“No, her ladyship does not wish him to be pressed. He is still heavy in his head with cold.”
“Well,” said Arminell, “I did not come here to talk about Giles, so we will dismiss him from our conversation. I have been considering this miserable matter, and I want to know what action you purpose taking on it.”
“I also,” said the tutor, “have been revolving the matter in my head, and I have resolved to leave Orleigh as soon as possible, and to ask my uncle, Mr. James Welsh, my mother’s brother, to assist me to enter a literary career.”
“Literary career! in what branch?”
“I intend to write for the press, I mean for the papers. Mr. Welsh lives by his profession, and I will do the same.”
“That must be more interesting than teaching little boys Mensa – mensæ, Dominus – domini.”
“The press is the sceptre that now rules the world, and I will wield it.”
“Oh, how I envy you!” said Arminell. “You are about to do something, something worth the labour, something the thought of which kindles ambition. You will escape out of this wearisome round of hum-drum into the world of heroic action. Here is my lord spending his life in petty duties as he regards them and has no result at the end to show; my lady thinking, planning, executing, and also with no result appearing; and I, wasting my time practising at the piano, running my voice over scales, doing a little sketching, reading odds and ends, picking flowers – and nothing can come of it all. We are made for more serious work.”
“I believe,” said Jingles, “that the writer of leaders exercises more power, because he appeals to a wider circle, than even the member of Parliament. One out of every twenty who takes up a paper, reads the speeches, but every one reads the leading articles. I believe that we stand at the beginning of a great social revolution, not in England only, but throughout the civilized world, and I have long desired to take part in it, I mean in directing it. I do not hold the extreme opinions of some, but I have my opinions, no, that is not the word, convictions, bred in me by my perception of the inequalities, injustices, and unrealities of life as it is now organised.”
“And you will work for your uncle?”
“I do not altogether hold with him,” said Jingles. “He takes too commercial an aspect of the mission imposed on a man with his power and faculties for reaching the ear of the people.”
“Do you intend to live with him?”
“I cannot tell. I have decided on nothing as to the particulars. I have sketched out the broad features of my future career.”
“And,” – Arminell’s voice faltered – “my father?”
“I will write to him after I am in town, informing him that I know all, and that, therefore, it was not possible for me, with self-respect, to remain in his house.”
Arminell looked down on the gravel.
“You will not go into this matter, not have my mother’s name brought in question?”
“I will do nothing that can cause you a moment’s pain,” answered Jingles patronisingly.
“I shall be very solitary,” she said. “More so than before. With you I can talk about matters of real interest, matters above the twaddle of common talk – Yes?”
This was addressed to the footman who appeared on the terrace and approached.
“What is it, Matthews?”
“My lady says, miss, that she will be glad if you could make it convenient to step into the parlour.”
“There,” said Arminell, when Matthews had withdrawn. “So she stands between me and the light at all times. I shall be back directly. She wants me about the choice of some new patterns for covering the sofas and chairs, I dare say. Here comes Giles from his rabbits.”
Arminell walked slowly to the drawing-room, with a frown of vexation on her brow. She never responded with alacrity to her step-mother’s calls.
Mrs. Cribbage, the rector’s wife, saw at once that Arminell was in a bad humour, as she entered the room.
“I am so sorry to interrupt you,” she said. “It was my doing. Lady Lamerton and I were speaking about old Samuel Ceely, and I have just heard how you have interested yourself about him.”
“I sent to ask you to come, dear,” said Lady Lamerton in her sweet, gentle tones, “because Mrs. Cribbage has been telling me about the man. He is unobjectionable now, but he was a bit of a rake once.”
“He was a gamekeeper to the late Lord Lamerton, and to the dowager,” put in Mrs. Cribbage, “and was dismissed. I could find out all the particulars. I believe he sold the game, and besides, was esteemed not to have the best moral character. However, I know no particulars. I will now make a duty of enquiring, and finding them out. Of late years – except for snaring rabbits and laying night-lines – I believe he has been inoffensive.”
