_Written in the fourteenth year of my age._
[The date is July the Second--or Third. I am not sure which, for Mary
Housemaid has burned yesterday's paper lighting the fire.]
We went to Torres Vedras the Second to-day. I don't quite know why--only
there are bigger stones there, and the river rushes more rapidly. We
often try to dam it altogether, but we have never quite succeeded. You
see, just when we are getting to the last bit, the water always rises
and sweeps it all away. But Hugh John said to-day he knew a way, and
that was to make the dam like a very blunt capital V with its nose
pointing up stream! The book on engineering he had been digging into
said this was the proper right way, and it acted very well till the
moment came when the very point of the V was put in. Hugh John was to do
that, of course. He would yield the honor to no one else, and as for
me, I did not want that kind of honor.
And, do you know, when he dropped in the big stone and stood on it to
make it all safe by plugging up the "interstices" with smaller stones
and rubble, as the book said--lo! the river rose again and swept away
the whole work from side to side, all except the big bowlder Hugh John
was standing on!
You never saw such a thing. Horatius, with the bridge going down behind
him, was at least on dry land. But there stood Hugh John waving his arms
to keep his balance, and crying out, "Oh--I don't care--I don't
care--I'll dam it yet!"
It was very ignoble, he said afterwards, of any river to behave that
way. Why couldn't it have stopped where it was put and done what it was
told? Anyway, while we tried to get him a plank to crawl ashore on, the
big bowlder swerved, and toppled him right in, and he was wet up to his
watch-pocket.
He had to go to the top of the Feudal Tower all by himself, and play at
being the Lady Godiva riding through Coventry, while his things dried
over the ramparts. But he took good care that nobody saw him. He dared
Toady Lion to come within half-a-mile. While he was away, we made great
excavations and navigable channels. One of these was so huge that Sir
Toady says that the ruins will remain even when we are Grown-ups
ourselves. But that is a long time yet, and I don't see how Sir Toady
can possibly know.
He also says that, just as there are the ruins of Memphis, Nineveh,
Rome, the Calton Hill, and the Portobello Brickworks, so there will be
the ruins of the First and Second Torres Vedras. Digging people in
future generations will wonder who made them, and so on each of the big
stones he has placed an inscription in the Abracadabrian language to
tell the explorers all about it.
Now I will tell you about the Abracadabrian language. We made it up
ourselves, and we four in the nursery all speak it fluently. Only the
curious thing about it is that none of us has the least idea what the
others are talking about! This must be owing, says Hugh John, to "some
variation of dialect, such as creeps into all languages sooner or
later."
The Abracadabrian language has suffered _sooner_ than most, that is all.
In fact, it was born suffering. But it is the writing of it that is
most difficult. It is founded on always putting a Z for an A, and so
back through the alphabet. And so difficult to read is it that not even
the writer of any sentence in that language has ever been able to make
out what he meant, twenty-four hours after!
Hugh John and I really labored at it hard, and might have made progress
if we had not squabbled about the grammatical rules. But Sir Toady said
brazenly, "_Hinky-chinky-pin!_" And stuck to it that it meant, "The
enemy of the Nursery Commonwealth has arrived at Leith, burnt his ships,
and is now marching on Peebles!" As for Maid Margaret, she said it was
so, and would Sir Toady please come with her and fish for minnows with a
tin can tied to a string?
This they did. They had no souls for true philology. They don't even
know what the word means. (_I_ have just looked it up.) After he was
dried up all right alone in the Feudal Tower, Hugh John dressed himself,
and signaled to me by waving his handkerchief three times, once with his
right hand, once with his bare toes, and once holding it between his
teeth--pretty intricate when you are not used to it.
This, when you can see it, is our fiery cross--that is, Hugh John's and
mine. As I say, it takes a good deal of trouble, but it is a worthy
summons--and the copy-book says that nothing truly noble is achieved
without difficulty.
Well, when I got to him, he said that he would take me to his Cave of
Mysteries. This was a great favor, for not even Sir Toady had ever been
there before.
"Not a gamekeeper knows it," he said, "and Fuz says I can use his
scouting-glass if I take good care not to drop it."
There was a steep wood to climb, all among the fir-trees, some grass
fields, then above and quite suddenly we came out on the side of a
rugged mountain.
The cave was about half-way up, under a slanting rock. You turned
quickly to the side, grabbed a little pine-root and swung yourself in.
