WE AND THE BOYS--WE AND THE BOYS AND OUR FADS--THE LAMP OF ZEAL--CLEMENT
ON UNREALITY--JACK'S OINTMENT.
Our life on the moors was, I suppose, monotonous. I do not think we ever
found it dull; but it was not broken, as a rule, by striking incidents.
The coming and going of the boys were our chief events. We packed for
them when they went away. We wrote long letters to them, and received
brief but pithy replies. We spoke on their behalf when they wanted
clothes or pocket-money. We knew exactly how to bring the news of good
marks in school and increased subscriptions to cricket to bear in
effective combination upon the parental mind, and were amply rewarded by
half a sheet, acknowledging the receipt of a ten-shilling piece in a
match-box (the Arkwrights had a strange habit of sending coin of the
realm by post, done up like botanical specimens), with brief directions
as to the care of garden or collection, and perhaps a rude outline of
the head-master's nose--"In a great hurry, from your loving and grateful
Bro."
We kept their gardens tidy, preserved their collections from dust, damp,
and Keziah, and knitted socks for them. I learned to knit, of course.
Every woman knits in that village of stone. And "between lights"
Eleanor and I plied our needles on the boys' behalf, and counted the
days to the holidays.
We had fresh "fads" every holidays. Many of our plans were ambitious
enough, and the results would, no doubt, have been great had they been
fully carried out. But Midsummer holidays, though long, are limited in
length.
Once we made ourselves into a Field Naturalists' Club. We girls gave up
our "spare dress wardrobe" for a museum. We subdivided the shelves, and
proposed to make a perfect collection of the flora and entomology of the
neighbourhood. Eleanor and I really did continue to add specimens whilst
the boys were at school; but they came home at Christmas devoted, body
and soul, to the drama. We were soon converted to the new fad. The
wardrobe became a side-scene in our theatre, and Eleanor and Clement
laboured day and night with papers of powdered paint, and kettles of hot
size, in converting canvas into scenery. "Theatricals" promised to be a
lasting fancy; but the next holidays were in fine weather, and we made
the drop-curtain into a tent.
When the boys were at school, Eleanor and I were fully occupied. We took
a good deal of pains with our room: half of it was mine now. I had my
knick-knack table as well as Eleanor, my own books and pictures, my own
photographs of the boys and of the dear boys, my own pot plants, and my
own dog--a pug, given to me by Jack, and named "Saucebox." In Jack's
absence, Pincher also looked on me as his mistress.
Like most other conscientious girls, we had rules and regulations of our
own devising: private codes, generally kept in cipher, for our own
personal self-discipline, and laws common to us both for the employment
of our time in joint duties--lessons, parish work, and so forth. I think
we made rather too many rules, and that we re-made them too often. I
make fewer now, and easier ones, and let them much more alone. I wonder
if I really keep them better? But if not, may GOD, I pray Him, send me
back the restless zeal, the hunger and thirst after righteousness, which
He gives in early youth! It is so easy to become more thick-skinned in
conscience, more tolerant of evil, more hopeless of good, more careful
of one's own comfort and one's own property, more self-satisfied in
leaving high aims and great deeds to enthusiasts, and then to believe
that one is growing older and wiser. And yet those high examples, those
good works, those great triumphs over evil, which single hands effect
sometimes, we are all grateful for, when they are done, whatever we may
have said of the doing. But we speak of saints and enthusiasts for
good, as if some special gifts were made to them in middle age which are
withheld from other men. Is it not rather that some few souls keep alive
the lamp of zeal and high desire which GOD lights for most of us while
life is young?
Eleanor and I worked at our lessons by ourselves. We always had her
mother to "fall back upon," as we said. When we took up the study of
Italian in order to be able to read Dante--moved thereto by the
attractions of the long volume of Flaxman's illustrations of the 'Divina
Commedia'--we had to "fall back" a good deal on Mrs. Arkwright's
scholarship. And this in spite of all the helps the library afforded us,
the best of dictionaries, English "cribs," and about six of those
elaborate commentaries upon the poem, of which Italians have been so
prolific.
During the winter the study of languages was commonly uppermost; in
summer sketching was more favoured.
I do think sketching brings one a larger amount of pleasure than almost
any other occupation. And like "collecting," it is a very sociable
pursuit when one has fellow-sketchers as well as fellow-naturalists. And
this, I must confess, is a merit in my eyes, I being of a sociable
disposition! Eleanor could live alone, I think, and be happy; but I
depend largely on my fellow-creatures.
