was her relationship with her household. She
was indeed nothing of the kind. On the contrary, in some respects she
was a kind-hearted person enough, and would for example have turned away
her housekeeper on the spot, had she been made aware that the servants
were badly fed or uncomfortable in their bedrooms, or anything of that
sort. Sins of that kind affected the reputation of her mansion, and
jarred, moreover, on her sense of comfortableness. To have life flow
easily, to see and feel none of the roughnesses of existence--this was
Lady Harriet's ideal. For the rest--how could she help it if menials
were low creatures? They were born so, and it was for her comfort
probably that Providence thus ordered the gradations of society. She had
been heard, moreover, to plume herself upon the exceptionally good
treatment her servants got, and to declare that she knew it to be much
better than that of her sister, who was the wife of a lord bishop of a
neighbouring diocese, and a woman of fashion.
Lady Harriet was, in short, an average sample of the modern English
aristocrat. Nay, in some respects she was better than the average woman
of her class, for she was gifted with some touch of the shrewd brains
that had lifted her grandfather, the London clothier, to great wealth
and an Irish peerage. In another sphere, as the parsons say, she might
have distinguished herself as a woman of affairs, but she loved ease,
disliked trouble, and wrapped her mind up in the refinements proper to
high birth and breeding. First amongst these she placed exemption from
all the cares and duties of maternity, and from the worries of household
management. Her aim was not lofty, and even her ladyship had begun to
fear that somehow her life had been a failure. A weary look was often
seen on her face--visible to the meanest domestic--telling all who saw
it that luxury could not insure any poor mortal from care any more than
from disease and death. But cannot one trace the hideous grinning skull
beneath the skin of the fairest and loftiest in the land? Care comes to
all, and sorrow, and pain, and for years before Sally went to the
Grange, the mistress thereof had felt the worm gnawing at her heart.
For one thing, her husband, now a man beyond sixty, was rapidly losing
the little wits he had possessed. His life was to all appearance most
prosperous. To the envy of many, he had made much money through the
railway speculations of the preceding decade; and by material standard
of the time should have been supremely happy. But he drank and over-ate
himself, and his self-indulgences in these and other ways made him gouty
and diseasedly fat. His life had thus become a misery to himself and to
all around him, even before he had become really old; and now his memory
was failing him, a sottish stupidity was stealing over his brain, so
that it was with much difficulty that his wife could rouse him to attend
to the most necessary affairs of his estates. Peevish and
ill-conditioned when in pain, stupified with wine when well, and at all
times of a dreary vacuity of mind, this pillar of the State, wielder of
men's votes, arbiter of parish fates and men's fortunes, was not a
lovable man to live with. To outsiders he might be an object of pity or
scorn; but to his wife! Ah, well, the servants said she looked worried.
Let it pass.
And yet had this been all she might have been in a fashion happy, for
she could turn off much of the ill-humour of her husband on his servants
by simply avoiding him. Other troubles, however, were coming thick upon
her, and making her look as old as the Squire, although she was nigh ten
years younger. Three children of the five she had borne were alive--two
daughters and a son. Of course the son, being also the heir, was made
much of, fawned on by mother and menial alike, and equally, of course,
he grew up a remarkable creature. Who has not known such without longing
for a whip of scorpions, and a strong arm to wield it? One daughter had
married a soldier--a showy man of good family but small fortune, who
sold out, became stock-gambler, and bankrupt in the brief space of
eighteen months; and then bolted to Australia to try sheep-farming with
a few hundreds given him by his friends to get rid of him. He had left
his wife and three children to the care of his mother-in-law. The eldest
daughter--eldest also of the family--was slightly deformed, and had
never left home, though some poor curates had cast longing looks at her,
hoping perhaps, that the money and influence she would have might be the
means of bringing them preferment. But they were not men of family, and
Lady Harriet would have none of them. The deformed daughter was left
otherwise to her own devices; and was probably the happiest in the
house, as she certainly was the gentlest. These were small troubles too,
and Lady Harriet could not afford to make herself long unhappy over
them; but it was otherwise with those of her son.
