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The Golden Age by Kenneth Grahame A Project Gutenb
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The Golden Age
by Kenneth Grahame
July, 1995 [Etext #291]
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The Golden Age
By
Kenneth Grahame
"'T IS OPPORTUNE TO LOOK BACK UPON OLD TIMES, AND
CONTEMPLATE OUR FOREFATHERS. GREAT EXAMPLES GROW
THIN, AND TO BE FETCHED FROM THE PASSED WORLD.
SIMPLICITY FLIES AWAY, AND INIQUITY COMES AT LONG
STRIDES UPON US.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Contents
PROLOGUE--THE OLYMPIANS
A HOLIDAY
A WHITE-WASHED UNCLE
ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS
THE FINDING OF THE PRINCESS
SAWDUST AND SIN
"YOUNG ADAM CUPID"
THE BURGLARS
A HARVESTING
SNOWBOUND
WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT
THE ARGONAUTS
THE ROMAN ROAD
THE SECRET DRAWER
"EXIT TYRANNUS"
THE BLUE ROOM
A FALLING OUT
"LUSISTI SATIS"
PROLOGUE: THE OLYMPIANS
Looking back to those days of old, ere the gate shut behind me, I
can see now that to children with a proper equipment of parents
these things would have worn a different aspect. But to those
whose nearest were aunts and uncles, a special attitude of mind
may be allowed. They treated us, indeed, with kindness enough as
to the needs of the flesh, but after that with indifference (an
indifference, as I recognise, the result of a certain stupidity),
and therewith the commonplace conviction that your child is
merely animal. At a very early age I remember realising in a
quite impersonal and kindly way the existence of that stupidity,
and its tremendous influence in the world; while there grew up in
me, as in the parallel case of Caliban upon Setebos, a vague
sense of a ruling power, wilful and freakish, and prone to the
practice of vagaries--"just choosing so:" as, for instance, the
giving of authority over us to these hopeless and incapable
creatures, when it might far more reasonably have been given to
ourselves over them. These elders, our betters by a trick of
chance, commanded no respect, but only a certain blend of envy--
of their good luck--and pity--for their inability to make use of
it. Indeed, it was one of the most hopeless features in their
character (when we troubled ourselves to waste a thought on them:
which wasn't often) that, having absolute licence to indulge in
the pleasures of life, they could get no good of it. They might
dabble in the pond all day, hunt the chickens, climb trees in the
most uncompromising Sunday clothes; they were free to issue forth
and buy gunpowder in the full eye of the sun--free to fire
cannons and explode mines on the lawn: yet they never did any one
of these things. No irresistible Energy haled them to church o'
Sundays; yet they went there regularly of their own accord,
though they betrayed no greater delight in the experience than
ourselves.
On the whole, the existence of these Olympians seemed to be
entirely void of interests, even as their movements were confined
and slow, and their habits stereotyped and senseless. To
anything but appearances they were blind. For them the
orchard (a place elf-haunted, wonderful!) simply produced so many
apples and cherries: or it didn't, when the failures of Nature
were not infrequently ascribed to us. They never set foot within
fir-wood or hazel-copse, nor dreamt of the marvels hid therein.
The mysterious sources--sources as of old Nile--that fed the
duck-pond had no magic for them. They were unaware of Indians,
nor recked they anything of bisons or of pirates (with pistols!),
though the whole place swarmed with such portents. They cared
not about exploring for robbers' caves, nor digging for hidden
treasure. Perhaps, indeed, it was one of their best qualities
that they spent the greater part of their time stuffily indoors.
To be sure, there was an exception in the curate, who would
receive unblenching the information that the meadow beyond the
orchard was a prairie studded with herds of buffalo, which it was
our delight, moccasined and tomahawked, to ride down with those
whoops that announce the scenting of blood. He neither laughed
nor sneered, as the Olympians would have done; but possessed of a
serious idiosyncrasy, he would contribute such lots of
valuable suggestion as to the pursuit of this particular sort of
big game that, as it seemed to us, his mature age and eminent
position could scarce have been attained without a practical
knowledge of the creature in its native lair. Then, too, he was
always ready to constitute himself a hostile army or a band of
marauding Indians on the shortest possible notice: in brief, a
distinctly able man, with talents, so far as we could judge,
immensely above the majority. I trust he is a bishop by this
time,--he had all the necessary qualifications, as we knew.
These strange folk had visitors sometimes,--stiff and colourless
Olympians like themselves, equally without vital interests and
intelligent pursuits: emerging out of the clouds, and passing
away again to drag on an aimless existence somewhere out of our
ken. Then brute force was pitilessly applied. We were captured,
washed, and forced into clean collars: silently submitting, as
was our wont, with more contempt than anger. Anon, with unctuous
hair and faces stiffened in a conventional grin, we sat and
listened to the usual platitudes. How could reasonable people
spend their precious time so? That was ever our wonder as we
bounded forth at last--to the old clay-pit to make pots, or to
hunt bears among the hazels.
It was incessant matter for amazement how these Olympians would
talk over our heads--during meals, for instance--of this or the
other social or political inanity, under the delusion that these
pale phantasms of reality were among the importances of life. We
illuminati, eating silently, our heads full of plans and
conspiracies, could have told them what real life was. We had
just left it outside, and were all on fire to get back to it. Of
course we didn't waste the revelation on them; the futility of
imparting our ideas had long been demonstrated. One in thought
and purpose, linked by the necessity of combating one hostile
fate, a power antagonistic ever,--a power we lived to evade,--we
had no confidants save ourselves. This strange anaemic order of
beings was further removed from us, in fact, than the kindly
beasts who shared our natural existence in the sun. The
estrangement was fortified by an abiding sense of injustice,
arising from the refusal of the Olympians ever to defend,
retract, or admit themselves in the wrong, or to accept similar
concessions on our part. For instance, whenI flung the cat
out of an upper window (though I did it from no ill-feeling, and
it didn't hurt the cat), I was ready, after a moment's
reflection, to own I was wrong, as a gentleman should. But was
the matter allowed to end there? I trow not. Again, when Harold
was locked up in his room all day, for assault and battery upon a
neighbour's pig,--an action he would have scorned, being indeed
on the friendliest terms with the porker in question,--there was
no handsome expression of regret on the discovery of the real
culprit. What Harold had felt was not so much the
imprisonment,--indeed he had very soon escaped by the window,
with assistance from his allies, and had only gone back in time
for his release,--as the Olympian habit. A word would have set
all right; but of course that word was never spoken.
Well! The Olympians are all past and gone. Somehow the sun does
not seem to shine so brightly as it used; the trackless meadows
of old time have shrunk and dwindled away to a few poor acres. A
saddening doubt, a dull suspicion, creeps over me. Et in
Arcadia ego,--I certainly did once inhabit Arcady. Can it be I
too have become an Olympian?
A HOLIDAY.
The masterful wind was up and out, shouting and chasing, the lord
of the morning. Poplars swayed and tossed with a roaring swish;
dead leaves sprang aloft, and whirled into space; and all the
clear-swept heaven seemed to thrill with sound like a great harp.
It was one of the first awakenings of the year. The earth
stretched herself, smiling in her sleep; and everything leapt and
pulsed to the stir of the giant's movement. With us it was a
whole holiday; the occasion a birthday--it matters not whose.
Some one of us had had presents, and pretty conventional
speeches, and had glowed with that sense of heroism which is no
less sweet that nothing has been done to deserve it. But the
holiday was for all, the rapture of awakening Nature for all, the
various outdoor joys of puddles and sun and hedge-breaking for
all. Colt-like I ran through the meadows, frisking happy
heels in the face of Nature laughing responsive. Above, the sky
was bluest of the blue; wide pools left by the winter's floods
flashed the colour back, true and brilliant; and the soft air
thrilled with the germinating touch that seemed to kindle
something in my own small person as well as in the rash primrose
already lurking in sheltered haunts. Out into the brimming sun-
bathed world I sped, free of lessons, free of discipline and
correction, for one day at least. My legs ran of themselves, and
though I heard my name called faint and shrill behind, there was
no stopping for me. It was only Harold, I concluded, and his
legs, though shorter than mine, were good for a longer spurt than
this. Then I heard it called again, but this time more faintly,
with a pathetic break in the middle; and I pulled up short,
recognising Charlotte's plaintive note.
She panted up anon, and dropped on the turf beside me. Neither
had any desire for talk; the glow and the glory of existing on
this perfect morning were satisfaction full and sufficient.
"Where's Harold;" I asked presently.
"Oh, he's just playin' muffin-man, as usual," said Charlotte
with petulance. "Fancy wanting to be a muffin-man on a whole
holiday!"
It was a strange craze, certainly; but Harold, who invented his
own games and played them without assistance, always stuck
staunchly to a new fad, till he had worn it quite out. Just at
present he was a muffin-man, and day and night he went through
passages and up and down staircases, ringing a noiseless bell and
offering phantom muffins to invisible wayfarers. It sounds a
poor sort of sport; and yet--to pass along busy streets of your
own building, for ever ringing an imaginary bell and offering
airy muffins of your own make to a bustling thronging crowd of
your own creation--there were points about the game, it cannot be
denied, though it seemed scarce in harmony with this radiant
wind-swept morning!
"And Edward, where is he?" I questioned again.
"He's coming along by the road," said Charlotte. "He'll be
crouching in the ditch when we get there, and he's going to be a
grizzly bear and spring out on us, only you mustn't say I told
you, 'cos it's to be a surprise."
"All right," I said magnanimously. "Come on and let's be
surprised." But I could not help feeling that on this day of
days even a grizzly felt misplaced and common.
Sure enough an undeniable bear sprang out on us as we dropped
into the road; then ensued shrieks, growlings, revolver-shots,
and unrecorded heroisms, till Edward condescended at last to roll
over and die, bulking large and grim, an unmitigated grizzly. It
was an understood thing, that whoever took upon himself to be a
bear must eventually die, sooner or later, even if he were the
eldest born; else, life would have been all strife and carnage,
and the Age of Acorns have displaced our hard-won civilisation.
This little affair concluded with satisfaction to all parties
concerned, we rambled along the road, picking up the defaulting
Harold by the way, muffinless now and in his right and social
mind.
"What would you do?" asked Charlotte presently,--the book of the
moment always dominating her thoughts until it was sucked dry and
cast aside,--"what would you do if you saw two lions in the road,
one on each side, and you didn't know if they was loose or if
they was chained up?"
"Do?" shouted Edward, valiantly, "I should--I should--I should--"
His boastful accents died away into a mumble: "Dunno what I
should do."
"Shouldn't do anything," I observed after consideration; and
really it would be difficult to arrive at a wiser conclusion.
"If it came to DOING," remarked Harold, reflectively, "the
lions would do all the doing there was to do, wouldn't they?"
"But if they was GOOD lions," rejoined Charlotte, "they would
do as they would be done by."
"Ah, but how are you to know a good lion from a bad one?" said
Edward. "The books don't tell you at all, and the lions ain't
marked any different."
"Why, there aren't any good lions," said Harold, hastily.
"Oh yes, there are, heaps and heaps," contradicted Edward.
"Nearly all the lions in the story-books are good lions. There
was Androcles' lion, and St. Jerome's lion, and--and--the Lion
and the Unicorn--"
"He beat the Unicorn," observed Harold, dubiously, "all round the
town."
"That PROVES he was a good lion," cried Edwards triumphantly.
"But the question is, how are you to tell 'em when you see 'em?"
"_I_ should ask Martha," said Harold of the simple creed.
Edward snorted contemptuously, then turned to Charlotte. "Look
here," he said; "let's play at lions, anyhow, and I'll run on to
that corner and be a lion,--I'll be two lions, one on each side
of the road,--and you'll come along, and you won't know whether
I'm chained up or not, and that'll be the fun!"
"No, thank you," said Charlotte, firmly; "you'll be chained up
till I'm quite close to you, and then you'll be loose, and you'll
tear me in pieces, and make my frock all dirty, and p'raps you'll
hurt me as well. _I_ know your lions!"
"No, I won't; I swear I won't," protested Edward. "I'll be quite
a new lion this time,--something you can't even imagine." And he
raced off to his post. Charlotte hesitated; then she went
timidly on, at each step growing less Charlotte, the mummer of a
minute, and more the anxious Pilgrim of all time. The lion's
wrath waxed terrible at her approach; his roaring filled the
startled air. I waited until they were both thoroughly absorbed,
and then I slipped through the hedge out of the trodden highway,
into the vacant meadow spaces. It was not that I was unsociable,
nor that I knew Edward's lions to the point of satiety; but the
passion and the call of the divine morning were high in my blood.
Earth to earth! That was the frank note, the joyous summons of
the day; and they could not but jar and seem artificial, these
human discussions and pretences, when boon Nature, reticent no
more, was singing that full-throated song of hers that thrills
and claims control of every fibre. The air was wine; the moist
earth-smell, wine; the lark's song, the wafts from the cow-shed
at top of the field, the pant and smoke of a distant train,--all
were wine,--or song, was it? or odour, this unity they all
blended into? I had no words then to describe it, that earth-
effluence of which I was so conscious; nor, indeed, have I found
words since. I ran sideways, shouting; I dug glad heels into the
squelching soil; I splashed diamond showers from puddles with a
stick; I hurled clods skywards at random, and presently I
somehow found myself singing. The words were mere nonsense,--
irresponsible babble; the tune was an improvisation, a weary,
unrhythmic thing of rise and fall: and yet it seemed to me a
genuine utterance, and just at that moment the one thing fitting
and right and perfect. Humanity would have rejected it with
scorn, Nature, everywhere singing in the same key, recognised and
accepted it without a flicker of dissent.
All the time the hearty wind was calling to me companionably from
where he swung and bellowed in the tree-tops. "Take me for guide
to-day," he seemed to plead. "Other holidays you have tramped it
in the track of the stolid, unswerving sun; a belated truant, you
have dragged a weary foot homeward with only a pale,
expressionless moon for company. To-day why not I, the
trickster, the hypocrite? I, who whip round corners and bluster,
relapse and evade, then rally and pursue! I can lead you the
best and rarest dance of any; for I am the strong capricious one,
the lord of misrule, and I alone am irresponsible and
unprincipled, and obey no law." And for me, I was ready enough
to fall in with the fellow's humour; was not this a whole
holiday? So we sheered off together, arm-in-arm, so to
speak; and with fullest confidence I took the jigging, thwartwise
course my chainless pilot laid for me.
