THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE
AFTER that, lessons went more easily, because both teachers and pupil
understood each other better. Rex had a good deal of the quick intuition
and clear brain that had made his sister a successful Captain of
Merriwa. He realized that it was only a different method of teaching
that had transformed “Horatius” from a dull lesson into something
startlingly alive. The words had been the same all the time, only he had
not had the wit to read them until his eyes were opened. Possibly, he
reasoned, other branches of learning might have possibilities; they
might not all be mere devices for embittering one’s young life.
His books, too, were different. To tell the truth, Mrs. Forester had
been rather horrified when she had realized the weary path her young son
had trod—a discovery not made until Helen, fresh from school, had
helped her to arrange Rex’s outfit for Emu Plains. Helen had gasped in
amazement over Rex’s books.
“But these aren’t all he has, surely, Mother? Wherever did you get
them?”
“I didn’t get them,” Mrs. Forester had answered. “Miss Green had them.
She brought them with her. I believe I bought them from her: she told me
most of them were difficult to obtain now.”
“I should think they would be. Poor little kid—just fancy having to
wade through these! Why, they’re fit for boys of fifteen, if they’re fit
for anything at all—only they’re not! Every one ought to be scrapped.
Look at the tiny print, and the weary, long paragraphs. And to drag a
little nine-year-old through them!”
“I do feel rather ashamed,” Mrs. Forester had admitted, after an
examination of Miss Green’s ancient literature. “They are really
dreadful, aren’t they? She came with high recommendations, and I thought
it wouldn’t matter if she were a bit old-fashioned—I was so much away
from home that it seemed better not to have a very young governess to
leave in charge of Rex.”
“And didn’t he tell you he hated his lessons?”
“Well, he did. But then so had you and Wilfred and Arthur before him,”
Mrs. Forester had said, twinkling. Helen had laughed.
“I suppose poor old Rex has paid the penalty of our grumbles—although I
know the other boys and I never had books like that. Well, you’ll let me
send up all the things he ought to have, won’t you, Mother?”—and Mrs.
Forester had thankfully consented.
So Rex found his new lessons taken from books that were easy to read and
pleasant to look at and to handle—books that made history a succession
of fascinating stories, and Geography something more than a weary
catalogue of place-names and products; and there was something new
called Literature, so like story-telling that it seemed impossible that
it should be really a lesson. He found new peep-holes into learning that
were extraordinarily interesting. Punctuation, under Miss Green, had
meant a collection of horrible things called “stops,” traps to catch the
unwary, for which there was neither rhyme nor reason. With the twins,
they became kind little bridges over which you stepped into
understanding just how a sentence should go: some places required big
bridges, like a full-stop, or lesser bridges, like a semi-colon, and
others only tiny foot-bridges, which were commas: but always when you
crossed them, the sense of what you read was waiting meekly for you,
instead of being a will-o’-the-wisp thing that dodged away from you and
hid itself in the mazes of a paragraph. Once you had mastered them it
was impossible to read poetry badly, and the lines sang to you as they
were meant to sing. Maps, with Miss Green, had been the dreariest
species of jigsaw puzzles; now they became pictures that helped you to
make stories wonderfully alive. When you had a twin reading you the
story of how Hawke chased the French fleet into Quiberon Bay, the full
thrill of the story came home if you followed his course on the map,
tracing his rush through the quicksands and shallows and roaring
breakers, his only pilot-light the flash of the enemy guns. “It would
seem just any old bay, if you didn’t see it,” Rex said. “But when the
map makes you understand what an awful passage it was—and he did it at
night, and in a howling gale!—well, it just makes you squiggle down the
back!”
And that is an amount of success which does not fall to all
teachers—perhaps not to many.
