Kitabı oku: «Arminell, Vol. 1», sayfa 10

“Marianne! Let him that is without guilt cast the first stone. I forgive you. Tell me that you loved me when I came to you asking you to be mine.”

“I did love you, Stephen – you and you only.”

“And that other; he who – ” he did not finish the sentence – a fresh fit of trembling came on him.

“I never did love him, Stephen. Only his title and his position impressed me. I was young, and he was so much my superior in age, in rank, in strength; and the prospect opened before me was so splendid, that a poor, young, trustful, foolish thing like me – ”

“You did not love him?” Stephen spoke with eagerness.

“I have assured you that I never did.”

“Oh the age that we have spent together under one roof, united yet separated; one in name, apart in soul; years of sorrow to both of us; years of estrangement; years of disappointed love, and broken trust, and embittered home – all this we owe to him!”

Marianne felt his heart beating furiously, and his muscles contracting spasmodically in his face, that was against hers, in his breast, in his arms.

Has it ever chanced to the reader to encounter a married couple blind to each other’s faults, and these faults glaring? One might suppose that daily intercourse would have sharpened the perception of each other’s weaknesses, but instead of that it blunts it. They cannot detect in each other the grotesque, the ugly, the false, that are conspicuous and offensive to everyone else. Love, it is, which has softly dropped the veil over their eyes, or withdrawn from them the faculty of perceiving in each other these blemishes which, if perceived, would make common life unendurable. Love is well painted as blind, but the blindest of all loves is the love of the married. In the case of the Saltrens the blindness was on one side only, because on his side only was there true love. This had dulled his perception, so that he saw not the shallowness, untruthfulness, vanity, and heartlessness of Marianne, qualities which her brother saw clearly enough.

“You have borne your wrong all these years unavenged,” he said. “My God! how I have misjudged you! One word more, Marianne.” He disengaged himself from her. He had been kneeling with his arms enfolding her; now he released his hold, and knelt, bolt-upright, with his hands depending to the floor, gaunt, ungainly, motionless. “Marianne,” he said, slowly, “I know so much that I must be told all. I must know the rest.” He paused for full a minute, looking her steadily in the face, still kneeling upright, stiffly, uncouthly. “Who was he?”

Marianne did not speak. Now in turn agitation overcame her. Had she gone too far with this story, true or false?

She raised her hands deprecatingly. What would the consequences be?

Then, all at once, with a shriek rather than a cry, Saltren leaped to his feet.

“You need not say a word. I know all now, all – without your telling me. You were in the park at the time with the old Lady Lamerton, and – and you had the boy named after him.”

Had there been light in the room, it would have been seen how pale was the face of Mrs. Saltren, but that of her husband, the captain, had turned a deadlier white still.

“It all unfolds before me, all becomes plain!” he cried. “I wondered whose was the head I saw on the book.”

“On what book, Stephen?”

“I feared, I doubted, but now I doubt no more. It was his likeness!”

“What book do you mean?”

“The book of the Everlasting Gospel which I saw an angel carry in his right hand, flying in the midst of heaven; and he cast the book down, and the book was dipped in blood; and when it fell into the water, the water was turned to blood, as the river of Egypt when Israel was about to escape.”

The door flew open, and Giles Inglett Saltren entered, wearing a light coat thrown over his evening dress. As he came in he removed his hat.

Captain Saltren turned on him with flashing eyes, and in his most sonorous tones said, as he waved him away: “Go back, go back whence you came. You have no part in me. You are not my son. Return to him who has cared for you: to him who is your father – Lord Lamerton.”

CHAPTER XVII
HOW JINGLES TOOK IT

Giles Inglett Saltren stood motionless, his hat in one hand, with the other holding the door, looking at the captain. No lamp had been lighted in the room since the sun had set, and he could only see his father’s face indistinctly by the pale evening sky light cast in through window and door. But he would have known from the tones of his father’s voice that he was profoundly moved, even if he had not caught the words he uttered. At first, indeed, he was too surprised to comprehend the full force of these words; but, when their significance became clear to him, he also became moved, and he said gravely:

“This must be explained.”

“What I said is quickly explained,” answered the captain; and he rose to his feet.

