"But they do!" he cried. "Suppose that long-haired brute Apollo wants to
give you a music lesson. Well, out you pop into the laurels. Or
Universal Nature comes along. You aren't feeling particularly keen on
Universal Nature so you turn into a reed."
"Is Jack mad?" asked Mrs. Worters.
But Miss Beaumont had caught the allusions--which were quite ingenious
I must admit. "And Croesus?" she inquired. "What was it one turned into
to get away from Croesus?"
I hastened to tidy up her mythology. "Midas, Miss Beaumont, not Croesus.
And he turns you--you don't turn yourself: he turns you into gold."
"There's no dodging Midas," said Ford.
"Surely--" said Miss Beaumont. She had been learning Latin not quite a
fortnight, but she would have corrected the Regius Professor.
He began to tease her. "Oh, there's no dodging Midas! He just comes, he
touches you, and you pay him several thousand per cent, at once. You're
gold--a young golden lady--if he touches you."
"I won't be touched!" she cried, relapsing into her habitual frivolity.
"Oh, but he'll touch you."
"He sha'n't!"
"He will."
"He sha'n't!"
"He will."
Miss Beaumont took up her Virgil and smacked Ford over the head with it.
"Evelyn! Evelyn!" said Mrs. Worters. "Now you are forgetting yourself.
And you also forget my question. What good has Latin done you?"
"Mr. Ford--what good has Latin done you?"
"Mr. Inskip--what good has Latin done us?"
So I was let in for the classical controversy. The arguments for the
study of Latin are perfectly sound, but they are difficult to remember,
and the afternoon sun was hot, and I needed my tea. But I had to justify
my existence as a coach, so I took off my eye-glasses and breathed on
them and said, "My dear Ford, what a question!"
"It's all right for Jack," said Mrs. Worters. "Jack has to pass his
entrance examination. But what's the good of it for Evelyn? None at
all."
"No, Mrs. Worters," I persisted, pointing my eye-glasses at her. "I
cannot agree. Miss Beaumont is--in a sense--new to our civilization. She
is entering it, and Latin is one of the subjects in her entrance
examination also. No one can grasp modern life without some knowledge of
its origins."
"But why should she grasp modern life?" said the tiresome woman.
"Well, there you are!" I retorted, and shut up my eye-glasses with a
snap.
"Mr. Inskip, I am not there. Kindly tell me what's the good of it all.
Oh, I've been through it myself: Jupiter, Venus, Juno, I know the lot of
them. And many of the stories not at all proper."
"Classical education," I said drily, "is not entirely confined to
classical mythology. Though even the mythology has its value. Dreams if
you like, but there is value in dreams."
"I too have dreams," said Mrs. Worters, "but I am not so foolish as to
mention them afterwards."
Mercifully we were interrupted. A rich virile voice close behind us
said, "Cherish your dreams!" We had been joined by our host, Harcourt
Worters--Mrs. Worters' son, Miss Beaumont's fiance. Ford's guardian, my
employer: I must speak of him as Mr. Worters.
"Let us cherish our dreams!" he repeated. "All day I've been fighting,
haggling, bargaining. And to come out on to this lawn and see you all
learning Latin, so happy, so passionless, so Arcadian----"
He did not finish the sentence, but sank into the chair next to Miss
Beaumont, and possessed himself of her hand. As he did so she sang: "Áh
yoù sílly àss góds lìve in woóds!"
"What have we here?" said Mr. Worters with a slight frown.
With the other hand she pointed to me.
"Virgil--" I stammered. "Colloquial translation----"
"Oh, I see; a colloquial translation of poetry." Then his smile
returned. "Perhaps if gods live in woods, that is why woods are so dear.
I have just bought Other Kingdom Copse!"
Loud exclamations of joy. Indeed, the beeches in that copse are as fine
as any in Hertfordshire. Moreover, it, and the meadow by which it is
approached, have always made an ugly notch in the rounded contours of
the Worters estate. So we were all very glad that Mr. Worters had
purchased Other Kingdom. Only Ford kept silent, stroking his head where
the Virgil had hit it, and smiling a little to himself as he did so.
"Judging from the price I paid, I should say there was a god in every
tree. But price, this time was no object." He glanced at Miss Beaumont.
"You admire beeches, Evelyn, do you not?"
"I forget always which they are. Like this?"
She flung her arms up above her head, close together, so that she looked
like a slender column. Then her body swayed and her delicate green dress
quivered over it with the suggestion of countless leaves.
"My dear child!" exclaimed her lover.
"No: that is a silver birch," said Ford,
"Oh, of course. Like this, then." And she twitched up her skirts so that
for a moment they spread out in great horizontal layers, like the layers
of a beech.
We glanced at the house, but none of the servants were looking. So we
laughed, and said she ought to go on the variety stage.
"Ah, this is the kind I like!" she cried, and practised the beech-tree
again.
"I thought so," said Mr. Worters. "I thought so. Other Kingdom Copse is
yours."
"Mine----?" She had never had such a present in her life. She could not
realize it.
"The purchase will be drawn up in your name. You will sign the deed.
Receive the wood, with my love. It is a second engagement ring."
"But is it--is it mine? Can I--do what I like there?"
"You can," said Mr. Worters, smiling.
She rushed at him and kissed him. She kissed Mrs. Worters. She would
have kissed myself and Ford if we had not extruded elbows. The joy of
possession had turned her head.
"It's mine! I can walk there, work there, live there. A wood of my own!
Mine for ever."
"Yours, at all events, for ninety-nine years."
"Ninety-nine years?" I regret to say there was a tinge of disappointment
in her voice.
"My dear child! Do you expect to live longer?"
"I suppose I can't," she replied, and flushed a little. "I don't know."
"Ninety-nine seems long enough to most people. I have got this house,
and the very lawn you are standing on, on a lease of ninety-nine years.
Yet I call them my own, and I think I am justified. Am I not?"
"Oh, yes."
"Ninety-nine years is practically for ever. Isn't it?"
"Oh, yes. It must be."
Ford possesses a most inflammatory note-book. Outside it is labelled
"Private," inside it is headed "Practically a book." I saw him make an
entry in it now, "Eternity: practically ninety-nine years."
Mr. Worters, as if speaking to himself, now observed: "My goodness! My
goodness! How land has risen! Perfectly astounding."