BAMBOOZLED.
Lord Lamerton was that day engaged in distributing prizes at a ploughing
match, about fifteen miles away from Orleigh.
“My dear,” said he to his wife before he started, “for goodness’ sake
come with me into the avenue, and give me the heads of what I am to
say.”
Report had it that his lordship got all his speeches from his wife, and
report was not far wrong in so saying.
“I’ll run up to Eggins,” he said, “and get him to give me some wrinkles
about ploughing. I know nothing concerning it.”
Thus primed, partly by one of his farmers and partly by his wife, his
lordship started for the ploughing match; and on reaching the ground
inspected the furrows with his glass to his eye, and repeated some of
the scraps of information he had gathered from Eggins.
After that came the dinner, and after the dinner the prize distribution,
and a speech from Lord Lamerton.
His lordship stood up, and coughed. He was not a fluent speaker, nor a
ready speaker; indeed he could not speak at all unless he had been given
time and opportunity to get primed. But he had a retentive memory, and
when allowance was made for hesitation, and repetition, and occasional
halts, his speeches were admitted to be not so bad as are the generality
of such performances. They read well; only it was a little irritating to
listen to them. The hearer never could be sure that his lordship would
not break down altogether. Speaking made him and his audience hot. They
perspired sympathetically. It made him uncertain what to do with his
legs, and those listening to his words found their attention drawn away
to his inferior members, and were kept in suspense as to what he would
do next with his extremities. Sometimes he endeavoured to stand on one
foot, and then he invariably lost his balance, and grabbed at the
table-cloth, or a lady’s bonnet to stay himself from falling. On such an
occasion he lost the thread of his discourse, and had to seek it in his
pocket-handkerchief, whilst those listening good-naturedly stamped and
rapped the table, and shrieked “Hear hear!”
Sometimes he curled one leg round the other in such a manner that to
recover himself he was obliged to face about, and he found himself
addressing the latter part of a sentence to the waiter and the tent wall
behind him, instead of the audience at the table. It was said that once
he put his foot into his plate on the table, but this was an
exaggeration; he caught himself about to do it and desisted in time.
How is it that the Englishman is so poor a speaker? I believe that the
language is partly the cause. The English tongue is so simple in its
structure that it runs out of the mouth faster than the ideas it is
supposed to express have taken shape in the brain. Consequently we
males, sometimes women even, say things before we have thought them out,
and then are embarrassed because the thought lags behind the word, like
the thunder after the flash.
In such a language as the German, however, the mind has to formulate the
sentence in all its ramifications and subsidiary articulations, before
it is uttered. The idea is kneaded, and squeezed into a shape and then
baked. A tap, and out of the buttered mould comes the sentence, compact
and complete, whereas, in English, the idea is not given time to set, it
is not even half baked, and then it is shaken out, and falls to pieces
as it appears; or, like an ill-set jelly, resolves into an insipid wash.
When Lord Lamerton rose to his feet, he proceeded to blow his nose
loudly, then he looked about him, and his face glowed redly. He caught
the eye of the Rector of Orleigh, and he said to himself: “Deuce take
the fellow, he will know whence I got this speech. He was discussing the
matter with my lady the other day.”
He arranged his legs as best he could to support his superincumbent
weight, and to make quite sure of not losing his balance laid his hand
on the back of a chair. Then he put the other hand into his pocket.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I am not the sort of man you should
have chosen to speak to you to-day, because——”
Interruptions of “No, no!”
“Because, if you allow me, I am not in the best of moods. I have had an
attack, a damned—I beg your pardon, a dastardly attack made on me in the
public papers, and I have been—I have been represented—that is,
represented as a monster of iniquity, one who is ruining the country,
and driving trade out of it.”
“No, no!”
“I was never more astonished and shocked in my life. I did think,
gentlemen and ladies, that, if there was one thing I cherished and
loved, and strove to live for it was—that is to say—it was my country,
and next to my country, my dear old—my dear old mother county.”
