THE LITERARY MICROBE
"We are contagious," Pauline announced honestly and courageously at the
advent of every stranger, however interesting.
And Lynn, equally careful it has been seen, refused to hold any
intercourse with the author at "Tenby" until the searching question,
"Have you had whooping cough?" had been put to him.
Yet here was Hugh Kinross himself taking no precaution whatever to
protect the neighbouring "Greenways" from contagion, and the result was
that the literary microbe was wafted across the road in a surprisingly
short space of time.
Miss Bibby certainly could not be said to be infected for the first
time, though there was no doubt that since the new tenants had come to
"Tenby" the disease had taken a much more aggravated form with her.
But Anna one afternoon made a solemn excursion to the store of Septimus
Smith and purchased one exercise-book, one pen, one bottle of ink and
one blotting-pad.
She had hitherto regarded the making of books as some occult art
practised by certain persons, mostly as dead and as distant as one
Shakespeare whose fame had faintly reached her.
But when there came into the unpretentious cottage across the road the
actual author of a printed book that lay on a table in the drawing-room;
and when this actual author was discovered on near view to be a rather
stout man with a shockingly bad hat and creases all over his linen
coats; and when the maid who dwelt in the same house with this actual
author testified, during the course of a gossip, that he was in no wise
different from other men--which is to say, he made no end of a fuss if
the toast was not to his liking and threw his burnt matches down
anywhere, and shouted angrily if there was no soap in the bathroom--why
then, when all these things were discovered, Anna simply walked up to
the store one fine afternoon and set herself up in the stock-in-trade of
an author, marvelling that it had never before occurred to her to write
a book.
But after she had done a very few chapters she craved a reading
audience. Blake the gardener, she determined, was too surly for this
office, and too sleepy; his day's work so near to Nature's heart and at
such an altitude made him nod by seven o'clock in the evening. And one
could hardly follow after him as he trundled about with his barrow in
the daytime and read aloud to him how it was discovered that the lovely
Annabell Deloitte, who was a nursery governess in a lord's family, had
been changed in the cradle and was really the Lady Florentine Trelawney.
And Miss Bibby, for all her gentleness, was too "stand-offish" for the
position of listener. Anna at once rejected any idea of asking that lady
to undertake the work.
But the children made a delightful audience and clamoured eagerly, the
moment they reached the foot of the waterfall, for the "book" to be
produced from the secret recesses of Anna's umbrella (in which it hid
itself from Miss Bibby's eyes), and for the enthralling woes of the Lady
Florentine Trelawney to be at once continued.
So it may be concluded that it was Anna who acted as the direct vehicle
for the transmission of the literary infection to the children
themselves.
The logic of the matter was very simple.
If Anna could write a book--Anna who was to be frequently seen with
black smuts from the stove all over her face; Anna who did not know that
the reign of William the Conqueror was 1066 to 1087, nor where sago
came from, nor what were the calyx and the stamen of a flower (had they
not themselves tested her?)--well, if Anna could make up a book, so
could they--every one of them.
"It will cost us twopence each," said Pauline calculatingly, "but we can
afford it; it's nearly the day for our sixpences again."
"I wanted my last tuppence for some pink wool--can't you find some paper
in the house?" said Muffie on discovering that the disbursement Pauline
declared necessary was for mere paper.
"No," said Pauline firmly; "authors always have plenty of clean paper. I
won't use the half sheets Miss Bibby gives us to scribble on."
"No, no; _do_ let us use proper paper," cried Lynn, who had had far too
many poetic fancies nipped in the bud for want of this precious
transmitting material.
So the purchases were made and the eightpennyworth of paper made a very
respectable show upon the table of the summer-house, to which they had
retreated to ensure privacy to themselves for the arduous undertaking.
Pauline sat at the head of the table, the others ranged almost meekly
around her. Hers was a responsible position and she intended them all to
realize it.
For while it was one thing for all to say lightly, "We will write a book
each," the matter resolved itself into all the actual writing falling to
Pauline, for the sad and simple reason that none of the others _could_
write.
So Pauline leaned back and gave herself airs.
"I shall write my own story first," she said, "and you are none of you
to speak a word to interrupt me, or I won't write yours at all. Max,
stop scratching on the table; Muffie, don't shuffle your feet like that,
you put my vein out." The last was a slightly tangled remark picked up
from Miss Kinross who had been heard to speak of various interruptions
putting her brother out of vein.
Muffie, thwarted in her desire to scratch a horse upon the surface of
the table, fell to filling up a crack in it with sand scooped up from
the floor and mixed, when the writing lady was not looking, to a
pleasing consistency with ink.
Lynn lay face downwards on a bench and bent all her energies to
composing the story that Pauline would shortly write at her dictation.
Max simply strolled to the door; the little girls might be under
Pauline's thumb, but no one expected him really to obey any one except
his father.
