Arminell, a social romance/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
SINTRAM.
Lord Lamerton returned to the house; he threw away his cigar-end, and went in at the snuggery door, the door into the room whither the gentlemen retired for pipes and spirits and soda-water, a room ornamented with foxes' heads and brushes, whips, hunting-pictures, and odds and ends of all sorts. He shut the door and passed through it into that part of the house in which was the schoolroom, and Giles' sleeping apartment. As he entered the passage, Lord Lamerton heard piercing shrieks, as from a child yelling in terror or pain.
In a moment, Lord Lamerton ran up the stairs towards the bedroom of his son. The nurse was there already, with a light, and was sitting on the bed, endeavouring to pacify the child. Giles sat up in his night-shirt, in the bed clothes, with his eyes wide open, his fair head disordered, striking out with his hands in recurring paroxysms of terror.
"What is the matter with him?" asked the father.
"My lord—he has been dreaming. He has had one or two of these fits before. Perhaps his fever and cold have had to do with it." Then hastily to Giles who began to kick and beat, and went into a fresh fit of cries, "There, there, my dear, your papa has come to see you. Have you nothing to say to him?"
But the little boy was not to be quieted. He was either still asleep, or, if awake, he saw something that bereft him of the power of regarding anything else.
"There will be no questioning him, my lord, till he is thoroughly roused," said the nurse.
"Bring me a glass of water."
Whilst the woman went for the tumbler, Lord Lamerton seated himself on the bedside, and drew the little boy up, and seated him on his lap.
"Giles, my darling, what is the matter?"
Then the little fellow clung round his father's neck, and the tears broke from his eyes, and he began to sob.
"What is the matter, my pet, tell me? Have you had bad dreams? Here, drink this draught of cold water."
"No, no, take it away," said the child. "I want papa to stay. Papa, you won't be taken off, will you? Papa, you will not leave me, will you?"
"No, my dear. What have you been thinking about?"
"I have not been thinking. I saw it."
"Saw what, Giles?"
Lord Lamerton stroked the boy's hair; it was wet with perspiration, and now his cheeks were overflowed with tears. The shrieks had ceased. He had recovered sufficient consciousness to control himself; "Papa I was at the window."
"What, in your night-shirt? After you had been put to bed? That was wrong. With your heavy cold you should not have left your bed."
The child seemed puzzled.
"Papa, I do not understand how it was. I would not have left my bed for the world, if I thought you did not wish it; and I do not remember getting out—still, I must have got out; for I was at the window."
"He has not left his bed. He has been dreaming, my lord," explained the nurse in an undertone; and Lord Lamerton nodded.
"Papa, dear."
"Yes, my pet."
"Are you listening to me?"
"I am all attention."
"Papa, I was at the window. But I am very sorry that I was there, if you are annoyed. I will not do it again, dear papa. And the moon was shining brightly on the drive. You know how white the gravel is. It was very white with the moon on it. I did not feel at all cold, papa; feel me, I am quite warm."
"Yes, my treasure, go on with your story."
"Then I watched something black come all the way up the drive, from the lodge-gates, through the park. I could not at first make out what it was, but I saw that it was something very, very black, and it came on slowly like a great beetle. But when it was near, then I saw it was a coach drawn by four black horses, and there was a man on the box, driving, and he was in black. There was no silver nor brass mounting to the harness of the horses, or I should have seen it sparkle in the moonlight. And, dear papa, the coach stole on without making any noise. I saw the horses trotting, and the wheels of the coach turning, but there was no sound at all on the gravel. Was that not strange?"
"Very strange indeed, my dear."
"But there was something much stranger. I saw that the horses had no heads, and also that the coachman had no head. His hat with the long weeper was on the top of the carriage. He could not wear it because he was without a head. Was not that queer?"
"Very queer," answered Lord Lamerton, and signed to the nurse to leave the room. His face looked grave, and he held the little boy to his heart, and kissed his forehead with lips that somewhat quivered.
