A BELT of rhododendrons grew close down to one side of our pond; and
along the edge of it many things flourished rankly. If you crept
through the undergrowth and crouched by the water’s rim, it was easy—if
your imagination were in healthy working order—to transport yourself
in a trice to the heart of a tropical forest. Overhead the monkeys
chattered, parrots flashed from bough to bough, strange large blossoms
shone all round you, and the push and rustle of great beasts moving
unseen thrilled you deliciously. And if you lay down with your nose
an inch or two from the water, it was not long ere the old sense of
proportion vanished clean away. The glittering insects that darted to
and fro on its surface became sea-monsters dire, the gnats that hung
above them swelled to albatrosses, and the pond itself stretched out
into a vast inland sea, whereon a navy might ride secure, and whence at
any moment the hairy scalp of a sea-serpent might be seen to emerge.
It is impossible, however, to play at tropical forests properly, when
homely accents of the human voice intrude; and all my hopes of seeing
a tiger seized by a crocodile while drinking (_vide_ picture-books,
_passim_) vanished abruptly, and earth resumed her old dimensions,
when the sound of Charlotte’s prattle somewhere hard by broke in on my
primæval seclusion. Looking out from the bushes, I saw her trotting
towards an open space of lawn the other side the pond, chattering to
herself in her accustomed fashion, a doll tucked under either arm,
and her brow knit with care. Propping up her double burthen against a
friendly stump, she sat down in front of them, as full of worry and
anxiety as a Chancellor on a Budget night.
Her victims, who stared resignedly in front of them, were recognisable
as Jerry and Rosa. Jerry hailed from far Japan: his hair was straight
and black, his one garment cotton of a simple blue; and his reputation
was distinctly bad. Jerome was his proper name, from his supposed
likeness to the holy man who hung in a print on the staircase; though
a shaven crown was the only thing in common ’twixt Western saint and
Eastern sinner. Rosa was typical British, from her flaxen poll to the
stout calves she displayed so liberally; and in character she was of
the blameless order of those who have not yet been found out.
I suspected Jerry from the first. There was a latent devilry in his
slant eyes as he sat there moodily; and knowing what he was capable of,
I scented trouble in store for Charlotte. Rosa I was not so sure about;
she sat demurely and upright, and looked far away into the tree-tops in
a visionary, world-forgetting sort of way; yet the prim purse of her
mouth was somewhat overdone, and her eyes glittered unnaturally.
‘Now, I’m going to begin where I left off,’ said Charlotte, regardless
of stops, and thumping the turf with her fist excitedly: ‘and you must
pay attention, ’cos this is a treat, to have a story told you before
you’re put to bed. Well, so the White Rabbit scuttled off down the
passage and Alice hoped he’d come back ’cos he had a waistcoat on and
her flamingo flew up a tree—but we haven’t got to that part yet, you
must wait a minute, and—where had I got to?’
[Illustration: “‘NOW WE’LL GO ON,’ BEGAN CHARLOTTE ONCE MORE”]
Jerry only remained passive until Charlotte had got well under way, and
then began to heel over quietly in Rosa’s direction. His head fell on
her plump shoulder, causing her to start nervously.
Charlotte seized and shook him with vigour. ‘O Jerry,’ she cried
piteously, ‘if you’re not going to be good, how ever shall I tell you
my story?’
Jerry’s face was injured innocence itself. ‘Blame if you like, Madam,’
he seemed to say, ‘the eternal laws of gravitation, but not a helpless
puppet, who is also an orphan and a stranger in the land.’
‘Now we’ll go on,’ began Charlotte once more. ‘So she got into the
garden at last—I’ve left out a lot but you won’t care, I’ll tell you
some other time—and they were all playing croquet, and that’s where the
flamingo comes in, and the Queen shouted out, “Off with her head!”’
At this point Jerry collapsed forward, suddenly and completely, his
bald pate between his knees. Charlotte was not very angry this time.
The sudden development of tragedy in the story had evidently been too
much for the poor fellow. She straightened him out, wiped his nose,
and, after trying him in various positions, to which he refused to
adapt himself, she propped him against the shoulder of the (apparently)
unconscious Rosa. Then my eyes were opened, and the full measure of
Jerry’s infamy became apparent. This, then, was what he had been
playing up for! The rascal had designs, had he? I resolved to keep him
under close observation.
‘If you’d been in the garden,’ went on Charlotte reproachfully, ‘and
flopped down like that when the Queen said “Off with his head!” she’d
have offed with your head; but Alice wasn’t that sort of girl at all.
She just said, “I’m not afraid of you, you’re nothing but a pack of
cards”—O dear! I’ve got to the end already, and I hadn’t begun hardly!
I never can make my stories last out! Never mind, I’ll tell you another
one.’
