Arminell, a social romance/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV.
MR. JAMES WELSH.
Mrs. Saltren had informed Arminell that she had a brother who was a gentleman. The term "gentleman" is derived from the Latin gens, and signifies a member of a patrician family. But this is not the signification now given it in the vernacular. On the tongue of the people, a gentleman and a lady are those who do no manual labour. A man informs you that he will be a gentleman on a bank-holiday, because he will lounge about with his hands in his pockets, and an old woman who has weeded turnips at ninepence a day, becomes a lady when rheumatism invades her limbs, and sends her to the union.
Mr. James Welsh, the brother of Mrs. Saltren, was a gentleman in this, that he belonged to a gens, a class not ancient or aristocratic, but modern, and one that has obtained considerable influence, wields much power and is likely to become dominant—we mean that of the professional journalist and politician. He was a gentleman also in this, that he did no hard manual labour, but few men worked harder than he, but then he dirtied his hands with ink only.
Along the coasts of Scotland and Sweden are terraces raised high above the sea-level, which are pronounced by geologists to be ancient beaches. At one time the waves washed where now sheep graze, and deposited sea-weed and shells where now grow heather and harebells. There are these raised sea-beaches in man, to which conscience at one time reached, where it formed a barrier, and whence it has retreated. But we are wrong in speaking of the retreat of the sea, for actually the level of the ocean is permanent, it is the land which rises, and as it rises leaves the sea below. And so perhaps it is with us. We lift ourselves above old convictions, scruples, principles, and the sometimes sleeping, sometimes tossing sea of conscience no longer touches those points they once fretted. Do we congratulate ourselves on this elevation? Perhaps so, and yet few of us can contemplate the raised beaches left in our hearts by the retiring waves of conscience without a sigh, and a doubt.
Mr. James Welsh said and wrote and did many things as a public journalist and a professional politician which as a boy or young man he would have looked upon as dishonest, false, and mischievous. His conscience no longer troubled him in his business, but in home relations he was blameless.
Perhaps one reason why the sea-level alters with us, is that we are always endeavouring to reclaim land from it, thrusting our sea-walls of self-interest further out, to take in more field from being overwashed. We make our line of conscience co-terminous with our line of self-interest. Outside this line the waves may toss and roar, within they may not cast a flake of foam, or waft a breath of ozone. How much thunder and buffet we permit outside our seawall of self-interest against any rock or sand-bank that stands unenclosed! but we only suffer the water of self-reproach to sweep with a shallow swash and soothing murmur the outside of the bank we have cast up.
What excellent words those are to conjure with and wherewith blind our own eyes as well as those of others—Political Party and the Public Weal! We regard ourselves as devoted to the respublica, when, in reality, we care only for our private interests; and our zeal for the public good is hot or cold according as our dividends are affected.
If we can show that the welfare of our party can be advanced by making out our neighbour to be a thief and assassin, with what pious energy do we set to work to invent lies to defame him. How we suppress and disguise facts which make against our pet doctrines! To what subterfuges and tricks do we have recourse to colour those facts which cannot be suppressed to make them look the opposite to what we know them to be!
It is really deserving of note how every dirty and dishonourable act is wrapped about with a moral sanction, as a comfit with a motto in a cracker.
We always profess to be actuated by noble and disinterested motives, and yet they are generally mean and personal. Our ancestors regarded the planets only so far as they by their conjunctions and interferences with each other's houses affected the constitutions and careers of these ancestors of ours. Jupiter is 1250 times larger than the earth, and has seven moons, and this planet with its moons revolves and illumines the sky to affect the spleen of Master Jack Sparrow and disturb the courtship of Mistress Jenny Wren. Jupiter is distant five hundred millions of miles from Jack and Jenny—but what of that? According to Euclid a straight line can be drawn between any two given points, accordingly between the planet at one end and these little nobodies at the other, lines exist. Now all people actually do draw invisible lines between themselves and every other object in heaven and earth, and contemplate these objects along these lines, and value and despise them according as these objects affect them along these lines.
The author was travelling in a second-class railway-carriage on that memorable Monday morning after the Phoenix Park tragedy that thrilled all England with horror and rage. Facing him, sat a gentleman reading his paper, who ever and anon slapped his knee, and exclaimed, "Famous! Splendid! Nothing better could have happened!" Presently, unable to understand these exclamations, the author asked, "Sir! do you mean to say that you approve of the crime?"
"Oh, no!" was his answer. "Certainly not, but, consider how it will make the papers sell! I have shares in one or two."
The writer was talking the other day to a timber merchant on the condition of Ireland. "I trust," said he, "that the Plan of Campaign will not be suppressed as yet. We can buy Irish oak at fourpence a foot just now."
The writer was discussing the annexation of Alsace with a native farmer. "Well," said he, "when we belonged to France I sold for a franc what I now sell for a mark, therefore, God save Kaiser Wilhelm." "But," was objected, "probably you now have to pay a mark for what formerly cost you a franc." He considered for a moment, and then said, "That is true, vive la France!" Twopence turned his patriotism this way to Berlin, or that way to Paris. He was a German when selling, a Frenchman when buying, all for twopence.
