Arminell, a social romance/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PRIVILEGED CLASS.
"Is it not a sad reflection," said Lady Lamerton on the return of his lordship, "that the men who influence others are those of one idea, in a word, the narrow? Because they are borné in mental vision, ignorant and prejudiced, they throw the whole force of their wills in one direction, they become battering rams, and the harder their heads the heavier the blows they deal. If we have knowledge, breadth of vision, charity, we cease to be certain, are no longer bigots, and our power of impressing others fails in proportion to our liberality. I feel my own incompetence with Arminell, but not with Arminell alone. I am conscious of it when taking my Sunday class. I dare insist on nothing, because I am convinced of nothing. I am so much afraid of laying stress on any religious topic, which has been, is, or may be controverted, that I restrain myself to the explanation of those facts which I know to be indisputable. I teach the children that when Ahasuerus sent young men with letters riding on dromedaries, these animals had two humps; whereas when Rebekah lighted down off her camel to meet Isaac, her creature had but one hump. And I console the dying with the last bulletins of the Palestine Exploration Fund determining the site of Ezion Geber. You know, my dear Lamerton, that there are in the atmosphere nitrogen which is the negative gas, oxygen which is positive, and carbonic acid which is deleterious to life. I suppose it is the same with the spiritual atmosphere breathed by the soul, only the oxygen is so hard—nay, to me so impossible to extract, and I am so scrupulous not to communicate any carbonic acid to my scholars, that I fill the lungs of their souls with nitrogen only—a long category of negatives."
"What you teach matters little. The great fact of your kindness and sympathy and sense of duty remains undisturbed, unassailable," said Lord Lamerton.
"My dear," said her ladyship, "I wish I could be of more use than I am; but I am like Mrs. Quickly in the 'Merry Wives of Windsor,' who held commissions simultaneously for Doctor Caius, Slender and Fenton, and wished each and all success in his suit for sweet Anne Page. I am not a power, or anything appreciable, because my judgment hangs ever in suspense and flickers like a needle in a magnetic storm. When I hear our dear good rector lay down the law with thump of cushion in the pulpit, I know he is thoroughly sincere and that sincerity is the outcome of conviction. All this emphasis would go were he to read such-or-such an article in the Westminster Review, because his conviction would be sapped. But, without his conviction would he be of much use? Would he carry weight with his rustic audience? They value his discourses as the Israelite valued the strong blast that brought quails. If his mighty lungs blew nothing but vagueness, would they care to listen, or if they listened would they pick up anything where nothing was dropped? I am sure that the great leaders of men were men of one idea. Look at the apostles, illiterate fishermen, but convinced, and they upset heathendom. Look at Mahomet, an epileptic madman, believing absolutely in only one thing—himself, and he founded Islam. Calvin, Luther, St. Bernard, Hildebrand, all were men of one idea, allowing of no Ifs and Buts to qualify. That was the secret of their strength. It is the convex glass that kindles a fire, not that which is even."
"The narrow can only influence the ignorant."
"The narrow will always influence the bulk of men, for the bulk of mankind is ignorant, not perhaps of the three R's, but of the compensating forces which keep the social and political systems from flying to pieces."
"Thank heaven, Julia, the country is not in the hands of fanatics to whirl her to destruction."
"How long will it remain so? There are plenty of hot-brained Phaethons who think themselves capable of driving the horses of the sun, and who have not yet learned to control themselves. To my mind, Lamerton, our class is the fly-wheel that saves the watch from running down at a gallop, and marking no progress at all. In the chronometer the balance-wheel is made up of two metals with different powers of contraction and expansion, one holds the other in check, and produces equilibrium. The wheel oscillates this way, that way, and acts as a controlling power on the mainspring and modifies the action of the wheels. Our class is so constituted with its double character, is so brought into relation with all parties in politics, is so associated with every kind of interest in the country, that it is swung this way, that way, is kept in perpetual vibration, and acts as an effective regulator on the violent forces in the political and social world—forces confined, and strong because confined, forces which keep the machine going, but which uncontrolled would wreck it."
"I dare say you are right, Julia, I have no doubt the social classes are all as, and where they ought to be, superposed as geologic strata, but wonderfully contorted, it must be allowed, in places. To change the subject—what have you said to Arminell about that fellow for whom she pleaded?"
"Samuel Ceely?"
"Yes, that is his name."
"He is a poor creature," said Lady Lamerton, "a cripple."
"If I remember right he was a scamp at one time and got into one or two scrapes, but what they were, 'pon my soul, I do not remember."
