LUCILLE.
“If you drinks a drop more, Miss Lucy, you’ll just go like my pore
young sister goed,” observed Cook in a warning voice, as Lucille paused
to get her second wind for the second draught.
(Lucille had just been tortured at the stake by Sioux and
Blackfeet—thirsty work on a July afternoon.)
“And how did she go, Cookie-Bird—_Pop?_” inquired Lucille politely,
with round eyes, considering over the top of the big lemonade-flagon as
it rose again to her determined little mouth.
“No, Miss Lucy,” replied Cook severely. “Pop she did not. She swole …
swole and swole.”
“You mean ‘swelled,’ Cookoo,” corrected Lucille, inclined to be a
little didactic and corrective at the age of ten.
“Well, she were _my_ sister after all, Miss Lucy,” retorted Cook, “and
perhaps I may, or may not, know what she done. _I_ say she swole—and
what is more she swole clean into a dropsy. All along of drinking
water…. _Drops_ of water—_Dropsy_.”
“Never drink water,” murmured Dam, absentmindedly annexing, and
pocketing, an apple.
“Ah, water, but you see this is lemonade,” countered Lucille.
“Home-made, too, and not—er—gusty. It doesn’t make you go——” and here
it is regrettable to have to relate that Lucille made a shockingly
realistic sound, painfully indicative of the condition of one who has
imbibed unwisely and too well of a gas-impregnated liquor.
“No more does water in my experiants,” returned Cook, “and I was not
allooding to wulgarity, Miss Lucy, which you should know better than to
do such. My pore young sister’s systerm turned watery and they tapped
her at the last. All through drinking too much water, which lemonade
ain’t so very different either, be it never so ’ome-made…. Tapped ’er
they did—like a carksk, an’ ’er a Band of ’Oper, Blue Ribander, an’
Sunday Schooler from birth, an’ not departin’ from it when she grew up.
Such be the Ways of Providence,” and Cook sighed with protestive
respectfulness….
“Tapped ’er systerm, they did,” she added pensively, and with a little
justifiable pride.
“Were they hard taps?” inquired Lucille, reappearing from behind the
flagon. “I hate them myself, even on the funny-bone or knuckles—but on
the _cistern!_ Ugh!”
“_Hard_ taps; they was _silver_ taps,” ejaculated Cook, “and drawed
gallings and gallings—and nothing to laugh at, Master Dammicles,
neether…. So don’t you drink no more, Miss Lucy.”
“I can’t,” admitted Lucille—and indeed, to Dam, who regarded his
“cousin” with considerable concern, it did seem that, even as Cook’s
poor young sister of unhappy memory, Lucille had “swole”—though only
locally.
“Does _beer_ make you swell or swole or swellow when you swallow,
Cooker?” he inquired; “because, if so, _you_ had better be—” but he was
not allowed to conclude his deduction, for cook, bridling, bristling,
and incensed, bore down upon the children and swept them from her
kitchen.
To the boy, even as he fled _via_ a dish of tartlets and cakes, it
seemed remarkable that a certain uncertainty of temper (and figure)
should invariably distinguish those who devote their lives to the
obviously charming and attractive pursuit of the culinary art.
Surely one who, by reason of unfortunate limitations of sex, age,
ability, or property, could not become a Colonel of Cavalry could still
find infinite compensation in the career of cook or railway-servant.
Imagine, in the one case, having absolute freedom of action with regard
to raisins, tarts, cream, candy-peel, jam, plum-puddings and cakes,
making life one vast hamper, and in the other case, boundless
opportunity in the matter of leaping on and off moving trains, carrying
lighted bull’s-eye lanterns, and waving flags.
One of the early lessons that life taught him, without troubling to
explain them, and she taught him many and cruel, was that Cooks are
Cross.
“What shall we do now, Dam?” asked Lucille, and added, “Let’s raid the
rotten nursery and rag the Haddock. Little ass! Nothing else to do. How
I _hate_ Sunday afternoon…. No work and no play. Rotten.”
The Haddock, it may be stated, owed his fishy title to the fact that he
once possessed a Wealthy Relative of the name of Haddon. With
far-sighted reversionary intent his mother, a Mrs. Berners _née_
Seymour Stukeley, had christened him Haddon.
