Arminell, a social romance/Chapter 22
CHAPTER XXII.
TOO LATE.
Lady Lamerton said no more to Arminell, but waited till the return of his lordship, before dinner, and spoke to him on the matter.
She was aware that any further exertion of authority would lead to no good. She was a kind woman who laboured to be on excellent terms with everybody, and who had disciplined herself to the perpetual bearing of olive branches. She had done her utmost to gain Arminell's goodwill, but had gone the wrong way to work. She had made concession after concession, and this made her step-daughter regard her as wanting in spirit, and the grey foliage of Lady Lamerton's olive boughs had become weariful in the eyes of the girl.
If my lady had taken a firm course from the first, and had held consistently to it, Arminell might have disliked her, but would not have despised her. It does not succeed to buy off barbarians. Moreover, Arminell misconstrued her step-mother's motives. She thought that my lady's peace pledges were sham, that she endeavoured to beguile her into confidence, in order that she might establish a despotic authority over her.
"I do not know what to do with Armie!" sighed Lady Lamerton. "We have had a passage of arms to-day, and she has shaken her glove in my face. Another word from me, and she would have thrown it at my feet."
She said no more, as she was afraid of saying too much, and she waited for her husband to speak. But, as he offered no remark, but looked annoyed, she continued, "I am sorry to speak to you. I know that I am in fault. I ought to have won her heart, and with it her cheerful respect, but I have not. It is now too late for me to alter my conduct. Arminell was a girl of sense when I came here, and it really seems disgraceful that at my age I should have been unable to win the child, or master her. But I have failed, and I acknowledge the failure frankly, without knowing what to suggest as a remedy to the mischief done. I accept all the blame you may be inclined to lay on me——"
Lord Lamerton went up to his wife, took her face between his hands, and kissed her.
"Little woman, I lay no blame on you."
"Well, dear, then I do on myself. I told you last night how I accounted for it. One can look back and see one's faults, but looking forward one is still in ignorance what road to pursue. It really seems to me, Lamerton, that on life's way all the direction posts are painted so as to show us where we have diverged from the right way and not whither we are to go."
"Julia, I exercise as little control over Armie as yourself. It is a painful confession for a father to make, that he has not won the respect of his child—of his daughter, I mean: as for Giles—dear monkey—" his voice softened and had a slight shake in it.
"And I am sure," said Lady Lamerton, putting her arms round his neck, and drawing his fresh red cheek to her lips, "that there is nothing, nothing whatever in you to make her lack the proper regard."
"I will tell you what it is," said Lord Lamerton, "Armie is young, and believes in heroes. We are both of us too ordinary in our ways, in our ideas, in our submission to the social laws, in our arm-in-arm plod along the road of duty, to satisfy her. She wants some one with great ideas to guide her; with high-flown sentiment; to such an one alone will she look up. She is young, this will wear off, and she will sober down, and come to regard hum-drum life with respect."
"In the meantime much folly may be perpetrated," said Lady Lamerton sadly. "Do look how much has been spent in the restoration of Orleigh. You have undone all that your grandfather had done. He overlaid the stone with stucco, and knocked out the mullions of the windows for the insertion of sashes, and painted over drab all the oak that was not cut away. So are we in later years restoring the mistakes made in ourselves, perhaps by our parents in our bringing up, but certainly, also, by our own folly and bad taste in youth. And well for us if there is still solid stone to be cleared of plaster, and rich old oak to be cleared of the paint that obscures it. What I dread is lest the iconoclastic spirit should be so strong in the girl that she may hack and tear down in her violent passion for change what can never be recovered and re-erected."
"She is not without principle."
"She mistakes her caprices for principles. Her own will is the ruling motive of all her actions, she has no external canon to which she regulates her actions and submits her will."
"What caprice has she got now?"
"She has taken a violent fancy to the society of young Saltren."
"Oh! he is harmless."
"I am not so certain of that. He is morbid and discontented."
"Discontented! About what? Faith he must be hard to please then. Everything has been done for him that could be done."
"Possibly for that reason he is discontented. Some men like to make their own fortunes, not to have them made for them. You have, in my opinion, done too much for the young fellow."
"He was consumptive and would certainly have died, had I not sent him abroad."
"Yes—but after that?"
"Then he was unfit for manual labour, and he was an intelligent lad, refined, and delicate still. So I had him educated."
"Are you sure he is grateful for what you have done for him?"
Lord Lamerton shrugged his shoulders. "I never gave a thought to that. I suppose so."