“We are all miserable sinners,” said Arminell, “we were told so on Sunday – ”
“You were not at church on Sunday,” interrupted Mrs. Cribbage.
“And,” continued Arminell, “it is really satisfactory to know that poor Ceely is not an exception to that all-embracing rule, and that he has not the moral perfection which would make up for his physical short-comings.”
Arminell could not endure the rector’s wife, and took no pains to disguise her feelings. Lady Lamerton likewise disliked her, but was too sweet and ladylike to show it.
Mrs. Cribbage was an indefatigable parish visitor. She worked the parish with the most conscientious ardour, considering a week lost unless she had visited every house in it and had dispensed a few pious scriptural remarks, and picked up a pinch of gossip in each. She knew everything about every one in the place, and retailed what she knew, especially if it were too unpleasant to retain. She did not give out much scandal in the cottages, but she pecked here and there after grains of information, and swallowed what she found. And the people, well aware of her liking, with that courtesy and readiness to oblige which characterises the English lower orders, brought out and strewed before her all the nasty, and ill-natured, and suspicious scraps of information they had hoarded in their houses. Mrs. Cribbage carried away whatever she learned, and communicated it to her acquaintances in a circle superior to that where she gathered it, to the Macduffs, to the wives of the neighbouring parsons, to the curate, with caution to Lady Lamerton. She acted as a turbine wheel that forces water up from a low level to houses on a height. She thus impelled a current of tittle-tattle from the deep places of society to those who lived above; but in this particular she differed from the turbine, that forces up clean water, whereas, what Mrs. Cribbage pumped up was usually the reverse.
Mrs. Cribbage was nettled by Arminell’s uncourteous tone, and said: “What charming weather we have been having. I hope, Miss Inglett, that you enjoyed your Sunday morning walk?”
“It was as delightful as the weather,” answered Arminell, well aware that there were claws in the velvet paw that stroked her. “Would you wish to know where I went?”
“O, my dear Miss Inglett! I know.”
Then Mrs. Cribbage left, and when she was gone, Lady Lamerton said gently, “You were too curt with that woman, dear. You should never forget your manners, never be rude to a visitor in your own house.”
“I am not an adept at concealment, as are others.”
“The best screen against such a person is politeness.”
“She is like a snail, with eyes that she stretches forth to all parts of the parish. I hate her.”
“Arminell, your father has been putting prickly wire about on fences where cattle or pigs force their way. The beasts scratch themselves against the spikes, and after one or two experiences, learn to keep within bounds, and lose the desire to transgress. The Mrs. Cribbages – and there are yards of them – are the spiky wires of society, hedging us about, and keeping us in our proper places, odious in themselves, but useful, and a protection to us against ourselves.”
“Barbed or unbarbed, I would break through them.”
“No, my dear, you would only tear yourself to pieces on them, without hurting them; they are galvanised, plated, incapable of feeling, but they can inflict, and it is their mission to inflict an incredible amount of pain. You have already committed an indiscretion, and the crooked spike of the Cribbage tongue has caught you. Instead of going to church on Sunday morning, you walked in the road with Mr. Saltren. Of course, this was an act of mere thoughtlessness, but so is the first plunge of the calf against the prickly wire. Be more judicious, dear Armie, in the future. Where were you on Sunday afternoon?”
“Sitting with Giles and Mr. Saltren,” said Arminell, furious with anger and resentment, “talking Sabbath talk. We discussed Noah’s ark.”
“And this morning he went into the music-room to you. Your father told me he found him there turning over the leaves of your music, and counting time for you; and now Mrs. Cribbage arrives and sees you walking with him on the terrace. My dear Armie, Jingles is a nobody, and these nobodies are just those whom it is unsafe to trifle with. They so speedily lose their balance, and presume.”
“Mr. Saltren is not such a nobody as you suppose,” answered Arminell. “He is a man of ability and independence of thought, he is one who will before long prove himself to be a somebody, indeed.”
“My dear, he is a somebody already who has established himself as a nuisance.”