But the Wealthy Relative, on being informed of his good fortune, had
bluntly replied that he intended to leave his little all to the
founding of Night-Schools for illiterate Members of Parliament,
Travelling-Scholarships for uneducated Cabinet Ministers, and
Deportment Classes for New Radical Peers. He was a Funny Man as well as
a Wealthy Relative.
And, thereafter, Haddon Berners’ parents had, as Cook put it, “up and
died” and “Grandfather” had sent for, and adopted, the orphan Haddock.
Though known to Dam and Lucille as “The Haddock” he was in reality an
utter Rabbit and esteemed as such. A Rabbit he was born, a Rabbit he
lived, and a Rabbit he died. Respectable ever. Seen in the Right Place,
in the Right Clothes, doing the Right Thing with the Right People at
the Right Time.
Lucille was the daughter of Sylvester Bethune Gavestone, the late and
lamented Bishop of Minsterbury (once a cavalry subaltern), a school,
Sandhurst, and life-long friend of “Grandfather,” and husband of
“Grandfather’s” cousin, Geraldine Seymour Stukeley.
Poor “Grandfather,” known to the children as “Grumper,” the ferocious
old tyrant who loved all mankind and hated all men, with him adoption
was a habit, and the inviting of other children to stay as long as they
liked with the adopted children, a craze.
And yet he rarely saw the children, never played with them, and hated
to be disturbed.
He had out-lived his soldier-contemporaries, his children, his power to
ride to hounds, his pretty taste in wine, his fencing, dancing,
flirting, and all that had made life bearable—everything, as he said,
but his gout and his liver (and, it may be added, except his ferocious,
brutal temper).
“Yes…. Let us circumvent, decoy, and utterly destroy the common
Haddock,” agreed Dam.
The entry into the nursery was an effective night-attack by Blackfeet
(not to mention hands) but was spoilt by the presence of Miss Smellie
who was sitting there knitting relentlessly.
“Never burst into rooms, children,” she said coldly. “One expects
little of a boy, but a _girl_ should try to appear a Young Lady. Come
and sit by me, Lucille. What did you come in for—or rather for what did
you burst in?”
“We came to play with the Haddock,” volunteered Dam.
“Very kind and thoughtful of you, I am sure,” commented Miss Smellie
sourly. “Most obliging and benevolent,” and, with a sudden change to
righteous anger and bitterness, “Why don’t you speak the truth?”
“I am speaking the truth, Miss—er—Smellie,” replied the boy. “We did
come to play with the dear little Haddock—like one plays with a
football or a frog. I didn’t say we came for Haddock’s _good_.”
“We needed the Haddock, you see, Miss Smellie,” confirmed Lucille.
“How many times am I to remind you that Haddon Berners’ name _is_
Haddon, Lucille,” inquired Miss Smellie. “Why must you always prefer
vulgarity? One expects vulgarity from a boy—but a girl should try to
appear a Young Lady.”
With an eye on Dam, Lucille protruded a very red tongue at surprising
length, turned one eye far inward toward her nose, wrinkled that member
incredibly, corrugated her forehead grievously, and elongated her mouth
disastrously. The resultant expression of countenance admirably
expressed the general juvenile view of Miss Smellie and all her works.
Spurred to honourable emulation, the boy strove to excel. Using both
hands for the elongation of his eyes, the extension of his mouth, and
the depression of his ears, he turned upon the Haddock so horrible a
mask that the stricken child burst into a howl, if not into actual
tears.
“What’s the matter, Haddon?” demanded Miss Smellie, looking up with
quick suspicion.
“Dam made a _fathe_ at me,” whimpered the smitten one.
“Say ‘made a grimace’ not ‘made a face,’” corrected Miss Smellie. “Only
God can make _faces_.”
Dam exploded.
“At what are you laughing, Damocles?” she asked sternly.
“Nothing, Miss Smellie. What you said sounded rather funny and a little
irrevilent or is it irrembrant?”
