"But what?" I said, looking severely at the ground, so that I might be
able to harden my heart against the pathos of Sweetheart's expression.
"But--I can't read the novels--indeed I can't. I have tried _Waverley_
at least twenty times. And as for _Rob Roy_--"
Even the multiplication table failed here, and at this, variously
a-sprawl on the turf beneath, the smaller fry giggled.
"Course," said Hugh John, who was engaged in eating grass like an ox,
"we know it is true about _Rob Roy_. She read us one whole volume, and
there wasn't no Rob Roy, nor any fighting in it. So we pelted her with
fir-cones to make her stop and read over _Treasure Island_ to us
instead!"
"Yes, though we had heard it twenty times already," commented Sir Toady
Lion, trying his hardest to pinch his brother's legs on the sly.
"Books wifout pictures is silly!" said a certain Maid Margaret, a
companion new to the honourable company, who was weaving daisy-chains,
her legs crossed beneath her, Turk fashion. In literature she had got as
far as words of one syllable, and had a poor opinion even of them.
"_I_ had read all Scott's novels long before I was your age," I said
reprovingly.
The children received this announcement with the cautious silence with
which every rising generation listens to the experiences of its elders
when retailed by way of odious comparison.
"Um-m!" said Sir Toady, the licensed in speech; "_we_ know all that. Oh,
yes; and you didn't like fruit, and you liked medicine in a big spoon,
and eating porridge and--"
"Oh, we know--we know!" cried all the others in chorus. Whereupon I
informed them what would have happened to us thirty years ago if we had
ventured to address our parents in such fashion. But Sweetheart, with
the gravity of her age upon her, endeavoured to raise the discussion to
its proper level.
"Scott writes such a lot before you get at the story," she objected,
knitting her brows; "why couldn't he just have begun right away?"
"With Squire Trelawney and Dr. Livesey drawing at their pipes in the
oak-pannelled dining room, and Black Dog outside the door, and Pew
coming tapping along the road with his stick!" cried Hugh John, turning
off a sketchy synopsis of his favourite situations in fiction.
"Now that's what I call a proper book!" said Sir Toady, hastily rolling
himself out of the way of being kicked. (For with these unusual
children, the smooth ordinary upper surfaces of life covered a constant
succession of private wars and rumours of wars, which went on under the
table at meals, in the schoolroom, and even, it is whispered, in
church.)
As for blithe Maid Margaret, she said nothing, for she was engaged in
testing the capacities of a green slope of turf for turning somersaults
upon.
"In Sir Walter Scott's time," I resumed gravely, "novels were not
written for little girls--"
"Then why did you give us Miss Edgeworth to read?" said Sweetheart,
quickly. But I went on without noticing the interruption, "Now, if you
like, I will tell you some of Sir Walter's stories over again, and then
I will mark in your own little edition the chapters you can read for
yourselves."
The last clause quieted the joyous shout which the promise of a
story--any sort of a story--had called forth. An uncertain look crept
over their faces, as if they scented afar off that abomination of
desolation--"lessons in holiday time."
"_Must_ we read the chapters?" said Hugh John, unhopefully.
"Tell us the stories, anyway, and leave it to our honour!" suggested Sir
Toady Lion, with a twinkle in his eye.
"Is it a story--oh, don't begin wifout me!" Maid Margaret called from
behind the trees, her sturdy five-year-old legs carrying her to the
scene of action so fast that her hat fell off on the grass and she had
to turn back for it.
"Well, I will tell you, if I can, the story of 'Waverley,'" I said.
"Was he called after the pens?" said Toady Lion the irreverent, but
under his breath. He was, however, promptly kicked into silence by his
peers--seriously this time, for he who interferes with the telling of a
story is a "Whelk,"--which, for the moment, is the family word for
whatever is base, mean, unprofitable, and unworthy of being associated
with.
But first I told them about the writing of _Waverley_, and the hand at
the Edinburgh back window which wrote and wrote. Only that, but the
story as told by Lockhart had affected my imagination as a boy.
"Did you ever hear of the Unwearied Hand?" I asked them.
"It sounds a nice title," said Sir Toady; "had he only one?"
"It was in the early summer weather of 1814," I began, "after a dinner
in a house in George Street, that a young man, sitting at the wine with
his companions, looked out of the window, and, turning pale, asked his
next neighbour to change seats with him.
"'There it is--at it again!' he said, with a thump of his fist on
thetable that made the decanters jump, and clattered the glasses;
'it has haunted me every night these three weeks. Just when I am
lifting my glass I look through the window, and there it is at
it--writing--writing--always writing!'
"So the young men, pressing about, looked eagerly, and lo! seen through
the back window of a house in a street built at right angles, they saw
the shape of a man's hand writing swiftly, steadily, on large quarto
pages. As soon as one was finished, it was added to a pile which grew
and grew, rising, as it were, visibly before their eyes.
"'It goes on like that all the time, even after the candles are lit,'
said the young man, 'and it makes me ashamed. I get no peace for it when
I am not at my books. Why cannot the man do his work without making
others uncomfortable?'
"Perhaps some of the company may have thought it was not a man at all,
but some prisoned fairy tied to an endless task--Wizard Michael's
familiar spirit, or Lord Soulis's imp Red Cap doing his master's bidding
with a goose-quill.
"But it was something much more wonderful than any of these. It was the
hand of Walter Scott finishing _Waverley_, at the rate of a volume every
ten days!"
"Why did he work so hard?" demanded Hugh John, whom the appearance of
fifty hands diligently writing would not have annoyed--no, not if they
had all worked like sewing-machines.
"Because," I answered, "the man who wrote _Waverley_ was beginning to
have more need of money. He had bought land. He was involved in other
people's misfortunes. Besides, for a long time, he had been a great
poet, and now of late there had arisen a greater."
"I know," cried Sweetheart, "Lord Byron--but _I_ don't think he was."
"Anyway Fitzjames and Roderick Dhu is ripping!" announced Hugh John,
and, rising to his feet, he whistled shrill in imitation of the outlaw.
It was the time to take the affairs of children at the fulness of the
tide.
"I think," I ventured, "that you would like the story of _Waverley_ if I
were to tell it now. I know you will like _Rob Roy_. Which shall it be
first?"
Then there were counter-cries of "Waverley" and "Rob Roy"--all the fury
of a contested election. But Sweetheart, waiting till the brawlers were
somewhat breathed, indicated the final sense of the meeting by saying
quietly, "_Tell us the one the hand was writing!_"