half of that it occurred to Aunt Phyllis that it would cultivate
self-reliance if they went alone. So Mary only went to fetch them when
there was need of an umbrella or some such serious occasion. The path
ran up through the bushes to the high road past the fence of Master’s
paddock where Peter had once covered himself with tar. Then they had to
go along the high road with a pine-wood to the right—a winding path
amidst the trees ran parallel to the road—and presently with a pine-wood
to the left, which hid the hollow in which the parents of young Cuspard
had made their abode and out of which young Cuspard would sometimes
appear, a ginger-haired, hard-breathing youngster, bareheaded and
barefooted and altogether very advanced, and so to the little common
where there would be geese or a tethered pony. Joan and Peter crossed
this obliquely by the path, which was often boggy in wet weather, and
went along by the Sheldrick’s holly hedge to the open crest of heather
from which one could run down to the school. One could see the
playground and games going on long before one could get down to them.
And if it were not too stormy the school flag with its red St. George
and the Dragon on white would be flying. There were no indications of
the Venerable Bede on the Flag, but Joan had concluded privately that he
was represented by the red knob at the top of the flagstaff. For a year
and more Joan thought that the Venerable Bede was really a large old
bead of profound mystical significance.
Joan and Peter varied with the seasons, but except when Joan wore a
djibbah they were dressed almost alike; in high summer with bare legs
and brown smocks and Heidelberg sandals, and in winter like rolls of
green wool stuck on leather gaiters. When they grew beyond the smock
stage, then they both wore art green blouses with the school emblem of
St. George on the pockets, but Joan wore a dark blue gym skirt and Peter
had dark blue knickerbockers simply. The walk altered a little every
day. Now the trees were dark and the brambles by the roadside wet and
wilted, now all the world was shooting green buds except for the pines,
now the pines were taking up the spring brightness, now all the world
was hot and dusty and full of the smell of resin, and now again it was
wet and misty and with a thousand sorts of brightly coloured fungus
among the pine stems. Joan and Peter learnt by experience that throwing
pine-cones hurts, and reserved them for the Cuspard boy who had never
mastered this lesson. Peter started a “Mooseum” of fungi in the
playroom, and made a great display of specimens that presently dried up
or deliquesced and stank. When the snow came in the winter the Cuspard
boy waylaid them at the corner with a prepared heap of snowballs and
fell upon them with shrieks of excitement, throwing so fast and wildly
and playing the giddy windmill so completely that it was quite easy for
Joan and Peter to close in and capture his heap. Whereupon he fled
toward the school weeping loudly that it was his heap and refusing to be
comforted.
But afterwards all three of them made common cause against a treacherous
ambuscade behind the Sheldrick holly hedge.
It was on these journeyings that Joan began to hear first of the
marvellous adventures of Uncle Nobby and Bungo Peter. She most liked
Bungo Peter because he had such a satisfying name; Peter never told her
he was really the newel knob at home, but she always understood him to
be something very large and round and humorous and richly coloured.
Sometimes he was as big as the world and sometimes he was a suitable
playmate for little children. He was the one constant link in a
wandering interminable Saga that came like a spider’s thread endlessly
out of Peter’s busy brain. It was a story of quests and wanderings,
experiments and tasks and feuds and wars; Nobby was almost always in it,
kind and dreadfully brave and always having narrow escapes and being
rescued by Bungo Peter. Daddy and Mummy came in and went out again,
Peter and Joan joined in. For a time Bungo Peter had a Wonderful Cat
that would have shamed Puss-in-boots. Sometimes the story would get
funny, so funny that the two children would roll along the road, drunken
with laughter. As for example when Bungo Peter had hiccups and couldn’t
say anything else whatever you asked him.
After a time Joan learned the trick of the Saga and would go on with it
in her own mind as a day-dream. She invented that really and truly Bungo
Peter loved her desperately and that she loved Bungo Peter; but she
knew, though she knew not why nor wherefore, that this was a thing Peter
must never be told.
Sometimes she would try to cut in and make some of the saga herself.
“Lemme tell _you_, Petah,” she used to squeal. “You just lemme tell
_you_.” But it was a rare thing for Peter to give way to her; sometimes
he would not listen at all to what she had to say about Bungo Peter; he
would smite her down with “No, he didn’t do nuffin of the sort, not
reely,” and sometimes when she had thought of a really good thing to
tell about him, Peter would take it away from her and go on telling
about it himself, as for instance when she thought of “Lightning-slick,”
that Bungo Peter used to put on his heels.
