Arminell, Vol. 1. Baring-Gould Sabine

best of churches, the most inspiring shrine for holy thoughts – O, how lucky, I have in my pocket Gaboriau’s ‘Gilded Clique!’”

      She wore a pretty pink dress with dark crimson velvet trimmings, but the brightest point of colour about Arminell was the blood-coloured cover of the English version of the French romance of rascality and crime.

      Arminell had lost her mother at an age at which she could not remember her. The girl had been badly brought up, by governesses unequal to the task of forming the mind and directing the conscience of a self-willed intelligent girl.

      She had changed her governesses often, and not invariably for the better. One indulged and flattered her, and set her cap at Lord Lamerton. She had to be dismissed. Then came a methodical creature, eminently conscientious, so completely a piece of animated clockwork, so incapable of acting or even thinking out of a set routine, that she drove Arminell into sullen revolt. After her departure, a young lady from Girton arrived, who walked with long strides, wore a pince-nez, was primed with slang, and held her nose on high to keep her pince-nez in place. She was dismissed because she whistled, but not before her influence, the most mischievous of all, had left its abiding impress on the character of the pupil.

      This governess laughed at conventionalities, such as are the safeguards of social life, and sneered at the pruderies of feminine modesty. Her tone was sarcastic and sceptical.

      Then came a young lady of good manners, but of an infinitely feeble mind, who wore a large fringe to conceal a forehead as retreating as that of the Neanderthal man. Arminell found her a person of infinite promise and no achievement. She undertook to teach Greek, algebra, and comparative anatomy, but could not spell “rhododendron.”

      When Lord Lamerton had married again, the new wife shrank from exercising authority over the wayward girl, and sought to draw her to her by kindness. But Arminell speedily gauged the abilities of her stepmother, and became not actively hostile, but indifferent to her. Lady Lamerton was not a person to provoke hostility.

      Thus the girl had grown up with mind unformed, judgment undisciplined, feelings impetuous and under no constraint, and with very confused notions of right and wrong. She possessed by nature a strong will, and this had been toughened by resistance where it should have been yielded to, and non-resistance where it ought to have been firmly opposed.

      She had taken a class that Sunday in the school, as well as on the preceding Sunday, only at Lady Lamerton’s urgent request, because the school-mistress was absent on a holiday.

      And now Arminell, who had come to the Owl’s Nest to pay her devotions to heaven, performed them by reading Gaboriau’s “Gilded Clique.”

      CHAPTER IV

      A PRAYER-RAFT

      How long Arminell had been resting in her sunny nook above the water, reading the record of luxury, misery and vice, she did not know, for she became engrossed in the repulsive yet interesting tale, and the time slipped away, unperceived.

      She was roused from her reading by the thought that suddenly occurred to her, quite unconnected with the story, that she had let go the strands of ivy when she reached the cave, – and in a moment her interest in the “Gilded Clique” ceased and she became alarmed about her own situation. In her delight at attaining the object of her ambition, she had cast aside the streamers without a thought that she might need them again, and they had reverted to their original position, beyond her reach. She could not venture along the strip of turf without their support, and she had not the crook with her, wherewith to rake them back within reach of her hand.

      What was to be done? The charm of the situation was gone. Its novelty had ceased to please. Her elation at her audacity in venturing on the “path perilous” had subsided. To escape unassisted was impossible, and to call for assistance useless in a place so rarely visited.

      “It does not much matter,” said Arminell; “I shall not have to spend a night among the owls. My lady when she misses me will send out a search-party, and Jingles will direct them whither to go for me. I will return to my book.”

      But Arminell could not recover her interest in the story of the “Gilded Clique.” She was annoyed at her lack of prudence, for it had not only subjected her to imprisonment, but had placed her in a position somewhat ridiculous. She threw down the book impatiently and bit her lips.

      “This is a lesson to me,” she said, “not to make rash excursions into unknown regions without retaining a clue which will enable me to retrace my steps to the known. Cæsar may have been a hero when he burnt his ships, but his heroism was next akin to folly.”

      She sat with her hands in her lap, with a clouded face, musing on the chance of her speedy release. Then she laughed, “Like Jingles, I am in a wrong position, but unlike him, I am here by my own foolhardiness. He was carried by my lord into the eagle’s nest. Like Sinbad, out of the valley of diamonds. But in the valley of diamonds there were likewise serpents. My lord swooped down on poor Jingles, caught him up, and deposited him in his nest on the heights for the young eagles to pull to pieces.”

      As she was amusing herself with this fancy, she observed a man by the waterside at the east or further end of the quarry, engaged in launching a primitive raft which he drew out of a bed of alder. The raft consisted of a couple of hurdles lashed together, on which an old pig-sty or stable door was laid. Upon this platform the man stationed himself when the raft was adrift, and with a long oar sculled himself into the middle of the pond.

      What was his object? Had he seen Arminell and was he coming to her assistance, concluding that she could be rescued in no other fashion? On further observation Arminell convinced herself that he had not seen her and knew nothing of her predicament and distress.

      What was he about to do? To fish?

      No – not to fish.

      When the raft floated in the middle of the tarn, the man laid down his oar, knelt on the board and began to pray.

      “Why – !” exclaimed the girl; “that is Captain Saltren, Jingles’ father.”

      Captain Stephen Saltren, master of the manganese mine, was a tall man, rather gaunt and thin, and loosely compacted at the joints, with dark hair, high cheek-bones and large, deeply-sunken eyes. His features were irregular and ill cut – yet it was impossible to look at his face without being impressed with the thought that he was no ordinary man. His hands, though roughened and enlarged by work, had long fingers, the indication of a nervous temperament. He had, moreover, one of those flexible voices which go far towards making a man an orator. He was unaware of the value of his organ, he was devoid of skill in using it; but it was an impressive voice when used in times of deep emotion, thrilling those who heard it and sweeping them into sympathy with the speaker. His eyes were those of a mystic, looking into a far-off sphere, esteeming the world of sense as a veil, a painted film, disturbing, impeding distinct vision of the sole realities that existed in the world beyond.

      There was velvety softness in his dark eyes, and gentleness in his flexible mouth, and yet the least observant person speaking with him could see that fire was ready to leap out of those soft eyes on provocation, and that the mouth could set with rigid determination when his prejudices were touched.

      The forehead of the man was of unusual height. He had become partly bald, had shed some of the hair above the brow, and this had given loftiness to his forehead. There were hollows between his temples and eye-brows; his head was lumpy and narrow. Altogether it was an ill-balanced, but an interesting head.

      The mystic, who at one time was a prominent feature in religious life, has almost disappeared from among us, gone utterly out of the cultured classes, gone from among the practical mercantile classes, going little by little from the lower beds of life, not expelled by education but by the materialism that penetrates every realm of human existence. In time the mystic will have become as extinct as the dodo, the great auk, and the Caleb Balderstones. But there are mystics still – especially where there is a strain of Celtic blood, and of this class of beings was Stephen Saltren.

      The captain was in trouble, and whenever he was in trouble or unhappy he had recourse to prayer, and he prayed with most disengagement on his raft. He came to the quarry when his mind was disturbed