HOW ARMINELL TOOK IT.
Giles Inglett Saltren walked on fast, he was disturbed in the stream of
his thoughts by the interruption of the tiresome old cripple. He had
more important matters to occupy his mind than the requirements of
Samuel Ceely. His heart beat, his hands became moist. What a marvellous
disclosure had been made to him—and he wondered at himself for not
having divined it before. He argued much as did his mother. Why had Lord
Lamerton done such great things for him, why had he sent him abroad,
found him money, given him education, lifted him far above the sphere in
which his parents moved, unless he felt called to do so by a sense of
responsibility, such as belongs to a father?
To a whole class of minds disinterested conduct is inconceivable. All
such conduct as is oblique is to them intelligible, and allowance is
made by them for stupidity, and stupidity with them is the same thing as
unselfishness. But such unselfishness is permissible only by fits as
lapses from the course which all men naturally take. But that men should
act consistently on disinterested motives is an idea too preposterous
for them to allow of its existence.
This class of minds does not belong specially to any particular stratum
of society, though it is found to be most prevalent where the struggle
for existence is most keen, and where there is least culture.
But of culture there are two kinds, that which is external, and that
which is within; it is generally found that this inability to understand
disinterested conduct is found everywhere where the inner culture does
not exist.
There is, we believe, a Rabbinic legend concerning a certain cow which
was its own calf, and much disputation ensued among the Talmudists, to
determine the point of time at which the cow calved itself, and when it
ceased to be accounted beef, and became veal, or the contrary. But what
seems to us Gentiles to be impossible in the material sense, is possible
enough in the spiritual realm, and a very calf-like self may become the
mother of a cow-self, so vast, so considerable that, like the Brahminic
cow, Varuna, it will occupy the entire firmament, extend to the horizon
on all sides, and overshadow and envelope everything. Varuna in fact is
the universe, and as we see and exist in that universe, so with the
cow-self born of calf-self, it becomes our universe. We see only that
cow, inhale the breath of that cow, think only cow thoughts, stand on
cow, and our aspirations are limited on all sides by cow. That cow is
Self born of self. The breath of that cow is sweet to our nostrils, its
milk the nourishment of our bowels, its low is music to our ears, and
nothing that does not smell and taste and sound of that cow is worthy of
being smelt, and tasted, and listened to.
Of this cow we can give information unattainable by the Rabbis. We can
watch its development, if we cannot determine the moment of its
nativity. It probably comes to the birth at an early age, but there is
this deserving of consideration about it that this cow born of calf can
be bled to whiteness, and knocked on the head if taken in time.
If, however, it be allowed to attain to heiferhood, it is thenceforth
unmanageable; we see everything through its medium, and like and
dislike, love and hate all objects and persons as they stand within or
without of the compass of the great cow-self, which has become our
Varuna, our universe.
It must not be supposed that such as live under the shadow of this great
cow, are oppressed by it. On the contrary they have become so accustomed
to it that they could not exist apart from it. There is a story of a man
who carried a monstrous cow on his shoulders, and explained that he had
acquired the ability to do so by beginning with the creature when it was
a day old. As the calf grew, so grew his ability to support its weight.
It is the same with us, we carry the little calf-self about on our
shoulder, and dance along the road and leap over the stones, and as day
by day the calf grows, so does our capacity for carrying it, till at
last we trudge about everywhere, into all society, even into church,
with the monstrous cow-self on our shoulders, and do not feel that we
have anything weighing on us whatsoever.
Now Giles Inglett Saltren had grown up nursing and petting this calf. He
had good natural abilities, but partly through his mother’s folly,
partly through external circumstances, he had come to see everything
through a medium of self. The notice taken of him by his schoolmaster
because he was intelligent, by Lord Lamerton because he was delicate,
the very stethoscoping of his lungs, the jellies and grapes sent him
from the great house, the petting he got in the servants’ hall, because
he was handsome and interesting, the superiority he had acquired over
his parents by his residence abroad, and education, all tended to the
feeding and fattening of the calf-self; and the cod-liver oil he had
consumed, had not merely gone to restore his lungs, but to build up
piles of yellow fat on the flanks of self. Jingles had already reached
that point at which his cow had become Varuna, his entire universe. He
thought of, considered, nothing from any other point of view than as it
touched himself.
His consciousness of discomfort in the society at Orleigh, his
bitterness of mood, his resentment of the distinctions not purposely
made, but naturally existing and necessarily insuperable, between
himself and those with whom he associated, all this sprang out of the
one source, all came of the one disease—intense, all-absorbing, all
prevailing selfishness.
