Arminell, a social romance/Chapter 33
CHAPTER XXXIII.
NOTHING.
Mr. James Welsh occupied a small, respectable house in a row in Shepherd's Bush. The house was very new; the smell of plaster clung about it. Before the row were young plane trees, surrounded with wire-netting to protect their tender bark from the pen-knives and pinching fingers of boys. Far in the dim future was a prospect of the road becoming an umbrageous avenue; accordingly, with an eye to the future, those who had planned and planted the row entitled it The Avenue.
Up this avenue of wretched, coddled saplings walked Mr. Giles Inglett Saltren, in the best of spirits, to visit his uncle, the Monday morning after his arrival in town.
Now Giles Inglett Saltren was about to begin his career as a journalist, as a politician, as a man of letters. He had broken away from the position which had degraded and enslaved him, which had cramped his genius, and suppressed his generous emotions.
He had not, indeed, heard from Welsh since he had written to him, but youth is sanguine. He could rely on his uncle finding him work, and he knew his own abilities were of no ordinary quality. He had essayed his powers on several political questions. He had written articles on the Eastern Embroglio, the Madagascar Policy of the French Republic, Port Hamilton, the dispute about the Fisheries, and Irish dissatisfaction. Very vigorous they were in style, and pulverizing in argumentative force.
He had not sent them to his uncle, but he brought them with him now in a hand-bag. He came early to ensure finding Mr. Welsh at home and to allow time for reading his articles to him, and discussing the terms on which he was to be taken upon the staff of the paper with which his uncle was connected. He figured to himself the expression of the face of Welsh changing, as he listened from incredulity to pleased surprise and rapt ecstasy, and the clasp of hands when the lecture was over, the congratulation on success, and the liberal offer of remuneration that would ensue.
There was one telling passage on Port Hamilton which to Jingles' mind was so finely turned, so rich and mellow in its eloquence, that he repeated it twice to himself as he walked from Shepherd's Bush station to his destination.
"It is really well put," mused Jingles; "and I think if it comes under the eye of the Ministry, that it must materially affect their policy, and, perhaps, decide the question of the retention or surrender of the station. More wonderful things have happened than that it should lead to my being offered a colonial appointment. Not that I would accept a post which was not influential. I am not going to be shelved as a foreign consul. I intend to be where I can put my mark on my times, and mould the destinies of the people. It would not be surprising were the Conservative Government to endeavour to silence me by the offer of some governorship which would take me from home, and corner me where my influence would be powerless. But I intend to keep my eyes open. I am not one of the men who submit to suppression. Ah! here is Uncle James' door."
He opened the little iron gate. A servant was on the steps, kneeling and scrubbing the threshold. She had managed to kneel on her apron, and tear it out of the gathers. Her slippers exposed a split over the toe, showing stocking, and the stocking was split over the heel, showing skin. She put her scrubbing-brush to her head to smooth the hair that had fallen forward, over the fringe.
"Is Mr. Welsh at home?"
"Yes'ir. Your card, please?"
She looked at her fingers; they were wet, so she put them beneath her apron, and extended her hand thus covered to receive the card, and nipped it through the integument of coarse linen, then turned and went in, leaving Saltren on the doorstep with the bucket. The soap she had prudently removed within, lest, while she was presenting the card, he might make off with the square. She was up to the dodges of such chaps. So, also, she shut the door behind her, lest he should make off with an overcoat or umbrella. A servant cannot be too careful in the suburbs of London. Presently she returned, re-opened the door, and asked Saltren to kindly step into the master's study.
Mr. James Welsh was just engaged in unfolding his morning's paper preparatory to reading, or, rather, skimming it, when Jingles entered.
"Hallo, young shaver!" exclaimed the uncle, laying aside the newspaper somewhat reluctantly. "This is sharp work, dropping in on me before I have had time allowed me to answer your letter. I only came home last night. It is like crossing the frontier simultaneously with declaration of war. If you had waited for my answer you would have saved yourself trouble and the cost of your ticket."
"There were reasons which made it necessary for me to leave at once."
"My dear boy, reasons are like eggs in a recipe for a pudding. The pudding is best with them; but it is good without. You wanted to come, and you enrich your coming with reasons. That is the sense of it."
"But, Uncle James, I have long felt a decided vocation for a political and literary life, and I have long chafed at the restraints——"
"Young shaver, in the ministerial world—I mean the world of ministers of religion—there are also calls; but, curiously enough, only such are listened to when the call is from a salary of fifty to a hundred and fifty. I never yet heard of a pastor who listened to a call to leave one of a hundred for one of half that amount. But they jump like frogs when the call is t'other way. You should have learned wisdom from those apostles of light. You have, I fear, thrown up a lucrative situation for nothing. Like the dog in the fable, dropped the piece of meat to bite at a shadow."