Then you saw the cave. It was not much of a place for size, not like the
self-contained villas they have in story-books. Only you could not be
seen. The rain did not come in unless it was driving quite level along
from the north, which did not happen often.
But when I turned about--why, it nearly took my breath away. We could
see half-a-dozen counties--Edinburgh dusting the little lion of Arthur's
Seat with her smoke, the blue firth beyond, little and narrow, the toy
towers of the Big Bridge to the left, and the green country all between
dotted with towers and towns innumerable.
Oh, it was so unexpected and so fine that I nearly cried. And Hugh John
lay watching me, his chin among the heather. But, more than all, he was
pleased that his cave had taken me so much by storm.
Then he showed me with his glasses he could "spot exactly where each of
the gamekeepers was, also the wood-foresters, and Sir Bulleigh Bunny
himself, if he were at home."
And indeed it was quite true. He could pick them all out one by one.
Never once did he make a mistake. Then he would show me them, but often
all I could see was no more than a little trembling among the green
leaves of some far-distant wood.
It was not long till I found the secret of Hugh John's complete security
in this his chosen Crusoe's Cave. Chesnay the gamekeeper was passing far
below, a gun over his shoulder, and as the wind was blowing off the
hill into the valley, it was almost certain that his dogs would scent
us.
But Hugh John had thought all this out. Trust him for that. He took a
gnawed bone out of an inner pocket, removed the wrapping of newspaper,
leaned far over, and threw it with the long, sweeping curve of a
boomerang upon the path in front of the dog's nose.
John Chesnay's retriever made a rush, a snap, and then sidled sidelong
into the thick copse-wood. The rest of the dogs were after him in a
moment. I had seen him glancing from side to side as if to watch for the
fall of the bone. He knew it would come, and that even if the devil took
the hindmost, the foremost would be sure of the bone. Therefore he, John
Chesnay's big black retriever, would be that foremost.
He was far too wise a dog to argue, or bother about where
the bone arrived from. His business was to find it, and
then--_crunch_--_crunch_--get it stowed away out of harm's way as
quickly as possible.
Caesar Augustus (that was the dog's name) knew very well that though you
may hunt out the causes of bad luck, it is better to leave good luck
alone. So at least Hugh John said, and if anybody knew all about such
things, _he_ did. There was hardly anything he could not tell you the
true explanation of, or, if in doubt, you had only to wait a moment and
he would make you up one on the spot quite as good, every bit, as the
real one. Furthermore, he would prove to you (and very likely to
himself) that it might be, must be, _was_, the only true and proper
reason and explanation.
Anyway, reason or no reason, it was just as nice as ninepence in the
Cave. Away down to the left where the sun was bright on the river we
could see Sir Toady and the Maid, little black dots moving to and fro
along the green edge of the river. Hugh John had the glass on them in a
minute, and behold--they were squabbling! Sir Toady had tossed some of
the Maid's fish out, and the Maid had promptly thrown the pail of water
in his face.
He stood dripping and laughing. The Maid had gone for a fresh supply of
ammunition. But war was over. Sir Toady had laughed. After that there
was no more to be said.
It is different with Hugh John, when he sucks in his cheeks, clenches
his fists, and laughs--well, look out for what you are going to get.
I asked Hugh John why he had never taken Sir Toady up to his Cave of the
Winds, and he said, "Oh, Toady--he would be getting out boxes to stuff
with beetles, and skirmishing for birds' eggs. He's all right in a wood,
that Toadums--better than me--but no good on the hillside, and too larky
all round in places where you can be seen miles off."
"And what do you do up here yourself?" I said.
"I am _by_ myself," he answered. "I think--I read!"
"But you have a room _to_ yourself in the house. You can go there!"
For I thought he was exceedingly well off. Because I have to share mine
with the Maid, who kicks like a young colt in her sleep. But Hugh John
gave me a look of utmost contempt.
"Did you never hear of Obermann?" he said, "--the man who made a cave on
the Pic de Jaman. I showed it to you when we stopped at Glion on the way
to Lausanne."
"It was a cow-chalet then," I reminded him. But he swept on without the
least heed of details.
"Yes, and Mr. Arnold has a lovely poem all about him, and 'the wild
bees' hum,' and 'his sad tranquil lore.' This isn't quite the Pic de
Jaman, of course, but it is just as lonely, if you don't tell anybody,
that is, and I've only told you, Sis! Never mind!"