“Damocles! Should _I_ be likely to say anything Irreverent? Should _I_
ever dream of Irreverence? What _can_ you mean? And never let me see
you make faces again.”
“I didn’t let you see me, Miss Smellie, and only God can make faces—”
“Leave the room at once, Sir, I shall report your impudence to your
great-uncle,” hissed Miss Smellie, rising in wrath—and the bad
abandoned boy had attained his object. Detention in the nursery for a
Sunday afternoon was no part of his programme.
Most unobtrusively Lucille faded away also.
“_Isn’t_ she a hopeless beast,” murmured she as the door closed.
“Utter rotter,” admitted the boy. “Let’s slope out into the garden and
dig some worms for bait.”
“Yes,” agreed Lucille, and added, “Parse _Smellie,_” whereupon, with
one voice and heart and purpose the twain broke into a paean, not of
praise—a kind of tribal lay, and chanted:—
“_Smellie_—Very common noun, absurd person, singular back number, tutor
gender, objectionable case governed by the word _I_,” and so _da capo_.
And yet the poor lady strove to do her duty in that station of life in
which it had pleased Providence (or a drunken father) to place her—and
to make the children “genteel”. Had she striven to win their love
instead, her ministrations might have had some effect (other than
infinite irritation and bitter dislike).
She was the Compleat Governess, on paper, and all that a person
entrusted with the training of young children should not be, in
reality. She had innumerable and admirable testimonials from various
employers of what she termed “aristocratic standing”; endless
certificates that testified unto her successful struggles in Music,
Drawing, Needlework, German, French, Calisthenics, Caligraphy, and
other mysteries, including the more decorous Sciences (against
Physiology, Anatomy, Zoology, Biology, and Hygiene she set her face as
subjects apt to be, at times, improper), and an appearance and manner
themselves irrefragible proofs of the highest moral virtue.
She also had the warm and unanimous witness of the children at
Monksmead that she was a Beast.
To those who frankly realize with open eyes that the student of life
must occasionally encounter indelicacies upon the pleasant path of
research, it may be revealed, in confidence, that they alluded to Miss
Smellie as “Sniffy” when not, under extreme provocation, as “Stinker”.
She taught them many things and, prominently, Deceit, Hate, and an
utter dislike of her God and her Religion—a most disastrous pair.
Poor old “Grumper”; advertising, he got her, paid her highly, and gave
her almost absolute control of the minds, souls, and bodies of his
young wards and “grandchildren”.
“The best of everything” for them—and they, at the average age of
eight, a band of depressed, resentful babes, had “hanged, drawed, and
quartered” her in effigy, within a month of coming beneath her stony
ministrations.
In appearance Miss Smellie was tall, thin, and flat. Most exceedingly
and incredibly flat. Impossibly flat. Her figure, teeth, voice, hair,
manner, hats, clothes, and whole life and conduct were flat as Euclid’s
plane-surface or yesterday’s champagne.
To counter-balance the possession, perhaps, of so many virtues, gifts,
testimonials, and certificates she had no chin, no eyebrows, and no
eyelashes. Her eyes were weak and watery; her spectacles strong and
thick; her nose indeterminate, wavering, erratic; her ears large, her
teeth irregular and protrusive, her mouth unfortunate and not
guaranteed to close.
An ugly female face is said to be the index and expression of an ugly
mind. It certainly was so in the case of Miss Smellie. Not that she had
an evil or vicious mind in any way—far from it, for she was a narrowly
pious and dully conscientious woman. Her mind was ugly as a useful
building may be very ugly—or as a room devoid of beautiful furniture or
over-crowded with cheap furniture may be ugly.
And her mind was devoid of beautiful thought-furniture, and
over-crowded with cheap and ugly furniture of text-book facts. She was
an utterly loveless woman, living unloving, and unloved—a terrible
condition.
One _could not_ like her.
Deadly dull, narrow, pedantic, petty, uninspiring, Miss Smellie’s
ideals, standards, and aims were incredibly low.
She lived, and taught others to live, for appearances.
The children were so to behave that they might appear “genteel”. If
they were to do this or that, no one would think they were young ladies
or young gentlemen.
