_"'All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night be near!'"_
And poor, morbid, precocious, overwrought Mimsey's eyes would fill, and
she would meditatively suck her thumb and think unutterable things.
And then I would copy Bewick's wood-cuts for her, as she sat on the arm
of my chair and patiently watched; and she would say: "La fée
Tarapatapoum trouve que tu dessines dans la perfection!" and treasure up
these little masterpieces--"pour l'album de la fée Tarapatapoum!"
[Illustration]
There was one drawing she prized above all others--a steel engraving
in a volume of Byron, which represented two beautiful beings of either
sex, walking hand in hand through a dark cavern. The man was in sailor's
garb; the lady, who went barefoot and lightly clad, held a torch; and
underneath was written--
_"And Neuha led her Torquil by the hand,
And waved along the vaults her flaming brand."_
I spent hours in copying it for her, and she preferred the copy to the
original, and would have it that the two figures were excellent
portraits of her Prince and Fairy.
Sometimes during these readings and sketchings under the apple-tree on
the lawn, the sleeping Médor (a huge nondescript sort of dog, built up
of every breed in France, with the virtues of all and the vices of none)
would wag his three inches of tail, and utter soft whimperings of
welcome in his dream; and she would say--
"C'est le Prince Charmant qui lui dit; 'Médor donne la patte!'"
Or our old tomcat would rise from his slumbers with his tail up, and rub
an imaginary skirt; and it was--
"Regarde Mistigris! La fée Tarapatapoum est en train de lui frotter les
oreilles!'"
We mostly spoke French, in spite of strict injunctions to the contrary
from our fathers and mothers, who were much concerned lest we should
forget our English altogether.
In time we made a kind of ingenious compromise; for Mimsey, who was
full of resource, invented a new language, or rather two, which we
called Frankingle and Inglefrank, respectively. They consisted in
anglicizing French nouns and verbs and then conjugating and pronouncing
them Englishly, or _vice versâ_.
For instance, it was very cold, and the school-room window was open, so
she would say in Frankingle--
"Dispeach yourself to ferm the feneeter, Gogo. It geals to pier-fend! we
shall be inrhumed!" or else, if I failed to immediately
understand--"Gogo, il frise a splitter les stonnes--maque aste et chute
le vindeau; mais chute--le donc vite! Je snize déjà!" which was
Inglefrank.
With this contrivance we managed to puzzle and mystify the uninitiated,
English and French alike. The intelligent reader, who sees it all in
print, will not be so easily taken in.
When Mimsey was well enough, she would come with my cousins and me into
the park, where we always had a good time--lying in ambush for red
Indians, rescuing Madge Plunket from a caitiff knight, or else hunting
snakes and field-mice and lizards, and digging for lizard's eggs, which
we would hatch at home--that happy refuge for all manner of beasts, as
well as little boys and girls. For there were squirrels, hedgehogs, and
guinea-pigs; an owl, a raven, a monkey, and white mice; little birds
that had strayed from the maternal nest before they could fly (they
always died!), the dog Médor, and any other dog who chose; not to
mention a gigantic rocking-horse made out of a real stuffed pony--the
smallest pony that had ever been!
Often our united high spirits were too boisterous for Mimsey. Dreadful
headaches would come on, and she would sit in a corner, nursing a
hedgehog with one arm and holding her thumb in her mouth with the other.
Only when we were alone together was she happy, and then, _moult
tristement!_
On summer evenings whole parties of us, grown-up and small, would walk
through the park and the Bois de Boulogne to the "Mare d'Auteuil"; as we
got near enough for Médor to scent the water, he would bark and grin and
gyrate, and go mad with excitement, for he had the gift of diving after
stones, and liked to show it off.
There we would catch huge olive-colored water-beetles, yellow
underneath; red-bellied newts; green frogs, with beautiful spots and a
splendid parabolic leap; gold and silver fish, pied with purply brown. I
mention them in the order of their attractiveness. The fish were too
tame and easily caught, and their beauty of too civilized an order; the
rare, flat, vicious dytiscus "took the cake."
Sometimes, even, we would walk through Boulogne to St. Cloud, to see the
new railway and the trains--an inexhaustible subject of wonder and
delight--and eat ices at the "Tête Noire" (a hotel which had been the
scene of a terrible murder, that led to a cause célèbre); and we would
come back through the scented night, while the glowworms were shining in
the grass, and the distant frogs were croaking in the Mare d'Auteuil.
Now and then a startled roebuck would gallop in short bounds across
the path, from thicket to thicket, and Médor would go mad again and wake
the echoes of the new Paris fortification, which were still in the
course of construction.
[Illustration]
He had not the gift of catching roebucks!
If my father were of the party, he would yodel Tyrolese melodies, and
sing lovely songs of Boieldieu, Hérold, and Grétry; or "Drink to me only
with thine eyes," or else the "Bay of Dublin" for Madame Seraskier, who
had the nostalgia of her beloved country whenever her beloved
husband was away.