of a mighty empire succumbing so easily to those invaders from over the
German ocean. The last time they excavated here at all systematically,
they turned over some of the rubbish heaps of the camp. Curiously enough
they actually found the skins of the nutty portion of the pine-cone from
_Pinus Pinea_, which is eaten to this day in southern Italy."
"_Pinocchi!_" cried Jasmine, leaping to her feet in excitement.
"Yes, _pinocchi_," the Dean confirmed. "The soldiers must have had
packets of them sent from Rome by their sweethearts and wives and
mothers. And that is one more proof that they remained strangers,
whereas the Saxons bred themselves into the soul of the country."
While they jogged back in the waggonette through the twilight, Jasmine
dreamed of those dead Roman soldiers, and herself longed for freshly
roasted _pinocchi_. The boys jabbered about butterflies. The Dean went
to sleep.
"I'm enjoying myself here comparatively," said Jasmine to herself that
night. "But only comparatively. I still love Italy best."
But she was enjoying herself, and she hoped that she should not have to
leave Silchester yet awhile.
_Chapter Eight_
Edward had written from Cambridge at the end of the term to say that his
friend Lord Gresham was urging him to explore Brittany in an extended
walking tour, and he had wondered in postscript if it would seem very
rude should he not arrive home until the beginning of August; in view of
the fact that the walking tour was to be in the company of Lord Gresham,
his mother had been positive that it would be much more rude if he did
arrive home, and she had telegraphed to him accordingly. Edmund and
Edgar came home from Marlborough at the end of July. It was Edmund's
last term at school, and he was going up to Cambridge in October with an
exhibition at Pembroke and a reputation as a good man in the scrimmage.
Edgar, who was seventeen, had another year of school before him. Jasmine
knew from the youngest boys that 'Monday' and 'Tuesday' in their day had
terrorized the inhabitants of Silchester much more ruthlessly and
extensively than their juniors. Golf, however, had of late attracted
their superfluous energy, and they spent the first fortnight of their
holidays in trying to make what they described as a 'sporting' four-hole
course in the Deanery garden. From their point of view the epithet was a
happy one, for during the first match they broke a window of the
dining-room and several cucumber frames, while in searching for lost
balls they spoiled the gardener's chance of a prize at the horticultural
show that year. The younger boys, jealous of such competent destruction,
filled a ginger-beer bottle with gunpowder and blew a hole in the bottom
of the lake. Jasmine, who was still working with her uncle, only heard
of these events as nuns hear a vague rumour of the outside world. The
proofs of the fifth volume were absorbing the Dean's attention; and even
when Edred shot a guinea-pig belonging to the Senior Canon's youngest
daughter he declined to interfere, much to the satisfaction of his wife,
who considered that the Senior Canon should be ashamed to own a daughter
young enough to take an interest in guinea-pigs. In fact it was not
until a model aeroplane, subscribed for unitedly by the three youngest
boys and flown by Ethelred from the ancient oak in the middle of the
Close, maintained a steady course in the direction of the Dean's window,
and to his sons' pride and pleasure flew right in to land on his table,
scatter his notes with the propeller, and upset the ink over his
manuscript, that he was moved to direct action. He then banished them to
work in an allotment garden attached to the Deanery, where on the
outskirts of Silchester for six hours a day they gathered what their
father called the fruits of a chastened spirit. The punishment was
ingenious and severe, because their enemy the head gardener benefited
directly by their labour, and because the allotment afforded no kind of
diversion except futile attempts to hit with catapults the bending forms
of labourers out of range in the surrounding allotments.
