Arminell, a social romance/Chapter 34
CHAPTER XXXIV.
LESS THAN NOBODY.
Giles Inglett Saltren was so completely thrown off his balance by Welsh's repudiations of the story of his parentage, that he did not resent, he hardly heard the burst of indignation that escaped his uncle; or, if he heard it, his mind was too preoccupied to follow his words, and measure their force, and take umbrage at their grossness. He was overpowered with dismay. What had he done? He could not even realise the extent of the evil he had wrought, nor measure the depth of his own baseness.
But Mr. Welsh was not a man to leave him without having spread out the mass of his misdeeds before him, and held his head down over it, and indicated its most salient features.
"You abominable little snob!" he exclaimed. "Have you forgotten what has been done for you? If his lordship had not taken you from the hard form on which you polished the seat of your corduroys, and set you in an easy chair, you'd have nice callosities now. Probably you would not have been alive at all had he not sent you to the South of France." Mr. Welsh became sarcastic. "No doubt you owe his lordship a grudge because he didn't let you go at once to kingdom come instead of detaining you here in this Vale of Tears. Mind you, Giles—there is no escape from this fact, that you owe your life to him. To him also you owe your education. To him you owe it that, supposing you had lived, your are not now a horny-handed ploughboy, that you know how to use a pocket-handkerchief, and don't put your knife in your mouth."
Mr. Welsh thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood with legs apart looking scornfully at his nephew.
"Pray, Mr. Giles Inglett, how would you like to go back to potato pasty and cold boiled junk of bacon? To an early dinner, and swipes instead of claret? To getting your clothes at a slop-shop, instead of being fitted by a tailor? To being without books and magazines and reviews? Are you aware that you have earned not one of the luxuries or even comforts of civilized life? That they have come to you undeserved as does free Grace? Upon my word, you make my blood splutter! Shall I tell you what would have been the end of you had not Lord Lamerton come to the rescue? After you were ill you would have been cared for, or not cared for, after the fashion of common folk's children, and your mother's haphazard way of doing everything, allowed to get your feet wet, and stand in draughts, neglected one day, coddled the next, till your weak lungs gave way, and rapid consumption set in. Shall I tell you what would have been the course of Act II? Then you would have been mewed up in that dismal back bedroom at Chillacot, with the ultramarine wash on the walls, and the snipped, emerald-green, silver-paper fly trap suspended in the middle of the room, and the blistered mirror and the window looking out at a dripping rock, ugh! There you would have lain and coughed; and when an attempt was made to light the fire, the smoke would have refused to try the road up the chimney, and preferred that to your lungs; and when the window was opened to let the smoke out it would have let in the smell of the pigstye. When you wanted a book to enliven you, you would have been given Baxter's 'Saints' Rest' or a Methodist Missionary Magazine, and death itself would have been welcome as an escape from such literature. You would have needed wine, and not had it; cod-liver oil, and not had it; grapes, and not had them; calves' foot jelly, and had to do without. You would have been given thin gruel, and fried india-rubber, that playfully considered itself rump steak, much as you consider yourself a nobleman, and leaden dough, greasy bacon, and lukewarm bad tea. Your bed would have been lumpy and made occasionally, and your sheets changed now and then, and your pillow-case assuming the adhesiveness to your cheek of postage stamps; and there would have been a draught like a mill-race pouring in through that gap—I know it—under the door. When you wanted to sleep by day, your mother would be scouring pans in the back kitchen underneath, and when so inclined at night, your father, on the other side of the partition, would be snoring like John Willett. As you grew weaker, and more unable to endure worry, in would have come the captain, to exhort and expound, and stir and whip up your weary soul into a caper of screaming terror. You would have longed for death as an escape from the smells and the smoke, and the crude blue, and the draught, and the knots in your mattress, and the Missionary Magazines, and the pigs in the yard, and the benzoline lamp."