CHAPTER XXI
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
So, now, even this was denied Arminell, to talk with a rational man, the only rational man in the house, about the subjects that interested her. She must keep Mrs. Cribbage before her eyes, ever walk in daily fear of Mrs. Cribbage; consider, before she did anything she liked, what would Mrs. Cribbage’s construction on it be. The opinion of Mrs. Cribbage was to be what she must strive to conciliate. All principle must be subordinated to the judgment of Mrs. Cribbage, all independence sacrificed to her.
It is one of those pleasant delusions under which we live in England, that we have only God and the Queen to look up to and obey. As a matter of fact Mrs. Cribbage is absolute in heaven and earth, and the Divine law has no force, unless subscribed by Mrs. Cribbage. We fear God, because Mrs. Cribbage is His vicegerent, and has the triple crown and power of the keys, and in addition bears the sword. Resistance is powerless before the all-reaching power of Mrs. Cribbage. The Holy Vehm was nothing in its might to the judgment of Mrs. Cribbage. Her ministers are everywhere executing her orders, and none of the condemned dare to remonstrate, or attempt escape. We may utter with impunity treasonable words against the Queen, and profess agnosticism towards God, but no one disputes the existence of Mrs. Cribbage and would not lick the dust under her feet.
No one loves this autocrat, but there is not a Nihilist in her realm.
Lady Lamerton had likened her to American barbed wire, and those who have dealings with Mrs. Cribbage touch her as I have seen porters handle a roll of spiked wire deposited on the railway platform, with caution, and impatience to consign it to its proper destination. And yet, though every one dreads, and some positively loathe Mrs. Cribbage, yet all agree that it would not be possible to live without her. She keeps society together as a paperweight compacts all kinds of scraps of correspondence, and bills and notices.
As long as young girls are in the nursery, and subject to governesses, they look forward to their coming out as to a time of emancipation. They have not reckoned on Mrs. Cribbage, who, as with a whoop they burst out of the school-room, confronts them and blocks their road.
Arminell had done with her schooling, and properly ought to have come out that year, but the event had been postponed, as Lord Lamerton did not wish to go to town that year. She was free from governesses, and by no means inclined to lay her neck under the wheels of Mrs. Cribbage’s car. When my lord and my lady had gone to town during the season, Arminell and Giles had not attended them. Giles was better in health in the country, with his pony, and his cricket, that is, with the tutor bowling to him, and the coachman’s son acting as long-stop; accordingly, he was left at Orleigh to his great delight, and Arminell was left as well, with the governess, to continue her lessons, till she put off governesses and other childish things. Arminell had not therefore been brought much in contact with the world, and did not know the force of public opinion, she no more considered it than she considered the pressure of the atmosphere. According to our best authorities, we are subjected to the weight of fifteen pounds to each square-inch of surface, and a man of ordinary size sustains a pressure on him of some thirty-thousand pounds of air. I am a man of ordinary size, but I no more knew that I laboured under the burden of thirty-thousand pounds than I did that I was subjected to the pressure of about the same burden of Mrs. Cribbage who sits on my shoulders all day and squats on my chest all night, till I turned up the matter in an encyclopædia. We no more think about the pressure of public opinion, I say, than we do about the pressure of the atmosphere. We make allowance for it, in all we undertake.
If we ascend great heights we suffer because we are no longer subjected to the pressure; our noses bleed, our breath comes short; and if, by any chance, we get out of the region where public opinion weighs, we become alarmed, uneasy, gasp, and cry out to be brought back under its incubus once more.
When Arminell had left the room, and closed the door behind her, she stood for a minute, resting the fingers of her left hand on the lock.