“If we were out at tea and you did that, I _should_ be ashamed,” she
would cry when some healthy little human licked its jarnmy fingers, and
“_Do_ you wish to be considered vulgar or a little gentleman,
Damocles?”
Damocles was profoundly indifferent on the point and said so plainly.
They were not to be clean of hand for hygienic reasons—but for fear of
what people might “think”; they were not to be honourable, gentle,
brave and truthful because these things are fine—but because of what
the World might dole out in reward; they were not to eat slowly and
masticate well for their health’s sake—but by reason of “good manners”;
they were not to study that they might develop their powers of
reasoning, store their minds, and enlarge their horizons—but that they
might pass some infernal examination or other, _ad majorem Smelliae
gloriam_; they were not to practise the musical art that they might
have a soul-developing aesthetic training, a means of solace, delight,
and self-expression—but that they might “play their piece” to the
casual visitor to the school-room with priggish pride, expectant of
praise; they were not to be Christian for any other reason than that it
was the recommended way to Eternal Bliss and a Good Time Hereafter—the
whole duty of canny and respectable man being to “save his soul”
therefore.
Her charges were skilfully, if unintentionally, trained in hypocrisy
and mean motive, to look for low reward and strive for paltry ends—to
do what looked well, say what sounded well, to be false, veneered,
ungenuine.
And Miss Smellie was giving them the commonly accepted “education” of
their class and kind.
The prize product of the Smellie system was the Haddock whose whole
life was a pose, a lie, a refusal to see the actual. Perhaps she
influenced him more strongly than the others because he was caught
younger and was of weaker fibre. Anyhow he grew up the perfect and
heartless snob, and by the time he left Oxford, he would sooner have
been seen in a Black Maria with Lord Snooker than in a heavenly chariot
with a prophet of unmodish garment and vulgar ancestry.
To the finished Haddock, a tie was more than a character, and the cut
of a coat more than the cutting of a loving heart.
To him a “gentleman” was a person who had the current accent and
waistcoat, a competence, the entree here and there—a goer unto the
correct places with the correct people. Manners infinitely more than
conduct; externals everything; let the whitening be white and the
sepulchre mattered not.
The Haddock had no bloodful vice, but he was unstable as water and
could not excel, a moral coward and weakling, a liar, a borrower of
what he never intended to return, undeniably and incurably mean, the
complete parasite.
From the first he feared and blindly obeyed Miss Smellie, propitiated
while loathing her; accepted her statements, standards, and beliefs;
curried favour and became her spy and informer.
“What’s about the record cricket-ball throw, Dam?” inquired Lucille, as
they strolled down the path to the orchard and kitchen-garden,
hot-houses, stream and stables, to seek the coy, reluctant worm.
“Dunno,” replied the boy, “but a hundred yards wants a lot of doing.”
“Wonder if _I_ could do it,” mused Lucille, picking up a tempting
egg-shaped pebble, nearly as big as her fist, and throwing it with
remarkably neat action (for a girl) at the first pear-tree over the
bridge that spanned the trout-stream.
_At_, but not into.
With that extraordinary magnetic attraction which glass has for the
missile of the juvenile thrower, the orchid-house, on the opposite side
of the path from the pear-tree, drew the errant stone to its hospitable
shelter.
Through the biggest pane of glass it crashed, neatly decapitated a
rare, choice exotic, the pride of Mr. Alastair Kenneth MacIlwraith,
head gardener, released from its hold a hanging basket, struck a large
pot (perched high in a state of unstable equilibrium), and passed out
on the other side with something accomplished, something done, to earn
a long repose.
So much for the stone.
The descending pot lit upon the edge of one side of the big glass
aquarium, smashed it, and continued its career, precipitating an
avalanche of lesser pots and their priceless contents.
The hanging basket, now an unhung and travelling basket, heavy,
iron-ribbed, anciently mossy, oozy of slime, fell with neat exactitude
upon the bald, bare cranium of Mr. Alastair Kenneth MacIlwraith, head
gardener, and dour, irascible child and woman hater.
“Bull’s-eye!” commented Dam—always terse when not composing
fairy-tales.
