HOB-Y-DERI-DANDO[1]
[Footnote 1: i.e. _Hey-derry-down_, or _Upsa-daisy-dando_.]
I alone was listening to the swan story, but it would have been more
in accordance with the custom of the house if it had been told in a
large company out in the yard--in one of the bedrooms--in the library
itself--or in the dining-room (where there was a vast sideboard bearing
a joint, cheese, bread, fruit, cakes, and bottles of ale, to which the
boys or the visitors resorted, for meals without a name, at all hours
of the day). Most often the yard and the steps leading down to it were
the meeting-place. The pigeons, the conservatory, with its bicycles, a
lathe and all sorts of beginnings and remains, the dogs, above all the
sun and the view of the Wilderness, attracted everyone to the yard as a
common centre for the Morgans and those who gathered round one or other
of them. Thus, for example, the pigeons did not belong to the Morgans
at all, but to one Higgs, who was unable to keep them at his home.
He was always in and out of the yard, frequently bringing friends who
might or might not become friends of the family. Everyone was free to
look at the pigeons, note which had laid and which had hatched, to use
the lathe, to take the dogs out if they were willing, to go upstairs
and see the wonders--the eggs of kites, ravens, buzzards, curlews, for
example, taken by Jack and Roland near Abercorran--and to have a meal
at the sideboard or a cup of tea from one of Ann’s brews in the kitchen.
Jack and Roland in themselves attracted a large and mixed company.
Jack, the eldest, was a huge, brown-haired, good-natured fellow, with
his father’s eyes, or rather eyelids. He was very strong, and knew all
about dogs and horses. He was a good deal away from the house, we did
not know where, except that it was not at an office or other place
where they work. Roland was tall, black-haired, dark-eyed like his
mother, and as strong as Jack. He was handsome and proud-looking, but
though quick-tempered was not proud in speech with us lesser ones. His
learning was equal to Jack’s, and it comprised also the theatre; he
was dressed as carefully as Jack was carelessly, but like Jack would
allow the pigeons to perch anywhere upon him. Both wore knickerbockers
and looked like country gentlemen in exile. Jack smoked a clay pipe,
Roland cigarettes. They were very good friends. Though they did no
work, one or other of them was often at the lathe. They boxed together
while we stood round, admiring Jack because he could never be beaten,
and Roland because no one but his brother could have resisted him. They
were sometimes to be seen looking extremely serious over a sporting
paper. Lewis and Harry were a similar pair many years younger, Lewis,
the elder, broader, shorter, and fairer of the two, both of them stiff
and straight like their elders. They also had begun to acquire trains
of adherents from the various schools which they had irregularly and
with long intervals attended. They treated the streets like woods, and
never complained of the substitute. Once or twice a year they went to a
barber to have their black and brown manes transformed into a uniform
stubble of less than half an inch. Midway between these two pairs came
Philip, and a little after him Jessie.
These six attracted every energetic or discontented boy in the
neighbourhood. Abercorran House was as good as a mountain or a
sea-shore for them, and was accessible at any hour of the day or
night, “except at breakfast time,” said Mr Stodham--for there was no
breakfast-time. Mr Stodham was a middle-aged refugee at Abercorran
House, one for whom breakfast had become the most austere meal of
the day, to be taken with a perfectly adjusted system of times and
ceremonies, in silence, far from children and from all innovation,
irregularity, and disorder. Therefore the house of the Morgans was
for him the house that had no breakfast-time, and unconsciously he
was seeking salvation in the anarchy which at home would have been
unendurable. Mr Stodham was not the only client who was no longer a
boy, but he and the few others were all late converts; for, as I have
mentioned, boys forsook Abercorran House as they grew up. Parents,
too, looked foul-favouredly on the house. The family was irregular,
not respectable, mysterious, in short unprofitable. It may have got
about that when Mr Morgan once received a fountain-pen as a gift, he
said he did not want any of “your damned time-saving appliances.” Of
course, said he, some people could not help saving time and money--let
them--they were never clever enough to know what to do with them,
supposing that their savings were not hidden out of their reach like
their childhood--but it had not occurred to him to do either, so he
gave the pen to the little milk-boy, advising him to give it away
before it got a hold on him. This child had delighted Mr Morgan by
coming up the street every day, singing a filthy song. It was a test of
innocence, whether the words of it did or did not make the hearer wish
that either he or the singer might sink instantaneously into the earth.
Mr Morgan did not like the song at all. The words were in no way better
than those of a bad hymn, nor was the tune. But he liked what he called
the boy’s innocence. Ophelia only sang “By Gis and by Saint Charity”
under cover of madness. At the worst this boy made no pretence. Mr
Morgan argued, probably, that one who had such thoughts would not have
the impudence to sing so except to a select audience; he had no doubt
of this when the boy sang it once on being asked to in the Library.
I do not know what happened, beyond this, that Mr Morgan looked as
if he had been crying, and the boy never sang it again. If this got
about, few could think any better of the Morgans at Abercorran House.
Moreover, the window frames and doors were never painted, and the
front gate remained upright only because it was never closed; and on
any sunny day a man passing down the lane was sure of hearing men and
boys laughing, or Jessie singing, and dogs barking or yawning, pigeons
courting, over the fence.