Does the reader remember a familiar toy of childhood composed of pretty birds, with feathers stuck in them, strung on horsehair or wires so as to form a sort of cage, but with this difference, that the cage did not contain the birds? When this toy was set down, all the little figures quivered slowly, uncertainly, to the bottom, and, when it was reversed, the same process was repeated. It was so with the captain’s speech. His words were threaded on the tremulous strings of his vocal organ, and not only quivered from a high pitch down, but also went up from a low one with much vibration on high. A voice of this quality is provocative of sympathy; as, when a violoncello string is touched, a piano chord trembles responsive. Such voices make not the voices, but the hearts of other men to tremble. I know a slater who, when I am ordering of him slates, brings tears into my eyes by asking if I will have “Duchess” or “Rag.”

“My words are quickly explained,” said Stephen Saltren. “I have never regarded you as my son – have never treated you as such. You know that I have shown you no fatherly affection, because I knew from the beginning that not a drop of my blood flowed in your veins. But never, before this evening, have I allowed you, or any one else, to suspect what I knew, lest the honour of your mother should suffer. Now, and only now, has the entire truth been disclosed to me. I did not suspect it, no, not when you were christened and given the name you bear. I thought it was a compliment paid through a fancy of your mother’s to the family in which she had lived, that was all. A little flickering suspicion may have been aroused afterwards, when his lordship, to save you from consumption, sent you abroad; but I put it angrily from me as unworthy of being harboured. I had no real grounds for suspicion; since then it has come up in my heart again and again, and I have stamped down the hateful thought with a kind of rage and shame at myself for thinking it. Only to-night has the whole story been told me, and I find that your mother was not to blame – that no real dishonour stains her – that all the fault, all the guilt, lies on and blackens – blackens and degrades his soul!”

“I did not mean to say – that is, I did not wish – ” began Mrs. Saltren in a weeping, expostulating tone.

“Marianne, say nothing,” Captain Saltren turned to her. “It is not for you to justify yourself to your child. The story shall be told him by me. I will spare you the pain and shame.”

“But, mother,” said Jingles, shutting the door behind him and leaning his back against it, “I must be told the whole truth. I must have it at least confirmed by your lips.”

“My dear,” – Mrs. Saltren’s voice shook – “I would not make mischief, for the world. I hate above everything the mischief-makers. If there be one kind of people I abhor it is those who make mischief; and I am, thank heaven, not one of such.”

“Quite so,” said her son, gravely; “but I must know what I have to believe, for I must act on it.”

“Oh, my dear, do nothing! Let it remain, if you love me, just as if it had never been told. I should die of shame were it to come out.”

“It shall not come out,” said Giles; “but I must know from your lips, mother, whether I am – I cannot say it. My happiness, my future depend on my knowledge of what my real parentage is. You can understand that?”

“Well, then, it is true that you are not Stephen Saltren’s son, and it is true that I was a shamefully-used and deceived woman, and that I had no bad intentions whatever. I was always a person of remarkable delicacy and refinement above my station. As for who your father was, I name no names; and, indeed, just now, when the captain asked me, I said the same – that I would name no names, and so I stick to the same resolution, and nothing more shall be torn from me, not if you were to tear me to pieces with a chain harrow.”

“Come without,” said the captain, “and you shall hear from me how it came to pass. We must spare your mother’s feelings. She was not in fault, she was wickedly imposed on.”

Then the mining captain moved to the door; Giles Inglett opened, and stood aside to allow his reputed father to go through; then he followed him and shut the door behind them.

Half an hour passed. Mrs. Saltren remained for some minutes seated where she had been, consoling herself with the reflection that she had named no names; and that, if mischief came of this, the fault would attach to Saltren, not to her. A little while ago we said that love was blind, hymeneal love most blind; but blind with incurable ophthalmia, blindest of all blindness, is self-love.

Mrs. Saltren rose and went about her domestic affairs.