Peter listened to her poor speeding-up with “Lightning-slick” for a
while.
Then he said: “And after that, Joan, after that——”
“Oh! _lemme_ go on, Petah. _Do_ lemme go on. The fird time he was runned
after by anyfing it was this.”
“He put it on his bicycle wheels,” said Peter, getting bored by her,
“instead of oil.”
“He put it on his bicycle wheels instead of oil,” said Joan, accepting
the idea, “and along came a Tiger.” (She had already done a Mad Dog and
a Bear.)
But after that Peter took over altogether while she was waving about
rather helplessly and breathlessly with “the _Forf_ time Bungo Peter
used Lightning-slick, the forf time—” and hesitating whether to make it
a snake or an elephant, Peter could stand it no longer.
“But you don’t know what Bungo Peter did the _Forf_ time, Joan—you don’t
_reely_ and I do. Bungo Peter told me. Bungo Peter wanted the holidays
to come, so Bungo Peter went and put Lightning-slick on the axles of the
Erf.”
“What good was that?”
“It went fast. It went faster and faster. The Erf. It regular spun
round. And the sun rose and the sun set jest in an hour or so. ’Cos it
_would_, Joan. It _would_. Yes, it _would_. There wasn’t any time for
anyfing. People got up and had their breckfus—and it was bedtime. People
went out for walks and got b’nighted. Then when the holidays came Bungo
Peter just put a stick in the place and stopped it going fast any more.”
“Put a stick in _what_ place?”
“Where the Erf goes round. And _then_, then the days were as long as
long. They lasted—oo, ’undreds of ’ours, heaps.”
“Didn’t they get ’ungry?” said Joan, overcome by this magnificent
invention.
“They ’ad _free_ dinners every day, sometimes four, and ’s many teas as
they wanted. Out-of-doors. Only you see they didn’t ’ave to go to bed,
’ardly ever. See, Joan?...”
There had to be a pause of blissful contemplation before their minds
could go on to any further invention.
“I believe if I had the fings I could make Lightning-slick,” said Peter
with a rising inflection of the voice.
He _did_ believe. As soon as it was really said he believed it. Joan,
round-eyed with admiration, believed too....
This Saga of Bungo Peter did not so much end as die out, when Aunt
Phyllis got little bicycles for her charges after Joan’s seventh
birthday, and they began to ride to school. You cannot tell legends on a
bicycle.
§ 5
Mr. Sheldrick was a large, loose painter man held together by a very
hairy tweed suit, and the Sheldricks were a large, loose family not so
much born and brought up as negligently let loose into the world at the
slightest provocation by a small facetious mother. It was Mr. Sheldrick
who painted the scenery for the school play productions, and it was the
Sheldricks who first put it into Miss Murgatroyd’s head that children
could be reasonably expected to act. The elder Sheldricks were so to
speak the camels and giraffes of Miss Murgatroyd’s school, but the
younger ones came down to dimensions that made them practicable
playmates for Joan and Peter. Every now and then there would be a
Sheldrick birthday (and once Mr. Sheldrick sold a picture) and then
there would be a children’s tea-party. It was always a dressing-up
tea-party at the Sheldricks. The Sheldrick household possessed a big
chest full of pieces of coloured stuff, cloaks, fragmentary wigs,
tinsel, wooden swords and the like; this chest stood on the big landing
outside the studio and it was called the “dressing-up box.” It was an
inexhaustible source of joy and a liberal education to the Sheldricks
and their friends.
There were grades of experience in these dressing-up parties. At the
lowest, when you were just a “little darling” fit only for gusty
embraces—Joan was that to begin with and Peter by dint of a resolute
angularity was but battling his way out of it—you put on a preposterous
hat or something and ran about yelling, “Look at meeeeee!” Then you
rose—Peter rose almost at once and saw to it that Joan rose too, to Dumb
Crambo.
In Dumb Crambo one half of the party, the bored half, is “in.” It
chooses a word, such as “sleep,” it tells the “outs” that it rhymes with
“sneep,” and the “outs” then prepare and act as rapidly as possible,
“deep,” “creep,” “sheep,” and so on until they hit upon the right word.
There was always much rushing about upon the landing, a great
fermentation of ideas, a perpetual “I say, let’s——,” imagination,
contrivance, co-operation. So rapidly, joyfully and abundantly, with a
disarming effect of confusion, the Sheldricks at their tea-parties did
exactly what Miss Mills believed she was doing in her slow, elaborate,
remote-spirited Kindergarten lessons, in which she was perpetually
saying, “No; no, dear, that isn’t right!” or “Now let us all do it over
again just once more and get it perfect.” It was Peter who discovered
that these strange ritual-exercises of Miss Mills’ were really a rigid
version of the Sheldrick entertainments, and tried to introduce
novelties of gesture and facial play and slight but pleasing variations
in the verses. He got a laugh or so. But Miss Mills soon put a stop to
these experiments.