Lessons ended at twelve, and there was an interval to recruit exhausted
nature before the dinner-gong sounded at half-past twelve. At half-past
two came bathing-parade, an institution for which the boys were never
late. They mustered in the verandah, with light coats flung on over
infinitesimal swimming-suits; and being joined by the twins, went,
helter-skelter, down the hill to the river. The stream was lower than
the twins ever remembered to have seen it, and in most places very
little current ran; but the bathing-pool was still good. It was formed
by a wide bend in the river; on the far side the bank rose high and
steep, but the bank near the house shelved gently down to the water’s
edge, in a little beach of fine sand. Mr. Weston had the pool always
kept clear of snags, and it was fenced in, so that the cattle could not
drink there. Trees overhung part of it: there were always shade and
coolness there, even in the hottest days. A hut, built in bush-fashion
of interlaced tea-tree poles, and overgrown with clematis and
sarsaparilla, formed a dressing-room, if needed.
The Weston children had learned to swim almost as babies. They could
scarcely remember a time when they had not rolled in and out of the
water as they chose. But Rex could not swim, and, to handicap him
further, he had an instinctive dread of the water. When a tiny boy he
had fallen into a creek, and had been nearly drowned; and now, even to
enter running water meant a rather painful effort for him. The twins had
been warned of this, and they took him very gently.
“You’re not going to learn to swim at all just yet,” they told him, on
his first day, as the small boy stood on the sand, looking as if he
would have shivered but for the heat of the day.
“But I want to learn to swim,” Rex protested. “I’ve got to. I can’t go
to school with other fellows if I can’t swim.”
“No, of course you can’t,” Jean said. “Don’t you worry, old chap; we’ll
make a regular Annette Kellermann of you before we’ve done with you. But
we won’t be in a hurry. You’ve got to learn this old pool first. Rule I
is that you don’t go beyond that rope.”
She pointed to a cord stretched across the water.
“Now, just you remember that the water is never more than three feet
deep on this side of that cord; and the bottom is all good, firm sand,
with no holes or snags. That’s quite deep enough for you to practise
strokes in when you feel like it. Plenty of time. We’ll sail Billy’s
yacht first.”
Billy’s yacht was a noble craft built by Mr. Weston, and home-rigged. In
a favourable wind she sailed well, but had a disconcerting habit of
suddenly turning turtle with no apparent reason. Her builder stated that
it must be due to some mysterious flaw in her original plan, but, as no
one knew what the original plan was, this theory was scarcely helpful.
Jo’s explanation was that she had really meant to be a submarine, and
had occasional uncontrollable impulses towards this ambition. Whatever
the reason might be, this curious habit of the yacht’s lent considerable
excitement to sailing her.
The boys played with the boat in the shallow water during the first
bathing days, Billy heroically stifling his longing for deep water so
that Rex might not feel himself an outsider; and gradually the boy lost
his first nervous terror of the cool touch of the river. Then, as the
twins saw that he was gaining confidence, they proposed a new game. They
brought to the river one afternoon a huge rubber ball, at the sight of
which Billy yelled with joy.
“Water-polo!” he shouted. “Wherever did you get it!”
He gave the ball a mighty kick, and it rose high in the air, to fall in
the deepest part of the pool. Billy was after it like a flash. He darted
across the pool with swift strokes, and then, turning on his back,
kicked the ball before him as he swam out again. Rex watched him
enviously.
“Wish I could do that,” he muttered.
“So you will, soon,” Jo said. “Come along, and we’ll have water-tennis;
you and Billy can keep the ball on the shallow side, and Jean and I will
go out in the deep part. It’s no end of fun.”
It was indeed a glorious game for a blazing January day. At first Rex
kept prudently near the bank; but as the excitement of keeping the ball
going backwards and forwards grew upon him, he forgot himself more and
more, and a few splashing tumbles gave him increased confidence, since
he found that he always emerged safely. Soon he was as keen as Billy,
laughing, shouting, and racing hither and thither after the elusive
ball. Backwards and forwards across the rope it flew, a wet and slippery
thing that never took the direction it might reasonably be expected to
take; and after it plunged and splashed and scrambled and flopped the
small boys, yelling with glee. The twins bobbed about in the deep water,
like cheery young seals, returning the boys’ erratic services, and
keeping a keen eye on the movements of their pupil.
“Working like a charm,” Jo said, nodding sagely.
“Yes, isn’t it?” responded her fellow-plotter. “Look at him!—he went
right under then, and never minded a bit. He’ll be like a dabchick
soon.”
