WHAT
THEY TALKED ABOUT
Edward was standing ginger-beer like a gentleman,
happening, as the one that had last passed under the dentist’s hands, to be the
capitalist of the flying hour. As in all well-regulated families, the usual
tariff obtained in ours,—half-a-crown a tooth; one shilling only if the molar
were a loose one. This one, unfortunately—in spite of Edward’s interested
affectation of agony—had been shaky undisguised; but the event was good enough
to run to ginger-beer. As financier, however, Edward had claimed exemption from
any servile duties of procurement, and had swaggered about the garden while I
fetched from the village post-office, and Harold stole a tumbler from the
pantry. Our preparations complete, we were sprawling on the lawn; the staidest
and most self respecting of the rabbits had been let loose to grace the feast,
and was lopping demurely about the grass, selecting the juiciest plantains;
while Selina, as the eldest lady present, was toying, in her affected feminine
way, with the first full tumbler, daintily fishing for bits of broken cork.
“Hurry up, can’t
you?” growled our host; “what are you girls always so beastly particular for?”
“Martha says,”
explained Harold (thirsty too, but still just), “that if you swallow a bit of
cork, it swells, and it swells, and it swells inside you, till you—”
“O bosh!” said
Edward, draining the glass with a fine pretence of indifference to
consequences, but all the same (as I noticed) dodging the floating
cork-fragments with skill and judgment.
“O, it’s all very
well to say bosh,” replied Harold, nettled; “but every one knows it’s true but
you. Why, when Uncle Thomas was here last, and they got up a bottle of wine for
him, he took just one tiny sip out of his glass, and then he said, ‘Poo, my
goodness, that’s corked!’ And he wouldn’t touch it. And they had to get a fresh
bottle up. The funny part was, though, I looked in his glass afterwards, when
it was brought out into the passage, and there wasn’t any cork in it at all! So
I drank it all off, and it was very good!”
“You’d better be
careful, young man!” said his elder brother, regarding him severely. “D’ you
remember that night when the Mummers were here, and they had mulled port, and
you went round and emptied all the glasses after they had gone away?”
“Ow! I did feel funny
that night,” chuckled Harold. “Thought the house was comin’ down, it jumped
about so; and Martha had to carry me up to bed, ‘cos the stairs was goin’ all
waggity!”
We gazed
searchingly at our graceless junior; but it was clear that he viewed the matter
in the light of a phenomenon rather than of a delinquency.
A third bottle
was by this time circling; and Selina, who had evidently waited for it to reach
her, took a most unfairly long pull, and then jumping up and shaking out her
frock, announced that she was going for a walk. Then she fled like a hare; for
it was the custom of our Family to meet with physical coercion any independence
of action in individuals.
“She’s off with
those Vicarage girls again,” said Edward, regarding Selina’s long black legs
twinkling down the path. “She goes out with them every day now; and as soon as
ever they start, all their heads go together and they chatter, chatter, chatter
the whole blessed time! I can’t make out what they find to talk about. They
never stop; it’s gabble, gabble, gabble right along, like a nest of young
rooks!”
“P’raps they talk
about birds’-eggs,” I suggested sleepily (the sun was hot, the turf soft, the
ginger-beer potent); “and about ships, and buffaloes, and desert islands; and
why rabbits have white tails; and whether they’d sooner have a schooner or a
cutter; and what they’ll be when they’re men—at least, I mean there’s lots of
things to talk about, if you WANT to talk.”
“Yes; but they
don’t talk about those sort of things at all,” persisted Edward. “How CAN they?
They don’t KNOW anything; they can’t DO anything—except play the piano, and
nobody would want to talk about THAT; and they don’t care about
anything—anything sensible, I mean. So what DO they talk about?”
“I asked Martha
once,” put in Harold; “and she said, ‘Never YOU mind; young ladies has lots of
things to talk about that young gentlemen can’t understand.’”
“I don’t believe
it,” Edward growled.
“Well, that’s
what she SAID, anyway,” rejoined Harold, indifferently. The subject did not
seem to him of first-class importance, and it was hindering the circulation of
the ginger-beer.