“No one can charge me,” said she, “with having kept my house untidy, or with having left unmended my husband’s clothes. To think of the cartloads of buttons I’ve put on during my married life! It is enough to convince any but the envious. Well, it is a comfort that Stephen has been brought to his senses at last, and come to view matters in a proper light. I’ve heard James say that there is a nerve goes from each eyeball into the brain, and afore they enter it they take a twist about each other, and, so coupled, march in together. And James said if it were not so we should see double, and neither eye would agree with the other. I mind quite well that he said this one day when I was complaining to him that Stephen and I didn’t get on quite right together. He said we’d get our twist one day and then see all alike. What he said is come true; leastways, the proper twist has come in Stephen. Thank God, I always see straight.”

She went to a corner cupboard and opened it.

“Now that Stephen is gone,” she said, “I’ll rinse out the glass James had for his gin-and-water. Saltren is that crazy on teetotalism that he would be angry if he knew I had given James any, and angry to think I kept spirits in the house; and because he is so stupid I’m obliged to put it in a medicine-bottle with ‘For outward application only’ on it, and say it is a lotion for neuralgia. It is a mercy that I named no names, so my conscience is clear. It is just as in Egypt, when there was darkness over all the land, the Israelites had light in their dwellings. I thank goodness I’ve always the clearest of light in me.”

She removed the tumbler and washed it in the back kitchen.

“When one comes to consider it, after all, Stephen isn’t so very much out in his reckoning. When does a nobleman take a delicate lad out of a school and send him to a warm climate because his lungs are affected, and then give him scholarship and college education, without having something that makes him do it? Are there no other delicate lads with weak lungs besides Giles? Why did not his lordship send them to Bordighera? Are there no other clever young fellows in national schools besides my boy, to be taken up and pushed on? There must have been some reason for my lord selecting Giles. Was it because I had been in service in the house? Other young women out of the park have married and had children, but I never heard of my lord doing anything for their sons. None of them have been sent to college and made into gentlemen except my boy. But then I was uncommonly good-looking, that is true, and not another young hussey at the park was fit to hold a candle to me. Though, the Lord knows, I never set store on good looks. If it pleases his lordship to treat Giles almost as if he were a son, he has a right to do so, but he must take the consequences. I don’t interfere with the fancies of others, but if any one chooses to do a queer thing, he must expect to have to answer for it. I have no doubt that his lordship has frequently wished he had a son, such a fine and handsome fellow as my Giles, and for some years he was without any son of his own to inherit his title. There was only Miss Arminell. Anyhow, no responsibility attaches to me, whatever may be said. No one can blame me. His lordship ought never to have taken notice of Giles, never to have had the doctor examine his lungs, and, when told that the boy would die unless sent to the south of France, he should have said, ‘He is the son of poor parents, who can’t afford the expense, so I suppose he must die.’ No one could have blamed him, then. And when Giles came back – better, but still delicate, and not suited to do hard work – my lord should not have sent him to school and college, and taken him in at Orleigh Park as tutor to his son – he should not have done any of these things unless he had made up his mind to take the consequences. Scripture says that no man sets down to build a tower without having first counted the cost. It is not at all unlikely that folks will say queer things, and I know for certain my husband thinks queer fancies about my boy and Lord Lamerton; but who is to blame for that? If his lordship didn’t want to make it thought by all the world that Giles was his son, all I can say is, he shouldn’t have done for him what he did. It is not my place to stop idle talk. I’d like to know whether it is any woman’s duty to run about a parish correcting the mistakes made by the gossiping tongues therein. I thank heaven I am not a gadabout. I do my duty, washing, and ironing, and mending of waistcoats, and sewing on of buttons, and darning of stocking-feet, and baking of meat-dumplings, and peeling of potatoes; that is what my work is, and I do it well. I don’t take upon me the putting to rights of other folks when in error. Every one stands for himself. If you cut the wick crooked you must expect your chimney-glass to get smoked, and, if Lord Lamerton has snipped his wick askew, he must look out for fish-tails.”

Mrs. Saltren removed her petroleum lamp-glass, struck a match, and proceeded slowly to light her lamp.

