Arminell, a social romance. Baring-Gould Sabine
his scalp.
"I know there is, Tamsin; a coal bounced on to it from the fire."
"Without bringing light to your brain."
"I shall change my place," said Archelaus; he stood up, stepped past the girl, and seated himself above her.
"Now," said he, "I can look down on, and seek for blemishes in your head."
"You will find none there—eh! Arkie? Shall I make my fortune with my hair? Coin it into gold and wear purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day? That is what I want and will have, and I don't care how I get it; so long as I get it. My head and hair are not for you."
Then she stood up, strode past Archelaus, and planted herself on the step higher than that he occupied.
"This is a queer keeping company, tandem fashion, and changing the leader," laughed Archelaus.
"We are not keeping company," answered Thomasine. "Tandem is best as we are, single best of all."
"I don't see why we should not keep company," said the lad.
"I do," answered Thomasine sharply; "have I not made it plain to you that I didn't want a life of drudgery, and that I choose to have a life in which I may amuse myself?"
"Let us try to sit on the same step," said Archelaus, "and then we can discuss the matter together, better than as we are, with one turning the back on the other."
"There is not room, Arkie."
"I'll try it all events," said he, as he got up and seated himself beside her. "Now we are together, and can keep steady if one puts an arm round the other."
"I will not be held by you," said she, and mounted to the step above; then she burst out laughing, and pointed. "Do y' look there," she said, "there is a keeping of company would suit you."
She indicated a pair that approached the farm. The man was lame, with a bad hip, and his right hand was furnished with two fingers only—it was Samuel Ceely. His maimed hand was thrust between the buttons of his waistcoat, and on his right arm rested the coarse red hand of Joan Melhuish.
"Do y' look there!" exclaimed Thomasine, "are they not laughable? They have been courting these twenty years, and no nigher marriage now than when they began, it might be the same with us, were I fool enough to listen and wait for what you offer."
"It is no laughing matter," said the lad, "it is sad."
"It is sad that she should be such a fool! Will his fingers grow again, and his hip right itself? She should have looked about for another lover twenty years ago, now it is too late, and I take warning from her. You, Arkie, are like Samuel Ceely, not in body but in wits, crippled and limping there."
"Tamsin!" exclaimed Arkie, "you shall not speak like that to me." He stood up and stepped to where she was, and seated himself again beside her. That was on the highest step, and they were now both with their backs to the granary door. He tried to take her hand.
"No, Arkie," she said, "I speak seriously, I will not be your sweetheart. I like you well enough. You are a good-tempered, nice fellow, very good natured, and always cheerful, but I won't have you. I can't live on fourteen shillings a week, and I won't live in the country where there is nothing going on, but cows calving and turnips growing. There is no wickedness in either, and wickedness makes life various and enjoyable. I can read and write and cypher, and am tired of work accordingly. I want to enjoy myself. There is mistress!" she exclaimed, stood up, stepped aside, missed her footing, and fell to the bottom of the steps.
"Oh, Tamsin, if only you had let me hold you!" cried Archelaus, and ran down to raise her. "Then you would not have fallen." She had sprained her foot and could only limp.
Chapter 10: "SABINA GREEN."
CHAPTER X.
"SABINA GREEN."
In the four-hundred-and-thirty-first number of the Spectator is a letter from Sabina Green, on the disordered appetite she had acquired by eating improper and innutritious food at school. "I had not been there above a Month, when being in the Kitchen, I saw some Oatmeal on the Dresser; I put two or three Corns in my Mouth, liked it, stole a Handful, went into my Chamber, chewed it, and for two Months after never failed taking Toll of every Pennyworth of Oatmeal that came into the House. But one Day playing with a Tobacco-pipe between my Teeth, it happened to break in my Mouth, and the spitting out the Pieces left such a delicious Roughness on my Tongue, that I could not be satisfied till I had champed up the remaining Part of the Pipe. I forsook the Oatmeal, and stuck to the Pipes three Months, in which time I had disposed of thirty-seven foul Pipes, all to the Boles. I left off eating of Pipes and fell to licking of Chalk. Two Months after this, I lived upon Thunderbolts, a certain long, round, bluish Stone, which I found among the Gravel in our Garden."
Arminell's mental appetite was as much disordered as the physical appetite of Sabina Green. Whether Gaboriau's novels bore any analogy to the foul tobacco-pipes, we do pretend to say, their record of vice certainly left an agreeable roughness on her mental palate, but now without any intermediate licking of chalk, she has clenched her teeth upon a thunderbolt—a question hard, insoluble, beyond her powers of mastication. Besides, she was wholly unaware that the thunderbolt had been laid in her path expressly that she might exercise her teeth upon it.
A hundred and fifty years ago, Sabina Green picked corns, licked chalk and munched tobacco pipes, and the same thing goes on nowadays. There are tens of thousands of Sabina Greens with their mouths full, and with no appetite but for tobacco-pipes or thunderbolts. We have advanced—our pipes are now meerschaum—foam of the sea.
We have known young ladies who would touch nothing but meringues, and thereby seriously impair their constitutions and complexions. We have known others who could touch nothing but literary meringues, novels, and whose digestion revolted at solid food, but who crunched flummery romance at all times of day and night, till the flummery invaded their brains, filled their mouths, frothed in their hearts; and then tired of sweets they look out for what is pungent or foul—like the old tobacco-pipes.
An unwholesome trick into which German women fall is that of "naschen," of nibbling comfits and cakes all day long. They carry cornets of bonbons in their pockets, and have recourse to them every minute. They suffer much from disordered digestion, and fall into the green sickness, because they lack iron in the blood. How can they have iron in the blood when they eat only sugar? Our English girls have a similar infirmity, they nibble at novels, pick at the unsubstantial, innutritious stuff that constitutes fiction all day long. Do they lack iron in their moral fibre? Are their souls bloodless and faint with the green sickness? How can it be other on a diet of flummery.
The stomach of the nibbler never hungers, only craves; the appetite is supplanted by nausea. The symptoms of disorder are permanent; languor of interest, debility of principle, loss of energy in purpose, a disordered vision, and creeping moral paralysis.
If Arminell had reached the condition of one of these novel-nibblers, what she had heard would have produced no effect upon her heart or brain because neither heart nor brain would have been left in her. But she had not been a habitual novel-reader, she had read whatever came to hand, indiscriminately; and the flummery of mere fiction would never have satisfied her, because she possessed, what the novel-nibblers do not possess, intelligence. No control had been exercised over her reading, consequently she had read things that were unsuitable. She had a strong character, without having found outlets for her energy. A wise governess would have tested her, and then led her to pursuits which would have exerted her ambition and occupied her interest; but her teachers had been either wedded to