From Dumb Crambo the Sheldrick dressing-up games rose to scenes from
history and charades. Then Mrs. Sheldrick was moved to write a
children’s play about fairies and bluebells and butterflies and an
angel-child who had died untimely, a play that broke out into a wild
burlesque of itself even at its first rehearsals. Then came a wave of
Shakespearian enthusiasm that was started by the two elder Sheldricks
and skilfully fostered by Daddy Sheldrick, who was getting bored by Dumb
Crambo and charades. After a little resistance the younger ones fell in
with the new movement and an auspicious beginning was made with
selections from _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_. Miss Murgatroyd was first
made aware of this new development by a case of discipline. The second
Sheldrick girl was charged with furtively learning passages of
Shakespeare by heart instead of pretending to attend to Miss Mills’
display of a total inability to explain the method used in the
extraction of the square root. Had it been any other playwright than
Shakespeare, things might have gone hard with the Sheldrick girl, but
“Shakespeare is different.”
Miss Murgatroyd, perceiving there was more in this than a mere question
of discipline, came to see one of the Sheldrick performances, was
converted, and annexed the whole thing. The next term of school life she
made a Shakespeare Boom, and she astonished the world and herself by an
altogether charming production of _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_. In those
days the histrionic possibilities of young children were unsuspected by
the parents and schoolmasters who walked over them. Romeo was still
played in England by elderly men with time-worn jowls and reverberating
voices, and Juliet by dear old actresses for whom the theatre-going
public had a genuine filial affection. England had forgotten how young
she was in the days of good Queen Elizabeth.
Both Joan and Peter took a prominent part in Miss Murgatroyd’s
production because, in spite of nearly four years of Miss Mills, they
still had wonderfully good memories. Peter made a dignified Oberon and
also a delightfully quaint Thisbe, and Joan was Puck. She danced a
dance. She danced in front of the Queen Titania after the Fairy song. It
was a dance in which she ceased to be human and became a little brown
imp with flashing snake’s eyes and hair like a thunder-cloud. It had
been invented years ago by poor dead and drowned Dolly, and the
Sheldricks had picked it up again from Joan and developed and improved
it for her.
§ 6
But the Sheldricks were not always acting Shakespeare. There were phases
in those tea-parties when a kind of wildness came into their blood and
the blood of those they entertained that called for something more
violent than dressing-up or acting. Then in summertime they had a great
scampering and hiding in the garden, it was the sort of garden where you
can run across the beds and charge through the shrubs, and in winter
they played “Ogre” or “Darkness Ogre” indoors. In Ogre some one—it was
usually Mr. Sheldrick—was Ogre, and the little corner room out of the
hall was his Den. And you hid. In the Sheldrick’s house you could hide
anywhere except in the studio or the pantry and china closet; you could
hide in Mrs. Sheldrick’s wardrobe or in the linen cupboard over the
hot-water pipes (until it got too hot for you) or under anybody’s bed in
anybody’s room. And the Ogre came after you and caught you—often by the
foot you had left out carelessly beyond the counterpane—and took you to
his Den, and there you were a prisoner until some brave soul came
careering across the hall to touch your hand and rescue you and set you
free again. The Ogre was never safe against rescues until every one was
caught, and everybody never was caught; sooner or later came a gaol
delivery, and so the game began all over again and went on until a meal
or something released the Ogre or the Ogre struck work. Nobody was so
good an Ogre as Mr. Sheldrick; there was such a nice terribleness about
him, and he had a way of chanting “Yumpty-Ow. Yumpty-Ow,” as he came
after you.
Of course every house is not suitable for Ogre. Intelligent children who
understand the delights of Ogre classify homes into two sorts. There are
the commonplace homes we most of us inhabit with one staircase, and
there are the glorious homes with two, so that you can sneak down one
while the Ogre hunts for you up the other. The Sheldrick home had two
entirely separate staircases and a long passage between them, and a sort
of loop-line arrangement of communicating bedrooms. And also, though
this has nothing to do with Ogre, it was easy to get out upon the
Sheldrick roof.
“Darkness Ogre” was more exciting in a dreadful kind of way than Ogre.