Should she obey her step-mother or defy her? She had promised young Saltren to return to the terrace. She wanted to have further talk with him. Why should she submit to the dictation of Lady Lamerton who was influenced by the hints of that detestable Mrs. Cribbage? If Lady Lamerton were allowed her own way in small matters, she would presume to dictate in those which were large, and Arminell would be allowed no will of her own. In her heart, the girl admitted that her step-mother had reason to reproach her. If Jingles were only the tutor, and the son of the mining captain, he was, as my lady said, a nobody, and it was unbecoming for her to frequent his society. Indeed, it was hardly decorous for her to be so much with him, were he any thing else but what she knew him to be, her brother. The possession of the knowledge of their relationship altered the aspect of her conduct radically, and justified it. Lady Lamerton, in her ignorance, interfered, and might be excused interfering, but she, Arminell, being better informed, was at liberty to act differently from what my lady advised. The young man was her brother, and what more delightful intercourse than that which subsists between brother and sister, when like-minded? There had taken place no open rupture between her ladyship and Arminell as yet; but it was inevitable that one would come, and that shortly; perhaps, the girl argued, the sooner the better, that her step-mother might be made clearly to understand that she – Arminell, stood on her independence.
The girl let go the handle of the drawing-room door, and with beating heart and heaving bosom, went deliberately out on the terrace and resumed her place at the side of Jingles.
“I have come,” she said, “as I undertook. My lady has read me a lecture.”
“About what?”
“About barbed wire, about Mrs. Cribbage. That creature saw me walking with you, and remonstrated with mamma, I mean my step-mother, and my lady retailed the remonstrance, as in duty bound; I am forsooth to be placed under Mrs. Cribbage, to have my feet strapped, compressed and distorted, like those of a Chinese lady, till I am unable to walk alone, and must lean on the shoulders of the Cribbage and my lady. This sort of thing is intolerable to me. Oh, that I were a man, that I might run away, as you are going to do, and stamp, and stride, and dance, and use every muscle in my feet freely. I detest this strapping and pinching and crippling.”
“I have felt the same,” said the young man. “And it has become unendurable to me. One must either submit or break away. The process must end in irremediable distortion, and fatal deprivation of the power of walking independently. Your whole future, your character for good or evil, depends on your conduct now. If you fall back in your chair unable to resist – ”
“No, I will kick and kick, I will not be disabled from walking.”
“If you make a brief attempt to resist, and do not maintain a stubborn and determined resistance, you will be cramped and crippled for life. As you put it, the whole social system of the upper classes is Chinese bandaging of the feet; not only so, but it is Indian flattening of the skull. I have felt, and so have you, that in this house our heads are strapped between boards to give them the requisite shape, and our brains to be not allowed to exceed the requisite measure.”
“What can I do? I have no one but yourself to advise me.”
“It will be impossible for you to escape the influences brought to bear on you, if you remain here; the Cribbages, great and small, will lie in wait till you are napping and then fall on you and bind you, and apply the laces to your feet, and the boards to your head.”
“But, whither could I go?” Arminell asked. She thought for a moment, and then said, “If I went to my Aunt Hermione, it would be going from beneath the shower under the shoot. There never was a more formal, society-laced creature in the whole world than my aunt, Lady Hermione Flathead. Everything in her house, her talk, her manners, her mind, her piety, everything about her is conventional.”
Lady Lamerton approached, with little spots of colour in her cheeks, holding a parasol.
“My dear Arminell,” she said, “how can you be so inconsiderate as to come out without a sunshade?”
“You see,” said Arminell, turning contemptuously away and addressing the tutor; “everything is to order. I may not even take two steps without a parasol, in fine weather; and in bad, without an umbrella. The hand must never be free.”
“I think, Mr. Saltren,” said Lady Lamerton, “that it would be well if Giles went indoors, and, now that he is better, learnt a little Latin.”
“As your ladyship desires it, certainly,” answered the tutor.
“I am so glad, my dear,” said Lady Lamerton, “that you have waited for me on the terrace. I am sorry to have detained you one minute, but I was looking out the address of those Straceys. I will take your arm and we will look at the pansies.”
“Step-mothers, the Germans call them,” said Arminell. “I do not admire pansies.”
“We call them pansies, from pensée, dear, which means thought, kind thought, and forethought, which possibly, though not always acknowledged, is to be found in step-mothers.”
Arminell tossed her head.
“The homely name for these same flowers,” continued Lady Lamerton, “is hearts-ease, and I’m sure it is a misnomer, if hearts-ease be the equivalent for step-mother, especially when she has to do with a wayward step-daughter.”