A whimsical comrade I found him, ere he had done with me. Was it
in jest, or with some serious purpose of his own, that he brought
me plump upon a pair of lovers, silent, face to face o'er a
discreet unwinking stile? As a rule this sort of thing struck me
as the most pitiful tomfoolery. Two calves rubbing noses through
a gate were natural and right and within the order of things; but
that human beings, with salient interests and active pursuits
beckoning them on from every side, could thus--! Well, it was a
thing to hurry past, shamed of face, and think on no more. But
this morning everything I met seemed to be accounted for and set
in tune by that same magical touch in the air; and it was with a
certain surprise that I found myself regarding these fatuous ones
with kindliness instead of contempt, as I rambled by, unheeded of
them. There was indeed some reconciling influence abroad, which
could bring the like antics into harmony with bud and growth and
the frolic air.
A puff on the right cheek from my wilful companion sent me off at
a fresh angle, and presently I came in sight of the village
church, sitting solitary within its circle of elms. From forth
the vestry window projected two small legs, gyrating, hungry for
foothold, with larceny--not to say sacrilege--in their every
wriggle: a godless sight for a supporter of the Establishment.
Though the rest was hidden, I knew the legs well enough; they
were usually attached to the body of Bill Saunders, the peerless
bad boy of the village. Bill's coveted booty, too, I could
easily guess at that; it came from the Vicar's store of biscuits,
kept (as I knew) in a cupboard along with his official trappings.
For a moment I hesitated; then I passed on my way. I protest I
was not on Bill's side; but then, neither was I on the Vicar's,
and there was something in this immoral morning which seemed to
say that perhaps, after all, Bill had as much right to the
biscuits as the Vicar, and would certainly enjoy them better; and
anyhow it was a disputable point, and no business of mine.
Nature, who had accepted me for ally, cared little who had the
world's biscuits, and assuredly was not going to let any
friend of hers waste his time in playing policeman for
Society.
He was tugging at me anew, my insistent guide; and I felt sure,
as I rambled off in his wake, that he had more holiday matter to
show me. And so, indeed, he had; and all of it was to the same
lawless tune. Like a black pirate flag on the blue ocean of air,
a hawk hung ominous; then, plummet-wise, dropped to the hedgerow,
whence there rose, thin and shrill, a piteous voice of squealing.
By the time I got there a whisk of feathers on the turf--like
scattered playbills--was all that remained to tell of the tragedy
just enacted. Yet Nature smiled and sang on, pitiless, gay,
impartial. To her, who took no sides, there was every bit as
much to be said for the hawk as for the chaffinch. Both were her
children, and she would show no preferences.
Further on, a hedgehog lay dead athwart the path--nay, more than
dead; decadent, distinctly; a sorry sight for one that had known
the fellow in more bustling circumstances. Nature might at least
have paused to shed one tear over this rough jacketed little son
of hers, for his wasted aims, his cancelled ambitions, his whole
career of usefulness cut suddenly short. But not a bit of
it! Jubilant as ever, her song went bubbling on, and "Death-in-
Life," and again, "Life-in-Death," were its alternate burdens.
And looking round, and seeing the sheep-nibbled heels of turnips
that dotted the ground, their hearts eaten out of them in frost-
bound days now over and done, I seemed to discern, faintly, a
something of the stern meaning in her valorous chant.
My invisible companion was singing also, and seemed at times to
be chuckling softly to himself, doubtless at thought of the
strange new lessons he was teaching me; perhaps, too, at a
special bit of waggishness he had still in store. For when at
last he grew weary of such insignificant earthbound company, he
deserted me at a certain spot I knew; then dropped, subsided, and
slunk away into nothingness. I raised my eyes, and before me,
grim and lichened, stood the ancient whipping-post of the
village; its sides fretted with the initials of a generation that
scorned its mute lesson, but still clipped by the stout rusty
shackles that had tethered the wrists of such of that
generation's ancestors as had dared to mock at order and law.
Had I been an infant Sterne, here was a grand chance for
sentimental output! As things were, I could only hurry
homewards, my moral tail well between my legs, with an uneasy
feeling, as I glanced back over my shoulder, that there was more
in this chance than met the eye.
And outside our gate I found Charlotte, alone and crying.
Edward, it seemed, had persuaded her to hide, in the full
expectation of being duly found and ecstatically pounced upon;
then he had caught sight of the butcher's cart, and, forgetting
his obligations, had rushed off for a ride. Harold, it further
appeared, greatly coveting tadpoles, and top-heavy with the
eagerness of possession, had fallen into the pond. This, in
itself, was nothing; but on attempting to sneak in by the back-
door, he had rendered up his duckweed-bedabbled person into the
hands of an aunt, and had been promptly sent off to bed; and
this, on a holiday, was very much. The moral of the whipping-
post was working itself out; and I was not in the least surprised
when, on reaching home, I was seized upon and accused of doing
something I had never even thought of. And my frame of mind was
such, that I could only wish most heartily that I had done
it.
A WHITE-WASHED UNCLE
In our small lives that day was eventful when another uncle was
to come down from town, and submit his character and
qualifications (albeit unconsciously) to our careful criticism.
Previous uncles had been weighed in the balance, and--alas!--
found grievously wanting. There was Uncle Thomas--a failure from
the first. Not that his disposition was malevolent, nor were his
habits such as to unfit him for decent society; but his rooted
conviction seemed to be that the reason of a child's existence
was to serve as a butt for senseless adult jokes,--or what, from
the accompanying guffaws of laughter, appeared to be intended for
jokes. Now, we were anxious that he should have a perfectly fair
trial; so in the tool-house, between breakfast and lessons, we
discussed and examined all his witticisms, one by one, calmly,
critically, dispassionately. It was no good; we could not
discover any salt in them. And as only a genuine gift of
humour could have saved Uncle Thomas,--for he pretended to naught
besides,--he was reluctantly writ down a hopeless impostor.
Uncle George--the youngest--was distinctly more promising. He
accompanied us cheerily round the establishment,--suffered
himself to be introduced to each of the cows, held out the right
hand of fellowship to the pig, and even hinted that a pair of
pink-eyed Himalayan rabbits might arrive--unexpectedly--from town
some day. We were just considering whether in this fertile soil
an apparently accidental remark on the solid qualities of guinea-
pigs or ferrets might haply blossom and bring forth fruit, when
our governess appeared on the scene. Uncle George's manner at
once underwent a complete and contemptible change. His interest
in rational topics seemed, "like a fountain's sickening pulse,"
to flag and ebb away; and though Miss Smedley's ostensible
purpose was to take Selina for her usual walk, I can vouch for it
that Selina spent her morning ratting, along with the keeper's
boy and me; while, if Miss Smedley walked with any one, it would
appear to have been with Uncle George.
But despicable as his conduct had been, he underwent no hasty
condemnation. The defection was discussed in all its bearings,
but it seemed sadly clear at last that this uncle must possess
some innate badness of character and fondness for low company.
We who from daily experience knew Miss Smedley like a book--were
we not only too well aware that she had neither accomplishments
nor charms, no characteristic, in fact, but an inbred viciousness
of temper and disposition? True, she knew the dates of the
English kings by heart; but how could that profit Uncle George,
who, having passed into the army, had ascended beyond the need of
useful information? Our bows and arrows, on the other hand, had
been freely placed at his disposal; and a soldier should not have
hesitated in his choice a moment. No: Uncle George had fallen
from grace, and was unanimously damned. And the non-arrival of
the Himalayan rabbits was only another nail in his coffin.
Uncles, therefore, were just then a heavy and lifeless market,
and there was little inclination to deal. Still it was agreed
that Uncle William, who had just returned from India, should have
as fair a trial as the others; more especially as romantic
possibilities might well be embodied in one who had held the
gorgeous East in fee.
Selina had kicked my shins--like the girl she is!--during a
scuffle in the passage, and I was still rubbing them with one
hand when I found that the uncle-on-approbation was half-
heartedly shaking the other. A florid, elderly man, and
unmistakably nervous, he dropped our grimy paws in succession,
and, turning very red, with an awkward simulation of heartiness,
"Well, h' are y' all?" he said, "Glad to see me, eh?" As we
could hardly, in justice, be expected to have formed an opinion
on him at that early stage, we could but look at each other in
silence; which scarce served to relieve the tension of the
situation. Indeed, the cloud never really lifted during his
stay. In talking it over later, some one put forward the
suggestion that he must at some time or other have committed a
stupendous crime; but I could not bring myself to believe that
the man, though evidently unhappy, was really guilty of anything;
and I caught him once or twice looking at us with evident
kindliness, though seeing himself observed, he blushed and turned
away his head.
When at last the atmosphere was clear of this depressing
influence, we met despondently in the potato-cellar--all of us,
that is, but Harold, who had been told off to accompany his
relative to the station; and the feeling was unanimous, that, at
an uncle, William could not be allowed to pass. Selina roundly
declared him a beast, pointing out that he had not even got us a
half-holiday; and, indeed, there seemed little to do but to pass
sentence. We were about to put it, when Harold appeared on the
scene; his red face, round eyes, and mysterious demeanour,
hinting at awful portents. Speechless he stood a space: then,
slowly drawing his hand from the pocket of his knickerbockers, he
displayed on a dirty palm one--two--three--four half-crowns! We
could but gaze--tranced, breathless, mute; never had any of us
seen, in the aggregate, so much bullion before. Then Harold told
his tale.
"I took the old fellow to the station," he said, "and as we went
along I told him all about the station-master's family, and how I
had seen the porter kissing our housemaid, and what a nice fellow
he was, with no airs, or affectation about him, and anything I
thought would be of interest.; but he didn't seem to pay much
attention, but walked along puffing his cigar, and once I
thought--I'm not certain, but I THOUGHT--I heard him say,
`Well, thank God, that's over!' When we got to the station he
stopped suddenly, and said, `Hold on a minute!' Then he shoved
these into my hand in a frightened sort of way; and said, `Look
here, youngster! These are for you and the other kids. Buy what
you like--make little beasts of yourselves--only don't tell the
old people, mind! Now cut away home!' So I cut."
A solemn hush fell on the assembly, broken first by the small
Charlotte. "I didn't know," she observed dreamily, "that there
were such good men anywhere in the world. I hope he'll die to-
night, for then he'll go straight to heaven!" But the repentant
Selina bewailed herself with tears and sobs, refusing to be
comforted; for that in her haste she had called this white-souled
relative a beast.
"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Edward, the master-mind,
rising--as he always did--to the situation: "We'll christen the
piebald pig after him--the one that hasn't got a name yet.
And that'll show we're sorry for our mistake!"
"I--I christened that pig this morning," Harold guiltily
confessed; "I christened it after the curate. I'm very sorry--
but he came and bow'ed to me last night, after you others had all
been sent to bed early--and somehow I felt I HAD to do it!"
"Oh, but that doesn't count," said Edward hastily; "because we
weren't all there. We'll take that christening off, and call it
Uncle William. And you can save up the curate for the next
litter!"
And the motion being agreed to without a division, the House went
into Committee of Supply.
ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS
"Let's pretend," suggested Harold, "that we're Cavaliers and
Roundheads; and YOU be a Roundhead!"
"O bother," I replied drowsily, "we pretended that yesterday; and
it's not my turn to be a Roundhead, anyhow." The fact is, I was
lazy, and the call to arms fell on indifferent ears. We three
younger ones were stretched at length in the orchard. The sun
was hot, the season merry June, and never (I thought) had there
been such wealth and riot of buttercups throughout the lush
grass. Green-and-gold was the dominant key that day. Instead of
active "pretence" with its shouts and perspiration, how much
better--I held--to lie at ease and pretend to one's self, in
green and golden fancies, slipping the husk and passing, a
careless lounger, through a sleepy imaginary world all gold and
green! But the persistent Harold was not to be fobbed of.
"Well, then," he began afresh, "let's pretend we're Knights of
the Round Table; and (with a rush) _I'll_ be Lancelot!"
"I won't play unless I'm Lancelot," I said. I didn't mean it
really, but the game of Knights always began with this particular
contest.
"O PLEASE," implored Harold. "You know when Edward's here I
never get a chance of being Lancelot. I haven't been Lancelot
for weeks!"
Then I yielded gracefully. "All right," I said. "I'll be
Tristram."
"O, but you can't," cried Harold again.
"Charlotte has always been Tristram. She won't play unless she's
allowed to be Tristram! Be somebody else this time."
Charlotte said nothing, but breathed hard, looking straight
before her. The peerless hunter and harper was her special hero
of romance, and rather than see the part in less appreciative
hands, she would even have returned sadly to the stuffy
schoolroom.
"I don't care," I said: "I'll be anything. I'll be Sir Kay.
Come on!"
Then once more in this country's story the mail-clad knights
paced through the greenwood shaw, questing adventure, redressing
wrong; and bandits, five to one, broke and fled discomfited to
their caves. Once again were damsels rescued, dragons
disembowelled, and giants, in every corner of the orchard,
deprived of their already superfluous number of heads; while
Palamides the Saracen waited for us by the well, and Sir Breuse
Saunce Pite vanished in craven flight before the skilled spear
that was his terror and his bane. Once more the lists were dight
in Camelot, and all was gay with shimmer of silk and gold; the
earth shook with thunder of horses, ash-staves flew in splinters;
and the firmament rang to the clash of sword on helm. The
varying fortune of the day swung doubtful--now on this side, now
on that; till at last Lancelot, grim and great, thrusting through
the press, unhorsed Sir Tristram (an easy task), and bestrode
her, threatening doom; while the Cornish knight, forgetting hard-
won fame of old, cried piteously, "You're hurting me, I tell you!
and you're tearing my frock!" Then it happed that Sir Kay,
hurtling to the rescue, stopped short in his stride, catching
sight suddenly, through apple-boughs, of a gleam of scarlet
afar off; while the confused tramp of many horses, mingled with
talk and laughter, was borne to our ears.