"He is harmless enough now," said Lady Lamerton. "I have him on my list of those for whom I pay into the shoe-club, and the clothing club, the blanket and the coal clubs. The rector's wife said it was a pity he should miss the advantages, which he must do, as he is too poor to pay, and he needs them more than many who receive them. So I have him on my list of those for whom I pay. I have told Arminell that he can work in the glen. That requires to be done up, it has been neglected for so many years. The paths and the summer-house, the benches, the waterfall, are all out of order. Giles may like to play there. Arminell will pay the man out of her allowance, it is her own wish. And now, Lamerton, I also will change the subject, and that to one which I am not sure I ought to mention on a Sunday. I am glad for one thing, that we do not go to town for the season, as it will enable us to show some civility to the country people, the squires and the parsons. Really, when we have the house full of our friends, we cannot do it, the groups do not amalgamate, they have so few subjects in common. I have thought of a garden-party for Wednesday week. You will mind and make no engagements for that day."
"I will book it—to be at home on Wednesday week." Lord Lamerton seated himself, and the light of his wife's reading lamp fell on his face.
"Are you not feeling well?" she asked. "You look pale, dear."
"It is nothing," he replied. "I may have caught a slight chill in the avenue, as no doubt the dew is falling, and there are no clouds in the sky. The night is very still and lovely, Julia. No—I think not—no, I cannot have been chilled there. I do not know what it is. Well—I will not say that either. To tell you the whole truth, I am worried."
"Worried? About what?"
"I am uneasy, for one thing, about Arminell. She has got queer fancies in her head. Giles also is not well; and there is something further—in itself nothing, but though a trifle it is distressing me greatly."
"What is it?"
"The leaders of my choice pines, which I had planted about the grounds, have been maliciously cut off. The thing has been done out of spite, and to hurt me, and yet the real sufferers are yet unborn. A hundred years hence these trees would have been admired for their stateliness—and now they are mutilated. I shall be dead and forgotten long before any tree I have put in comes to size. I am pained—this has been aimed at me, to wound me. I fear this has been done because I have refused to allow my house to be undermined."
"Who can have done it?"
"I do not know. If I did know, I would not prosecute. That is one of the privileges of our privileged class—to bear injuries and impertinences without resentment. I am hurt—I am hurt greatly. The matter may be a trifle"—his lordship stood up—"but—after all I have done for the Orleigh people—it does seem unkind."
Lady Lamerton put out her hand, and took that of her husband. "Never mind," she said; "he who did it will come to regret it."
"The injury does not touch the Lamertons alone," said his lordship; "we throw open the park and gardens every Saturday to the public, and we allow Bands of Hope, and Girls' Friendly Societies, and Choirs, and all sorts of agglomerations of men to come here and picnic in our grounds and strew them with sandwich papers and empty ginger-beer bottles, and cut their initials on the park gates and trees. A century hence the trees that have been mutilated would have grown into magnificence, and overshadowed heaven knows what—political, social or religious holiday-taking companies and awkward squads."
"Put in some more pines, next autumn."
"What with rabbits and the public, planting is discouraging work. It costs a lot of money, and you get no satisfaction from it. My dear Julia, it is one of the privileges—no—drawbacks of our class, that we expose a wide surface to the envious and the evil-disposed. They can injure us in a thousand ways, whereas our powers of self-protection are unduly limited. If we try to save ourselves, we do ourselves injury, as pigs when swimming cut their own throats with their fore-claws."
"Never mind that. Whom shall we invite—or rather, whom must we omit? I must send out cards of invitation to our garden party at once."
"O, bother the garden party," said his lordship wearily. "You and I hardly ever get a quiet evening together, so now that we have one, let us forget the world outside and some of these exacting and embarrassing duties we owe it. Really, I envy those who, belonging to a less conspicuous sphere, have their cosy evenings at home, their privacy and peaceful joys. We are forced to live in publicity, we have to fill our house with guests, lay ourselves out to entertain them, keep a French cook for them—I am sure boiled mutton and caper sauce would content me,—stock our cellars for them, keep hunters and preserve the game for them. Upon my word, Julia, we are not suffered to live for ourselves. A selfish existence is with us impossible. No monks or nuns ever gave up half so much, and lived so completely for others, continually sacrificing their own pleasures, leisure, thoughts, time, to others,—as we, the British aristocracy."
"You are out of spirits to-night, Lamerton." His wife retained his hand, and pressed it.
