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