ARMINELL
A Social Romance
BY THE
AUTHOR OF “MEHALAH,” “JOHN HERRING,” ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. III.
LONDON:
METHUEN & CO., 18 BURY STREET, W.C.
1890
ARMINELL.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE TURN OF THE TIDE.
Giles Saltren caught an express and whirled down into the west. He had
not taken a ticket for Orleigh Road Station, as he did not choose to get
out there, but at the nearest town, and there he hired a light trap in
which he was driven to within half a mile of Chillacot, where he
dismissed the vehicle and walked on.
He had resolved what to do. He would pay a hasty visit to his mother and
then go on to the village, and perhaps call at the Rectory. He must show
himself as much as possible.
He had hardly left the trap, when, on turning a corner, he came on
Samuel Ceely and Joan Melhuish walking together, arm in arm. The sight
brought the blood into his pale face. He was behind the pair, and he was
able to notice the shabbiness of the old man and the ungainliness of his
walk. This man was his father. To him, the meanest in the parish—not to
his lordship, the highest—must he look as the author of his being.
Joan Melhuish knew nothing of Samuel’s love affair with Marianne Welsh.
She looked up to and admired the cripple, seeing him in the light of her
girlish fancy, as the handsome, reckless gamekeeper.
Giles’s foot lagged, but he kept his eyes steadily on the man slouching
along before him. A new duty had fallen on him. He must provide for the
cripple, without allowing the secret of his relationship to become
known, both for the sake of his mother and for that of the trusting
Joan.
Samuel Ceely heard his step and turned his head, disengaged his arm from
the woman, and extended the mutilated hand towards the young man.
“I say—I say!” began he, with his water-blue eyes fixed eagerly on
Jingles. “I was promised a place; Miss Arminell herself said I should
have work, two shillings a day, sweeping, and now they say she has gone
away and left no directions about me. If you can put in a word with my
lady, or with my lord, mind that I was promised it.”
“How can you, Samuel, speak of my lord, when you know he is dead?”
“My lord is not dead,” answered the old man sharply. “Master Giles is
now my lord. I know what I am about.”
“And Samuel would do the work wonderfully well,” threw in Joan; “of all
the beautifulest things that ever I see, is Samuel’s sweeping. If they
were to give prizes for that as they do for ploughing, Samuel would be
rich.”
“I should like,” said Giles, “to have some particulars about my lord’s
death.”
“’Tis a terrible job, sure enough,” answered the woman. “And folks tell
strange tales about it, not half of ’em is true. They’ve sat on him this
afternoon.”
“The inquest already?”
“Yes, to be sure. You see he died o’ Saturday, so he was crowned to-day.
Couldn’t do it yesterday.”
“And what was the verdict? I have been to Huxham to-day”—this was the
nearest town.
“Samuel can tell you better than I, sir, I don’t understand these
things. But it do seem a funny thing to crown a man when he is dead.”
“What was the verdict?” asked Giles of Samuel.
“Well,” said the old man, shaking his head. “It puzzled the jury a bit.
Some said it was an accident, and some that it was murder; but the worst
of it all is, that it will drive my sweeping at two shillings out of the
heads of my lady and Miss Arminell. They’ll be so took up wi’ ordering
of mourning that they’ll not think of me—which is a crying shame. If his
lordship could but have lived another week till I was settled into my
sweeping and victuals, he might have died and welcome, but to go
interfering like between me and two shillings, is that provoking I could
swear. Not that I say it was his lordship’s fault, and I lay no blame on
him, but folks do say, that——”
“There now, Samuel,” interrupted Joan. “This is young Mr. Saltren you
are speaking to and you are forgetting.”
“I’m not forgetting,” grumbled the old man; “don’t you be always of a
flurrying me. Why, if I had had my situation as was promised me, we
might have married and reared a family. I reckon one can do that on two
shillings a day, and broken victuals from the kitchen. I might take the
case into court and sue Captain Saltren for damages.”
“Hush Samuel,” interposed Joan nervously, looking at Giles.
