Mrs. Torwood was lady-like, good-natured, indolent, rather foolish, easily-influenced, not difficult to get on with, and thinking more of her clothes, her appearance, and her dogs, than anything else. She spoilt these last terribly, and let them do whatever they pleased. But I liked them for all that; indeed, if it had not been for them, I doubt whether I should not have found myself too much bored in the situation to stay there, for their mistress was very uninteresting in my eyes, and did not move about enough to please me. Her pets, however, had considerably more individuality than she had, and afforded me sufficient amusement and occupation to keep me contented. As my ignorance of dressmaking had prevented me from getting other places that I had tried for, and as it was through the dogs that I had at last surmounted that obstacle, mere gratitude would have prompted me to do well by them, even if the work of looking after them had been distasteful to me. But this was not the case, thanks to my fondness for animals; and it was not long before they and I were on the best of terms together.
In some respects, however, they caused me a good deal of anxiety. The chief of these causes was the daily airing which it was my duty to give them; and I was always thankful to find myself safely at home again without either of my charges being lost or stolen, or having got into any mischief. I used to take them out singly and in a chain just at first; and as soon as our acquaintance was sufficiently advanced for me to discard the chain, I took them two at a time. But I did not venture to go beyond that number when in town, as all the dear creatures had some little characteristic peculiarity or other, which made it necessary to keep a sharp look-out upon each individual during the whole walk, if one did not want to lose them or get into a scrape. If I enumerate these little peculiarities, I think it will be evident that my precaution of not taking more than two together was not uncalled-for.
I will begin with Dart, a terrier whose mouth always watered after the calves of children's legs, though he only wanted to enjoy the feel of the flesh between his teeth, and had not the least wish to do any real harm. As soon as he saw a pair of these tempting objects anywhere near, he would go and join the owner, wagging his tail, smoothing back his ears, smiling, wriggling his body, and altogether looking sweet enough to inspire confidence in the breast of the most distrustful infant. Then, turning his head insidiously as he walked along, he would seize the nearest calf, give it a good squeeze, and depart hastily, leaving the victim more frightened than hurt, howling dismally, kicking, and struggling. Of course it was easy to prevent the catastrophe by recalling him the instant he assumed an expression of extra-amiability, and set off in the direction of a barelegged child; but, as barelegged children are plentiful in London, it was obviously well for whoever had charge of Dart to keep an eye upon him constantly.
Yarrow, again, was a collie who had a rooted conviction that his constitution required carriage exercise, and who never failed to do his best to give effect to that idea by trying to get into any carriage, cab, or 'bus whose door he saw open. This habit of his sometimes gave rise to laughable scenes, as, for instance, one day when he skipped up the steps of an extremely grand barouche, just as the gorgeously-apparelled footman was holding the door open for his mistress to get in, whilst a dignified butler, and a couple more men in gorgeous liveries were respectfully attending her to the door of the house she was leaving. The flunkey at the carriage nearly fell backwards with horror, but did not venture to interfere with the audacious intruder, so Yarrow settled himself in triumph on the front seat, and sat there at ease with his tongue hanging out, and shedding drops on the smart cushions which he was profaning. He looked blandly at the dismayed servants—not one of whom dared lay a finger on him—and at the lady standing laughing on the doorstep of the house; and how the scene would have terminated if I had not arrived to the rescue and dislodged him, I cannot imagine. He was complete master of the situation as far as the servants were concerned; but I suppose one of them would eventually have called a policeman if I had not intervened.
A third member of my pack was Royal, a fat King Charles, who always made me wish I had eyes in the back of my head. He was the veriest dawdle that ever existed, and was possessed with the idea that whoever took him out was walking too fast, and that it was his duty to protest against such haste; therefore, no matter how slowly one went, he was sure to lag far behind. His dilatoriness was especially provoking, because of his being so handsome and well-bred as to be unusually attractive to dog-stealers; and many a collision have I had with other street passengers in consequence of walking backwards so as not to lose sight of that precious animal.
