Lucian settled down in his new surroundings with a readiness and
docility that surprised his relatives. He rarely made any allusion to
the loss of his father--he appeared to possess a philosophic spirit that
enabled him, even at so early an age, to accept the facts of life as
they are. He was never backward, however, in talking of the past. He had
been his father’s constant companion for six years, and had travelled
with him wherever he went, especially in Italy, and he brought out of
his memory stores of reminiscences with which to interest and amuse his
newly found relatives. He would talk to Mr. Pepperdine of Italian
agriculture; to Keziah of Italian domestic life; to Judith of the
treasures of Rome and Naples, Pisa and Florence, of the blue skies and
sun-kissed groves of his native land. He always insisted on his
nationality--the accident of his connection with England on the maternal
side seemed to have no meaning for him.
‘I am Italian,’ he would say when Mr. Pepperdine slyly teased him. ‘It
does not matter that I was born in England. My real name is Luciano
Damerelli, and my father’s, if he had used it, was Cypriano.’
Little by little they began to find out the boy’s qualities and
characteristics. He was strangely old-fashioned, precocious, and
unnaturally grave, and cared little for the society of other children,
at whom he had a trick of staring as if they had been insects impaled
beneath a microscope and he a scientist examining them. He appeared to
have two great passions--one for out-door life and nature; the other for
reading. He would sit for hours on the bridge watching the river run by,
or lie on his back on the lawn in front of the house staring at the
drifting clouds. He knew every nook of the ruinous part of the castle
and every corner of the old church before he had been at Simonstower
many weeks. He made friends with everybody in the village, and if he
found out that an old man had some strange legend to tell, he pestered
the life out of him until it was told. And every day he did so much
reading, always with the stern concentration of the student who means to
possess a full mind.
When Lucian had been nearly two months at the farm it was borne in upon
Miss Pepperdine’s mind that he ought to be sent to school. She was by no
means anxious to get rid of him--on the contrary she was glad to have
him in the house: she loved to hear him talk, to see him going about,
and to watch his various proceedings. But Keziah Pepperdine had been
endowed at birth with the desire to manage--she was one of those people
who are never happy unless they are controlling, devising, or
superintending. Moreover, she possessed a very strict sense of
justice--she believed in doing one’s duty, especially to those people to
whom duty was owing, and who could not extract it for themselves. It
seemed to her that it was the plain duty of Lucian’s relatives to send
Lucian to school. She was full of anxieties for his future. Every
attempt which she had made to get her brother to tell her anything about
the boy’s affairs had resulted in sheer failure--Simpson Pepperdine,
celebrated from the North Sea to the Westmoreland border as the
easiest-going and best-natured man that ever lived, was a past master in
the art of evading direct questions. Keziah could get no information
from him, and she was anxious for Lucian’s sake. The boy, she said,
ought to be fitted out for some walk in life.
She took the vicar into her confidence, seizing the opportunity when he
called one day and found no one but herself at home.
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘the boy is a great book-worm. Reading is all
that he seems to care about. He brought a quantity of books with him--he
has bought others since. He reads in an old-fashioned sort of way--not
as you would think a child would. I offered him a child’s book one
night--it was one that a little boy who once stayed here had left in the
house. He took it politely enough, and pretended to look at it, but it
was plain to see that he was amused. He is a precocious child, Mr.
Chilverstone.’
The vicar agreed. He suggested that he might be better able to judge the
situation, and to advise Miss Pepperdine thereon, if he were allowed to
inspect Lucian’s library, and Keziah accordingly escorted him to the
boy’s room. Mr. Chilverstone was somewhat taken aback on being
confronted by an assemblage of some three or four hundred volumes,
arranged with great precision and bearing evidences of constant use. He
remarked that the sight was most interesting, and proceeded to make a
general inspection. A rapid survey of Lucian’s books showed him that the
boy had three favourite subjects--history, mediæval romance, and poetry.
There were histories of almost every country in Europe, and at least
three of the United States of America; there were editions of the
ancient chronicles; the great Italian poets were all there in the
original; the English poets, ancient and modern, were there too, in
editions that bespoke the care of a book-lover. There was nothing of a
juvenile, or even a frivolous nature from the top of the old bookcase to
the bottom--the nearest approach to anything in the shape of light
literature was found in the presence of certain famous historical
romances of undoubted verisimilitude, and in much-thumbed copies of
_Robinson Crusoe_ and _The Pilgrim’s Progress_.
Mr. Chilverstone was puzzled. As at least one-half of the books before
him were in Italian, he concluded that Lucian was as well acquainted
with that language as with English, and said so. Miss Pepperdine
enlightened him on the point, and gave him a rapid sketch of Lucian’s
history.