General emotion, and some of the ladies who had taken more than two
glasses of sherry felt the tears rise into their eyes. Every gentleman
kindled and stamped and said, “Hear, hear!”
“But,” continued Lord Lamerton, re-adjusting his balance, by putting one
foot between the rails of the chair, and the other on a hat of a
gentleman, that was on the floor near him, and removing his hand from
his trouser to his waistcoat pocket, “but, ladies and gentlemen, I will
pass from personal matters to the subject in hand.” (Then, to himself,
“Confound the rector, I can see by the twinkle of his eye that he knows
what is coming.”) “But, ladies and gentlemen, we are here assembled on
an august and interesting occasion, perhaps one of the most august and
interesting that could have arisen—I mean, I mean, a ploughing-match.
And this recalls me to the fact that one of our earliest English poets,
William Langland, who lived in the reign of Richard II., wrote an entire
poem on—what do you suppose? Ploughing. He entitled his poem, ‘The
Vision of Piers the Ploughman.’ And, what would you think gentlemen and
ladies, was the drift of this remarkable composition? We know that long
before, centuries earlier, Virgil wrote his ‘Georgics,’ in praise of
agriculture, but here, our English poet confined himself to one branch
of agriculture, and that, ploughing. And the author represents all
men—mark me—_all_ men, as ploughmen, all, from the king on his throne
and the parson in the pulpit, to the least among us all, as ploughmen
set to make our furrows in the great field of the world. And, ladies and
gentlemen, each has his own proper furrow to run, and he may make it
well, or make it badly, plough deep, or merely skirt the soil, plough
straight, or run a feeble, fluttering, irregular line, or he may even
fold his hands, and take a snooze in the hedge, and make no attempt to
plough.”
A pause: the gentleman whose hat had been converted into a footstool
recovered the crushed article from under the foot of the speaker, and
cast at him a melancholy, reproachful glance.
“I beg your pardon, ’pon my soul, I did not mean it. I did not observe
it.” This was said aside to the sufferer. Then after a complete
rearrangement of his attitude, with his legs very wide apart, like that
of the Colossus of Rhodes, Lord Lamerton continued, “Ladies and
gentlemen! I am much afraid that some of us—I will not say all—for I do
not believe it is true of all—I say some of us, and God knows, I include
myself, on looking back at our furrows do not find them as we should
have wished; do not derive, I mean, much satisfaction in the retrospect;
but—but—let me see. Yes!” He leaned both his hands on the table, so that
his back was curved, and his position was far from elegant. “But, ladies
and gentlemen, the broad fact remains, that we are all ploughboys
together, and we must take a lesson from these hearty good fellows we
have seen to-day, and in all we do and undertake, make our furrows
straight, and drive them deep.”
“Hear! Hear! Hear!” and much thumping and stamping; in the midst of
which Lord Lamerton sat down, and nearly missed his chair in so doing.
Then he leaned over to the rector, and said, “All my lady’s; ’pon my
soul, all. Never read a line of what’s-his-name in my life. She has—she
reads everything.”
Lord Lamerton returned to Orleigh by an evening train. The station was
at some distance from his place. Only when the new line was made would
he have a station near at hand.
On reaching the Orleigh road station, the master told him what had
occurred during his absence. His carriage was in waiting outside to take
him home.
“Bless my heart!” exclaimed his lordship. “You don’t mean to tell me
that Tubb’s son is dead, and that the old woman has not been found?
Here—” said he to the coachman, “set me down at the Chillacot turn, and
drive on. I shall walk home, after I have made enquiries. Deuce take it!
I wouldn’t have had this happen for all I am worth. Poor Tubb! He is a
workman and will feel the loss of his son, though the fellow was not
good for much—I know that I should be horribly cut up if anything were
to happen to my cub.”
He threw himself into the carriage, and continued his exclamations of
distress and wonder how it could have come about. “Macduff must have
gone to work clumsily. Bless the man, he is a machine.”