"Then, papa, the carriage stopped at the entrance, and I could see through the window panes to the gravel with the moon on it, on the other side, and there was no one at all in the coach. It was quite, quite empty."
"Did you not think it was Dr. Blewett come to see you, my little man?"
"No, papa, I did not think anything about whose coach it was. But when it remained at the door, and no one got out, I saw it must be staying for some one to enter it."
"And did any one come out of the house?"
Then the little boy began to sob again, and cling round his father's neck, and kiss him.
"Well, my dear Giles?"
"Oh, papa!—you will not go away!—I saw you come out of the door, and you went away in the coach—"
"I!" Lord Lamerton drew a sigh of relief. The dream of the dear little fellow, associated with his illness, had produced an uneasy effect on his father's mind—he feared it might portend the loss of the boy, but if the carriage waited only for himself—!
"That, papa, was why I cried, and was frightened. You will not go! you must not go!" The child trembled, clasping his father, and rubbing his wet cheek against his father's face.
Then Lord Lamerton called the nurse from the next room. "Master Giles," he said, "is not thoroughly roused. The current of his thoughts must be diverted. Throw that thick shawl over him. I will carry him down into the drawing-room to my lady, and show him a picture-book. Then he will forget his dream and go to sleep. Come for him in a quarter of an hour."
The nurse did as required. Then Lord Lamerton stood up, carrying his son, who laid his head on his father's shoulders, and so he bore him through the passages and down the grand staircase to the drawing-room. The little fair face rested on the shoulder, with the fair hair hanging down over the father's back, and one hand was clutched in the collar. Lord Lamerton kissed the little hand. He was not afraid of making the child's cold worse, the evening was so warm.
Lady Lamerton was sitting on a settee with a reading lamp on a table at her side, engaged on an article in one of the contemporary magazines, on Decay of Belief in the World.
Lady Lamerton was a good woman, who on Sunday would on no account read a novel, or a book of travels, or of profane history. Her Sabbatarianism was a habit that had survived from her childish education, long after she had come to doubt its obligation or advisability. But, though she would not read a book of travels, memoirs or history, she had no scruple in reading religious polemical literature. On one Sunday she found that miracles were incredible by intelligent beings, and next Sunday she had her faith in the miraculous re-established on the massive basis of a magazine article.
For an entire fortnight she laboured under the impression that Christianity had not a leg to stand on, and then, on the strength of another article, was sure it stood on as many as a centipede. For a while she supposed that dogmas were the cast cocoons of a living religion, and then, newly instructed, harboured the belief that it was as impossible to preserve the spirit of religion without them as it is to keep essences without bottles. At one time she supposed the articles of the creed to be the shackles of faith, and then that they were the characters by which faith was decipherable.
The sun was at one time supposed to be a solid incandescent ball, but astronomers probed it with their proboscises, and found that the body was enveloped in sundry wraps, which they termed photosphere and chromosphere, and which acted as jacket and overcoat to the body, which was declared to be black as that of a Hottentot. Some fresh proboscis-poking revealed the fact that the blackness supposed to be the sun-core was in fact an intervening vapour or rain of ash, and when this was perforated, the very body of the sun was seen, red as that of an Indian, sullenly glowing, lifeless, almost lightless, a cinder. Moreover, the spectroscope was brought to analyse the constituents of the photosphere and to determine the metals in a state of incandescence composing it.
Lady Lamerton, looking through the telescopes of magazine articles and reviews, was continually seeing deeper into the great luminous, heat-giving orb of Christianity; was shown behind its photosphere, taught to despise its chromosphere, and saw exhibited behind them blackness, exhausted force, the ash of extinct superstitions. The critical spectroscope was, moreover, brought to bear on Christianity, and to analyse its luminous atmosphere, and resolve it into alien matter, none distinctively solar, all vulgar, terrestrial, and fusible.
