ARMINELL
A Social Romance
BY THE
AUTHOR OF “MEHALAH,” “JOHN HERRING,” ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.
LONDON:
METHUEN & CO., 18 BURY STREET, W.C.
1890
ARMINELL.
CHAPTER I.
SUNDAY SCHOOL.
Sunday-school on the ground floor of the keeper’s cottage that stood
against the church-yard, in a piece nibbled out of holy ground. Some old
folks said this cottage had been the church-house where in ancient days
the people who came to divine service stayed between morning prayer and
evensong, ate their mid-day meal and gave out and received their
hebdomadal quotient of gossip. But such days were long over, the house
had been used as a keeper’s lodge for at least a hundred years. The
basement consisted of one low hall exactly six feet one inch from floor
to rafters. There was no ceiling between it and the upper house—only a
flooring laid on the rafters. In pre-traditional days the men had sat
and eaten and drunk in the room above, and the women in that below,
between services, and their horses had been stabled where now the keeper
had his kennel.
The basement chamber was paved with slabs of slate. Rats infested the
lodge, they came after the bones and biscuits left by the dogs. The
pheasants’ food was kept there, the keeper’s wife dropped her dripping,
and the children were not scrupulous about finishing their crusts. The
rats undermined the slates, making runs beneath the pavement to get at
the box of dog biscuits, and the sacks of buckwheat, and the parcels of
peppercorns; consequently the slates were not firm to walk on. Moreover,
in the floor was a sunless secret cellar, of but eighteen inches in
depth, for the reception of liquor, or laces or silks that had not paid
the excise. The slates over this place, long disused, were infirm and
inclined to let whoever stepped on them down.
During the week the keeper’s wife washed in the basement and slopped
soapy water about, that ran between the slates and formed puddles,
lurking under corners, and when, on Sunday, the incautious foot rested
on an angle of slate, the slab tilted and squirted forth the stale
unsavoury water.
The room, as already said, was unceiled. The rafters were of solid oak;
the boards above were of deal, and had shrunk in places, and in places
dropped out the core of their knots. The keeper’s children found a
pleasure in poking sticks and fingers through, and in lying flat on the
floor with an eye on the knot-hole, surveying through it the proceedings
in the Sunday-school below.
About the floor in unsystematic arrangement spraddled forms of deal,
rubbed by boys’ trousers to a polish. Some of these forms were high in
the leg, others short. No two were on a level, and no two were of the
same length. They were rudely set about the floor in rhomboidal shapes,
or rather in trapeziums, which according to Euclid have no defined
shapes at all.
There was a large open fireplace at one end of the room, in which in
winter a fire of wood burned. When it burned the door had to be left
wide open, because of the smoke, consequently Sunday-school was held in
winter in a draught. At the extremity of the room, opposite the
fireplace stood Moses and Aaron—not in the flesh, nor even in spirit,
but in “counterfeit presentment” as large as life, rudely painted on
board. They had originally adorned the east end of the chancel; when,
however, the fashion of restoring churches set in, Orleigh Church had
been done up, and Moses and Aaron had been supplanted to make room for a
horrible reredos of glazed tiles. One of the Sunday-school scholars, a
wag, had scribbled mottoes from their mouths, on scrolls, and had made
Aaron observe to Moses, “Let us cut off our noses;” to which the meekest
of men was made to re-join, “It is the fashion to wear ’em.” But through
orthographical weakness, fashion had been spelled _fashum_, and wear ’em
had been rendered _warum_.
But why was the Sunday-school held in the basement of the keeper’s
cottage? For the best of good reasons. There was no other room
conveniently near the church in which it could be held.
Lady Lamerton could not live in peace without a Sunday-school. To her,
the obligation to keep the ten commandments was second to the obligation
to keep Sunday-school. How could the ten commandments be taught, unless
there were a Sunday-school in which to teach them? About a century ago
Mr. Raikes invented and introduced this institution; it spread like
measles, schools multiplied like maggots. It became an incumbus on
consciences. It was supposed to be the panacea for all moral evil. There
are still to be found persons with childlike faith in Sunday-schools, as
there are to be found persons who believe in spontaneous combustion and
calomel.
