CHAPTER IV.
SALES--MATTERS OF PRINCIPLE--MRS. MINCHIN QUARRELS WITH THE BRIDE--MRS.MINCHIN QUARRELS WITH EVERYBODY--MRS. MINCHIN IS RECONCILED--THE VOYAGEHOME--A DEATH ON BOARD.
I only remember a little of our voyage home in the troop-ship, but Ihave heard so much of it, from the elder Buller girls and the ladies ofthe regiment, that I seem quite familiar with all that happened; and Ihardly know now what I remember myself, and what has been recalled orsuggested to me by hearing the other ladies talk.
There was no lack of subjects for talk when the news came that theregiment was ordered home. As Aunt Theresa repeatedly remarked, "Thereare a great many things to be considered." And she considered them allday long--by word of mouth.
The Colonel (that is, the new Colonel)--he had just returned from leavein the hills--and his wife behaved rather shabbily, it was thought."But," as Mrs. Minchin said, "what could you expect? They say she wasthe daughter of a wholesale draper in the City. And trade in the bloodalways peeps out." We knew for certain that before there was a word saidabout the regiment going home, it had been settled that the Colonel'swife should go to England, where her daughters were being educated, andtake the two youngest children with her. Her passage in the mail-steamerwas all but taken, if not quite. And then, when they heard of thetroop-ship, she stayed to go home in that. "Money can be no object tothem," said Mrs. Minchin, "for one of the City people belonging to herhas died lately, and left her--I can't tell you how many thousands.Indeed, they've heaps of money, and now he's got the regiment he oughtto retire. And I must say, I think it's very hard on you, dear Mrs.Buller. With all your family, senior officer's wife's accommodationwould be little enough, for a long voyage."
"Which is no reason why my wife should have better accommodation thanshe is entitled to, more than any other lady on board," observed UncleBuller. "The Quartermaster's wife has more children than we have, andyou know how much room she will get."
"Quartermaster's wife!" muttered Mrs. Minchin. "She would have beenaccommodated with the women of the regiment if we had gone home threemonths ago (at which time Quartermaster Curling was still only asergeant)."
Uncle Buller made no reply. He was not fond of Mrs. Minchin, and henever disputed a point with her.
One topic of the day was "sales." We all had to sell off what we did notwant to take home, and the point was to choose the right moment fordoing so.
"I shan't be the first," said Aunt Theresa decidedly. "The first salesare always failures somehow. People are depressed. Then they know thatthere are plenty more to come, and they hang back. But further on,people have just got into an extravagant humour, and would gobargain-hunting to fifty sales a day. Later still, they find out thatthey've got all they want."
"And a great deal that they don't want," put in Uncle Buller.
"Which is all the same thing," said Aunt Theresa. "So I shall sell aboutthe middle." Which she did, demanding her friends' condolencesbeforehand on the way in which her goods and chattels would be "givenaway," and receiving their congratulations afterwards upon the highprices that they fetched.
To do Aunt Theresa justice, if she was managing, she was quite honest.
[Eleanor is shocked by some of the things I say about people in our ownrank of life. She believes that certain vulgar vices, such as cheating,lying, gluttony, petty gossip, malicious mischief-making, etc., areconfined to the lower orders, or, as she wisely and kindly phrases it,to people who know no better. She laughs at me, and I laugh at myself,when I say (to support my own views) that I know more of the world thanshe does; since what I know of the world beyond this happy corner of itI learned when I was a mere child. But though we laugh, I can remember agood deal. I have heard polished gentlemen lie, at a pinch, like theproverbial pick-pocket, and pretty ladies fib as well as servant-girls.Of course, I do not mean to say that as many ladies as servant-girlstell untruths. But Eleanor would fain believe that the lie which Solomondiscovered to be "continually on the lips of the untaught" is not on thelips of those who "know better" at all. As to dishonesty, too, I shouldbe sorry to say that customers cheat as much as shopkeepers, but I dothink that many people who ought to "know better" seem to forget thattheir honour as well as their interest is concerned in every bargain.The question then arises, do people in our rank know so much better onthese points of moral conduct than those below them? If Eleanor and herparents are "old-fashioned" (and the boys think us quite behind thetimes), I fancy, that perhaps high principle and a nice sense of honourare not so well taught now as they used to be. Noble sentiments are notthe fashion. The very phrase provokes a smile of ridicule. But I do notknow whether the habit of uttering ignoble ones in "chaff" does not atlast bring the tone of mind down to the low level. It is so terriblyeasy to be mean, and covetous, and selfish, and cowardly untrue, if thepeople by whose good opinion one's character lives will comfortablyconfess that they also "look out for themselves," and "take care ofNumber One," and think "money's the great thing in this world," and hold"the social lie" to be a necessary part of social intercourse. I knowthat once or twice it has happened that young people with whom we havebeen thrown have said things which have made high-principled Eleanorstand aghast in honourable horror; and that that speechless indignationof hers has been as much lost upon them as the touch of a feather on thehide of a rhinoceros. Eleanor is more impatient than I am on suchsubjects. I who have been trained in more than one school myself, amsorry for those who have never known the higher teaching. Eleanor thinksthat modesty, delicacy of mind and taste, and uprightness in word anddeed, are innate in worthy characters. Where she finds them absent, sheis apt to dilate her nostrils, and say, in that low, emphatic voicewhich is her excited tone, "There are some things that you cannot _putinto_ anybody!" and so turn her back for ever on the offender. Or, asshe once said to a friend of the boys, who was staying with us, in theheat of argument, "I supposed that honourable men, like poets, are born,not made." I, indeed, do believe these qualities to be in great measureinherited; but I believe them also to come of training, and to be moreeasily lost than Eleanor will allow. She has only lived in one moralatmosphere. I think that the standard of a family or a social circlefalls but too easily; and in all humbleness of mind, I say that I havereason to believe that in this respect, as in other matters, elevationand amendment are possible.
