A
HARVESTING
The year was in its yellowing time, and the face of
Nature a study in old gold. “A field or, semee, with garbs of the same:” it may
be false Heraldry—Nature’s generally is—but it correctly blazons the display
that Edward and I considered from the rickyard gate, Harold was not on in this
scene, being stretched upon the couch of pain; the special disorder stomachic,
as usual.
The evening
before, Edward, in a fit of unwonted amiability, had deigned to carve me out a
turnip lantern, an art-and-craft he was peculiarly deft in; and Harold, as the
interior of the turnip flew out in scented fragments under the hollowing knife,
had eaten largely thereof: regarding all such jetsam as his special perquisite.
Now he was dreeing his weird, with such assistance as the chemist could afford.
But Edward and I, knowing that this particular field was to be carried to-day,
were revelling in the privilege of riding in the empty waggons from the
rickyard back to the sheaves, whence we returned toilfully on foot, to career
it again over the billowy acres in these great galleys of a stubble sea. It was
the nearest approach to sailing that we inland urchins might compass: and hence
it ensued, that such stirring scenes as Sir Richard Grenville on the Revenge,
the smoke-wreathed Battle of the Nile, and the Death of Nelson, had all been
enacted in turn on these dusty quarter decks, as they swayed and bumped afield.
Another waggon
had shot its load, and was jolting out through the rickyard gate, as we swung
ourselves in, shouting, over its tail.
Edward was the
first up, and, as I gained my feet, he clutched me in a death-grapple. I was a
privateersman, he proclaimed, and he the captain of the British frigate
Terpsichore, of—I forget the precise number of guns. Edward always collared the
best parts to himself; but I was holding my own gallantly, when I suddenly
discovered that the floor we battled on was swarming with earwigs. Shrieking, I
hurled free of him, and rolled over the tail-board on to the stubble. Edward
executed a war-dance of triumph on the deck of the retreating galleon; but I
cared little for that. I knew HE knew that I wasn’t afraid of him, but that I
was—and terribly—of earwigs, “those mortal bugs o’ the field.” So I let him
disappear, shouting lustily for all hands to repel boarders, while I strolled
inland, down the village.
There was a touch
of adventure in the expedition. This was not our own village, but a foreign
one, distant at least a mile. One felt that sense of mingled distinction and
insecurity which is familiar to the traveller: distinction, in that folk turned
the head to note you curiously; insecurity, by reason of the ever-present
possibility of missiles on the part of the more juvenile inhabitants, a class
eternally conservative. Elated with isolation, I went even more nose-in-air
than usual: and “even so,” I mused, “might Mungo Park have threaded the trackless
African forest and...” Here I plumped against a soft, but resisting body.
Recalled to my
senses by the shock, I fell back in the attitude every boy under these
circumstances instinctively adopts—both elbows well up over the ears. I found
myself facing a tall elderly man, clean-shaven, clad in well-worn black—a
clergyman evidently; and I noted at once a far-away look in his eyes, as if
they were used to another plane of vision, and could not instantly focus things
terrestrial, being suddenly recalled thereto. His figure was bent in apologetic
protest: “I ask a thousand pardons, sir,” he said; “I am really so very
absent-minded. I trust you will forgive me.”
Now most boys
would have suspected chaff under this courtly style of address. I take infinite
credit to myself for recognising at once the natural attitude of a man to whom
his fellows were gentlemen all, neither Jew nor Gentile, clean nor unclean. Of
course, I took the blame on myself; adding, that I was very absent-minded
too,—which was indeed the case.
“I perceive,” he
said pleasantly, “that we have something in common. I, an old man, dream
dreams; you, a young one, see visions. Your lot is the happier. And now—” his
hand had been resting all this time on a wicket-gate—“you are hot, it is easily
seen; the day is advanced, Virgo is the Zodiacal sign. Perhaps I may offer you
some poor refreshment, if your engagements will permit.”
