THE Diroms belonged to a class now very common in England, the class of very rich people without any antecedents or responsibilities, which it is so difficult to classify or lay hold of, and which neither the authorities of society nor the moralist have yet fully comprehended. They had a great deal of money, which is popularly recognized to be power, and they owed it to nobody but themselves.
They owed nothing to anybody. They had no estates to keep up; no poor people depended upon them; the clerks and porters at the office were not to call dependents, though probably—out of good nature, when they were ill or trouble arose in their families, if it happened to come under the notice of the head of the firm, he would fling them a little money, perhaps with an admonition, perhaps with a joke. But this was pure liberality, generosity as his friends called it. He had nothing to “keep up.”
Even the sick gamekeeper who had been hurt by a fall, though he was in the new tenant’s service, was Lady Allonby’s servant, and it was she who had to support his family while he was ill. The rich people were responsible for nobody. If they were kind—and they were not unkind—it was all to their credit, for they had no duty to any one.
This was how the head of the house considered his position. “I don’t know anything about your land burdens, your feudal burdens,” he would say; “money is what has made me. I pay taxes enough, I hope; but I’ve got no sentimental taxes to pay, and I won’t have anything to say to such rubbish. I am a working man myself, just like the rest. If these fellows will take care of their own business as I did, they will get on themselves as I have done, and want nothing from anybody. I’ve no call even to ‘keep up’ my family; they ought to be working for themselves, as I was at their age. If I do, it’s because the girls and their mother are too many for me, and I have to yield to their prejudices.”
These were Mr. Dirom’s principles: but he threw about his money very liberally all the same, giving large subscriptions, with a determination to stand at the head of the list when he was on it at all, and an inclination to twit the others who did not give so liberally with their stinginess; “What is the use of making bones of it?” he said, with a flourish to Sir John, who was well known to be in straightened circumstances; “I just draw a cheque for five hundred and the thing’s done.”
Sir John could no more have drawn a cheque for five hundred than he could have flown, and Mr. Dirom knew it; and the knowledge gave an edge to his pleasure. Sir John’s twenty-five pounds was in reality a much larger contribution than Mr. Dirom’s five hundred, but the public did not think of this. The public said that Sir John gave the twenty-five because he could not help it, because his position demanded it; but Mr. Dirom’s five hundred took away the breath of the spectators. It was more than liberal; it was magnificent.
Mr. Dirom was a man who wore white waistcoats and large well-blown roses in his coat. He swaggered, without knowing it, in his walk, and in his speech, wherever he was visible. The young people were better bred, and were very conscious of those imperfections. They preferred, indeed, that he should not “trouble,” as they said, to come home, especially to come to the country when business prevented. There was no occasion for papa to “trouble.” Fred could take his place if he was detained in town.
In this way they showed a great deal of tender consideration for their father’s engagements. Perhaps he was deceived by it, perhaps not; no one could tell. He took his own way absolutely, appearing when it suited him, and when it did not suit him leaving them to their own devices. Allonby was too far off for him, too distant from town: though he was quite willing to be known as the occupier of so handsome a “place.” He came down for the first of the shooting, which is the right thing in the city, but afterwards did not trouble his family much with his presence, which was satisfactory to everybody concerned. It was not known exactly what Mr. Dirom had risen from, but it was low enough to make his present elevation wonderful, and to give that double zest to wealth which makes the self-made man happy.
Mrs. Dirom was of a different order. She was two generations at least from the beginning of her family, and she too, though in a less degree than her children, felt that her husband’s manners left something to be desired. He had helped himself up by her means, she having been, as in the primitive legend, of the class of the master’s daughters: at least her father was the head of the firm under which Dirom had begun to “make his way.” But neither was she quite up to the mark.
“Mamma is dreadfully middle-class,” the girls said. In some respects that is worse than the lower class. It made her a little timid and doubtful of her position, which her husband never was. None of these things affected the young people; they had received “every advantage.”
Their father’s wealth was supposed to be immense; and when wealth is immense it penetrates everywhere. A moderate fortune is worth very little in a social point of view, but a great fortune opens every door.
The elder brother, who never came to Allonby, who never went near the business, who had been portioned off contemptuously by his father, as if he had been a girl (and scorn could not go farther), had married an earl’s daughter, and, more than that, had got her off the very steps of the throne, for she had been a Maid of Honour. He was the most refined and cultivated individual in the world, with one of the most lovely houses in London, and everything about him artistic to the last degree. It was with difficulty that he put up with his father at all. Still, for the sake of his little boy, he acknowledged the relationship from time to time.
As for Fred and his sisters, they have already been made known to the reader. Fred was by way of being “in the business,” and went down to the office three or four times in the week when he was in town. But what he wished to be was an artist. He painted more or less, he modelled, he had a studio of his own in the midst of one of the special artistic quarters, and retired there to work, as he said, whenever the light was good.