He observed the natural ease that pervaded all the actions of those with
whom he was brought into contact in the upper world, and their complete
lack of self-consciousness, their naturalness, simplicity, in all they
said and did. He had not got it—he could not acquire it, he was like a
maid-of-all work from a farmhouse on a market day in the county town
wearing a Mephistopheles hat on her red head, and ten-button gloves on
her mottled arms. He was conscious of his self-consciousness—he feared
it would be remarked. It made him suspicious and envious and angry. He
could not reach to the ease of those above him, and therefore he desired
to level them to his own plane. A man with black blood in his veins is
fearful lest those at the table should look at his nails. Jingles was
ever dreading lest some chance glance should discover the want of breed
in himself.
This caused him much misery; and this all came of his carrying about the
cow-self with him into my lady’s boudoir, and my lord’s study, to the
dining-room, and to the parlour.
I was at the autumn fair some years ago at Liège; on the boulevards were
streets of booths, some for the sale of cakes and toys, others shows;
but, as among the stalls those for cakes prevailed, so among the shows
did the Rigolade Parisienne preponderate.
Not having the faintest conception of what the Rigolade was, I paid my
sou and entered one in quest of knowledge; and this is what I saw—a
series of mirrors. But there was this peculiar about the mirrors, one
was convex, and in it I beheld my nose reduced to a pimple, and my eyes
to currants; another was concave, in which my nose swelled to a
proboscis and my eyes to plums. A third mirror multiplied my face fifty
times. A fourth showed me my face elongated, as when my MS. has been
returned “not suited,” from an editor; a fifth widened my face to an
absurd grin; in a sixth I saw my pleasant self magnified in serene and
smiling beauty in the midst, and showed me every surrounding person and
object, the faces of men, the houses, the cathedral, the sky, the sun,
all distorted out of shape and proportions. “Eh ça, M’sou,” said the
showman, “c’est la véritable Rigolade Parisienne.”
Eh ça—my dear readers, was Giles Inglett Saltren’s vision of life. He
saw himself, infinitely magnified, and everything else dwarfed about him
and tortured into monstrosity.
Of one thing I am very certain, dear reader, in this great Rigolade of
life into which we have entered, and through which we are walking, there
are some who are always seeing themselves in the multiplying mirror, and
there are others who contemplate their faces continually elongated,
whilst others again see themselves in the widening mirror and
accommodate themselves to be the perpetual buffoon. Let us trust that
these are not many, but there certainly are some who view themselves
enlarged, and view everything and every person beside, the world about
them, the heaven above them, in a state of distortion.
Lord Lamerton had shown the young tutor extraordinary kindness, for he
was a man with a soft heart, and he really wished to make the young
fellow happy. He would have liked Giles to have opened out to him and
not to have maintained a formal distance, but he was unable to do more
than invite confidence, and he attributed the stiffness of the tutor to
his shyness. Of late, his lordship had begun to think that perhaps
Jingles was somewhat morbid, but this he attributed to his
constitutional delicacy. Consumptive people are fantastical, was his
hasty generalization.
In the heart of Giles Inglett Saltren a very mixed feeling existed as he
walked back to the park. He was gratified to think that he had noble
blood in his veins, but he was incensed at the thought of the treachery
to which his mother had fallen a victim, and which robbed him of his
birth-rights. Had that function in the drawing-room, described by his
mother, been celebrated legally, he and not the snivelling little Giles
would be heir to Orleigh, to fifty thousand a year, and a coronet, and a
seat in the House of Lords. What use would Giles the Little make of his
privileges? Would he not lead the same prosaic life as his father,
planting pines, digging fish-ponds, keeping a pack of hounds, doing the
active work of a county magnate and magistrate—whereas he—Giles Inglett
Saltren, no longer Saltren, but Baron Lamerton of Orleigh, might become,
with the advantages of his birth, wealth, and abilities combined, the
greatest statesman and reformer England had known. He felt that his head
was bursting with ideas, his blood on fire to give them utterance, and
his hands tingling to carry his projects into effect. Without some
adventitious help, such as position and wealth could give, he could not
take the place he knew by inner illumination should be his.
“I was sure of it,” said Jingles, “that is to say I imagined that I
could not be the son of a common mining captain. There was something
superior to that sort of stuff in me. But now this infamous act of
treachery stands between me and acknowledgment by the world, between me
and such success as, perhaps no man in England, except perhaps Mr.
