_ALL AMONG THE SNOW._
And what a difference the lad's return made to the dear old house!
It scarcely seemed the same. What house ever is the same when the
holidays are on and the boys are back again? Nor need the word be in
the plural to make the change distinctly felt. One boy is quite
sufficient to revolutionise a quiet household, especially when it
consists of only women. And in the present case Duke's absence or
presence made all the difference in the world, for they all loved him
so, and he was so much to all of them, that nothing was too much to
do for him. It seemed impossible to make enough of him. The young
gentleman was--pardon the vulgarism--distinctly cock of the walk when
he was at Tregowan. Fortunately, his was not one of those natures
which are easily spoiled by being too well loved. Those who loved
him he never failed to love in return. Selfishness was not a vice of
his. It was scarcely possible to do more for him than he was anxious
on his part to do for others. He idolised his mother. In his
judgment such an one had never been known in all the world before,
nor could a second like her exist again; and she was a mother worthy
to be idolised. There is no more noble word than that word mother,
and wise is the son whose mother is dear to him as was Marmaduke's to
him. He idolised his sisters. He was not one of those who prate in
public of those nearest and dearest to their hearts, and who find
relief in exhibiting their most precious treasures to the approval of
the world; but had he been--had it been his way to talk of his
relations, he would probably have spoken of his sisters thus:--
"Winnie, that's the oldest--Winifred's her name, but we call her
Winnie--she's not the sort of girl you can just twist round your
finger and get to do just what you please, like lots of girls, you
know,--not she. She's got a temper of her own has Win, and when
she's made up her mind about a thing, is as hard and obstinate as
nails; but she's as true as steel, and truer too; and when she has
made up her mind, you bet anything you like that it's made up just in
the way it ought to be. I'd trust her a good deal sooner than I
would myself, though I shouldn't exactly like to tell her so, you
know. A fellow must keep a girl in order, let her be ever such a
brick, you see. Then there's Nell--Eleanor's her name--she's one of
your meek and gentle sort; sort of girl who would give up anything
for any one she cottoned to; would never think of herself at all, but
would just lie by, and do whatever a fellow wanted before he ever
thought of asking. She's the best girl in the world is Nell; but
don't you go flattering yourself that she's the sort of article you
can ride it over rough-shod--just because she happens to be gentle.
You'd be mixing it slightly, I can tell you. She's got a little way
of her own which would just knock you out of time before you could as
much as look at her, and a tongue--Nell's got a tongue which just
makes you feel the meanest thing in breeches that ever yet was born.
And there's Marion--Ria's what we call her--she's the youngest of the
three; she's a trump is she! There's no nonsense about her, except
that she believes every boy's a hero; and, when you come to think,
precious few of them are that, you know. But she's up to every lark
that's going, and as plucky as they make them. She's perhaps a
little bit too fond of larks, if anything; but what's the odds?
There aren't many larks about, and it's not many of the few that are
that girls have any chance of joining in."
Such, and in such-like English of his own, would probably have been
Duke's verdict on the Mesdemoiselles Tregowan; while they, on their
part, would probably have been--Ria would certainly have been--even
more enthusiastic in their estimate of him. Indeed, they reached
that ideal of what a family should be--bound together by the
indissoluble bonds of love by which God intended that every family
should be bound. Thus the joys of one were the joys of all, and no
one had a sorrow which was not shared in by them all.
They were in the schoolroom after lunch, that schoolroom in which
first we made the acquaintance of the girls. No word had yet been
exchanged upon the all-engrossing subject between the mother and the
son, for Mrs. Tregowan not unwisely judged that on this the first
day, especially after the adventure of the previous night, it were
best to leave such matters for the time, and not to speak of them, if
possible at all, till Duke came with them first to her; for she knew
his ways so well, and how it was his habit to come with all his
troubles and make a clean breast of them to her; but she did not
know, nor could he tell, how actually the fashion was to be in which
the matter was to be dwelt upon between they two.
But now the girls and Duke were in the schoolroom after lunch. Duke
was standing in a lordly attitude before the fire, hands in pockets,
master of the situation, as even the most chivalrous of boys is apt
to think himself when all alone with girls. Winnie was seated in an
arm-chair, which she had drawn up so that it directly faced the
centre of the fire--from the enjoyment of which, however, Duke
effectually screened her--an unopened book upon her lap, prepared
either to read or gossip. Busy Nell was still engaged upon the work
which was to be, when finished, the mother's Christmas present, but
she could talk just as well and as sympathetically, even better,
perhaps, when working as when she had nothing at all to do. Ria, who
was nothing if ceremonious, had placed a footstool in a corner of the
great old-fashioned hearth, and was sitting upon that, with her knees
drawn almost to her chin, and her hands clasped round her knees.
