Arminell, a social romance. Baring-Gould Sabine

on our table at every quarter most bitter bills—those of the butcher and the green-grocer, the milliner's little account, and the heavy itemless bill from the doctor. What shall we say about our Eve, the beautiful, the all-but divine, the ideal woman? The all-but divine turns out to have a touchy temper and a twanging tongue, falls out with her cook, dismisses her, and consequently serves you cold mutton and underboiled potatoes.

      The transformation is complete, and how does it leave us? In a rage at our folly? Cursing our idealism? Rasped and irritable? Withdrawing more and more from the society of our Eve, and our Eden turned to an espalier garden, to our club? So it is in many cases. The transformation scene is a trial, and certain ones there are that never recover the shock of disenchantment; but there are others, on the other hand, who endure, and to them comes in the end a reward. These continue to sit in their box, listless, paring their nails, turning the programme face downwards. Half contemptuously, wholly void of interest, they lend a dull ear to what follows, and look on with a wondering eye, convinced that the rest is farce and buffoonery and a vexation of spirit, which must however be sat through; then, little by little fresh interests arise, tiny new actors invade the stage, with sweet but feeble voices, saying nothing of point, yet full of poetry. The magic begins to work once more, the little fingers weave a spell that lays hold of heart and brain, and conjures up a new world of fantasy. The flowers re-open and flush with colour, the balmy air fans our jaded faces, again the songs of angels reach our ears, the clouds dispel, the manna falls, Eve resumes her beauty, not the old beauty of childlike innocence and freshness, but that of ripened womanhood, of sweet maternity, of self-command and self-devotion.

      We sit hushed with our head in our hands, and look with ​intense eye, and listen with sharpened ear, and the tears rise and run down our cheeks. We have forgotten the old Eden with its fantastic imaginations, in the more matured, the richer, the fuller, and above all the more real paradise that is now revealed.

      In the case of Arminell Inglett there was no enchantment of colour, no setting of tableau, for the transformation scene; it came on her suddenly but also quietly. In one day, on a quiet country Sunday, when she walked out of the dull and stuffy school, she passed, as it were, through a veil, out of childland into the realm of Sphinx.

      In the evening, after a dull dinner, instead of remaining in the drawing-room with my lady, who had taken up a magazine, Arminell put a shawl over her head and shoulders, went forth into the garden, and thence to the avenue.

      The evening was pleasantly warm, the weather beautiful; beneath the trees the dew did not fall heavily. A new moon was shining. The girl thought over what she had heard and seen that day—over the troubles and wrongs of Captain Saltren, driven from his occupation, and yet chained to the house that was his own, and with which he would not part; over the defiant scepticism of Patience Kite, at war in heart with God and man; over the suffering lives of Samuel and Joan, united in heart, yet severed by fate, looking to a common grave as the marriage bed, and Arminell felt almost contempt for these latter, because they accepted their lot without resentment. She thought over what young Mr. Saltren had said about his own position, and she was able to understand that it was one of difficulty and discomfort.

      Then she turned her mind to the Sunday-school, where, whilst outside of it, within the narrow confines of Orleigh parish, there was so much of trouble and perplexity, my lady was placidly teaching the children to recite as parrots the names of the books of the Apocrypha, which they were ​not to read for the establishment of doctrine, and Captain Tubb was enunciating arrant nonsense about the names of the Sundays preceding Lent.

      The avenue was composed of ancient oaks. It was reached from the garden, which intervened between the house and it. The avenue was not perfectly in line, because the lay of the land did not admit of its being carried at great length without a curve, following the slope of the hill that rose above it, and fell away below in parkland to the river.

      The walk was gravelled with white spar. It commanded an exquisite view down the valley of the Ore, over rich meadow-land and pasture, dotted with clumps of trees, beech, chestnut, and Scotch pine. A line of alders marked the course of the river, to where, by means of a dam, it had been widened into a lake. On the further side of the river, the ground gently rose in grassy sweeps to the wooded hills. To the south-west the river wound away about shoulders of richly-clothed hills, closing in on each other, fold on fold. The avenue was most delightful in the evening, when the setting sun gilded the valley with its slant beams, turned the trunks of the pines scarlet, and cast the shadows of the park trees a purple blue on the illuminated grass.

      Oaks do not readily accommodate themselves to form avenues, they are contorted, gnarled, consequently oak avenues are rarely met with. That at Orleigh had the charm of being uncommon.

      The evening was still, the sky was full of light, so much so that the stars hardly showed. The light spread as a veil from the north, from behind the Orleigh woods, and reflected itself in the dew that bathed the grass. Arminell was attached to this walk, in great measure because she could at almost all times saunter in it undisturbed.

      She had not, however, on this occasion, been in it half ​an hour, before she saw her father coming to her. He had left his wine; there were, as it happened, no guests in the house, and he and the tutor had not many topics in common.

      "Well, Armie!" he said, "I have come out to have a cigar, and lean on you. My lady told me I should find you here."

      "And, papa, I am so glad you have come, for I want to have a word with you."

      "About what, child?" Lord Lamerton was a direct man—a man in his position must be direct to get through all the business that falls to him, business which he cannot escape from, however much he may desire it.

      "Papa," said Arminell, "it is about the Saltrens."

      "What about them?"

      "If you give up the manganese—what is Captain Saltren to do?"

      "Stephen will find work somewhere, never fear."

      "But he cannot leave his house."

      "That he will have to sell; the railway company want to cross Chillacombe at that point. He will get a good price, far beyond the value of the house and plot of land."

      "Papa—must the manganese be given up?"

      "Of course it must. I have no intention of allowing myself to be undermined."

      "But it is so cruel to the men who worked on it."

      "Manganese no longer pays for working. There has been a loss on the mine for the last five years. We are driven out of the market by the Eiffel manganese. The Germans work at less wage, and our men refuse to have their wage reduced."

      "But what are the miners to do?"

      "They were given warning that the mine would be closed, as long as five years ago; and the warning has been renewed every year since. They have known that they ​must seek employment elsewhere. They will have to go after work, work will not come to them—it is the same in every trade. All businesses are liable to fluctuations, some to extinction. When the detonating cap was invented, the old trade of flint chipping on the Sussex downs began to languish; with the discovery of the lucifer match it expired altogether. When adhesive envelopes were introduced, the wafer-makers and sealing-wax makers were thrown out of work, and the former trade was killed outright. I was wont to harvest oak-bark annually, and put many hundreds of pounds in my pocket. Now the Americans have superseded tan by some chemical composition, and there is no further sale for bark. I am so many hundreds of pounds the poorer."

      "Yes, papa, that is true enough, but you have a resisting power in you that others have not. You have your rents and other sources of income to fall back on; these poor tradesmen and miners and artizans have none. I have read that in Manitoba the secret of the magnificent corn crops is found in this, that the ground is frozen in winter many feet deep, and remains frozen in the depths all summer, but gradually thaws and sends up from below the released water to nourish the roots of the wheat, which are thus fed by an unfailing subterranean fountain. It is so with you, you are always heavy in purse and flush in pocket, because you also have your sources always oozing up under your roots."