A CHRISTMAS MORALITY
[Illustration: Remember my ears are so quick I can hear the grass
grow. _Frontispiece._]
[Illustration]
LITTLE PETER
A Christmas Morality
for Children of any Age
By LUCAS MALET
AUTHOR OF 'COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE' ETC.
[Illustration]
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY PAUL HARDY
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1888
TO
CECILY
IN TOKEN OF AFFECTION
TOWARDS HERSELF, HER MOTHER, AND HER STATELY HOME
THIS LITTLE STORY IS DEDICATED
BY
HER OBEDIENT SERVANT
LUCAS MALET
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Which deals with the opinions of a Cat, and the sorrows of
a Charcoal-burner 1
II. Which introduces the Reader to an Admirer of the Ancient
Romans 19
III. Which improves our acquaintance with the Grasshopper-man 36
IV. Which leaves some at Home, and takes some to Church 50
V. Which is both Social and Religious 68
VI. Which attempts to show why the Skies fall 84
VII. Which describes a pleasant Dinner Party, and an
unpleasant Walk 95
VIII. Which proves that even Philosophic Politicians may
have to admit themselves in the wrong 115
IX. Which is very short because, in some ways, it is rather
sad 132
X. Which ends the Story 143
_ILLUSTRATIONS._
'Remember my ears are so quick I can hear
the grass grow' _Frontispiece_
'What will happen? please tell me' _To face p._ 10
'Go to bed when you are told' " 34
'You all despise me' " 66
Going to Church " 72
Lost " 110
Waiting " 120
Found " 138
The Charcoal-burner visits Little Peter " 150
[Illustration: Little Peter.]
CHAPTER I.
WHICH DEALS WITH THE OPINIONS OF A CAT, AND THE SORROWS OF A CHARCOAL
BURNER.
The pine forest is a wonderful place. The pine-trees stand in ranks
like the soldiers of some vast army, side by side, mile after mile, in
companies and regiments and battalions, all clothed in a sober uniform
of green and grey. But they are unlike soldiers in this, that they are
of all ages and sizes; some so small that the rabbits easily jump
over them in their play, and some so tall and stately that the fall
of them is like the falling of a high tower. And the pine-trees are
put to many different uses. They are made into masts for the gallant
ships that sail out and away to distant ports across the great ocean.
Others are sawn into planks, and used for the building of sheds; for
the rafters and flooring, and clap-boards and woodwork of our houses;
for railway-sleepers, and scaffoldings, and hoardings. Others are
polished and fashioned into articles of furniture. Turpentine comes
from them, which the artist uses with his colours, and the doctor in
his medicines; which is used, too, in the cleaning of stuffs and in a
hundred different ways. While the pine-cones, and broken branches and
waste wood, make bright crackling fires by which to warm ourselves on a
winter's day.
But there is something more than just this I should like you to think
about in connection with the pine forest; for it, like everything else
that is fair and noble in nature, has a strange and precious secret of
its own.
You may learn the many uses of the trees in your school books, when
men have cut them down or grubbed them up, or poked holes in their
poor sides to let the turpentine run out. But you can only learn the
secret of the forest itself by listening humbly and reverently for it
to speak to you. For Nature is a very great lady, grander and more
magnificent than all the queens who have lived in sumptuous palaces and
reigned over famous kingdoms since the world began; and though she will
be very kind and gracious to children who come and ask her questions
modestly and prettily, and will show them the most lovely sights and
tell them the most delicious fairy tales that ever were seen or heard,
she makes very short work with conceited and impudent persons. She
covers their eyes and stops their ears, so that they can never see her
wonderful treasures or hear her charming stories, but live, all their
lives long, shut up in the dark fusty cupboard of their own ignorance,
and stupid self-love, and self-satisfaction, thinking they know all
about everything as well as if they had made it themselves, when they
do not really know anything at all. And because you and I dislike fusty
cupboards, and because we want to know anything and everything that
Nature is condescending enough to teach us, we will listen, to begin
with, to what the pine forest has to tell.