The carriage stopped.
“Shall I attend you, my lord?” asked the footman at the door, as he held
it.
“Attend me! What for? _Me!_ I’m going to enquire about the matter, then
I shall go on to Tubb’s cottage. Tell my lady not to wait dinner.”
He swung his umbrella, and walked away. He marched to the quarry where
had been Patience Kite’s cottage. He thought it possible that some one
might still be on the spot, and that there he would learn the latest,
fullest and most authentic particulars. That the old woman had been seen
crouched at her hearth, that the chimney had fallen upon her, and that
she had not been exhumed from the ruins, was to him inexplicable. When
he came out on the clearing where the ruins of the cottage stood, Lord
Lamerton was surprised to find it occupied by a crowd. A lantern was
slung to one of the principals of the roof, above the head of a speaker
who occupied a table that had been drawn out of the cottage. That
speaker was Mr. James Welsh. Lord Lamerton did not know him by sight,
only by reputation.
As my lord appeared on the scene, those there assembled shrank aside,
with a look of confusion and shyness. He listened for a moment to the
orator, and then proceeded to push his way through the throng, which
divided to allow him to pass; and, approaching the table, he said, “I
beg your pardon, sir; I have not the honour of knowing your name; but
you are making pretty free with mine. What is it all about?”
“You are Lord Lamerton, I presume?” said the orator, looking at the
dismayed faces of those within the radiance of the lantern. “The saying
goes that listeners hear no good of themselves. Perhaps it may be true
in this case.”
“I have not been listening, but I have caught a sentence or two; and I
have no idea of allowing anyone taking liberties with my name behind my
back. If you have anything to say about me, say it to my face. What is
all this about?”
“What is all this about?” repeated the orator. “His noble lordship, the
Right Honourable Giles Inglett, Baron Lamerton, asks, What is all this
about?” In a lower tone charged with oratorical irony, “_What_ is all
this about?” Mr. Welsh looked round on his audience. “Having shut up his
manganese mine, and reduced a hundred men to destitution, broken up
their homes, obliged them to wander over the face of the earth in quest
of work, without houses of their own, without bread to put into the
mouths of their children, forced to sell their poor sticks of furniture
down to the baby’s cradle—he asks, What is all this about? After having
torn down a house over the head of a poor widow, and bespattered her
grey hairs with gore, he asks, What is all this about? After having
deprived a father of his only child, and an orphan of her mother, he has
the effrontery—yes—in the face of his lordship I repeat the word, I
repeat it in the boldness which my righteous indignation gives me—the
effrontery to ask, What is all this about? Possibly, when Cain saw his
brother, his younger brother Abel, lying at his feet, with fractured
skull and crushed limbs, he also asked, What is all this about? I will
not pretend to know where his lordship has been all day; but I do say
that, as an Englishman, as a Christian, as a man, when he was about to
render desolate the heart of a father by taking the life of his only
son, and of a child by bereaving her of her mother, when he was about to
tear the roof off from over the head of the widow and the fatherless, he
should have been _here_, yes, here and not far away—Heaven knows
where—in what scene of riot and revelry, into which decent folk like us
would not venture to look.”
“Now come,” said Lord Lamerton, “this is all rubbish. I have been at a
ploughing match. I want to know what you are doing here. Who the deuce
are you?”
“My lord,” said the orator, “I am—I rejoice to say it—one of the People,
one of the down-trodden and ill-treated, the excluded from the good
things of life. My heart, my lord, beats in the right place. Where yours
is, my lord, it is not for me, it is for your own conscience to decide.
But mine, mine—is in the right place. I am one of the people, and my
lord, let me inform you that when you insult me, you insult the entire
people of England; you bespatter not me only, but the whole of that
enlightened, hearty, intelligent people, of whom I see so many noble,
generous specimens before me—you bespatter them, I repeat, my lord, you
bespatter them in the grossest and most unwarranted fashion—with dirt.”