"What is it?" inquired Tristram, sitting up and shaking out her
curls; while Lancelot forsook the clanging lists and trotted
nimbly to the hedge.
I stood spell-bound for a moment longer, and then, with a cry of
"Soldiers!" I was off to the hedge, Charlotte picking herself up
and scurrying after.
Down the road they came, two and two, at an easy walk; scarlet
flamed in the eye, bits jingled and saddles squeaked
delightfully; while the men, in a halo of dust, smoked their
short clays like the heroes they were. In a swirl of
intoxicating glory the troop clinked and clattered by, while we
shouted and waved, jumping up and down, and the big jolly
horsemen acknowledged the salute with easy condescension. The
moment they were past we were through the hedge and after them.
Soldiers were not the common stuff of everyday life. There had
been nothing like this since the winter before last, when on a
certain afternoon--bare of leaf and monochrome in its hue of
sodden fallow and frost-nipt copse--suddenly the hounds had burst
through the fence with their mellow cry, and all the paddock was
for the minute reverberant of thudding hoof and dotted with
glancing red. But this was better, since it could only mean that
blows and bloodshed were in the air.
"Is there going to be a battle?" panted Harold, hardly able to
keep up for excitement.
"Of course there is," I replied. "We're just in time. Come on!"
Perhaps I ought to have known better; and yet-- The pigs and
poultry, with whom we chiefly consorted, could instruct us little
concerning the peace that in these latter days lapped this sea-
girt realm. In the schoolroom we were just now dallying with the
Wars of the Roses; and did not legends of the country-side inform
us how Cavaliers had once galloped up and down these very lanes
from their quarters in the village? Here, now, were soldiers
unmistakable; and if their business was not fighting, what was
it? Sniffing the joy of battle, we followed hard on their
tracks.
"Won't Edward be sorry," puffed Harold, "that he's begun that
beastly Latin?"
It did, indeed, seem hard. Edward, the most martial spirit of us
all, was drearily conjugating AMO (of all verbs) between four
walls; while Selina, who ever thrilled ecstatic to a red coat,
was struggling with the uncouth German tongue. "Age," I
reflected, "carries its penalties."
It was a grievous disappointment to us that the troop passed
through the village unmolested. Every cottage, I pointed out to
my companions, ought to have been loopholed, and strongly held.
But no opposition was offered to the soldiers, who, indeed,
conducted themselves with a recklessness and a want of precaution
that seemed simply criminal.
At the last cottage a transitory gleam of common sense flickered
across me, and, turning on Charlotte, I sternly ordered her back.
The small maiden, docile but exceedingly dolorous, dragged
reluctant feet homewards, heavy at heart that she was to behold
no stout fellows slain that day; but Harold and I held steadily
on, expecting every instant to see the environing hedges crackle
and spit forth the leaden death.
"Will they be Indians?" inquired my brother (meaning the enemy);
"or Roundheads, or what?"
I reflected. Harold always required direct, straightforward
answers--not faltering suppositions.
"They won't be Indians," I replied at last; "nor yet Roundheads.
There haven't been any Roundheads seen about here for a long
time. They'll be Frenchmen."
Harold's face fell. "All right," he said; "Frenchmen'll do; but
I did hope they'd be Indians."
"If they were going to be Indians," I explained, "I--I don't
think I'd go on. Because when Indians take you prisoner they
scalp you first, and then burn you at a stake. But Frenchmen
don't do that sort of thing."
"Are you quite sure?" asked Harold doubtfully.
"Quite," I replied. "Frenchmen only shut you up in a thing
called the Bastille; and then you get a file sent in to you in a
loaf of bread, and saw the bars through, and slide down a rope,
and they all fire at you--but they don't hit you--and you run
down to the seashore as hard as you can, and swim off to a
British frigate, and there you are!"
Harold brightened up again. The programme was rather attractive.
"If they try to take us prisoner," he said, "we--we won't run,
will we?"
Meanwhile, the craven foe was a long time showing himself; and we
were reaching strange outland country, uncivilised, wherein lions
might be expected to prowl at nightfall. I had a stitch in my
side, and both Harold's stockings had come down. Just as I was
beginning to have gloomy doubts of the proverbial courage of
Frenchmen, the officer called out something, the men closed up,
and, breaking into a trot, the troops--already far ahead--
vanished out of our sight. With a sinking at the heart, I began
to suspect we had been fooled.
"Are they charging?" cried Harold, weary, but rallying gamely.
"I think not," I replied doubtfully. "When there's going to be a
charge, the officer always makes a speech, and then they draw
their swords and the trumpets blow, and--but let's try a short
cut. We may catch them up yet."
So we struck across the fields and into another road, and pounded
down that, and then over more fields, panting, down-hearted,
yet hoping for the best. The sun went in, and a thin drizzle
began to fall; we were muddy, breathless, almost dead beat; but
we blundered on, till at last we struck a road more brutally,
more callously unfamiliar than any road I ever looked upon. Not
a hint nor a sign of friendly direction or assistance on the
dogged white face of it. There was no longer any disguising it--
we were hopelessly lost. The small rain continued steadily, the
evening began to come on. Really there are moments when a fellow
is justified in crying; and I would have cried too, if Harold had
not been there. That right-minded child regarded an elder
brother as a veritable god; and I could see that he felt himself
as secure as if a whole Brigade of Guards hedged him round with
protecting bayonets. But I dreaded sore lest he should begin
again with his questions.
As I gazed in dumb appeal on the face of unresponsive nature, the
sound of nearing wheels sent a pulse of hope through my being;
increasing to rapture as I recognised in the approaching vehicle
the familiar carriage of the old doctor. If ever a god emerged
from a machine, it was when this heaven-sent friend,
recognising us, stopped and jumped out with a cheery hail.
Harold rushed up to him at once. "Have you been there?" he
cried. "Was it a jolly fight? who beat? were there many people
killed?"
The doctor appeared puzzled. I briefly explained the situation.
"I see," said the doctor, looking grave and twisting his face
this way and that. "Well, the fact is, there isn't going to be
any battle to-day. It's been put off, on account of the change
in the weather. You will have due notice of the renewal of
hostilities. And now you'd better jump in and I'll drive you
home. You've been running a fine rig! Why, you might have both
been taken and shot as spies!"
This special danger had never even occurred to us. The thrill of
it accentuated the cosey homelike feeling of the cushions we
nestled into as we rolled homewards. The doctor beguiled the
journey with blood-curdling narratives of personal adventure in
the tented field, he having followed the profession of arms (so
it seemed) in every quarter of the globe. Time, the destroyer of
all things beautiful, subsequently revealed the baselessness
of these legends; but what of that? There are higher things than
truth; and we were almost reconciled, by the time we were dropped
at our gate, to the fact that the battle had been postponed.
THE FINDING OF THE
PRINCESS.
It was the day I was promoted to a tooth-brush. The girls,
irrespective of age, had been thus distinguished some time
before; why, we boys could never rightly understand, except that
it was part and parcel of a system of studied favouritism on
behalf of creatures both physically inferior and (as was shown by
a fondness for tale-bearing) of weaker mental fibre. It was not
that we yearned after these strange instruments in themselves;
Edward, indeed, applied his to the scrubbing-out of his
squirrel's cage, and for personal use, when a superior eye was
grim on him, borrowed Harold's or mine, indifferently; but the
nimbus of distinction that clung to them--that we coveted
exceedingly. What more, indeed, was there to ascend to, before
the remote, but still possible, razor and strop?
Perhaps the exaltation had mounted to my head; or nature and the
perfect morning joined to him at disaffection; anyhow, having
breakfasted, and triumphantly repeated the collect I had broken
down in the last Sunday--'twas one without rhythm or
alliteration: a most objectionable collect--having achieved thus
much, the small natural man in me rebelled, and I vowed, as I
straddled and spat about the stable-yard in feeble imitation of
the coachman, that lessons might go to the Inventor of them. It
was only geography that morning, any way: and the practical thing
was worth any quantity of bookish theoretic; as for me, I was
going on my travels, and imports and exports, populations and
capitals, might very well wait while I explored the breathing,
coloured world outside.
True, a fellow-rebel was wanted; and Harold might, as a rule,
have been counted on with certainty. But just then Harold was
very proud. The week before he had "gone into tables," and had
been endowed with a new slate, having a miniature sponge
attached, wherewith we washed the faces of Charlotte's dolls,
thereby producing an unhealthy pallor which struck terror into
the child's heart, always timorous regarding epidemic
visitations. As to "tables," nobody knew exactly what they
were, least of all Harold; but it was a step over the heads of
the rest, and therefore a subject for self-adulation and--
generally speaking--airs; so that Harold, hugging his slate and
his chains, was out of the question now. In such a matter, girls
were worse than useless, as wanting the necessary tenacity of
will and contempt for self-constituted authority. So eventually
I slipped through the hedge a solitary protestant, and issued
forth on the lane what time the rest of the civilised world was
sitting down to lessons.
The scene was familiar enough; and yet, this morning, how
different it all seemed! The act, with its daring, tinted
everything with new, strange hues; affecting the individual with
a sort of bruised feeling just below the pit of the stomach, that
was intensified whenever his thoughts flew back to the ink-
stained, smelly schoolroom. And could this be really me? or was
I only contemplating, from the schoolroom aforesaid, some other
jolly young mutineer, faring forth under the genial sun? Anyhow,
here was the friendly well, in its old place, half way up the
lane. Hither the yoke-shouldering village-folk were wont to come
to fill their clinking buckets; when the drippings made worms
of wet in the thick dust of the road. They had flat wooden
crosses inside each pail, which floated on the top and (we were
instructed) served to prevent the water from slopping over. We
used to wonder by what magic this strange principle worked, and
who first invented the crosses, and whether he got a peerage for
it. But indeed the well was a centre of mystery, for a hornet's
nest was somewhere hard by, and the very thought was fearsome.
Wasps we knew well and disdained, storming them in their
fastnesses. But these great Beasts, vestured in angry orange,
three stings from which--so 't was averred--would kill a horse,
these were of a different kidney, and their warning drone
suggested prudence and retreat. At this time neither villagers
nor hornets encroached on the stillness: lessons, apparently,
pervaded all Nature. So, after dabbling awhile in the well--what
boy has ever passed a bit of water without messing in it?--I
scrambled through the hedge, avoiding the hornet-haunted side,
and struck into the silence of the copse.
If the lane had been deserted, this was loneliness become
personal. Here mystery lurked and peeped; here brambles caught
and held with a purpose of their own, and saplings whipped
the face with human spite. The copse, too, proved vaster in
extent, more direfully drawn out, than one would ever have
guessed from its frontage on the lane: and I was really glad when
at last the wood opened and sloped down to a streamlet brawling
forth into the sunlight. By this cheery companion I wandered
along, conscious of little but that Nature, in providing store of
water-rats, had thoughtfully furnished provender of right-sized
stones. Rapids, also, there were, telling of canoes and
portages--crinkling bays and inlets--caves for pirates and hidden
treasures--the wise Dame had forgotten nothing--till at last,
after what lapse of time I know not, my further course, though
not the stream's, was barred by some six feet of stout wire
netting, stretched from side to side, just where a thick hedge,
arching till it touched, forbade all further view.
The excitement of the thing was becoming thrilling. A Black Flag
must surely be fluttering close by. Here was evidently a
malignant contrivance of the Pirates, designed to baffle our gun-
boats when we dashed up-stream to shell them from their lair. A
gun-boat, indeed, might well have hesitated, so stout was the
netting, so close the hedge: but I spied where a rabbit was wont
to pass, close down by the water's edge; where a rabbit could go
a boy could follow, albeit stomach-wise and with one leg in the
stream; so the passage was achieved, and I stood inside, safe but
breathless at the sight.
Gone was the brambled waste, gone the flickering tangle of
woodland. Instead, terrace after terrace of shaven sward, stone-
edged, urn-cornered, stepped delicately down to where the stream,
now tamed and educated, passed from one to another marble basin,
in which on occasion gleams of red hinted at gold-fish in among
the spreading water-lilies. The scene lay silent and slumbrous
in the brooding noonday sun: the drowsing peacock squatted humped
on the lawn, no fish leapt in the pools, nor bird declared
himself from the environing hedges. Self-confessed it was here,
then, at last the Garden of Sleep!
Two things, in those old days, I held in especial distrust:
gamekeepers and gardeners. Seeing, however, no baleful
apparitions of either nature, I pursued my way between rich
flower-beds, in search of the necessary Princess. Conditions
de<56>clared her presence patently as trumpets; without this
centre such surroundings could not exist. A pavilion, gold
topped, wreathed with lush jessamine, beckoned with a special
significance over close-set shrubs. There, if anywhere, She
should be enshrined. Instinct, and some knowledge of the habits
of princesses, triumphed; for (indeed) there She was! In no
tranced repose, however, but laughingly, struggling to disengage
her hand from the grasp of a grown-up man who occupied the marble
bench with her. (As to age, I suppose now that the two swung in
respective scales that pivoted on twenty. But children heed no
minor distinctions; to them, the inhabited world is composed of
the two main divisions: children and upgrown people; the latter
being in no way superior to the former--only hopelessly
different. These two, then, belonged to the grown-up section.)
I paused, thinking it strange they should prefer seclusion when
there were fish to be caught, and butterflies to hunt in the sun
outside; and as I cogitated thus, the grown-up man caught sight
of me.
"Hallo, sprat!" he said, with some abruptness, "where do you
spring from?"
"I came up the stream," I explained politely and comprehensively,
"and I was only looking for the Princess."
"Then you are a water-baby," he replied. "And what do you think
of the Princess, now you've found her?"
"I think she is lovely," I said (and doubtless I was right,
having never learned to flatter). "But she's wide-awake, so I
suppose somebody has kissed her!"
This very natural deduction moved the grown-up man to laughter;
but the Princess, turning red and jumping up, declared that it
was time for lunch.
