THE YOUNG IDEA
Squire Walcote had given the Wren's End family the run of his woods,
and, what was even more precious, permission to use the river-path
through his grounds. Lady Mary, who had no children of her own, was
immensely interested in Tony and little Fay, and would give Jan more
advice as to their management in an hour than the vicar's wife ever
offered during the whole of their acquaintance. But then _she_ had a
family of eight.
But the first time Tony went to the river Jan took him alone; and not to
the near water in Squire Walcote's grounds, but to the old bridge that
crossed the Amber some way out of the village. It was the typical
Cotswold bridge, with low parapets that make such a comfortable seat for
meditative villagers. Just before they reached it she loosed Tony's
hand, and held her breath to see what he would do. Would he run straight
across to get to the other side, or would he look over?
Yes. He went straight to the low wall; stopped, looked over, leaned
over, and stared and stared.
Jan gave a sigh of relief.
The water of the Amber just there is deep and clear, an infinite thing
for a child to look down into; but it was not of that Jan was thinking.
Hugo was no fisherman. Water had no attraction for him, save as a
pleasant means of taking exercise. He was a fair oar; but for a stream
that wouldn't float a boat he cared nothing at all.
Charles Considine Smith had angled diligently. In fact, he wrote almost
as much about the habits of trout as about wrens. James Ross, the
gallant who carried off the second Tranquil, had been fishing at Amber
Guiting when he first saw her. Anthony's father fished and so did
Anthony; and Jan, herself, could throw a fly quite prettily. Yet, your
true fisherman is born, not made; it is not a question of environment,
but it is, very often, one of heredity; for the tendency comes out when,
apparently, every adverse circumstance has combined to crush it.
And no mortal who cares for or is going to care for fishing can ever
cross a bridge without stopping to look down into the water.
"There's a fish swimming down there," Tony whispered (was it instinct
made him whisper? Jan wondered), "brown and speckledy, rather like the
thrushes in the garden."
Jan clutched nervously at the little coat while Tony hung over so far
that only his toes were on the ground. She had brought a bit of bread in
her pocket, and let him throw bits to the greedy, wily old trout who had
defied a hundred skilful rods. On that first day old Amber whispered her
secret to Tony and secured another slave.
For Jan it was only another proof that Tony possessed a sterling
character. Since her sister's disastrous marriage she had come to look
upon a taste for fishing as more or less of a moral safeguard. She had
often reflected that if only Fay had not been so lukewarm with regard to
the gentle craft--and so bored in a heavenly place where, if it did rain
for twenty-three of the twenty-four hours, even a second-rate rod might
land fourteen or fifteen pounds of good sea-trout in an afternoon--she
could never have fallen in love with Hugo Tancred, who was equally
without enthusiasm and equally bored till he met Fay. Jan was ready
enough now to blame herself for her absorption at this time, and would
remember guiltily the relief with which she and her father greeted Fay's
sudden willingness to remain a week longer in a place she previously had
declared to be absolutely unendurable.
The first time Tony's sister went to Amber Bridge Meg took them both.
Little Fay descended from her pram just before they reached it,
declaring it was a "nice dly place to walk." She ran on a little ahead,
and before Meg realised what she was doing, she had scrambled up on to
the top of the low wall and run briskly along it till her progress was
stopped by a man who was leaning over immersed in thought. He nearly
fell in himself, when a clear little voice inquired, "Do loo mind if I
climb over loo?"
It was Farmer Burgess, and he clasped the tripping lady of the white
woolly gaiters in a pair of strong arms, and lifted her down just as the
terrified Meg reached them.
"Law, Missie!" gasped Mr. Burgess, "you mustn't do the like o' that
there. It's downright fool'ardy."
"Downlight foolardy," echoed little Fay. "And what nelse?"
According to Mr. Burgess it was dangerous and a great many other things
as well, but he lost his heart to her in that moment, and she could
twist him round her little finger ever after.
To be told that a thing was dangerous was to add to its attractions. She
was absolutely without fear, and could climb like a kitten. She hadn't
been at Wren's End a week before she was discovered half-way up the
staircase on the outside of the banisters. And when she had been caught
and lifted over by a white-faced aunt, explained that it was "muts the
most instasting way of going up tairs."
When asked how she expected to get to the other side at the top, she
giggled derisively and said "ovel."
Jan seriously considered a barbed-wire entanglement for the outside edge
of her staircase after that.