From that coign of vantage she looked up at Duke, towering loftily
above her, and basked in the full radiance of the fire.
"It is a comfort to be at home again," said Duke, benignly looking
down upon the three of them, and rattling the keys and money in his
trousers' pockets; "it really is a comfort, don't you know. Of
course you girls can't understand the feeling; you never are away,
you see, or, if you are, you just go visiting about, and that's just
a jolly bit of fun."
"I don't know," observed Ria reflectively; "I should think it fun to
go to school. I know I would sooner go to school than work at home.
When you're at home you don't do any work; you just come to enjoy
yourself, while in a way it's school to us."
"Pretty sort of school! What do you know about school? You girls
don't know anything at all about it. How should you? I know what
you do here. You get up and you have your breakfast, then you do a
bit of work with Fräulein, then you have lunch, then you loaf away
the afternoon, pottering about with needles and things, then you have
your dinner, then you make-believe to prepare some lessons for
to-morrow, instead of which you put them all on to Fräulein, and she
pre-pares them for you, then you just enjoy yourselves and go to bed.
Bah! Don't tell me! I know the sort of thing it is! You have no
more idea of what we have to endure than you have of the way in which
to twist a ball from the leg stump to take the middle wicket."
"Your fate is very hard; we feel for you, poor Marmaduke," said Nelly
demurely. "You have to get up early, because you did no work the
night before; you have to beat little boys, very little boys, because
they don't get up an hour before you do, and clean your room and make
your fire; you have to copy your lessons from a book or a crib, or
whatever you call it, because they are too hard for your poor head.
You have to do them over again, because the master finds it out, and
you have to get another little boy to do them for you. Oh, your fate
is very hard, poor Marmaduke! You actually have to do some work
yourself, because there are not enough little boys to do it for you."
"We," said Ria, "have to do it all ourselves. There's no such thing
as cribbing or copying for us, and it's just slavery from the first
thing in the morning to the last at night."
"But we," commented Nelly, still never raising her eyes from her
work, "are not to be compared to Marmaduke. His wrongs are of a kind
of which no tongue can tell."
"I don't pretend to be equal to you girls at chaff. That's exactly
the sort of thing you girls can do. It doesn't suit a man. A man
doesn't study the fashion of his speech. What he says is straight
from the shoulder."
"A man, of course, is altogether superior to a girl, just as much,"
and here Nelly bent her head a trifle lower, "as he is superior to a
boy."
"Nell, you scamp!" and down went Duke on his knees in front of her.
"Just drop that work a moment. I believe you do nothing but work the
whole day long." And Nelly perforce resigned her work, for Duke took
both her hands in his. "Aren't you glad to see me back again? What
an awful tongue you've got! If I were not the mildest-tempered
mortal in existence, I'd just cut off a bit; but I know one thing,
I'm jolly glad to get another sight of you."
And he looked into her face with the light of laughter in his eyes;
and she released one of her hands and laid it on his head, and
smoothed his hair, and slipped it round his neck; and then, "Our
Duke!" she said; and then again, "Our own boy Duke!" and stopped; and
they looked into each other's eyes a time, and then again she said,
"You're a very foolish boy, but I'm very glad to see you all the
same, and you're to be the best and noblest man that ever lived.
You'll try to, won't you, Duke?"
"Oh, yes, I'll try to," he replied, and there was laughter in his
voice. "It's the easiest thing to be all that, you know; you've only
got to let people know what you intend to do, and there's an end of
it upon the spot."
"I should like you to be a Bayard or a Roland. I should like you to
do something great and noble, which would live for ever. O Duke!"
and she drew him closer to her, "you don't know what great things I
would have you do. I would have no one greater than our own boy
Duke."
"Here's an unsuspected vein of romance discovering itself upon a
sudden," said Duke; but though he said it lightly, his conscience
pricked him, for he remembered how bad a beginning he had made, and
he had it on his mind to tell them then and there that Dorrincourt
had seen the last of him, and, disgraced and shamed, he was bidden
from its doors; but he had not the heart to tell them then. So he
sat down on the floor at Nelly's feet, and laid his head upon her
knee, and she put her cool hand upon his head, and kept it there, and
so all of them fell dreaming; and all of them with one accord looked
in the fire, as though in its hottest parts were some strange power
which told of times and seasons still in the land of dreams; and in
that dreamy fashion the minutes passed, until at last Ria said, still
in a reverie--
"I wonder what is the best and greatest thing a man can do?"
"I should say there was no actually best and greatest," said Winnie.
"It depends upon the man. Many things are noble, but not one is
noble over all the others. Every man has his ideal, and to him that
ideal is the best and greatest."