"I have no doubt," said Jingles gravely, "that at first I shall not earn much; but I have some money laid by which will serve my necessities till I have made myself a name, and got an assured income."
"Made yourself a name! That is what no journalist ever does. Got an assured income! That comes late. You have not been through the mill."
"I have in my bag some articles I have touched off, leaders on important matters, of absorbing interest to the public."
"As what?"
"Port Hamilton."
"The public don't care a snap about that."
"The Eastern Question."
"About which you know nothing."
"The Irish Land Question."
"On which you are incompetent to form an opinion."
"Will you look at my articles?"
"I can't say. I can tell what they are like without your opening the bag. I know exactly the style of these schoolboy productions. If you particularly desire it, I will run my eye over them; but I tell you beforehand, they are good for nought. Mind you, I don't expect that a writer of a leader knows any more of his subject than do you; but he does know how to affect a knowledge he does not possess, and disguise his ignorance; and he has a certain style that belongs to the business. It is with journalism as with acting. An amateur proclaims himself in every sentence. The ass's ears project from under the lion's skin. There are little tricks of the trade, a margin for gag, that must be employed and utilised, and only a professional is at his ease, and has the familiar tricks at his disposal, and gag at the end of his tongue. Can you manage shorthand?"
"Shorthand! No."
"Pity that. I might have got you some reporting jobs."
"But I do not want reporting jobs."
"Then you will get nothing."
Jingles was rather offended than cast down.
"I see what it is, Uncle Welsh," he said in a tone of irritation, "you journalists are a close corporation, and you will not admit an intruder. You are jealous of an invasion within your circle, just as a parcel of commercials resent the entry of any but a commissioned bagman into their coffee-room."
"Not a bit; but we do object to a raw bumpkin who has not gone through his apprenticeship giving himself airs, and pretending an equality with us who have drudged at the trade till we have mastered its technicalities."
"I presume that a good education and brains qualify a man to write."
"Not necessarily—certainly not to write leaders. I dare say we might hand over to you the reviewing of children's books. That would come within your range."
"It is an insult to offer such a thing."
"Indeed! You know little of literature or you would not say so. Formerly, when education was scarce, there were but a few writers, and they were well paid. Now education is universal, and every one who can handle a pen thinks he can write, even if he be imperfectly acquainted with spelling. Education now is as common, as general, as pocket-handkerchiefs. Both were luxuries fifty years ago. Literature is glutted with aspirants; brain is as common as æsthetic colours, as embroidered sunflowers, and Japanese lacquer. What is rare is muscle. Learn some mechanical art, and you will find biceps pay better than brain."
"You know very well I have not the health to adopt the trade of an artisan."
"Then become a preacher; and here let me give you advice. If you want to become a popular preacher, and a power in the pulpit or on the platform, tear down. It is thankless work to build up; that takes time, demands patience, and does not command immediate popularity and ready applause. You appeal to no passion when constructive. Passion is your assistant in destruction. Every man has so much of the savage in him that he likes the war-path and the taste of blood. You appeal to what you know is in all, when you give a war-whoop, and brandish a tomahawk. There is some picturesqueness and a sense of power, in whooping and whirling the axe; there is only prose in smoking calumets of peace."
"I have no fancy for the pulpit; but I should like to become a political speaker."
"We can try you at some village meeting; but the pay is not much. Take my advice and return to Orleigh."
"That is impossible. I have burnt my ships. I can never recross the threshold of the house till I am recognised."
"What—as a literary lion? As a stump orator?"
"No, uncle, as Lord Lamerton's son."
"As—as his—what?"
Mr. James Welsh burst into a fit of laughter, and when he was exhausted, exploded, in spite of exhaustion, into a second peal.
Jingles maintained his gravity. His brow contracted. He folded his arms across his breast, and stood sternly waiting till this unseemly ebullition of merriment had subsided, in the attitude in which Napoleon appears in Horace Vernet's celebrated picture, on Saint Helena, looking at the setting sun.
"You must excuse me," said he at last, "if I say that this is not the way in which I expected to be received. First you scoff at my honourable ambition to be a man of letters, and then you explode into indecent laughter when I mention the fact of my parentage with which you are perfectly familiar, though it is not known to the world at large."
"By Jove, Giles, I did not suppose you were such a fool."
"I do not understand you."
"I may say, Giles, that I do not understand you. Do you mean seriously to assure me that you give credence to that cock-and-bull tale?"
"Uncle Welsh, I believe my mother's word."