However, this is one of the many subjects we discuss, rocking and pacingthe kitchen to the howling of the wind. We have confessed that ourexperience is very small, and our opinions still unfixed in the matter,so it is unlikely that I shall settle it to my own, or anybody'ssatisfaction, in the pages of this biography.]
To return to Aunt Theresa. She was, as I said, honest. She chose a goodmoment for our sale; but she did not "doctor" the things. For the creditof the regiment, I feel ashamed to confess that everybody was not soscrupulous. One lady sat in our drawing-room, with twenty-five pounds'worth of lace upon her dress, and congratulated herself on having soldsome toilette-china as sound, of which she had daintily doctored twofractures with an invaluable cement. The pecuniary gain may have beenhalf-a-crown. The loss in self-respect she did not seem to estimate.Aunt Theresa would not have done it herself, but she laughedencouragingly. It is difficult to be strait-laced with a lady who had somuch old point, and whose silks are so stiff that she can rustle downyour remonstrances. Another friend, a young officer whose personalextravagance was a proverb even at a station in India, boasted for aweek of having sold a rickety knick-knack shelf to a man who was goingoff to the hills for five-and-twenty rupees when it was not worth six. Ihave heard him swear at tailors, servants, and subordinates of allkinds, for cheating. I do not think it ever dawned upon his mind thatcommon honesty was a virtue in which he himself was wanting. As to Mrs.Minchin's tales on this subject--but Mrs. Minchin's tales were not to berelied upon.
It was about this time that Mrs. Minchin and the bride quarrelled. In afew weeks after her arrival, the bride knew all the ladies of theregiment and the society of the station, and then showed lit
tleinclination to be bear-led by Mrs. Minchin. She met that terrible ladyso smartly on one occasion that she retired, worsted, for the afternoon,and the bride drove triumphantly round the place, and called on all herfriends, looking as soft as a Chinchilla muff, and dropping at everybungalow the tale of something that Mrs. Minchin had said, by no meansto the advantage of the inmates.
It was in this way that Aunt Theresa came to know what Mrs. Minchin hadsaid about her wearing half-mourning for my father and mother. That sheknew better than to go into deep black, which is trying to indefinitecomplexions, but was equal to any length of grief in those lavenders,and delicate combinations of black and white, which are so becoming toeverybody, especially to people who are not quite so young as they havebeen.
In the warmth of her own indignation at these unwarrantable remarks, andof the bride's ready sympathy, Aunt Theresa felt herself in candourbound to reveal what Mrs. Minchin had told her about the bride's havingsold a lot of her wedding presents at the sale for fancy prices; theybeing new-fashioned ornaments, and so forth, not yet to be got at thestation.
The result of this general information all round was, of course, aquarrel between Mrs. Minchin and nearly every lady in the regiment. Thebride had not failed to let "the Colonel's lady" know what Mrs. Minchinthought of her going home in the troop-ship, and had made a call uponthe Quartermaster's wife for the pleasure of making her acquainted withMrs. Minchin's warm wish that the regiment had been ordered home threemonths sooner, when Mrs. Curling and the too numerous little Curlingswould not have been entitled to intrude upon the ladies' cabin.
And yet, strange to say, before we were half-way to England, Mrs.Minchin was friendly once more with all but the bride; and the bride wasat enmity with every lady on board. The truth is, Mrs. Minchin, though agossip of the deepest dye, was kind-hearted, after a fashion. Herrestless energy, which chiefly expended itself in petty social plots,and the fomentation of quarrels, was not seldom employed also inpractical kindness towards those who happened to be in favour with her.She was really interested--for good or for evil--in those with whoseaffairs she meddled, and if she was a dangerous enemy, and a yet moredangerous friend, she was neither selfish nor illiberal.
