Arminell, a social romance - Baring-Gould Sabine

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Saltren turned to little Giles and said:—

      "Bring us your box of bricks, my boy."

      ​"It is Sunday," answered the child. "Mamma would not wish me to play with them."

      "I do not wish to make a Sabbath-breaker of you," answered the tutor, "nor are your sister and I going to do other than build Babel with them—which is permissible of a Sunday."

      The little boy slid off his seat, went to his cupboard, and speedily produced the required box, which he gave to Mr. Saltren.

      The tutor drew forth the lid. The bricks were all in place compacted in perfect order.

      Then he said, with half-sneer, half-laugh, "There are no gaps between them. The whole assemblage firm as it were one block. Not a breakage anywhere, not room for a breakage."

      "No," said Arminell, "of course not. They all fit exactly because they are all cubes. The bricks," she laughed, "have no long necks like the giraffe, or legs or horns, or proboscis, or broad-brimmed hats, liable to be broken. Of course they fit together."

      "If you shake the ark—the least concussion produces a breakage, one or two beasts suffer. You may toss the box of bricks about; and nothing is hurt. Why?"

      Arminell was impatient. "Of course the reason is plain."

      "The reason is plain. The bricks are all equal. If it were so in the world of men, there would be no jars, no fractures, no abrasions, but concord, compactness, peace."

      Arminell said nothing. She closed her eyes and sat looking at the bricks, then at the animals Giles had arranged.

      The tutor said no more, but his eyes, bright and eager, were on the girl's face.

      Presently Arminell had gathered her thoughts together sufficiently to speak.

      "That, then, is the solution you offer to my problem. ​But to me it does not seem solved. There the animals are. They are animals—and not bricks."

      "They are animals, true, but they must be shaken and shaken together, till all their excrescences are rubbed away, and then they will fit together and find sufficiency of room. That is how marbles are made. Shapeless masses of stone are put in a bag and rattled till all their edges and angles are rattled off."

      "What an ark would remain! You complain of some animals crippling others, this scheme of yours would involve a universal mutilation—the animals resolved into undistinguishable, shapeless, uninteresting trunks. The only creature that would come out scatheless would be the slug. All the rest would be levelled down to the condition of that creature—which is a digesting tube, and nothing more." Then Arminell stood up. "It is time for me to be off," she said; "her ladyship will be back from church, and oh! Mr. Saltren, I have interfered with the Psalms and Lessons."

      Chapter 11: IN THE AVENUE.

       Table of Contents

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      CHAPTER XI.

       Table of Contents

       IN THE AVENUE.

      According to the classic story, the Sphinx demanded of all who visited her the solution of an enigma—and that enigma was Man.

      Suddenly, unexpectedly, on a quiet ordinary Sunday morning, Arminell, a young girl without experience, had been confronted with the Sphinx, and set the same enigma, an enigma involving others, like the perforated Chinese puzzle-balls, an enigma that has been essayed and answered repeatedly, yet always remains insoluble, that, as it has assumed fresh aspects, has developed new perplexities. Arminell had been wearied with the routine and restraint of social life, its commonplace duties and conventionalities, and had been fired with that generous though mistaken dislike to the insincerities and formalities of civilisation, so often found among the young—generous, because bred of truth; mistaken, because it ignores the fact that the insincerities impose on no one, and the formalities are made of mutual compromises, such as render life, social life, possible.

      Arminell was in this rebellious mood, when she was brought face to face with a problem beyond her powers to unravel. She might as well, with a rudimentary knowledge of algebraic symbols, have been set to work out Euler's proof of the Binomial Theorem. She was like Fatima when she opened Blue-Beard's secret chamber, and saw in it an ​array of victims. Of these victims disclosed to her, one was Jingles, another Patience Kite; then came Captain Saltren and his wife; and next hung in the dismal cabinet of horrors, Samuel Ceely and Joan Melhuish. The world was indeed a Blue-Beard's room. If you but turned the key you saw an array of misery and tearful faces, and hearts with blood distilling from them. It was more than that—it was a box with a Jack in it. She had touched the spring, and a monster had flown up in her face, not to be compressed and buttoned down again.

      How could the facts of existence be reconciled with the idea of Divine Justice? On one side were men and women born to wealth and position and happiness; on the other, men and women denied the least of the blessings of life. Why were some of God's creatures petted and pampered, and others kicked about and maltreated? Was the world of men so made from the beginning, or had things so come about through man's mismanagement, and if so, where was the over-ruling Providence which governed the world? When the Noah's Ark arrived new from the great toy-shop whence issue the planets and spheres, were all the figures round and fitted together, only afterwards in the rearrangement to impinge on and mutilate each other? Or had they been all alike in the beginning and had developed their horns and proboscises, their tusks and broad-brimmed hats? Life is a sort of pantomime, that begins with a fairy tale, leads to a transformation scene, and ends, perhaps, with low comedy. In a moment when we least expect it, ensues a blaze of light, a spectacular arrangement of performers, and then, away fall the trappings of splendour, and forth, from under them, leap out harlequin, clown, and pantaloon. The knights cast off their silver armour, the fairies shed their gauzy wings, kings and queens depose their crowns and sceptres, and there are revealed to us ordinary men and women, with streaks of paint on their faces, and patches of ​powder in their hair, perpetrating dismal jokes, the point of which we fancy is levelled at ourselves.

      To some men and women the transformation scene arrives late in life, but to all inevitably at some time; and then when the scene on the stage before us is changed, a greater transformation ensues within.

      When we were children we believed that everything glittering was gold, that men were disinterested and women sincere. The transformation scene came on us, perhaps with coruscations of light and grouping of colours and actors, perhaps without, and went by, leaving us mistrustful of every person, doubtful of everything, sceptical, cynical, disenchanted. Is not—to take a crucial case—marriage itself a grand transformation scene that closes the idyl of youth, and opens the drama of middle age? We live for a while in a fairy world, the flowers blaze with the most brilliant colours, the air is spiced as the breezes of Ceylon, angels converse with men, and sing æthereal music, manna floats down from heaven, containing in itself all sweetness; sun and moon stand still o'er us, over against each other, not to witness a conflict, as of old in Ajalon, but to brighten and prolong the day of glamour. Then the bride appears before us, as Eve appeared to Adam, unutterably beautiful and perfect and innocent, and we kneel in a rapture, and dare not breathe, dare not speak, nor stir; and swoon in an ecstasy of wonder and adoration.

      Then tingle the marriage bells. The transformation scene is well set with bridesmaids and orange-blossoms, and a wedding breakfast, postboys with favours, and a shower of rice, and then—?

      The fairy tale is over. The first part of the pantomime is over. The colours have lost their brilliancy, the flowers shrivel, the scents are resolved into smells of everyday life, broiled bacon, cabbage water, and the light is eclipsed as by a November fog. The men for the way-rate, the water-rate, and ​the gas-rate are urgent to have a word

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