“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!”
CHAPTER XXII
TOO LATE
Lady Lamerton said no more to Arminell, but waited till the return of his lordship, before dinner, and spoke to him on the matter.
She was aware that any further exertion of authority would lead to no good. She was a kind woman who laboured to be on excellent terms with everybody and who had disciplined herself to the perpetual bearing of olive branches. She had done her utmost to gain Arminell’s goodwill, but had gone the wrong way to work. She had made concession after concession, and this made her step-daughter regard her as wanting in spirit, and the grey foliage of Lady Lamerton’s olive boughs had become weariful in the eyes of the girl.
If my lady had taken a firm course from the first and had held consistently to it, Arminell might have disliked her, but would not have despised her. It does not succeed to buy off barbarians. Moreover, Arminell misconstrued her step-mother’s motives. She thought that my lady’s peace pledges were sham, that she endeavoured to beguile her into confidence, in order that she might establish a despotic authority over her.
“I do not know what to do with Armie!” sighed Lady Lamerton. “We have had a passage of arms to-day and she has shaken her glove in my face. Another word from me, and she would have thrown it at my feet.”
She said no more, as she was afraid of saying too much, and she waited for her husband to speak. But, as he offered no remark, but looked annoyed, she continued, “I am sorry to speak to you. I know that I am in fault. I ought to have won her heart and with it her cheerful respect, but I have not. It is now too late for me to alter my conduct. Arminell was a girl of sense when I came here, and it really seems disgraceful that at my age I should have been unable to win the child, or master her. But I have failed, and I acknowledge the failure frankly, without knowing what to suggest as a remedy to the mischief done. I accept all the blame you may be inclined to lay on me – ”
Lord Lamerton went up to his wife, took her face between his hands and kissed her.
“Little woman, I lay no blame on you.”
“Well, dear, then I do on myself. I told you last night how I accounted for it. One can look back and see one’s faults, but looking forward one is still in ignorance what road to pursue. It really seems to me, Lamerton, that on life’s way all the direction posts are painted so as to show us where we have diverged from the right way and not whither we are to go.”
“Julia, I exercise as little control over Armie as yourself. It is a painful confession for a father to make, that he has not won the respect of his child – of his daughter, I mean; as for Giles – dear monkey – ” his voice softened and had a slight shake in it.
“And I am sure,” said Lady Lamerton, putting her arms round his neck, and drawing his fresh red cheek to her lips, “that there is nothing, nothing whatever in you to make her lack the proper regard.”
“I will tell you what it is,” said Lord Lamerton, “Armie is young and believes in heroes. We are both of us too ordinary in our ways, in our ideas, in our submission to the social laws, in our arm-in-arm plod along the road of duty, to satisfy her. She wants some one with great ideas to guide her; with high-flown sentiment; to such an one alone will she look up. She is young, this will wear off, and she will sober down and come to regard hum-drum life with respect.”
“In the meantime much folly may be perpetrated,” said Lady Lamerton sadly. “Do look how much has been spent in the restoration of Orleigh. You have undone all that your grandfather had done. He overlaid the stone with stucco, and knocked out the mullions of the windows for the insertion of sashes, and painted over drab all the oak that was not cut away. So are we in later years restoring the mistakes made in ourselves, perhaps by our parents in our bringing up, but certainly, also, by our own folly and bad taste in youth. And well for us if there is still solid stone to be cleared of plaster, and rich old oak to be cleared of the paint that obscures it. What I dread is lest the iconoclastic spirit should be so strong in the girl that she may hack and tear down in her violent passion for change what can never be recovered and re-erected.”
“She is not without principle.”
“She mistakes her caprices for principles. Her own will is the ruling motive of all her actions, she has no external canon to which she regulates her actions and submits her will.”
“What caprice has she got now?”
“She has taken a violent fancy to the society of young Saltren.”
“Oh! he is harmless.”
“I am not so certain of that. He is morbid and discontented.”
“Discontented! About what? Faith – he must be hard to please then. Everything has been done for him that could be done.”
“Possibly for that reason he is discontented. Some men like to make their own fortunes, not to have them made for them. You have, in my opinion, done too much for the young fellow.”
“He was consumptive and would certainly have died, had I not sent him abroad.”
“Yes – but after that?”
“Then he was unfit for manual labour, and he was an intelligent lad, refined, and delicate still. So I had him educated.”
“Are you sure he is grateful for what you have done for him?”
Lord Lamerton shrugged his shoulders. “I never gave a thought to that. I suppose so.”
“I am not sure that he is. Look at children, they accept as their due everything given them, all care shown them, and pay no regard to the sacrifices made for them. There is no conscious gratitude in children. I should not be surprised if it were the same with young Saltren. I do not altogether trust him. There is a something in him I do not like. He does his duty by Giles. He is respectful to you and me – and yet – I have no confidence in him.”
“Julia,” said Lord Lamerton with a laugh. “I know what it is, you mistrust him because he is not a gentleman by birth.”
“Not