So I swore never to reveal his hiding-place, and he showed me all he had
written about his observations. He had a shelf covered in with wood and
a lot of copy-books. Here was written all he had seen through the
glasses he had borrowed and the three-draw telescope of his own which he
carried constantly in his pocket.
Oh, it was wonderful what he had observed--all about the changing
seasons, the country people, the moor-birds, the gamekeepers, and the
comings and goings of Sir Bulleigh Bunny.
"Anybody can hide in a wood," he said, "but it takes Obermann and me to
do it on a bare hill!"
Then he smiled a little and confessed.
"I don't really know much about him," he said, "except that his name was
Senancour. I got his book out of the library, all marked with father's
scribblings, but I really couldn't understand much of it. Only this that
I translated--you could do it better, of course. It is about himself
when he was as old as we are, and felt just the same.
"'I loved all manner of glades, valleys where it was always dusk--and
thick woods. I loved heathery hills, ruined pleasaunces, and tumbled
rocks fallen in avalanche. Still more I loved vast and shifting sands
which never plowshare had furrowed nor human foot crossed--plains
abandoned to the mountain doe or the frightened scouring hare. I never
liked to sit amid the storming of cataracts, nor on a little hill
overlooking a boundless plain. Rather I chose a hiding-place well
sheltered, a block of stone wetted lip deep with the brook which glided
through the silence of the valley, or better still, a mossy trunk, prone
in the deeps of the forest, with the dry rustle of beech-leaves above me
which the wind is getting ready to blow down when the time is ripe.
Silently I march, my feet deep in last year's fallen leaves--the little
worn footpath full of them from side to side.'
"Oh, and this is finest of all," said Hugh John, hurrying on, "but don't
tell any one. I make you a partner of my solitude. It lasts just a
little while. It is selfish, if you like, but sometimes it is good to
live alone! Do you know what Senancour says love is?"
"No!" I gasped, "how should I know?"
And in truth I was more surprised that already Hugh John should be
thinking of such things. But when I told father, he just said to let him
alone--that the boy was finding his soul.
Perhaps it might be in this old, sad, hundred-year-old book that he was
to find it. For the soul, father says, is just the capacity a man has of
thinking for himself.
But Hugh John went on joyously, with his firm, pale, clean-cut face
looking out of the Cave's mouth towards the distant sapphire band of the
Firth, with the three Lomonds in a paler row of blue mounds behind.
"'Often on the breast of some mountain, when the winds, sweeping down
from their wild "hopes" and gorges, ruffle the little high-lying
solitary lakes, the eternal clatter of the waves, heard only by myself,
makes me feel the instability of things, and the eternal reconstruction
of the earth out of her own _debris_.
"'Thus giving myself up to the influence of all about me, bending to the
stoop of the bird which passes above me, thrilled by the falling stone,
conferring only with the moaning of the wind, watching the oncoming
mist, I become a part of the Peace of Things which is God. All reposes,
yet all is in motion, and I become part of it--calm as that higher
serenity, cool as that shadow--the hum of an insect or the scent of a
trampled herb making my communion with Nature. I also am of the great
sweet earth. I live its life, and in time I shall die its death.'"
Now, for myself, I did not think that this was the sort of thing a boy
ought to be thinking of at Hugh John's age. But, since father said he
too had "passed that way," and since Hugh John could eat, sleep, run,
and play as well as anybody, I did not say anything.
But I foresaw a day of reckoning--yes, I--because I am older, and a
girl. And in the world there are other girls. One day Hugh John (or I am
greatly mistaken) will turn the leaves of another book, and then
Senancour the austere will be forgotten, passed by on his shelf like a
chance acquaintance whose very name has become strange.
Perhaps I wrong him. But this is what I think. At any rate I resolved to
try and guide his thoughts into more cheerful paths (it is a pity we
have not Senancour's pretty word '_sentier_'; I have always loved it).
"Do you never observe _people_?" I asked him.
He stared at me in amazement.
"Why, of course I do," he answered, and he got down two more thick
copy-books. Everything Hugh John did about this time was original and
unexpected.
"People!" he said, holding up the two manuscript books; "why, these are
stuffed full of people. Enough to make a real book!"
Then I confided to Hugh John the great secret that _I_ was making a
book.
A look of joy flashed over his face.
"Let's make one together!" he said, "and not tell anybody!"
"Let's!" I answered.
Because I felt that I really owed Hugh John something for showing me the
Cave.
And it was arranged that he was to tell me about his People and Things,
and I was to write everything down with my thoughts planted in here and
there.