The bride, on the other hand, had no real interest whatever in anybody'saffairs but her own, and combined in the highest degree those qualitiesof personal extravagance and general meanness which not unfrequently gotogether.
A long voyage is no small test of temper; and it was a situation inwhich Mrs. Minchin's best qualities shone. It was proportionablyunfavourable to those of the bride. Her maid was sick, and she wasslovenly. She was sick herself, and then her selfishness and discontentknew no check. The other ladies bore their own little troubles, andhelped each other; but under the peevish egotism of the bride, herwarmest friends revolted. It was then that Mrs. Minchin resumed her swayamongst us.
With Aunt Theresa she was soon reconciled. Mrs. Buller's memory wasalways hazy, both in reference to what she said herself, and to what wassaid to her. She was too good-natured to strain it to recall pastgrievances. Her indignation had not lasted much beyond that afternoon inwhich the bride scattered discord among her acquaintances. She hadrelieved herself by outpouring the tale of Mrs. Minchin's treachery toUncle Buller, and then taking him warmly to task for the indifferencewith which he heard her wrongs; and had ended by laughing heartily whenhe compared the probable encounter between Mrs. Minchin and the bride tothe deadly struggles of two quarrelsome "praying-mantises" in hiscollection.
[Major Buller was a naturalist, and took home some rare and beautifulspecimens of Indian insects.]
It was an outbreak of sickness amongst the little Curlings which led tothe reconciliation with the Quartermaster's wife. Neither her kindnessof heart nor her love of managing other folks' matters would permit Mrs.Minchin to be passive then. She made the first advances, and poor Mrs.Curling gratefully responded.
"I'm sure, Mrs. Minchin," said she, "I don't wonder at any one thinkingthe children would be in the way, poor dears. But of course, as Curlingsaid----"
"GOD bless you, my good woman," Mrs. Minchin broke in. "Don't let us goback to that. We all know pretty well what Mrs. Seymour's made of, now.Let's go to the children. I'm as good a sick-nurse as most people, andif you keep up your heart we'll pull them all through before we get tothe Cape."
But with all her zeal (and it did not stop short of a quarrel with thesurgeon) and all her devotion, which never slackened, Mrs. Minchin didnot "pull them all through."
We were just off the Cape when Arthur Curling died. He was my own age,and in the beginning of the voyage we had been playfellows. Of all thechildren who swarmed on deck to the distraction of (at least) theunmarried officers of the regiment, he had been the noisiest and themerriest. He made fancy ships in corners, to which he admitted the otherchildren as fancy passengers, or fancy ship's officers of variousgrades. Once he employed a dozen of us to haul at a rope as if we were"heaving the log." Owing to an unexpected coil, it slackened suddenly,and we all fell over one another at the feet of two young officers whowere marching up and down, arm-in-arm, absorbed in conversation. Theiranger was loud as well as deep, but it did not deter Arthur Curling fromfurther exploits, or stop his ceaseless chatter about what he would dowhen he was a man and the captain of a vessel.
He did not live to be either the one or the other. Some very roughweather off the Cape was fatal to him at a critical point in hisillness. How Mrs. Minchin contrived to keep her own feet and to nursethe poor boy as she did was a marvel. He died on her knees.
The weather had been rough up to the time of his death, but it was acalm lovely morning on which his body was committed to the deep. Theship's bell tolled at daybreak, and all the ladies but the bride werewith poor Mrs. Curling at the funeral. Mrs. Seymour lay in her berth,and whined complaints of "that horrid bell." She displayed somethingbetween an interesting terror and a shrewish anger because there was "abody on board." When she said that the Curlings ought to be thankful tohave one child less to provide for, the other ladies hurried indignantlyfrom the cabin.
The early morning air was fresh and mild. The sea and sky were grey, butpeaceful. The decks were freshly washed. The sailors in various parts ofthe ship uncovered their heads. The Colonel and several officers werepresent. I had earnestly begged to be there also, and finding Mr.George, I stood with my hand in his.
Mrs. Curling's grief had passed the point of tears. She had not shed onesince the boy died, though Mrs. Minchin had tried hard to move her tothe natural relief of weeping. She only stood in silent agony, thoughthe Quartermaster's cheeks were wet, and most of the ladies sobbedaloud.
As the little coffin slid over the hatchway into the quiet sea, the sunrose, and a long level beam covered the place where the body had gonedown.
Then, with a sudden cry, the mother burst into tears.