The cliff was ribbed horizontally, the harder bands of stratification standing forth as shelves on which lodged the crumbling of the more friable beds, and the leaves that sailed down from the autumn trees above. On these ledges a few bushes and a stunted Scotch pine grew. The latter grappled with the rock, holding to it with its red-brown roots like the legs of a gigantic spider.
At the west end, on a level with the topmost shelf of rock, just beneath where the earth buried the surface of rock, was a cave artificially constructed, at the time when the lime was worked, as a refuge for the miners when blasting.
Formerly a path had existed leading to this cave, but now the path was gone – scarce a trace survived. The owls, calculating on the inaccessibility of the grot to man, had taken possession of it, and bred there.
“I am glad I came here,” said Arminell. “In this lovely, lonely spot one can worship God better than in a stuffy church, pervaded with the smell of yellow-soap, of clean linen, and the bergamot of oiled heads, and the peppermint the clerk sucks. Here one has the air full of the incense of the woods, the pines exuding resin in the sun, the oak-leaves exhaling their aroma, and the ferns, fragrant with a sea-like stimulating odour. I am weary of that hum-drum which constitutes to mamma the law and aim of life. We may be all – as Jingles says – steeped in syrup, but it is the syrup of hum-drum that crystallizes about us, after having extracted from us and dismissed all individual flavour, like the candied fruit in a box, where currants, greengage, apricot, pear – all taste alike. We are so saturated with the same syrup that we all lead the same saccharine existences, have the same sweet thoughts, utter the same sugary words, and have not an individualizing smack and aroma among us. Mamma is the very incarnation of routine. She talks to her guests on what she thinks will interest them, got up for the occasion out of magazines and reviews. These magazines save her and the like of her a world of trouble. The aristocrats of the moon, according to Jingles, sent their heads forth in pursuit of knowledge; we have other peculiar heads sent to us stuffed with the forced meat of knowledge, and wrapped in the covers of magazines. So much for my mother. As for my father, he neither takes in nor gives vent to ideas. He presents prizes at schools, opens institutes, attends committees, sits on boards, presides at banquets; occasionally votes, but never speaks in the House; his whole circle of interests is made up of highways, asylums and county bridges. In olden times, witches drew circles and set about them skulls and daggers, toads, and braziers, and within these circles wrought necromancy. My father’s circle is that of hum-drum, set round with county and parochial institutions, with the sanitary arrangements carefully considered, and without the magic circle he works – nothing.”
She was standing at the west end of the quarry, looking along the edge of the precipice, on her left.
“I wonder,” she mused, “whether it would be feasible to reach the owls.”
Filled with this new ambition, she thought no more of the shortcomings of her father and step-mother.
“It would be possible, by keeping a cool head,” she said.
“I should like to see what an owl’s nest is like, and in that cave I can pay my Sunday devotions.”
The shelf was not broad enough to allow of any one walking on it unsupported, even with a cool head.
In places, indeed, it broadened, and there lay a cushion of grass, but immediately it narrowed to a mere indication. The distance was not great, from whence Arminell stood, to the cave, some twenty-five feet, and a slip would entail a fall into the water beneath.
As the girl stood considering the possibilities and the difficulties, she noticed that streamers of ivy hung over the edge from the surface of the soil. She could not reach these, however, from where she stood. Were she to lay hold of them, she might be able to sustain herself whilst stepping along the ledge, just as if she were supported by a pendent rope.
“I believe it is contrivable,” she said,“I see where the ivy springs at the root of an elder tree. I can find or cut a crooked stick, and thus draw the strands to me. How angry and indignant mamma would be, were she to see what I am about.”
She speedily discovered a suitable stick, and with its assistance drew the pendent branches towards her. Then, laying hold of them, she essayed an advance on the shelf. The ivy-ropes were tough, and tenacious in their rooting into the ground. She dragged at them, jerked them, and they did not yield. She grasped them in her left hand, and cautiously stepped forward.
At first she had a ledge of four inches in width to rest her feet on, but the rock, though narrow, was solid, and by leaning her weight well on the ivy, and advancing on the tips of her feet, she succeeded, not without a flutter of heart, in passing to a broad patch of turf, where she was comparatively safe, and where, still clinging to the ivy, she drew a long breath.
The water, looked down on from above, immediately beneath her was blue; only in the shadows, where it did not reflect the light, was it bottle-green.
There was not a ripple on it. She had not dislodged a stone. She turned her eyes up the bank. She had no fear of the ropes failing her; they would not be sawn through, because they swung over friable earth, not jagged rock.
“Allons, avançons,” said Arminell, with a laugh. She was excited, pleased with herself – she had broken out of the circle of humdrum.
The ledge was wide, where she stood, and she held to the rope to keep her from giddiness, rather than to sustain her weight.
After a few further steps, she paused. The shelf failed altogether for three feet, but beyond the gap was a terrace matted with cistus and ablaze with flower. Arminell’s first impulse was to abandon her enterprise as hazardous beyond reason, but her second was to dare the further danger, and make a spring to the firm ground.
“This is the difference between me and my lady,” said Arminell. “She – and my lord likewise – will not risk a leap – moral, social, or religious.”
Then with a rush of impetuosity and impatience, she swung herself across the gap, and landed safely on the bed of cistus.
“Would Giles ever be permitted the unconventional?” asked Arminell. “What a petit-maître he will turn out.”
The Hon. Giles Inglett, her half-brother, aged ten, was, as already said, the only son of Lord Lamerton and heir-apparent to the barony.
From the cistus patch she crept, still clinging to the ivy, along the ledge that now bore indications of the path once formed on it, and presently, with a sense of defiance of danger, allowed herself to look down into the still water.
“After all, if I did go down, it would not be very dreadful – it is a reversed heaven. I would spoil my gown, but what of that? I have my allowance, and can spoil as many gowns as I choose within my margin. I wonder – would a fall from my social terrace be as easy as one from this – and lead to such trifling and reparable consequences?”
Then she reached the platform of the cave, let go the ivy-streamers, and entered the grotto.
The entrance was just high enough for Arminell to pass in without stooping. The depth of the cave was not great, ten feet. The sun shone in, making the nook cheerful and warm. Again Arminell looked down at the pond.
“How different the water seems according to the position from which we look at it. Seen from one point it blazes with reflected light, and laughs with brilliance; seen from another it is infinitely sombre, light-absorbing, not light-reflecting. It is so perhaps with the world, and poor Jingles contemplates it from an unhappy point.”
She seated herself on the floor at the mouth of the cave, and leaned her back against the side, dangling one