Gladstone, has attained to. All I want is a lift on the ladder—after
that first step I will mount the rest of the way myself.”
He walked on fast. His blood seethed in his heart. He was angry with
Lord Lamerton for having betrayed his mother’s trust, and with his
mother for allowing herself to be deceived.
“Something may yet be done. It is not impossible that I may discover
what has not been suspected. I must discover this friend who pretended
to be a parson, and search the archiepiscopal registers for the alleged
licence. It is hardly likely, that my lord would dare to fabricate a
false licence, or for a friend of his to run the risk, out of
friendship, of twenty-five years’ penal servitude. No—it is, calmly
considered, far more likely that a true licence was obtained, that the
marriage though secret, was valid, and that my mother was imposed upon,
when assured she had been duped, and then she was forced on Captain
Saltren to dispose of her securely against discovering her rights and
demanding them. I will go to town and then take advice what to do. It
will, perhaps, be best for me thence to write to his lordship and ask
for the particulars, threatening unless they are furnished me
voluntarily, that I will search them out for myself. If I were the
Honourable Giles Inglett,” mused Jingles, with his eyes on the moonlit
road, “how utterly different my position in the house would be to what
it now is. That confounded butler—who assumes a patronising air, and
would, if I gave him encouragement, pat me on the shoulder. That
impudent valet, who brought me up the wrong waistcoat yesterday morning
and allowed me to ring thrice before he chose to answer the bell, and
never apologised for having kept me waiting. Then, again, at table the
other day, when something was said of fish out of water, the footman
touched my back with the dish of curried prawns. He did it
intentionally, he meant that I was a fish out of water, a curried prawn
myself, in fiery heat. There was something said among the gentlemen
about Gammon, the man who has just been created High Sheriff. He made
his money in mines. One of those present said that those fellows who
scramble into society for which they are not qualified always reminded
him of French poodles, half-shaven and half-savage; every one laughed
and the laugh cut me like knives. I am sure several at the table thought
of me, and that they have taken to calling to me ‘the French poodle.’
What am I? I am either his lordship’s legitimate but unacknowledged
son—and if so I am shaved all over; but if I am as he would pretend, his
bastard—I am half-shaved, and so half-shaved I must run about the world,
laughed at, thought monstrous, pitied, a creature of aristocratic and
plebeian origin commingled, with the hair about my neck, and ears, and
eyes, and nose, but all the rest of me polished and cultured. A poodle
indeed! I—a French poodle!”
A piece of decayed branch fallen from a tree lay in the road. Jingles
kicked it away.
“That,” said he passionately, “is what I should like to do to the
butler, were I the Honourable Giles. And that,” he kicked another stick,
“is how I would treat that brute who allowed me to wait for my
waistcoat. And so,” he trod on and snapped a twig that lay athwart his
path, “so would I crush the footman who dared to nudge me with the
curried prawns! And,” he caught a hazel bough that hung from the hedge,
and broke it off, and ripped the leaves away, and then with his teeth
pulled the rind away, “and this is what I would do to that man who dared
to talk of half-shaved French poodles. Oh! if I could be but a despot—a
dictator for an hour—for an hour only—to ram the curried prawns down the
throat of that insolent ruffian who nudged me, and to flay alive that
creature who spoke of poodles! Then I would cheerfully surrender my
power into the hands of the people and be the democratic leader once
more.”
He entered the park grounds by a side-gate and was soon on the terrace.
There he saw Arminell returning to the house from her stroll in the
avenue.
“Mr. Saltren,” she said, “have you also been enjoying the beauty of the
night?”
“I have been trying to cool the fever within,” he replied.
“I hope,” she said, misunderstanding him, “that you have not caught the
influenza, or whatever it is from Giles.”
“I have taken nothing from Giles. The fever I speak of is not physical.”
“Oh! you are still thinking of what we discussed over the Noah’s Ark.”
“Yes—how can I help it? I who am broken and trodden on at every moment.”
“I am sorry to hear you say this, Mr. Saltren. I also have been talking
the matter over with papa, and after he went in, I have been walking up
and down under the trees meditating on it—but I get no farther, for all
my thinking.”
“Miss Inglett,” said Jingles, “the time of barley-mows is at an end.
Hitherto we have had the oats, and the wheat, and the rye, and the
clover, and the meadow-grass ricked, stacked separately. All that is of
the past. The age of the stack-yard is over with its several distinct
classified ricks—this is wheat, that is rye; this is clover, that
damaged hay. We are now entering an age of Silo, and inevitably as
feudalism is done away with, so will the last relics of distinctions be
swept aside also, and we shall all enter an universal and common silo.”