We heard the
click of the front-gate. Through a gap in the hedge we could see the party
setting off down the road. Selina was in the middle: a Vicarage girl had her by
either arm; their heads were together, as Edward had described; and the clack
of their tongues came down the breeze like the busy pipe of starlings on a
bright March morning.
“What DO they
talk about, Charlotte?” I inquired, wishing to pacify Edward. “You go out with
them sometimes.”
“I don’t know,”
said poor Charlotte, dolefully. “They make me walk behind, ‘cos they say I’m
too little, and mustn’t hear. And I DO want to so,” she added.
“When any lady
comes to see Aunt Eliza,” said Harold, “they both talk at once all the time.
And yet each of ‘em seems to hear what the other one’s saying. I can’t make out
how they do it. Grown-up people are so clever!”
“The Curate’s the
funniest man,” I remarked. “He’s always saying things that have no sense in
them at all, and then laughing at them as if they were jokes. Yesterday, when
they asked him if he’d have some more tea he said ‘Once more unto the breach,
dear friends, once more,’ and then sniggered all over. I didn’t see anything
funny in that. And then somebody asked him about his button-hole and he said
‘’Tis but a little faded flower,’ and exploded again. I thought it very
stupid.”
“O HIM,” said
Edward contemptuously: “he can’t help it, you know; it’s a sort of way he’s
got. But it’s these girls I can’t make out. If they’ve anything really sensible
to talk about, how is it nobody knows what it is? And if they haven’t—and we
know they CAN’T have, naturally—why don’t they shut up their jaw? This old
rabbit here—HE doesn’t want to talk. He’s got something better to do.” And
Edward aimed a ginger-beer cork at the unruffled beast, who never budged.
“O but rabbits DO
talk,” interposed Harold. “I’ve watched them often in their hutch. They put
their heads together and their noses go up and down, just like Selina’s and the
Vicarage girls’. Only of course I can t hear what they’re saying.”
“Well, if they
do,” said Edward, unwillingly, “I’ll bet they don’t talk such rot as those
girls do!”—which was ungenerous, as well as unfair; for it had not yet
transpired—nor has it to this day—WHAT Selina and her friends talked about.
THE
ARGONAUTS
The advent of strangers, of whatever sort, into our
circle, had always been a matter of grave dubiety and suspicion; indeed, it was
generally a signal for retreat into caves and fastnesses of the earth, into
unthreaded copses or remote outlying cowsheds, whence we were only to be
extricated by wily nursemaids, rendered familiar by experience with our secret
runs and refuges. It was not surprising therefore that the heroes of classic
legend, when first we made their acquaintance, failed to win our entire
sympathy at once. “Confidence,” says somebody, “is a plant of slow growth;” and
these stately dark-haired demi-gods, with names hard to master and strange
accoutrements, had to win a citadel already strongly garrisoned with a more
familiar soldiery. Their chill foreign goddesses had no such direct appeal for
us as the mocking malicious fairies and witches of the North; we missed the
pleasant alliance of the animal—the fox who spread the bushiest of tails to
convey us to the enchanted castle, the frog in the well, the raven who croaked
advice from the tree; and—to Harold especially—it seemed entirely wrong that
the hero should ever be other than the youngest brother of three. This belief,
indeed, in the special fortune that ever awaited the youngest brother, as
such,—the “Borough-English” of Faery,—had been of baleful effect on Harold,
producing a certain self-conceit and perkiness that called for physical
correction. But even in our admonishment we were on his side; and as we
distrustfully eyed these new arrivals, old Saturn himself seemed something of a
parvenu. Even strangers, however, we may develop into sworn comrades; and these
gay swordsmen, after all, were of the right stuff. Perseus, with his cap of
darkness and his wonderful sandals, was not long in winging his way to our
hearts; Apollo knocked at Admetus’ gate in something of the right fairy
fashion; Psyche brought with her an orthodox palace of magic, as well as
helpful birds and friendly ants. Ulysses, with his captivating shifts and
strategies, broke down the final barrier, and hence forth the band was adopted
and admitted into our freemasonry. I had been engaged in chasing Farmer
Larkin’s calves—his special pride—round the field, just to show the man we
hadn’t forgotten him, and was returning through the kitchen-garden with a
conscience at peace with all men, when I happened upon Edward, grubbing for
worms in the dung-heap. Edward put his worms into his hat, and we strolled
along together, discussing high matters of state. As we reached the tool-shed,
strange noises arrested our steps; looking in, we perceived Harold, alone,
rapt, absorbed, immersed in the special game of the moment. He was squatting in
an old pig-trough that had been brought in to be tinkered; and as he
rhapsodised, anon he waved a shovel over his head, anon dug it into the ground
with the action of those who would urge Canadian canoes. Edward strode in upon
him.