The Dean worked harder than ever when his youngest sons were removed;
and Jasmine, finding that she was being useful enough to be able to
shake off the thought that she was an infliction, and that there was no
hint of a wish for her departure from the Deanery, was anxious to
prevent anything's happening to upset what so far were the jolliest
weeks she had passed since she left Sirene. Although she had thought a
certain amount about Harry Vibart, she had not allowed herself to grow
sentimental over him, and after this sojourn at the Deanery, she had
quite convinced herself that it would be wiser not to see him again. She
had, of course, no reason to suppose that he wanted to see her again; at
the same time she had had no reason to suppose as much at Rouncivell
Lodge before he suddenly turned up with such disastrous results. His
interruption had not mattered so much there, because she was only
negatively happy at the time. Here she was something like positively
happy, and it seemed from every point of view prudent to write him a
letter and as sympathetically as possible to ask him not to disturb the
present situation. She wondered whether if she sent it to him in the
care of his uncle at Spaborough it would ultimately reach him. By a
series of roundabout questions she arrived at the discovery that by
looking up Sir John Vibart in Burke she could ascertain his address.
When she had found that Sir John Vibart lived at Whiteladies, near Long
Escombe in the North Riding of Yorkshire, she devoted herself to the
composition of the following letter:--
The Deanery,
Silchester,
_August 6th._
_Dear Harry,_
She had been tempted to go back to _Mr. Vibart_, but inasmuch as she was
writing to ask him not to see her again, the formal address seemed to
lend a gratuitous and unnecessary coldness to her request, and even to
give him the idea that she was offended with him.
_I am staying down here with my uncle the Dean, who is very nice and is
writing a history of England before the Norman Conquest. I went with
him to see the remains of the Roman city of something or other, a very
long name, but it is quite near here, and fancy, in the rubbish heaps of
the old Roman camp, they have actually found the skins--husks, I
mean--of pinocchi. In case you do not know what a pinocchio is, I must
tell you that they are the nutty part of the pinecombs from the big
umbrella pines that grow all round Naples and Rome. It made tears come
into my eyes to think of those Roman soldiers having those boxes of
pinocchi sent to them by their mothers and friends all the way to
England._
She had written _sweethearts_ at the first draft, but the word looked
wrong somehow in a letter that was meant to be discouraging.
_I work quite hard at typewriting, and this is a very good machine.
The only thing is that it won't do dipthongs, which is a pity,
because Uncle Arnold gets very angry if Saxon names are not spelt
with dipthongs. There are six cousins here who are called after the
six boy kings. Uncle Arnold calls them Eadward, Eadmund, Eadgar,
Eadwig, AEdred and AEthelred; but other people call them Eddy,
Monday, Tuesday, Why, Because, and Ethel. Edward, who is the
eldest, I haven't seen yet. He is at Cambridge. I hope you are
enjoying yourself wherever you are, and that you haven't been
taking any more people's walking-sticks!_
_Kindest regards,_
_Yours sincerely,_
_Jasmine Grant._
_P.S. I think it would be better if you didn't come down here and
try to see me._
Jasmine was very proud of this postscript; it did not strike her that
the bee's sting is in its tail. She would have been astonished if
anybody had told her that it was unkind to end up with such an
afterthought, did she seriously mean to forbid Harry Vibart to see her
again. And she would have been still more astonished and a good deal
horrified if anybody had suggested that the prohibition put like that
might actually have the air of an invitation, should the recipient of
the letter choose to regard it cynically.
However, she did not receive so much as a bare acknowledgment of her
letter, and she convinced herself, perhaps a little regretfully, that
Harry Vibart, offended by her request, had decided not to bother any
more about her.
Meanwhile Edward had arrived. Edward was one of those young men of whom
it can be postulated immediately that he could never have been called
anything else except Edward. He was a tall and awkward, an extremely
industrious, a clever and an immensely conceited young man, who hid the
natural gloom established by years of nervous dyspepsia, or more bluntly
by chronic indigestion, under a pretentious solemnity of manner. His
arrival at Silchester coincided with a change of weather, and the rainy
days that attended in his wake created in Jasmine's mind an impression
that he was even more of a wet blanket than she might otherwise have
thought. For the first few days he hung about the rooms like a low
cloud, telling long stories about his tour in Brittany with Lord
Gresham, stories that for the most part were about taking the wrong road
and putting up at the wrong inn. When he had bored his family so
successfully that every member of it had reached the point of regarding
life from the standpoint of a nervous dyspeptic, he grew more cheerful
and aired his latest discoveries in modern literature. Then he decided
to keep a journal, with the intention, it was understood, of
immortalizing his spleen. Like most people who keep journals, he was
usually a day or two in arrears, and when people saw him pompously
entering the room with a notebook under his arm, they used to hasten
anywhere to escape being asked what he had done on Thursday morning
between eleven and one. At last the sun appeared again, and Edward,
looking at Jasmine--by the intensity of his regard it might have been
the first time he had seen her--divined, as if the sun had possessed the
power of X-rays, that she lacked education. Edward, whose success in
life had been the success of his education, considered that he owed it
to his cousin to remedy her deficiencies; keeping in view his principle
of never offering to give something for nothing, he suggested that, in
exchange for his teaching her Latin, she should teach him Italian.