“I do not think I quite understand you.”
“Henceforth all mankind will make one, all contribute to the common
good, all be pressed together and the individuality of one pass to
become the property of all.”
Arminell shook her head and laughed.
“I confess that I find great sweetness in the old stack-yard, and a
special fragrance attaches to each rick. Is all that to be a thing of
the past, and the savour of the silo to be the social atmosphere of the
future?”
“You strain the illustration,” said Saltren testily.
“You wish to substitute an aggregate of nastiness for diversified
sweets.”
“Miss Inglett, I will say no more. I thought you more sympathetic with
the aspirations of the despised and down-trodden, with the movement of
ideas in the present century.”
“I am sympathetic,” said Arminell. “But I am as bewildered now as I was
this morning. I am just as one who has been spun through the spiral
tunnel on the St. Gothard line, when one rushes forth into day; you know
neither in which direction you are going, nor to what level you are
brought. I dislike your similitude of a silo, and so have a right to
criticise it.”
“Arminell,” said Jingles, standing still.
“Mr. Saltren!” The girl reared herself haughtily, and spoke with icy
coldness.
“Exactly,” laughed the tutor, bitterly. “I thought as much! You will not
allow the presumed son of a manganese captain, the humble tutor, to
presume an approach of familiarity to the honourable the daughter of a
peer.”
“I allow no one to presume,” said she, haughtily, and turned her back on
him, and resumed her walk.
“Yet I have a right,” pursued Jingles, striding after her. “Miss
Inglett—Arminell listen to me. I am not the man to presume. I know and
am made to feel too sharply my inferiority to desire to take a liberty.
But I have a right, and I stand on my right. I have a right to call you
by your Christian name, a right which you will acknowledge. I am your
brother.”
Arminell halted, turned and looked at him from head to foot with
surprise mingled with disdain.
“You doubt my words,” he went on. “I am not offended—I am not surprised
at that; indeed, I expected it. But what I say is true. We have
different mothers, mine”—with bitterness—“of the people, that I allow—of
the people, of the common, base lot, who are dirt under your feet; yours
is of the aristocracy, made much of, received in society, in the magic
circle from which mine would be shut out. But we have one father; I
stand to you in precisely the same relation as does the boy Giles, but I
am your elder brother, and should be your adviser and closest friend.”
END OF VOLUME I.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
--------------
S. BARING GOULD, M.A.
--------------
=HISTORIC ODDITIES AND STRANGE EVENTS.= Demy 8vo, 10s. 6d.
[Now Ready.
“Striking into the dark side-paths of history, we have a
collection of exciting and entertaining chapters. The
volume is delightful reading.”—_Times._
“The entire contents are stimulating and
delightful.”—_Notes and Queries._
=OLD COUNTRY LIFE.= With numerous Illustrations and
Initial Letters by W. PARKINSON, F. D. BEDFORD, and F.
MASEY. Large Crown 8vo, 10s. 6d. A limited number of
copies on large paper will also be printed.
[_On November 18._
-------
_CONTENTS._
CHAP.
I. OLD COUNTY FAMILIES.
II. THE LAST SQUIRE.
III. COUNTRY HOUSES.
IV. THE OLD GARDEN.
V. THE COUNTRY PARSON.
VI. THE HUNTING PARSON.
VII. COUNTRY DANCES.
VIII. OLD ROADS.
IX. FAMILY PORTRAITS.
X. THE VILLAGE MUSICIANS.
XI. THE VILLAGE BARD.
XII. OLD SERVANTS.
XIII. THE HUNT.
XIV. THE COUNTY TOWN.
-------
=JAEL AND OTHER STORIES.= (=In February.=)
=YORKSHIRE ODDITIES.= =New and Cheaper Edition.= (=In the
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Punctuation has been normalized. Variations in hyphenation have been
retained as they were in the original publication. The following changes
have been made:
were banished the laundry —> were banished to the laundry {page 6}
dotted —> jotted down his ideas {page 246}
convertion —> conversion of dirty rags {page 250}
Advertising material “By the Same Author” has been moved to the end of
the text.
Italicized phrases are presented by surrounding the text with
_underscores_.
Bolded phrases are presented by surrounding the text with =equal signs=
End of Project Gutenberg's Arminell (Vol. 1/3), by Sabine Baring-Gould