My only
engagement that afternoon was an arithmetic lesson, and I had not intended to
keep it in any case; so I passed in, while he held the gate open politely,
murmuring “Venit Hesperus ite, capellae: come, little kid!” and then
apologising abjectly for a familiarity which (he said) was less his than the
Roman poet’s. A straight flagged walk led up to the cool-looking old house, and
my host, lingering in his progress at this rose-tree and that, forgot all about
me at least twice, waking up and apologising humbly after each lapse. During
these intervals I put two and two together, and identified him as the Rector: a
bachelor, eccentric, learned exceedingly, round whom the crust of legend was
already beginning to form; to myself an object of special awe, in that he was
alleged to have written a real book. “Heaps o’ books,” Martha, my informant,
said; but I knew the exact rate of discount applicable to Martha’s statements.
We passed
eventually through a dark hall into a room which struck me at once as the ideal
I had dreamed but failed to find. None of your feminine fripperies here! None
of your chair-backs and tidies! This man, it was seen, groaned under no aunts.
Stout volumes in calf and vellum lined three sides; books sprawled or hunched
themselves on chairs and tables; books diffused the pleasant odour of printers’
ink and bindings; topping all, a faint aroma of tobacco cheered and heartened
exceedingly, as under foreign skies the flap and rustle over the wayfarer’s
head of the Union Jack—the old flag of emancipation! And in one corner,
book-piled like the rest of the furniture, stood a piano.
This I hailed
with a squeal of delight. “Want to strum?” inquired my friend, as if it was the
most natural wish in the world—his eyes were already straying towards another
corner, where bits of writing-table peeped out from under a sort of Alpine
system of book and foolscap.
“O, but may I?” I
asked in doubt. “At home I’m not allowed to—only beastly exercises!”
“Well, you can
strum here, at all events,” he replied; and murmuring absently, Age, dic
Latinum, barbite, carmen, he made his way, mechanically guided as it seemed, to
the irresistible writing-able. In ten seconds he was out of sight and call. A
great book open on his knee, another propped up in front, a score or so
disposed within easy reach, he read and jotted with an absorption almost
passionate. I might have been in Boeotia, for any consciousness he had of me.
So with a light heart I turned to and strummed.
Those who
painfully and with bleeding feet have scaled the crags of mastery over musical
instruments have yet their loss in this,—that the wild joy of strumming has
become a vanished sense. Their happiness comes from the concord and the
relative value of the notes they handle: the pure, absolute quality and nature
of each note in itself are only appreciated by the strummer. For some notes
have all the sea in them, and some cathedral bells; others a woodland joyance
and a smell of greenery; in some fauns dance to the merry reed, and even the
grave centaurs peep out from their caves. Some bring moonlight, and some the
deep crimson of a rose’s heart; some are blue, some red, and others will tell
of an army with silken standards and march-music. And throughout all the
sequence of suggestion, up above the little white men leap and peep, and strive
against the imprisoning wires; and all the big rosewood box hums as it were
full of hiving bees.
Spent with the
rapture, I paused a moment and caught my friend’s eye over the edge of a folio.
“But as for these Germans,” he began abruptly, as if we had been in the middle
of a discussion, “the scholarship is there, I grant you; but the spark, the
fine perception, the happy intuition, where is it? They get it all from us!”
“They get nothing
whatever from US,” I said decidedly: the word German only suggesting Bands, to
which Aunt Eliza was bitterly hostile.
“You think not?”
he rejoined, doubtfully, getting up and walking about the room. “Well, I
applaud such fairness and temperance in so young a critic. They are
qualities—in youth—as rare as they are pleasing. But just look at Schrumpffius,
for instance—how he struggles and wrestles with a simple {GREEK gar} in this
very passage here!”
I peeped
fearfully through the open door, half-dreading to see some sinuous and
snark-like conflict in progress on the mat; but all was still. I saw no trouble
at all in the passage, and I said so.
“Precisely,” he
cried, delighted. “To you, who possess the natural scholar’s faculty in so
happy a degree, there is no difficulty at all. But to this Schrumpffius—” But
here, luckily for me, in came the housekeeper, a clean-looking woman of staid
aspect.
“Your tea is in
the garden,” she said, as if she were correcting a faulty emendation. “I’ve put
some cakes and things for the little gentleman; and you’d better drink it
before it gets cold.”
