Arminell, a social romance. Baring-Gould Sabine

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СКАЧАТЬ It should have been metalled in the winter, then the stones would have worked in, now they will be loose all the summer to throw down the horses."

      "And you will build us a Sunday-school?"

      "I will see about it. Won't the keeper's lodge do? The woman does not wash downstairs on a Sunday."

      "I wish you kept school there one Sabbath day. You would discover how great are the discomforts. Now we are at the church gates and must compose our minds."

      "Certainly, my dear. The lord-lieutenant is going to make Gammon sheriff."

      "Why Gammon?"

      ​"Because he can afford to pay for the honour. The old squirearchy can't bear the expense."

      "Hush, we are close to the church, and must withdraw our minds from the world."

      "So I will, dear. Eggin's pigs have been in the garden again."

      "There'll be the exhortation to-day, Lamerton, and you must stand up for it. Next Sunday is Sacrament Sunday."

      "To be sure. I'll have a lower line of wire round the fences. Those pigs go where a hare will run."

      "Have you brought your hymnal with you?"

      Lord Lamerton fumbled in his pocket, and produced his yellow silk kerchief and a book together.

      "That," said his wife, "is no good; it is the old edition."

      "It doesn't matter. I will open the book, and no one will be the wiser."

      "But you will be thinking during the hymn of Eggin's pigs and Gammon's sheriffalty."

      "I'll do better next Sunday. The gardener tells me they have turned up your single dahlias."

      "Hush! we are in the church. Arminell is not in the pew. Where can she be?"

      Arminell was not in church. She was, in fact, walking away from it, and by the time her father had entered his pew and looked into his hat, had put a distance of half a mile between herself and the sacred building. A sudden fit of disgust at the routine of Sunday duties had come over her, and she resolved to absent herself that morning from church, and pay a visit to a deserted lime quarry, where she could spend an hour alone, and her moral and religious sense, as she put it, could recover tone after the ordeal of Sunday-school.

      "What can induce my lady to take a class every Sunday?" questioned Arminell, in her thought. "It does no good to the children, and it maddens the teachers. But, ​oh! what a woman mamma is! Providence must have been hard up for ideas when it produced my lady. How tiresome!"

      These last words were addressed to a bramble that had caught in her skirt. She shook her gown impatiently and walked on. The bramble still adhered and dragged.

      "What a nuisance," said Arminell, and she whisked her skirt round and endeavoured to pick off the brier, but ineffectually.

      "Let me assist you," said a voice; and in a moment a young man leaped the park wall, stepped on the end of the bramble, and said, "Now, if you please, walk on, Miss Inglett."

      Arminell took a few steps and was free. She turned, and with a slight bow said, "I thank you, Mr. Saltren." Then, with a smile, "I wish I could get rid of all tribulations as easily."

      "And find them whilst they cling as light. You are perhaps not aware that 'tribulation' derives from the Latin tribulus, a bramble."

      "So well aware was I that I perpetrated the joke which you have spoiled by threshing it. Why are you not at church, Mr. Saltren, listening for the rector's pronunciation of the Greek names of St. Paul's acquaintances, in the hopes of detecting a false quantity among them?"

      "Because Giles has a cold, and I stay at my lady's desire to read the psalms and lessons to him."

      "I wonder whether schooling Giles is as intolerable as taking Sunday class; if it be, you have my grateful sympathy."

      "Your sympathy, Miss Inglett, will relieve me of many a tribulus which adheres to my robe."

      "Is Giles a stupid boy and troublesome pupil?"

      "Not at all. My troubles are not connected with my little pupil." ​"Class-taking in that Sunday-school is a sort of mental garrotting," said Arminell. "I wonder whether a teacher always feels as if his brains were being measured for a hat when he is giving instruction."

      "Only when there is non-receptivity in the minds of those he teaches, or tries to teach. May I ask if you are going to church, Miss Inglett?"

      "I have done the civil by attending the Sunday-school, and the articles disapprove of works of supererogation. I am going to worship under the fresh green leaves, and to listen to the choir of the birds—blackbird, thrush and ouzel. I am too ruffled in temper to sit still in church and listen to the same common-places in the same see-saw voice from the pulpit. Do you know what it is to be restless, Mr. Saltren, and not know what makes you ill at ease? To desire greatly something, and not know what you long after?"

      The young man was walking beside her, a little in the rear, respectfully, not full abreast. He was a pale man with an oval face, dark eyes and long dark lashes, and a slight downy moustache.

      "I can in no way conceive that anything can be lacking to Miss Inglett," he said. "She has everything to make life happy, an ideally perfect lot, absolutely deficient in every element that can jar with and disturb tranquillity and happiness."

      "You judge only by exterior circumstances. You might say the same of the bird in the egg—it fits it as a glove, it is walled round by a shell against danger, it is warmed by the breast of the parent, why should it be impatient of its coiled-up, comatose condition? Simply because that condition is coiled-up and comatose. Why should the young sponge ever detach itself from the rock on which it first developed by the side of the great absorbent old sponge? It gets enough to eat, it is securely attached by its foot to ​the rock; it is in the oceanic level that suits its existence. Why should it let go all at once and float away, rise to the surface and cling elsewhere? Because of the monotony of its life of absorption and contraction, and of its sedentary habits. But, there—enough about myself. I did not intend to speak of myself. You have brambles clinging to you. Show me them, that I may put my foot on them and free you."

      "You know, Miss Inglett, who I am—the son of the captain of the manganese mine, and that his wife is an old lady's maid from the park. You know that I was a clever boy, and that his lordship most generously interested himself in me, and when it was thought I was consumptive, sent me for a couple of winters to Mentone. You know that he provided for my schooling, and sent me to the University, and then most kindly took me into Orleigh as tutor to your half-brother Giles, till I can resolve to enter the Church, when, no doubt, he will some day give me a living. All that you know. Do not suppose I am insensible to his lordship's kindness, when I say that all this goodness shown me has sown my soul full of brambles, and made me the most miserable of men."

      "But how so?" Miss Inglett looked at him with unfeigned surprise. "As you said to me, so say I to you, and excuse the freedom. Mr. Saltren has everything to make life happy, education, comfortable quarters, kind friends, an assured future, an ideally perfect lot, absolutely deficient in disturbing elements."

      "Now you judge by the outside. I admit to the full that Lord Lamerton has done everything СКАЧАТЬ