"Come along, then," said the grown-up man; "and you too, Water-
baby; come and have something solid. You must want it."
I accompanied them, without any feeling of false delicacy. The
world, as known to me, was spread with food each several mid-day,
and the particular table one sat at seemed a matter of no
importance. The palace was very sumptuous and beautiful, just
what a palace ought to be; and we were met by a stately lady,
rather more grownup than the Princess--apparently her mother.
My friend the Man was very kind, and introduced me as the
Captain, saying I had just run down from Aldershot. I didn't
know where Aldershot was, but had no manner of doubt that he was
perfectly right. As a rule, indeed, grown-up people are fairly
correct on matters of fact; it is in the higher gift of
imagination that they are so sadly to seek.
The lunch was excellent and varied. Another gentleman in
beautiful clothes--a lord, presumably--lifted me into a high
carved chair, and stood behind it, brooding over me like a
Providence. I endeavoured to explain who I was and where I had
come from, and to impress the company with my own tooth-brush and
Harold's tables; but either they were stupid--or is it a
characteristic of Fairyland that every one laughs at the most
ordinary remarks? My friend the Man said good-naturedly, "All
right, Water-baby; you came up the stream, and that's good enough
for us." The lord--a reserved sort of man, I thought--took no
share in the conversation.
After lunch I walked on the terrace with the Princess and my
friend the Man, and was very proud. And I told him what I was
going to be, and he told me what he was going to be; and then
I remarked, "I suppose you two are going to get married?" He
only laughed, after the Fairy fashion. "Because if you aren't,"
I added, "you really ought to": meaning only that a man who
discovered a Princess, living in the right sort of Palace like
this, and didn't marry her there and then, was false to all
recognised tradition.
They laughed again, and my friend suggested I should go down to
the pond and look at the gold-fish, while they went for a stroll.
I was sleepy, and assented; but before they left me, the grown-up
man put two half-crowns in my hand, for the purpose, he
explained, of treating the other water-babies. I was so touched
by this crowning mark of friendship that I nearly cried; and
thought much more of his generosity than of the fact that the
Princess; ere she moved away, stooped down and kissed me.
I watched them disappear down the path--how naturally arms seem
to go round waists in Fairyland!--and then, my cheek on the cool
marble, lulled by the trickle of water, I slipped into dreamland
out of real and magic world alike. When I woke, the sun had
gone in, a chill wind set all the leaves a-whispering, and the
peacock on the lawn was harshly calling up the rain. A wild
unreasoning panic possessed me, and I sped out of the garden like
a guilty thing, wriggled through the rabbit-run, and threaded my
doubtful way homewards, hounded by nameless terrors. The half-
crowns happily remained solid and real to the touch; but could I
hope to bear such treasure safely through the brigand-haunted
wood? It was a dirty, weary little object that entered its home,
at nightfall, by the unassuming aid of the scullery-window: and
only to be sent tealess to bed seemed infinite mercy to him.
Officially tealess, that is; for, as was usual after such
escapades, a sympathetic housemaid, coming delicately by
backstairs, stayed him with chunks of cold pudding and
condolence, till his small skin was tight as any drum. Then,
nature asserting herself, I passed into the comforting kingdom of
sleep, where, a golden carp of fattest build, I oared it in
translucent waters with a new half-crown snug under right fin and
left; and thrust up a nose through water-lily leaves to be kissed
by a rose-flushed Princess.
SAWDUST AND SIN
A belt of rhododendrons grew close down to one side of our pond;
and along the edge of it many things flourished rankly. If you
crept through the undergrowth and crouched by the water's rim, it
was easy--if your imagination were in healthy working order--to
transport yourself in a trice to the heart of a tropical forest.
Overhead the monkeys chattered, parrots flashed from bough to
bough, strange large blossoms shone around you, and the push and
rustle of great beasts moving unseen thrilled you deliciously.
And if you lay down with your nose an inch or two from the water,
it was not long ere the old sense of proportion vanished clean
away. The glittering insects that darted to and fro on its
surface became sea-monsters dire, the gnats that hung above them
swelled to albatrosses, and the pond itself stretched out into a
vast inland sea, whereon a navy might ride secure, and whence
at any moment the hairy scalp of a sea serpent might be seen to
emerge.
It is impossible, however, to play at tropical forests properly,
when homely accents of the human voice intrude; and all my hopes
of seeing a tiger seized by a crocodile while drinking (vide
picture-books, passim) vanished abruptly, and earth resumed her
old dimensions, when the sound of Charlotte's prattle somewhere
hard by broke in on my primeval seclusion. Looking out from the
bushes, I saw her trotting towards an open space of lawn the
other side the pond, chattering to herself in her accustomed
fashion, a doll tucked under either arm, and her brow knit with
care. Propping up her double burden against a friendly stump,
she sat down in front of them, as full of worry and anxiety as a
Chancellor on a Budget night.
Her victims, who stared resignedly in front of them, were
recognisable as Jerry and Rosa. Jerry hailed from far Japan: his
hair was straight and black; his one garment cotton, of a simple
blue; and his reputation was distinctly bad. Jerome was his
proper name, from his supposed likeness to the holy man who hung
in a print on the staircase; though a shaven crown was the
only thing in common 'twixt Western saint and Eastern sinner.
Rosa was typical British, from her flaxen poll to the stout
calves she displayed so liberally, and in character she was of
the blameless order of those who have not yet been found out.
I suspected Jerry from the first; there was a latent devilry in
his slant eyes as he sat there moodily, and knowing what he was
capable of I scented trouble in store for Charlotte. Rosa I was
not so sure about; she sat demurely and upright, and looked far
away into the tree-tops in a visionary, world-forgetting sort of
way; yet the prim purse of her mouth was somewhat overdone, and
her eyes glittered unnaturally.
"Now, I'm going to begin where I left off," said Charlotte,
regardless of stops, and thumping the turf with her fist
excitedly: "and you must pay attention, 'cos this is a treat, to
have a story told you before you're put to bed. Well, so the
White Rabbit scuttled off down the passage and Alice hoped he'd
come back 'cos he had a waistcoat on and her flamingo flew up a
tree--but we haven't got to that part yet--you must wait a
minute, and--where had I got to?"
Jerry only remained passive until Charlotte had got well under
way, and then began to heel over quietly in Rosa's direction.
His head fell on her plump shoulder, causing her to start
nervously.
Charlotte seized and shook him with vigour, "O Jerry," she cried
piteously, "if you're not going to be good, how ever shall I tell
you my story?"
Jerry's face was injured innocence itself. "Blame if you like,
Madam," he seemed to say, "the eternal laws of gravitation, but
not a helpless puppet, who is also an orphan and a stranger in
the land."
"Now we'll go on," began Charlotte once more. "So she got into
the garden at last--I've left out a lot, but you won't care, I'll
tell you some other time--and they were all playing croquet, and
that's where the flamingo comes in, and the Queen shouted out,
`Off with her head!'"
At this point Jerry collapsed forward, suddenly and completely,
his bald pate between his knees. Charlotte was not very angry
this time. The sudden development of tragedy in the story had
evidently been too much for the poor fellow. She straightened
him out, wiped his nose, and, after trying him in various
positions, to which he refused to adapt himself, she propped him
against the shoulder of the (apparently) unconscious Rosa. Then
my eyes were opened, and the full measure of Jerry's infamy
became apparent. This, then, was what he had been playing up
for. The fellow had designs. I resolved to keep him under close
observation.
"If you'd been in the garden," went on Charlotte, reproachfully,
"and flopped down like that when the Queen said `Off with his
head!' she'd have offed with your head; but Alice wasn't that
sort of girl at all. She just said, `I'm not afraid of you,
you're nothing but a pack of cards'--oh, dear! I've got to the
end already, and I hadn't begun hardly! I never can make my
stories last out! Never mind, I'll tell you another one."
Jerry didn't seem to care, now he had gained his end, whether the
stories lasted out or not. He was nestling against Rosa's plump
form with a look of satisfaction that was simply idiotic; and one
arm had disappeared from view--was it round her waist? Rosa's
natural blush seemed deeper than usual, her head inclined shyly--
it must have been round her waist.
"If it wasn't so near your bedtime," continued Charlotte,
reflectively, "I'd tell you a nice story with a bogy in it. But
you'd be frightened, and you'd dream of bogies all night. So
I'll tell you one about a White Bear, only you mustn't scream
when the bear says `Wow,' like I used to, 'cos he's a good bear
really--"
Here Rosa fell flat on her back in the deadest of faints. Her
limbs were rigid, her eyes glassy; what had Jerry been doing? It
must have been something very bad, for her to take on like that.
I scrutinised him carefully, while Charlotte ran to comfort the
damsel. He appeared to be whistling a tune and regarding the
scenery. If I only possessed Jerry's command of feature, I
thought to myself, half regretfully, I would never be found out
in anything.
"It's all your fault, Jerry," said Charlotte, reproachfully, when
the lady had been restored to consciousness: "Rosa's as good as
gold, except when you make her wicked. I'd put you in the
corner, only a stump hasn't got a corner--wonder why that is?
Thought everything had corners. Never mind, you'll have to sit
with your face to the wall--SO. Now you can sulk if you
like!"
Jerry seemed to hesitate a moment between the bliss of indulgence
in sulks with a sense of injury, and the imperious summons of
beauty waiting to be wooed at his elbow; then, carried away by
his passion, he fell sideways across Rosa's lap. One arm stuck
stiffly upwards, as in passionate protestation; his amorous
countenance was full of entreaty. Rosa hesitated--wavered--and
yielded, crushing his slight frame under the weight of her full-
bodied surrender.
Charlotte had stood a good deal, but it was possible to abuse
even her patience. Snatching Jerry from his lawless embraces,
she reversed him across her knee, and then--the outrage offered
to the whole superior sex in Jerry's hapless person was too
painful to witness; but though I turned my head away, the sound
of brisk slaps continued to reach my tingling ears. When I
looked again, Jerry was sitting up as before; his garment,
somewhat crumpled, was restored to its original position; but his
pallid countenance was set hard. Knowing as I did, only too
well, what a volcano of passion and shame must be seething under
that impassive exterior, for the moment I felt sorry for him.
Rosa's face was still buried in her frock; it might have been
shame, it might have been grief for Jerry's sufferings. But the
callous Japanese never even looked her way. His heart was
exceeding bitter within him. In merely following up his natural
impulses he had run his head against convention, and learnt how
hard a thing it was; and the sunshiny world was all black to him.
Even Charlotte softened somewhat at the sight of his rigid
misery. "If you'll say you're sorry. Jerome," she said, "I'll
say I'm sorry, too."
Jerry only dropped his shoulders against the stump and stared out
in the direction of his dear native Japan, where love was no sin,
and smacking had not been introduced. Why had he ever left it?
He would go back to-morrow--and yet there were obstacles: another
grievance. Nature, in endowing Jerry with every grace of form
and feature, along with a sensitive soul, had somehow forgotten
the gift of locomotion.
There was a crackling in the bushes behind me, with sharp short
pants as of a small steam-engine, and Rollo, the black retriever,
just released from his chain by some friendly hand, burst
through the underwood, seeking congenial company. I joyfully
hailed him to stop and be a panther; but he sped away round the
pond, upset Charlotte with a boisterous caress, and seizing Jerry
by the middle, disappeared with him down the drive. Charlotte
raved, panting behind the swift-footed avenger of crime; Rosa lay
dishevelled, bereft of consciousness; Jerry himself spread
helpless arms to heaven, and I almost thought I heard a cry for
mercy, a tardy promise of amendment; but it was too late. The
Black Man had got Jerry at last; and though the tear of
sensibility might moisten the eye, no one who really knew him
could deny the justice of his fate.
"YOUNG ADAM CUPID"
NO one would have suspected Edward of being in love, but that
after breakfast, with an over-acted carelessness, "Anybody who
likes," he said, "can feed my rabbits," and he disappeared, with
a jauntiness that deceived nobody, in the direction of the
orchard. Now, kingdoms might totter and reel, and convulsions
change the map of Europe; but the iron unwritten law prevailed,
that each boy severely fed his own rabbits. There was good
ground, then, for suspicion and alarm; and while the lettuce-
leaves were being drawn through the wires, Harold and I conferred
seriously on the situation.
It may be thought that the affair was none of our business; and
indeed we cared little as individuals. We were only concerned as
members of a corporation, for each of whom the mental or physical
ailment of one of his fellows might have far-reaching effects.
It was thought best that Harold, as least open to suspicion of
motive, should be despatched to probe and peer. His instructions
were, to proceed by a report on the health of our rabbits in
particular; to glide gently into a discussion on rabbits in
general, their customs, practices, and vices; to pass thence, by
a natural transition, to the female sex, the inherent flaws in
its composition, and the reasons for regarding it (speaking
broadly) as dirt. He was especially to be very diplomatic, and
then to return and report progress. He departed on his mission
gaily; but his absence was short, and his return, discomfited and
in tears, seemed to betoken some want of parts for diplomacy. He
had found Edward, it appeared, pacing the orchard, with the sort
of set smile that mountebanks wear in their precarious antics,
fixed painfully on his face, as with pins. Harold had opened
well, on the rabbit subject, but, with a fatal confusion between
the abstract and the concrete, had then gone on to remark that
Edward's lop-eared doe, with her long hindlegs and contemptuous
twitch of the nose, always reminded him of Sabina Larkin (a nine-
year-old damsel, child of a neighbouring farmer): at which point
Edward, it would seem, had turned upon and savagely maltreated
him, twisting his arm and punching him in the short ribs. So
that Harold returned to the rabbit-hutches preceded by long-drawn
wails: anon wishing, with sobs, that he were a man, to kick his
love-lorn brother: anon lamenting that ever he had been born.
I was not big enough to stand up to Edward personally, so I had
to console the sufferer by allowing him to grease the wheels of
the donkey-cart--a luscious treat that had been specially
reserved for me, a week past, by the gardener's boy, for putting
in a good word on his behalf with the new kitchen-maid. Harold
was soon all smiles and grease; and I was not, on the whole,
dissatisfied with the significant hint that had been gained as to
the fons at origo mali.