The national school was two miles distant, near the village. The church
stood in the grounds of Orleigh Park, and its satellite, the
Sunday-school, necessarily near it.
In Yorkshire it is customary among the lower classes at dinner, when
there is meat, to introduce first a huge and heavy slab of pudding, and
the young people are expected to devour a pound’s weight of this before
meat is put on their plates. It is thought, and justly, that a grounding
of leaden dough will make their appetites less keen for roast beef. On
the same principle the disciples of Mr. Raikes serve out Sunday-school,
slabby and heavy, to young church-folk, before Church worship, to abate
in some degree their relish for it.
There had been some difficulty about a habitat for the Sunday-school.
Lady Lamerton had tried to hold it in the laundry of the great house,
but the children in muddy weather had brought in so much dirt that no
laundry-work could be done in the room on Monday till it had been
scoured out. Besides—a fearful discovery had been made, better left to
the imagination than particularized. Suffice it to say that after this
discovery the children were banished the laundry. It must have come from
them. From whom else could it have been derived? The laundry-maids were
Aphrodites, foam, or rather soapsud-born, and it could not proceed from
such as they. Some said—but nonsense—there is no such a thing as
spontaneous generation. Pasteur has exploded that. So all the pupils,
with their prayer-books and Ancient-and-Moderns under their arms, made
an exodus, and went for a while into an outhouse in the stable-yard.
There they did not remain long, for the boys hid behind doors instead of
coming in to lessons, and then dived into stables to see the horses. One
of them nearly died from drinking embrocation for spavin, thinking it
was cherry-brandy, and another scratched his ignoble name on the panel
of one of my lord’s carriages, with a pin.
So, on the complaint of the coachman, my lord spoke out, and the Sunday
scholars again tucked their prayer-books and hymnals under their arms,
and, under the guidance of Lady Lamerton, migrated to a settled
habitation in the basement of the keeper’s cottage. The place was hardly
commodious, but it had its advantages-it was near the church.
Lady Lamerton, who presided over the Sunday-school and collected the
Sunday scholars’ club-pence, and distributed that dreary
brown-paper-covered literature that constituted the Sunday-school
lending library, was a middle-aged lady with a thin face and very
transparent skin, through which every vein showed. There was not much
character in her face, but it possessed a certain delicacy and purity
that redeemed it from being uninteresting. She was—it could be read in
every feature—a scrupulously conscientious woman, a woman strong in
doing her duty, and in that only; one whose head might be and generally
was in a profound muddle as to what she believed, but who never for a
moment doubted as to what she should do. She would be torn by wild
horses rather than not keep Sunday-school, and yet did not know what to
teach the children in the school she mustered.
Lady Lamerton, seated on a green garden chair from which the paint was
much rubbed away, had about her on three sides of an irregular square
the eldest girls of the school. The next class to hers was taken by the
Honourable Arminell Inglett, her step-daughter, only child of Lord
Lamerton by his first wife.
Miss Inglett was very different in type from her step-mother; a tall,
handsome girl, with dark hair cut short, like a boy’s, and eyes of
violet blue. She had a skin of the purest olive, no rose whatever in her
cheeks, as transparent as Lady Lamerton’s, but of a warmer tone, like
the mellow of an old painting, whereas that of her step-mother had the
freshness and crudeness of a picture from the easel sent to the Royal
Academy on the first of May.
Arminell differed from Lady Lamerton in expression as completely as in
type of feature and colour. She had an unusual breadth of brow, whereas
Lady Lamerton’s forehead was narrow. Her eyes had not that patient
gentleness that filled the dark blue orbs of her ladyship, they were
quick and sparkling. Her lips, somewhat prominent, were full, warm and
contemptuous. She held her head erect, with a curl of the mouth, and a
contraction of the brows, that expressed impatience at the task on which
she was engaged.
On the left side of Miss Inglett sat Captain Tubb, engaged on the
illumination of the souls of the senior boys. Captain Tubb held no
commission in the army or navy, not even in the volunteers. He was, in
fact, only the manager of a lime-quarry in the parish, on the estate of
Lord Lamerton, but such heads over gangs of quarry and mining men bear
among the people the courtesy-title of captain.
