As fate would have it, Mrs. Handsomebody decreed that I should not leave
the house on Saturday morning, and she, having a spell of sciatica did not
go to market, as usual; so there I was, unable to meet Harry on the
cathedral steps, as I had promised. It simply meant that Angel must
undertake the mission, while I kicked my heels in the schoolroom.
He undertook it with a careless alacrity that was very irritating to one
who longed to finish, in his own fashion, an undertaking that had, so far,
been carried on with masterly diplomacy.
The Seraph went with Angel, and it seemed a long hour indeed till I heard
the longed-for footsteps hurrying up the stairs. The door was thrown open,
and they burst in rosy and wind-blown.
"It's all right," announced Angel briskly. "He'll be there sharp at seven,
and he's jolly glad that we're to be there too!"
"And did you tell him?" I asked rather plaintively, "that I had done the
whole thing?"
"Course I did."
"What did he say when you told him he was to come home?"
"He slapped his leg--" Angel gave his own leg a vigorous slap in
illustration--"and said--'once aboard the lugger, and the girl is mine!'"
It was a fascinating and cryptic utterance. We all tried it on varying
notes of exultation. It put zest into what otherwise would have been a
dragging day. By tea-time our legs were sore with whacking.
Came the hour at last. We set out holding each other by moist clean hands,
an admonishing Mrs. Handsomebody on the doorsill.
Our hearts were high with excitement when we were shown ceremoniously into
the Bishop's library, where he and Margery were sitting in the dancing
firelight. We loved the dark-panelled room where we were always made so
happy. At Mrs. Handsomebody's we could never do anything right, mugs of
milk had a spiteful way of tilting over on the table-cloth without ever
having been touched, but we could handle the things in the Chinese cabinet
here or play carpet ball on the rug in the most seemly fashion.
No one could tell stories like the Bishop, and after we had played for a
bit, and The Seraph had demonstrated, on the hearthrug, how he could turn a
somersault, some one suggested a story.
I often thought it a pity that those, who only heard the Bishop preach,
should never know how his great talents were wasted in that role. It took
the "Arabian Nights" to bring out the deep thrill of his sonorous voice,
and his power of filling the human heart with delicious fear.
Now we perched about him listening with rapt eyes to the tale of Ali Baba.
We wished there were more women like the faithful Morgiana with her pot of
boiling oil. The Seraph, especially, revelled in the thought of those poor
devils of thieves, each simmering away in his own jar.
There fell a silence when the story was finished, and I was just casting
about in my mind for the next one I should beg, when, Angel, looking at the
clock, suddenly asked:
"Bishop, will you sing? Will you please sing us a nice old song 'stead of a
story? Sing 'John Peel,' won't you?"
"Please sing 'John Peel'!" echoed The Seraph.
The Bishop seemed loath to sing "John Peel." It was years since he had sung
it, he said; he had almost forgotten the words. But when Margery joined her
persuasions to ours, he consented to sing just one verse and the chorus. So
he sang (but rather softly);
"D'ye ken John Peel, with his coat so grey?
D'ye ken John Peel, at the break of day?
D'ye ken John Peel, when he's far, far away,
With his hounds and his horn in the morning?"
Before he had time to begin the chorus, it was taken up by a mellow
baritone voice in the hall. It began softly too, but when it reached the
"View halloo," it rang boldly.
"For the sound of his horn brought me from my bed,
And the cry of his hounds, which he oft-times led,
Peel's 'View halloo!' would awaken the dead,
Or the fox from his lair in the morning."
The Bishop never moved a muscle till the last note died away, then he shook
us off him, took three strides to the door, and swept the curtains back.
Harry stood in the doorway with a rather shame-faced smile.
"Good God!" exclaimed the Bishop. "Harry!" Then he put his arms around him
and kissed him.
I threw a triumphant glance at Margery. It hadn't hurt the Bishop at all to
forgive Harry.
