Arminell, a social romance. Baring-Gould Sabine
and were crisp. The bells were ringing for evening service far away in a belfry that stood on a hill against the western sky, and their music came in wafts mingled with the hum of the wind among the heather, and the twitter among the sycamores.
Aloft, on the highest twig of the tallest tree sat a crow calling itself in Greek, Korax! and so pleased with the sound of its name in Greek that it repeated its name again and again, and grew giddy with vanity, and nearly over- balanced itself, and had to spread wings and recover its poise.
Thomasine was in a bad humour. All the household of Court were away, master and mistress, men and maids, and she was left alone like that crow on the tree-tops.
"Tamsin!" muttered the girl, "what a foolish name I have got. It's like damson, of which they make cheese. If they'd call me by my proper name of Thomasine, it would be all right, but Tamsin I hate."
"Korax!" croaked the crow. "Why was I not born in Greece to be called Korax? Crow is vulgar."
"I'm tired of my place," grumbled the girl; "here I am a servant maid at Court, out of the world and hard worked. Nothing going on, nothing to see, no amusements, nothing to read."
Why was Thomasine restless and impatient for a change? She did not herself know. She was dissatisfied with what? She did not herself properly know. She had vigorous health; she had work, but not more than what with her fresh youth and hearty body she could easily execute. She had sufficient to eat. The farmer and his wife were not exacting, nor rough and bad tempered. The workmen and women on the farm were as workmen and women are, with good and bad points about them. Elsewhere she would meet with much the same sort of associates. She knew that. Her wage was not high, but it was as much as she was likely to get in a farm-house, and a small wage there with freedom was better than a big wage in a gentleman's family with restraint. She knew that. Yet she was not content. She wanted something, and she did not know what. She would give her mistress notice and go elsewhere. Whither? She did not know. At any rate it would be elsewhere, a change; and she craved for a change, for she had been a twelvemonth in one place. Would she like her new situation? She did not know. Would she, when in a town, look back on the healthy life at Court? Possibly; she did not know. But she could not stay, because as the passion for roving is in the gipsy blood, so was the fever of unrest in hers. She was tired of life as it presented itself to her, uniform, commonplace, unsensational.
There was a period in European history when all was change, when every people plucked itself out of its ancestral ground and went a wandering; when the whole of the continent was trampled over by races galloping west, like cattle and wild beasts disturbed by a prairie fire. What was the cause? We hardly know, but we know that there was not a people, a race, a class which was not thus inspired with the passion for change of domicile. The Germans entitle that period the time of the great Folk-wandering. We are in the midst of such another Folk-wandering, but it is not now the migration of races and nations, but of classes and individuals; the passion for change drives the men and women out of the country to towns, and the young out of their situations. It is in the air, it is in their blood.
The evening sun touched the western sea, and flared up in a spout of fire. Then Thomasine rose to her feet. Her red hair had fallen, and she bent her arms behind her, to do it up. Gorgeous that hair was in the evening sun, it seemed itself to be on fire, to be incandescent in every hair, and her attitude as she stood on the step was grand, her vigorous, graceful form, her splendid proportions were shown in perfection, with bosom expanded, and her hands behind her head collecting and tying and twisting the fire that rained off it. The evening sun was full on her, and filled her eyes that she could see nothing; but her handsome face was shown illuminated as a lamp against the cold grey walls of the corn-chamber. Her shadow was cast up the steps and against the door, a shadow that had no blackness in it, but the purple of the plum.
"Tamsin! my word, you are on fire!"
She started, let go her hair, and it fell about her, enveloping her shoulders and arms in flame. Then she put one hand above her eyes, and looked to see who addressed her.
"You here, Archelaus! What has brought you to this lost corner of the world, this time o' day?"
"You, of course, Tamsin, what else?"
"I wish you'd choose a better time than when I'm doing up my hair."
"I could not wish a better time than when you are in a blaze of glory."
The young man who spoke was Archelaus Tubb, son of the captain of the slate quarry. He was a simple, good-humoured, not clever young man. Strongly built, with sparkling eyes and a merry laugh, he was just such a fellow as would have made his way in the world, had he been endowed with wits. He was not absolutely stupid, but he was muddle-headed. He succeeded in nothing that he undertook. He had been apprenticed to a carpenter, and at the expiration of three years was unable even to make a gate.
He tried his hand at gardening, and dug graves for potatoes, and put in bulbs upside down. He had faculties, but was incapable of applying them, or was too careless to call them together and concentrate them on his work. There seemed small prospect of his earning wage above that of a day-labourer.
He had fair hair, an honest face, always on the alert for a laugh. As he had been unqualified for any trade, his father had given him work in the quarry, but therein he earned but a labourer's wage, fourteen shillings a week.
Thomasine reseated herself on the lowest step but one, and put her feet on the lowest, and crossed her hands on her lap.
"Arkie," said she; "I am going away from Court, the life here is too dull for me. I want to see the world."
"Where are you going, Tamsin?"
"Not to bury myself in a place where nothing is doing, again."
"Nothing doing! There is plenty of work on a farm."
"Work!" scorned Thomasine. "Who wants work now? not I—I want to go where there are murders and burglaries and divorces—into a place where there is life."
"Queer sort of life that," said Archelaus, casting himself down on the lowest step.
"I want to be where those things are done and talked about," said Thomasine; "what do I care about how the corn looks, and whether the sheep have the foot-rot, and what per stone is the price of bullocks? Now—you need not sit on my feet."
"I will choose a higher step," said the lad; then he stepped past her, and seated himself on that above her.
"Upon my word, Tamsin," he said, "you have wonderful hair. It is like mother's copper kettle new scoured, and spun into spiders' threads. Some red hair," continued he, "is coarse as wire, but this," he put his fingers through the splendid waves, "but this——"
"Is not for you to meddle with," said Thomasine. "Shall I make my fortune with it in the world?"
She stood up, and stepped past him, and seated herself on the step immediately above that he occupied.
"In the world!" repeated Archelaus. "What world—— that where murders and burglaries and divorces are the great subject of talk?"
"Aye—in the world where something is doing, where there is life, not in the world of mangold-wurzel."
"I do not know, Tamsin," said the lad dispiritedly. "I hope not."
"Why not? I am not happy here. I want to be where something is stirring. "Why," said Thomasine with a flash of anger in her cheek and eye and the tone of her voice—"Why am I to be a poor farm girl, and Miss Arminell Inglett to have all she wishes? She to be wealthy, and I to have nothing? She to be happy, and I wretched? I suppose I am good-looking, eh, Arkie?"
"Of course you are," said he; "but, Tamsin, I cannot talk to you as you are behind me."
"I do not care to see your face," said the girl, "the back of your collar and coat are enough for me. Is that your Sunday wide-awake?"
"Yes—what have you against it?"
"Only that there is a hole in it, there"—she thrust her finger through the gap