Mr. Tubb was a short, pale man with shiny face much polished, and with
sandy moustache and beard. When he was in perplexity, he put his hand to
his mouth, and stroked his moustache, or his beard under the chin,
turned it up, and nibbled at the ends.
Some folk said that the captain taught in school so as to stand well
with her ladyship, who would speak a word for him to my lord; but the
rector thought, more charitably, he did it for his soul’s and conscience
sake. Captain Tubb was a simple man, except in his business, and in that
he was sharp enough. Perhaps he taught a class from mixed motives, and
thought it would help him on a bit in both worlds.
“Yes,” said Lady Lamerton, “yes, Fanny White, go on. As the list of the
canonical books is known to you all, I require you to learn the names of
these books which, as the sixth article says, are read for example of
life and instruction of manners; but yet are not applied to establish
any doctrine. After that we will proceed to learn by heart the names of
the Homilies, twenty-one in all, given in the thirty-fifth article,
which are the more important, because they are not even read and hardly
any one has a copy of them. Go on with the uncanonical books. Third Book
of Esdras, Fourth Book of Esdras.”
“Tobit,” whispered the timid Fanny White, and curtsied.
“Quite right, Tobit—go on. It is most important for your soul’s health
that you should know what books are not canonical, and in their
sequence. What comes after Tobit?”
“Judith,” faltered Fanny.
“Then a portion of Esther, not found in Hebrew. What next?”
“Wisdom,” shouted the next girl, Polly Woodley.
“True, but do not be so forward, Polly; I am asking Fanny White.”
“Ecclesiasticks,” in a timid, doubtful sigh from Fanny, who raised her
eyes to the boards above, detected an eye inspecting her through a
knot-hole, laughed, and then turned crimson.
“Not sticks,” said Lady Lamerton, sweetly, “you must say—cus.”
A dead silence and great doubt fell on the class.
“Yes, go on—cus.”
Then faintly from Fanny, “Please, my lady, mother says I b’aint to
swear.”
“I don’t mind,” exclaimed the irrepressible Polly Woodley, starting up,
and thrusting her hand forward into Lady Lamerton’s face, “Darn it.”
Her ladyship fell back in her chair; the eye was withdrawn from the hole
in the floor, and a laugh exploded upstairs.
“I—I didn’t mean that,” explained the lady, “I meant, not Ecclesiastics,
nor Ecclesiastes, which is canonical, but Ecclesiasti—cus, which is
not.”
Just then a loud, rolling, grinding sound made itself heard through the
school-room, drowning the voices of the teachers and covering the asides
of the taught.
“Dear me,” said Lady Lamerton, “there is the keeper’s wife rocking the
cradle again. One of you run upstairs and ask her very kindly to desist.
It is impossible for any one to hear what is going on below with that
thunder rolling above.”
“Please, my lady,” said Polly, peeping up through the nearest knot in
the superjacent plank, “it b’aint Mrs. Crooks, it be Bessie as is
rocking of the baby. Wicked creetur not to be at school.”
“It does not matter who rocks the cradle,” said her ladyship, “nor are
we justified in judging others. One of you—not all at once—you, Polly
Woodley, ask Bessie to leave the cradle alone till later.”
The whole school listened breathlessly as the girl went out, tramped up
the outside slate steps to the floor occupied by the keeper’s family
above, and heard her say:—
“Now then, Bessie! What be you a-making that racket for? My lady says
she’ll pull your nose unless you stop at once. My lady’s doing her best
to teach us to cuss downstairs, and her can’t hear her own voice wi’out
screeching like a magpie.”
Then up rose Lady Lamerton in great agitation.
“That girl is intolerable. She shall not have a ticket for good conduct
to-day. I will go—no, you run, Joan Ball, and make her return. I will
have a proper school-room built. This shall not occur again.”
Then Captain Tubb rose to his full height, stood on a stool, put his
mouth to the orifice in the plank, placed his hands about his mouth and
roared through the hole: “Her ladyship saith Come down.”
Presently with unabashed self-satisfaction Polly Woodley reappeared.
“When I send you on an errand,” said Lady Lamerton severely, “deliver it
as given. I am much displeased.”
“Yes, my lady, thank you,” answered Polly with cheerful face, and
resumed her seat in class.