"Far be it from me to say anything to a son disrespectful of his mother; and in this case I merely point out to you the richness and exuberance of your mother's fancy. Penelope embroidered by day, and by night unpicked her day-work. My dear boy, it is, perhaps, a matter of regret that my sister contents herself with embroidery, and does not complement her work by unpicking the fantastic and highly-coloured figures that needle, her tongue, has elaborated. She is like a magic-lantern projecting pictures upon smoke, sheets, or blank walls, making those surfaces alive with forms and faces. You really would suppose that the man in bed was actually swallowing the rats that ran into his mouth, and that Blue Beard in very truth rolled his eyes and cut off his wife's head, and that the cabbage was converted into Snip the Tailor. But, my dear nephew, they are phantasms. Go up to them, touch, observe, there is only smoke or whited wall. I have the highest respect for my sister's genius. I bow before her imagination, and adore it; but remember what Paley said of the imagination—that it is the fertile mother of error. My good sister's delusive faculty seems to have become mamma to an extravagant blunder, which you are lovingly nursing."
"Then you place no reliance on my mother's account?"
"Wait a moment." Mr. Welsh went to the bookcase. "Here is a peerage. Turn up 'Lamerton, Baron,' and see where his lordship was at that time that you were begun to be thought about. He was not in England—had not been there for two or three years. I knew that as well as the author of the peerage, perhaps better; for I was at Orleigh at that time, a fact my sister Marianne forgot when she exhibited to me her magic-lantern slides. I was not then what I am now. I was then thankful for a bit of literary work, and did not turn up my nose at reviewing children's books. I was as glad then to get a chance of putting pen to paper as I now am of getting a holiday from pen and paper."
"And," said Jingles, somewhat staggered by the evidence of the peerage, "you mean to tell me that my mother said—what what—what—was false?"
"Young shaver," said Mr. Welsh, "I read 'Herodotus' in Bohn's translation. I don't even know the letters of the Greek alphabet. I read for professional purposes. I observe that when the father of history comes to a delicate and disputed question, he passes it over with the remark 'I prefer not to express my own opinion thereon.' When you ask me whether what your mother said was true or a lie, I answer with Herodotus, 'I prefer not to express my own opinion thereon.'"
Giles Inglett looked down on the carpet. His lips quivered.
"Young shaver," pursued Mr. Welsh, cheerily, rubbing his hands together, and taking up his newspaper, as a hint to his nephew to be gone, "you had best return to your inn, and begin to pull out the threads of that elaborate and gorgeous piece of Gobelin your mother has furnished you with. Believe me, under the coloured worsted and floss silk, you will come on very vulgar canvas. It is a sad pity that you should have learned that you are not the son of Stephen Saltren. You might well have been left to share the common belief. Perhaps it was inevitable that you should discover the flaw in your nativity. Some women cannot hold their tongues. I am not sure that the Babylonians acted unwisely when on the occasion of their revolt against Darius, they strangled every woman in the city except their cooks, for, they argued, men can get along without the sex in every other capacity."
The young man was profoundly disturbed. He looked up, and said in a voice that expressed his emotion—
"Uncle, do not jest with me in this matter. To me it is one of deadly earnest. I entreat you speak the truth, for—good heavens! If I am not what I supposed myself to be, I have made a terrible mistake."
"You are no more a son of Lord Lamerton than I am. Marianne—I mean your mother—thinks I am ignorant of the real facts, but I never was, though I said nothing at the time or after."
"Then you know who my father was."
"Yes, I do—but I am not disposed to tell you."
"I insist on knowing."
"You ought never to have been told that you were not what you and the world supposed. Now don't attempt to lift the embroidered veil your good mother has over the mystery. The veil is handsomer than what it conceals."
"But—I have acted on the supposition that I was the son of Lord Lamerton."
"I know you have, and more fool you. You have left your situation as tutor in his house and a respectable income."
"I have done more. I have persuaded Miss Inglett to run away with me."
"You have—what?"
Mr. Welsh dropped his hands and the paper; he stood for a moment in blank amazement. Then the blood rushed into his brow, and his hands clenched.
"You have—you dare not repeat those words."
"It is true. I supposed she was my sister."
"You dirty little blackguard!" cried Welsh, losing all control over himself and his tongue; he sprang towards his nephew, brandishing the newspaper. "I will horsewhip you with the only weapon I have, the Daily News! You coxcomb! You infamous snob! I'm ashamed to acknowledge you as my sister's child."
"I know that I have made a terrible mistake."
"Mistake is not the word for it. A more detestable, outrageous, caddish act, I could not conceive. Good gracious! I would like to kick you round my table, kick you down the hall, kick you out at my door, down the steps, send you flying along the avenue from tree to tree, and a kick at each. Do you not see, you scoundrel, what you have done? cast an indelible slur upon the girl's character. Mistake—mistake, indeed! Of all snobbery! Mistake! Get out of my house this instant. You pollute the atmosphere, you. You a son of my lord! You, who have not a drop of honourable blood in your veins, not a spark of proper feeling in your heart, not the smallest grain of gentlemanly, let alone noble sentiment in your whole nature—you contemptible bastard of Sam Ceely."