‘Just so, just so,’ said he. ‘No doubt the boy’s father formed his
taste. It is really most interesting. It is very evident that the child
has an uncommon mind--you say that he reads with great attention and
concentration?’
‘You might let off a cannon at his elbow and he wouldn’t take any
notice,’ said Miss Pepperdine.
‘It is evident that he is a born student. This is a capital collection
of modern histories,’ said Mr. Chilverstone. ‘If your nephew has read
and digested them all he must be well informed as to the rise and
progress of nations. I should like, I think, to have an opportunity of
conversing with him.’
Although he did not say so to Miss Pepperdine, the vicar was secretly
anxious to find out what had diverted the boy’s attention from the usual
pursuits of childhood into these paths. He contrived to waylay Lucian
and to draw him into conversation, and being a man of some talent and of
considerable sympathy, he soon knew all that the boy had to tell. He
found that Lucian had never received any education of the ordinary type;
had never been to school or known tutor or governess. He could not
remember who taught him to read, but cherished a notion that reading and
writing had come to him with his speech. As to his choice of books, that
had largely had its initiative in his father’s recommendation; but there
had been a further incentive in the fact that the boy had travelled a
great deal, was familiar with many historic scenes and places, and had a
natural desire to re-create the past in his own imagination. For six
years, in short, he had been receiving an education such as few children
are privileged to acquire. He talked of mediæval Italy as if he had
lived in its sunny-tinted hours, and of modern Rome as though it lay in
the next parish. But Mr. Chilverstone saw that the boy was in no danger
of becoming either prig or pedant, and that his mind was as normal as
his body was healthy. He was the mere outcome of an exceptional
environment. He had lived amongst men who talked and worked and thought
but with one object--Art--and their enthusiasm had filled him too. ‘I
am to be a poet--a great poet,’ he said, with serious face and a
straight stare from the violet eyes whose beauty brought everybody
captive to his feet. ‘It is my destiny.’
Mr. Chilverstone had a sheaf of yellow papers locked away in a secret
drawer which he had never exhibited to living man or woman--verses
written in long dead college days. He was sentimental about them still,
and the sentiment inclined him to tenderness with youthful genius. He
assured Lucian that he sincerely trusted that he might achieve his
heart’s desire, and added a word of good advice as to the inadvisability
of writing too soon. But he discovered that some one had been beforehand
with the boy on that point--the future poet, with a touch of worldly
wisdom which sounded as odd as it was quaint, assured the parson that he
had a horror of immaturity and had been commanded by his father never to
print anything until it had stood the test of cool-headed reflection and
twelve months’ keeping.
The vicar recognised that here was material which required careful
nursing and watchful attention. He soon found that Lucian knew nothing
of mathematics, and that his only desire in the way of Greek and Latin
was that he might be able to read the poets of those languages in the
originals. Of the grammar of the English language he knew absolutely
nothing, but as he spoke with an almost too extreme correctness, and in
a voice of great refinement, Mr. Chilverstone gave it as his opinion
that there was no necessity to trouble him with its complexities. But in
presenting his report to Miss Pepperdine the vicar said that it would do
the boy good to go to school. He would mix with other boys--he was
healthy and normal enough, to be sure, and full of boyish fun in his
way, but the society of lads of his own age would be good for him. He
recommended Miss Pepperdine to send him to the grammar-school at
Saxonstowe, the headmaster of which was a friend of his and would gladly
give special attention to any boy whom he recommended. He volunteered,
carrying his kindness further, to go over to Saxonstowe and talk to Dr.
Babbacombe; for Lucian, he remarked, was no ordinary boy, and needed
special attention.
Miss Pepperdine, like most generals who conceive their plans of campaign
in secret, found that her troubles commenced as soon as she began to
expose her scheme to criticism. Mr. Pepperdine, as a lifelong exponent
of the art of letting things alone, wanted to know what she meant by
disturbing everything when all was going on as comfortably as it could
be. He was sure the boy had as much book-learning as the archbishop
himself--besides, if he was sent away to school, he, Simpson Pepperdine,
would have nobody to talk to about how they farmed in foreign countries.
Judith, half recognising the force of her sister’s arguments, was still
angry with Keziah for allowing them to occur to her--she knew that the
boy had crept so closely into her heart and had so warmed it with new
fire that she hated the thought of his leaving her, even though
Saxonstowe was only thirty miles away. Consequently Miss Pepperdine
fought many pitched battles with her brother and sister, and Simpson and
Judith, who knew that she had more brains in her little finger than they
possessed in their two heads, took to holding conferences in secret in
the vain hope of circumventing her designs.