When the rough winds are up and at play, and the pine-trees shout and
sing together in a mighty chorus, while the hoarse voice of them is
like the roar of the sea upon a rocky coast, then you may learn the
secret of the forest. It sings first of the winged seed; and then of
the birth of the tiny tree; of sunrise and sunset, and the tranquil
warmth of noon-day, and of the soft, refreshing rain, and the kindly,
nourishing earth, and of the white moonlight, and pale, moist garments
of the mist, all helping the tree to grow up tall and straight, to
strike root deep and spread wide its green branches. It sings, too, of
the biting frost, and the still, dumb snow, and the hurrying storm,
all trying and testing the tree, to prove if it can stand firm and
show a brave face in time of danger and trouble. Then it sings of the
happy spring-time, when the forest is girdled about with a band of
flowers; while the birds build and call to each other among the high
branches; and the squirrel helps his wife to make her snug nest for the
little, brown squirrel-babies that are to be; and the dormice wake up
from their long winter sleep, and sit in the sunshine and comb their
whiskers with their dainty, little paws. And then the forest sings of
man--how he comes with axe and saw, and hammer and iron wedges, and
lays low the tallest of its children, and binds them with ropes and
chains, and hauls them away to be his bond-servants and slaves. And,
last of all, it sings slowly and very gently of old age and decay and
death; of the seed that falls on hard, dry places and never springs up;
of the tree that is broken by the tempest or scathed by the lightning
flash, and stands bare and barren and unsightly; sings how, in the end,
all things shrink and crumble, and how the dust of them returns and is
mingled with the fruitful soil from which at first they came.
This is the song of the pine forest, and from it you may learn this
lesson: that the life of the tree and of beast and bird are subject to
the same three great laws as the life of man--the law of growth, of
obedience, and of self-sacrifice. And perhaps, when you are older, if
you take care to avoid that spirit of conceit and impudence which, as
we have already said, gets people into such trouble with Nature, you
may come to see that these three laws are after all but one, bound for
ever together by the golden cord of love.
Once upon a time, just on the edge of the pine forest, there lived a
little boy. He lived in a big, brown, wooden house, with overhanging
eaves and a very deep roof to it, which swept down from the high middle
gable like the wings of a hen covering her chickens. The wood-sheds,
and hay-barn, and the stable where the brown-eyed, sweet-breathed
cows lay at night, and the clean, cool dairy, and the cheese-room
with its heavy presses were all under this same wide sheltering roof.
Before the house a meadow of rich grass stretched down to a stream,
that hurried along over rocky limestone ledges, or slipped away over
flat sandy places where you might see the little fishes playing at
hide-and-seek or puss in the corner among the bright pebbles at the
bottom. While on the shallow, marshy puddles by the stream side, where
the forget-me-not and brook-lime and rushes grow, the water-spiders
would dance quadrilles and jigs and reels all day long in the sunshine,
and the frogs would croak by hundreds in the still spring evenings,
when the sunset was red behind the pine-trees to the west. And in this
pleasant place little Peter lived, as I say, once upon a time, with his
father and mother, and his two brothers, and Eliza the servant-maid,
and Gustavus the cowherd.
He was the youngest of the children by a number of years, and was such
a small fellow that Susan Lepage, his mother, could make him quite a
smart blouse and pair of trousers out of Antony's cast-off garments,
even when all the patches and thin places had been cut out. He had a
black, curly head, and very round eyes--for many things surprised him,
and surprise makes the eyes grow round as everybody knows--and a dear,
little, red mouth, that was sweet to kiss, and nice, fat cheeks, which
began to look rather cold and blue, by the way, as he stood on the
threshold one evening about Christmas time, with Cincinnatus, the old,
tabby tom-cat, under his arm. He was waiting for his brother Antony
to come home from the neighbouring market-town of Nullepart. It was
growing dusk, yet the sky was very clear. The sound of the wind in the
pine branches and of the chattering stream was strange in the frosty
evening air; so that little Peter felt rather creepy, as the saying is,
and held on very tight to Cincinnatus for fear of--he didn't quite know
what.
'Come in, little man, come in,' cried his mother, as she moved to and
fro in the ruddy firelight, helping Eliza to get ready the supper. 'You
will be frozen standing there outside; and we shall be frozen, too,
sitting here with the door open. Antony will get home none the quicker
for your watching. That which is looked for hardest, they say, comes
last.'