For his part Fred aspired to be a Bohemian, and did everything he could in a virtuous way to carry out his intention. He scorned money, or thought he did while enjoying every luxury it could procure. If he could have found a beautiful milkmaid or farm girl with anything like the Rossetti type of countenance he would have married her off-hand; but then beauties of that description are rare. The country lasses on the Border were all of too cheerful a type. But he had fully made up his mind that when the right woman appeared no question of money or ambition should be allowed to interfere between him and his inclinations.
“You may say what you will,” he said to his sisters, “and I allow my principles would not answer with girls. You have nothing else to look to, to get on in the world. But a man can take that sort of thing in his own hands, and if one gets beauty that’s enough. It is more distinction than anything else. I shall insist upon beauty, but nothing more.”
“It all depends on what you call beauty,” said Miss Phyllis. “You can make anything beauty if you stand by it and swear to it. Marrying a painter isn’t at all a bad way. He paints you over and over again till you get recognized as a Type, and then it doesn’t matter what other people say.”
“You can’t call Effie a Type,” said the young lady who called herself Doris—her name in fact was a more humble one: but then not even the Herald’s College has anything to do with Christian names.
“She may not be a Type—but if you had seen her as I did in the half light, coming out gradually as one’s eyes got used to it like something developing in a camera—Jove! She was like a Burne-Jones—not strong enough for the blessed Damozel or that sort of thing, but sad and sweet like—like—” Fred paused for a simile, “like a hopeless maiden in a procession winding down endless stairs, or—standing about in the wet, or—If she had not been dressed in nineteenth-century costume.”
“He calls that nineteenth-century costume!” said Phyllis with a mixture of sympathy and scorn.
“Poor Effie is not dressed at all,” said the other sister. “She has clothes on, that is all: but I could make her look very nice if she were in my hands. She has a pretty little figure, not spoiled at all—not too solid like most country girls but just enough to drape a pretty flowing stuff or soft muslin upon. I should turn her out that you would not know her if she trusted herself to me.”
“For goodness’ sake let her alone,” cried Fred; “don’t make a trollop of my little maiden. Her little stiffness suits her. I like her just so, in her white frock.”
“You should have been born a milliner, Dor.”
“Perhaps I was—and papa’s money has thwarted nature. If he should ever lose it all, which I suppose is on the cards——”
“Oh, very much on the cards,” said Fred.
“There is always a smash some time or other in a great commercial concern.”
“What fun!” said Miss Phyllis.
“Then I should set up directly. The sisters Dirom, milliners and dressmakers. It would be exceedingly amusing, and we should make a great fortune—all good dressmakers do.”
“It would be very amiable of you, Dor, to call your firm the sisters Dirom—for I should be of no use. I shall spend the fortune if you please, but I couldn’t help in any other way.”
“Oh, yes, you could. You will marry, and have all your things from me. I should dress you beautifully, and you would be the most delightful advertisement. Of course you would not have any false pride. You would say to your duchesses, I got this from my sister. She is the only possible dressmaker nowadays.”
“False pride—oh, I hope not! It would be quite a distinction—everybody would go. You could set up afternoon teas, and let them try on all your things. It would be delightful. But papa will not come to grief, he is too well backed up,” said Phyllis with a sigh.
“If I do not marry next season, I shall not wait for the catastrophe,” said Doris. “Perhaps if the Opposition comes in we might coax Lord Pantry to get me appointed milliner to the Queen. If Her Majesty had once a dress from me, she would never look at Worth more.”
“Worth!” said Phyllis, throwing up her hands in mild but indignant amazement.
“Well, then, Waley, or whatever you call him. Worth is a mere symbol,” said Doris with philosophical calm. “How I should like it! but if one marries, one’s husband’s family and all kinds of impossible people interfere.”
“You had better marry, you girls,” said Fred; “it is much your best chance. Wipe out the governor with a title. That’s what I should do if I could. But unfortunately I can’t—the finest of heiresses does not communicate her family honours, more’s the pity. I shall always be Fred Dirom, if I were to marry a duchess. But an artist’s antecedents don’t matter. Fortunately he makes his own way.”
“Fred,” said his mother, coming in, “I wish you would not talk of yourself as an artist, dear. Papa does not like it. He indulges you all a great deal, but there are some things that don’t please him at all.”
“Quite unreasonably, mother dear,” said Fred, who was a good son, and very kind to her on the whole. “Most of the fellows I know in that line are much better born than I am. Gentlemen’s sons, most of them.”
“Oh, Fred!” said Mrs. Dirom, with eyes of deep reproach. She added in a tremulous voice, “My grandfather had a great deal of property in the country. He had indeed, I assure you, although you think we have nothing but money. And if that does not make a gentleman, what does?”