“What rot are you
playing at now?” he demanded sternly.
Harold flushed
up, but stuck to his pig-trough like a man. “I’m Jason,” he replied, defiantly;
“and this is the Argo. The other fellows are here too, only you can’t see them;
and we’re just going through the Hellespont, so don’t you come bothering.” And
once more he plied the wine-dark sea.
Edward kicked the
pig-trough contemptuously.
“Pretty sort of
Argo you’ve got!” said he.
Harold began to
get annoyed. “I can’t help it,” he replied. “It’s the best sort of Argo I can
manage, and it’s all right if you only pretend enough; but YOU never could
pretend one bit.”
Edward reflected.
“Look here,” he said presently; “why shouldn’t we get hold of Farmer Larkin’s
boat, and go right away up the river in a real Argo, and look for Medea, and
the Golden Fleece, and everything? And I’ll tell you what, I don’t mind your
being Jason, as you thought of it first.”
Harold tumbled
out of the trough in the excess of his emotion. “But we aren’t allowed to go on
the water by ourselves,” he cried.
“No,” said Edward,
with fine scorn: “we aren’t allowed; and Jason wasn’t allowed either, I
daresay—but he WENT!”
Harold’s protest
had been merely conventional: he only wanted to be convinced by sound argument.
The next question was, How about the girls? Selina was distinctly handy in a
boat: the difficulty about her was, that if she disapproved of the
expedition—and, morally considered, it was not exactly a Pilgrim’s Progress—she
might go and tell; she having just reached that disagreeable age when one
begins to develop a conscience. Charlotte, for her part, had a habit of
day-dreams, and was as likely as not to fall overboard in one of her rapt
musings. To be sure, she would dissolve in tears when she found herself left
out; but even that was better than a watery tomb. In fine, the public voice—and
rightly, perhaps—was against the admission of the skirted animal: spite the
precedent of Atalanta, who was one of the original crew.
“And now,” said
Edward, “who’s to ask Farmer Larkin? I can’t; last time I saw him he said when
he caught me again he’d smack my head. YOU’LL have to.”
I hesitated, for
good reasons. “You know those precious calves of his?” I began.
Edward understood
at once. “All right,” he said; “then we won’t ask him at all. It doesn’t much
matter. He’d only be annoyed, and that would be a pity. Now let’s set off.”
We made our way
down to the stream, and captured the farmer’s boat without let or hindrance,
the enemy being engaged in the hayfields. This “river,” so called, could never
be discovered by us in any atlas; indeed our Argo could hardly turn in it
without risk of shipwreck. But to us ‘t was Orinoco, and the cities of the
world dotted its shores. We put the Argo’s head up stream, since that led away
from the Larkin province; Harold was faithfully permitted to be Jason, and we
shared the rest of the heroes among us. Then launching forth from Thessaly, we
threaded the Hellespont with shouts, breathlessly dodged the Clashing Rocks,
and coasted under the lee of the Siren-haunted isles. Lemnos was fringed with
meadow-sweet, dog-roses dotted the Mysian shore, and the cheery call of the
haymaking folk sounded along the coast of Thrace.
After some hour
or two’s seafaring, the prow of the Argo embedded itself in the mud of a
landing-place, plashy with the tread of cows and giving on to a lane that led
towards the smoke of human habitations. Edward jumped ashore, alert for
exploration, and strode off without waiting to see if we followed; but I
lingered behind, having caught sight of a moss-grown water-gate hard by,
leading into a garden that from the brooding quiet lapping it round, appeared
to portend magical possibilities.