“I aint a-going to be hushed like a baby,” said Samuel Ceely irritably;
“I reckon if I don’t get my place, we can’t marry, and have a family,
and where will my domestic happiness be? I tell you, them as chucked his
lordship down the Cleave, chucked my family as was to be down with him,
and if I can’t bring ’em into court for murdering his lordship, I can
for murdering my family, of as healthy and red-cheeked children as might
have been—all gone,” said the old man grimly. “All, head over heels down
the Cleave, along of Lord Lamerton.”
“How can you talk so?” said Joan, reproachfully. “You know you have no
children.”
“I might have had—a dozen of ’em—seven girls and five boys, and I’d got
the names for them all in my head. I might have had if I’d got the
sweeping and the broken victuals as I was promised. What’s the
difference in wickedness, I’d like to know?” asked the old man
sententiously, and figuring out his proposition on Saltren’s coat with
his crooked fingers. “What’s the odds in wickedness, chucking over a
horrible precipice a dozen sweet and innocent children as is, or as is
to be, my family was as certain as new potatoes in June, and now all
gone, chucked down the Cleave. It is wickedness.”
“What is that you hinted about Captain Saltren?” asked Giles gravely.
“Oh, I say nothing,” answered old Samuel sourly. “I don’t talk—I leave
that to the woman.”
“It does seem a pity,” said Joan. “Samuel would have been so useful. He
might have gone about the park picking up the sandwich-papers and the
corks and bottles, after the public.”
“But,” said the young man, “I really wish to know what the talk is about
in which my father’s name is introduced.”
“Sir, sir! folk’s tongues go like the clappers in the fields to drive
away the blackbirds. A very little wind makes ’em rattle wonderfully.”
“But what have they said?”
“Well”—Joan hesitated. She was a woman of delicate feeling. “Well, sir,
you must not think there is anything in it. Tongues cannot rest, and
what they say to-day they unsay to-morrow. Some think that as the
captain was so bitter against his lordship, and denounced him as
ordained to destruction, that he may have had a helping hand in his
death. But, sir, the captain did not speak so strong as Mr. Welsh, and
nobody says that Mr. Welsh laid a finger on him. Why should they try to
fix it on your father and not on your uncle? But, sir, there is no call
to fix it on any one. I might walk over the edge of the Cleave. If a man
goes over the brink, I reckon he needs no help to make him go to the
bottom.”
“The jury couldn’t agree, Joan,” said Samuel. “Two of ’em wanted to
bring in wilful murder against the captain.”
“So they did against his lordship in the case of Arkie Tubb. But that
was nonsense. His lordship wasn’t there. And this is nonsense, just the
same.”
“But the captain was nigh. Mr. Macduff saw him.”
“Well, and he might have seen me, and he did see me a little while
afore, as I was coming from Court with some baccy money for you, Samuel.
That don’t follow that I killed his lordship. Mr. Macduff see’d also
Farmer Yole’s old grey mare. Be you a going accusing of that old mare of
having had a hoof in his lordship’s death?”
“Where did Mr. Macduff see my father?” asked the young man.
“On the down. But he didn’t see him speak to his lordship, and he
couldn’t tell to half an hour or three-quarters when it was. So the
crowner discharged the jury, just as he did in the case of Arkie, and he
got together another, and they found that his lordship had done it
accidental.”
“For all that,” growled Samuel, “folks will always say that the captain
helped him over, as he was so set against him.”
“Then,” said Joan, “it is a shame and a sin if they do. It is one thing
to talk against a person, and another thing to lift a hand against him.
I’ve said hard things of you, scores of times; I’ve said you never ought
to have taken the game and sent it off by the mail-cart when you was
keeper, and that you couldn’t have blown off your hand if you’d not gone
poaching, nor put out your hip if you’d been sober—I’ve said them cruel
things scores o’ times, but never laid a finger on you to hurt you. I
couldn’t do it—as you know very well.”
She cast an affectionate glance at the cripple; then she went on, “Lord!
I forgive and excuse all the frolics of your youth; and folks always
says things rougher than they mean them.”
Instead of going on to Chillacot, as he had at first intended, Giles now
resolved on following the road to the village, and returning home later.
He must lose no time in showing himself. He trusted that in the
excitement caused by the death of Lord Lamerton no questions would be
raised about Arminell, and any little suspicions which might have been
awakened by her sudden departure would be allayed.