“What indeed?” said her son: but he made no further reply. And the sisters interposed.
“We were talking of what we shall all do in case the firm should come to grief, and all the money be lost.”
“Oh, girls!” Mrs. Dirom started violently and put her hand to her heart. “Fred! you don’t mean to say that there are rumours in the city, or a word whispered—”
“Not when I heard last—but then I have not been in the city for a month. That reminds me,” said Fred, “that really I ought to put in an appearance—just once in a way.”
“You mean you want to have a run to town?”
“Yes, dear,” said his mother, “go if you think you could be of any use. Oh, you don’t know what it is you are talking of so lightly. I could tell you things—Oh, Fred, if you think there is anything going on, any danger—”
“Nothing of the sort,” he said, with a laugh. “We were only wondering what we should be good for mother—not much, I believe. I might perhaps draw for the Graphic fancy pictures of battles and that sort of thing; or, if the worst came to the worst, there is the Police News.”
“You have both got Vocations,” said Phyllis. “It is fine for you. You know what to do, you two. But I can do nothing; I should have to Marry.” She spoke with a languid emphasis as of capitals, in her speech.
“Oh, children!” cried Mrs. Dirom, “what are you thinking of? You think all that is clever, but it does not seem clever to me. It is just the dreadful thing in business that one day you may be up at the top of the tree, and next morning—”
“Nowhere!” said Fred, with a burlesque groan. And then they all laughed. The anxious middle-class mother looked at them as the hen of the proverb looks at her ducklings. Silly children! what did they know about it? She could have cried in vexation and distress.
“You laugh,” she said, “but you would not laugh if you knew as much as I do. The very name of such a thing is unlucky. I wouldn’t let myself think of it lest it should bring harm. Things may be quite right, and I hope and believe they are quite right: but if there was so much as a whisper on the Exchange that his children—his own children—had been joking on the subject. Oh, a whisper, that’s enough!”
The young people were not in the least impressed by what she said—they had not been brought up in her sphere. That alarm for exposure, that dread of a catastrophe which was strong in her bosom, had no response in theirs. They had no more understanding of poverty than of Paradise—and to the girls in particular, the idea of a great event, a matter of much noise and commotion, to be followed by new enchanting freedom and the possibilities of adventure, was really “fun!” as they said. They were not afraid of being dropped by their friends.
Society has undergone a change in this respect. A young lady turned into a fashionable dressmaker would be the most delightful of lions; all her acquaintances would crowd round her. She would be celebrated as “a noble girl” by the serious, and as chic by the fast.
Doris looked forward to the possibility with a delightful perception of all the advantages that were in it. It was more exciting than the other expedient of marrying, which was all that, in the poverty of her invention, occurred to Phyllis. They made very merry, while their mother trembled with an alarm for which there was no apparent foundation. She was nervous, which is always a ready explanation of a woman’s troubles and fears.
There was, in fact, no foundation whatever for any alarm. Never had the credit of Dirom, Dirom and Company stood higher. There was no cloud, even so big as a finger, upon the sky.
Mr. Dirom himself, though his children were ashamed of him, was not without acceptance in society. In his faithfulness to business, staying in town in September, he had a choice of fine houses in which to make those little visits from Saturday to Monday which are so pleasant; and great ladies who had daughters inquired tenderly about Fred, and learned with the profoundest interest that it was he who was the Prince of Wales, the heir-apparent of the house, he, and not Jack the married son, who would have nothing to say to the business.
When Fred paid a flying visit to town to “look up the governor,” as he said, and see what was going on, he too was overwhelmed with invitations from Saturday to Monday. And though he was modest enough he was very well aware that he would not be refused, as a son-in-law, by some of the finest people in England.
That he was not a little dazzled by the perception it would be wrong to say—and the young Lady Marys in English country houses are very fair and sweet. But now there would glide before him wherever he went the apparition of Effie in her white frock.
Why should he have thought of Effie, a mere country girl, yet still a country gentlewoman without the piquancy of a milkmaid or a nursery governess? But who can fathom these mysteries? No blooming beauty of the fields had come in Fred’s way, though he had piously invoked all the gods to send him such a one: but Effie, who was scarcely a type at all—Effie, who was only a humble representative of fair maidenhood, not so perfect, perhaps, not so well dressed, not so beautiful as many of her kind.
Effie had come across his path, and henceforward went with him in spirit wherever he went. Curious accident of human fate! To think that Mr. Dirom’s money, and Fred’s accomplishments, and their position in society and in the city, all things which might have made happy a duke’s daughter, were to be laid at the careless feet of little Effie Ogilvie!
If she had been a milkmaid the wonder would have been less great.