"I should like Duke to do something for others. It is impossible for
anything to be really great and noble which is done for yourself
alone. Self-sacrifice! there is nothing nobler than that. I think
he is the very noblest man who lives for all the world and never for
himself at all."
"I don't! I think the very noblest man a hero. I'd sooner be
Richard Cœur de Lion than any one I know. Richard of the Lion
Heart! there's a name for you. Or Nelson, or Christopher Columbus,
or Barbarossa, or anybody who never counted his life as of any value
in the face of difficulty or of danger; an 'Up guards and at 'em'
sort of man--a man who would dare anything to do and die. Your
Roland was a splendid fellow, so was Bayard; but Roland was a better.
I always think of him at Roncesvalles, with night coming on to hide
the dead, and Olivier dying in his arms. Olivier and Roland were
both splendid fellows, and the Archbishop was a good one too."
It was Ria spoke. Duke lay listening to the girls, listening to them
discuss his destiny, the prize which they would wish him to make the
mark of his high calling. But he said nothing on his side; he only
lay and listened, and listened, if they had only known it, in no very
pleasant humour; for all the time while they spoke of a splendid
future, he thought only of a miserable past. And while still they
talked and dreamed, a knock came at the schoolroom door.
"Come in!" cried Marmaduke. The door was opened, and a servant
entered.
"Some young gentlemen to see Mr. Marmaduke," he said; and in an
instant Duke was on his feet, and the girls had turned their heads to
see who the visitors might be; but before they had time to wonder, in
their own graceful way, three young gentlemen came in--Ralph
Eva--'Quicksilver' Ralph--Chandos Effingham, and George Trevena.
"It's awfully good of you, you fellows," said Duke, as he went
forward to give them greeting. "You, Effingham? Why, I thought you
were at Newton Abbott?"
"I daresay you did," replied Chandos in his usual light and cheerful
way; "but I'm not at Newton Abbott, and I'm not going to Newton
Abbott, if it's all the same to you, though I daresay I should be as
well off there as I'm likely to be here."
"Fact is," explained Ralph, "Chandos couldn't stand his aunt. She's
a very cheerful sort of party on the whole, but as she's not exactly
fond of boys, and thinks Christmas the most horrid season of the
year, it's not quite too charming living all alone with her. So I've
taken pity on him, and he's going to spend the holidays with me."
"Yes, and pretty sort of holidays they'll be," observed Chandos with
peculiar politeness. "A little of you is about as much as anybody
can stand."
But Ralph cared neither for his civilities nor for his rudeness. He
was already exchanging greetings with the girls, and laughing all the
time.
"How are you, Winnie?" They were such old friends that the idea of
prefixing "Miss" never entered his imagination. "How are you, Nelly?
How are you, Ria? I say, isn't this awfully jolly weather?
Something like Christmas, isn't it? Did you ever see such snow? All
round Zennor and Towednack you can hardly get along. We found out
one drift which is ten foot deep at least; and Spills, that's the
coastguardsman, says that a lot more snow is coming yet."
"How did you come?" asked Duke; for Eva lived beyond St. Ives towards
Gurnard's Head, and that's a good ten miles from Tregowan.
"Oh, George drove over in the pony trap to fetch us." Trevena lived
at the other side of Gwinear, which is about six miles from Tregowan.
"We're going to sleep with him to-night. We're going to put up the
trap at Abraham's"--(Abraham's is the hotel in Camborne town)--"and
are going on by train; but we thought we'd look you up upon the way.
I say, we heard all about the accident."
And so the voluble Ralph went on. It was seldom he was at a loss for
words. They were a merry party if a noisy one; even the girls did
their fair share of talking. All sorts of things were talked
about--how they had found the folks at home; plans for the holidays;
what parties there were going to be; what was going to be done by
every one; what were the prospects for good skating;--all the very
varied things which were likely to be of interest to such a company
at such a time. Finally, it was proposed that they should go out
there and then into the snow and build a castle whose walls should
tower to the skies. It was Trevena's proposal. It appeared that
they were to rear a similar structure at Gwinear, and he suggested
that they should at least commence one at Tregowan now. The idea was
taken up at once by Marmaduke.
"Come along!" he cried. "We'll build it right in front there, where
the girls can have a look at it; just on that little hillock.
There's no time to waste if you fellows mean to catch your train;
let's start it now."
And they did so there and then. The schoolroom window was raised
conveniently above the ground, so that it was easy for any one with
the least agility to spring from it into the open air. The proper
entrance was some little distance from the schoolroom, and then they
had to go all round the house--and that was quite a walk--to get to
the desired spot. So the window was thrown up; hats were forced upon
their heads, and one after another of the young gentlemen leapt upon
the ground.
"Of course you'll come?" cried Ralph to Ria, well knowing that young
lady's peculiarities.