Indeed the very
air within seemed stiller, as we circumspectly passed through the gate; and
Harold hung back shamefaced, as if we were crossing the threshold of some
private chamber, and ghosts of old days were hustling past us. Flowers there
were, everywhere; but they drooped and sprawled in an overgrowth hinting at
indifference; the scent of heliotrope possessed the place, as if actually hung
in solid festoons from tall untrimmed hedge to hedge. No basket-chairs, shawls,
or novels dotted the lawn with colour; and on the garden-front of the house
behind, the blinds were mostly drawn. A grey old sun-dial dominated the central
sward, and we moved towards it instinctively, as the most human thing visible.
An antique motto ran round it, and with eyes and fingers we struggled at the
decipherment.
“TIME: TRYETH:
TROTHE:” spelt out Harold at last. “I wonder what that means?”
I could not
enlighten him, nor meet his further questions as to the inner mechanism of the
thing, and where you wound it up.
I had seen these
instruments before, of course, but had never fully understood their manner of
working.
We were still
puzzling our heads over the contrivance, when I became aware that Medea herself
was moving down the path from the house. Dark-haired, supple, of a figure
lightly poised and swayed, but pale and listless—I knew her at once, and having
come out to find her, naturally felt no surprise at all. But Harold, who was
trying to climb on the top of the sun-dial, having a cat-like fondness for the
summit of things, started and fell prone, barking his chin and filling the
pleasance with lamentation.
Medea skimmed the
ground swallow-like, and in a moment was on her knees comforting him,—wiping
the dirt out of his chin with her own dainty handkerchief,—and vocal with soft
murmur of consolation.
“You needn’t take
on so about him,” I observed, politely. “He’ll cry for just one minute, and
then he’ll be all right.”
My estimate was
justified. At the end of his regulation time Harold stopped crying suddenly,
like a clock that had struck its hour; and with a serene and cheerful
countenance wriggled out of Medea’s embrace, and ran for a stone to throw at an
intrusive blackbird.
“O you boys!”
cried Medea, throwing wide her arms with abandonment. “Where have you dropped
from? How dirty you are! I’ve been shut up here for a thousand years, and all
that time I’ve never seen any one under a hundred and fifty! Let’s play at
something, at once!”
“Rounders is a
good game,” I suggested. “Girls can play at rounders. And we could serve up to
the sun-dial here. But you want a bat and a ball, and some more people.”
She struck her
hands together tragically. “I haven’t a bat,” she cried, “or a ball, or more
people, or anything sensible whatever. Never mind; let’s play at hide-and-seek
in the kitchen garden. And we’ll race there, up to that walnut-tree; I haven’t
run for a century!”
She was so easy a
victor, nevertheless, that I began to doubt, as I panted behind, whether she
had not exaggerated her age by a year or two. She flung herself into
hide-and-seek with all the gusto and abandonment of the true artist, and as she
flitted away and reappeared, flushed and laughing divinely, the pale
witch-maiden seemed to fall away from her, and she moved rather as that other
girl I had read about, snatched from fields of daffodil to reign in shadow
below, yet permitted once again to visit earth, and light, and the frank,
caressing air.
Tired at last, we
strolled back to the old sundial, and Harold, who never relinquished a problem
unsolved, began afresh, rubbing his finger along the faint incisions, “Time
tryeth trothe. Please, I want to know what that means.”
Medea’s face
drooped low over the sun-dial, till it was almost hidden in her fingers.
“That’s what I’m here for,” she said presently, in quite a changed, low voice.
“They shut me up here—they think I’ll forget—but I never will—never, never! And
he, too—but I don’t know—it is so long—I don’t know!”
Her face was
quite hidden now. There was silence again in the old garden. I felt clumsily
helpless and awkward; beyond a vague idea of kicking Harold, nothing remedial
seemed to suggest itself.
None of us had
noticed the approach of another she-creature—one of the angular and rigid
class—how different from our dear comrade! The years Medea had claimed might
well have belonged to her; she wore mittens, too—a trick I detested in woman.