While Meg rested in the hammock Jan spent a strenuous morning in Guiting
Woods with the children and William. Late windflowers were still in
bloom, and early bluebells made lovely atmospheric patches under the
trees, just as though a bit of the sky had fallen, as in the oft-told
tale of "Cockie Lockie." There were primroses, too, and white violets,
so that there were many little bunches with exceedingly short stalks to
be arranged and tied up with the worsted provident Auntie Jan had
brought with her; finally they all sat down on a rug lined with
mackintosh, and little Fay demanded "Clipture."
"Clipture" was her form of "Scripture," which Auntie Jan "told" every
morning after breakfast to the children. Jan was a satisfactory
narrator, for the form of her stories never varied. The Bible stories
she told in the actual Bible words, and all children appreciate their
dramatic simplicity and directness.
That morning Joseph and his early adventures and the baby Moses were the
favourites, and when these had been followed by "The Three Bears" and
"Cock Robin," it was time to collect the bouquets and go home. And on
the way home they met Captain Middleton. William spied him afar off, and
dashed towards him with joyful, deep-toned barks. He was delighted to
see William, said he had grown and was in the pink of condition; and
then announced that he had already been to Wren's End and had seen Miss
Morton. There was something in the tone of this avowal that made Jan
think. It was shy, it was proud, it seemed to challenge Jan to find any
fault in his having done so, and it was supremely self-conscious. He
walked back with them to the Wren's End gate, and then came a moment of
trial for William.
He wanted to go with his master.
He wanted to stay with the children.
Captain Middleton settled it by shaking each offered paw and saying very
seriously: "You must stay and take care of the ladies, William. I trust
you." William looked wistfully after the tall figure that went down the
road with the queer, light, jumpetty tread of all men who ride much.
Then he trotted after Jan and the children and was exuberantly glad to
see Meg again.
She declared herself quite rested; heard that they had seen Captain
Middleton, and met unmoved the statement that he was coming to tea.
But she didn't look nearly so well rested as Jan had hoped she would.
After the children's dinner Meg went on duty, and Jan saw no more of the
nursery party till later in the afternoon. The creaking wheels of two
small wheelbarrows made Jan look up from the letters she was writing at
the knee-hole table that stood in the nursery window, and she beheld
little Fay and Tony, followed by Meg knitting busily, as they came
through the yew archway on to the lawn.
Meg subsided into one of the white seats, but the children processed
solemnly round, pausing under Jan's window.
"I know lots an' lots of Clipture," her niece's voice proclaimed proudly
as she sat down heavily in her wheelbarrow on the top of some garden
produce she had collected.
"How much do you know?" Tony asked sceptically.
"Oh, lots an' lots, all about poor little Jophez in the bullushes, and
his instasting dleams."
"Twasn't Jophez," Tony corrected. "It was Mophez in the bulrushes, and
he didn't have no dreams. That was Jophez."
"How d'you know," Fay persisted, "that poor little Mophez had no dleams?
Why _shouldn't_ he have dleams same as Jophez?"
"It doesn't say so."
"It doesn't say he _didn't_ have dleams. He _had_ dleams, I tell you; I
know he had. Muts nicer dleams van Jophez."
"Let's ask Meg; she'll know."
Jan gave a sigh of relief. The children had not noticed her, and Meg had
a fertile mind.
The wheelbarrows were trundled across the lawn and paused in front of
Meg, while a lively duet demanded simultaneously:
{"_Did_ little Mophez have dleams?"
{"_Didn't_ deah littoo Mophez have dleams?"
When Meg had disentangled the questions and each child sat down in a
wheelbarrow at her feet, she remarked judicially: "Well, there's nothing
said about little Moses' dreams, certainly; but I should think it's
quite likely the poor baby did have dreams."
"What sort of dleams? Nicer van sheaves and sings, wasn't they?"
"I should think," Meg said thoughtfully, "that he dreamed he must cry
very quietly lest the Egyptians should hear him."
"Deah littoo Mophez ... and what nelse?"
Meg was tempted and fell. It was very easy for her to invent "dleams"
for "deah littoo Mophez" lying in his bulrush ark among the flags at the
river's edge. And, wholly regardless of geography, she transported him
to the Amber, where the flags were almost in bloom at that moment, such
local colour adding much to the realism of her stories.
Presently William grew restless. He ran to Anthony's Venetian gate in
the yew hedge and squealed (William never whined) to get out. Tony let
him out, and he fled down the drive to meet his master, who had come a
good half-hour too soon for tea.
Jan continued to try and finish her letters while Captain Middleton,
coatless, on all-fours, enacted an elephant which the children rode in
turn. When he had completely ruined the knees of his trousers he arose
and declared it was time to play "Here we go round the mulberry-bush,"
and it so happened that once or twice he played it hand-in-hand with
Meg.