“Now boys,” said Captain Tubb to his class, which was composed of the
senior male scholars, including Tom Metters, the rascal who had put the
inscriptions in the mouths of Moses and Aaron. “Now boys, attention. The
cradle and Polly Woodley are nothing to you. We will proceed with what
we were about.”
“Please, sir,” said Tom Metters, thrusting forth his hand as a
semaphore, “what do Quinquagesima, Septuagesima and the lot of they
rummy names mean?”
“Rummy,” reproved Captain Tubb, “is an improper term to employ. Say,
remarkable. Quinquagesima”—he stroked his moustache, then brightened—“it
is the name of a Sunday.”
“I know, sir, but why is it so called?”
“Why are _you_ called Tom Metters?” asked the captain as a feeble effort
to turn the tables.
“I be called Tom after my uncle, and Metters is my father’s name—but
Quinquagesima?”
“Quin-qua-gess-im-a!” mused the Captain, and looked furtively towards my
lady for help, but she was engrossed in teaching her class what books
were not to be employed for the establishment of doctrine, and did not
notice the appeal.
“Yes, sir,” persisted Metters, holding him as a ferret holds the throat
of a rabbit, “Quinquagesima.”
“I think,” said Tubb eagerly, “we were engaged on David’s mighty men. Go
on with the mighty men.”
“But, please sir, I _do_ want to know about Quinquagesima, cruel bad.”
“Quin-qua-gess-ima,” sighed Capt. Tubb, nibbling the ends of his beard;
then again in a lower sigh, “Quin-qua-gess-ima?” He looked at Arminell
for enlightenment, but in vain. She was listening amused and scornful.
“Gessima—gessima!” said Mr Tubb; then falteringly: “It’s a sort of
creeper, over veranders.”
He saw a flash in Arminell’s eye, and took it as encouragement. Then,
with confidence he advanced.
“Yes, Metters, it means that this is the Sunday or week whereabouts the
yaller jessamine—or in Latin, gessima—do begin to bloom.”
“Thank you, sir—and Septuagesima?”
“That,” answered the captain with great promptitude, “that is when the
white ’un flowers.”
“But, sir, there’s another Sunday collick, Sexagesima. There’s no red or
blue jessamine, be there?”
“Red, or blue!” The teacher looked hopelessly at Arminell, who with
compressed lips observed him and shook her head.
“Sex—sex—sex,” repeated Mr. Tubb, with his mouth full of beard, “always
means females. That means the female jessamine.”
“Be there any, sir? There’s a petticoat narcissus, and a lady’s smock,
and a marygold, but I never heard of a she-jessamine.”
“There are none here,” answered Tubb, “but in the Holy Land—lots.”
“Really, Arminell,” said Lady Lamerton, “your class is doing nothing but
play and disturb mine.”
“I am on the stool of the learner,” sneered the girl.
At that moment, through the ceiling, or rather boards above, dropped a
black-handled kitchen fork within a hair’s breadth of Arminell’s head.
She drew back, startled.
“What is it? What is the matter?” exclaimed Lady Lamerton. “Run up,
Polly Woodley!—no, not you this time; you, Fanny White, and see what
they are about upstairs.”
“Please, my lady,” said Polly, peering into the higher regions through
the hole, “Bessie have given the baby the knives and forks to play with,
’cause you wont let her rock the cradle, and to keep ’un from crying.
He’s a shoving ’em through the floor.”
Then, down through the knot-hole descended a shower of comfits. The
child had been given a cornet by its mother, and had eagerly opened it,
over the hole where it had poked the fork.
The school floor was overspread with a pink and white hail-shower. In a
moment, all order was over. The classes broke up into individual units,
all on the floor, kicking, scratching, elbowing, grabbing after the
scattered comfits, thrusting fingers into eyes, into soapy water;
getting them trodden on, nipped between slates, a wriggling, contending,
greedy, noisy tangle of small humanity, and above it stood my lady
protesting, and Captain Tubb nibbling the ends of his sandy beard, and
looking dazed; and Arminell Inglett, half angry, half amused, altogether
contemptuous.
“There!” exclaimed Lady Lamerton, “the bells are going for divine
service. In places at once—Let us pray!”