It was only played in winter, and all the blinds and curtains were drawn
and all the lights put out. You didn’t need to hide. You just got into a
corner and stood still, holding your breath. And the Ogre took off his
boots and put on felt slippers, and all the noise he made was a rustle
and a creak, and you were never sure that it was him—unless he betrayed
himself by whispering “Yumpty-Ow.” He creaked rather more than most, but
that was a matter for delicate perceptions. There were frightful moments
when you could hear him moving about and feeling about in the very room
where you stood frozen, getting nearer and nearer to you. You had to
bite your knuckles not to scream.
Once when they were playing Darkness Ogre, Peter was in a corner of Mrs.
Sheldrick’s room with Sydney Sheldrick, the third of the Sheldrick
sisters, and they were crowding up very close together. And suddenly
Sydney put her arms round Peter and began to kiss his ears and cheek.
Peter resisted, pushed her away from him. “Ssh,” said Sydney. “You be my
little sweetheart.” Peter resisted this proposal with vigour. Then they
heard the Ogre creaking down the passage. Sydney drew Peter closer to
her, but Peter struggled away from her and made a dash for the further
door. He was almost caught. He escaped because somebody else started
into flight from the corner of the landing outside the studio and drew
the Ogre off the scent.
Afterwards Peter avoided secluded corners when Sydney was about.
But somehow he could not forget what had happened. He kept on thinking
of Sydney for a time, and after that she seemed always to be a little
more important than the rest of his older schoolmates. Perhaps it was
because she took more notice of him. She wanted to help his work, and
she would ruffle his hair or pinch his ear as she went past him. She
wore a peculiar long jersey so that you could distinguish her from the
others quite a long way off. She had level brows and a radiant smile,
her shoulders were strong and her legs and feet were very pretty. He
noted how well she walked. She always seemed to be looking at Peter.
When he shut his eyes and thought of her he could remember her better
than he could other people. He did not know whether he liked her or
disliked her more than the others; but he perceived that she had in some
way become exceptional.
§ 7
Young Winterbaum was another of Miss Murgatroyd’s pupils who made a
lasting impression on Peter. He was dark-eyed and fuzzy-haired, the
contour of his face had a curious resemblance to that of a sheep, and
his head was fixed on in a different way so that he looked more skyward
and down his face at you. His expression was one of placid
self-satisfaction; his hands twisted about, and ever and again he
pranced as he walked. He had a superfluity of gesture, and his voice was
a fat voice with the remotest possible hint of a lisp. He had two little
round, jolly, frizzy, knock-about sisters who ousted Joan and Peter from
their position as the little darlings of the school. The only boy in the
school who at all resembled him was young Cuspard, but young Cuspard had
not the same bold lines either in his face or conduct; he was
red-haired, his nose was a snout instead of a hook, and instead of
rather full, well-modelled lips he had that sort of loose mouth that
blows. Young Winterbaum said his nose had the Norman arch, and that it
showed he was aristocratic and one of the conquerors of England. He was
second cousin to a peer, Lord Contango. It was only slowly that Peter
came to apprehend the full peculiarity of young Winterbaum.
The differences in form and gesture of the two boys were only the
outward and visible signs of profound differences between their
imaginations. For example, the heroes of Peter’s romancings were
wonderful humorous persons, Nobbys and Bungo Peters, and his themes
adventures, struggles, quests that left them neither richer nor poorer
than before in a limitless, undisciplined, delightful world, but young
Winterbaum’s hero was himself, and he thought in terms of achievement
and acquisition. He was a King and the strongest and bravest and richest
of all Kings. He had wonderful horses, wonderful bicycles, wonderful
catapults and an astonishing army. He counted these things. He walked
from the other direction to school, and though no one knew it but
himself, he walked in procession. Guards went before him and behind him,
and ancient councillors walked beside him. And always he was going on to
fresh triumphs and possessions.
He had a diplomatic side to him. He was prepared to negotiate upon the
matter of kingship. One day he reached the crest above the school while
it was still early, and found Joan and Peter sitting and surveying the
playground, waiting for the first bell before they ran down. He stood
beside Peter.
“All this is my Kingdom,” he said, waving both his arms about over the
Weald. “I am King of all this, I have a great army.”
“Not over this part,” said Peter modestly but firmly.
“You be King up to here,” said young Winterbaum. “You have an army too.”
“_I_ want a kingdom too,” said Joan.
Young Winterbaum proposed a fair division of Peter’s kingdom between
Joan and Peter.