Fortunately, means were at hand for resolving any doubts on the
subject, since the morning was Sunday, and already the bells were
ringing for church. Lest the connexion may not be evident at
first sight, I should explain that the gloomy period of church-
time, with its enforced inaction and its lack of real interest--
passed, too, within sight of all that the village held of
fairest--was just the one when a young man's fancies lightly
turned to thoughts of love. For such trifling the rest of the
week afforded no leisure; but in church--well, there was really
nothing else to do! True, naughts-and-crosses might be indulged
in on fly-leaves of prayer-books while the Litany dragged its
slow length along; but what balm or what solace could be found
for the sermon? Naturally the eye, wandering here and there
among the serried ranks, made bold, untrammelled choice among our
fair fellow-supplicants. It was in this way that, some months
earlier, under the exceptional strain of the Athanasian Creed, my
roving fancy had settled upon the baker's wife as a fit object
for a life-long devotion. Her riper charms had conquered a heart
which none of her be-muslined, tittering juniors had been able to
subdue; and that she was already wedded had never occurred to me
as any bar to my affection. Edward's general demeanour, then,
during morning service, was safe to convict him; but there was
also a special test for the particular case. It happened that we
sat in a transept, and, the Larkins being behind us, Edward's
only chance of feasting on Sabina's charms was in the all-too
fleeting interval when we swung round eastwards. I was not
mistaken. During the singing of the Benedictus the impatient one
made several false starts, and at last he slewed fairly round
before "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be"
was half finished. The evidence was conclusive: a court of law
could have desired no better.
The fact being patent, the next thing was to grapple with it; and
my mind was fully occupied during the sermon. There was really
nothing unfair or unbrotherly in my attitude. A philosophic
affection such as mine own, which clashed with nothing, was (I
held) permissible; but the volcanic passions in which Edward
indulged about once a quarter were a serious interference with
business. To make matters worse, next week there was a circus
coming to the neighbourhood, to which we had all been strictly
forbidden to go; and without Edward no visit in contempt of law
and orders could be successfully brought off. I had sounded him
as to the circus on our way to church, and he had replied briefly
that the very thought of a clown made him sick. Morbidity could
no further go. But the sermon came to an end without any line of
conduct having suggested itself; and I walked home in some
depression, feeling sadly that Venus was in the ascendant and in
direful opposition, while Auriga--the circus star--drooped
declinant, perilously near the horizon.
By the irony of fate, Aunt Eliza, of all people, turned out to be
the Dea ex machina: which thing fell out in this wise. It was
that lady's obnoxious practice to issue forth, of a Sunday
afternoon, on a visit of state to such farmers and cottagers as
dwelt at hand; on which occasion she was wont to hale a reluctant
boy along with her, from the mixed motives of propriety and his
soul's health. Much cudgelling of brains, I suppose, had on that
particular day made me torpid and unwary. Anyhow, when a victim
came to be sought for, I fell an easy prey, while the others fled
scatheless and whooping. Our first visit was to the Larkins.
Here ceremonial might be viewed in its finest flower, and we
conducted ourselves, like Queen Elizabeth when she trod the
measure, "high and disposedly." In the low, oak-panelled
parlour, cake and currant wine were set forth, and after
courtesies and compliments exchanged, Aunt Eliza, greatly
condescending, talked the fashions with Mrs Larkin; while the
farmer and I, perspiring with the unusual effort, exchanged
remarks on the mutability of the weather and the steady fall in
the price of corn. (Who would have thought, to hear us, that
only two short days ago we had confronted each other on either
side of a hedge,--I triumphant, provocative, derisive; he
flushed, wroth, cracking his whip, and volleying forth profanity?
So powerful is all-subduing ceremony!) Sabina the while,
demurely seated with a Pilgrim's Progress on her knee, and
apparently absorbed in a brightly coloured presentment of
"Apollyon Straddling Right across the Way," eyed me at times with
shy interest; but repelled all Aunt Eliza's advances with a
frigid politeness for which I could not sufficiently admire her.
"It's surprising to me," I heard my aunt remark presently, "how
my eldest nephew, Edward, despises little girls. I heard him
tell Charlotte the other day that he wished he could exchange her
for a pair of Japanese guinea-pigs. It made the poor child cry.
Boys are so heartless!" (I saw Sabina stiffen as she sat, and
her tip-tilted nose twitched scornfully.) "Now this boy here--"
(my soul descended into my very boots. Could the woman have
intercepted any of my amorous glances at the baker's wife?) "Now
this boy," my aunt went on, "is more human altogether. Only
yesterday he took his sister to the baker's shop, and spent his
only penny buying her sweets. I thought it showed such a nice
disposition. I wish Edward were more like him!"
I breathed again. It was unnecessary to explain my real motives
for that visit to the baker's. Sabina's face softened, and her
contemptuous nose descended from its altitude of scorn; she gave
me one shy glance of kindness, and then concentrated her
attention upon Mercy knocking at the Wicket Gate. I felt awfully
mean as regarded Edward; but what could I do? I was in Gaza,
gagged and bound; the Philistines hemmed me in.
The same evening the storm burst, the bolt fell, and--to continue
the metaphor--the atmosphere grew serene and clear once more.
The evening service was shorter than usual, the vicar, as he
ascended the pulpit steps, having dropped two pages out of his
sermon-case,--unperceived by any but ourselves, either at the
moment or subsequently when the hiatus was reached; so as we
joyfully shuffled out I whispered Edward that by racing home at
top speed we should make time to assume our bows and arrows (laid
aside for the day) and play at Indians and buffaloes with Aunt
Eliza's fowls--already strolling roostwards, regardless of their
doom--before that sedately stepping lady could return. Edward
hung at the door, wavering; the suggestion had unhallowed charms.
At that moment Sabina issued primly forth, and, seeing Edward,
put out her tongue at him in the most exasperating manner
conceivable; then passed on her way, her shoulders rigid, her
dainty head held high. A man can stand very much in the cause of
love: poverty, aunts, rivals, barriers of every sort,--all these
only serve to fan the flame. But personal ridicule is a shaft
that reaches the very vitals. Edward led the race home at a
speed which one of Ballantyne's heroes might have equalled but
never surpassed; and that evening the Indians dispersed Aunt
Eliza's fowls over several square miles of country, so that the
tale of them remaineth incomplete unto this day. Edward himself,
cheering wildly, pursued the big Cochin-China cock till the bird
sank gasping under the drawing-room window, whereat its mistress
stood petrified; and after supper, in the shrubbery, smoked a
half-consumed cigar he had picked up in the road, and declared to
an awe-stricken audience his final, his immitigable, resolve to
go into the army.
The crisis was past, and Edward was saved! . . . And
yet . . . sunt lachrymae rerem . . . to me watching the cigar-
stump alternately pale and glow against the dark background of
laurel, a vision of a tip-tilted nose, of a small head poised
scornfully, seemed to hover on the gathering gloom--seemed to
grow and fade and grow again, like the grin of the Cheshire cat--
pathetically, reproachfully even; and the charms of the baker's
wife slipped from my memory like snow-wreaths in thaw. After
all, Sabina was nowise to blame: why should the child be
punished? To-morrow I would give them the slip, and stroll round
by her garden promiscuous-like, at a time when the farmer was
safe in the rick-yard. If nothing came of it, there was no harm
done; and if on the contrary. . . !
THE BURGLARS
It was much too fine a night to think of going to bed at once,
and so, although the witching hour of nine P.M. had struck,
Edward and I were still leaning out of the open window in our
nightshirts, watching the play of the cedar-branch shadows on the
moonlit lawn, and planning schemes of fresh devilry for the
sunshiny morrow. From below, strains of the jocund piano
declared that the Olympians were enjoying themselves in their
listless, impotent way; for the new curate had been bidden to
dinner that night, and was at the moment unclerically proclaiming
to all the world that he feared no foe. His discordant
vociferations doubtless started a train of thought in Edward's
mind, for the youth presently remarked, a propos of nothing
that had been said before, "I believe the new curate's rather
gone on Aunt Maria."
I scouted the notion. "Why, she's quite old," I said. (She must
have seen some five-and-twenty summers.)
"Of course she is," replied Edward, scornfully. "It's not her,
it's her money he's after, you bet!"
"Didn't know she had any money," I observed timidly.
"Sure to have," said my brother, with confidence. "Heaps and
heaps."
Silence ensued, both our minds being busy with the new situation
thus presented,--mine, in wonderment at this flaw that so often
declared itself in enviable natures of fullest endowment,--in a
grown-up man and a good cricketer, for instance, even as this
curate; Edward's (apparently), in the consideration of how such a
state of things, supposing it existed, could be best turned to
his own advantage.
"Bobby Ferris told me," began Edward in due course, "that there
was a fellow spooning his sister once--"
"What's spooning?" I asked meekly.
"Oh, _I_ dunno," said Edward, indifferently. It's--it's--it's
just a thing they do, you know. And he used to carry notes and
messages and things between 'em, and he got a shilling almost
every time."
"What, from each of 'em?" I innocently inquired.
Edward looked at me with scornful pity. "Girls never have any
money," he briefly explained. "But she did his exercises and got
him out of rows, and told stories for him when he needed it--and
much better ones than he could have made up for himself. Girls
are useful in some ways. So he was living in clover, when
unfortunately they went and quarrelled about something."
"Don't see what that's got to do with it," I said.
"Nor don't I," rejoined Edward. "But anyhow the notes and things
stopped, and so did the shillings. Bobby was fairly cornered,
for he had bought two ferrets on tick, and promised to pay a
shilling a week, thinking the shillings were going on for ever,
the silly young ass. So when the week was up, and he was being
dunned for the shilling, he went off to the fellow and said,
`Your broken-hearted Bella implores you to meet her at sundown,--
by the hollow oak, as of old, be it only for a moment. Do not
fail!' He got all that out of some rotten book, of course.
The fellow looked puzzled and said,--
"`What hollow oak? I don't know any hollow oak.'
"`Perhaps it was the Royal Oak?' said Bobby promptly, 'cos he saw
he had made a slip, through trusting too much to the rotten book;
but this didn't seem to make the fellow any happier."
"Should think not," I said, "the Royal Oak's an awful low sort of
pub."
"I know," said Edward. "Well, at last the fellow said, `I think
I know what she means: the hollow tree in your father's paddock.
It happens to be an elm, but she wouldn't know the difference.
All right: say I'll be there.' Bobby hung about a bit, for he
hadn't got his money. `She was crying awfully,' he said. Then
he got his shilling."
"And wasn't the fellow riled," I inquired, "when he got to the
place and found nothing?"
"He found Bobby," said Edward, indignantly. "Young Ferris was a
gentleman, every inch of him. He brought the fellow another
message from Bella: `I dare not leave the house. My cruel
parents immure me closely If you only knew what I suffer. Your
broken-hearted Bella.' Out of the same rotten book. This made
the fellow a little suspicious,'cos it was the old Ferrises who
had been keen about the thing all through: the fellow, you see,
had tin."
"But what's that got to--" I began again.
"Oh, _I_ dunno," said Edward, impatiently. `I'm telling you
just what Bobby told me. He got suspicious, anyhow, but he
couldn't exactly call Bella's brother a liar, so Bobby escaped
for the time. But when he was in a hole next week, over a stiff
French exercise, and tried the same sort of game on his sister,
she was too sharp for him, and he got caught out. Somehow women
seem more mistrustful than men. They're so beastly suspicious by
nature, you know."
"_I_ know," said I. "But did the two--the fellow and the
sister--make it up afterwards?"
"I don't remember about that," replied Edward, indifferently;
"but Bobby got packed off to school a whole year earlier than his
people meant to send him,--which was just what he wanted. So you
see it all came right in the end!"
I was trying to puzzle out the moral of this story--it was
evidently meant to contain one somewhere--when a flood of golden
lamplight mingled with the moon rays on the lawn, and Aunt Maria
and the new curate strolled out on the grass below us, and took
the direction of a garden seat that was backed by a dense laurel
shrubbery reaching round in a half-circle to the house. Edward
mediated moodily. "If we only knew what they were talking
about," said he, "you'd soon see whether I was right or not.
Look here! Let's send the kid down by the porch to reconnoitre!"
"Harold's asleep," I said; "it seems rather a shame--"
"Oh, rot!" said my brother; "he's the youngest, and he's got to
do as he's told!"
So the luckless Harold was hauled out of bed and given his
sailing-orders. He was naturally rather vexed at being stood up
suddenly on the cold floor, and the job had no particular
interest for him; but he was both staunch and well disciplined.
The means of exit were simple enough. A porch of iron trellis
came up to within easy reach of the window, and was habitually
used by all three of us, when modestly anxious to avoid
public notice. Harold climbed deftly down the porch like a white
rat, and his night gown glimmered a moment on the gravel walk ere
he was lost to sight in the darkness of the shrubbery. A brief
interval of silence ensued, broken suddenly by a sound of
scuffle, and then a shrill, long-drawn squeal, as of metallic
surfaces in friction. Our scout had fallen into the hands of the
enemy!
Indolence alone had made us devolve the task of investigation on
our younger brother. Now that danger had declared itself, there
was no hesitation. In a second we were down the side of the
porch, and crawling Cherokee-wise through the laurels to the back
of the garden-seat. Piteous was the sight that greeted us. Aunt
Maria was on the seat, in a white evening frock, looking--for an
aunt--really quite nice. On the lawn stood an incensed curate,
grasping our small brother by a large ear, which--judging from
the row he was making--seemed on the point of parting company
with the head it adorned. The gruesome noise he was emitting did
not really affect us otherwise than aesthetically. To one who
has tried both, the wail of genuine physical anguish is easy
distinguishable from the pumped-up ad misericordiam
blubber. Harold's could clearly be recognised as belonging to
the latter class. "Now, you young--" (whelp, _I_ think it was,
but Edward stoutly maintains it was devil), said the curate,
sternly; "tell us what you mean by it!"
"Well, leggo of my ear then!" shrilled Harold, "and I'll tell you
the solemn truth!"
"Very well," agreed the curate, releasing him; "now go ahead, and
don't lie more than you can help."