“Lucy!” she said, sharply, in a tone with AUNT writ large over it; and Medea
started up guiltily.
“You’ve been
crying,” said the newcomer, grimly regarding her through spectacles. “And pray
who are these exceedingly dirty little boys?”
“Friends of mine,
aunt,” said Medea, promptly, with forced cheerfulness. “I—I’ve known them a
long time. I asked them to come.”
The aunt sniffed
suspiciously. “You must come indoors, dear,” she said, “and lie down. The sun
will give you a headache. And you little boys had better run away home to your
tea. Remember, you should not come to pay visits without your nursemaid.”
Harold had been
tugging nervously at my jacket for some time, and I only waited till Medea
turned and kissed a white hand to us as she was led away. Then I ran. We gained
the boat in safety; and “What an old dragon!” said Harold.
“Wasn’t she a
beast!” I replied. “Fancy the sun giving any one a headache! But Medea was a
real brick. Couldn’t we carry her off?”
“We could if
Edward was here,” said Harold, confidently.
The question was,
What had become of that defaulting hero? We were not left long in doubt. First,
there came down the lane the shrill and wrathful clamour of a female tongue,
then Edward, running his best, and then an excited woman hard on his heel.
Edward tumbled into the bottom of the boat, gasping, “Shove her off!” And shove
her off we did, mightily, while the dame abused us from the bank in the self
same accents in which Alfred hurled defiance at the marauding Dane.
“That was just
like a bit out of Westward Ho!” I remarked approvingly, as we sculled down the
stream. “But what had you been doing to her?”
“Hadn’t been
doing anything,” panted Edward, still breathless. “I went up into the village
and explored, and it was a very nice one, and the people were very polite. And
there was a blacksmith’s forge there, and they were shoeing horses, and the
hoofs fizzled and smoked, and smelt so jolly! I stayed there quite a long time.
Then I got thirsty, so I asked that old woman for some water, and while she was
getting it her cat came out of the cottage, and looked at me in a nasty sort of
way, and said something I didn’t like. So I went up to it just to—to teach it
manners, and somehow or other, next minute it was up an apple-tree, spitting,
and I was running down the lane with that old thing after me.”
Edward was so
full of his personal injuries that there was no interesting him in Medea at
all. Moreover, the evening was closing in, and it was evident that this
cutting-out expedition must be kept for another day. As we neared home, it
gradually occurred to us that perhaps the greatest danger was yet to come; for
the farmer must have missed his boat ere now, and would probably be lying in
wait for us near the landing-place. There was no other spot admitting of
debarcation on the home side; if we got out on the other, and made for the
bridge, we should certainly be seen and cut off. Then it was that I blessed my
stars that our elder brother was with us that day,—he might be little good at
pretending, but in grappling with the stern facts of life he had no equal.
Enjoining silence, he waited till we were but a little way from the fated
landing-place, and then brought us in to the opposite bank. We scrambled out
noiselessly, and—the gathering darkness favouring us—crouched behind a willow,
while Edward pushed off the empty boat with his foot. The old Argo, borne down
by the gentle current, slid and grazed along the rushy bank; and when she came
opposite the suspected ambush, a stream of imprecation told us that our
precaution had not been wasted. We wondered, as we listened, where Farmer
Larkin, who was bucolically bred and reared, had acquired such range and wealth
of vocabulary. Fully realising at last that his boat was derelict, abandoned,
at the mercy of wind and wave,—as well as out of his reach,—he strode away to
the bridge, about a quarter of a mile further down; and as soon as we heard his
boots clumping on the planks, we nipped out, recovered the craft, pulled
across, and made the faithful vessel fast to her proper moorings. Edward was
anxious to wait and exchange courtesies and compliments with the disappointed
farmer, when he should confront us on the opposite bank; but wiser counsels
prevailed. It was possible that the piracy was not yet laid at our particular
door: Ulysses, I reminded him, had reason to regret a similar act of bravado,
and—were he here—would certainly advise a timely retreat. Edward held but a low
opinion of me as a counsellor; but he had a very solid respect for Ulysses.