I come next to Sue, a spaniel of inordinate appetite, who, like Royal, kept me in a continual state of alarm during her walks lest she should be stolen. As she never thought she had had enough to eat, she was sure to follow any one who carried food, and would also constantly stop to sniff about in the gutter in search of something to satisfy her cravings; for she was not in the least dainty, and devoured everything edible with relish. She was a shocking thief, too; and now and then, before I could stop her, she would manage to whip a beef-steak or mutton-chop off some butcher's tray that had been left unguarded by the area-rails whilst the butcher was below enjoying a gossip with the cook. On these occasions I felt a little puzzled how to act. To let Sue carry off her prize quietly would be robbing the butcher, and I did not want to be dishonest if I could help it. Yet, if the man knew what had happened, he would probably make a bother and claim damages, and I did not want that either. So I adopted the middle course of running after Sue, taking the meat from her and restoring it to the tray, and getting clear off from the spot as quickly as possible before the return of the owner. This arrangement seemed to me fair to all parties, as it saved me from unpleasantness, and, at the same time, did no wrong to the butcher. No doubt his customers would not buy the meat if they knew it had been in the dog's mouth, and would declare it to be disgusting and uneatable; but then the idea is everything in matters of taste; and as the little accident with Sue would be unknown, the meat would be eaten without a qualm, and was therefore undeteriorated in value, I argued; for I was sure it was not really any the worse. Sue often aggravated me also in respect of poor working men eating an al fresco breakfast or dinner. As soon as ever she saw one of these men, off she would go, and sit up on her hind-legs in front of him, begging with glistening eyes, slobbering mouth, and an eagerness that might have made one think she was starving, if her sleek sides had not told a different tale. Her beseeching face and manner generally produced an effect, and I have seen many a man, who looked ill able to afford a morsel out of his scanty meal, throw her a scrap. I always interfered with this little game of hers, and prevented her from being given anything if I could get to the spot in time; for I felt quite ashamed to be in charge of an evidently well-fed dog like her, who went sponging upon poor people who probably had not enough for themselves—I almost wondered she had not too much self-respect to do it.
Chose was a light-hearted French poodle, with a strong taste for sport, which had, unluckily, never been developed in the right direction. Sheep appeared to him to be quite legitimate game, and he never could see them without trying to sneak off in their direction, with a drooping tail and general air of depression, which may have been caused by a consciousness of wrongdoing, or else by fear of being recalled before he was out of reach, and thus deprived of the chasse on which his heart was set. As for birds, he considered all to be fair game alike, and rushed madly after any feathered creature that was sitting or running on the ground, or flying low anywhere near him. Repeated failure did not discourage him; he evidently believed it to be his mission to catch birds, and dashed off accordingly in frantic pursuit of rooks, swallows, chaffinches, sparrows, and other birds on the wing, though he had no more chance of catching them than he had of jumping over the moon. This was all very well when he hunted wild birds that could fly away; but it was a more serious matter when poultry were concerned, and the scrapes he got into with ducks and chickens in the course of his career would require a chapter to enumerate.
Finally, I come to Jumbo, a diminutive terrier, with a mania for digging, who was the abomination of all the gardeners in his neighbourhood. Soft, freshly-turned earth was an irresistible temptation to him; and if not watched carefully, he was sure to slip off to the nearest flower-bed in park, square, or garden, and there dig gigantic graves in a surprisingly short space of time. I expect he thought that, considering what a lot of moles, rabbits, rats, and mice had holes underground, he must infallibly light upon some one of these creatures at last, if he persevered in his researches long enough. He had also a weakness for flowers, and liked to pick them for himself; so, altogether, I don't wonder he was not loved by gardeners, one of whom once remarked to me indignantly:
"That 'ere dawg o' yourn is the werry wusstest little beast I ever see! I'd just like to take and give 'im to one o' them 'ere willysectin doctors, that I would!"
Well, those six dogs gave me a good bit of trouble in one way or other, no doubt; and all the more because their mistress spoilt them, and did not try to get them out of their bad ways, and they were not with me long enough for me to be able to undo the effect of her spoiling. But they amused me and I liked them, notwithstanding their troublesomeness; and when I went near them it pleased me to hear the thump thump of tails against the ground, which showed that I was welcome.
The Torwoods kept no indoor man-servant except the butler already mentioned, who rejoiced in the name of Eliezer Scroggins; and as he was a respectable, steady-going married man, I found, to my great satisfaction, that I was in no danger of suffering from persecutions like those of the detestable Perkins. I got on very well with Scroggins, and was often amused by his peculiarities; for he was (as I had guessed at first) somewhat of a character, though a very good sort of fellow, for all that. His prejudices were very strong, and he was sure to cling with pigheaded obstinacy to whatever idea he had taken into his head. I soon discovered that amongst his pet aversions were people who, in his opinion, gave themselves airs, and presumed to push their way up to a station above that in which they had been born. Such people he hated as he hated stairs—perhaps more; and no matter whether they moved in his mistress's sphere of life or his own, they irritated him as the proverbial red rag does the bull. Indeed, I rather suspect that he sometimes had premeditated accidents when any of these objects of his dislike were dining at the Torwoods, and that any visitor of theirs who was considered by him to be what he called a "parvenyoo" was not at all unlikely to receive a bath of soup, sauce, tea, coffee, or wine, or to suffer from some similar misadventure, caused by the intentional clumsiness of the butler.