Jasmine would have willingly taught him Italian without the advantage of
learning Latin; but she did not wish to appear ungracious, and the
bargain was made. Edward advanced much more rapidly in Italian than she
advanced in Latin, partly because he was better accustomed to study than
she was, and partly because of the four hours a day they devoted to
mutual instruction, three and a half hours were devoted to Italian and
only half an hour to Latin. The result of this was that by the end of
September he was reading Petrarch with fluency, while she had only
reached the first conjugation of verbs and the second declension of
nouns.
"You're very slow," Edward reproved her. "I can't understand why. It
ought to be just as easy for you to learn Latin as it is for me to learn
Italian. It's absolutely useless to go on to the third declension until
you remember the genitive plural of _dominus_. _Dominorum_, not
_dominurum_."
"I said _dominorum_."
"Yes, but you mustn't pronounce it like Italian."
"I'm not," Jasmine argued. "I think the trouble is that I've got a
slight Neapolitan accent, and you think I'm saying _urum_ when I'm
really saying _orum_. You forget that I've got to unlearn my
pronunciation to suit yours."
"Well, that applies equally to me," Edward argued.
The result of these difficulties was that Edward gave up trying to teach
Jasmine Latin and confined himself entirely to learning Italian from
her. About this time he read somewhere that the only way to master a
language was to fall in love with somebody who speaks it. Such an
observation struck him as a useful tip, in the same way as when he was
at school he would remember the useful tip:
_Tolle me, mi, mu, mis,_
_Si declinare domus vis._
He therefore proceeded to fall in love with Jasmine in the same earnest
acquisitive way in which he would have proceeded to buy a highly
recommended new type of notebook. Edward's notion of falling in love was
that he should be able to introduce into an ordinary conversation
phrases that otherwise and outside his study of Petrarch would have
sounded extravagant. He made up his mind that if Jasmine showed the
least sign of taking him seriously--and he realized that he had to bear
in mind that cousins are marriageable--he would explain that it was
merely practice. At the same time he found her personable, even
charming, and if without involving himself or committing himself too far
he could for the rest of the summer establish between himself and her a
mildly sentimental relationship, which at the same time would be of
great benefit to his Italian, he should be able to go up to Cambridge
next term with the satisfactory thought that during the Long Vacation he
had improved his French, strengthened his friendship with Lord Gresham,
effected an excellent beginning with Italian, amused himself
incidentally, and made sufficient progress with his reading for the
first part of the Classical Tripos not to feel that he had neglected the
main current of his academic career.
Unfortunately for Edward's plans he found that Jasmine was inclined to
laugh at him when in the middle of rehearsing a dialogue from the
_Italian Traveller's Vade Mecum_ between himself and a laundress he
indulged in Petrarchan apostrophes. Now Edward was not inclined to
laughter either at his own expense or at the expense of life in general,
because his conception of the universe only allowed laughter to depend
upon minor mistakes in behaviour or scansion. Therefore in order to cure
Jasmine of her frivolity he was driven into being more serious and less
academic than he had intended. In other words, Edward, even if he was
already a perfectly formed prig, was not yet twenty-one, and to put the
matter shortly, he really did fall in love with Jasmine; so much so
indeed that he ceased to make love to her in Italian and began to make
love to her in English. Jasmine, apprehensive of all the trouble such a
state of affairs would stir up and knowing what an additional grievance
it would create against her in the minds of her relatives, begged him
not to be foolish. The more she begged him not to be foolish, the more
foolish Edward became, so foolish indeed that he began to let his
infatuation be suspected by his brothers, the result of which was that
he lost the authority hitherto maintained for him by his attitude of
discouraging gloom. In a weak moment he even allowed himself to bribe
Ethelred to leave him alone with Jasmine in the dusky garden one evening
after dinner, and Ethelred, realizing that Edwy and Edred would soon
discover for themselves such a source of profit from their eldest
brother, it might be to his own disadvantage, resolved to enter into a
formal compact of blackmail with both of them.