Jerry didn’t seem to care, now he had gained his end, whether the
stories lasted out or not. He was nestling against Rosa’s plump form
with a look of satisfaction that was simply idiotic; and one arm had
disappeared from view—was it round her waist? Rosa’s natural blush
seemed deeper than usual, her head inclined shyly—it must have been
round her waist.
‘If it wasn’t so near your bedtime,’ continued Charlotte reflectively,
‘I’d tell you a nice story with a bogy in it. But you’d be frightened,
and you’d dream of bogies all night. So I’ll tell you one about a White
Bear, only you mustn’t scream when the bear says ‘Wow,’ like I used to,
’cos he’s a good bear really——’
Here Rosa fell flat on her back in the deadest of faints. Her limbs
were rigid, her eyes glassy. What had Jerry been doing? It must have
been something very bad, for her to take on like that. I scrutinised
him carefully, while Charlotte ran to comfort the damsel. He appeared
to be whistling a tune and regarding the scenery. If I only possessed
Jerry’s command of feature, I thought to myself, half regretfully, I
would never be found out in anything.
‘It’s all your fault, Jerry,’ said Charlotte reproachfully, when the
lady had been restored to consciousness: ‘Rosa’s as good as gold except
when you make her wicked. I’d put you in the corner, only a stump
hasn’t got a corner—wonder why that is? Thought everything had corners.
Never mind, you’ll have to sit with your face to the wall—_so_. Now you
can sulk if you like!’
Jerry seemed to hesitate a moment between the bliss of indulgence in
sulks with a sense of injury, and the imperious summons of beauty
waiting to be wooed at his elbow; then, overmastered by his passion, he
fell sideways across Rosa’s lap. One arm stuck stiffly upwards, as in
passionate protestation; his amorous countenance was full of entreaty.
Rosa hesitated—wavered—yielded, crushing his slight frame under the
weight of her full-bodied surrender.
Charlotte had stood a good deal, but it was possible to abuse even her
patience. Snatching Jerry from his lawless embraces, she reversed him
across her knee, and then—the outrage offered to the whole superior
sex in Jerry’s hapless person was too painful to witness; but though
I turned my head away the sound of brisk slaps continued to reach my
tingling ears. When I dared to look again, Jerry was sitting up as
before; his garment, somewhat crumpled, was restored to its original
position; but his pallid countenance was set hard. Knowing as I did,
only too well, what a volcano of passion and shame must be seething
under that impassive exterior, for the moment I felt sorry for him.
Rosa’s face was still buried in her frock; it might have been shame, it
might have been grief for Jerry’s sufferings. But the callous Japanese
never even looked her way. His heart was exceeding bitter within him.
In merely following up his natural impulses he had run his head against
convention, and learned how hard a thing it was; and the sunshiny world
was all black to him. Even Charlotte softened somewhat at the sight of
his rigid misery. ‘If you’ll say you’re sorry, Jerome,’ she said, ‘I’ll
say I’m sorry, too.’
Jerry only dropped his shoulders against the stump and stared out in
the direction of his dear native Japan, where love was no sin, and
smacking had not been introduced. Why had he ever left it? He would
go back to-morrow! And yet there were obstacles: another grievance.
Nature, in endowing Jerry with every grace of form and feature, along
with a sensitive soul, had somehow forgotten the gift of locomotion.
There was a crackling in the bushes behind me, with sharp short pants
as of a small steam-engine, and Rollo, the black retriever, just
released from his chain by some friendly hand, burst through the
underwood, seeking congenial company. I joyfully hailed him to stop and
be a panther, but he sped away round the pond, upset Charlotte with a
boisterous caress, and seizing Jerry by the middle, disappeared with
him down the drive. Charlotte panting, raved behind the swift-footed
avenger of crime; Rosa lay dishevelled, bereft of consciousness; Jerry
himself spread helpless arms to heaven, and I almost thought I heard a
cry for mercy, a tardy promise of amendment. But it was too late. The
Black Man had got Jerry at last; and though the tear of sensibility
might bedew an eye or two for his lost sake, no one who really knew him
could deny the justice of his fate.
[Illustration]
‘YOUNG ADAM CUPID’
NOBODY would have suspected Edward of being in love, had it not been
that after breakfast, with an overacted carelessness, ‘Anybody who
likes,’ he said, ‘can feed my rabbits,’ and he disappeared, with a
jauntiness that deceived nobody, in the direction of the orchard. Now
kingdoms might totter and reel, and convulsions play skittles with
the map of Europe; but the iron unwritten law prevailed, that each
boy severely fed his own rabbits. There was good ground, then, for
suspicion and alarm; and while the lettuce leaves were being drawn
through the wires, Harold and I conferred seriously on the situation.