“Crikey!” shrieked Lucille. “That’s done it,” and fled straightway to
her room and violent earnest prayer, not for forgiveness but for
salvation, from consequences. (What’s the good of Saying your Prayers
if you can’t look for Help in Time of Trouble such as this?)
The face of Mr. Alastair Kenneth MacIlwraith was not pleasant to see as
he pranced forth from the orchid-house, brandishing an implement of his
trade.
“Ye’ll be needing a wash the day, Mon Sandy, and the Sawbath but fower
days syne,” opined Dam, critically observing the moss-and-mud streaked
head, face and neck of the raving, incoherent victim of Lucille’s
effort.
When at all lucid and comprehensible Mr. MacIlwraith was understood to
say he’d give his place (and he twanty-twa years in it) to have the
personal trouncing of Dam, that Limb, that Deevil, that predestined and
fore-doomed Child of Sin, that—
Dam pocketed his hands and said but:—
“_Havers_, Mon Sandy!”
“I’ll tak’ the hide fra y’r bones yet, ye feckless, impident—”
Dam shook a disapproving head and said but:—
“_Clavers_, Mon Sandy!”
“I’ll _see_ ye skelped onny-how—or lose ma job, ye—”
More in sorrow than in anger Dam sighed and said but:—
“_Hoots_, Mon Sandy!”
“I’ll go straight to y’r Grandfer the noo, and if ye’r not flayed
alive! Aye! I’ll gang the noo to Himself——”
“_Wi’ fower an twanty men, an’ five an’ thairrty pipers_,” suggested
Dam in tuneful song.
Mr. Alastair Kenneth MacIlwraith did what he rarely did—swore
violently.
“_Do you think at your age it is right_?” quoted the wicked boy … the
exceedingly bad and reprehensible boy.
The maddened gardener turned and strode to the house with all his
imperfections on his head and face and neck.
Taking no denial from Butterson, he forced his way into the presence of
his master and clamoured for instant retributive justice—or the
acceptance of his resignation forthwith, and him twanty-twa years in
the ane place.
“Grandfather,” roused from slumber, gouty, liverish, ferociously angry,
sent for Dam, Sergeant Havlan, and Sergeant Havlan’s cane.
“What’s the meaning of this, Sir,” he roared as Dam, cool, smiling,
friendly ever, entered the Sanctum. “What the Devil d’ye mean by it,
eh? Wreckin’ my orchid-houses, assaultin’ my servants, waking me up,
annoying ME! Seven days C.B.[15] and bread and water, on each count.
What d’ye mean by it, ye young hound? Eh? Answer me before I have ye
flogged to death to teach ye better manners! Guilty or Not Guilty? and
I’ll take your word for it.”
[15] Confined to barracks.
“The missile, describing a parabola, struck its subjective with fearful
impact, Sir,” replied the bad boy imperturbably, misquoting from his
latest fiction (and calling it a “parry-bowler,” to “Grandfather’s”
considerable and very natural mystification).
“_What?_” roared that gentleman, sitting bolt upright in astonishment
and wrath.
“No. It’s _ob_jective,” corrected Dam. “Yes. With fearful impact.
Fearful also were the words of the Mon Sandy.”
“Grandfather” flushed and smiled a little wryly.
“You’d favour _me_ with pleasantries too, would you? I’ll reciprocate
to the best of my poor ability,” he remarked silkily, and his mouth set
in the unpleasant Stukeley grimness, while a little muscular pulse beat
beneath his cheek-bone.
“A dozen of the very best, if you please, Sergeant,” he added, turning
to Sergeant Havlan.
“Coat off, Sir,” remarked that worthy, nothing loath, to the boy who
could touch him almost as he would with the foil.
Dam removed his Eton jacket, folded his arms, turned his back to the
smiter and assumed a scientific arrangement of the shoulders with tense
muscles and coyly withdrawn bones. He had been there before….
The dozen were indeed of the Sergeant’s best and he was a master. The
boy turned not a hair, though he turned a little pale…. His mouth grew
extraordinarily like that of his grandfather and a little muscular
pulse beat beneath his cheek-bone.