Thenceforth Edward found himself being gradually deprived of various
little possessions that however valueless in themselves had for him the
sentimental importance he attached to everything connected with himself.
In order to secure twilit walks with his cousin that she, poor girl,
with one eye on a jealous mother, did her best to avoid, Edward parted
with his choicest cricket bat, presented for the highest score in a
junior match in the days before dyspepsia cramped his style; with a
collection of birds' eggs made at the age of fourteen; in fact with
everything that, should he die now, would have led anybody to suppose
that he was once human. Finally he was reduced to forking out small sums
of money to purchase the good will of his three youngest brothers. Their
demands grew more exorbitant, and Edward, who had already decided to
become a Government servant after that triumphant university career
which was to crown his triumphant school career, tried to be firm.
Indeed he smacked Edwy's head, and when he had done so felt that he had
been firm. Unfortunately it was the worst moment he could have chosen to
be firm--yes, he was certainly intended to be a Government
servant--because the blackmailers had something up their sleeves, and of
what that was Jasmine received the first intimation in the shape of a
letter from Edwy.
_Dear Jasmine,_
_If you will meet the undersigned by the blasted elm at the corner
of the heath to-night at half-past eight, you will hear of
something to your advantage. I mean the elm that was struck by
lightening last spring at the corner of the paddock. But in future
I shall not call it the paddock. The enclosed token will tell you
what._
_(signed)_
_A friend and well-wisher._
The enclosed token was a lock of hair tied up with the end of a
bootlace. Jasmine supposed that the three youngest cousins had
discovered a new kind of game in the pleasure and excitement of which
they wished her to share; glad of an excuse to escape Edward's
attentions after dinner, she presented herself at the blasted elm and
tried to appear as mysterious as the requirements of the game demanded.
She had not been waiting more than a minute when three cloaked figures
stealthily approached the trysting-place. They were all wearing what
Jasmine hoped were only discarded hats of the Dean, and when they drew
nearer she perceived that they were also wearing gaiters of the Dean.
She wondered if the Dean had so many gaiters to spare for his sons'
pranks, and she began to fear that some of his present wardrobe had been
requisitioned. Edwy's voice, in trying to assume the appropriate bass of
a conspirator, ran up to a high treble at the third word he uttered,
which set his brothers off laughing so unrestrainedly that in order to
conceal such an intrusion of their own modern personalities, they had to
pommel each other until Edwy at last rescued his voice from the heights
and called upon Jasmine to follow his lead. She, still supposing that
some game of buried treasure or capture by brigands was afoot followed
with appropriate caution along the winding paths of the shrubbery to
that favourite haunt of mystery, the ruined tower.
"Fair maiden," the eldest conspirator growled, "your betrothed awaitest
you within."
"You've surely never persuaded Edward to hide himself up there?" she
laughed.
"Edward avaunt!" he hissed. "The doom of Edward is sealed."
"Sealed!" echoed Edred, more successfully hoarse than his brother.
Ethelred was unable to take up his cue, being choked by laughter.
"I say, do you think she ought to climb up by the rope-ladder?" Edred
asked, falling back into his ordinary voice for the moment.
"Shut up, you ass," replied Edwy in the same commonplace accents.
"Maiden," he continued in a bass that was now truly diabolic, "the
ladder of knotted sheets for thy fell purpose awaitest thee."
"A terribly appropriate adjective," Jasmine observed with a smile. "I'm
not really to climb up that, am I?"