“I remember James telling me once, how that he had been in France, I think he called it La Vendée, where the fields are divided by dykes full of stagnant water; and one of the industries of the place is the collecting of leeches. The men roll up their breeches above the knee and carry a pail, and wade in the ditches, and now and again throw up a leg, and sweep off two, three, or it may be a dozen leeches from the calf into the pail. Then they wade further, and up with a leg again and off with a fresh batch of leeches. I haven’t been in a big house, and seen the ways of the aristocracy, and not found out that they are waders in leech dykes, and that it is as much as they can do to keep their calves clear, and their blood from being sucked out of them altogether. Now what I want to know is, if a starved leech does bite, and suck and swell, and is not wiped off and sent to market, but gets reg’lar blown out with blood, hasn’t that leech a right to say that he has in him the blood of the man to whom he has attached himself? I’d ask any independent jury whether my Giles Inglett has eaten and drunk more at Saltren’s expense, or at that of his lordship, whether he does not owe his very life to his lordship as much as to me, for he’d have died of decline, if he had not been sent to the South? And if he owes his life to Lord Lamerton equally as he does to me, and has been fed and clothed, and educated by him and not by Saltren, why then, like the leech, he can say he has the blood of the Lamertons in him. That is common sense. And again – bother that lamp!”

Mrs. Saltren in place of turning the wick up, had turned it down, and was obliged to remove the chimney and strike another match.

“And then,” she continued, “if Lord Lamerton has not chose to wipe him off into the pail, who is to blame but himself? If he choose to keep his leg in a leech pond, there’s neither rhyme nor reason in my objecting; and he has no claim to cry out. Put Giles on a plate, and sprinkle salt on him, and whose blood will come out? Any one can see he is a gentleman! He has imbibed it all, his manners, his polish, his knowledge, everything he has, from Lord Lamerton and others, all the world can see it.”

Then in came the young man about whom she was arguing with herself. He could not speak, so great was his agitation, but he went to his mother, and threw his arms about her, clasped her to his heart, and kissed her. For some time he could not say anything, but after a while he conquered his emotion sufficiently to say —

“Oh, my mother – my poor mother! Oh, my dear, my ill-used mother!” and then again his emotions got the better of him. “I cannot,” he said, after a pause, with a renewed effort to govern himself, “I cannot say what I shall do now, I cannot even think, but I am sure of one thing, I must remain no longer at the park.”

“My boy!” exclaimed Mrs. Saltren. “Fall off yourself into the plate and salt!”

“I do not understand,” said he. She left him in his ignorance, she had been thinking of the leeches.

“My dear Giles! Whatever you do, don’t breathe a word of this to any one.”

“Mother, I will not, you may be sure of that.”

“Not to Lord Lamerton above all – not for heaven’s sake.”

“Least of all to him.”

“I should get into such trouble. Oh, my gracious!”

“Mother, dear,” the young fellow clasped her to his heart again – “how inexpressibly precious you are to me now, and how I grieve for you. I can say no more now.”

Then he went forth.

“Why, bless me!” exclaimed Mrs. Saltren. “He never was so affectionate before. Well, as far as human reason goes, it does seem as if all things were being brought to their best for me; for this day has given me my husband’s love and doubled that of my son.”

Giles Inglett Saltren walked hastily back to the park. On his way he encountered Samuel Ceely, who put forth his maimed hand, and crooked the remaining fingers in his overcoat, to arrest him, as he went by.

“What do you want with me?” asked Jingles impatiently.

“I should be so glad if you would put in a word for me,” pleaded the old man.

“I am engaged – I cannot wait.”

“But,” urged old Ceely, without letting go his hold, “Joan has axed Miss Arminell for a scullery-maid’s place for me. Now I’d rather have to do wi’ the dogs, or I could keep the guns beautifully clean, or even the stables.”

“I really cannot attend to this!” said Jingles, impatiently. “I have other matters of more importance now on my mind; besides, my influence is not what – ” he spoke bitterly – “what it should be in the great house.”

“You might do me a good turn, and speak a word for me.”

“The probability of my speaking a good word for you, or any one to Lord Lamerton, or of doing any one a good turn in Orleigh Park, is gone from me for ever,” said Giles. “You must detain me no longer – it is useless. Let me go.”

He shook himself free from the clutch of the old man, and walked along the road.

After he had gone several paces, perhaps a hundred yards, he turned – moved by what impulse was unknown to him – and looked back. In the road, lit by the moon, stood the cripple, stretching forth his maimed hand after him, with the claw-like fingers.