“’Pon my soul,” interrupted Lord Lamerton, rapping on the table, “I can
make no heads nor tails out of all this. If you have anything against
me, say it out. If you want anything, tell it me plainly. I am not
unreasonable, but I’m not going to stand here and listen to all this
rigmarole.”
“Perhaps, my lord, you are not aware, that there are many grievances
under which the Public, the Public, my lord, are groaning. Shall I begin
with the lighter, and proceed to the graver, or reverse the process?”
“As you please. It is one to me.”
“Very well,” said Welsh. He looked round complacently on his audience,
and rubbed his hands. “His lordship, in all simplicity of heart, wants
to know what occasion he has given for this indignation. What occasion,”
with a chuckle, and those who could see his face and catch his tone
chuckled also. “What occasion,” with sarcasm, and his audience felt
their gall rise. “What occasion,” in a hollow thrilling tone, and the
crowd responded with a groan. “Shall we tell his lordship? We will, and
we will begin with some of the lighter grievances, heavy in themselves,
but light in comparison with the others. In the first place, what does
he mean by throwing open the grounds on a Tuesday, a day when the
public, as he knows, the hard-working public which needs relaxation and
the sight of the beautiful, cannot enjoy the boon? Is that, I ask, a day
when the shops are closed? Is it a day when the sons of toil in our
cities can get away from their labours and admire the beauties of
nature, and the charms of art? It is not. The grounds are thrown open on
Tuesdays, with almost fiendish malevolence and the cunning of the
serpent, that his lordship may obtain the credit of liberality, whilst
doing nothing to deserve it. The true public are excluded by the
selection of the day, but the gentle-folks, the parsons, the squires,
and all the do-nothings, to whom one day is as another, they can see
Orleigh Park on Tuesdays. If Lord Lamerton had in him any true humanity,
any sympathy for the tradesman, for the clerk, for the milliner and the
seamstress, he would open on—let us say Saturday.”
“Very well,” said Lord Lamerton, “I have no objection in the world,
except that it will give the gardeners more to do, picking up the papers
and scraps—henceforth the grounds shall be open to the public on
Saturdays.”
“But, my lord, are the pictures and statuary and other works of art to
be shown only to the aristocratic eye and are they to be carefully kept
within closed doors from the profane gaze of what you contemptuously
call—The Common People?”
“Not at all,” said Lord Lamerton. “I will order that the state
apartments be opened on Saturdays—though, Lord knows, above a
questionable Van Dyck, there are no great shakes in the way of pictures
there. Is that all?”
“That is not all,” proceeded Mr. James Welsh. “Lord Lamerton
innocently—I will not say, sheepishly—asks, Is that all? No, I reply,
and I reply as the mouth-piece of all present, as the shout of the
democracy of England. It is not all. It is very far from being all. Is
that all? he asks, standing before you, out of whose mouths he has
snatched the crust of bread, the staff of life. Is that all? When he
closes the manganese mine, and throws almost the entire population of
Orleigh out of employ, and scatters them everywhere, hungry, homeless,
forlorn.”
“Now, this is a trifle too extravagant,” said Lord Lamerton. “The mine
would have gone under my house and brought it down. Why, it would have
cost me twenty thousand pounds to rebuild the house.”
“You hear that! Twenty thousand pounds which might have been spent in
Orleigh is refused the people. Twenty thousand pounds! How many
able-bodied men are there in Orleigh? About two hundred. What might you
not have done with a hundred pounds each? What comforts might you not
have provided yourselves with? But his lordship buttons up his pockets.
Look upon yourselves, each of you, as defrauded of a hundred pounds. My
lord will bank his twenty thousand. He does not want it. He hoards it.
He fossilizes it. There is a fable about a dog in the manger which
snarled at the horses that wanted to eat out of that manger which was of
no use at all to the hound.”
