Books: Our Friend the Charlatan

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Fully another ten years elapsed before the widow's health showed any
sign of failing. It was whilst passing a winter in Cornwall, that
she suffered a slight paralytic attack, speedily, in appearance,
overcome, but the beginning of steady decline. Her intellectual
activity had seemed to increase as time went on. Outgrowing various
phases of orthodox religious zeal, outgrowing an unreasoned
conservatism in political and social views, she took up all manner
of novel causes, and made Rivenoak a place of pilgrimage for the
apostles of revolution. Yet the few persons who enjoyed close
acquaintance with her knew that, at heart, she still nourished the
pride of her Tank, and that she had little if any genuine sympathy
with democratic principles. Only a moral restlessness, a perhaps
half-conscious lack of adaptation to her circumstances, accounted
for the antinomianism which took hold upon her. Local politics found
her commonly on the Conservative side, and, as certain indiscreet
inquirers found to their cost, it was perilous to seek Lady Ogram's
reasons for this course. But there came at length a schism between
her and the Hollingford Tories: it dated from the initial stage of
her great quarrel with their representative Mr. Robb.

Lady Ogram, who was on the lookout in these latter years for
struggling merit or talent which she could assist, interested
herself in the son of a poor woman of Shawe, a boy who had won a
scholarship at Hollingford School, and seemed full of promise. Being
about sixteen, the lad had a great desire to enter a bank, and Lady
Ogram put his case before the senior partner in the chief
Hollingford banking-house, who was no other than Mr. Robb himself.
Thus recommended, the boy soon had his wish; he was admitted to a
clerkship. But less than six months proved him so unsuitable a
member of the establishment that he received notice of dismissal.
Not till after this step had been taken did Lady Ogram hear of it.
She was indignant at what seemed to her a lack of courtesy; she made
inquiries, persuaded herself that her _protege_ had been harshly
dealt with, and wrote a very pungent letter to the head of the firm.
Mr. Robb did not himself reply, and the grave arguments urged by his
subordinate served nothing to mitigate Lady Ogram's wrath. Insult
had been added to injury; her ladyship straightway withdrew an
account she kept at the bank, and dispatched to the M. P. a second
letter, so forcible in its wording that it received no answer at
all.

Never half-hearted in her quarrels, Lady Ogram made known to all her
acquaintances in the neighbourhood the opinion she had of Mr. Robb,
and was in no wise discouraged when it came to her ears that the
banker M. P. spoke of taking legal proceedings against her. It
happened that Mr. Robb about this time addressed an important
meeting of his constituents. His speech was not brilliant, and Lady
Ogram made great fun of the newspaper report. He reminded her, she
said, of a specially stupid organ-grinder, grinding all out of time
the vulgarest and most threadbare tunes. Henceforth, applying the
name of a character in Dickens, she spoke of Hollingford's
representative as Robb the Grinder; which, when Mr. Robb heard of
it, as of course he did very soon, by no means sweetened his
disposition towards "the termagant of Rivenoak"--a phrase he was
supposed to have himself invented. "I'll grind her!" remarked the
honourable gentleman, in the bosom of his family, and before long he
found his opportunity. In the next parliamentary recess, he again
spoke at Hollingford, this time at a festal meeting of the
Conservative Club, where the gentility of town and district was well
represented. His subject was the British Aristocracy, its glories in
the past, its honours in the present, and the services it would
render in a future dark with revolutionary menace. The only passage
which had any particular meaning, or to which anyone listened, ran
pretty much thus:

"Ladies and gentleman--ha--hum--we pride ourselves on the fact
that--ha--our Aristocracy is recruited from the choice
representatives of the middle class--hum. The successful in every--that
is to say in all the respectable branches of activity--ha--see
before them the possibility, I would say the glorious
possibility, of taking a seat in that illustrious Upper Chamber,
which is the balance of our free Constitution. May the day never
come, ladies and gentlemen, when--ha--the ranks of our nobility
suffer an intrusion of the unworthy--hum. And I would extend this
remark to the order below that of peers, to the hereditary dignity
which often rewards--ha--distinguished merit. May those simple
titles, so pleasant--hum--to our ears, whether applied, I say,
to man or woman--ha--hum--ha--never be degraded by ignoble
bearers, by the low born--ha--by the tainted in repute--ha--
in short by any of those unfit, whether man or woman--ha--hum--
who, like vile weeds, are thrown up to the surface by the, shall I
say, deluge of democracy."