The astronomer assures us that the fuel of the sun must fail, and then the world will congeal and life disappear out of it, and the critic announces the speedy expiring of Christianity. But, as—indifferent to the fact that the sun like a worn-out and made-up old beau is tottering to extinction—Lady Lamerton ordered summer bonnets, and laid out new azalea beds, just so was it with her religion. She continued to teach in Sunday-school, went to church regularly, read the Bible to sick people, did her duty in society, ordered her household, made home very dear to his lordship—in a word, lived in the light and heat of that same Christianity which she was assured, and by fits and starts believed, was an exploded superstition. As Lord Lamerton brought little Giles in his arms into the drawing-room, he whispered in his ear, "Not a word about the coach to mamma," and Giles nodded.
Lady Lamerton put her book aside and looked up.
"Oh, Lamerton! What are you doing? The boy is unwell, and ought to be in bed."
"He has been dreaming, my dear; has had the nightmare, and I have brought him down for change, to drive the frightening thoughts away. He will not take cold, he is in flannel, and the shawl is round him. Besides, the evening is warm."
"He must not be here many minutes. He ought to be asleep," said his mother.
"My dear, I have promised him a look at a picture-book. It will make him forget his fancies. What have you over there?"
"No Sunday stories or pictures, I fear."
"Yonder is a book in red—illustrated. What is it?"
"'Sintram'—it is not a Sunday book."
"I have not read it for an age, but if I remember right, the D— comes into it."
"If that be the case it is perhaps allowable."
"What is the meaning of that picture?" asked the little boy, pointing to the first in the text. It was by Selous. It represented a great hall with a stone table in the centre, about which knights were seated, carousing. In the foreground was a boy kneeling, beating his head, apparently frantic. An old priest stood by, on one side, and a baron was starting from the table, and upsetting his goblet of wine.
"I cannot tell, I forget the story, it must be forty years since I read it. I have not my glasses. Pass the book to your mother, she will read."
Lady Lamerton drew the volume to her, and read as follows:— "A boy, pale as death, with disordered hair and closed eyes, rushed into the hall, uttering a wild scream of terror, and clinging to the baron with both hands, shrieked piercingly, 'Knight and father! Father and knight! Death and another are closely pursuing me!' An awful stillness lay like ice on the whole assembly, save that the boy screamed ever the fearful words."
"It is not a pretty story," said Lord Lamerton uneasily.
"Papa," whispered the boy, "I did not think that anything was following me. I thought"—his father's hand pressed his shoulders—"no, papa, I will not repeat it to mamma."
"What is it, Giles?" asked his mother, looking up from the book.
"Nothing but this, my dear," answered Lord Lamerton, "that I told Giles not to talk about his dreams. He must forget them as quickly as possible."
"What is that priest doing?" asked the child, pointing to the picture.
Lady Lamerton read further. "'Dear Lord Biorn,' said the chaplain, 'our eyes and thoughts have all been directed to you and your son in a wonderful manner; but so it has been ordered by the providence of God.'"
"I think, Giles, we will have no more of 'Sintram' to-night. Let us look together at the album of photographs. I will show you the new likeness of Aunt Hermione."
"Where is young Mr. Saltren?" asked Lady Lamerton.
"I fancy he has gone to see his mother. If I remember aright, he said, after dinner, that he would stroll down to Chillacot."
"There comes nurse," said Lady Lamerton. "Now, Giles, dear, you must go to sleep, and sleep like a top."
"I will try, dear mamma." But he clung to and kissed most lovingly, and still with a little distress in his flushed face, his father. He had not quite shaken off the impression left by his dream. When the boy was going out at the door, keeping his head over his nurse's shoulder, wrapped in the shawl, Lord Lamerton watched him lovingly. Then ensued a silence of a minute or two. It was broken by Lady Lamerton who said——
"We really cannot go on any longer in the crypt."
"The crypt?"
"You must build us a new school-room. The basement of the keeper's cottage is unendurable. It did as a make-shift through the winter, but in summer the closeness is insupportable. Besides, the noises overhead preclude teaching and prevent learning."