Peter let Joan have what young Winterbaum gave her. It took some moments
to grasp this new situation. “My kingdom,” he said suddenly, “goes right
over to those ponds there and up to the church.”
“You can’t,” said young Winterbaum. “_I’ve_ claimed that.”
Peter grunted. It did not seem worth while to have a kingdom unless
those ponds were included.
“But if you like I’ll give your people permission to go over all that
country whenever they like.”
Peter still felt there was a catch in it somewhere.
“I’ve got a hundred and seven soldiers,” said young Winterbaum. “And six
guns that shoot.”
Joan was surprised and shocked to hear that Peter had five hundred
soldiers.
“Each of my soldiers, each one, counts as a thousand men,” said young
Winterbaum, getting ahead again.
Then the first bell rang and suspended the dispute. But Peter went down
to the school with a worried feeling. He wished he had thought of
claiming all Surrey as his kingdom first. It was a lamentable oversight.
He was disposed to ask the eldest Sheldrick girl whether young
Winterbaum really had a _right_ to claim all the Weald. There was a
reason in these things....
Young Winterbaum had an extraordinary knack of accentuating possessions.
Joan and Peter were very pleased and proud to have bicycles; the first
time they arrived upon them at the school young Winterbaum took
possession of them and examined them thoroughly. They were really good
bicycles, excellent bicycles, he explained, and new, not second-hand;
but they were not absolutely the best sort. The best sort nowadays had
wood rims. He was going to have a bicycle with wood rims. And there
ought to be a Bowden brake in front as well as behind; the one in front
was only a spoon brake. It was a pity to have a spoon brake; it would
injure the tyre. He doubted if the tubing was helical tubing. And the
bell wasn’t a “King of the Road.” It was no good for Peter to pretend it
had a good sound, “the King of the Road” had a better sound. When young
Winterbaum got his bicycle _his_ bell was going to be a “King of the
Road, 1902 pattern.”...
Young Winterbaum was always doing this with things, bringing them up
into the foreground of life, grading them, making them competitive and
irritating. There was no getting ahead of him. He made Peter feel that
the very dust in the Winterbaum dustbin was Grade A. Standard I. while
The Ingle-Nook was satisfied with any old makeshift stuff.
Young Winterbaum’s clothes were made by Samuelson’s, the best boys’
tailor in London; there was no disputing it because there was an
advertisement in _The Daily Telegraph_ that said as much; he was in
trousers and Peter had knickerbockers; he wore sock suspenders, and he
had his name in gold letters inside his straw hat. Also he had a
pencil-case like no other pencil-case in the school. He was always
proposing a comparison of pencil-cases.
His imagination turned precociously and easily to romance and love and
the beauty of women. He read a number of novelettes that he had borrowed
from his sister’s nurse. He imparted to Peter the idea of a selective
pairing off of the species, an idea for which _A Midsummer Night’s
Dream_ had already prepared a favourable soil. It was after he had seen
Joan dance her dance when that play was performed and heard the
unstinted applause that greeted her, that he decided to honour her above
all the school with his affections. Previously he had wavered between
the eldest Sheldrick girl because she was the biggest, tallest and
heaviest girl in the school (though a formidable person to approach) and
little Minnie Restharrow who was top in so many classes. But now he knew
that Joan was “it,” and that he was in love with her.
But some instinct told him that Peter had to be dealt with.
He approached Peter in this manner.
“Who’s your girl, Peter?” said young Winterbaum. “Who is your own true
love? You’ve got to have some one.”
Peter drew a bow at a venture, and subconscious processes guided the
answer. “Sydney Sheldrick,” he said.
Young Winterbaum seemed to snatch even before Peter had done speaking.
“I’m going to have Joan,” he said. “She dances better than any one.
She’s going to be, oh!—a lovely woman.”
Peter was dimly aware of an error. He had forgotten Joan. “I’m going to
have Joan too,” he said.
“You can’t have two sweethearts,” said young Winterbaum.
“I _can_. I’m going to. I’m different.”
“But Joan’s mine already.”
“Get out,” said Peter indignantly. “You can’t have her.”
“But she’s mine.”
“Shut it,” said Peter vulgarly.
“I’ll fight you a duel for her. We will fight a real duel for her.”
“You hadn’t better begin,” said Peter.
“But I mean—you know—a duel, Peter.”
“Let’s fight one now,” said Peter, “’f you think you’re going to have
Joan for _your_ girl.”
“We will fight with swords.”
“Sticks.”
“Yes, but _call_ them swords. And we shall have to have seconds and a
doctor.”
“Joan’s my second.”