Then Lord Lamerton raised his voice, and said, “My good friends, I don’t
believe you are so weak as to be gulled by these fallacies. Why should I
allow my house to be undermined and rattled down about my ears, if I can
help it?”
A voice from the throng shouted, “Good for trade.”
“Some one has said,” continued Lord Lamerton, “some one has remarked
that it would be good for trade. I dispute this. I deny it
energetically. I say that it would cost me twenty thousand pounds to
rebuild the place, but I do not say that—if ousted by the manganese
mine, I would rebuild it. Why should I? If I built on any rock, how
could I tell but that some vein of metal would again be found under it,
and then I might be driven away once more. Or if I built on clay, some
company might insist on exploring the clay for aluminium; or if I built
on gravel, it might be insisted on to under-dig me for coprolites, for
the formation of artificial manure. Why, I say, should I risk my twenty
thousand pounds when my very foundations are no security for the outlay?
I would say to myself: As there is no security any where, I will spend
my twenty thousand pounds in amusing myself on the Continent, on
personal jewellery—or God knows what selfish luxuries. Security of
property, unassailability of right of property, that is the basis of all
prosperity in trade. Touch property, and down goes trade with it. Look
at the Jews in past times. They had no security, so they hoarded, and
never spent a farthing they could not help. They did nothing for trade
with their wealth. Touch property, and no one with money will do other
than did the Jews. Touch property, and down goes trade.” Lord Lamerton
thumped the table. “Now look here, I don’t want to be hard on any one. I
have lost a great deal of money already on the manganese, which has not
paid for these five years, but has been worked at a dead loss. I don’t
see my way to lose more, and to endanger, moreover, the walls of my
house. That is plain sense. But as I say, I won’t be hard on any one. If
the miners cannot get work elsewhere, I’ll set them road-making. They
can cut a new road as soon as ever it is settled where the station is to
be, and hedge and stone it. That will cost me a thousand pounds, if it
will cost me a penny.”
“Just listen to this proposal,” shouted Welsh, who found that the plain
sense of Lord Lamerton was producing some effect. “You hear his
lordship’s magnanimous offer. He will take you honest, hearty, active
mining fellows and debase you to stone-breakers by a road-side. He has
had such experience in heart-breaking, that he thinks to set you a job
that commends itself to his fancy—stone-breaking. But let us pass from
this. I have not done with my noble lord yet. Not by any means. The last
of his misdeeds is not yet quite exhausted. I want to ask the Right
Honourable Baron Lamerton how it is that he is so sensitive about the
tumbling down of his own house, and so ready by the hands of his
Macduffs and other minions to tear down the walls of the widow’s
cottage? I ask him that. See—he is confounded, he cannot answer.” Welsh
looked round triumphantly. “Nor is that all,” he pursued; “I have
another question to put, to which also, I have no doubt, I shall meet
with silence only as an answer. His lordship who is so touchy about the
rights of property is, I suspect, only touchy about the rights of his
_own_ property. I have it on the best possible authority that he is
threatening to dispossess a man whom we all esteem, Captain Saltren, to
dispossess him of his house and land, a house built by his father and
repaired and beautified by himself. I believe I am not wrong in saying
that he has threatened to employ law against our valued friend, Captain
Saltren.”
A cry of “Shame, shame!”
“Yes,” pursued the orator, “it is shame. What was that his lordship said
just now about rights of property? Touch property, he insisted, and down
goes trade. Who is touching property. Who but he? Who lays his envious
grasp—he, Ahab, on the vineyard of the poor Naboth.”
Then the orator jumped off the table, and in a changed tone said to Lord
Lamerton, “I must be off and report this meeting. I’ve a train to catch.
Give you a leader on it, old cock. No offence meant; none I hope taken.
Both of us men of the world, and know how to live by it. I know as well
as you what is gammon, but gammon is the staple diet of the chawbacon.
Give us your hand.” He nudged the nobleman in the side. “Bamboozled, my
lord, eh? I am James Welsh. Pretty considerably bamboozled, eh?”