"Of course I shall," said Ria; and of course she did, and in her own
fashion too. A pair of thick woollen gloves were thrust upon her
hands, an old hat upon her head, a thick cloth jacket on her back,
and then Miss Marion, deeming herself prepared for all emergencies,
did as the boys had done, climbed upon the window-ledge and sprang
down upon the ground.
How they worked! There was no thought of idleness with them just
then. Winnie and Nellie, not feeling strongly tempted to rush about
with Ria up to their knees in snow, and deeming the weather hardly of
a kind to render it desirable to have the window up as high as it
would go, drew it down, and placing their chairs in front of it, sat
there, and from the cosy schoolroom watched the scene without.
Winnie had her book and Nelly had her work, and as they worked and
read they talked. And without they got spades and shovels, and
proceeded in a thoroughly scientific way to rear a tower.
First they cleared the ground entirely of snow, shovelling it away
with might and main. That which they cleared away went to form the
base and sides. Ria and Ralph did this, for it was deemed better
that the young lady should stand as much as possible on solid ground.
Then when the snow was cleared they still stayed within the tower,
finding plenty of employment in beating down the supplies which those
outside kept throwing in, and being careful to see that the walls
were ship-shape and solid and strong. Duke and George both worked
like troopers, but Effingham was by no means as laborious; in fact,
his enthusiasm never was remarkable. He had been heard to observe as
he followed the others through the window, that it was just the sort
of thing to give a fellow his death of cold, and that it was a
cheerful way of spending the Christmas holidays; and very soon he
declared that he had had enough of it, and thrust his hands into his
pockets in a vain attempt to keep them warm.
"Now then, Chandos, why aren't you working?" inquired George Trevena,
perceiving the young gentleman did nothing but survey the proceedings
with an air of the deepest dudgeon.
"I'm not a galley-slave," said Chandos, "and I'm not a fool; and when
my idea of holidays consists of going in for extra slavery all among
this messing snow, I'll let you shut me up in an asylum. Idiots you
fellows are!"
"Holloa, Effingham!" cried Duke, when the walls were already
beginning to raise themselves above the ground, "don't you seem to
find it cold doing nothing but standing there? Why don't you lend a
hand? This is the sort of thing to put life into you, my boy."
It was unmistakably the sort of thing to put life into him, judging
from the colour on his cheeks and the sparkle in his eyes; but
Chandos had a point of view entirely his own.
"Yes, I daresay," was his reply. "About the beastliest thing in all
the world is snow. I would a good deal sooner make mud-pies than
make such a donkey of myself as you; it's healthier and cleaner too.
And if you want some life put in you, why don't you go in for being
navvies right away?"
And so they let him grumble by himself. As it was plain that he
would not help them, it was equally plain that it was vain to hope to
help him to a pleasanter mood, so they worked on alone.
"It must be two feet high," cried Ria soon. "Isn't it splendid fun?"
"Splendid!" agreed Ralph, and he banged still harder at the snow. It
really promised to be quite a respectable sort of tower after all.
The walls were at least twelve inches thick. It was as nearly as
possible circular in shape, and bid fair, if they continued
operations at the rate they had begun, soon to conceal any
average-sized person who might be standing in the interior. An
entrance was to be left on one side, but only large enough to admit
an individual of moderate dimensions upon his hands and knees.
"When we've finished it we'll have a regular attack," declared
Trevena, pausing for a moment to survey the work. "We'll have some
other fellows down, and we'll let somebody defend the fort inside,
and we'll do our best to rout them out of it."
"We will," said Duke. "But you'll have all your work cut out for
you, my boy. You'll find it a good deal easier to build it up than
to knock it down again; that's to say, unless there comes a sudden
thaw. And another thing, if anybody has got to defend the fort, we
shall have to put loopholes, and pretty big ones too, so that they
can aim through them."
And so they did. Here and there they left open spaces--loopholes--in
the tower, about twelve inches in length and five or six in height,
to facilitate the task of the defenders; for it was plain that if it
were not for some such contrivance they would be as though fastened
in a trap; for while the besiegers would be able to send an endless
rain of balls upon their undefended heads, they would have to pitch
their balls straight up into the air, in ignorance even of the
whereabouts of their opponents.
And the work went on. Higher and higher rose the tower walls.
Deeper and deeper became Chandos's deep dudgeon.
"I wish to goodness," he declared in his frank way, "that I had gone
to Newton Abbott, and never come near this beastly place at all.
It's the most wretched hole I ever saw. Talk about holidays! why,
I'd sooner be in school ten thousand times."
And the afternoon went on and the night came near, and it was plain
that if George and his friends intended to be at home for dinner that
they would have to be starting soon.