We abode the promised disclosure without the least misgiving; but
even we had hardly given Harold due credit for his fertility of
resource and powers of imagination.
"I had just finished saying my prayers," began that young
gentleman, slowly, "when I happened to look out of the window,
and on the lawn I saw a sight which froze the marrow in my veins!
A burglar was approaching the house with snake-like tread! He
had a scowl and a dark lantern, and he was armed to the teeth!"
We listened with interest. The style, though unlike Harold's
native notes, seemed strangely familiar.
"Go on," said the curate, grimly.
"Pausing in his stealthy career," continued Harold, "he gave a
low whistle. Instantly the signal was responded to, and from the
adjacent shadows two more figures glided forth. The miscreants
were both armed to the teeth."
"Excellent," said the curate; "proceed."
"The robber chief," pursued Harold, warming to his work, "joined
his nefarious comrades, and conversed with them in silent tones.
His expression was truly ferocious, and I ought to have said that
he was armed to the t--"
"There, never mind his teeth," interrupted the curate, rudely;
"there's too much jaw about you altogether. Hurry up and have
done."
"I was in a frightful funk," continued the narrator, warily
guarding his ear with his hand, "but just then the drawing-room
window opened, and you and Aunt Maria came out--I mean emerged.
The burglars vanished silently into the laurels, with horrid
implications!"
The curate looked slightly puzzled. The tale was well sustained,
and certainly circumstantial. After all, the boy might have
really seen something. How was the poor man to know--though
the chaste and lofty diction might have supplied a hint--that
the whole yarn was a free adaptation from the last Penny Dreadful
lent us by the knife-and-boot boy?
"Why did you not alarm the house?" he asked.
"'Cos I was afraid," said Harold, sweetly, "that p'raps they
mightn't believe me!"
"But how did you get down here, you naughty little boy?" put in
Aunt Maria.
Harold was hard pressed--by his own flesh and blood, too!
At that moment Edward touched me on the shoulder and glided off
through the laurels. When some ten yards away he gave a low
whistle. I replied by another. The effect was magical. Aunt
Maria started up with a shriek. Harold gave one startled glance
around, and then fled like a hare, made straight for the back
door, burst in upon the servants at supper, and buried himself in
the broad bosom of the cook, his special ally. The curate faced
the laurels--hesitatingly. But Aunt Maria flung herself on him.
"O Mr. Hodgitts!" I heard her cry, "you are brave! for my sake do
not be rash!" He was not rash. When I peeped out a second
later, the coast was entirely clear.
By this time there were sounds of a household timidly emerging;
and Edward remarked to me that perhaps we had better be off.
Retreat was an easy matter. A stunted laurel gave a leg up on to
the garden wall, which led in its turn to the roof of an out-
house, up which, at a dubious angle, we could crawl to the window
of the box-room. This overland route had been revealed to us one
day by the domestic cat, when hard pressed in the course of an
otter-hunt, in which the cat--somewhat unwillingly--was filling
the title role; and it had proved distinctly useful on
occasions like the present. We were snug in bed--minus some
cuticle from knees and elbows--and Harold, sleepily chewing
something sticky, had been carried up in the arms of the friendly
cook, ere the clamour of the burglar-hunters had died away.
The curate's undaunted demeanour, as reported by Aunt Maria, was
generally supposed to have terrified the burglars into flight,
and much kudos accrued to him thereby. Some days later, however,
when he hid dropped in to afternoon tea, and was making a mild
curatorial joke about the moral courage required for taking the
last piece of bread-and-butter, I felt constrained to remark
dreamily, and as it were to the universe at large, "Mr.
Hodgitts! you are brave! for my sake, do not be rash!"
Fortunately for me, the vicar was also a caller on that day; and
it was always a comparatively easy matter to dodge my long-coated
friend in the open.
A HARVESTING
The year was in its yellowing time, and the face of Nature a
study in old gold. "A field or, semee, with garbs of the same:"
it may be false Heraldry--Nature's generally is--but it correctly
blazons the display that Edward and I considered from the
rickyard gate, Harold was not on in this scene, being stretched
upon the couch of pain; the special disorder stomachic, as usual.
The evening before, Edward, in a fit of unwonted amiability, had
deigned to carve me out a turnip lantern, an art-and-craft he was
peculiarly deft in; and Harold, as the interior of the turnip
flew out in scented fragments under the hollowing knife, had
eaten largely thereof: regarding all such jetsam as his special
perquisite. Now he was dreeing his weird, with such assistance
as the chemist could afford. But Edward and I, knowing that this
particular field was to be carried to-day, were revelling in the
privilege of riding in the empty waggons from the rickyard
back to the sheaves, whence we returned toilfully on foot, to
career it again over the billowy acres in these great galleys of
a stubble sea. It was the nearest approach to sailing that we
inland urchins might compass: and hence it ensued, that such
stirring scenes as Sir Richard Grenville on the Revenge, the
smoke-wreathed Battle of the Nile, and the Death of Nelson, had
all been enacted in turn on these dusty quarter decks, as they
swayed and bumped afield.
Another waggon had shot its load, and was jolting out through the
rickyard gate, as we swung ourselves in, shouting, over its tail.
Edward was the first up, and, as I gained my feet, he clutched me
in a death-grapple. I was a privateersman, he proclaimed, and he
the captain of the British frigate Terpsichore, of--I forget
the precise number of guns. Edward always collared the best
parts to himself; but I was holding my own gallantly, when I
suddenly discovered that the floor we battled on was swarming
with earwigs. Shrieking, I hurled free of him, and rolled over
the tail-board on to the stubble. Edward executed a war-dance of
triumph on the deck of the retreating galleon; but I cared
little for that. I knew HE knew that I wasn't afraid of
him, but that I was--and terribly--of earwigs, "those mortal bugs
o' the field." So I let him disappear, shouting lustily for all
hands to repel boarders, while I strolled inland, down the
village.
There was a touch of adventure in the expedition. This was not
our own village, but a foreign one, distant at least a mile. One
felt that sense of mingled distinction and insecurity which is
familiar to the traveller: distinction, in that folk turned the
head to note you curiously; insecurity, by reason of the ever-
present possibility of missiles on the part of the more juvenile
inhabitants, a class eternally conservative. Elated with
isolation, I went even more nose-in-air than usual: and "even
so," I mused, "might Mungo Park have threaded the trackless
African forest and. . ." Here I plumped against a soft, but
resisting body.
Recalled to my senses by the shock, I fell back in the attitude
every boy under these circumstances instinctively adopts--both
elbows well up over the ears. I found myself facing a tall
elderly man, clean-shaven, clad in well-worn black--a
clergyman evidently; and I noted at once a far-away look in his
eyes, as if they were used to another plane of vision, and could
not instantly focus things terrestrial, being suddenly recalled
thereto. His figure was bent in apologetic protest: "I ask a
thousand pardons, sir," he said; "I am really so very absent-
minded. I trust you will forgive me."
Now most boys would have suspected chaff under this courtly style
of address. I take infinite credit to myself for recognising at
once the natural attitude of a man to whom his fellows were
gentlemen all, neither Jew nor Gentile, clean nor unclean. Of
course, I took the blame on myself; adding, that I was very
absent-minded too,--which was indeed the case.
"I perceive," he said pleasantly, "that we have something in
common. I, an old man, dream dreams; you, a young one, see
visions. Your lot is the happier. And now--" his hand had been
resting all this time on a wicket-gate--"you are hot, it is
easily seen; the day is advanced, Virgo is the Zodiacal sign.
Perhaps I may offer you some poor refreshment, if your
engagements will permit."
My only engagement that afternoon was an arithmetic lesson, and I
had not intended to keep it in any case; so I passed in, while he
held the gate open politely, murmuring "Venit Hesperus ite,
capellae: come, little kid!" and then apologising abjectly for a
familiarity which (he said) was less his than the Roman poet's.
A straight flagged walk led up to the cool-looking old house, and
my host, lingering in his progress at this rose-tree and that,
forgot all about me at least twice, waking up and apologising
humbly after each lapse. During these intervals I put two and
two together, and identified him as the Rector: a bachelor,
eccentric, learned exceedingly, round whom the crust of legend
was already beginning to form; to myself an object of special
awe, in that he was alleged to have written a real book. "Heaps
o' books," Martha, my informant, said; but I knew the exact rate
of discount applicable to Martha's statements.
We passed eventually through a dark hall into a room which struck
me at once as the ideal I had dreamed but failed to find. None
of your feminine fripperies here! None of your chair-backs and
tidies! This man, it was seen, groaned under no aunts. Stout
volumes in calf and vellum lined three sides; books sprawled
or hunched themselves on chairs and tables; books diffused the
pleasant odour of printers' ink and bindings; topping all, a
faint aroma of tobacco cheered and heartened exceedingly, as
under foreign skies the flap and rustle over the wayfarer's head
of the Union Jack--the old flag of emancipation! And in one
corner, book-piled like the rest of the furniture, stood a piano.
This I hailed with a squeal of delight. "Want to strum?"
inquired my friend, as if it was the most natural wish in the
world--his eyes were already straying towards another corner,
where bits of writing-table peeped out from under a sort of
Alpine system of book and foolscap.
"O, but may I?" I asked in doubt. "At home I'm not allowed to--
only beastly exercises!"
"Well, you can strum here, at all events," he replied; and
murmuring absently, Age, dic Latinum, barbite, carmen, he made
his way, mechanically guided as it seemed, to the irresistible
writing-able. In ten seconds he was out of sight and call. A
great book open on his knee, another propped up in front, a score
or so disposed within easy reach, he read and jotted with an
absorption almost passionate. I might have been in Boeotia, for
any consciousness he had of me. So with a light heart I
turned to and strummed.
Those who painfully and with bleeding feet have scaled the crags
of mastery over musical instruments have yet their loss in
this,--that the wild joy of strumming has become a vanished
sense. Their happiness comes from the concord and the relative
value of the notes they handle: the pure, absolute quality and
nature of each note in itself are only appreciated by the
strummer. For some notes have all the sea in them, and some
cathedral bells; others a woodland joyance and a smell of
greenery; in some fauns dance to the merry reed, and even the
grave centaurs peep out from their caves. Some bring moonlight,
and some the deep crimson of a rose's heart; some are blue, some
red, and others will tell of an army with silken standards and
march-music. And throughout all the sequence of suggestion, up
above the little white men leap and peep, and strive against the
imprisoning wires; and all the big rosewood box hums as it were
full of hiving bees.
Spent with the rapture, I paused a moment and caught my friend's
eye over the edge of a folio. "But as for these Germans," he
began abruptly, as if we had been in the middle of a
discussion, "the scholarship is there, I grant you; but the
spark, the fine perception, the happy intuition, where is it?
They get it all from us!"
"They get nothing whatever from US," I said decidedly: the
word German only suggesting Bands, to which Aunt Eliza was
bitterly hostile.
"You think not?" he rejoined, doubtfully, getting up and walking
about the room. "Well, I applaud such fairness and temperance in
so young a critic. They are qualities--in youth--as rare as they
are pleasing. But just look at Schrumpffius, for instance--how
he struggles and wrestles with a simple {GREEK gar} in this very
passage here!"
I peeped fearfully through the open door, half-dreading to see
some sinuous and snark-like conflict in progress on the mat; but
all was still. I saw no trouble at all in the passage, and I
said so.
"Precisely," he cried, delighted. "To you, who possess the
natural scholar's faculty in so happy a degree, there is no
difficulty at all. But to this Schrumpffius--" But here,
luckily for me, in came the housekeeper, a clean-looking woman of
staid aspect.
"Your tea is in the garden," she said, as if she were
correcting a faulty emendation. "I've put some cakes and things
for the little gentleman; and you'd better drink it before it
gets cold."
He waved her off and continued his stride, brandishing an aorist
over my devoted head. The housekeeper waited unmoved till there
fell a moment's break in his descant; and then, "You'd better
drink it before it gets cold," she observed again, impassively.
The wretched man cast a deprecating look at me. "Perhaps a
little tea would be rather nice," he observed, feebly; and to my
great relief he led the way into the garden. I looked about for
the little gentleman, but, failing to discover him, I concluded
he was absent-minded too, and attacked the "cakes and things"
with no misgivings.
After a most successful and most learned tea a something happened
which, small as I was, never quite shook itself out of my memory.
To us at parley in an arbour over the high road, there entered,
slouching into view, a dingy tramp, satellited by a frowsy woman
and a pariah dog; and, catching sight of us, he set up his
professional whine; and I looked at my friend with the heartiest
compassion, for I knew well from Martha--it was common
talk--that at this time of day he was certainly and surely
penniless. Morn by morn he started forth with pockets lined; and
each returning evening found him with never a sou. All this he
proceeded to explain at length to the tramp, courteously and even
shamefacedly, as one who was in the wrong; and at last the
gentleman of the road, realising the hopelessness of his case,
set to and cursed him with gusto, vocabulary, and abandonment.
He reviled his eyes, his features, his limbs, his profession, his
relatives and surroundings; and then slouched off, still oozing
malice and filth. We watched the party to a turn in the road,
where the woman, plainly weary, came to a stop. Her lord, after
some conventional expletives demanded of him by his position,
relieved her of her bundle, and caused her to hang on his arm
with a certain rough kindness of tone, and in action even a dim
approach to tenderness; and the dingy dog crept up for one lick
at her hand.
"See," said my friend, bearing somewhat on my shoulder, "how this
strange thing, this love of ours, lives and shines out in the
unlikeliest of places! You have been in the fields in early
morning? Barren acres, all! But only stoop--catch the light
thwartwise--and all is a silver network of gossamer! So the
fairy filaments of this strange thing underrun and link together
the whole world. Yet it is not the old imperious god of the
fatal bow--{3 GREEK}not that--nor even the placid respectable
{GREEK}--but something still unnamed, perhaps more mysterious,
more divine! Only one must stoop to see it, old fellow, one must
stoop!"