He waved her off
and continued his stride, brandishing an aorist over my devoted head. The
housekeeper waited unmoved till there fell a moment’s break in his descant; and
then, “You’d better drink it before it gets cold,” she observed again,
impassively. The wretched man cast a deprecating look at me. “Perhaps a little
tea would be rather nice,” he observed, feebly; and to my great relief he led
the way into the garden. I looked about for the little gentleman, but, failing
to discover him, I concluded he was absent-minded too, and attacked the “cakes
and things” with no misgivings.
After a most
successful and most learned tea a something happened which, small as I was,
never quite shook itself out of my memory.
To us at parley
in an arbour over the high road, there entered, slouching into view, a dingy
tramp, satellited by a frowsy woman and a pariah dog; and, catching sight of
us, he set up his professional whine; and I looked at my friend with the
heartiest compassion, for I knew well from Martha—it was common talk—that at
this time of day he was certainly and surely penniless. Morn by morn he started
forth with pockets lined; and each returning evening found him with never a
sou. All this he proceeded to explain at length to the tramp, courteously and
even shamefacedly, as one who was in the wrong; and at last the gentleman of
the road, realising the hopelessness of his case, set to and cursed him with
gusto, vocabulary, and abandonment. He reviled his eyes, his features, his
limbs, his profession, his relatives and surroundings; and then slouched off,
still oozing malice and filth. We watched the party to a turn in the road,
where the woman, plainly weary, came to a stop. Her lord, after some
conventional expletives demanded of him by his position, relieved her of her
bundle, and caused her to hang on his arm with a certain rough kindness of
tone, and in action even a dim approach to tenderness; and the dingy dog crept
up for one lick at her hand.
“See,” said my
friend, bearing somewhat on my shoulder, “how this strange thing, this love of
ours, lives and shines out in the unlikeliest of places! You have been in the
fields in early morning? Barren acres, all! But only stoop—catch the light
thwartwise—and all is a silver network of gossamer! So the fairy filaments of
this strange thing underrun and link together the whole world. Yet it is not
the old imperious god of the fatal bow—{GREEK}not that—nor even the placid
respectable {GREEK}—but something still unnamed, perhaps more mysterious, more
divine! Only one must stoop to see it, old fellow, one must stoop!”
The dew was falling,
the dusk closing, as I trotted briskly homewards down the road. Lonely spaces
everywhere, above and around. Only Hesperus hung in the sky, solitary, pure,
ineffably far-drawn and remote; yet infinitely heartening, somehow, in his
valorous isolation.
SNOWBOUND
Twelfth-night had come and gone, and life next
morning seemed a trifle flat and purposeless. But yester-eve and the mummers
were here! They had come striding into the old kitchen, powdering the red brick
floor with snow from their barbaric bedizenments; and stamping, and crossing,
and declaiming, till all was whirl and riot and shout. Harold was frankly
afraid: unabashed, he buried himself in the cook’s ample bosom. Edward feigned
a manly superiority to illusion, and greeted these awful apparitions
familiarly, as Dick and Harry and Joe. As for me, I was too big to run, too
rapt to resist the magic and surprise. Whence came these outlanders, breaking
in on us with song and ordered masque and a terrible clashing of wooden swords?
And after these, what strange visitants might we not look for any quiet night,
when the chestnuts popped in the ashes, and the old ghost stories drew the
awe-stricken circle close? Old Merlin, perhaps, “all furred in black
sheep-skins, and a russet gown, with a bow and arrows, and bearing wild geese
in his hand!” Or stately Ogier the Dane, recalled from Faery, asking his way to
the land that once had need of him! Or even, on some white night, the
Snow-Queen herself, with a chime of sleigh-bells and the patter of reindeers’
feet, with sudden halt at the door flung wide, while aloft the Northern Lights
went shaking attendant spears among the quiet stars!