And indeed, after three days of water-tennis, Rex revolted against the
limitations of the non-swimmer. The ball had bobbed away from him at an
unexpected angle into deep water; he flopped after it, missed his
footing, and went under. Scarcely had his head disappeared when a twin
was by his side, her hand on his arm. Rex came up, shaking the water
from his eyes, and bursting into a flood of incoherent speech.
“Why, you’re not frightened, Rex?” demanded Jo, the twin in question.
“You weren’t really in deep water, you know.”
“Frightened? No, of course I’m not frightened,” said Rex crossly. “I’m
wild, that’s all! It’s just too silly, not being able to swim—I’d have
had that ball as easy as wink if I could have swum two strokes. Do teach
me, Jo!”
“My, rather!” said Jo delightedly. “Here you go—I’ll hold you.” She
swung him off his feet, her hands under his chest. “Now kick away: hands
too. I won’t let you down.”
Rex kicked manfully, thrashing the water until the splashing almost hid
his teacher and himself. Gradually Jo induced him to calm his movements,
and they progressed up and down beside the rope.
“Don’t try to go too quickly—you aren’t trying to increase your number
of strokes per minute, you’re learning to swim. Bring your hands well
back—remember you’re using them and the soles of your feet to push you
through the water—that’s right, now you’re doing better. Slowly does
it—now, don’t you begin to feel you’re shoving yourself along?”
“I’m not really, am I?” Rex panted.
“Yes, of course you are; do you think I’d walk about in the water
carrying a great lump like you?” demanded his instructor, pithily. “Not
much; and soon you’ll be doing all the work for yourself, and I’ll only
be keeping one finger under your chin; and then I’ll forget you, when I
want to scratch my nose, and take it away; and you’ll never notice,
’cause you’ll be swimming along merrily by yourself. All that keeps most
people from swimming is the idea that it’s dreadful to go under the
water; now you’ve found out that it’s really quite pleasant and homely
under there, and you won’t mind a bit. And I’ll write to your mother and
tell her you’ve developed into a young human porpoise, and she’ll be
ever so proud! And now I think we’ll have a rest,” Jo finished, panting
herself. “Stick your feet down: you’re only within your depth.”
“Like it. Rex?” demanded Billy, swimming happily on the other side of
the rope.
“Rather. Only I don’t know that I’ll ever go by myself.”
“You’ll swim by yourself just as soon as you believe that you can,”
stated Jo. “You know all the movements now—that comes of practising
them on land. It’s only a question of believing you can swim—and there
you’ll be!”
“I’m an awful hen in the water, you know, Jo.”
“Now, that’s the very thing you’re _not_ to believe,” Jo said,
positively. “The fellow who thinks he’s a hen in anything will act like
a hen—and I simply decline to teach hens! But we aren’t going to hurry
you, old chap: we’ll have a few days of practising like this before we
let you go alone, and then it will only be inside the rope, and facing
towards the bank, so that you’ll know you’ve only to put your feet down
and bob your head up, if you go under. So don’t worry.”
“You’re an awful brick, Jo!” said the small boy gratefully.
“I’m not—I’m a high-class instructor!” said Jo, laughing. “Come on, and
we’ll have some more tennis.”
They practised tennis and swimming alternately during that day and the
next, Jo and Jean taking turns in supporting their kicking pupil. On the
way up to the house, and at intervals throughout the day, he was to be
seen vigorously employing the breast-stroke; he was even discovered face
downwards across a log in the paddock, practising with his feet as well
as his arms, and gasping heavily.
“There’s nothing in it, you know,” he said in his old-fashioned manner
to Billy. “Any ass could do the movements. Then why can’t I swim?”
“But p’rhaps you can,” said Billy, grinning. “Jo says you can do
anything if you only believe you can. You’d better practise believing,
instead of breast-stroke!”
“I believe I’d better,” said Rex solemnly.
Billy awoke next morning earlier than usual. He fancied he had heard a
step: and yet there was no sound in the house. He leaned on his elbow,
and looking across towards Rex’s bed, saw that it was empty.
