In the matter of general culture and attainments, we youngsters stood on
pretty level ground. True, it was always happening that one of us would
be singled out at any moment, freakishly, and without regard to his own
preferences, to wrestle with the inflections of some idiotic language
long rightly dead; while another, from some fancied artistic tendency
which always failed to justify itself, might be told off without warning
to hammer out scales and exercises, and to bedew the senseless keys with
tears of weariness or of revolt. But in subjects common to either sex,
and held to be necessary even for him whose ambition soared no higher
than to crack a whip in a circus-ring--in geography, for instance,
arithmetic, or the weary doings of kings and queens--each would have
scorned to excel. And, indeed, whatever our individual gifts, a general
dogged determination to shirk and to evade kept us all at much the same
dead level,--a level of Ignorance tempered by insubordination.
Fortunately there existed a wide range of subjects, of healthier tone
than those already enumerated, in which we were free to choose for
ourselves, and which we would have scorned to consider education; and in
these we freely followed each his own particular line, often attaining
an amount of special knowledge which struck our ignorant elders as
simply uncanny. For Edward, the uniforms, accoutrements, colours,
and mottoes of the regiments composing the British Army had a special
glamour. In the matter of facings he was simply faultless; among
chevrons, badges, medals, and stars, he moved familiarly; he even knew
the names of most of the colonels in command; and he would squander
sunny hours prone on the lawn, heedless of challenge from bird or beast,
poring over a tattered Army List. My own accomplishment was of another
character--took, as it seemed to me, a wider and a more untrammelled
range. Dragoons might have swaggered in Lincoln green, riflemen might
have donned sporrans over tartan trews, without exciting notice or
comment from me. But did you seek precise information as to the fauna of
the American continent, then you had come to the right shop. Where and
why the bison “wallowed”; how beaver were to be trapped and wild turkeys
stalked; the grizzly and how to handle him, and the pretty pressing
ways of the constrictor,--in fine, the haunts and the habits of all that
burrowed, strutted, roared, or wriggled between the Atlantic and the
Pacific,--all this knowledge I took for my province. By the others my
equipment was fully recognized. Supposing a book with a bear-hunt in
it made its way into the house, and the atmosphere was electric with
excitement; still, it was necessary that I should first decide whether
the slot had been properly described and properly followed up, ere the
work could be stamped with full approval. A writer might have won
fame throughout the civilized globe for his trappers and his realistic
backwoods, and all went for nothing. If his pemmican were not properly
compounded I damned his achievement, and it was heard no more of.
Harold was hardly old enough to possess a special subject of his own. He
had his instincts, indeed, and at bird's-nesting they almost amounted to
prophecy. Where we others only suspected eggs, surmised possible eggs,
hinted doubtfully at eggs in the neighbourhood, Harold went straight for
the right bush, bough, or hole as if he carried a divining-rod. But this
faculty belonged to the class of mere gifts, and was not to be ranked
with Edward's lore regarding facings, and mine as to the habits of
prairie-dogs, both gained by painful study and extensive travel in those
“realms of gold,” the Army List and Ballantyne.
Selina's subject, quite unaccountably, happened to be naval history.
There is no laying down rules as to subjects; you just possess them--or
rather, they possess you--and their genesis or protoplasm is rarely to
be tracked down. Selina had never so much as seen the sea; but for
that matter neither had I ever set foot on the American continent,
the by-ways of which I knew so intimately. And just as I, if set down
without warning in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, would have been
perfectly at home, so Selina, if a genie had dropped her suddenly on
Portsmouth Hard, could have given points to most of its frequenters.
From the days of Blake down to the death of Nelson (she never
condescended further) Selina had taken spiritual part in every notable
engagement of the British Navy; and even in the dark days when she had
to pick up skirts and flee, chased by an ungallant De Ruyter or Van
Tromp, she was yet cheerful in the consciousness that ere long she would
be gleefully hammering the fleets of the world, in the glorious times
to follow. When that golden period arrived, Selina was busy indeed; and,
while loving best to stand where the splinters were flying the thickest,
she was also a careful and critical student of seamanship and of
maneuver. She knew the order in which the great line-of-battle ships
moved into action, the vessels they respectively engaged, the moment
when each let go its anchor, and which of them had a spring on its cable
(while not understanding the phrase, she carefully noted the fact);
and she habitually went into an engagement on the quarter-deck of the
gallant ship that reserved its fire the longest.