The dew was falling, the dusk closing, as I trotted briskly
homewards down the road. Lonely spaces everywhere, above and
around. Only Hesperus hung in the sky, solitary, pure, ineffably
far-drawn and remote; yet infinitely heartening, somehow, in his
valorous isolation.<113>
SNOWBOUND
Twelfth-night had come and gone, and life next morning seemed a
trifle flat and purposeless. But yester-eve and the mummers were
here! They had come striding into the old kitchen, powdering the
red brick floor with snow from their barbaric bedizenments; and
stamping, and crossing, and declaiming, till all was whirl and
riot and shout. Harold was frankly afraid: unabashed, he buried
himself in the cook's ample bosom. Edward feigned a manly
superiority to illusion, and greeted these awful apparitions
familiarly, as Dick and Harry and Joe. As for me, I was too big
to run, too rapt to resist the magic and surprise. Whence came
these outlanders, breaking in on us with song and ordered masque
and a terrible clashing of wooden swords? And after these, what
strange visitants might we not look for any quiet night, when the
chestnuts popped in the ashes, and the old ghost stories
drew the awe-stricken circle close? Old Merlin, perhaps, "all
furred in black sheep-skins, and a russet gown, with a bow and
arrows, and bearing wild geese in his hand!" Or stately Ogier
the Dane, recalled from Faery, asking his way to the land that
once had need of him! Or even, on some white night, the Snow-
Queen herself, with a chime of sleigh-bells and the patter of
reindeers' feet, with sudden halt at the door flung wide, while
aloft the Northern Lights went shaking attendant spears among the
quiet stars!
This morning, house-bound by the relentless, indefatigable snow,
I was feeling the reaction Edward, on the contrary, being
violently stage struck on this his first introduction to the real
Drama, was striding up and down the floor, proclaiming "Here be
I, King Gearge the Third," in a strong Berkshire accent. Harold,
accustomed, as the youngest, to lonely antics and to sports that
asked no sympathy, was absorbed in "clubmen": a performance
consisting in a measured progress round the room arm-in-arm with
an imaginary companion of reverend years, with occasional halts
at imaginary clubs, where--imaginary steps being leisurely
ascended--imaginary papers were glanced at, imaginary scandal was
discussed with elderly shakings of the head, and--regrettable to
say--imaginary glasses were lifted lipwards. Heaven only knows
how the germ of this dreary pastime first found way into his
small-boyish being. It was his own invention, and he was
proportionately proud of it. Meanwhile, Charlotte and I,
crouched in the window-seat, watched, spell-stricken, the whirl
and eddy and drive of the innumerable snow-flakes, wrapping our
cheery little world in an uncanny uniform, ghastly in line and
hue.
Charlotte was sadly out of spirits. Having "countered" Miss
Smedley at breakfast, during some argument or other, by an apt
quotation from her favourite classic (the Fairy Book) she had
been gently but firmly informed that no such things as fairies
ever really existed. "Do you mean to say it's all lies?" asked
Charlotte, bluntly. Miss Smedley deprecated the use of any such
unladylike words in any connection at all. "These stories had
their origin, my dear," she explained, "in a mistaken
anthropomorphism in the interpretation of nature. But though
we are now too well informed to fall into similar errors,
there are still many beautiful lessons to be learned from these
myths--"
"But how can you learn anything," persisted Charlotte, "from what
doesn't exist?" And she left the table defiant, howbeit
depressed.
"Don't you mind HER," I said, consolingly; "how can she know
anything about it? Why, she can't even throw a stone properly!"
"Edward says they're all rot, too," replied Charlotte,
doubtfully.
Edward says everything's rot," I explained, "now he thinks he's
going into the Army. If a thing's in a book it MUST be true,
so that settles it!"
Charlotte looked almost reassured. The room was quieter now, for
Edward had got the dragon down and was boring holes in him with a
purring sound Harold was ascending the steps of the Athenaeum
with a jaunty air--suggestive rather of the Junior Carlton.
Outside, the tall elm-tops were hardly to be seen through the
feathery storm. "The sky's a-falling," quoted Charlotte, softly;
"I must go and tell the king." The quotation suggested a fairy
story, and I offered to read to her, reaching out for the
book. But the Wee Folk were under a cloud; sceptical hints had
embittered the chalice. So I was fain to fetch Arthur--second
favourite with Charlotte for his dames riding errant, and an easy
first with us boys for his spear-splintering crash of tourney and
hurtle against hopeless odds. Here again, however, I proved
unfortunate,--what ill-luck made the book open at the sorrowful
history of Balin and Balan? "And he vanished anon," I read: "and
so he heard an horne blow, as it had been the death of a beast.
`That blast,' said Balin, `is blowen for me, for I am the prize,
and yet am I not dead.'" Charlotte began to cry: she knew the
rest too well. I shut the book in despair. Harold emerged from
behind the arm-chair. He was sucking his thumb (a thing which
members of the Reform are seldom seen to do), and he stared wide-
eyed at his tear stained sister. Edward put off his histrionics,
and rushed up to her as the consoler--a new part for him.
"I know a jolly story," he began. "Aunt Eliza told it me. It
was when she was somewhere over in that beastly abroad"--(he had
once spent a black month of misery at Dinan)--"and there was
a fellow there who had got two storks. And one stork died--it
was the she-stork." ("What did it die of?" put in Harold.) "And
the other stork was quite sorry, and moped, and went on, and got
very miserable. So they looked about and found a duck, and
introduced it to the stork. The duck was a drake, but the stork
didn't mind, and they loved each other and were as jolly as could
be. By and by another duck came along,--a real she-duck this
time,--and when the drake saw her he fell in love, and left the
stork, and went and proposed to the duck: for she was very
beautiful. But the poor stork who was left, he said nothing at
all to anybody, but just pined and pined and pined away, till one
morning he was found quite dead! But the ducks lived happily
ever afterwards!"
This was Edward's idea of a jolly story! Down again went the
corners of poor Charlotte's mouth. Really Edward's stupid
inability to see the real point in anything was TOO annoying!
It was always so. Years before, it being necessary to prepare
his youthful mind for a domestic event that might lead to awkward
questionings at a time when there was little leisure to invent
appropriate answers, it was delicately inquired of him
whether he would like to have a little brother, or perhaps a
little sister? He considered the matter carefully in all its
bearings, and finally declared for a Newfoundland pup. Any boy
more "gleg at the uptak" would have met his parents half-way, and
eased their burden. As it was, the matter had to be approached
all over again from a fresh standpoint. And now, while Charlotte
turned away sniffingly, with a hiccough that told of an
overwrought soul, Edward, unconscious (like Sir Isaac's Diamond)
of the mischief he had done, wheeled round on Harold with a
shout.
"I want a live dragon," he announced: "you've got to be my
dragon!"
"Leave me go, will you?" squealed Harold, struggling stoutly.
"I'm playin' at something else. How can I be a dragon and belong
to all the clubs?"
"But wouldn't you like to be a nice scaly dragon, all green,"
said Edward, trying persuasion, "with a curly tail and red eyes,
and breathing real smoke and fire?"
Harold wavered an instant: Pall-Mall was still strong in him.
The next he was grovelling on the floor. No saurian ever
swung a tail so scaly and so curly as his. Clubland was a
thousand years away. With horrific pants he emitted smokiest
smoke and fiercest fire.
"Now I want a Princess," cried Edward, clutching Charlotte
ecstatically; "and YOU can be the doctor, and heal me from the
dragon's deadly wound."
Of all professions I held the sacred art of healing in worst
horror and contempt. Cataclysmal memories of purge and draught
crowded thick on me, and with Charlotte--who courted no barren
honours--I made a break for the door. Edward did likewise, and
the hostile forces clashed together on the mat, and for a brief
space things were mixed and chaotic and Arthurian. The silvery
sound of the luncheon-bell restored an instant peace, even in the
teeth of clenched antagonisms like ours. The Holy Grail itself,
"sliding athwart a sunbeam," never so effectually stilled a riot
of warring passions into sweet and quiet accord.
WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT
Edward was standing ginger-beer like a gentleman, happening, as
the one that had last passed under the dentist's hands, to be the
capitalist of the flying hour. As in all well-regulated
families, the usual tariff obtained in ours,--half-a-crown a
tooth; one shilling only if the molar were a loose one. This
one, unfortunately--in spite of Edward's interested affectation
of agony--had been shaky undisguised; but the event was good
enough to run to ginger-beer. As financier, however, Edward had
claimed exemption from any servile duties of procurement, and had
swaggered about the garden while I fetched from the village post-
office, and Harold stole a tumbler from the pantry. Our
preparations complete, we were sprawling on the lawn; the
staidest and most self respecting of the rabbits had been let
loose to grace the feast, and was lopping demurely about the
grass, selecting the juiciest plantains; while Selina, as
the eldest lady present, was toying, in her affected feminine
way, with the first full tumbler, daintily fishing for bits of
broken cork.
"Hurry up, can't you?" growled our host; "what are you girls
always so beastly particular for?"
"Martha says," explained Harold (thirsty too, but still just),
"that if you swallow a bit of cork, it swells, and it swells, and
it swells inside you, till you--"
"O bosh!" said Edward, draining the glass with a fine pretence of
indifference to consequences, but all the same (as I noticed)
dodging the floating cork-fragments with skill and judgment.
"O, it's all very well to say bosh," replied Harold, nettled;
"but every one knows it's true but you. Why, when Uncle Thomas
was here last, and they got up a bottle of wine for him, he took
just one tiny sip out of his glass, and then he said, `Poo, my
goodness, that's corked!' And he wouldn't touch it. And they
had to get a fresh bottle up. The funny part was, though, I
looked in his glass afterwards, when it was brought out into the
passage, and there wasn't any cork in it at all! So I drank
it all off, and it was very good!"
"You'd better be careful, young man!" said his elder brother,
regarding him severely. "D' you remember that night when the
Mummers were here, and they had mulled port, and you went round
and emptied all the glasses after they had gone away?"
"Ow! I did feel funny that night," chuckled Harold. "Thought the
house was comin' down, it jumped about so; and Martha had to
carry me up to bed, 'cos the stairs was goin' all waggity!"
We gazed searchingly at our graceless junior; but it was clear
that he viewed the matter in the light of a phenomenon rather
than of a delinquency.
A third bottle was by this time circling; and Selina, who had
evidently waited for it to reach her, took a most unfairly long
pull, and then jumping up and shaking out her frock, announced
that she was going for a walk. Then she fled like a hare; for it
was the custom of our Family to meet with physical coercion any
independence of action in individuals.
"She's off with those Vicarage girls again," said Edward,
regarding Selina's long black legs twinkling down the path. "She
goes out with them every day now; and as soon as ever they start,
all their heads go together and they chatter, chatter, chatter
the whole blessed time! I can't make out what they find to talk
about. They never stop; it's gabble, gabble, gabble right along,
like a nest of young rooks!"
"P'raps they talk about birds'-eggs," I suggested sleepily (the
sun was hot, the turf soft, the ginger-beer potent); "and about
ships, and buffaloes, and desert islands; and why rabbits have
white tails; and whether they'd sooner have a schooner or a
cutter; and what they'll be when they're men--at least, I mean
there's lots of things to talk about, if you WANT to talk."
"Yes; but they don't talk about those sort of things at all,"
persisted Edward. "How CAN they? They don't KNOW
anything; they can't DO anything--except play the piano, and
nobody would want to talk about THAT; and they don't care
about anything--anything sensible, I mean. So what DO they
talk about?"
"I asked Martha once," put in Harold; "and she said, `Never
YOU mind; young ladies has lots of things to talk about
that young gentlemen can't understand.'"
"I don't believe it," Edward growled.
"Well, that's what she SAID, anyway," rejoined Harold,
indifferently. The subject did not seem to him of first-class
importance, and it was hindering the circulation of the ginger-
beer.
We heard the click of the front-gate. Through a gap in the hedge
we could see the party setting off down the road. Selina was in
the middle: a Vicarage girl had her by either arm; their heads
were together, as Edward had described; and the clack of their
tongues came down the breeze like the busy pipe of starlings on a
bright March morning.
"What DO they talk about, Charlotte?" I inquired, wishing to
pacify Edward. "You go out with them sometimes."
"I don't know," said poor Charlotte, dolefully. "They make me
walk behind, 'cos they say I'm too little, and mustn't hear. And
I DO want to so," she added.
"When any lady comes to see Aunt Eliza," said Harold, "they both
talk at once all the time. And yet each of 'em seems to hear
what the other one's saying. I can't make out how they do
it. Grown-up people are so clever!"
"The Curate's the funniest man," I remarked. "He's always saying
things that have no sense in them at all, and then laughing at
them as if they were jokes. Yesterday, when they asked him if
he'd have some more tea he said `Once more unto the breach, dear
friends, once more,' and then sniggered all over. I didn't see
anything funny in that. And then somebody asked him about his
button-hole and he said `'Tis but a little faded flower,' and
exploded again. I thought it very stupid."
"O HIM," said Edward contemptuously: "he can't help it, you
know; it's a sort of way he's got. But it's these girls I can't
make out. If they've anything really sensible to talk about, how
is it nobody knows what it is? And if they haven't--and we know
they CAN'T have, naturally--why don't they shut up their jaw?
This old rabbit here--HE doesn't want to talk. He's got
something better to do." And Edward aimed a ginger-beer cork at
the unruffled beast, who never budged.
"O but rabbits DO talk," interposed Harold. "I've
watched them often in their hutch. They put their heads together
and their noses go up and down, just like Selina's and the
Vicarage girls'. Only of course I can t hear what they're
saying."
"Well, if they do," said Edward, unwillingly, "I'll bet they
don't talk such rot as those girls do!"--which was ungenerous, as
well as unfair; for it had not yet transpired--nor has it to this
day--WHAT Selina and her friends talked about.