His bitterness on the subject of people who had risen above their natural position was so great that I had little doubt of there being some particular reason for it; and idle curiosity moved me to try and find out what that reason was, though I never for an instant supposed that the history could be one in any way specially concerning me. However, he did not choose to confide his private family affairs to a complete stranger; and so, though he dropped occasional dark hints, whence I concluded that he had a step-sister whom he detested, yet it was not till I had been nearly a year in Mrs. Torwood's service that I at last was permitted to know the cause of his inveterate spite against the whole race of parvenus.
His mother, it appeared, had been twice married, and he was her child by the second marriage. Her first husband was a clerk named Brown, who had died before he was thirty, leaving only one child, a daughter named Mary. He had had rather exalted ideas about education, and had no opinion of home teaching, and consequently had sent his daughter to a cheap boarding-school as soon as ever she was old enough to leave home.
After Brown's death his young widow had married into a social position a shade below that of the clerk, and become the spouse of a grocer in the East End, named Joshua Scroggins, to whom in due time she presented my friend Eliezer, and sundry other children.
On the second marriage the grocer, a good-hearted conscientious man, had declared that it would be a shame for her daughter Mary not to have the same education as her own father would have given her, so he generously went on paying for her at the school where she had been already placed. Here the girl picked up a fair education, and also many ridiculous and fine ideas. She took to spell her name with an "e" at the end; would sooner have died than let her school-fellows know that she was connected with a small retail shopkeeper bearing a name so odiously vulgar as Scroggins; and brooded over the grievance of having so unpresentable a step-father, until she became convinced he had done her a mortal injury by marrying her mother, and got into the habit of disliking and despising him in spite of the kindness and liberality with which he always treated her. Now Scroggins was an honest hard-working man, who minded his shop in person, with the assistance of his wife and children; though he had managed to defray Mary's schooling, yet the expense had now and then pressed on him a little heavily, and he had not the least intention of keeping her as an idle fine lady when she left school for good and came to live at home, but expected her to take her turn in the shop, as the rest of the household did. Her disgust at this was intense, and she showed it by doing her work as badly as she dared, scolding and flouncing about the house, and losing no opportunity of making herself generally disagreeable.
The Scroggins family—consisting of father and mother, and four children, of whom my friend Eliezer was the eldest—had hitherto lived in unbroken peace and harmony, and now groaned sorely under the infliction of the new-comer, with her airs and graces and tantrums. The recollection of her being fatherless kept them from resenting her nonsense as it deserved, and made them more gentle and patient with her than they would perhaps have been otherwise; but it was felt by all to be a blessed relief when the disturbing element was removed by marriage to a city gent. He was in business, but did not keep a shop, and so she graciously condescended to accept him as a means of escape from the intolerable humiliation of serving behind her step-father's counter. The city gent proved a good speculation. A few lucky ventures gave him a rise in the world; and when, in the course of years, he left her a widow, her social position was very considerably better than it had been when she first became his wife. By the time he died, all intercourse between her and the Scrogginses had long been at an end. Though she had not hesitated to receive a dowry from her step-father, yet she had never evinced the smallest gratitude for that, or any of the numerous other benefits he had bestowed upon her. On the contrary, she took no trouble to conceal her aversion to him; declared that vulgarity was necessarily attached to such a name as Scroggins; and, after her marriage, saw less and less of the family, and rudely checked all friendly advances on their part, till at last she succeeded in altogether cutting the connection. Mrs. Scroggins—a peace-loving, kindly soul, who could not bear to be mixed up in any kind of dissension—was grieved by this, and by the separation from her daughter, though it was no fault of hers, and she could not possibly help it. But she bore no malice, and when the news came of her son-in-law's death, she thought only of her daughter's present distress, and forgot the many slights and insults that had been cast upon her and hers. Full of unaffected hearty sorrow and sympathy, she set off immediately to visit the bereaved Mary, hoping to be able to comfort her and be of use to her. What took place on the occasion of this visit Eliezer never exactly knew. But he knew well that the reception of his good-hearted and forgiving mother must have been both unseemly and unpleasant, when he saw her return home in tears, thoroughly upset, and saying that she could not have believed any woman would have behaved so rudely to her own mother; and that, unless she was sent for, she would never again try to see Mary. This had made a deep impression on Eliezer, who adored his mother; and the bitter enmity he had ever since cherished against the person who had treated her so badly, and whom he regarded as an upstart, had extended to the whole race of "parvenyoos."