"No," said Edwy reluctantly. "An thou wilt, thou cannest enter by the
door."
"Poor Edward!" murmured Jasmine. "How he must be hating this!"
"Foolish maiden," Edwy reproached her. "It is not Edward who you
seekest, but one more near, no, I mean more dear, but one more dear to
thee. My trusty followers and me will watch without whilst thou speaketh
with him."
The air of Bartelmytide was moist and chill, and Jasmine, with
regretful thoughts of the Deanery fires which had just begun, hurried
into the tower to finish off her part of the performance. She was not to
be let off until she had mounted to the upper room, and though in the
darkness the ladder felt more than usually wobbly and the stones on
either side more than usually covered with cobwebs, she went boldly on,
and had no sooner reached the upper room than she was aware that there
was somebody there, somebody who did not greet her with the flash of a
dark lantern, but with the flicker of a cigar-lighter.
"Well, this is a rum way to meet you again," Harry Vibart exclaimed
genially.
"But...." Jasmine stammered, "I thought I told you not to come down
here."
Vibart was too tactful to say that he had supposed the forbidding
postscript was at least a suggestion if not an invitation that he should
come down, and looking as suitably penitent as he could by the wavering
beams of the cigar-lighter, he explained that he had only done so with
great caution, and added a hope that she would forgive him.
"Yes, but supposing my uncle and aunt find out that you have arranged to
meet me like this?"
"Oh, I didn't arrange to meet you like this," Vibart explained. "Those
three young sportsmen downstairs arranged that. The only thing I did was
to make enquiries beforehand where you were living, and somehow they got
it into their heads--of course you'll think it ridiculous, I know--but
... well, to put it shortly, they imagined ... that I was ... rather
keen on you."
"I suppose you realize that I am very angry indeed?" said Jasmine.
"Oh yes, I realize that," Vibart admitted. "I can see you're very angry.
But don't you think that to-morrow I might call in the ordinary way?
That's the main object of this interview. I've really rather enjoyed
sitting up here thinking about you. I should have enjoyed it even more
if something that was either a small bat or a large spider hadn't fallen
on my head. But what about to-morrow?"
"Oh no, please," she expostulated. "No, no, no, you really mustn't. I'm
quite enjoying myself here. I'm quite happy, and I know that if you
arrive on the scene, something's bound to happen to make everything go
wrong."
"That's very discouraging of you."
"I don't mean to be discouraging."
"You may not mean to be, but you certainly are. Look here, Jasmine, I've
been thinking a tremendous lot lately about you, and if you'll risk it,
I'll risk it."
"Risk what?"
"Well, you see ... confound this patent lighter; it's gone out."
The upper room of the tower was in complete darkness, and Jasmine was
inclined to hope that it would remain in darkness; she felt that even
the mild illumination of the cigar-lighter gave too intimate a
revelation of her countenance for any promise to be made. Harry was
gaining time for his reply by devoting himself to the cigar-lighter, and
Jasmine felt that if this tension was continued, she should presently
begin to emit white sparks herself.
"Risk what?" she repeated.
"Risk being cut off by my uncle and not having a penny to bless
ourselves with, and getting married on what I made this August. I've had
a topping August. I'm L84 10s. up on the bookies. And though of course
it's not much for two, it would give us enough for an economical
honeymoon, and I've got a friend who would give me a job in a teak
forest in Burmah. It's a very useful wood, you know. They make boats of
it and the better kind of packing-cases."
"Stop! Stop!" she exclaimed.
"What's the matter? Have you got a spider on you? Show me where it is
and I'll brush it off. I'm frightfully afraid of spiders, but I'm so
fond of you, you darling little girl, that I'll...."
"Oh, you mustn't call me that," Jasmine interrupted.
"Don't you like being called a darling little girl?" he asked with a
sigh of relief. "Well, I promise you I won't ever call you that again. I
assure you that it took a lot to work myself up to the scratch and get
off that term of endearment. But, Jasmine, I love you. Look here, murmur
something pleasant for goodness' sake. I'm feeling an awful ass now I've
said it."