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!”