Mr. Welsh stooped and picked up his newspaper, which lay crumpled on the floor. He smoothed it, and folded it on the table. Then he looked hard at his nephew. Giles remained motionless, with eyes on the carpet; his brow was troubled and his lips trembling. He was very pale.
"That is how you would have ended as a boy of seventeen," pursued Mr. Welsh, remorselessly, mercilessly. "Your life you owe to Lord Lamerton, your mind has been expanded and enriched by him. Had he not sent you to college what would have been the range of your ideas? What would you have known of Shakespeare, Thackeray, Pope, Gœthe, and Dante? What appreciation of art? You would have been as incapable of judging between a good painting and a daub, of discriminating between Tannhaüser and Sankey and Moody, as any chawbacon. What I have learned, I have learned with labour, I had no masters, no hand to help me over the stile. I wish I had had your advantages, but no Lord Lamerton took me up. I had not that luck. I have had to fight my own way. I daresay you think it inconsistent in me to take the part of his lordship against my own nephew, but that is because your conscience is disordered. I fight him tooth and nail, because he is an aristocrat and I a democrat. It is my business to attack the Tories and the landed interest and the House of Lords. I am a politician, and in politics all is fair; but we are now in another region altogether, in that of common honesty, and domestic relations; I look on my lord, not as a nobleman, but as a father, and a kind-hearted man who has done much for you; and I am able to take the gauge of your conduct accordingly. You have behaved infamously towards your benefactor, you have hurt him where he is most sensitive—hitting, you contemptible little coward, below the belt. You have stained the pure name of his only daughter, tarnished the honour of an irreproachable house. Who will believe that the girl ran away with you, because she supposed that you were her brother? Everyone knows that you are nothing of the kind. Should it leak out that you are not Captain Saltren's son, how will it mend matters if it be shown that you are the bastard brat of old blear-eyed, one-handed, limping Samuel Ceely?"
Giles winced, he raised both his hands, half beseechingly, half as if to protect himself from the words which struck him as blows. It was a convulsive, not a purposed movement. Also he looked up for a moment, and attempted to speak, but said nothing, the words died away in his throat. Then his head fell again.
"You say you have saved some money," Welsh went on; "whose money? That which Lord Lamerton gave you. How many hundreds of pounds do you suppose you have cost him? In sending you to Bordighera, in doctors' bills, in school and college accounts? You swaggered at Oxford as a gentleman, and Lord Lamerton paid for it. He furnished your rooms in college, paid your battels. You invited your friends to breakfasts and wines, and he paid for them. Who but he put the clothes on your back, hung the pictures on your walls, fitted neat boots on your feet, and supplied you with that silk pocket-handkerchief you are now using to wipe the shame drops off your brow with? And—in return for all this, you stab him to the heart and blast the fair name of his child! Good heavens! I feel as uncomfortable in your presence as would Mr. Gladstone in a lodge of Primrose Dames on St. Benjamin's day. But there!—enough about your despicable self. It is high time something were done about Miss Inglett. I'll go with you. What a nuisance it is that Tryphœna is just now without a cook. I'll bring the girl here, nevertheless, if she has nowhere else to go to; or I will run down with her myself to Orleigh, or I'll take her to any relation she may have in town. You come with me, you mean little cad, as far as your inn, or lodgings, or where the deuce you are, and leave me there. Don't show your pasty face again. We have seen already too much of you."
He rang the bell, and the maid-of-all-work appeared.
"Susan, turn, or take off your apron, and run and fetch me a hansom."
"Please, sir, an' if I don't come on an 'ansom?"
"Then a cab. Come, sharp!"
He said no more. He was agitated, because very angry. He went out for his hat and gloves, and an umbrella, opened the latter, and refolded it; then he discovered that he was in a shabby morning coat, so he changed it upstairs, and put on his boots in the hall, and then returned for his newspaper.
By this time Susan had arrived, seated in a four-wheeler. She had not encountered a hansom.
"Go on," said Welsh to his nephew, "I'll follow." He took his newspaper from the table, and brought it with him to the cab.