It came as a vast surprise to these two conspirators that Lucian
himself, on whose behalf they basely professed to be fighting, deserted
to, or rather openly joined, the enemy as soon as the active campaign
began. Miss Pepperdine, like the astute woman she was, gained the boy’s
ear and had talked him over before either Simpson or Judith could
pervert his mind. He listened to all she had to say, showed that he was
impressed, and straightway repaired to the vicarage to seek Mr.
Chilverstone’s advice. That evening, in the course of a family council,
shared in by Mr. Pepperdine with a gloomy face and feelings of silent
resentment against Keziah, and by Judith with something of the emotion
displayed by a hen who is about to be robbed of her one chicken, Lucian
announced that he would go to school, adding, however, that if he found
there was nothing to be learnt there he would return to his uncle’s
roof. Mr. Pepperdine plucked up amazingly after this announcement, for
he cherished a secret conviction that his nephew already knew more than
any schoolmaster could teach him; but Judith shed tears when she went to
bed, and felt ill-disposed towards Keziah for the rest of the week.
Lucian went to Saxonstowe presently with cheerfulness and a businesslike
air, and the three middle-aged Pepperdines were miserable. Mr.
Pepperdine took to going over to the Grange at Wellsby nearly every
night, and Judith was openly rebellious. Miss Pepperdine herself felt
that the house was all the duller for the boy’s absence, and wondered
how they had endured its dumb monotony before he came. There was much of
the Spartan in her, however, and she bore up without sign; but the
experience taught her that Duty, when actually done, is not so pleasing
to the human feelings as it seems to be when viewed from a distance.
No word came from Lucian for two weeks after his departure; then the
postman brought a letter addressed to Mr. Pepperdine, which was opened
amidst great excitement at the breakfast table. Mr. Pepperdine, however,
read it in silence.
/#
‘My dear Uncle Simpson Pepperdine,’ wrote Lucian, ‘I did not wish
to write to you until I had been at school quite two weeks, so that
I could tell you what I thought of it, and whether it would suit
me. It is a very nice school, and all the boys are very nice too,
and I like Dr. Babbacombe, and his wife, and the masters. We have
very good meals, and I should be quite content in that respect if
one could sometimes have a cup of decent coffee, but I believe that
is impossible in England. They have a pudding here, sometimes,
which the boys call Spotted Dog--it is very satisfying and I do not
remember hearing of it before--it has what English people call
plums in it, but they are in reality small dried raisins.
‘I am perfectly content with my surroundings and my new friends,
but I greatly fear that this system of education will not suit me.
In some subjects, such as history and general knowledge, I find
that I already know much more than Dr. Babbacombe usually teaches
to boys. As regards other subjects I find that it is not _en règle_
to permit discussion or argument between master and pupil. I can
quite see the reasonableness of that, but it is the only way in
which I have ever learnt everything. I am not quick at learning
anything--I have to read a thing over and over again before I
arrive at the true significance. It may be that I would spend a
whole day in accounting to myself why a certain cause produces a
certain effect--the system of education in use here, however,
requires one to learn many things in quite a short time. It reminds
me of the man who taught twelve parrots all at once. In more ways
than one it reminds me of this, because I feel that many boys here
learn the sound of a word and yet do not know what the word means.
That is what I have been counselled to avoid.
‘I am anxious to be amenable to your wishes, but I think I shall
waste time here. If I could have my own way I should like to have
Mr. Chilverstone for a tutor, because he is a man of understanding
and patience, and would fully explain everything to me. I am not
easy in my mind here, though quite so in my body. Everybody is very
kind and the life is comfortable, but I do not think Dr. Babbacombe
or his masters are great _savants_, though they are gracious and
estimable gentlemen.
‘I send my love to you and my aunts, and to Mr. Chilverstone and
Mr. and Mrs. Trippett. I have bought a cricket-bat for John
Trippett and a doll for Mary, which I shall send in a box very
soon.--And I am your affectionate kinsman,
/*
‘LUCIAN DAMEREL.
*/
#/
As the greater part of this remarkable epistle was pure Greek to Mr.
Pepperdine, he repaired to the vicarage with it and laid it before Mr.
Chilverstone, who, having duly considered it, returned with Lucian’s
kinsman to the farm and there entered into solemn conclave with him and
his sisters. The result of their deliberations was that the boy was soon
afterwards taken from the care of the gracious and estimable gentlemen
who were not _savants_, and placed, so far as his education was
concerned, under the sole charge of the vicar.