"Then," continued his lordship, following his own train of thought, and not answering his wife's remark, perhaps because he did not hear it, so full was his mind of the topic then uppermost in it, "then, Julia, consider—we are mounted specimens; like those unfortunate worms in sour paste, and monsters in a drop of dirty water, we were shown by lime-light and a magnifying glass the other evening at the National School, projected on a white sheet. The whole room was crowded, and the bumpkins in the place sat gazing as the lecturer pointed to the wriggling creatures, named each in succession, and described it. What must have been the discomfort to those animals, if in any degree sensitive, to be exposed, stared at, glared through, commented on! and—consider—the lecturer may have misinterpreted them, because misunderstanding them, and they listened to it all, squirmed a little more painfully, but were incapable of setting him to rights. The German princes are entitled durch-laucht, that is, 'Transparencies;' and quite right. We also are transparencies, we worms of the aristocracy, monsters of privilege, held up before the public eye, magnified, projected on newspaper sheets, characterised sometimes aright, more often wrongly, forced to have every nerve in our system, every pulsation in our blood, every motion in our brains, every moment in our lives, and every writhe of our bodies and spasm of our hearts commented on by the vulgar, and brutally misunderstood. It is rather hard on us, Julia. There are other worms in the sour paste of life, other monsters in the drop of dirty water we call Society, who are at liberty to turn about, and stretch themselves, bound or coil as they list; only we—we must live and wriggle between two plates of glass, illuminated and made translucent by the most powerful known light, denied that privilege which belongs to the humble—opacity."
"Is it the injured pines that have put you out of spirits to-night, Lamerton?" asked my lady, stroking the hand she held.
"Did you ever read about Matthew Hopkins, the witch-finder?" asked his lordship, with a fluttering smile on his lips. "He brought many poor harmless creatures to a violent end. Every suspected witch was stripped and closely examined for a mole, a wart, for any blemish,—and such blemishes were at once declared to be the devil's seals, stamping the poor wretches as his own. Then they were tied hand and foot together, and thrown into the water; if they sank they were pronounced innocent; if they floated they were declared guilty and were withdrawn from the water to be delivered over to the fire. We, Julia, are treated in a way not unlike that pursued by Matthew Hopkins; and there are ten thousand amateur witch-finders searching us, tearing off our clothes, peering after defects, chucking us into the water or the fire. If we are found to have moles, how we are probed with lancets, and plucked with tweezers, and then we are cast to the flames of public indignation and democratic wrath. If, however, we are found to have no moles about us, if we give no occasion for scandal, then away we are pitched into the water, and down down we sink in public estimation, and chill disregard, as coroneted nonentities."
Lady Lamerton continued to caress her husband's hand.
"Then again," he continued, after a short silence, "the witches were tortured into confession by sleeplessness. They were seated on uncomfortable stools, and watched night and day. If they nodded, their soles were tickled with feathers, cold water was poured down their backs, or pepper was blown up their noses. As for us, it is the same, we are not allowed to live quietly, we are forced to activity. I am kept running about, giving prizes at school commemorations, taking seat on committees, laying foundation-stones, opening institutions, attending quarter sessions, throwing wide my doors to every one, my purse to a good many; I am denied domesticity, denied rest. I am kept in perpetual motion. I have a title, that means every one else has a title to bully me. I am tickled into energy if I nod, or the pepper of journalistic sarcasm is blown into my eyes and nose to stir me to activity. Julia, a rich merchant, or banker, or manufacturer, a well-to-do tradesman lives more comfortably than do we. In the first place they can do what they will with their money—but we have to meet a thousand claims on what we get, and are grudged the remnant we reserve for our individual enjoyment. Next, they are not exposed to ruthless criticism, to daily, hourly comment, as we are. They are free, we are not; they can think first of themselves, afterwards of others, whereas we have to be for ever considering others, and thrusting ourselves into corners, thankful to find a corner in which we may possess and stretch our individual selves. Upon my soul, I wish I had been born in another order of humanity, without title, and land, and a seat in the Upper House, and—and without manganese."
"If it had been so—"
"If it had been so, then I could have enjoyed life, stuck at home, and seen more of you, and Arminell, and dear little Giles, and then—why then, I would have had no enemies."
Lord Lamerton had reseated himself when he began to talk of Matthew Hopkins, the witch-finder. Now he stood up again.
"Julia," he said, "those Douglas pines had made noble shoots—it is a pity. I shall go to bed, and dream, if I can, that I am lying in clover and not over a bunch of manganese."