At the time of Selina's weird seizure I was unfortunately away from
home, on a loathsome visit to an aunt; and my account is therefore
feebly compounded from hearsay. It was an absence I never ceased to
regret--scoring it up, with a sense of injury, against the aunt. There
was a splendid uselessness about the whole performance that specially
appealed to my artistic sense. That it should have been Selina, too,
who should break out this way--Selina, who had just become a regular
subscriber to the “Young Ladies' Journal,” and who allowed herself to
be taken out to strange teas with an air of resignation palpably
assumed--this was a special joy, and served to remind me that much of
this dreaded convention that was creeping over us might be, after
all, only veneer. Edward also was absent, getting licked into shape at
school; but to him the loss was nothing. With his stern practical bent
he wouldn't have seen any sense in it--to recall one of his favourite
expressions. To Harold, however, for whom the gods had always cherished
a special tenderness, it was granted, not only to witness, but also,
priestlike, to feed the sacred fire itself. And if at the time he paid
the penalty exacted by the sordid unimaginative ones who temporarily
rule the roast, he must ever after, one feels sure, have carried inside
him some of the white gladness of the acolyte who, greatly privileged,
has been permitted to swing a censer at the sacring of the very Mass.
October was mellowing fast, and with it the year itself; full of tender
hints, in woodland and hedgerow, of a course well-nigh completed. From
all sides that still afternoon you caught the quick breathing and sob
of the runner nearing the goal. Preoccupied and possessed, Selina had
strayed down the garden and out into the pasture beyond, where, on a
bit of rising ground that dominated the garden on one side and the downs
with the old coach-road on the other, she had cast herself down to chew
the cud of fancy. There she was presently joined by Harold, breathless
and very full of his latest grievance.
“I asked him not to,” he burst out. “I said if he'd only please wait a
bit and Edward would be back soon, and it couldn't matter to him, and
the pig wouldn't mind, and Edward'd be pleased and everybody'd be happy.
But he just said he was very sorry, but bacon didn't wait for nobody.
So I told him he was a regular beast, and then I came away. And--and I
b'lieve they're doing it now!”
“Yes, he's a beast,” agreed Selina, absently. She had forgotten all
about the pig-killing. Harold kicked away a freshly thrown-up mole-hill,
and prodded down the hole with a stick. From the direction of Farmer
Larkin's demesne came a long-drawn note of sorrow, a thin cry and
appeals telling that the stout soul of a black Berkshire pig was already
faring down the stony track to Hades.
“D' you know what day it is?” said Selina presently, in a low voice,
looking far away before her.
Harold did not appear to know, nor yet to care. He had laid open his
mole-run for a yard or so, and was still grubbing at it absorbedly.
“It's Trafalgar Day,” went on Selina, trancedly; “Trafalgar Day--and
nobody cares!”
Something in her tone told Harold that he was not behaving quite
becomingly. He didn't exactly know in what manner; still, he abandoned
his mole-hunt for a more courteous attitude of attention.
“Over there,” resumed Selina--she was gazing out in the direction of the
old highroad--“over there the coaches used to go by. Uncle Thomas was
telling me about it the other day. And the people used to watch for 'em
coming, to tell the time by, and p'r'aps to get their parcels. And one
morning--they wouldn't be expecting anything different--one morning,
first there would be a cloud of dust, as usual, and then the coach would
come racing by, and then they would know! For the coach would be dressed
in laurel, all laurel from stem to stern! And the coachman would be
wearing laurel, and the guard would be wearing laurel; and then they
would know, then they would know!”
Harold listened in respectful silence. He would much rather have been
hunting the mole, who must have been a mile away by this time if he had
his wits about him. But he had all the natural instincts of a
gentleman; of whom it is one of the principal marks, if not the complete
definition, never to show signs of being bored.
Selina rose to her feet, and paced the turf restlessly with a short
quarter-deck walk.
“Why can't we do something?” she burst out presently. “He--he did
everything--why can't we do anything for him?”