CHAPTER XVIII
HOW ARMINELL TOOK IT

Giles Inglett Saltren walked on fast, he was disturbed in the stream of his thoughts by the interruption of the tiresome old cripple. He had more important matters to occupy his mind than the requirements of Samuel Ceely. His heart beat, his hands became moist. What a marvellous disclosure had been made to him – and he wondered at himself for not having divined it before. He argued much as did his mother. Why had Lord Lamerton done such great things for him, why had he sent him abroad, found him money, given him education, lifted him far above the sphere in which his parents moved, unless he felt called to do so by a sense of responsibility, such as belongs to a father?

To a whole class of minds disinterested conduct is inconceivable. All such conduct as is oblique is to them intelligible, and allowance is made by them for stupidity, and stupidity with them is the same thing as unselfishness. But such unselfishness is permissible only by fits as lapses from the course which all men naturally take. But that men should act consistently on disinterested motives is an idea too preposterous for them to allow of its existence.

This class of minds does not belong specially to any particular stratum of society, though it is found to be most prevalent where the struggle for existence is most keen, and where there is least culture.

But of culture there are two kinds, that which is external, and that which is within; it is generally found that this inability to understand disinterested conduct is found everywhere where the inner culture does not exist.

There is, we believe, a Rabbinic legend concerning a certain cow which was its own calf, and much disputation ensued among the Talmudists, to determine the point of time at which the cow calved itself, and when it ceased to be accounted beef, and became veal, or the contrary. But what seems to us Gentiles to be impossible in the material sense, is possible enough in the spiritual realm, and a very calf-like self may become the mother of a cow-self, so vast, so considerable that, like the Brahminic cow, Varuna, it will occupy the entire firmament, extend to the horizon on all sides, and overshadow and envelope everything. Varuna in fact is the universe, and as we see and exist in that universe, so with the cow-self born of calf-self, it becomes our universe. We see only that cow, inhale the breath of that cow, think only cow thoughts, stand on cow, and our aspirations are limited on all sides by cow. That cow is Self born of self. The breath of that cow is sweet to our nostrils, its milk the nourishment of our bowels, its low is music to our ears, and nothing that does not smell and taste and sound of that cow is worthy of being smelt, and tasted, and listened to.

Of this cow we can give information unattainable by the Rabbis. We can watch its development, if we cannot determine the moment of its nativity. It probably comes to the birth at an early age, but there is this deserving of consideration about it that this cow born of calf can be bled to whiteness, and knocked on the head if taken in time.

If, however, it be allowed to attain to heiferhood, it is thenceforth unmanageable; we see everything through its medium, and like and dislike, love and hate all objects and persons as they stand within or without of the compass of the great cow-self, which has become our Varuna, our universe.

It must not be supposed that such as live under the shadow of this great cow, are oppressed by it. On the contrary they have become so accustomed to it that they could not exist apart from it. There is a story of a man who carried a monstrous cow on his shoulders, and explained that he had acquired the ability to do so by beginning with the creature when it was a day old. As the calf grew, so grew his ability to support its weight. It is the same with us, we carry the little calf-self about on our shoulder, and dance along the road and leap over the stones, and as day by day the calf grows, so does our capacity for carrying it, till at last we trudge about everywhere, into all society, even into church, with the monstrous cow-self on our shoulders, and do not feel that we have anything weighing on us whatsoever.

Now Giles Inglett Saltren had grown up nursing and petting this calf. He had good natural abilities, but partly through his mother’s folly, partly through external circumstances, he had come to see everything through a medium of self. The notice taken of him by his schoolmaster because he was intelligent, by Lord Lamerton because he was delicate, the very stethoscoping of his lungs, the jellies and grapes sent him from the great house, the petting he got in the servants’ hall, because he was handsome and interesting, the superiority he had acquired over his parents by his residence abroad, and education, all tended to the feeding and fattening of the calf-self; and the cod-liver oil he had consumed, had not merely gone to restore his lungs, but to build up piles of yellow fat on the flanks of self. Jingles had already reached that point at which his cow had become Varuna, his entire universe. He thought of, considered, nothing from any other point of view than as it touched himself.