The professional politician is a man who lives by politics as the professional chess-player lives by chess. He acquires a professional conscience. His profession has to fill his pockets and find bread for his children, and politics must be kept going to do so. The chess-player sacrifices pawns to gain his end. The stoker shovels on coals into the furnace to make his engine gallop; and the electrician pours vitriol into the battery to produce a current in his wires. They have none of them the slightest scruple in doing these things—they belong to the business, and the professional politician has no scruple in playing with facts, and throwing them away as pawns in his game, or of exciting the passions and prejudices of men, or of using the most biting and corroding acid in his endeavours to evoke a current of feeling. When an organist desires to produce a noise, he pulls out stop diapason, and dances on the pedals. The professional politician deals with the public in the same way; that is his instrument. What in the organ are the pedals for but to be kicked, and the keys but to be struck, and the stops but to be drawn out, and what are the social classes but the manuals, and the individuals composing them, but the keys, and the grudges, greed, ambition, envy, and prejudices but the stops, which a clever player understands to manipulate?
Mr. Welsh was a worthy man, eminently respectable, a good husband, and a kind friend. He was truthful, honest, reliable in his family and social relations, but professionally unscrupulous. The sea-line stood in its old place on one side of his character, but on another a wide tract, that tract on which he grew his harvest, had been reclaimed from the waves of conscience. It is so with a good many others besides Mr. Welsh, and in a good many other trades and professions than journalism and politics. We are conscientious in every department except that of money making, and in that we allow of tricks and meannesses, which we excuse to ourselves as forced on us by the exigencies of competition. Recently Mr. Welsh had been slightly indisposed, so he came from town into the country, on a holiday, to spend the Sunday with his sister, and then run on to see a congenial friend in a town in the same county.
In the afternoon he took a stroll by himself in the woods, smoking his pipe, and always with an eye to business, looking about him for material for an article.
"Halloo!" said Mr. Welsh, halting in front of the ruinous cottage of Patience Kite. "What have we here? Does any one inhabit this tumble-down concern?"
He went to the door and looked in.
Patience faced him.
"What do you want? Who are you? This is my house, and I will not be turned out of it."
She took him for a sanitary officer, or a lawyer, come to enforce her expulsion.
"This is a queer hole for a lady to occupy as her boudoir," said Mr. Welsh, taking his pipe out of his mouth. "I wouldn't care for this style of thing myself except as a drawing copy. Not to become a hero of romance, or to give my experience in a magazine article would I sleep under that chimney on a stormy night."
"Nobody has invited you," said Patience, blocking her door.
"And pray, madam, whose house is this? Is this the sort of cottage my lord provides for his tenants?"
"The house is mine."
"Copyhold or freehold?"
"I pay ground rent for it of two shillings; it is mine for life, and then it falls to his lordship."
"I should expect it would fall altogether to you shortly. Why don't you do it up?"
"How can I? I am poor."
"I suppose that you are bound by the terms of the lease to maintain the house in repair?"
"I dare say. The agent, Mr. Macduff, has threatened me; but no one can make me do it when I haven't a shilling. You can't make one dance who is born without legs."
"Then, properly, this house belongs to his lordship. Why does not he do it up? I can make something out of this! A Day in the Country, something to fill a column and a-half in a Monday morning paper. Contrast his lordship's princely residence with the ruins in which he pigs his tenants. Compare Saltren's place, Chillacot, which is his own, all in spic-and-span order, with this, and then a word about the incubus of the great holders on the land, and the advantage of the enfranchisement of the soil. It will do. And so, madam, they have tried to evict you?"
"Yes; the sanitary officer ordered me to leave; the Board of Guardians went to the magistrates, and issued a summons to me to quit, and my lord has sent Mr Macduff to me, to threaten proceedings against me if I will not put the house in repair or quit it. But what can they do when I won't budge, and could prosecute 'em if they laid fingers on me? The police daren't touch me. They've come and looked at me and argued, but they can't force me to leave."
"So his lordship wants to evict you, eh?"
"Mr. Macduff has declared he'll send masons and strip the roof, and pull down the chimney, and rebuild the walls, but they can't do it without driving me out first, and that is more than they can with me having the house as my own for life."
"By Jove!" exclaimed Welsh, "it's a case—a poor widow, I suppose you are a widow; it doesn't matter if you are not; it sounds best—a widow, a victim to his lordship's tyranny—tearing down the roof that shelters her grey head, casting down her chimney, desecrating her hearthstone, the sacred penates, with the foot of violence—or hoof, which shall it be? By George! I'll make something out of it, harrowing to the feelings, and as rousing as tartaric acid and soda! Who cares for a contradiction or a correction? We can always break the lines and make nonsense of it, and lay the blame on the printer, if called to task. I'm glad I came here for a Sunday. You will let me inside, I suppose, ma'am, to cast an eye round; particulars are so useful in a description, lend such a vraisemblance to an account."
