Arminell, Vol. 1

“Yes, my lady, thank you,” answered Polly with cheerful face, and resumed her seat in class.

“Now boys,” said Captain Tubb to his class, which was composed of the senior male scholars, including Tom Metters, the rascal who had put the inscriptions in the mouths of Moses and Aaron. “Now boys, attention. The cradle and Polly Woodley are nothing to you. We will proceed with what we were about.”

“Please, sir,” said Tom Metters, thrusting forth his hand as a semaphore, “what do Quinquagesima, Septuagesima and the lot of they rummy names mean?”

“Rummy,” reproved Captain Tubb, “is an improper term to employ. Say, remarkable. Quinquagesima” – he stroked his moustache, then brightened – “it is the name of a Sunday.”

“I know, sir, but why is it so called?”

“Why are you called Tom Metters?” asked the captain as a feeble effort to turn the tables.

“I be called Tom after my uncle, and Metters is my father’s name – but Quinquagesima?”

“Quin-qua-gess-im-a!” mused the Captain, and looked furtively towards my lady for help, but she was engrossed in teaching her class what books were not to be employed for the establishment of doctrine, and did not notice the appeal.

“Yes, sir,” persisted Metters, holding him as a ferret holds the throat of a rabbit, “Quinquagesima.”

“I think,” said Tubb eagerly, “we were engaged on David’s mighty men. Go on with the mighty men.”

“But, please sir, I do want to know about Quinquagesima, cruel bad.”

“Quin-qua-gess-ima,” sighed Capt. Tubb, nibbling the ends of his beard; then again in a lower sigh, “Quin-qua-gess-ima?” He looked at Arminell for enlightenment, but in vain. She was listening amused and scornful.

“Gessima – gessima!” said Mr Tubb; then falteringly: “It’s a sort of creeper, over veranders.”

He saw a flash in Arminell’s eye, and took it as encouragement. Then, with confidence he advanced.

“Yes, Metters, it means that this is the Sunday or week whereabouts the yaller jessamine – or in Latin, gessima – do begin to bloom.”

“Thank you, sir – and Septuagesima?”

“That,” answered the captain with great promptitude, “that is when the white ’un flowers.”

“But, sir, there’s another Sunday collick, Sexagesima. There’s no red or blue jessamine, be there?”

“Red, or blue!” The teacher looked hopelessly at Arminell, who with compressed lips observed him and shook her head.

“Sex – sex – sex,” repeated Mr. Tubb, with his mouth full of beard, “always means females. That means the female jessamine.”

“Be there any, sir? There’s a petticoat narcissus, and a lady’s smock, and a marygold, but I never heard of a she-jessamine.”

“There are none here,” answered Tubb, “but in the Holy Land – lots.”

“Really, Arminell,” said Lady Lamerton, “your class is doing nothing but play and disturb mine.”

“I am on the stool of the learner,” sneered the girl.

At that moment, through the ceiling, or rather boards above, dropped a black-handled kitchen fork within a hair’s breadth of Arminell’s head. She drew back, startled.

“What is it? What is the matter?” exclaimed Lady Lamerton. “Run up, Polly Woodley! – no, not you this time; you, Fanny White, and see what they are about upstairs.”

“Please, my lady,” said Polly, peering into the higher regions through the hole, “Bessie have given the baby the knives and forks to play with, ’cause you wont let her rock the cradle, and to keep ’un from crying. He’s a shoving ’em through the floor.”

Then, down through the knot-hole descended a shower of comfits. The child had been given a cornet by its mother, and had eagerly opened it, over the hole where it had poked the fork.

The school floor was overspread with a pink and white hail-shower. In a moment, all order was over. The classes broke up into individual units, all on the floor, kicking, scratching, elbowing, grabbing after the scattered comfits, thrusting fingers into eyes, into soapy water; getting them trodden on, nipped between slates, a wriggling, contending, greedy, noisy tangle of small humanity, and above it stood my lady protesting, and Captain Tubb nibbling the ends of his sandy beard, and looking dazed; and Arminell Inglett, half angry, half amused, altogether contemptuous.

“There!” exclaimed Lady Lamerton, “the bells are going for divine service. In places at once – Let us pray!”

CHAPTER II

A FOLLOWER

The church bells were ringing, the Sunday-school had at last been reduced to order, arranged in line, and wriggled, sinuous, worm-like, along the road and up the avenue to the church porch. Lady Lamerton, brandishing her sunshade as a field-marshal’s baton, kept the children in place, and directed the head of the procession.

But with what heart-burnings, what envies, what excited passions did that train sweep on its way. Some of the children had got more comfits than others, and despised those less favoured by luck, and others comfitless envied the more successful. Polly Woodley had secured more comfits than the rest, and had them screwed in the corner of her pocket-handkerchief, and she thrust it exultantly under the eyes of Fanny White, who had come off with one only.

Some sobbed because they had crumpled their gowns, one boy howled because in stooping he had ruptured his nether garments, Joan Ball had broken the feather in her hat, and revenged herself on her neighbour by a stab of pin. One child strewed its tongue with comfits, and when Lady Lamerton did not observe, exposed its tongue to the rest of the children to excite their envy. Another was engaged in wiping out of its eyes the soapy water that in the scuffle had been squirted into them.

Captain Tubb dropped away at the church gates to shake hands with, and talk to, some of the villagers, the inn-keeper to the Lamerton Arms, the churchwarden, the guardian of the poor, and the miller, men who constituted the middle crumb of the parochial loaf.

Lady Lamerton likewise deserted her charges at the porch, and having consigned them to the clerk, returned on her course, entered the drive, and proceeded to meet his lordship, that they might make their solemn entrance into church together. Arminell had disappeared.

“Where is the girl?” asked her ladyship when she took my lord’s arm.

“Haven’t seen her, my dear.”

“Really, Lamerton,” said my lady, “she frightens me. She is so impulsive and self-willed. She flares up when opposed, and has no more taste for Sunday-school than I have for oysters. I do my best to influence her for good, but I might as well try to influence a cocoa-nut. By the way, Lamerton, you really must build us a Sunday-school, the inconveniences to which we are subjected are intolerable.”

“Have you seen Legassick, my dear?”

“I believe he is standing by the steps.”

“I must speak to him about the road, it has been stoned recently. Monstrous! It should have been metalled in the winter, then the stones would have worked in, now they will be loose all the summer to throw down the horses.”

“And you will build us a Sunday-school?”

“I will see about it. Won’t the keeper’s lodge do? The woman does not wash downstairs on a Sunday.”

“I wish you kept school there one Sabbath day. You would discover how great are the discomforts. Now we are at the church gates and must compose our minds.”

“Certainly, my dear. The lord-lieutenant is going to make Gammon sheriff.”

“Why Gammon?”

“Because he can afford to pay for the honour. The old squirearchy can’t bear the expense.”

“Hush, we are close to the church, and must withdraw our minds from the world.”