His consciousness of discomfort in the society at Orleigh, his bitterness of mood, his resentment of the distinctions not purposely made, but naturally existing and necessarily insuperable, between himself and those with whom he associated, all this sprang out of the one source, all came of the one disease – intense, all-absorbing, all prevailing selfishness.

He observed the natural ease that pervaded all the actions of those with whom he was brought into contact in the upper world, and their complete lack of self-consciousness, their naturalness, simplicity, in all they said and did. He had not got it – he could not acquire it, he was like a maid-of-all work from a farmhouse on a market day in the county town wearing a Mephistopheles hat on her red head, and ten-button gloves on her mottled arms. He was conscious of his self-consciousness – he feared it would be remarked. It made him suspicious and envious and angry. He could not reach to the ease of those above him, and therefore he desired to level them to his own plane. A man with black blood in his veins is fearful lest those at the table should look at his nails. Jingles was ever dreading lest some chance glance should discover the want of breed in himself.

This caused him much misery; and this all came of his carrying about the cow-self with him into my lady’s boudoir, and my lord’s study, to the dining-room, and to the parlour.

I was at the autumn fair some years ago at Liège; on the boulevards were streets of booths, some for the sale of cakes and toys, others shows; but, as among the stalls those for cakes prevailed, so among the shows did the Rigolade Parisienne preponderate.

Not having the faintest conception of what the Rigolade was, I paid my sou and entered one in quest of knowledge; and this is what I saw – a series of mirrors. But there was this peculiar about the mirrors, one was convex, and in it I beheld my nose reduced to a pimple, and my eyes to currants; another was concave, in which my nose swelled to a proboscis and my eyes to plums. A third mirror multiplied my face fifty times. A fourth showed me my face elongated, as when my MS. has been returned “not suited,” from an editor; a fifth widened my face to an absurd grin; in a sixth I saw my pleasant self magnified in serene and smiling beauty in the midst, and showed me every surrounding person and object, the faces of men, the houses, the cathedral, the sky, the sun, all distorted out of shape and proportions. “Eh ça, M’sou,” said the showman, “c’est la véritable Rigolade Parisienne.”

Eh ça – my dear readers, was Giles Inglett Saltren’s vision of life. He saw himself, infinitely magnified, and everything else dwarfed about him and tortured into monstrosity.

Of one thing I am very certain, dear reader, in this great Rigolade of life into which we have entered, and through which we are walking, there are some who are always seeing themselves in the multiplying mirror, and there are others who contemplate their faces continually elongated, whilst others again see themselves in the widening mirror and accommodate themselves to be the perpetual buffoon. Let us trust that these are not many, but there certainly are some who view themselves enlarged, and view everything and every person beside, the world about them, the heaven above them, in a state of distortion.

Lord Lamerton had shown the young tutor extraordinary kindness, for he was a man with a soft heart, and he really wished to make the young fellow happy. He would have liked Giles to have opened out to him and not to have maintained a formal distance, but he was unable to do more than invite confidence, and he attributed the stiffness of the tutor to his shyness. Of late, his lordship had begun to think that perhaps Jingles was somewhat morbid, but this he attributed to his constitutional delicacy. Consumptive people are fantastical, was his hasty generalization.

In the heart of Giles Inglett Saltren a very mixed feeling existed as he walked back to the park. He was gratified to think that he had noble blood in his veins, but he was incensed at the thought of the treachery to which his mother had fallen a victim, and which robbed him of his birth-rights. Had that function in the drawing-room, described by his mother, been celebrated legally, he and not the snivelling little Giles would be heir to Orleigh, to fifty thousand a year, and a coronet, and a seat in the House of Lords. What use would Giles the Little make of his privileges? Would he not lead the same prosaic life as his father, planting pines, digging fish-ponds, keeping a pack of hounds, doing the active work of a county magnate and magistrate – whereas he – Giles Inglett Saltren, no longer Saltren, but Baron Lamerton of Orleigh, might become, with the advantages of his birth, wealth, and abilities combined, the greatest statesman and reformer England had known. He felt that his head was bursting with ideas, his blood on fire to give them utterance, and his hands tingling to carry his projects into effect. Without some adventitious help, such as position and wealth could give, he could not take the place he knew by inner illumination should be his.