Jack and I were talking rather sentimentally the other day about "old
times," and I said:
"How jolly it was, that summer we used to sketch so much--all four of us
together!"
And Jack, who was rubbing some new stuff of his own compounding into his
fishing-boots, replied:
"Awfully. I vote we take to it again when the weather's warmer."
But Jack is so sympathetic, he will agree with anything one says.
Indeed, I am sure that he feels what one feels--for the time, at any
rate.
Clement is very different. He always disputes and often snubs what one
says; partly, I am sure, from a love of truth--a genuine desire to keep
himself and everybody else from talking in an unreal way, and from
repeating common ideas without thinking them out at first hand; and
partly, too, from what Keziah calls the "contradictiousness" of his
temper. He was in the room when Jack and I were talking, but he was not
talking with us. He was reading for his examination.
All the Arkwrights can work through noise and in company, having
considerable powers of mental abstraction. I think they even sometimes
combine attention to their own work with an occasional skimming of the
topics current in the room as well.
Some outlying feeler of Clement's brain caught my remark and Jack's
reply.
"My dear Margery," said he, "you are at heart one of the most unaffected
people I know. Pray be equally genuine with your head, and do not
encourage Jack in his slipshod habits of thought and conversation
by----"
"Slipshod!" interrupted Jack, holding his left arm out at full length
before him, the hand of which was shod with a fishing-boot. "Slipshod!
They fit as close as your convictions, and would be as stiff and
inexorable as logic if I didn't soften them with this newly-invented and
about-to-be-patented ointment by the warmth of a cheerful fire and
Margery's beaming countenance."
Clement had been reading during this sentence. Then he lifted his head,
and said pointedly:
"What I was going to advise _you_, Margery, is never to get into the
habit of adopting sentiments till you are quite sure you really mean
them. It is by the painful experience of my own folly that I know what
trouble it gives one afterwards. If ever the time comes when you want to
know your real opinion on any subject, the process of getting rid of
ideas you have adopted without meaning them will not be an easy one."
I am not as intellectual as the Arkwrights. I can always see through
Jack's jokes, but I am sometimes left far behind when Eleanor or Clement
"take flight," as Jack calls it, on serious subjects. I really did not
follow Clement on this occasion.
With some hesitation I said:
"I don't know that I quite understand."
"I'm sure you don't," said Jack. "I have feared for some time that your
hair was getting too thick for the finer ideas of this household to
penetrate to your brain. Allow me to apply a little of this ointment to
the parting, which in your case is more definite than with Eleanor; and
as our lightest actions should proceed from principles, I may mention
that the principle on which I propose to apply the Leather-softener to
your scalp is that on which the blacksmith's wife gave your cholera
medicine to the second girl, when she began with rheumatic fever--'it
did such a deal of good to our William.' Now, this unguent has done 'a
deal of good' to the leather of my boots. Why should it not successfully
lubricate the skin of your skull?"
Only the dread of "a row" between Jack and Clem enabled me to keep
anything like gravity.
"Don't talk nonsense, Jack!" said I, as severely as I could. (I fear
that, like the rest of the world, I snubbed Jack rather than Clement,
because his temper was sweeter, and less likely to resent it.)
"Clement, I'm very stupid, but I don't quite see how what _you_ said
applies to what _I_ said."
"You said, 'How happy we were, that summer we went sketching!' or words
to that effect. It's just like a man's writing about the careless
happiness of childhood, when he either forgets, or refuses to advert to,
the toothache, the measles, learning his letters, the heat of the
night-nursery, not being allowed to sit down in the yard whilst his
knickerbockers were new, going to bed at eight o'clock, and having a lie
on his conscience. I have striven for more accurate habits of thought,
and I remember distinctly that you cried over more than one of your
sketches."
"I got into the 'Household Album' with mine, however," said Jack; "and I
defy an A.R.A. to have had more difficulty in securing his position."
"I'm afraid your appearance in the _Phycological Quarterly_ was better
deserved," said Mrs. Arkwright, without removing her eye from the
microscope she was using at a table just opposite to Clem's.
But this demands explanation, and I must go back to the time of which
Jack and I spoke--when we used to go sketching together.