THE ARGONAUTS
The advent of strangers, of whatever sort, into our circle, had
always been a matter of grave dubiety and suspicion; indeed, it
was generally a signal for retreat into caves and fastnesses of
the earth, into unthreaded copses or remote outlying cowsheds,
whence we were only to be extricated by wily nursemaids, rendered
familiar by experience with our secret runs and refuges. It was
not surprising therefore that the heroes of classic legend, when
first we made their acquaintance, failed to win our entire
sympathy at once. "Confidence," says somebody, "is a plant of
slow growth;" and these stately dark-haired demi-gods, with names
hard to master and strange accoutrements, had to win a citadel
already strongly garrisoned with a more familiar soldiery. Their
chill foreign goddesses had no such direct appeal for us as the
mocking malicious fairies and witches of the North; we missed the
pleasant alliance of the animal--the fox who spread the
bushiest of tails to convey us to the enchanted castle, the frog
in the well, the raven who croaked advice from the tree; and--to
Harold especially--it seemed entirely wrong that the hero should
ever be other than the youngest brother of three. This belief,
indeed, in the special fortune that ever awaited the youngest
brother, as such,--the "Borough-English" of Faery,--had been of
baleful effect on Harold, producing a certain self-conceit and
perkiness that called for physical correction. But even in our
admonishment we were on his side; and as we distrustfully eyed
these new arrivals, old Saturn himself seemed something of a
parvenu.
Even strangers, however, if they be good fellows at heart,
may develop into sworn comrades; and these gay swordsmen, after
all, were of the right stuff. Perseus, with his cap of darkness
and his wonderful sandals, was not long in winging his way to our
hearts; Apollo knocked at Admetus' gate in something of the right
fairy fashion; Psyche brought with her an orthodox palace of
magic, as well as helpful birds and friendly ants. Ulysses, with
his captivating shifts and strategies, broke down the final
barrier, and hence forth the band was adopted and admitted
into our freemasonry.
I had been engaged in chasing Farmer Larkin's calves--his
special pride--round the field, just to show the man we hadn't
forgotten him, and was returning through the kitchen-garden with
a conscience at peace with all men, when I happened upon Edward,
grubbing for worms in the dung-heap. Edward put his worms into
his hat, and we strolled along together, discussing high matters
of state. As we reached the tool-shed, strange noises arrested
our steps; looking in, we perceived Harold, alone, rapt,
absorbed, immersed in the special game of the moment. He was
squatting in an old pig-trough that had been brought in to be
tinkered; and as he rhapsodised, anon he waved a shovel over his
head, anon dug it into the ground with the action of those who
would urge Canadian canoes. Edward strode in upon him.
"What rot are you playing at now?" he demanded sternly.
Harold flushed up, but stuck to his pig-trough like a man.
"I'm Jason," he replied, defiantly; "and this is the Argo. The
other fellows are here too, only you can't see them; and
we're just going through the Hellespont, so don't you come
bothering." And once more he plied the wine-dark sea.
Edward kicked the pig-trough contemptuously.
"Pretty sort of Argo you've got!" said he.
Harold began to get annoyed. "I can't help it," he replied.
"It's the best sort of Argo I can manage, and it's all right if
you only pretend enough; but YOU never could pretend one bit."
Edward reflected. "Look here," he said presently; "why shouldn't
we get hold of Farmer Larkin's boat, and go right away up the
river in a real Argo, and look for Medea, and the Golden Fleece,
and everything? And I'll tell you what, I don't mind your being
Jason, as you thought of it first."
Harold tumbled out of the trough in the excess of his emotion.
"But we aren't allowed to go on the water by ourselves," he
cried.
"No," said Edward, with fine scorn: "we aren't allowed; and Jason
wasn't allowed either, I daresay--but he WENT!"
Harold's protest had been merely conventional: he only
wanted to be convinced by sound argument. The next question was,
How about the girls? Selina was distinctly handy in a boat: the
difficulty about her was, that if she disapproved of the
expedition--and, morally considered, it was not exactly a
Pilgrim's Progress--she might go and tell; she having just
reached that disagreeable age when one begins to develop a
conscience. Charlotte, for her part, had a habit of day-dreams,
and was as likely as not to fall overboard in one of her rapt
musings. To be sure, she would dissolve in tears when she found
herself left out; but even that was better than a watery tomb.
In fine, the public voice--and rightly, perhaps--was against the
admission of the skirted animal: spite the precedent of Atalanta,
who was one of the original crew.
"And now," said Edward, "who's to ask Farmer Larkin? I can't;
last time I saw him he said when he caught me again he'd smack my
head. YOU'LL have to."
I hesitated, for good reasons. "You know those precious calves
of his?" I began.
Edward understood at once. "All right," he said; "then we won't
ask him at all. It doesn't much matter. He'd only be
annoyed, and that would be a pity. Now let's set off."
We made our way down to the stream, and captured the farmer's
boat without let or hindrance, the enemy being engaged in the
hayfields. This "river," so called, could never be discovered by
us in any atlas; indeed our Argo could hardly turn in it without
risk of shipwreck. But to us 't was Orinoco, and the cities of
the world dotted its shores. We put the Argo's head up stream,
since that led away from the Larkin province; Harold was
faithfully permitted to be Jason, and we shared the rest of the
heroes among us. Then launching forth from Thessaly, we threaded
the Hellespont with shouts, breathlessly dodged the Clashing
Rocks, and coasted under the lee of the Siren-haunted isles.
Lemnos was fringed with meadow-sweet, dog-roses dotted the Mysian
shore, and the cheery call of the haymaking folk sounded along
the coast of Thrace.
After some hour or two's seafaring, the prow of the Argo embedded
itself in the mud of a landing-place, plashy with the tread of
cows and giving on to a lane that led towards the smoke of human
habitations. Edward jumped ashore, alert for exploration, and
strode off without waiting to see if we followed; but I
lingered behind, having caught sight of a moss-grown water-gate
hard by, leading into a garden that from the brooding quiet
lapping it round, appeared to portend magical possibilities.
Indeed the very air within seemed stiller, as we circumspectly
passed through the gate; and Harold hung back shamefaced, as if
we were crossing the threshold of some private chamber, and
ghosts of old days were hustling past us. Flowers there were,
everywhere; but they drooped and sprawled in an overgrowth
hinting at indifference; the scent of heliotrope possessed the
place, as if actually hung in solid festoons from tall untrimmed
hedge to hedge. No basket-chairs, shawls, or novels dotted the
lawn with colour; and on the garden-front of the house behind,
the blinds were mostly drawn. A grey old sun-dial dominated the
central sward, and we moved towards it instinctively, as the most
human thing visible. An antique motto ran round it, and with
eyes and fingers we struggled at the decipherment.
"TIME: TRYETH: TROTHE:" spelt out Harold at last. "I wonder what
that means?"
I could not enlighten him, nor meet his further questions as to
the inner mechanism of the thing, and where you wound it up.
I had seen these instruments before, of course, but had never
fully understood their manner of working.
We were still puzzling our heads over the contrivance, when I
became aware that Medea herself was moving down the path from the
house. Dark-haired, supple, of a figure lightly poised and
swayed, but pale and listless--I knew her at once, and having
come out to find her, naturally felt no surprise at all. But
Harold, who was trying to climb on the top of the sun-dial,
having a cat-like fondness for the summit of things, started and
fell prone, barking his chin and filling the pleasance with
lamentation.
Medea skimmed the ground swallow-like, and in a moment was on her
knees comforting him,--wiping the dirt out of his chin with her
own dainty handkerchief,--and vocal with soft murmur of
consolation.
"You needn't take on so about him," I observed, politely. "He'll
cry for just one minute, and then he'll be all right."
My estimate was justified. At the end of his regulation time
Harold stopped crying suddenly, like a clock that had struck its
hour; and with a serene and cheerful countenance wriggled
out of Medea's embrace, and ran for a stone to throw at an
intrusive blackbird.
"O you boys!" cried Medea, throwing wide her arms with
abandonment. "Where have you dropped from? How dirty you are!
I've been shut up here for a thousand years, and all that time
I've never seen any one under a hundred and fifty! Let's play at
something, at once!"
"Rounders is a good game," I suggested. "Girls can play at
rounders. And we could serve up to the sun-dial here. But you
want a bat and a ball, and some more people."
She struck her hands together tragically. "I haven't a bat," she
cried, "or a ball, or more people, or anything sensible whatever.
Never mind; let's play at hide-and-seek in the kitchen garden.
And we'll race there, up to that walnut-tree; I haven't run for a
century!"
She was so easy a victor, nevertheless, that I began to doubt, as
I panted behind, whether she had not exaggerated her age by a
year or two. She flung herself into hide-and-seek with all the
gusto and abandonment of the true artist, and as she flitted
away and reappeared, flushed and laughing divinely, the pale
witch-maiden seemed to fall away from her, and she moved rather
as that other girl I had read about, snatched from fields of
daffodil to reign in shadow below, yet permitted once again to
visit earth, and light, and the frank, caressing air.
Tired at last, we strolled back to the old sundial, and Harold,
who never relinquished a problem unsolved, began afresh, rubbing
his finger along the faint incisions, "Time tryeth trothe.
Please, I want to know what that means."
Medea's face drooped low over the sun-dial, till it was almost
hidden in her fingers. "That's what I'm here for," she said
presently, in quite a changed, low voice. "They shut me up
here--they think I'll forget--but I never will--never, never!
And he, too--but I don't know--it is so long--I don't know!"
Her face was quite hidden now. There was silence again in the
old garden. I felt clumsily helpless and awkward; beyond a vague
idea of kicking Harold, nothing remedial seemed to suggest
itself.
None of us had noticed the approach of another she-creature--one
of the angular and rigid class--how different from our dear
comrade! The years Medea had claimed might well have belonged to
her; she wore mittens, too--a trick I detested in woman. "Lucy!"
she said, sharply, in a tone with AUNT writ large over it; and
Medea started up guiltily.
"You've been crying," said the newcomer, grimly regarding her
through spectacles. "And pray who are these exceedingly dirty
little boys?"
"Friends of mine, aunt," said Medea, promptly, with forced
cheerfulness. "I--I've known them a long time. I asked them to
come."
The aunt sniffed suspiciously. "You must come indoors, dear,"
she said, "and lie down. The sun will give you a headache. And
you little boys had better run away home to your tea. Remember,
you should not come to pay visits without your nursemaid."
Harold had been tugging nervously at my jacket for some time, and
I only waited till Medea turned and kissed a white hand to us as
she was led away. Then I ran. We gained the boat in safety; and
"What an old dragon!" said Harold.
"Wasn't she a beast!" I replied. "Fancy the sun giving any one a
headache! But Medea was a real brick. Couldn't we carry her
off?"
"We could if Edward was here," said Harold, confidently.
The question was, What had become of that defaulting hero? We
were not left long in doubt. First, there came down the lane the
shrill and wrathful clamour of a female tongue, then Edward,
running his best, and then an excited woman hard on his heel.
Edward tumbled into the bottom of the boat, gasping, "Shove her
off!" And shove her off we did, mightily, while the dame abused
us from the bank in the self same accents in which Alfred hurled
defiance at the marauding Dane.
"That was just like a bit out of Westward Ho!" I remarked
approvingly, as we sculled down the stream. "But what had you
been doing to her?"
"Hadn't been doing anything," panted Edward, still breathless.
"I went up into the village and explored, and it was a very nice
one, and the people were very polite. And there was a
blacksmith's forge there, and they were shoeing horses, and
the hoofs fizzled and smoked, and smelt so jolly! I stayed there
quite a long time. Then I got thirsty, so I asked that old woman
for some water, and while she was getting it her cat came out of
the cottage, and looked at me in a nasty sort of way, and said
something I didn't like. So I went up to it just to--to teach it
manners, and somehow or other, next minute it was up an apple-
tree, spitting, and I was running down the lane with that old
thing after me."
Edward was so full of his personal injuries that there was no
interesting him in Medea at all. Moreover, the evening was
closing in, and it was evident that this cutting-out expedition
must be kept for another day. As we neared home, it gradually
occurred to us that perhaps the greatest danger was yet to come;
for the farmer must have missed his boat ere now, and would
probably be lying in wait for us near the landing-place. There
was no other spot admitting of debarcation on the home side; if
we got out on the other, and made for the bridge, we should
certainly be seen and cut off. Then it was that I blessed my
stars that our elder brother<149> was with us that day,--he might
be little good at pretending, but in grappling with the stern
facts of life he had no equal. Enjoining silence, he waited till
we were but a little way from the fated landing-place, and then
brought us in to the opposite bank. We scrambled out
noiselessly, and--the gathering darkness favouring us--crouched
behind a willow, while Edward pushed off the empty boat with his
foot. The old Argo, borne down by the gentle current, slid and
grazed along the rushy bank; and when she came opposite the
suspected ambush, a stream of imprecation told us that our
precaution had not been wasted. We wondered, as we listened,
where Farmer Larkin, who was bucolically bred and reared, had
acquired such range and wealth of vocabulary. Fully realising at
last that his boat was derelict, abandoned, at the mercy of wind
and wave,--as well as out of his reach,--he strode away to the
bridge, about a quarter of a mile further down; and as soon as we
heard his boots clumping on the planks, we nipped out, recovered
the craft, pulled across, and made the faithful vessel fast to
her proper moorings. Edward was anxious to wait and exchange
cour<150>tesies and compliments with the disappointed farmer,
when he should confront us on the opposite bank; but wiser
counsels prevailed. It was possible that the piracy was not yet
laid at our particular door: Ulysses, I reminded him, had reason
to regret a similar act of bravado, and--were he here--would
certainly advise a timely retreat. Edward held but a low opinion
of me as a counsellor; but he had a very solid respect for
Ulysses.
THE ROMAN ROAD
ALL the roads of our neighbourhood were cheerful and friendly,
having each of them pleasant qualities of their own; but this one
seemed different from the others in its masterful suggestion of a
serious purpose, speeding you along with a strange uplifting of
the heart. The others tempted chiefly with their treasures of
hedge and ditch; the rapt surprise of the first lords-and-ladies,
the rustle of a field-mouse, splash of a frog; while cool noses
of brother-beasts were pushed at you through gate or gap. A
loiterer you had need to be, did you choose one of them,--so many
were the tiny hands thrust out to detain you, from this side and
that. But this other was of a sterner sort, and even in its
shedding off of bank and hedgerow as it marched straight and full
for the open downs, it seemed to declare its contempt for
adventitious t | |