But Peter only hugged Cincinnatus a little closer--thereby making that
long-suffering animal kick spasmodically with his hind legs, as a
rabbit does when you hold it up by the ears--and looked more earnestly
than ever down the forest path into the dimness of the pines.
Just then John Paqualin, the charcoal-burner, came up to the open
door, with a couple of empty sacks across his shoulders. Now the
charcoal-burner was a great friend of little Peter's, though he was
a queer figure to look at. For his red hair hung in wild locks down
over his shoulders, and his eyes glowed red too--as red as his own
smouldering charcoal fires--and his back was bent and crooked; while
his legs were so inordinately long and thin, that all the naughty
little boys in Nullepart, when he went down there to sell his sacks of
charcoal, used to run after him up the street, shouting:--
'Hurrah, hurrah! here's the grasshopper man again! Hey, ho!
grasshopper, give us a tune--haven't you brought your fiddle?'
But when Paqualin got annoyed, as he sometimes did, and turned round
upon them with his glowing eyes, they would all scuttle away as hard as
their legs could carry them. For, like a good many other people, they
were particularly courageous when they could only see the enemy's back.
You may be sure our little Peter never called the charcoal-burner by
any offensive names, and therefore, having a good conscience, had no
cause to be afraid of him.
'Eh! but what is this?' he cried, in his high cracked voice as he flung
down the sacks, and stood by the little lad in the doorway. 'Remember
my ears are so quick I can hear the grass grow. Just now I heard the
best mother in the world call her little boy to go indoors, and here
he stands still on the threshold. If you do not go in do you know what
will happen, eh?'
'No; what will happen? Please tell me,' said Peter.
[Illustration: 'WHAT WILL HAPPEN? PLEASE TELL ME.' _Page 10._]
The charcoal-burner stretched out one long arm and pointed away into
the forest, and sunk his voice to a whisper:--
'The old, grey she-wolf will assuredly come pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat over
the moss and the stones, pit-a-pat over the pine-needles and the fallen
twigs and branches, pit-a-pat out of the wood, and--snap!--like that,
catch your poor Cincinnatus by the tail and carry him off to make into
soup for her little ones. Picture to yourself poor Cincinnatus in the
wolf's great, black, steaming soup-pot, and all the wolf-cubs with
their wicked, little mouths wide open, sitting round, with their wooden
spoons in their hands, all ready to begin.'
Peter retreated hastily into the kitchen, cat and all, and took up his
stand rather close to his mother.
'Is it true, mother?' he said. 'But where do the wolves buy their
wooden spoons, do you think--in the shop at Nullepart?'
'Nay, how should I know?' said Susan Lepage, as she stooped down
and kissed the child, and then looking up kindly nodded to the
charcoal-burner. 'You must ask the old she-wolf herself if you want to
know where she buys her spoons, and her soup pot too for that matter.
She is no friend of mine, little one.'
After a moment's pause, she added:--
'You will stay to supper, John Paqualin? My husband and sons will be in
soon, and there is plenty for all, thank God. You will be welcome.'
But Paqualin shook his head, and the light died away in those strange
eyes of his.
'Welcome?' he said. 'The pretty, false word has little meaning for
me. And yet perhaps in your mouth it is honest, Susan Lepage, for you
are gentle and merciful as a saint in heaven, and the child, here,
takes after you. But, for the rest, who welcomes a mad, mis-shapen,
half-finished creature on whom Nature herself has had no mercy? Master
Lepage will come in hungry. Will he like to have his stomach turned
by the sight of the hump-backed charcoal-burner? No, no, I go home to
my hut. Good-night, little Peter. I will tell the grey wolf to look
elsewhere for her supper.--Ah! I see wonderful things though sometimes,
for all that I live alone and in squalor. The red fire and the white
moon tell me stories, turn by turn, all the night through.'
And with that he swung the empty sacks across his back again and
shambled away into the growing darkness.
[Illustration]
'A good riddance,' muttered Eliza, as she set the cheese on the table.
'It is an absolute indignity to ask a respectable servant to wait at
table on a wild animal like that.'
But Susan Lepage sighed as she turned from the doorway.