“And what do you think of _my_ pleasantries, my young friend?” inquired
Grandfather. “Feeling at all witty _now_?”
“Havlan is failing a bit, Sir,” was the cool reply. “I have noticed it
at fencing too—Getting old—or beer perhaps. I scarcely felt him and so
did not see or feel the point of your joke.”
“Grandfather’s” flush deepened and his smile broadened crookedly. “Try
and do yourself justice, Havlan,” he said. “’Nother dozen. ’Tother
way.”
Sergeant Havlan changed sides and endeavoured to surpass himself. It
was a remarkably sound dozen.
He mopped his brow.
The bad boy did not move, gave no sign, but retained his rigid,
slightly hunched attitude, as though he had not counted the second
dozen and expected another stroke.
“Let that be a lesson to you to curb your damned tongue,” said
“Grandfather,” his anger evaporating, his pride in the stiff-necked,
defiant young rogue increasing.
The boy changed not the rigid, slightly hunched attitude.
“Be pleased to wreck no more of my orchid-houses and to exercise your
great wit on your equals and juniors,” he added.
Dam budged not an inch and relaxed not a muscle.
“You may go,” said “Grandfather”…. “Well—what are you waiting for?”
“I was waiting for Sergeant Havlan to _begin_,” was the reply. “I
thought I was to have a second dozen.”
With blazing eyes, bristling moustache, swollen veins and bared teeth,
“Grandfather” rose from his chair. Resting on one stick he struck and
struck and struck at the boy with the other, passion feeding on its own
passionate acts, and growing to madness—until, as the head gardener and
Sergeant rushed forward to intervene, Dam fell to the ground, stunned
by an unintentional blow on the head.
“Grandfather” stood trembling…. “_Quite_ a Stukeley,” observed he.
“Oblige me by flinging his carcase down the stairs.”
“‘Angry Stookly’s mad Stookly’ is about right, mate, wot?” observed the
Sergeant to the gardener, quoting an ancient local saying, as they
carried Dam to his room after dispatching a groom for Dr. Jones of
Monksmead.
“Dammy Darling,” whispered a broken and tear-stained voice outside
Dam’s locked and keyless door the next morning, “are you dead yet?”
“Nit,” was the prompt reply, “but I’m starving to death, fast.”
“I am so glad,” was the sobbed answer, “for I’ve got some flat food to
push under the door.”
“Shove it under,” said Dam. “Good little beast!”
“I didn’t know anything about the fearful fracass until tea-time,”
continued Lucille, “and then I went straight to Grumper and confessed,
and he sent me to bed on an empty stummick and I laid upon it, the bed
I mean, and howled all night, or part of it anyhow. I howled for your
sake, not for the empty stummick. I thought my howls would break or at
least soften his hard heart, but I don’t think he heard them. I’m sure
he didn’t, in fact, or I should not have been allowed to howl so loud
and long…. Did he blame you with anger as well as injustice?”
“With a stick,” was the reply. “What about that grub?”
“I told him you were an innocent unborn babe and that Justice had had a
mis-carriage, but he only grinned and said you had got C.B. and dry
bread for insilence in the Orderly Room. What is ‘insilence’?”
“Pulling Havlan’s leg, I s’pose,” opined Dam. “What about that _grub_?
There comes a time when you are too hungry to eat and then you die. I—”
“Here it is,” squealed Lucille, “don’t go and die after all my trouble.
I’ve got some thin ice-wafer biscuits, sulphur tablets, thin cheese, a
slit-up apple and three sardines. They’ll all come under the
door—though the sardines may get a bit out of shape. I’ll come after
lessons and suck some brandy-balls here and breathe through the
key-hole to comfort you. I could blow them through the key-hole when
they are small too.”
“Thanks,” acknowledged Dam gratefully, “and if you could tie some up
and a sausage and a tart or two and some bread-and-jam and some chicken
and cake and toffee and things in a handkerchief, and climb on to the
porch with Grumper’s longest fishing-rod, you might be able to relieve
the besieged garrison a lot. If the silly Haddock were any good he
could fire sweets up with a catapult.”
“I’d try that too,” announced Lucille, “but I’d break the windows. I
feel I shall never have the heart to throw a stone or anything again.