"I am not sure that he is. Look at children, they accept as their due everything given them, all care shown them, and pay no regard to the sacrifices made for them. There is no conscious gratitude in children. I should not be surprised if it were the same with young Saltren. I do not altogether trust him. There is a something in him I do not like. He does his duty by Giles. He is respectful to you and me—and yet—I have no confidence in him."
"Julia," said Lord Lamerton with a laugh, "I know what it is, you mistrust him because he is not a gentleman by birth."
"Not at all," answered his wife, warmly. "Though I grant that there is a better guarantee for a man of birth conducting himself properly in a place of trust, because he has deposited such stakes. Even if he have not principle in himself, he will not act as if he had none, for fear of losing caste. Whereas one with no connections about him to hold him in check will only act aright if he have principle. But we have gone from our topic, which was, not Jingles, but Arminell. I want to speak about her, and about him only so far as he influences her for good or bad. I will tell you my cause of uneasiness."
Then she related to her husband what she knew about the Sunday walk in the morning, and the Sunday talk in the afternoon, and the music-room meeting on the following morning.
"Oh!" said his lordship, "he only went there to turn over the pages of her music."
"You see nothing in that?"
"'Pon my soul, no."
"Then I must tell you about her conduct this afternoon, when she disobeyed me in a marked, and—I am sorry to use the expression—offensive manner."
"That I will not tolerate. I can not suffer her to be insolent to you."
"For pity's sake do not interfere. You will make matters worse. She will hate me for having informed you of what occurred. No—take some other course."
"What course?"
"Will it not be well to get rid of Saltren? And till he has departed, let Arminell go to Lady Hermione Woodhead."
Within parenthesis be it said that Woodhead was Aunt Hermione's real name, only in scorn, and to signify her contraction of mind had Arminell called her Flathead, after the tribe of Indians which affects the compression of infants' skulls.
"I cannot dismiss him at a moment's notice, like a servant who has misconducted himself. I'll be bound it is not his fault—it is Armie's."
"Let Arminell go to her aunt's at once."
"By all means. I'll have a talk with Saltren."
"Not a word about Arminell to him."
"Of course not, Julia. Now, my dear, it is time for me to dress for dinner."
Dinner passed with restraint on all sides. Lord Lamerton was uncomfortable because he felt he must speak to Arminell, and must give his congé to the tutor. Arminell was in an irritable frame of mind, suspecting that something was brewing, and Lady Lamerton was uneasy because she saw that her husband was disturbed in his usually placid manner.
After dinner, Lord Lamerton said to his daughter as she was leaving the room, "Armie, dear, are you going into the avenue? If so, I shall be glad of your company, as I intend to go there with a cigar presently."
"If you wish it, papa; but—Mrs. Cribbage heard that you and I had been walking there last night, and it meets with her disapproval. May James first run to the rectory with our compliments and ask Mrs. Cribbage's kind permission?"
She looked, as she spoke, at her step-mother, and there was defiance in her eye.
"Nonsense, dear," said her father. "I shall be out there in ten minutes. Will you have a whitewash, Saltren, and then I will leave for my cigar? You are not much of a wine-drinker, I am glad, however, you are not a teetotaller like your father."
Again a reference to the captain. Jingles looked towards the door, and caught Arminell's eye as she went through. She also had heard the reference, and understood it, as did the tutor. Certainly his lordship was very determined to have the past buried, and to refuse all paternity in the young fellow.
"Very well," said the girl to herself, "I will let my father understand that I know more than he supposes. He has no right to shelve his responsibilities. If a man has done wrong, let him be manful, and bear the consequences. I would do so. I would be ashamed not to do so."
She set her teeth, and her step was firm. She threw a light shawl over her head and shoulders and went into the avenue, where she paced with a rebellious, beating heart a few minutes alone, till her father joined her.
"I know, papa, what you want; or rather what you have been driven to. My lady has been peaching of me, and has constituted you her executioner."
"Arminell, I dislike this tone. You forget that courtesy which is due to a father."
"Exacted of a father," corrected the girl.
"And due to him as a father," said Lord Lamerton gravely. His cigar was out. He struck a fusee and lighted it again. His hand was not steady; Arminell looked in his face, illumined by the fusee, and her heart relented. That was a good, kind face, a guileless face, very honest, and she could see by the flare of the match that it was troubled. But her perverse mood gained the upper hand again in a moment. She possessed the feminine instinct in dealing with men, when threatened, to attack, not wait to be attacked.
"I do not think it fair, papa, that my lady should hide herself behind you, and thrust you forward, as besiegers attack a fortress, from behind a screen."
"You are utterly mistaken, Arminell, if you imagine that your mother—your step-mother—has intentions of attacking you. Her heart overflows with kindness towards you, the warmest kindness."