This was unusual, for Rex loved his bed, and, as a rule, it was hard to
withdraw him from it. Billy was mildly surprised. There was another
sound, inside their room, and he went to the window and peeped in. Rex,
in his little coat and sandals, a towel over his arm, was just going out
into the passage.
“Great Scott!” said Billy. “He’s off to bathe by himself!”
A moment’s reflection showed him that this was a proceeding that should
not be allowed. He hesitated a moment over the point of calling Jean and
Jo: then he decided that he could deal with it himself. He slipped on
his bathing-knickers and coat, and trotted down the hill after Rex, just
as the twin’s alarum-clock brought them painfully from their beds.
Ambition had been striving within Rex for four-and-twenty hours. He
wanted to swim alone: he felt within himself that he _could_ swim, if
only he might try without anyone there to witness his preliminary
struggles. Overnight he had made up his mind to go down alone to the
river, if only he could awake early enough. He had gone to sleep
urgently repeating, “I’m going to wake up at four”; he had given himself
four hard knocks on the head, a plan which—so he had heard—never
failed to rouse you at the time indicated by the number of knocks. And
whether the fact was due to one of these charms, or to his own
determination, he had certainly waked up in the early dawn.
Bathing did not seem half so tempting then as in the heat of the day,
although it had been a hot night, and he had lain with only a sheet as
covering. Still, his mind was made up, and it was an obstinate enough
little mind; so, after a few moments’ hesitation, he got up noiselessly,
and slipped away.
He ran down the hill as hard as he could, trying to get hot enough to be
anxious for the cool touch of the water. But he was not very thoroughly
warmed when he reached the river; and it looked lonely and dark under
its overhanging trees. He flung off his sandals and coat without giving
himself time to think, and ran in.
Whew-w! it was cold. At the first touch of the still water his courage
almost melted. This would not do, he knew. Stooping, he splashed water
over his head and face, as the twins had taught him, and then flung
himself full-length in the shallows, knowing that once he was wet all
over, one terror would have passed. That was better. He stood up and
waded sturdily out towards the rope—just as Billy gained the bank and
dived into the dressing-hut for purposes of observation.
Rex turned when he reached the rope and faced the bank from which he had
come, telling himself, over and over, that if he did go under he was
only within his depth. It was a comforting thought, but it needed
constant repetition, or it seemed to slip away from him—so dark and
unpleasant seemed the water. It was not at all like the warm, cheery
pool in which they frolicked daily after dinner. There was no small
effort of heroism, at length, in his sudden, clumsy dive forward.
He went under, lost his head for a moment, and came up, gasping and
spluttering, all his courage gone, for a moment. Then he realized that
he had not tried to swim at all—that from the first his feet had been
seeking for the bottom. “Silly ass I am!” he remarked—and dived forward
again, kicking vigorously.
Hurrah! he was swimming. One, two, three—yes, that was certainly three
strokes, and he was almost in the shallows. Another, and his knees
touched the bottom. He turned on his back, digging his hands into the
oozy sand, and kicked in an ecstasy of triumph. The rope was really
quite a decent distance away, and he had swum from it—he, Rex Forester,
who had always been scared of water! It was almost beyond belief.
“Won’t Jo yell!” he said aloud. “I—I think I’ll swim out to the rope
again.”
He rose and waded a few steps, and cast himself forward again. It was
quite easy this time: he made a huge splashing, but certainly the rope
was getting nearer. Then almost within reach of it, he missed his stroke
and tried to clutch the rope, losing his head for a moment. The impetus
of his kick carried him forward, under the rope. There was nothing but
deep water before him, and he did not know how to turn. Terror seized
him, and he went under.
He rose, choking, clawing at the air. Then a leg, lean and brown and
scarred, came beside him, and, as he clutched it, a cool voice spoke
cheerily.
“My word, that was bonza!” said Billy. “Told you you’d swim. Hang on to
my leg and turn now, and I’ll give you a start and race you in.”
