Arminell: A Social Romance, Vol. 1Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
General
Arminell: A Social Romance, Vol. 1
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
English fiction -- 19th century
But would she recover that elasticity after her conversation with the
young tutor? What he had said was true. He was a village lad of humble
antecedents who had been taken up by her father because he was
intelligent and pleasing, and commended by the schoolmaster, and
delicate. Lord and Lady Lamerton were ever ready to do a kindness to a
tenant or inhabitant of Orleigh. When any of the latter were sick, they
received jellies and soups and the best port wine from the park; and a
deserving child in school received recognition, and a steady youth was
sure of a helping hand into a good situation.
More than ordinary favor had been shown to this young man, son of
Stephen Saltren, captain of the manganese mine. He had been lifted out
of the station in which he had been born, and was promoted to be the
instructor of Giles. Arminell had always thought her father’s conduct
towards him extraordinarily kind, and now her eyes were open to see that
it had been a cruel kindness, filling the young man’s heart with a
bitterness that contended with his gratitude.
It would have been more judicious perhaps had Lord Lamerton sent young
Jingles elsewhere.
Jingles, it must be explained, was not the tutor’s Christian name. He
had been baptised out of compliment to his lordship, Giles Inglett, and
Giles Inglett Saltren was his complete name. But in the national school
his double Christian name had been condensed, not without a flavour of
spite, into Jingles, and at Orleigh he would never be known by any
other.
The old lime-quarry lay a mile from the park. It was a picturesque spot,
and would have been perfectly beautiful but for the heaps of rubbish
thrown out of it which took years to decay, and which till decayed were
unsightly. The process had, however, begun. Indeed, as the quarry had
been worked for a century prior to its abandonment, a good deal of the
“ramp,” as such rubbish heaps are locally called, was covered with grass
and pines.
Lord Lamerton had done his best to disguise the nakedness by plantations
of Scotch, larch and spruce, which took readily to the loose soil, the
creeping roots grasped the nodes of stone and crushed them as in a vice,
then sucked out of them the nutriment desired; the wild strawberry
rioted over the banks, and the blackberry brambles dropped their
trailers over the slopes, laden in autumn with luscious fruit, and
later, when flowers are scarce with frost-touched leaves, carmine,
primrose, amber and purple.
At the back of the quarry was an old wood, sloping to the south and
breaking off sharply at the precipice where the lime rock had been cut
away; this was a wood of oaks with an undergrowth of bracken and male
fern, and huge hollies. Here and there large venerable Scotch pines rose
above the rounded surface of the oak tops, in some places singly,
elsewhere in dark clumps.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account