said Arminell. “I do not admire pansies.”
“We call them pansies, from pensée, dear, which means thought, kind thought, and forethought, which possibly, though not always acknowledged, is to be found in step-mothers.”
Arminell tossed her head.
“The homely name for these same flowers,” continued Lady Lamerton, “is hearts-ease, and I’m sure it is a misnomer, if hearts-ease be the equivalent for step-mother, especially when she has to do with a wayward step-daughter.”
“I think that step-mothers would find most hearts-ease, if they would turn their activity away from their step-daughters, and leave them alone.”
“My conscience will not suffer me to do this,” answered Lady Lamerton without losing her temper. “You may not acknowledge my authority, and you may hold cheap my intellectual powers and acquirements, but, after all, Armie, I am in authority, and I do not think I am quite a fool. I can, and I must, warn you against dashing yourself against the barbed wire. My dear, if we would listen to others, we would save ourselves many a tear and bitter experience. I love you too well, and your dear father too well, to leave you uncautioned when I see you doing what is foolish and dangerous.”
“But do you not know that experience is the one thing that must be bought, and cannot be accepted as a gift?”
“I beg your pardon. Our whole system of social culture is built upon experience accepted and not bought. It is not the Catholics alone who hold by tradition, we all do it, or are barbarians. Progress without it is impracticable. We start from the accumulated experience of the past, handed on to us by the traditions of our fathers. If everyone began by rejecting the acquisitions of the past, advance would be limited to the term of man’s natural life, for everyone would begin from the beginning; whereas, each generation now starts where the last generation left off. It is like the hill of Hissarlik where there are cities superposed the one on the other, and each is an advance culturally and artistically on that below – above the Greek Ilium, below the Homeric Troy, under that the primeval hovel of the flint-chipper.”
“Each on the ruins of the other.”
“Each using up the material of the other, following the acquisitions of the earlier builders and pushing further on to structural perfection.”
“That may be true of material process,” said Arminell, “but, morally, it is not true. Besides, our forefathers made blunders. I have been speaking with Mr. Saltren about the Flatheads and the Chinese who compress the heads and double up the feet of children. But our ancestors were nearly as stupid. Look at the monument of the first Lord Lamerton in the church. See the swaddled babies represented on it, cross-gartered like Malvolio. Now we give freedom to our babies, let them stretch, and scramble, and sprawl. But you old ladies still treat us young girls as your great-grandmothers treated their babies. You swaddle us, and keep us swaddled all our life long. No wonder we resent it. The babies got emancipated, and so will we. I have heard both papa and you say that when you were children you were not allowed to draw nearer the fire than the margin of the rug. Was there sense in that? Was the fire lighted to radiate its heat over an area circumscribed by the mat, and that the little prim mortals with blue noses and frosty fingers must shiver beyond the range of its warmth? We do not see it. We will step across the rug, and if we are cold, step inside the fender.”
“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,