Rex grasped him, panting. Billy, on his back, was holding the taut rope
with both hands and stiffening his young body in the water, kicking
gently towards him. He drew him quietly back until the rope was within
his reach. A faint sigh of relief escaped the rescuer as Rex caught the
cord and pulled himself in until his feet were on the bottom once more.
“You’re a nice sort of chap, scooting off to go swimming all alone,”
said Billy, bobbing up and down cheerily beside him. “Anyhow, now you
know that you can swim all right, and we’ll have no end of larks.”
“I can’t,” Rex shivered, his teeth chattering. “I’d have drowned if you
hadn’t come.”
“Not you!” Billy’s voice was reassuring. “You only thought you couldn’t
swim for a moment. Come along and we’ll swim in.”
“I don’t think I will,” Rex quivered. “I’ll just wade in.”
“Ah, don’t,” Billy begged. “You can’t say that, after the way you were
swimming about before I came in. Have a go, now—I’ll be just behind
you.”
Thus adjured, Rex gripped his waning courage in both hands and plunged
in again. This time it was quite easy: in a moment he was near the bank
and Billy was crowing gently beside him, triumphant.
“That’s top-hole. Cold?”
“Rather!” chattered Rex.
“I’ll tell you what, then—come and have a race on the bank to get warm,
and we’ll have another practice afterwards.”
They splashed out and tore round the dry slopes like a couple of young
puppies. The sun was well up now: already it was warm with the promise
of a blazing day. In a few minutes they were glowing with heat. Down the
bank again and into the water, tumbling over each other in the shallows;
then they swam out to the rope, and back again, and round and round in a
circle, Rex’s confidence developing at every stroke. He tingled with the
joy that comes with the first knowledge that deep water has lost its
mystery and terror and has become merely a playfellow.
“I believe I could swim right across, now!” he said, looking longingly
at the deep side.
“Yes, but you better hadn’t—it must be nearly cow-time,” said Billy
prudently. “Come along home, or the girls will be hunting for us.”
They trotted home gently, hugging the prospect of surprising the twins.
A knowledge of the early-morning habits of those energetic damsels
enabled them to slip into their room unperceived, and when they appeared
presently in the kitchen, ready for milking, their hats concealing their
damp heads, no one suspected them of anything more than being rather
later than usual. Faint surprise was excited by their appetites, which
seemed remarkable for the early morning, even for small boys.
“Them’s the two to eat,” remarked Sarah, looking after them as they ran
off to milk, their hands full of food. “Here was me thinkin’ I’d enough
scones to do breakfast—but they’ve made ’em look silly. Well, you’d
sooner see ’em eatin’ than not eatin’.”
“Yes, and Rex is looking ever so much better already,” said Jo, with
satisfaction.
“H’m,” sniffed Sarah, who adored Billy and viewed with distrust and
suspicion any small boy so completely unlike him. “I dunno that you’ll
ever make a man of him. He’s built wrong. Think he’ll ever swim?”
“Oh, yes—after a bit,” Jo said. “One can’t expect too much all at
once.”
They had agreed between themselves that it would be extremely unwise to
try to hurry Rex’s development in the water; and as they followed the
boys down to the river that afternoon they reminded each other of his
disadvantages, deciding that for a week or two they would not think of
allowing him to try to swim alone.
“I’d rather wait a month than risk him losing his nerve,” Jo remarked,
as they neared the river-bank. “It’s one thing to paddle round with
someone holding you, and quite another to find yourself with nothing but
cold water as a support. And he’s such a scared little kid. We’d never
forgive ourselves if——”
She broke off, gaping. They had come within sight of the pool; and
there, beside the rope, the “scared little kid” was swimming solemnly,
his earnest face, with very tightly-shut lips, held stiffly away from
the water, his eyes anxiously watching for them, to make sure they
missed no detail of his prowess. At the sight of their amazed faces he
uttered a kind of triumphant snort, and promptly sank—emerging a second
later, grinning broadly. Beside him, Billy swung upon the rope, chanting
a gleeful song.
“Well—I—never!” gasped the twins, in unison.
“We couldn’t wait for you,” called Billy patronizingly. “You’re so jolly
slow at teaching a chap to swim!”