“Who did everything?” inquired Harold, meekly. It was useless wasting
further longings on that mole. Like the dead, he travelled fast.
“Why, Nelson, of course,” said Selina, shortly, still looking restlessly
around for help or suggestion.
“But he's--he's dead, isn't he?” asked Harold, slightly puzzled.
“What's that got to do with it?” retorted his sister, resuming her
caged-lion promenade.
Harold was somewhat taken aback. In the case of the pig, for instance,
whose last outcry had now passed into stillness, he had considered the
chapter as finally closed. Whatever innocent mirth the holidays might
hold in store for Edward, that particular pig, at least, would not be a
contributor. And now he was given to understand that the situation had
not materially changed! He would have to revise his ideas, it seemed.
Sitting up on end, he looked towards the garden for assistance in the
task. Thence, even as he gazed, a tiny column of smoke rose straight up
into the still air. The gardener had been sweeping that afternoon, and
now, an unconscious priest, was offering his sacrifice of autumn leaves
to the calm-eyed goddess of changing hues and chill forebodings who was
moving slowly about the land that golden afternoon. Harold was up and
off in a moment, forgetting Nelson, forgetting the pig, the mole, the
Larkin betrayal, and Selina's strange fever of conscience. Here was
fire, real fire, to play with, and that was even better than messing
with water, or remodelling the plastic surface of the earth. Of all the
toys the world provides for right-minded persons, the original elements
rank easily the first.
But Selina sat on where she was, her chin on her fists; and her fancies
whirled and drifted, here and there, in curls and eddies, along with the
smoke she was watching. As the quick-footed dusk of the short October
day stepped lightly over the garden, little red tongues of fire might
be seen to leap and vanish in the smoke. Harold, anon staggering under
armfuls of leaves, anon stoking vigorously, was discernible only at
fitful intervals. It was another sort of smoke that the inner eye of
Selina was looking upon,--a smoke that hung in sullen banks round the
masts and the hulls of the fighting ships; a smoke from beneath which
came thunder and the crash and the splinter-rip, the shout of the
boarding-party, the choking sob of the gunner stretched by his gun; a
smoke from out of which at last she saw, as through a riven pall, the
radiant spirit of the Victor, crowned with the coronal of a perfect
death, leap in full assurance up into the ether that Immortals breathe.
The dusk was glooming towards darkness when she rose and moved slowly
down towards the beckoning fire; something of the priestess in her
stride, something of the devotee in the set purpose of her eye.
The leaves were well alight by this time, and Harold had just added an
old furze bush, which flamed and crackled stirringly.
“Go 'n' get some more sticks,” ordered Selina, “and shavings, 'n' chunks
of wood, 'n' anything you can find. Look here--in the kitchen-garden
there 's a pile of old pea-sticks. Fetch as many as you can carry, and
then go back and bring some more!”
“But I say,--” began Harold, amazedly, scarce knowing his sister, and
with a vision of a frenzied gardener, pea-stickless and threatening
retribution.
“Go and fetch 'em quick!” shouted Selina, stamping with impatience.
Harold ran off at once, true to the stern system of discipline in which
he had been nurtured. But his eyes were like round O's, and as he ran he
talked fast to himself, in evident disorder of mind.
The pea-sticks made a rare blaze, and the fire, no longer smouldering
sullenly, leapt up and began to assume the appearance of a genuine
bonfire. Harold, awed into silence at first, began to jump round it with
shouts of triumph. Selina looked on grimly, with knitted brow; she
was not yet fully satisfied. “Can't you get any more sticks?” she said
presently. “Go and hunt about. Get some old hampers and matting and
things out of the tool-house. Smash up that old cucumber frame Edward
shoved you into, the day we were playing scouts and Mohicans. Stop a
bit! Hooray! I know. You come along with me.”
Hard by there was a hot-house, Aunt Eliza's special pride and joy, and
even grimly approved of by the gardener. At one end, in an out-house
adjoining, the necessary firing was stored; and to this sacred fuel, of
which we were strictly forbidden to touch a stick, Selina went straight.
Harold followed obediently, prepared for any crime after that of the
pea-sticks, but pinching himself to see if he were really awake.
