Arminell: A Social Romance, Vol. 2

by S. Baring-Gould

Her father’s cheery face had been a feature at the meal, as was also her step-mother, fresh, gentle, pale, and dove-like in movement and tone. She remembered these things now that she had cast them from her, and found that they had been pleasant, and were not to be recalled without a beating of the pulse, and a rising in the throat.

Two gentlemen were at breakfast at a table near her, and were eating eggs—London eggs—and the savour of eggs, especially London eggs, in a low room is not agreeable.

They were talking about the tribes of Northern Asia—Samojeds, Ostiacks, Tungus, Vogulese, about brachycephalic and dolichocephalic heads, and agglutinative tongues, and linguistic roots; and then one of the gentlemen dropped some of his egg on his beard, and continued to eat and talk of agglutinative tongues, and ethnological peculiarities, and Turanian characteristics, without observing it; and the drop of yolk coagulated on his beard, and moved with his jaw, and became agitated and excited over the linguistic affinities of the Tchuchtchees with the Koriacks on one side and the Yuckaheres on the other.

Arminell was teased both by the drop of yolk from which she could not withdraw her eye, and by the vehemence of the disputants, and by the—to her—uninteresting nature of the topic that was discussed. She forced herself to look into the street, and observe the passers-by; but in another minute fell to ruminating on the condition of the gentleman’s beard, to wondering whether he had yet wiped the egg-drop away, or why his friend did not point it out to him; and then her eye mechanically travelled back to the beard, and the gamboge spot on it. Presently a stout, shabbily-dressed lady entered with her two plain daughters, all three with that grey complexion that makes one think the heads must be cut out of Jerusalem artichoke. The mother had puffy cheeks, and small beady eyes. She talked loudly to her daughters, loudly enough to be heard by all in the room, about her distinguished acquaintances, her butler, and footmen, and lady’s-maid, and coachman, and carriages, and gradually subdued the gentlemen who had been arguing over the ethnology of Northern Asia, and set them wondering how it was that this stout party and her daughters had come to so small an inn, and were not occupying a suite in the Hotel Metropole.

Arminell had endured the talk of the learned men, but the vulgar clack of this underbred woman was insupportable. She rose and ascended the stairs to her bedroom, which was now, fortunately, ready for her.

This room did not command the street. It looked out at the mews, and beyond the mews at a row of brick houses, seen above the wall enclosing the back premises. In the mews yard were some carriages being washed, and grooms with their braces discharged from their right shoulders, brushing and combing their horses. Over the stables were the windows of the dwellings of the cabdrivers and their wives, and of the ostlers; and there were sickly attempts at flower gardening in some of them. Out of others hung articles of clothing to be aired or dried. A multitude of dingy sparrows hopped about in the yard, and also a considerable and apparently inexhaustible number of equally dingy children.

Beyond the wall of the backyard of a house in the row was a gaunt Lombardy poplar, trunk and branches sable as the stalks of maidenhair fern. What a pretty view had been that which Arminell had commanded from her bed-room window at Orleigh! The sweeps of green turf in the park, the stately trees, the cedars, and the copper beech, and the silver birch! How the birds had sung in the morning about her window! How sweet had been the incense of the wisteria trusses of lilac flowers entering at the open casement!

What would her father say at her departure? Into what a predicament had she put him? She had forced him into one from which he could not escape without publishing his own dishonour, without allowing his wife, and the parish, and the county, and society generally to know that once on a time he had behaved in a manner unworthy of a gentleman to a poor servant girl. He to whom every one in the place, in the county, looked up as a spotless and worthy John Bull, was to be proclaimed an impostor, and made the talk of idle and malicious tongues.

“If a man has done wrong,” she said to justify herself, “he must bear the consequences. It is cowardly to try and hide the act, evade what it entails, and base to appear before the world under false pretences. Let him acknowledge the wrong he has done, and men will then respect him because he is open, and does not shrink from those consequences a wrong act brings on the wrong-doer.”

But this did not satisfy her. It might be true, it was true, that this was the only right and honourable course for one to take who had erred, but—was she, his daughter, the proper person to force her father into the course and out of the road he had elected to pursue? Was it for her hand to rip up old wounds, and drag into the light the dark secrets he strove to bury out of sight? Was it for her to reveal a stain which disfigured the whole house? Was it for her to shock her step-mother, and disturb her trust? To mar the domestic unity and mutual esteem which had been so perfect?