My heart is broken,” and the penitent sinner groaned in deep travail of
soul.
“Have you eaten everything, Darling? How do you feel?” she suddenly
asked.
“Yes. Hungrier than ever,” was the reply. “I like sulphur tablets with
sardines. Wonder when they’ll bring that beastly dry bread?”
“If there’s a sulphur tablet left I could eat one myself,” said
Lucille. “They are good for the inside and I have wept mine sore.”
“Too late,” answered Dam. “Pinch some more.”
“They were the last,” was the sad rejoinder. “They were for Rover’s
coat, I think. Perhaps they will make your coat hairy, Dam. I mean your
skin.”
“Whiskers to-morrow,” said Dam.
After a pregnant silence the young lady announced:—
“Wish I could hug and kiss you, Darling. Don’t you?… I’ll write a kiss
on a piece of paper and push it under the door to you. Better than
spitting it through the key-hole.”
“Put it on a piece of _ham_,—more sense,” answered Dam.
The quarter-inch rasher that, later, made its difficult entry, pulled
fore and pushed aft, was probably the only one in the whole history of
Ham that was the medium of a kiss—located and indicated by means of a
copying-ink pencil and a little saliva.
Before being sent away to school at Wellingborough Dam had a very
curious illness, one which greatly puzzled Dr. Jones of Monksmead
village, annoyed Miss Smellie, offended Grumper, and worried Lucille.
Sitting in solitary grandeur at his lunch one Sabbath, sipping his old
Chambertin, Grumper was vexed and scandalized by a series of
blood-curdling shrieks from the floor above his breakfast-room.
Butterson, dispatched in haste to see “who the Devil was being killed
in that noisy fashion,” returned to state deferentially as how Master
Damocles was in a sort of heppipletic fit, and foaming at the mouth.
They had found him in the General’s study where he had been reading a
book, apparently; a big Natural History book.
A groom was galloping for Dr. Jones and Mrs. Pont was doin’ her
possible.
No. Nothing appeared to have hurt or frightened the young gentleman—but
he was distinctly ’eard to shout: “_It is under my foot. It is
moving—moving—moving out_….” before he became unconscious.
No, Sir. Absolutely nothing under the young gentleman’s foot.
Dr. Jones could shed no light and General Sir Gerald Seymour Stukeley
hoped to God that the boy was not going to grow up a wretched
epileptic. Miss Smellie appeared to think the seizure a judgment upon
an impudent and deceitful boy who stole into his elders’ rooms in their
absence and looked at their books.
Lucille was troubled in soul for, to her, Damocles confessed the
ghastly, terrible, damning truth that he was a Coward. He said that he
had hidden the fearful fact for all these years within his guilty bosom
and that now it had emerged and convicted him. He lived in subconscious
terror of the Snake, and in its presence—nay even in that of its
counterfeit presentment—he was a gibbering, lunatic coward. Such, at
least, was her dimly realized conception resultant upon the boy’s bald,
stammering confession.
But how could her dear Dammy be a _coward_—the vilest thing on earth!
He who was willing to fight anyone, ride anything, go anywhere, act
anyhow. Dammy the boxer, fencer, rider, swimmer. Absurd! Think of the
day “the Cads” had tried to steal their boat from them when they were
sailing it on the pond at Revelmead. There had been five of them, two
big and three medium. Dam had closed the eye of one of them, cut the
lip of another, and knocked one of the smaller three weeping into the
dust.
They had soon cleared off and flung stones until Dam had started
running for them and then they had fled altogether.
Think of the time when she set fire to the curtains. Why, he feared no
bull, no dog, no tramp in England.
A coward! Piffle.
And yet he had screamed and kicked and cried—yes _cried_—as he had
shouted that it was under his foot and moving out. Rum! _Very_ rum!
On the day that Dam left Monksmead for school Lucille wept till she
could weep no more. Life for the next few years was one of intermittent
streaks of delirious joy and gloomy grief, vacation time when he was at
Monksmead and term time when he was at school. All the rest of the
world weighed as a grain of dust against her hero, Dam.