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                                ARMINELL

                            A Social Romance




                                 BY THE
               AUTHOR OF “MEHALAH,” “JOHN HERRING,” ETC.


                            IN THREE VOLUMES


                                VOL. II.


                                LONDON:
                  METHUEN & CO., 18 BURY STREET, W.C.
                                  1890




                               ARMINELL.




                              CHAPTER XIX.

                          LITTLE JOHN NOBODY.


Giles Inglett Saltren had promised his mother to say nothing to any one
of what had been told him, but the temptation had come strongly upon him
to tell Arminell that he was not the nobody she and others supposed, and
he had succumbed in the temptation. He and the girl had interests in
common, sympathies that drew them together, and he felt that it would be
of extraordinary benefit to her, and a pleasure to himself, if, in that
great house, where each was so solitary, they could meet without the
barrier which had hitherto divided them and prevented the frank
interchange of ideas and the communication of confidences. Later on in
the evening, it is true, that he felt some twinges of conscience, but
they were easily stilled.

Jingles had greatly felt his loneliness. He had been without a friend,
without even a companion. He could not associate with those of his
mother’s class, for he was separated from them by his education, and he
made no friends in the superior class, from the suspicion with which he
regarded its members. He had made acquaintances at college, but he could
not ask them to stay at Chillacot when he was at the park, nor invite
them as guests to Orleigh; consequently, these acquaintanceships died
natural deaths. Nevertheless, that natural craving which exists in all
hearts to have a familiar friend, a person with whom to associate and
open the soul, was strong in Jingles.

If the reader has travelled in a foreign country—let us say in
Bohemia—and is ignorant of the tongue, Czech, he has felt the
irksomeness of a _table d’hôte_ at which he has sat, and of which he has
partaken, without being able to join in the general conversation. He has
felt embarrassed, has longed for the dinner to be over, that he might
retire to his solitary chamber. Yet, when there, he wearies over his
loneliness, and descends to the coffee-room, there to sip his _café
noir_, and smoke, and pare his nails, and turn over a Czech newspaper,
make up his accounts, then sip again, again turn over the paper,
re-examine his nails, and recalculate his expenditure, in weariful
iteration, and long for the time when he can call for his bill and
leave. But, if some one at an adjoining table says, “Ach! zu Englitsch!”
how he leaps to eager dialogue, how he takes over his coffee-cup and
cognac to the stranger’s table; how he longs to hug the barbarian, who
professes to “speaque a littelle Englitsch.” How he clings to him,
forgives him his blunders, opens a thirsty ear to his jargon, forces on
him champagne and cigars, forgets the clock, his nails, his notes, the
bill and the train, in the delight of having met one with whom he can
for a moment forget his isolation.

If this be so when meeting with a foreigner, how much more cordial is
our encounter with a pleasant Englishman. We at once seek out links of
connection, to establish the fact of our having mutual acquaintances.

So did the impulse come on Saltren and overpower him. There was a
community of ideas between him and Arminell: and he was swept away by
his desire to find a companion, into forgetfulness of the promise he had
made to his mother.

That he was doing wrong in telling the girl a secret, about which he had
no right to let a hint fall without her father’s knowledge and consent
could hardly be hid from his conscience, but he refused to listen, and
excused himself on grounds satisfactory to his vanity. It was good for
Arminell herself to know the relationship, that she might be able to
lean on him without reserve. Giles Inglett Saltren had been very
solitary in Orleigh. He had not, indeed, been debarred the use of his
mother-tongue; but he had been unable to give utterance to his thoughts;
and of what profit is the gift of speech to a man, if he may not speak
out what is on his mind? The young are possessed with eager desire to
turn themselves inside out, and to show every one their internal
organisation. A polypus has the same peculiarity. It becomes weary of
exposing one surface to the tide, and so frankly and capriciously
inverts itself, so that what was coat of stomach becomes external
tissue, and the outer skin accommodates itself to the exercise of
digestive functions. Young people do the same, and do it publicly, in
society, in a drawing-room, in unsympathetic company. As we grow older
we acquire reserve, and gradually withdraw our contents within
ourselves, and never dream of allowing any other surface to become
exposed to the general eye, but that furnished us by nature as our
proper external envelope.

The young tutor had his own crude, indigested notions, a mind in
ferment, and an inflamed and irritable internal tissue, and he naturally
and eagerly embraced the only opportunity he had of inverting himself.

Then, again, a still mightier temptation operated on Jingles, the
temptation which besets every man to assume the rôle of somebody, who
has been condemned to play the part of nobody, when an opening is given.

There is a poem in Percy’s Reliques, that represents the grievances of
the common Englishman at the time of the Reformation, who dislikes the
change that is going on about him, the introduction of novelties, the
greed that masqueraded under the name of religion: and every verse ends
with the burden, “But I am little John Nobody, and durst not speak.”

Jingles had been unable to express his opinion, to appear to have any
opinion at all; he had been in the house, at table, everywhere, a little
John Nobody who durst not speak. Now the _rôle_ of little John Nobody is
a _rôle_ distasteful to every one, especially to one who has a good