But Mrs. Kite's tumble-down cottage was not the only material Mr. Welsh collected for use on that Sunday. He heard from Saltren about the stoppage of the manganese.
"Something can be made out of that," said Welsh. "We are in want of a grievance. Tell me the particulars, I'll sift out for myself what will serve my purpose."
When he had heard all, "It will do," said he, "there has been nothing to interest the public or stir them up since the last divorce suit in high life. High life!—so high that some folks had to hold their noses. We want a bit of a change now. After that bit of strong venison, some capsicum to restore the palate. Saltren, you must convene a public meeting, make a demonstration, a torchlight procession of the out-of-work, issue a remonstrance. I'll come and help you. I know how to work those kind of things. A little grievance and some dissatisfaction well-stirred together is like chlorate of potash and sulphur in a mortar; only stir away, and in the end you get an explosion."
"It is of no use," said the captain, in a tone of discouragement.
"Of no use! I tell you it is of the utmost use; we'll make a public matter of it. Get a question asked in the House about it. There are so many journalists in there now that we can get anything asked when we want the question as a text for a leader. Why, we will fill the papers with your grievance, only we must have some meeting to report, and I'll help you with that. Bless you, I've half a dozen ways of poking this matter into notoriety; and we will show up the British aristocracy as the oppressors of the poor, those who are driving business out of the country, who are the true cause of the prevailing depression. Thanks to that recent divorce case we've made them out to be the moral cancer in the body of old England, and now we shall show that they are the drag on commercial progress. When folks are grumbling because the times are bad, it makes them mighty content to be shown a cause for it all, on which they may vent their ill-humour. Did you ever read 'The Curiosity Shop,' Saltren? Quilp had a figure-head to batter whenever things went wrong with him, and the public are much like Quilp; give 'em an admiral or a peer, or an archbishop, some figure-head, and whack, bang, hammer, and smash they go at it."
"As for the aristocracy," said Mrs. Saltren, "I ought to know them. I combed their hair, and hooked their dresses, and unpacked their portmanteaus; and them as do that are best qualified to know them, I should think."
"I don't mind telling you," said the captain, addressing his brother-in-law, "that their doom is sealed in heaven. I've had it revealed to me."
"You have, have you?" asked Welsh in a tone of irony, which, however, Saltren did not perceive.
"Yes, I have—you shall hear. I would not tell every one, but I tell you. I was in the spirit this very morning, and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Saltren, Saltren! Then I looked, and behold there came flying down to me, a book from heaven, written within and without. I held up my hands to receive it; but it fell past me into the water, and I stooped and looked thereon, and saw written 'The Gilded Clique,' and again the voice cried, 'It is fallen, it is fallen!'"
"You don't expect me to gulp that——" Welsh checked himself, and added, shaking his head—"I can't, I'm afraid, make copy of that."
"It is true," said Saltren earnestly. His vehemence, his kindled eyes, his deepened colour, showed his sincerity. "Would I dare in such matters to utter lies? I am but a poor mean instrument, but what of that? Prophets have been found among shepherds, and apostles taken from their fishing nets. I was engaged in heartfelt prayer when this took place."
"You didn't happen to fall asleep whilst occupied in devotion, of course?" said Welsh, with a contemptuous jerk of the chin. "Such a weakness is not likely to befall you."
"I was not asleep," answered Saltren sternly. "How could I be asleep, when my eyes were open, and I saw the book; and my ears, and they heard the voice?"
"You didn't happen to get hold of the book, and see the name of the publisher?"
"No—I was unable. It was unnecessary. I read the title plainly. I saw what was on the cover of the book."
"I can do nothing with this," said Welsh, leaning back in his chair, stretching, and closing his hands behind the back of his head. "This belongs to another department altogether. You had better relate your experiences at the next revival-meeting among the horse-marines, there is no knowing what effect it may have upon that intelligent and excitable body of men."
"It is true," urged Saltren again, frowning.
He was incapable of seeing that his brother-in-law was bantering him. The man was absolutely without sense of humour; but he saw that Welsh did not believe in his story, and this irritated and offended him. That his tale as he told it, grew in its proportions and became more and more unreal, was also what he did not know. His mind worked on the small materials it had, and spun out of them a fable in which he himself implicitly believed.
"I don't dispute what you have narrated," said Welsh composedly. "I know you are a total abstainer, so it is not to be accounted for in the way which comes naturally uppermost. Still, I've heard of wonderful elevation of spirits and general head-over-heeledness after an over-dose of non-alcoholic effervescing liquors."
"I had touched nothing," said Saltren, with his temper chafed. "If you doubt me——"
"But I do not doubt you," interrupted Welsh. "I tell you that this does not interest me, because it is outside my department, like Bulgaria, and the Opera Comique, and Inoculations for Hydrophobia, and Primitive Marriage. I don't meddle with the Eastern Question, or review historical works, or sermons, or novels. I leave all that to other fellows; you must pass this on to the chap who does religion, not that I think he would make copy out of it for a magazine article, except under the head of Hallucinations."