"It was all the doing of these kids," Harry was saying, "if they hadn't
cleared the way, I'd never have dared. John engineered everything. As a
diplomat he's a pocket marvel."
He and Margery gave each other a very funny look. I should like to have
heard their later conversation.
"They're good boys," said the Bishop, with an arm still around Harry,
"capital boys, and if their governess will let them come to dinner tomorrow
we'll have a sort of party, and talk everything over. I think cook would
make a blackberry pudding. Will you arrange it Margery? Just now I want--"
He said no more, but he and Harry gripped hands.
Margery herded us gently into the hall, and gave us each two chocolate
bars.
Going home under the first pale stars, we were three rollicking blades
indeed. We no longer held hands, but we hooked arms, and swaggered and we
did not ring the bell till the last vestige of chocolate was gone.
As we waited for Mary Ellen, I said, suddenly to Angel:
"Angel, what made you ask the Bishop to sing 'John Peel'? Did you know
Harry was going to sing in the hall?"
"Oh, Harry and I fixed that up this morning," replied my senior, airily. "I
kept it to myself, 'cos I didn't want any interference, see?"
Mary Ellen, opening the door at this moment, prevented a scuffle, though I
was in too happy a mood to quarrel with any one.
Mrs. Handsomebody was surprisingly civil about our visit. She showed great
interest in the return of the Bishop's only son. Was he a nice young man?
she asked. Was he nice-looking? Did the Bishop appear to be overjoyed to
see him?
We three were seated on three stiff-backed chairs, our backs to the wall.
Angel and I told her as much as was good for her to know of the adventure.
The Seraph felt that he was being ignored, so when a pause came, he
remarked in that throaty little voice of his:
"It's a vewy bad fing to be boiled in oil."
"What's that?" snapped Mrs. Handsomebody. "Say that again!"
"It's a vewy bad fing to be boiled in oil," reiterated The Seraph suavely,
"thirty-nine of 'em there was--for the captain was stabbed alweady--boilin'
away in oil. Their _ears was full of it_."
Mrs. Handsomebody gripped the arms of her chair, and leaned towards him.
"Alexander, I have never known a child of such tender years to possess so
unquenchable a lust for frightfulness. It must be eradicated at all costs."
The Seraph stood, then, balancing himself on the rung of his chair,
"'Once aboard the lugger,'" he sang out, slapping his plump little thigh,
"'and the gell is mine!'"
Mrs. Handsomebody sank back in her chair. She said:
"This is appalling. David--John--take your little brother to bed instantly!
Take him out of my hearing."
Angel and I each grasped an arm of the reluctant infant and dragged him
from the room. He stamped up the stairway between us, with an air of
stubborn jollity.
When we had reached the top, he loosed himself from me and put his head
over the handrail.
"'John Peel's View Halloo! would waken the dead'--" he roared down into the
hall.
But he got no further. Between us we hustled him into the bedroom, and shut
the door. Angel and I leaned against it, then, in helpless laughter.
In a moment I felt my arm squeezed by Angel, who was pointing ecstatically
toward the bed.
There, by the bedside, his dimpled hands folded, his curly head meekly
bent, knelt The Seraph.
He was saying his prayers.
_Chapter VII: Granfa_
I
At Mrs. Handsomebody's on a Sunday morning Angel and I had an egg divided
between us, after our porridge. It was boiled rather hard so that it might
not run, and we watched the cutting of it jealously. The Seraph's infant
organs were supposed not to be strong enough to cope with even half an egg,
so he must needs satisfy himself with the cap from Mrs. Handsomebody's; and
he made the pleasure endure by the most minute nibbling, filling up the
gaps with large mouthfuls of toast.
It was at a Sunday morning breakfast that Mrs. Handsomebody broached the
subject of fishing. Angel and I had just scraped the last vestige of
rubbery white from our half shells, and, having reversed them in our
egg-cups, were gazing wistfully at what appeared to be two unchipped eggs,
when she spoke.