"I will do what I can," said Lord Lamerton; "but I want to avoid building this year, as I am not flush of money. Such a room will cost at least four hundred pounds. It must have some architectural character, as it will be near the church, and must not be an eyesore. I wish it were possible to set the miners to build, so as to relieve them; but they are incapable of doing anything outside their trade."
"What will they do?"
"I cannot say. They have not been like the young larks in the fable. These were alarmed when they overheard the farmer and his sons discuss the cutting of the corn. But the men have been forewarned and have taken no notice of the warnings. Now they are bewildered and alarmed because they are turned off."
"Something must be done for them."
"I have been considering the cutting of a new road to the proposed station; but the position of the station cannot be determined till Saltren has consented to sell Chillacot, and he is obstinate and stupid about it."
"Then you cannot cut it till you know where the station will be?"
"Exactly; and Captain Saltren is obstructive. I am not at all sure that his right to the land could be maintained. I strongly suspect that I might reclaim it; but I do not wish any unpleasantness."
"Of course not. Is the road necessary?"
"Not exactly necessary; but I suppose work for the winter must be found for the men. As we have not gone to town this season, and if, as I propose, we abandon our projected tour to the Italian lakes in the autumn, I daresay we can manage both the road and the school-room; but I need not tell you, Julia, that I have had heavy losses. My Irish property brings me in not a groat. I have lost heavily through the failure of the Occidental Bank, and I have reduced my rents, I am sorry for the men. Cornish mining is bad, or the fellows might have gone to Cornwall. Perhaps if I find them work on the new road, mines may look up next year."
"Arminell has been speaking to me about Samuel Ceely. She wants him taken on," said her ladyship. "She will pay for him out of her own pocket."
Lord Lamerton's mouth twitched. "Arminell has asked me why I should have been allowed two Lady Lamertons, and he not one Mrs. Ceely."
"Arminell is an odd girl," said her ladyship. "But I am thankful to find her take some interest in the poor. It is a new phase in her life."
"It seems to me," said Lord Lamerton, "that you and Armie are alike in one particular, and unlike in another. You both puzzle your brains with questions beyond your calibre, you with theological, she with social questions; but you are unlike in this, that you take your perplexities easily, Arminell goes into a fever over hers."
"It is a bitter sorrow to me that I cannot influence her," said Lady Lamerton humbly. "But I believe that no one devoid of definite opinions could acquire power over her. I see that so much can be said, and said with justice on all sides of every question, that all my opinions remain, and ever will remain, in abeyance."
"I sincerely trust that the minx will not fall under the influence of those who are opinionated."
"Arminell is young, vehement, and, as is usual with the young, indisposed to make allowance for those who oppose what commends itself to her mind, or for those who do not leap at conclusions with the same activity as herself."
"And she is pert!" said Lord Lamerton. "Upon my soul, Julia, it is going a little too far to take me to task for having been twice married. And again, when I said something about my being content with the providential ordering of the world, she caught me up and told me that anyone with a coronet and fifty thousand a year would say the same. I have not that sum this year anyhow. Girls nowadays are born without the bump of reverence, and with that of self-assurance unduly developed."
Neither spoke for a few minutes.
Presently Lord Lamerton, who was looking depressed, and was listening, said:
"Hark! Is that Giles crying again?"
"I heard nothing."
"Possibly it was but my fancy. Poor little fellow. Something has upset him. It was unfortunate, Julia, our lighting on 'Sintram.'"
He stood up.
"I am not easy about the dear little creature. Did you see, Julia, how he kissed me and clung to me?"
"He is very fond of you, Lamerton."
"And I of him. I think I shall be more easy if I go up and see our Sintram, and learn whether he is asleep, or whether the bad dreams are threatening him. Poor little Sintram!"
"You will come back, Lamerton?"
"Yes, dear, when I have seen and kissed my little Sintram."