“You bring some coals,” said Selina briefly, without any palaver or
pro-and-con discussion. “Here's a basket. I'll manage the faggots!”
In a very few minutes there was little doubt about its being a genuine
bonfire and no paltry makeshift. Selina, a Maenad now, hatless and
tossing disordered locks, all the dross of the young lady purged out of
her, stalked around the pyre of her own purloining, or prodded it with
a pea-stick. And as she prodded she murmured at intervals, “I knew there
was something we could do! It isn't much--but still it 's something!”
The gardener had gone home to his tea. Aunt Eliza had driven out for
hers a long way off, and was not expected back till quite late; and this
far end of the garden was not overlooked by any windows. So the Tribute
blazed on merrily unchecked. Villagers far away, catching sight of
the flare, muttered something about “them young devils at their tricks
again,” and trudged on beerwards. Never a thought of what day it was,
never a thought for Nelson, who preserved their honest pint-pots, to
be paid for in honest pence, and saved them from litres and decimal
coinage. Nearer at hand, frightened rabbits popped up and vanished with
a flick of white tails; scared birds fluttered among the branches, or
sped across the glade to quieter sleeping-quarters; but never a bird nor
a beast gave a thought to the hero to whom they owed it that each year
their little homes of horsehair, wool, or moss, were safe stablished
'neath the flap of the British flag; and that Game Laws, quietly
permanent, made la chasse a terror only to their betters. No one seemed
to know, nor to care, nor to sympathise. In all the ecstasy of her
burnt-offering and sacrifice, Selina stood alone.
And yet--not quite alone! For, as the fire was roaring at its best,
certain stars stepped delicately forth on the surface of the immensity
above, and peered down doubtfully--with wonder at first, then with
interest, then with recognition, with a start of glad surprise. They
at least knew all about it, they understood. Among them the Name was
a daily familiar word; his story was a part of the music to which they
swung, himself was their fellow and their mate and comrade. So they
peeped, and winked, and peeped again, and called to their laggard
brothers to come quick and see.
*****
The best of life is but intoxication, and Selina, who during her brief
inebriation had lived in an ecstasy as golden as our drab existence
affords, had to experience the inevitable bitterness of awakening
sobriety, when the dying down of the flames into sullen embers coincided
with the frenzied entrance of Aunt Eliza on the scene. It was not so
much that she was at once and forever disrated, broke, sent before the
mast, and branded as one on whom no reliance could be placed, even with
Edward safe at school, and myself under the distant vigilance of an
aunt; that her pocket money was stopped indefinitely, and her new Church
Service, the pride of her last birthday, removed from her own custody
and placed under the control of a Trust. She sorrowed rather because
she had dragged poor Harold, against his better judgment, into a most
horrible scrape, and moreover because, when the reaction had fairly set
in, when the exaltation had fizzled away and the young-lady portion of
her had crept timorously back to its wonted lodging, she could only see
herself as a plain fool, unjustified, undeniable, without a shadow of an
excuse or explanation.
As for Harold, youth and a short memory made his case less pitiful than
it seemed to his more sensitive sister. True, he started upstairs to his
lonely cot bellowing dismally, before him a dreary future of pains and
penalties, sufficient to last to the crack of doom. Outside his door,
however, he tumbled over Augustus the cat, and made capture of him; and
at once his mourning was changed into a song of triumph, as he conveyed
his prize into port. For Augustus, who detested above all things going
to bed with little boys, was ever more knave than fool, and the trapper
who was wily enough to ensnare him had achieved something notable.
Augustus, when he realized that his fate was sealed, and his night's
lodging settled, wisely made the best of things, and listened, with
a languorous air of complete comprehension, to the incoherent babble
concerning pigs and heroes, moles and bonfires, which served Harold for
a self-sung lullaby. Yet it may be doubted whether Augustus was one of
those rare fellows who thoroughly understood.
But Selina knew no more of this source of consolation than of the
sympathy with which the stars were winking above her; and it was only
after some sad interval of time, and on a very moist pillow, that she
drifted into that quaint inconsequent country where you may meet your
own pet hero strolling down the road, and commit what hair-brained
oddities you like, and everybody understands and appreciates.