"Call me when you're leady," he said to Pauline, "I'll be sitting on the
loof."
And Muffie, suffering from her enforced inactivity, soon had the
tantalizing sight of sections of his brown legs displayed through the
lattice work above her head.
Scratch, scratch went Pauline's pen--scratch, scratch along line after
line. Evidently she was not troubled with any lack of ideas.
Twenty minutes, half an hour slipped away. Lynn had long since composed
her tale and had fallen to playing a fairy drama at the end of her bench
with bits of moss and white pebbles from the floor.
Max had tumbled twice through a hole in the lattice roof, and had on
each occasion blotted Pauline's precious MS by the precipitation of his
whole body upon it.
Sore, therefore, about his knees and elbows, he had given up his lofty
perch and betaken himself to his oft-essayed task of digging a hole in
the ground, to reach the fire that the kindergarten governess had
informed him burnt in the middle of the earth.
And Muffie now occupied the seat on the summer-house roof, and did not
lose the opportunity of demonstrating to Max that girls kept their
balance much better than boys.
"I've finished--come and listen," cried Pauline at last.
Lynn sat upright at once and tried to disentangle her drama from her
story. Muffie slid comfortably down from her perch. But Max was not
ready.
"Wait a minte," he cried, "I'm nearly down to the fire--oh, oh, I can
feel it on my hand--I b'leeve my spade's aginning to melt."
But Pauline insisted on his instant attendance within doors.
"'Once upon a time'," she began, "'there was a beautiful mother'."
"As beautiful as ours?" asked Lynn.
"Beautifuller," said Pauline.
Lynn argued the point hotly, with Muffie to back her.
"She _couldn't_ be," they said.
"Yes, she could--in a book," said Pauline. "I'm not talking about really
truly, of course. But in a book they can be as lovely as lovely."
"So is mother," said the little girls stoutly.
"Oh, of course," said Pauline, and her heart softening to the distant
dear one, she said, "Well, 'once 'pon a time there was a mother as
beautiful as our mother, and she died'."
"Oh, oh," said Lynn. "Oh, I wish mamma was here. Oh, I don't like your
story a bit, Paul."
"Silly," said Paul, "this is only a book mother--it doesn't hurt book
mothers to die. Now just stop interrupting me. Well, she died--she's
just got to die or the rest of the story can't happen. The beautiful
mother died, 'and one day when Emmeline was sitting in the spachius
drawing-room of the castle--'"
"Who's Emmeline?" asked Muffie.
"Oh, how stupid you are," cried Pauline; "she's the daughter, of
course,--'sitting in the spachius drawing-room of the castle her father
strode in, and he led by the hand a very horty lady. "This is your new
mother and I command you to obey her, my lady Emmeline," he said.
Emmeline fainted to the ground.
"'Her father the noble lord was always out at his office and didn't know
how the horty step-mother treated Emmeline, but she grew thinner and
paler every day, and all her face went transparant and the blue veins
were trased in their pallor and her little hand was like a
skellington's; and the cruel step-mother made her do all the scrubbing
and hard work, and treated her like a menient. And one day the Lady
Emmeline disappeared and was never found again. But twenty years
afterwards the wainscotching in the castle was being mended, and they
found her lying behind it, her long eyelashes resting on the marble
pallor of her cheeks, her little hands clasped in their last long
sleep, quite dead. And the noble lord wept bitterly and resolved never
to have another step-mother, and he built a monyment with a white angel
to her memory'."
Lynn was quite moved by the story, and gulped down a sob which made Paul
most gracious and grateful to her.
But Muffie sniffed. "Well, she was a silly," she said. "Why didn't she
bang and kick on the wall like the time I hid in the cupboard and the
door got shut? Every one heard me in a minute."
"Wainscotching's much thicker than common cupboards," said Paul
disdainfully.
"I'd have got my axe and chopped and chopped and walked light out and
chopped off the woman's head and put her down my hole," said Max.
Then it was Lynn's turn.
She dictated rapidly, occasionally waving her arms dramatically to
heighten the effect.
"'A key lay on the ground. The moon was up. Purple was on the mountains,
and all in the valley lay the snow-white mist. Black pine trees stood in
a long, long row, like the ghosts of tall soldiers. The sun was setting,
and orange and purple flamed in the sky. The moon was very young and
thin and was just climbing up the other side of the sky. The sun----'"
"Oh, I say," said Pauline, "isn't anything ever going to happen? I'm
tired of the sun and the moon. I always skip that kind of thing in
books."
"Oh, Paul!" said Lynn, "that's the best part. You can make such lovely
pictures."
"Go on," said Paul.
"'The sun was----'"
Pauline folded her arms. "I won't write another word about the sun," she
said.
"Well, the moon--" said Lynn beseechingly. "Just say 'the moon looked
like a far-off silver boat.'"