Every hearer saw the application of this, and Lady Ogram had not
long to wait before she read it in print. Her temper that day was
not mild. She had occasion to controvert a friend, a Conservative
lady, on some little point of fact in an innocent gossip, and that
lady never again turned her steps to Rivenoak.

But worse was to come. Rarely had Lady Ogram any trouble with her
domestics; she chose them very carefully, and kept them for a long
time; they feared her, but respected her power of ruling, the rarest
gift in women of whatever rank. Now it befell that the maid in
personal attendance upon her left to be married, and in her
engagement of a successor Lady Ogram (perhaps because of her turbid
state of mind just now) was less circumspect than usual; she did not
ascertain, for instance, that the handmaid had a sister attached in
like capacity to the person of Mrs. Robb, nor did she note certain
indications of a temper far too closely resembling her own. Before
many days had passed, mistress and attendant found themselves on
cool terms, and from this to the extremity of warmth was a step as
fatally easy as that from the sublime to the ridiculous. Lady Ogram
gave an order; it was imperfectly obeyed. Lady Ogram, her eyes
blazing with wrath, demanded an explanation of this neglect; met
with inadequate excuses, she thundered and lightened. Any ordinary
domestic would have been terror-stricken, but this handmaid echoed
storm with storm; she fronted the lady of Rivenoak as no one had
ever dared to do. The baronet's widow, losing all command of
herself, caught up the nearest missile--a little ivory-framed
hand-mirror and hurled it at her antagonist, who was struck full on
the forehead and staggered.

"You shall pay for this, you old hag," shrieked the injured woman.
"I'll pull you up before the Hollingford magistrates, and I'll tell
them where you got your manners. I know now that it's true, what
Mrs. Robb told my sister, that you began life as a "Saxon
monosyllable--" on London streets!"

Some minutes later, a servant sent to Lady Ogram's room by the
retreating combatant found her mistress lying unconscious. For a day
or two the lady of Rivenoak was thought to be near her end; but the
struggle prolonged itself, hope was seen, and in three months' time
the patient went about her garden and park in a bath chair. Doctors
opined that she would never walk again; yet, before six months were
out, Lady Ogram was down in Cornwall, taking the air very much as of
old. But her aspect had greatly changed; her body had shrunk, her
face had become that of an old, old woman. Then it was that she
renewed her falling locks, and appeared all at once with the
magnificent crown of auburn hair which was henceforth to astonish
beholders.

More than ten years had now elapsed since that serious illness. Lady
Ogram's age was seventy-nine. Medical science declared her a marvel,
and prudently held it possible that she might live to ninety.

What to do with her great possessions had long been a harassing
subject of thought with Lady Ogram. She wished to use them for some
praiseworthy purpose, which, at the same time, would perpetuate her
memory. More than twenty years ago she had instructed her solicitor
to set on foot an inquiry for surviving members of her own family.
The name was Tomalin. Search had gone on with more or less
persistence, and Tomalins had come to light, but in no case could a
clear connection be established with the genealogical tree, which so
far as Arabella had knowledge of it, rooted in the person of John
Tomalin of Hackney, her grandfather, by trade a cabinet-maker,
deceased somewhere about 1840. Since her illness, Lady Ogram had
fallen into the habit of brooding over the days long gone by. She
revived the memory of her home in Camden Town, of her life as a
not-ill-cared-for child, of her experiences in a West-end workroom,
her temptations, multiplied as she grew to the age of independence,
her contempt of girls who "went wrong," these domestic quarrels and
miseries which led to her breaking away and becoming an artists'
model. How remote it all was! Had she not lived through it in a
prior existence, with rebirth to the life of luxury and command
which alone seemed natural to her? All but sixty years had passed
since she said good-bye for ever to Camden Town, and for thirty
years at least, the greater part of her married life, she had scarce
turned a thought in that direction. Long ago her father and mother
were dead; she knew of it only from the solicitor, Mr. Kerchever,
who, after the death of Sir Quentin, gave her a full account of the
baronet's pecuniary relations with the Tomalin household. No
blackmailing had ever been practised; the plumber and his wife were
content with what they received, (Arabella felt a satisfaction in
remembering that of her own accord she had asked her husband to do
something for them, when she might very well have disregarded them
altogether,) and the two brothers, who were supposed to have left
England, had never been heard of again. The failure to discover
anyone named Tomalin whom she could regard as of her own blood was
now a disappointment to Lady Ogram; sometimes she even fretted about
it. Mr. Kerchever had it in charge to renew the inquiry, to use
every possible means, and spare no outlay. The old woman yearned for
kinsfolk, as the younger sometimes do for offspring of their own.