"You have been invited by Bishop Torrance to go on a fishing excursion with
him tomorrow, and I have consented; provided, of course, that your conduct
today be most exemplary. What do you say? Thanks would not be amiss."
Angel and I mumbled thanks, though we were well nigh speechless with
astonishment and joy. The Seraph bolted his cherished bit of egg whole and
said in his polite little voice:
"He's a vewy nice man to take us fishin'. I wonder what made him do it."
"I have never pretended," returned Mrs. Handsomebody, stiffly, "to account
for the vagaries of the male. Yet I grant you it seems singular that a
dignitary of the church should find pleasure in such a project, in company
with three growing boys."
"If it had been anyone but the Bishop," she went on, "I should have
refused, for there are untold possibilities of danger in trout fishing. You
must, for example, guard against imbedding the fish hook in the flesh,
which is most painful, often leading to blood-poisoning. This is to say
nothing of the risk in sitting on damp grass, or the stings of insects."
"Did you ever sit on the sting of an insect, please?" questioned The Seraph
eagerly.
Mrs. Handsomebody looked at him sharply. "One more question of that
character," she said, "and you will remain at home." Then, glancing around
the table, she went on--"What! your eggs gone so soon? We shall give thanks
then. Alexander"--to The Seraph--"It is your turn to say grace. Proceed."
The Seraph, with folded hands and bent head, repeated glibly:
"Accept our thanks, O Lord, for these Thy good cweatures given to our use,
and by them fit us for Thy service. Amen."
There was a scraping of chairs, and we got to our feet. The Seraph, holding
his bit of egg shell in his warm little palm asked--"Is an egg a cweature,
yet?"
Mrs. Handsomebody gloomed down at him from her height. "I say it in all
solemnity, Alexander, the natural bent of your mind is toward the ribald
and cynical. I do what I can to curb it, but I fear for your future." And
she swept from the room.
Eagerly we took our places in the choir stalls that morning.
The May sunshine had taken on the mellowness of summer, and it struck fire
from the sacred vessels on the altar, and the brazen-winged eagle of the
lectern. Strange-shaped patterns of wine-colour and violet were cast from
the stained glass windows upon the walls and pillars, enriching the grey
fabric of the church, like tropic flowers. The window nearest me was a
favourite of ours. It was dedicated, so saith the bronze tablet beneath, to
the memory of Cosmo John, fifth son of an Earl of Aberfalden. He had died
at the age of fifteen, not a tender age to me, but the age toward which I
was eagerly straining, the vigourous, untrammelled age of the big boy.
I stared at the young knight in the red cloak who, to me, represented Cosmo
John, and thought it a great pity that he should have gone off in such a
hurry, just when life was opening up such happy vistas before him, vistas
no longer patrolled by governesses and maid servants, nor hedged in by
petty restrictions. Cosmo John had died one hundred years ago, in May--and,
by the Rood! this was May! Had he ever been a-fishing. Had the sudden
tremor of the rod made his young heart to leap? I heard the Bishop's rich
voice roll on:
"--Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy favour to behold our most
gracious Sovereign Lady, Queen Victoria; and so replenish her with the
grace of Thy Holy Spirit that she may alway incline to Thy will"--the
Bishop's voice became one with the murmur of the river, as it moved among
the ridges; the mellow sunlight scarcely touched this sheltered pool, but
one could see it in its full strength on the meadow beyond, where larks
were nesting. I brought myself up with a start. The Bishop's voice came
from a great distance--"beseech Thee to bless Albert Edward Prince of
Wales"--Angel was joggling me with his elbow.
"You duffer," he whispered, "you've been nodding. Get your hymn book."
In the choir vestry the Bishop stopped for a moment beside us, his surplice
billowing about him like the sails about a tall mast when the wind dies.
"At seven," he said, "tomorrow morning at my house. And _wear old
clothes_."
The sails were filled, and he moved majestically away, towering above the
small craft around him.