“I think that step-mothers would find most hearts-ease, if they would turn their activity away from their step-daughters, and leave them alone.”
“My conscience will not suffer me to do this,” answered Lady Lamerton without losing her temper. “You may not acknowledge my authority, and you may hold cheap my intellectual powers and acquirements, but, after all, Armie, I am in authority, and I do not think I am quite a fool. I can, and I must, warn you against dashing yourself against the barbed wire. My dear, if we would listen to others, we would save ourselves many a tear and bitter experience. I love you too well, and your dear father too well, to leave you uncautioned when I see you doing what is foolish and dangerous.”
“But do you not know that experience is the one thing that must be bought, and cannot be accepted as a gift?”
“I beg your pardon. Our whole system of social culture is built upon experience accepted and not bought. It is not the Catholics alone who hold by tradition, we all do it, or are barbarians. Progress without it is impracticable. We start from the accumulated experience of the past, handed on to us by the traditions of our fathers. If everyone began by rejecting the acquisitions of the past, advance would be limited to the term of man’s natural life, for everyone would begin from the beginning; whereas, each generation now starts where the last generation left off. It is like the hill of Hissarlik where there are cities superposed the one on the other, and each is an advance culturally and artistically on that below – above the Greek Ilium, below the Homeric Troy, under that the primeval hovel of the flint-chipper.”
“Each on the ruins of the other.”
“Each using up the material of the other, following the acquisitions of the earlier builders and pushing further on to structural perfection.”
“That may be true of material process,” said Arminell, “but, morally, it is not true. Besides, our forefathers made blunders. I have been speaking with Mr. Saltren about the Flatheads and the Chinese who compress the heads and double up the feet of children. But our ancestors were nearly as stupid. Look at the monument of the first Lord Lamerton in the church. See the swaddled babies represented on it, cross-gartered like Malvolio. Now we give freedom to our babies, let them stretch, and scramble, and sprawl. But you old ladies still treat us young girls as your great-grandmothers treated their babies. You swaddle us, and keep us swaddled all our life long. No wonder we resent it. The babies got emancipated, and so will we. I have heard both papa and you say that when you were children you were not allowed to draw nearer the fire than the margin of the rug. Was there sense in that? Was the fire lighted to radiate its heat over an area circumscribed by the mat, and that the little prim mortals with blue noses and frosty fingers must shiver beyond the range of its warmth? We do not see it. We will step across the rug, and if we are cold, step inside the fender.”
“And set fire to your skirts?”
“We will go for warmth where it is to be found, and not keep aloof from it because of the vain traditions of the elders.”
Lady Lamerton sighed.
“Well, dear,” she said, “we will not argue the matter. To shift the subject, I hardly think it was showing much good feeling in you to come straight out here after I had expressed my wish that you would not. It was not what I may term – pretty.”
“I had promised Mr. Saltren to return to him and resume the thread of our interrupted conversation. Why did you send for me about old Ceely’s past history, as if I cared a straw for that?”
“I sent for you, Armie, because you were walking with the tutor, and Mrs. Cribbage had observed it. She told me, also, that you had been seen with him when you ought to have been at church.”
“Well?”
“It was injudicious. She also said that you had been observed walking in the avenue last night with a gentleman; but I was able to assure her that the gentleman was your father.”
“This espionage is insufferable,” interrupted Arminell.
“I allow it is unpleasant, but we must be careful to give no occasion for ill-natured remark.”
“I can not. I will not be swaddled and have my feet crippled, and my head compressed, and then like a Chinese lady ask to be helped about by you and Mrs. Cribbage.”
“Better that than by any one you may pick up.”
“I do not ask to be helped about by any one I may pick up. Besides, Mr. Saltren was not picked up by me, but by my father. He introduced him to the house, gave him to be the guide and companion of Giles, and therefore I cannot see why I may not cultivate his acquaintance, and, if I see fit, lean on him. I will not be swaddled, and passed about from arm to arm – baby eternal!”