The engagement of Constance Bride as resident secretary resulted no
doubt from this craving in the old lady's mind for human affection.
Perhaps she felt that she had behaved with less than justice to the
girl's father; moreover, Constance as a little child had greatly won
her liking, and in the young woman she perceived a capability, an
independence, which strongly appealed to her. Thus far they had got
on very well together, and Lady Ogram began to think that she had
found in Constance what she had long been looking for--one of her
own sex equal to the burden of a great responsibility and actuated
by motives pure enough to make her worthy of a high privilege.

Had her girlhood fallen into brutal hands, Arabella's native
savagery would doubtless have developed strange excesses in the life
of a social outlaw. The companionship of Quentin Ogram, a mild
idealist, good-naturedly critical of the commonplace, though it
often wearied her and irritated her primitive interests, was a
civilising influence, the results of which continued to manifest
themselves after the baronet's death. On the aesthetic side Arabella
profited not at all; to the beautiful she ever presented a hard
insensibility, and in later years she ceased even to affect pleasure
in the things of nature or art which people generally admired. Her
flowery and leafy drawing-room indicated no personal taste; it came
of a suggestion by her gardener when she converted to her own use
the former smoking-room; finding that people admired and thought it
original, she made the arrangement a permanence, anxious only that
the plants exhibited should be nicer and finer than those possessed
by her neighbours. On the other hand, her moral life had from the
first shown capacity of expansion; it held at its service an
intellect, of no very fine quality indeed, but acute and energetic.
In all practical affairs she was greatly superior to the average
woman, adding to woman's meticulous sense of interest and persistent
diplomacy a breadth of view found only in exceptional males; this
faculty the circumstances of her life richly fostered, and, by
anomaly, advancing age enlarged, instead of contracting, the
liberality of her spirit. After fifty years told, when ordinary
mortals have long since given their measure in heart and brain, Lady
Ogram steadily advanced. Solitary possessor of wealth, autocrat over
a little world of her own, instead of fossilising in dull dignity,
she proved herself receptive of many influences with which the time
was fraught. She cast off beliefs--or what she had held as such--
and adopted others; she exchanged old prejudices for new forms of
zeal; above all, she chose to be in touch with youth and aspiration
rather than with disillusioned or retrospective age. Only when
failing health shadowed the way before her did she begin to lose
that confident carriage of the mind which, together with her
profound materialism, had made worry and regret and apprehension
things unknown to her. Thus, when old but by no means senile, she
learnt that disquiet of conscience, so common in our day, which has
nothing to do with spiritual perceptiveness, but comes of habitual
concentration on every-day cares and woes, on the life of the world
as apart from that of the soul. Through sleepless nights, Lady Ogram
brooded over the contrast between her own exaltation and the
hopeless level of the swinking multitude. What should she do with
her money? The question perturbed her with a sense of responsibility
which would have had no meaning for her in earlier years. How could
she best use the vast opportunity for good which lay to her hand?

Endless were the projects she formed, rejected, took up again. Vast
was the correspondence she held with all manner of representative
people, seeking for information, accumulating reports, lectures,
argumentative pamphlets, theoretic volumes, in mass altogether
beyond her ability to cope with; nowadays, her secretary read and
digested and summarised with tireless energy. Lady Ogram had never
cared much for reading; she admired Constance's quick intelligence
and power of grappling with printed matter. But that she had little
faith in the future of her own sex, she would have been tempted to
say: "There is the coming woman." Miss Bride's companionship was
soon indispensable to her; she had begun to dread the thought of
being left alone with her multiplying solicitudes and uncertainties.