It may be thought that the affair was none of our business; and indeed
we cared little as individuals. We were only concerned as members of a
corporation, for each of whom the mental or physical ailment of one of
his fellows might have far-reaching effects. It was thought best that
Harold, as least open to suspicion of motive, should be despatched to
probe and peer. His instructions were, to proceed by a report on the
health of our rabbits in particular; to glide gently into a discussion
concerning rabbits in general, their customs, practices, and vices;
and to pass thence, by a natural transition, to the female sex, the
inherent flaws in its composition, and the reasons for regarding it
(speaking broadly) as dirt. He was especially to be very diplomatic,
and then to return and report progress. He departed on his mission
gaily; but his absence was short, and his return, discomfited and in
tears, seemed to betoken some want of parts for diplomacy. He had found
Edward, it appeared, pacing the orchard, with the sort of set smile
that mountebanks wear in their precarious antics, fixed painfully on
his face, as with pins. Harold had opened well, on the rabbit subject,
but, with a fatal confusion between the abstract and the concrete, had
then gone on to remark that Edward’s lop-eared doe, with her long
hindlegs and contemptuous twitch of the nose, always reminded him of
Sabina Larkin (a nine-year-old damsel, child of a neighbouring farmer):
at which point Edward, it would seem, had turned upon and savagely
maltreated him, twisting his arm and punching him in the short ribs.
So that Harold returned to the rabbit-hutches preceded by long-drawn
wails: anon wishing, with tears and sobs, that he were a man, to kick
his love-lorn brother; anon lamenting that ever he had been born.
I was not big enough to stand up to Edward personally, so I had to
console the sufferer by allowing him to grease the wheels of the
donkey-cart—a luscious treat that had been specially reserved for me,
a week past, by the gardener’s boy, for putting in a good word on
his behalf with the new kitchen-maid. Harold was soon all smiles and
grease; and I was not, on the whole, dissatisfied with the significant
hint that had been gained as to the _fons et origo mali_.
Fortunately, means were at hand for resolving any doubts on the
subject, since the morning was Sunday, and already the bells were
ringing for church. Lest the connexion may not be evident at first
sight, I should explain that the gloomy period of church-time, with its
enforced inaction and its lack of real interest—passed, too, within
sight of all that the village held of fairest—was just the one when a
young man’s fancies lightly turned to thoughts of love. The rest of
the week afforded no leisure for such trifling; but in church—well,
there was really nothing else to do! True, noughts-and-crosses might be
indulged in on flyleaves of prayer-books while the Litany dragged its
slow length along; but what balm or what solace could be found for the
Sermon? Naturally the eye, wandering here and there among the serried
ranks, made bold untrammelled choice among our fair fellow-supplicants.
It was in this way that, some months earlier, under the exceptional
strain of the Athanasian Creed, my roving fancy had settled upon the
baker’s wife as a fit object for a life-long devotion. Her riper charms
had conquered a heart which none of her be-muslined tittering juniors
had been able to subdue; and that she was already wedded had never
occurred to me as any bar to my affection. Edward’s general demeanour,
then, during morning service was safe to convict him; but there was
also a special test for the particular case. It happened that we sat in
a transept, and, the Larkins being behind us, Edward’s only chance of
feasting on Sabina’s charms was in the all-too fleeting interval when
we swung round eastwards. I was not mistaken. During the singing of the
Benedictus the impatient one made several false starts, and at last he
slewed fairly round before ‘As it was in the beginning, is now, and
ever shall be’ was half finished. The evidence was conclusive: a court
of law could have desired no better.
The fact being patent, the next thing was to grapple with it; and my
mind was fully occupied during the sermon. There was really nothing
unfair or unbrotherly in my attitude. A philosophic affection such as
mine own, which clashed with nothing, was (I held) permissible; but the
volcanic passions in which Edward indulged about once a quarter were a
serious interference with business. To make matters worse, next week
there was a circus coming to the neighbourhood, to which we had all
been strictly forbidden to go; and without Edward no visit in contempt
of law and orders could be successfully brought off. I had sounded
him as to the circus on our way to church, and he had replied briefly
that the very thought of a clown made him sick. Morbidity could no
further go. But the sermon came to an end without any line of conduct
having suggested itself; and I walked home in some depression, feeling
sadly that Venus was in the ascendant and in direful opposition, while
Auriga—the circus star—drooped declinant, perilously near the horizon.
By the irony of fate, Aunt Eliza, of all people, turned out to be the
_Dea ex machinâ_. The thing fell out in this wise. It was that lady’s
obnoxious practice to issue forth, of a Sunday afternoon, on a visit of
state to such farmers and cottagers as dwelt at hand; on which occasion
she was wont to hale a reluctant boy along with her, from the mixed
motives of propriety and his soul’s health. Much cudgelling of brains,
I suppose, had on that particular day made me torpid and unwary.