"Do you know what has become of your step-sister?" I asked carelessly; "and do you ever see her?"
"See 'er!" he ejaculated wrathfully; "not if I knows it. I'm none so fond of raising my corruption by looking at what I 'ates! But I 'ears tell on 'er now and agin; she married some swell with a 'andle to 'is name some years back. Mary Grove's clever enough—you may trust 'er to do well for 'erself wherehever she is."
In telling his tale he had not before mentioned the name of his step-sister's husband; but when he spoke of Mary Grove, I pricked up my ears with a sudden recollection that that had been the name of my step-mother. "Was Grove the name of the city gent?" I enquired eagerly.
Scroggins nodded.
"Had they any children?" I continued.
"A couple o' gals named Jane and Margret there was," he returned; "I don't know what they be like now, for I ain't seen 'em—not since they was little mites o' things."
Jane and Margaret! these had been the names of my step-sisters, and I felt almost sure that his step-sister and my step-mother must be one and the same person. One more question would make the matter absolutely certain, so I said: "What was the name of Mary Grove's second husband—do you know it?"
"Oh yes, I knows it; but I can't lay tongue to it at this moment. What hever is it now? Sir Hanthony something or other—I should know it if I was to 'ear it."
"Was it anything like——" I began, and then paused. Never once had my own name passed my lips since I left home, and somehow now, when I tried to say it, it seemed to stick in my throat. Overcoming this feeling, however, I completed my sentence—"like Trecastle?" It was strange how, in spite of my first hesitation about uttering the word, yet when once it was out, my tongue clung lovingly to it, and I should have liked to repeat it over and over again. I thought it sounded better than any other name I had ever heard, and felt a thrill of pride to think that it was mine by right.
"That's the very thing!" he exclaimed triumphantly; "Sir Hanthony Trecassel, and I wishes 'im joy of 'is bargain! 'Ow hever did you come to think of 'im?"
"Oh, I had heard of a Sir Anthony Trecastle before," I replied, "and so when you started me with the first name, the second suggested itself quite naturally."
Here our conversation was interrupted, and I retired to meditate complacently on the means of being revenged on my step-mother, which fortune had so kindly thrown in my way. There was nothing really to be ashamed of in such a connection as the Scrogginses, who were evidently highly respectable and excellent individuals. Yet few people in society would altogether enjoy having a mother named Scroggins, who sold soap and tallow candles in the East End; and, least of all, the former Mary Brown, who had striven so indefatigably and successfully to cut herself free from every trace of the grocer's shop. It would be gall and wormwood to her to have her secret revealed; and I chuckled with delight to think that it had fallen into my hands, and that the whole world would know it when I chose.
But I would not be in too great a hurry with my vengeance. I would take time about it— prolong her torment by keeping her in suspense, and letting her see the blow coming before it actually fell. Therefore I commenced operations by posting to her an anonymous letter in a feigned hand, stating that the writer was a benevolent individual to whom the spectacle of domestic discord was inexpressibly shocking, and who was much inclined to undertake the good work of endeavouring to bring about a public reconciliation between the Scrogginses and one of their family who had long been estranged from them.
This would suffice to alarm her and make her anxious as to what the writer's real intentions were. Perhaps she would think he meant only to extort money—from which idea her parsimonious soul would shrink with horror; or perhaps she would think that he meant to execute his threat, which she would regard as a still more terrible possibility. Either way she would be made miserable, and so my object would be gained.
After leaving some weeks for the digestion of this missive, I despatched another, stating that the writer considered it part of a wife's duty to introduce her husband to her parents; and that if any wife failed to perform that duty, it behoved some one else to do it in her place.
This I presently followed by a third and still more menacing letter, so as continually to increase her terrors, and keep her perpetually with a sword hanging over her head. At every epistle I sent off I gloated over the thought of the state of disquietude in which she must be; and as I remembered how uncomfortable she had once made me, I regretted that I could not be present when the letters arrived, so as to have the pleasure of seeing my shafts take effect and wound her. The execution of the threats should come soon, I thought. My intention was to play with her and keep her on tenterhooks for a while, and then to send anonymous letters containing information of her antecedents to my father, his family, the county people, and others with whom she had formerly been intimate. I should of course give the address of the Scroggins' shop, so that it would be easy for the recipients of the letters to verify my statement if they cared to do so; and there could be little doubt that all her bosom friends would give themselves that much trouble, even if mere chance acquaintances did not think it worth while. Therefore there was no danger of the history being hushed up and kept quiet, and of her being spared the humiliation she dreaded.
Before, however, I had brought my operations to a climax, they were interrupted by an unforeseen event, which must be related in the next chapter.