He was not altogether easy about his father, nor satisfied with Joan’s
justification of him. That the jury had returned a verdict of accidental
death was a relief to his mind, but it made him uncomfortable to think
that suspicion against his father should be entertained. Giles had
little or no knowledge of his father’s new craze. He knew that the
captain was a fanatic who went heart and soul with whatever commended
itself to his reason or prejudice. At one time he took up hotly the
subject of vegetarianism, then he became infatuated with
Anglo-Israelism, then he believed vehemently in a quack syrup he saw
advertised in a Christian paper, warranted to cure all disorder; after
that he became possessed with the teetotal mania, and attributed all the
evils in the world, war, plagues, earthquakes, popery, and
foot-and-mouth disease to the use of alcohol. Recently he had combined
his religious vagaries with political theories, and had made a strange
stir-about of both. His trouble at losing his situation as captain of
the manganese mine, and his irritation against the railway company for
wanting Chillacot had combined to work him into a condition of unusual
excitability. Giles had heard that his father had seen a vision, but of
what sort he had not inquired, because he was entirely out of sympathy
with the spiritual exaltations and fancies of his father.
The village of Orleigh was not what is commonly termed a “church town,”
that is to say, it was not clustered about the church, which stood in
the park, near the mansion of the Ingletts. In ancient days, when the
population was sparse, the priest drew his largest congregation from the
manor house, and therein he lived as chaplain and tutor; consequently in
many places we find the parish church situated close to the manor house,
and away from the village which had grown up later. It was so at
Orleigh. The village consisted of a green, with an old tree in the
midst, an ale-house, the Lamerton Arms, a combined general and grocery
store, which was also post office, a blacksmith’s forge, and
half-a-dozen picturesque cottages white-washed, with red windows and
thatched roofs. Most of these houses had flower gardens before their
doors, encouraged thereto by an annual Floricultural Society which gave
prizes to those villagers who had the neatest, most cheerful and varied
gardens.
Jingles found knots of men standing about the green, some were coming
out of, others about to enter the public-house door; another knot
clustered about the forge. Women were not wanting, to throw in words.
The dusk of evening had settled in, so that at first none noticed the
approach of the young man. He came, not by the road, but across by the
blacksmith’s garden, where a short cut saved a round. Thus he was in the
midst of the men before they were aware that he was near.
He could not catch all that was being said, but he heard that the death
of Lord Lamerton occupied their minds and exercised their tongues. His
father’s name was also freely bandied about.
“I say,” exclaimed the village tailor, in a voice like that of a
corncrake, “I say that Cap’n Saltren did it. What do you consider the
reason why the coroner discharged the jury and called another? I know,
if you do not. You don’t perhaps happen to know, but I do, that Marianne
Saltren’s aunt, old Betsy Welsh, washes for the coroner. Nothing more
likely, were he to allow a verdict against the captain, than that his
shirt-fronts would come home iron-moulded. Don’t tell me there was no
evidence. Evidence is always to be had if looked for. Evidence is like
snail’s horns, thrust forth or drawn in, according to circumstances. If
the coroner had wanted evidence, he could have had it. But he was
thinking of his shirt-front, and he, maybe, going out to a dinner-party.
It is easy done, boil an old nail along with the clothes, and pounds’
worth of linen is spoiled. I don’t blame him,” concluded the tailor
sententiously. “Human nature is human nature.”
“And,” shouted a miner, “facts is facts”—but he pronounced them _fax_.
“Lord Lamerton,” said a second miner, “wanted to make a new road, and
carry it to Chillacot. The cap’n didn’t like it, he didn’t want to have
a station there. He was set against his lordship on that account, for
his lordship was a director. If you can prove to me that his lordship
wasn’t a director, then I shall admit he may have come by his death
naturally. I say naught against his lordship for not wanting to have his
house undermined, but I do say that the cap’n acted unreasonably and
wrongly in not letting the company have Chillacot for the station. If
he’d have done that, his lordship would have found us work on the road.”
“Ah, Gloyne,” called the other miner, “that’s it. Fax is fax.”