Jan left her letters and went out.
The situation puzzled her. She feared for Meg's peace of mind, for
Captain Middleton was undoubtedly attractive; and then she found herself
fearing for his.
After tea and more games with the children Captain Middleton escorted
his hostess to church, where he joined his aunt in the Manor seat.
During church Jan found herself wondering uneasily:
"Was everybody going to fall in love with Meg?"
"Would Peter?"
"What a disagreeable idea!"
And yet, why should it be?
Resolutely she told herself that Peter was at perfect liberty to fall
in love with Meg if he liked, and set herself to listen intelligently to
the Vicar's sermon.
* * * * *
Meg started to put her children to bed, only to find that her fertility
of imagination in the afternoon was to prove her undoing in the evening;
for her memory was by no means as reliable as her powers of invention.
Little Fay urgently demanded the whole cycle of little Mophez' dleams
over again. And for the life of her Meg couldn't remember them either in
their proper substance or sequence--and this in spite of the most
persistent prompting, and she failed utterly to reproduce the
entertainment of the afternoon. Both children were disappointed, but
little Fay, accustomed as she was to Auntie Jan's undeviating method of
narrating "Clipture," was angry as well. She fell into a passion of rage
and nearly screamed the house down. Since the night of Ayah's departure
there had not been such a scene.
Poor Meg vowed (though she knew she would break her vow the very first
time she was tempted) that never again would she tamper with Holy Writ,
and for some weeks she coldly avoided both Jophez and Mophez as topics
of conversation.
Meg could never resist playing at things, and what "Clipture" the
children learned from Jan in the morning they insisted on enacting with
Meg later in the day.
Sometimes she was seized with misgiving as to the propriety of these
representations, but dismissed her doubts as cowardly.
"After all," she explained to Jan, "we only play the very human bits. I
never let them pretend to be anybody divine ... and you know the
people--in the Old Testament, anyway--were most of them extremely human,
not to say disreputable at times."
It is possible that "Clipture's" supreme attraction for the children was
that it conveyed the atmosphere of the familiar East. The New Testament
was more difficult to play at, but, being equally dramatic, the children
couldn't see it.
"Can't we do one teeny miracle?" Tony would beseech, but Meg was firm;
she would have nothing to do with either miracles nor yet with angels.
Little Fay ardently desired to be an angel, but Meg wouldn't have it at
any price.
"You're not in the least _like_ an angel, you know," she said severely.
"What for?"
"Because angels are _perfectly_ good."
"I could _pletend_ to be puffectly good."
"Let's play Johnny Baptist," suggested the ever-helpful Tony, "and we
could pittend to bring in his head on a charger."
"Certainly not," Meg said hastily. "That would be a horrid game."
"Let me be the daughter!" little Fay implored, "and dance in flont of
Helod."
This was permitted, and Tony, decorated with William's chain, sat
gloomily scowling at the gyrations of "the daughter," who, assisted by
William, danced all over the nursery: and Meg, watching the
representation, decided that if the original "daughter" was half as
bewitching as this one, there really might have been some faint excuse
for Herod.
Hannah had no idea of these goings-on, or she would have expected the
roof to fall in and crush them. Yet she, too, was included among the
children's prophets, owing to her exact and thorough knowledge of
"Clipture." Hannah's favourite part of the Bible was the Book of Daniel,
which she knew practically by heart; and her rendering of certain
chapters was--though she would have hotly resented the phrase--extremely
dramatic.
It is so safe and satisfying to know that your favourite story will run
smoothly, clause for clause, and word for word, just as you like it
best, and the children were always sure of this with Hannah.
Anne Chitt would listen open-mouthed in astonishment, exclaiming
afterwards, "Why, 'Annah, wot a tremenjous lot of Bible verses you 'ave
learned to be sure."
The children once tried Anne Chitt as a storyteller, but she was a
failure.
As she had been present at several of Hannah's recitals of the Three
Children and the burning fiery furnace, they thought it but a modest
demand upon her powers. But when--instead of beginning with the sonorous
"_Then an herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people, nations
and languages_"--when she wholly omitted any reference to "_the sound of
cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer_, and all kinds of
musick"--and essayed to tell the story in broad Gloucestershire and her
own bald words, the disappointed children fell upon her and thumped her
rudely upon the back; declaring her story to be "_kutcha_" and she,
herself, a _budmash_. Which, being interpreted, meant that her story was
most badly made and that she, herself, was a rascal.
Anne Chitt was much offended, and complained tearfully to Jan that she
"wouldn't 'ave said nothin' if they'd called 'er or'nery names, but them
there Injian words was more than she could abear."