Her great resource in these days was her savage hatred of Mr. Robb
and his family, and of all in any way adhering to him. Whenever she
fixed her mind on that, all wider troubles fled into space, and she
was the natural woman of her prime once more. Since making the
acquaintance of Dyce Lashmar, she had thought of little but this
invigorating theme. At last she had found the man to stand against
Robb the Grinder, the man of hope, a political and moral enthusiast
who might sweep away the mass of rotten privilege and precedent
encumbering the borough of Hollingford. She wrote to all her
friends, at Hollingford and throughout the country, making known
that the ideal candidate in the Liberal cause had at last been
discovered. And presently she sent out invitations to a dinner, on a
day a fortnight ahead, which should assemble some dozen of her
faithful, to meet and hear the eloquent young philosopher.

Excitement was not good for Lady Ogram's health; the doctors agreed
in prescribing tranquillity, and she had so far taken their advice
as to live of late in comparative retirement. Her observant
companion noticed that the conversations with Lashmar had been
followed by signs of great fatigue; an agitated manner, a temper
even more uncertain than usual, and physical symptoms which
Constance had learnt to look for, proved during the ensuing days
that the invalid was threatened with another crisis. Acting on her
own responsibility, Constance addressed a note to Dr. Baldwin, who
presently, as if making a casual call, dropped in to see his
patient. The doctor knew how to comport himself with Lady Ogram. He
began by remarking cheerfully how well she looked, and asking
whether she had settled the details of her summer holiday. Dull and
rather sullen of air, Lady Ogram replied with insignificant
brevities; then, as the doctor chatted on about local matters, her
interest gradually awoke.

"Anything more been done about the new hospital?" she asked.

"Oh, there are promises, but nothing really important. It'll cost
far more money than there seems any chance as yet of getting. We
ought to buy that bit of land I told you about on Burgess Hill. The
price is high, but it's a perfect situation, and I'm afraid it'll be
going to the builders if something isn't soon done."

Lady Ogram would have purchased the site in question long since, for
it was her purpose to act decisively in this matter of the
much-needed hospital, but it happened that the unspeakable Robb was
the man who had first drawn public attention to the suitability of
Burgess Hill, and Lady Ogram was little inclined to follow where
Robb had led. She hoped to find a yet better site, and, by
undertaking at once both purchase of land and construction of the
building, with a liberal endowment added, to leave in the lurch all
philanthropic rivals. For years she had possessed plans and pictures
of "The Lady Ogram Hospital." She cared for no enterprise, however
laudable, in which she could only be a sharer; the initiative must
be hers, and hers the glory.

Discreetly, Dr. Baldwin worked round to the subject of his patient's
health. He hoped she was committing no imprudence in the way of
excessive mental exertion. It seemed to him--perhaps he was
mistaken--that talk agitated her more than usual. Quiet and
repose--quiet and repose.

That afternoon Lady Ogram was obliged to lie down, a necessity she
always disliked in the daytime, and for two or three days she kept
her room. Constance now and then read to her, but persuaded her to
speak as little as possible of exciting subjects. She saw no one but
this companion. Of late she had been in the habit of fixing her look
upon Constance, as though much occupied with thoughts concerning
her. When she felt able to move about again, they sat together one
morning on the terrace before the house, and Lady Ogram, after a
long inspection of her companion's countenance, asked suddenly:

"Do you often hear from your father?"

"Not often. Once in two months, perhaps."

"I suppose you are not what is called a good daughter?"

Constance found the remark rather embarrassing, for it hit a truth
of which she had been uneasily aware.

"Father and I have not much in common," she replied. "I respect him,
and I hope he isn't quite without some such feeling for me. But we
go such different ways."

"Does he believe what he pretends to?"

"He has never made any pretences at all, Lady Ogram. That's his
character, and I try to think that it's mine too."

"Well, well," exclaimed the old lady, "I suppose you're not going to
quarrel with me because I ask a simple question? You have a touchy
temper, you know. If I had had a temper like yours, I should have
very few friends at my age."

Constance averted her eyes, and said gravely:

"I try to correct myself by your example."

"You might do worse. By the bye--if you won't snap my nose off--
I suppose your father isn't very well to do?"

"He's very poor. Such men always are."