"No," said Paul; "you've said once it looked like a starved baby."
"I didn't," said Lynn indignantly.
"Yes--'young and thin,' that's the same thing," said Pauline. "Now get
on to something else. What about the key?"
"'The key lay on the ground'," said Lynn resignedly, "'and sparkled in
the darkness'."
"Keys _don't_ sparkle in the darkness, but go on," said Paul, writing
away.
"This one did," persisted the poor little authoress; "the fairies had
smeared it with that phis,--phos,--oh, you know, that lovely shiny stuff
we saw on the sea at night when we were in the ship."
"I know," shouted Max; "lat-poison, like they put down at the tables to
kill the lats."
"It wasn't," said Lynn angrily,--"rat-poison indeed,--it was like
burning gold."
"Go on," said Pauline wearily.
"'Su'nnly out of a snow-white lily stepped a beautious fairy. She
had----'"
Scratch, scratch went Pauline's pen over a couple of pages; the fairy's
eyes were described and likened to stars and other shining things; her
ears, her teeth, her neck, her arms and hands were all lingeringly and
lovingly enumerated and described.
Max went back disgustedly to his digging for fire.
Muffie nearly fell asleep, Pauline's hand grew cramped, and still the
fairy continued to "have" things.
"'Her dress was of silver spider's silk studded all over with
dewdrops'," went on Lynn, beginning now energetically upon every detail
of the wardrobe of the "beautious" being.
And Pauline bore even with this, though she heaved a huge sigh of relief
when from crown to shoes the entire toilette of the fairy had been dealt
with.
But Lynn held her, like the ancient mariner, with a glittering eye.
"'She was followed by six handmaidens'," she said, "'and the first one
had----'"
But here Pauline struck. The prospect of describing six more beauteous
beings and their toilettes was more than she could contemplate.
"You've had your amount," she cried; "mine only took five pages, and
I've done five for you." And despite Lynn's wild entreaties, she wrote
"The End" at this point of the story, and shook Muffie and informed her
it was her turn.
Muffie yawned.
"'Oncepon a time'," she said.
"Go on," said Pauline.
"'Oncepon a time there was'----"
"I've got that, be quick," said Paul.
"'Oncepon a time there was a--a----'" Muffie looked appealingly at Lynn.
"A fairy?" suggested Lynn.
"A little dog?" said Max who had strolled back.
"Yes, a little dog," said Muffie gratefully.
"Go on, I've got that," said Paul.
"'Oncepon a time there was a little dog and it--it----'"
"Was really a fairy under a enchanting spell?" whispered Lynn.
But Muffie was too sleepy to rise to the occasion. She repeated her
formula once more in the hope of helping herself.
"'Oncepon a time there was a--a dog--and it--it----'"
"Barked?" said Max.
"Yes," said Muffie thankfully. "That's all, Paul--write it big, and it
will make a lot. Le's go and see if tea's ready."
"I haven't lote _my_ book," said Max, and looked ready to cry.
"Don't be so mean, Muffie; sit down and wait," said Pauline. "Come on
Max, darling, Paul will write yours the neatest of all. Now then."
Max thrust his hands into his ridiculous pockets and stood with his legs
well apart. He always told the same class of story though the variations
were several.
"Well," he said slowly, "''was a ittle boy, an' him said to hims mover,
can I go down in the deep foresh all by myself, an' she told him no.
And'"--here Max paused very impressively till he had collected the eyes
of all his audience--"'he went. An' he walked along, an' he walked
along, an' he walked along, an' he met'"--another pause, calculated to
thrill his listeners--"'a snake. An' it clawled light up him an' it ate
him all up. Evly bit of him. Escept hims legs. An' he walked along, an'
he walked along, an' he walked along, an' he met a tiger. An' e tiger
eat 'em up. Evly bit of 'em. Escept hims feet. An' he walked along, an'
he walked along, an' he walked along, an' he met a horsh. An' e horsh
ate 'em all up. Evly bit of 'em. An' nofing was left. Ony hims button.
An' hims mover had no dear ittle boy left', so there."
The unique part of the stories Max told was, he invariably managed to
leave the impression that the moral of the tale was the mother should
not have refused her consent to his going down the dark forest all alone
and that she was the sole sufferer.
Pauline opened and shut her cramped hand half a dozen times.
"Thank goodness they're done," she said. "Give me that piece of paper to
wrap them in, Muffie, and you go and get some string, Lynn, while I
write to him."
For the final destination of the tales had long since been settled.
So it happened that Hugh Kinross, coming home from the golf links at
tea-time, was greeted by a bulky newspaper parcel on his desk, and the
laconic note, "Please corect our mistakes and have them made into books
like yours, only nicer covers. We like red except Lynn, and she likes
green. And we like gold edges and plenty of pictures, and our names at
the front in big letters."