This pampered darling of his mother, this remarkable youth whose leading
idea was that the world and all that was therein had been created
expressly for him--if, indeed, he had ever stopped in his career of
selfish lust to form an idea so definite--this youth of many privileges,
before whom the path of life was rolled smooth and carpeted, on whom the
sun dare not shine too freely nor any wintry storm beat untempered, was
now causing his mother more agony than she ever imagined she could bear
and live. She felt she was wronged somehow in having so much sorrow by
one she so deeply loved. Had she not done everything for him all his
life, given him all he asked, made the whole household his slaves,
forbidden his masters to task his brain with too many studies, poured
handfuls of pocket-money into his lap, and in all ways treated him like
a demi-god? Yes, yes; she knew that no mother could have done more, felt
it in her heart as she reviewed the past, and yet had not this precious
boy been stabbing her to the heart every day of his life? Lady Harriet
felt that the world was out of joint.
Others, less blind, will say that this nurture would have destroyed the
noblest of natures. On a commonplace mind like Cecil Wiseman's its
effect was disastrous. The young man was, about the time of Sally
Wanless's entry on service at the Grange, some twenty-four years of age,
and handsome enough to look upon. When he liked his manners were
engaging, and his conversation not without shrewdness. But its range was
limited to matters of the stable. He had no acquaintance with literature
outside the sporting papers and some filthy English novels. French he
had never learned to read. He shone more in the stable than in
drawing-rooms, and understood the philosophy of horse jockeys, or racing
touts, better than the difference between right and wrong. If he had a
pet ambition it was to "make a pot of money" on a horse, and if he had
not been the heir to a great estate he might have distinguished himself
as a horse-dealer, that is, had he not come to the treadmill before he
got the chance.
The social position to which he was born saved him the trouble of
choosing a profession, and from the grasp of the law, but it did not
prevent him from being a criminal worse than many a poor wretch in the
dock. A commission had been bought for him some years before in a
regiment of dragoons, and by means of money he was now a captain, but
there was little about him of the soldier. When not bawling on a race
course he was lounging about the clubs of Pall Mall, playing billiard
matches for high stakes, or losing money at cards with the
freehandedness of a gentleman of fashion. What leisure these high
occupations left him was devoted to the society of loose women, by whom
his purse was just as freely emptied.
Naturally a career of this kind cost much, and soon Lady Harriet was
driven to her wits' end to find her son the means he demanded, and at
the same time to hide his extravagance from his father. The old man was
growing stupid, but not on the side of lavishness. On the contrary, he
clung to his money the more tenaciously, the more he felt that, and all
other earthly goods slipping from him, and woke to snappish
inquisitiveness when his name was wanted at the bottom of a cheque.
For a time Cecil's mother smuggled considerable sums for her boy through
the household accounts, and by pinching herself in the matter of new
clothes and jewels, managed to keep him afloat. But soon his
wastefulness went far beyond the range of such petty expedients. From
hundreds his losses grew to thousands, and she was in despair. Again and
again did she beseech her darling to be careful, to restrain himself, to
have pity on her grey hairs. She might as well have prayed to the church
steeple. Cecil abused her, and told her that he would have money, get it
how he might; if she did not give it him the Jews would, and it would be
the worse for her. Sometimes she thought she must tell his father, but
the courage and truth of heart were alike wanting for a course so open.
Once she threatened Cecil with this dreaded alternative, and he wrote
back that he did not see why she could not put his father's name to a
cheque, and be done with it. And he spoke of the old man's grasping
tendencies in terms unfit for transcription.
Verily, Nemesis was overtaking this poor woman, and bitter care had
become her familiar friend, though she knew hardly the fringe of her
son's iniquity. He weltered in a pool of corruption, caring for nobody,
loving no one but himself, despising natural affection, trampling it
under his feet with the unconsciousness of a demon, and crying for
money, money, as a horse leech seeks for blood. Such are some of the
characteristics of the family under whose roof the daughter of Thomas
Wanless now found herself, a stranger, bewildered with the splendour
around her, and the signs of a wealth greater than her imagination had
ever conceived.