The direction was given to the driver, and the vehicle started. Welsh would not speak another word to Giles. He threw himself back with a grunt in the cab, and began to read his paper.
Jingles looked dreamily forth from the window on his side. The cab was being driven along Gold Hawk Road; there was not much traffic in it that morning; a coal-cart, a Shepherd's Bush omnibus were passed. The cabman drew up, and swore at an old lady who in crossing the road had dropped a parcel of tracts, which scattered in all directions, and who returned almost under the feet of the horse to recover some of the papers. Mr. James Welsh uttered an exclamation. Saltren did not notice it, he was in a stunned condition unable to take observation of anything, unable to do more than reiterate in his mind, "I have made a mistake—a fatal mistake!" He was unable even to consider in what way it could be rectified, if capable of rectification. He was not in a condition to weigh his uncle's proposals what to do with Arminell. He did not even feel his uncle's rude remarks, they passed over him without producing an impression, so deadened were his faculties by the consternation in which he was. His brain was like a sewing-machine in full operation, with a needle in it, stab—stab—stabbing, and always carrying the same thread, "I've made a mistake—a fatal mistake!" and making therewith a lock stitch incapable of unravelment, that went round and round both heart and brain, and bound them together.
"Good God!" exclaimed Welsh, and let drop his paper on his lap. Then he turned, "Giles!" he shouted in his nephew's ear. "Confound the fellow, are you asleep? I did think I had heard the worst, but there is worse behind! Lord—this is awful! Giles—you fool—look at the paper."
The young man took the sheet mechanically. The fly jolted, and he could not read. He laid the paper down. "My eyes are dazzled," he said, "I cannot make out the print. Besides, I am indifferent to news."
"You must not be indifferent. The news concerns you particularly."
"I don't care about politics," said Giles irritably, "I am worried, crushed. I have made a mistake—an awful, a fatal mistake."
"This is not about politics at all," shouted his uncle. "Lord! how shall I break the tidings to Miss Inglett? I wish I had brought my wife. Women do these things better than men. But, as we have no cook, Tryphœna is engaged this morning in the kitchen, up to her ears, above her ears, judging from the condition of the top of her head, in work—I must do it. I hope that Miss Inglett has not seen a newspaper this morning."
"Well—then—what is it?" asked young Saltren impatiently.
"What is it? Just this," answered Welsh grimly and with vehemence, "Lord Lamerton is dead."
"Dead!" Giles Saltren was frozen with horror.
"Yes—dead. Found dead near Chillacot, fallen down the cliff whilst on his way to see your father. Of course there are suspicions of foul play. Nothing as yet certain."
"Found dead!" The young man gasped for breath. The muscles of his chest contracted and a pain as though a bayonet had stabbed him shot through his heart. He was suffocating, he gasped for breath. The windows of the cab began to spin round him, the back of the cab with the cushions swung round to the front, and the front lights went behind, and the side windows rose and hung over his head, then revolved and were beneath his feet. Mr. Welsh let down the glass near the young man, as he saw the condition into which he was falling, and that he was incapable of doing this for himself.
"Yes," said his uncle, "dead—that is what has come on us now, and there is mischief behind. That mad, fanatical fool, the captain—I should not wonder if he were involved in it, with his visions, and trumpets, and vials, and book of the Gilded Clique. He ought to have been locked up long ago. He took everything in solemn earnest; he believed in Marianne's rhodomontade; he swallowed her lies whole. As far as I can guess this is what happened. Lord Lamerton discovered that Miss Inglett was gone, gone with you, and without a word to any one went to Chillacot over the down to make enquiries of the captain about the fugitives. How he came to fall over the cliff on his way, God knows! But of this I am very certain, that it was you, Giles, who sent him on the road that led to death. He would not have gone to Chillacot had he not had need to go there to enquire after you. So now, Giles, what do you think of yourself—eh?"
Young Saltren covered his face with his hands, and sank fainting into the bottom of the cab.