"Papa, when Vesuvius is in eruption, the villagers in proximity pray to heaven to divert into the sea, anywhere but towards them, the warm gush of incandescent lava."
"Arminell," said her father, "you pain me inexpressibly. I suppose that it is inevitable that a daughter by a first wife should not agree thoroughly with her father's second choice; but, 'pon my soul, I can see no occasion for you to take up arms against your step-mother; she has been too forbearing with you. She is the kindest, most considerate and conscientious of women."
"You may spare me the enumeration of her good qualities, papa: I am sure she is a paragon in your eyes, and I would not disturb the happy conviction. I suppose marriage is much like the transfusion of blood practised by the renaissance physicians. An injection of rabbit's bleed into the arm of a turbulent man made him sensible to fear, and one of lion's blood into the arteries of a coward infused heroism into his soul. When there was an interchange of blood between two individuals they came to think alike, feel alike, and act alike; it is a happy condition. But as there has been no infusion of my lady's blood into me—I think and feel and act quite differently from her."
"We will leave her out of the question," said Lord Lamerton, dropping his daughter's arm which at first he had taken affectionately. "Confound it, my cigar is out again, the tobacco must be bad. I will not trouble to relight it."
"By all means let us leave my lady out of the question," said Arminell. "I suppose I am not to be court-martialed for having discussed Noah's Ark on Sunday with the tutor. I assure you we did not question the universality of the Flood, we talked only of the packing of the animals in the Ark."
"Was there any necessity for Mr. Saltren to come to you in the music-room?"
"No necessity whatever. He came for the pleasure of talking to me, not even to turn over my music leaves."
"You must not forget, my dear, who he is."
"I do not, I assure you, papa, it is precisely that which makes me take such an interest in him."
"Well, my dear, I am glad of that; but you must not allow him to forget what is due to you. It will not do for you to encourage him. He is only a mining captain's son."
"Papa," said Arminell, slowly and emphatically, "I know very well whose son he is."
"Of course you do; all I say is, do not forget it. He is a nice fellow, has plenty of brains, and knows his place."
"Yes, papa," said Arminell, "he knows his place, and he knows how equivocal that place is. He is regarded as one thing, and he is another."
"I daresay I made a mistake in bringing him here so near to his father."
"So very near to his father, and yet so separated from him."
"I suppose so," said Lord Lamerton, "education does separate."
"It separates so widely that those who are divided by it hardly regard each other as belonging to the same human family."
"I daresay it is so; the miners cannot judge me fairly about the manganese, because we stand on different educational levels."
"It is not only those beneath the line who misjudge those above; it is sometimes the superiors who misunderstand those below."
"Very possibly; but, my dear, that lower class, with limited culture and narrow views, is nowadays the dominating class. It is, in fact, the privileged class, it pays no taxes, and yet elects our rulers; our class is politically swamped, we exist upon sufferance. Formerly the castle dominated the cottage, but now the cottages command the castle. We, the educated and wealthy, are maintained as parochial cows, to furnish the parishioners with milk, and when we run dry are cut up to be eaten, and our bones treated with sulphuric acid and given to the earth to dress it for mangel-wurzel."
Arminell was vexed at the crafty way in which, according to her view, her father shifted ground, when she approached too nearly the delicate secret. She wondered whether she had spoken plainly enough to let him understand how much she knew. It was not her desire to come to plain words, she would spare him that humiliation. It would be quite enough, it would answer her purpose fully to let him understand that she knew the real facts as to the relationship in which she stood to the tutor.
"Papa," said Arminell, "Giles Inglett Saltren strikes me as standing towards us much in the same relation as do those apocryphal books the names of which my lady was teaching the children on Sunday. He is not canonical, of questionable origin, and to be passed over."
"I do not understand you, Armie."
"I am sorry, papa, that I do not see my way to express my meaning unenigmatically."
"Armie, I have been talking to mamma about your paying a visit to Aunt Hermione. You really ought to see the Academy this year, and, as mamma and I do not intend to go to town, it will be an opportunity for you."
"Aunt Hermione!"—Arminell stood still. "I don't want to go to her. Why should I go? I do not like her, and she detests me."
"My dear, I wish it."
"What? That I should see the Academy? I can take a day ticket, run up, race through Burlington House, and come home the same evening."
"No, my dear, I wish you to stay a couple of months at least, with Hermione."
"I see—you want to put me off, out of the way of the tutor, so as to have no more talk, no more confidences with him. That is my lady's scheme. It is too late, papa, do you understand me? It is too late."
"What do you mean?"
"What I say. This is locking the door after the horse is stolen. Send me away! It will not alter matters one scrap. As I said before, the precaution have come too late."