Lady Ogram lay back and mused. She had no affection for Constance,
yet felt more kindly disposed to her than to any other girl or woman
she knew. Consciously or not, she had come to feel a likeness
between her own mind and that of the clergyman's daughter; she
interpreted Constance's thoughts by her own. Indeed, there was a
certain resemblance, both mental and moral. In one regard it showed
itself strikingly--the contempt for their own sex which was
natural to both. As a mere consequence of her birth, Arabella
Tomalin had despised and distrusted womanhood; the sentiment is all
but universal in low-born girls. Advancing in civilisation, she
retained this instinct, and confirmed the habit of mind by results
of her experience; having always sought for meanness and incapacity
in the female world, she naturally had found a great deal of it. By
another way, Constance Bride had arrived at very much the same
results; she made no friends among women, and desired none. Lady
Ogram and she agreed in their disdain for all "woman" movements;
what progress they aimed at concerned the race at large, with merely
a slighting glance towards the special circumstances of its
sex-burdened moiety. Moreover, the time-worn woman perceived in her
young associate a personal ambition which she read by the light of
her own past. She divined in Constance a hunger for things at once
substantial and brilliant, a smouldering revolt against poverty and
dependence. Not for the first time did she remark and study such a
disposition; the symptoms were very well known to Lady Ogram; but
never before had she met it in combination with genuine ability and
other characteristics which she held in esteem.

"Let us talk about our coming man," were her next words.

They talked of Dyce Lashmar.

CHAPTER IX

It was natural that Lady Ogram should from the beginning have
suspected Miss Bride of a peculiar interest in Lashmar. When first
she introduced her friend's name, Constance a little exaggerated the
tone of impartiality, and in subsequent conversation she was never
quite herself on this topic. Evidently she thought of the young man
more often than she cared to have it known; a sort of subdued
irritation now and then betrayed itself in her when she assented to
a favourable comment regarding him, and a certain suspense of
judgment--quite unlike her familiar attitude of mind--always
marked her agreement in hopes for his future. The old woman of the
world interpreted this by her own lights. At moments it vexed her,
for she did not like to be mystified; at others, it touched a chord
of sympathy in some very obscure corner of her being. And, as no
practical problem could be put before her without her wishing to
solve it autocratically, Lady Ogram soon formed a project with
regard to these two persons, a project which took firmer
consistence, and pleased her more, the more she pondered it.

On the appointed day, Lashmar arrived at Rivenoak. He was allowed to
spend an hour in reposeful solitude ere being admitted to his
hostess's presence. Conducted at length to the green drawing-room,
he found Lady Ogram alone. She scrutinised him with friendly but
searching eye, gave him her hand, and bade him be seated near her.

"I have another visitor coming from London to-day; an old friend of
mine, Mrs. Toplady."

Where had Dyce heard that name? Somewhere, certainly. He tried hard
to remember, but without success.

"I think you will like her," pursued Lady Ogram, "and she will
perhaps be useful to you. She likes to know everybody who is, or is
going to be, somebody. She'll ask you, no doubt, to her house in
Pont Street, where you'll meet a great many fools and some
reasonable people. She herself, I may tell you, is no fool, but she
has a good deal more patience with that sort than I ever had, and
so, of course, has many more friends. She's what they call a leader
of Society, yet she doesn't grudge leaving London for a day or two
in the beginning of the Season to do me a service."

"I seem to know her name," said Dyce.

"Of course you do, if you ever read about what Society is doing."

Lady Ogram always uttered the word with a contemptuous lip, but
plainly she did not dislike to have it understood that Society, in
certain of its representatives, took respectful account of her.

"And now," she continued, "I want to tell you about some other
friends of mine you're to meet at dinner tomorrow. Most of them
belong to Hollingford, and you will have to know them."

Very pungently did she sketch these personages. When her listener
showed amusement, Lady Ogram was pleased; if he seemed to find the
picture too entertaining, she added--"But he--or she--is not a
fool, remember that." So did the talk go on, until a servant entered
to announce the arrival of Mrs. Toplady, who had gone to her room,
and, being rather tired, would rest there till dinner-time.

"Where is Miss Bride?" asked Lady Ogram.

"Miss Bride has just returned from Hollingford, my lady."

"I remember," said the hostess to her guest. "She had an appointment
with Mrs. Gallantry, who has her eye on a house for the
training-school. I suppose we must set the thing going; there's no
harm in it."

Constance entered in a few minutes, greeted Lashmar as if she saw
him every day, and began to talk about Mrs. Gallantry's project.

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