'Poor, unhappy one,' she said. 'God gave thee thy fair soul, but who
gave thee thy ungainly body?'
Then she reproved Eliza for her conduct in various matters which had
nothing in the world to do with her remarks upon the charcoal-burner.
Even the best of women are not always quite logical.
Meanwhile little Peter had sat down on his stool by the fire. For a
little while he sat very still, for he was thinking over the visit of
his friend John Paqualin. He felt rather unhappy about him, he could
not quite have said why. But when we are children it is not easy to
think of any one person or one thing for long together. There are such
lots of things to think about, that one chases another out of our
heads very quickly. And so Peter soon gave up puzzling himself about
the charcoal-burner, and began counting the sparks as they flew out of
the blazing, crackling, pine logs up the wide chimney. Unfortunately,
however, he was not a great arithmetician; and though he began over
and over again at plain one, two, three, he always got wrong among the
fifteens and sixteens; and never succeeded in counting up to twenty
at all. Nothing is more tedious than making frequent mistakes. So he
got off his stool, and began hopping from one stone quarry in the
kitchen floor to the next. Suddenly he became entangled in Eliza's full
petticoats--she was whirling them about a good deal, it is true, being
in rather a bad temper--and nearly tumbled down on his poor, little
nose.
'Bless the child, what possesses him?' cried Eliza.
Peter retired to his stool again, in a hurry; and after thinking for a
minute pulled a long bit of string, with a cross-bar of stick at the
end of it, out of the bulging side pocket of his short trousers, and
drew it backwards and forwards, and bobbed it up and down just in front
of Cincinnatus' nose. But Cincinnatus would not play.
Cincinnatus sat up very stiff and straight, with all his four paws
in a row and his tail curled very tight over them, blinking his
yellow eyes at the fire. For Cincinnatus was offended! Even cats have
feelings. And on thinking it over, he came to the conclusion that he
had not been treated with sufficient respect.
'Soup-pots and wooden spoons--fiddledee-dee,' he said to himself in the
cat-language. 'Why pervert a child's mind with such inane fictions?'
For you see Cincinnatus was not a common cat; being first cousin once
removed, indeed, to the Sacristan's cat at Nullepart--who knew all the
feast and fast days in the church calendar as well as the Sacristan
himself, and had not eaten a mouse on a Friday for I cannot say how
long. When you have a scholar in the family it obliges you to be
dignified.
And so poor little Peter, as nothing and nobody would help to amuse him
and pass away the time, pressed his two fat, little hands together in a
sort of despair, and gave a terrible sigh.
'Bless the child, what possesses him?' cried Eliza again. 'Ah, my
heart! How you made me jump!'
'What is the matter, Peter?' asked his mother.
'Oh! I don't believe Antony will ever come home,' said the boy, while
the great tears began to run down over his chubby cheeks. 'And I am so
tired of waiting. And I want so badly to know whether they have dressed
the stable in the big church at Nullepart; and whether we shall really
go there on Sunday, to see the dear baby Jesus, and the blessed Virgin,
and good St. Joseph, and the donkeys and cows, you told me about. I
have never seen them yet. And I want so dreadfully to go.'
Then his mother took up Peter in her arms, and sat down in the wooden
chair in the chimney-corner, and held him gently on her lap.
'There, there,' she said, as she stroked his pretty hair, 'what cause
have you to fret? The stable will be dressed all in good time; and the
donkeys and cows certainly won't run away before Sunday. And St. Joseph
and the blessed Virgin will be glad that a little lad like you should
come and burn a candle before them--never fear. If the day is fair we
will certainly all go to church on Sunday. What is to be will be, and
Antony's coming late or early can make no difference. Patience is a
great virtue, dear, little one--you cannot learn that too soon.'
But Cincinnatus sat up very stiff, though he was growing slightly
sleepy; and still winked his yellow eyes at the fire. He was not at all
sure that it was not incumbent upon him to spit at the charcoal-burner
next time he saw him. It was an extreme measure certainly, and
before adopting it he would have been glad to take his cousin the
Sacristan's cat's opinion on the matter. Social position brings its
responsibilities. Yet all the same, it is a fine thing to have a
scholar in the family.
[Illustration]