Anyhow, when a victim came to be sought for, I fell an easy prey, while
the others fled scatheless and whooping. Our first visit was to the
Larkins. Here ceremonial might be viewed in its finest flower, and we
conducted ourselves, like Queen Elizabeth when she trod the measure,
‘high and disposedly.’ In the low oak-panelled parlour cake and currant
wine were set forth, and, after courtesies and compliments exchanged,
Aunt Eliza, greatly condescending, talked the fashions with Mrs.
Larkin; while the farmer and I, perspiring with the unusual effort,
exchanged remarks on the mutability of the weather and the steady fall
in the price of corn. (Who would have thought, to hear us, that only
two short days ago we had confronted each other on either side of a
hedge? I triumphant, provocative, derisive? He flushed, wroth, cracking
his whip, and volleying forth profanity? So powerful is all-subduing
ceremony!) Sabina the while, demurely seated with a _Pilgrim’s
Progress_ on her knee, and apparently absorbed in a brightly-coloured
presentment of ‘Apollyon Straddling Right across the Way,’ eyed me at
times with shy interest; but repelled all Aunt Eliza’s advances with a
frigid politeness for which I could not sufficiently admire her.
‘It’s surprising to me,’ I heard my aunt remark presently, ‘how
my eldest nephew, Edward, despises little girls. I heard him tell
Charlotte the other day that he wished he could exchange her for a
pair of Japanese guinea-pigs. It made the poor child cry. Boys are so
heartless!’ (I saw Sabina stiffen as she sat, and her tip-tilted nose
twitched scornfully.) ‘Now this boy here——’ (my soul descended into my
very boots. Could the woman have intercepted any of my amorous glances
at the baker’s wife?) ‘Now this boy,’ my aunt went on, ‘is more human
altogether. Only yesterday he took his sister to the baker’s shop, and
spent his only penny buying her sweets. I thought it showed such a nice
disposition. I wish Edward were more like him!’
I breathed again. It was unnecessary to explain my real motives
for that visit to the baker’s. Sabina’s face softened, and her
contemptuous nose descended from its altitude of scorn; she gave me one
shy glance of kindness, and then concentrated her attention upon Mercy
knocking at the Wicket Gate. I felt awfully mean as regarded Edward;
but what could I do? I was in Gaza, gagged and bound; the Philistines
hemmed me in.
The same evening the storm burst, the bolt fell, and—to continue the
metaphor—the atmosphere grew serene and clear once more. The evening
service was shorter than usual, the vicar, as he ascended the pulpit
steps, having dropped two pages out of his sermon-case—unperceived by
any but ourselves, either at the moment or subsequently when the hiatus
was reached; so, as we joyfully shuffled out I whispered Edward that
by racing home at top speed we should make time to assume our bows and
arrows (laid aside for the day) and play at Indians and buffaloes with
Aunt Eliza’s fowls—already strolling roostwards, regardless of their
doom—before that sedately stepping lady could return. Edward hung at
the door, wavering; the suggestion had unhallowed charms. At that
moment Sabina issued primly forth, and, seeing Edward, put out her
tongue at him in the most exasperating manner conceivable; then passed
on her way, her shoulders rigid, her dainty head held high. A man can
stand very much in the cause of love: poverty, aunts, rivals, barriers
of every sort, all these only serve to fan the flame. But personal
ridicule is a shaft that reaches the very vitals. Edward led the race
home at a speed which one of Ballantyne’s heroes might have equalled
but never surpassed; and that evening the Indians dispersed Aunt
Eliza’s fowls over several square miles of country, so that the tale
of them remaineth incomplete unto this day. Edward himself, cheering
wildly, pursued the big Cochin-China cock till the bird sank gasping
under the drawing-room window, whereat its mistress stood petrified;
and after supper, in the shrubbery, smoked a half-consumed cigar he had
picked up in the road, and declared to an awe-stricken audience his
final, his immitigable resolve to go into the army.
[Illustration: “EDWARD LED THE RACE HOME AT A SPEED WHICH ONE OF
BALLANTYNE’S HEROES MIGHT HAVE EQUALLED BUT NEVER SURPASSED”]
The crisis was past, and Edward was saved!... And yet ... _sunt
lachrymæ rerum_ ... to me watching the cigar-stump alternately
pale and glow against the dark background of laurel, a vision of a
tip-tilted nose, of a small head poised scornfully, seemed to hover
on the gathering gloom—seemed to grow and fade and grow again, like
the grin of the Cheshire cat—pathetically, reproachfully even; and the
charms of the baker’s wife slipped from my memory like snow-wreaths in
thaw. After all, Sabina was nowise to blame: why should the child be
punished? To-morrow I would give them the slip, and stroll round by
her garden promiscuous-like, at a time when the farmer was safe in the
rick-yard. If nothing came of it, there was no harm done; and if on the
contrary...!
[Illustration]