This morning,
house-bound by the relentless, indefatigable snow, I was feeling the reaction
Edward, on the contrary, being violently stage struck on this his first
introduction to the real Drama, was striding up and down the floor, proclaiming
“Here be I, King Gearge the Third,” in a strong Berkshire accent. Harold,
accustomed, as the youngest, to lonely antics and to sports that asked no
sympathy, was absorbed in “clubmen”: a performance consisting in a measured
progress round the room arm-in-arm with an imaginary companion of reverend
years, with occasional halts at imaginary clubs, where—imaginary steps being
leisurely ascended—imaginary papers were glanced at, imaginary scandal was
discussed with elderly shakings of the head, and—regrettable to say—imaginary
glasses were lifted lipwards. Heaven only knows how the germ of this dreary
pastime first found way into his small-boyish being. It was his own invention,
and he was proportionately proud of it. Meanwhile, Charlotte and I, crouched in
the window-seat, watched, spell-stricken, the whirl and eddy and drive of the
innumerable snow-flakes, wrapping our cheery little world in an uncanny
uniform, ghastly in line and hue.
Charlotte was
sadly out of spirits. Having “countered” Miss Smedley at breakfast, during some
argument or other, by an apt quotation from her favourite classic (the Fairy
Book) she had been gently but firmly informed that no such things as fairies
ever really existed. “Do you mean to say it’s all lies?” asked Charlotte,
bluntly. Miss Smedley deprecated the use of any such unladylike words in any
connection at all. “These stories had their origin, my dear,” she explained,
“in a mistaken anthropomorphism in the interpretation of nature. But though we
are now too well informed to fall into similar errors, there are still many
beautiful lessons to be learned from these myths—”
“But how can you
learn anything,” persisted Charlotte, “from what doesn’t exist?” And she left
the table defiant, howbeit depressed.
“Don’t you mind
HER,” I said, consolingly; “how can she know anything about it? Why, she can’t
even throw a stone properly!”
“Edward says
they’re all rot, too,” replied Charlotte, doubtfully.
“Edward says
everything’s rot,” I explained, “now he thinks he’s going into the Army. If a
thing’s in a book it MUST be true, so that settles it!”
Charlotte looked
almost reassured. The room was quieter now, for Edward had got the dragon down
and was boring holes in him with a purring sound Harold was ascending the steps
of the Athenaeum with a jaunty air—suggestive rather of the Junior Carlton.
Outside, the tall elm-tops were hardly to be seen through the feathery storm. “The
sky’s a-falling,” quoted Charlotte, softly; “I must go and tell the king.” The
quotation suggested a fairy story, and I offered to read to her, reaching out
for the book. But the Wee Folk were under a cloud; sceptical hints had
embittered the chalice. So I was fain to fetch Arthur—second favourite with
Charlotte for his dames riding errant, and an easy first with us boys for his
spear-splintering crash of tourney and hurtle against hopeless odds. Here
again, however, I proved unfortunate,—what ill-luck made the book open at the
sorrowful history of Balin and Balan? “And he vanished anon,” I read: “and so
he heard an horne blow, as it had been the death of a beast. ‘That blast,’ said
Balin, ‘is blowen for me, for I am the prize, and yet am I not dead.’” Charlotte
began to cry: she knew the rest too well. I shut the book in despair. Harold
emerged from behind the arm-chair. He was sucking his thumb (a thing which
members of the Reform are seldom seen to do), and he stared wide-eyed at his
tear stained sister. Edward put off his histrionics, and rushed up to her as
the consoler—a new part for him.
“I know a jolly
story,” he began. “Aunt Eliza told it me. It was when she was somewhere over in
that beastly abroad”—(he had once spent a black month of misery at Dinan)—“and
there was a fellow there who had got two storks. And one stork died—it was the
she-stork.” (“What did it die of?” put in Harold.) “And the other stork was
quite sorry, and moped, and went on, and got very miserable. So they looked
about and found a duck, and introduced it to the stork. The duck was a drake,
but the stork didn’t mind, and they loved each other and were as jolly as could
be. By and by another duck came along,—a real she-duck this time,—and when the
drake saw her he fell in love, and left the stork, and went and proposed to the
duck: for she was very beautiful. But the poor stork who was left, he said
nothing at all to anybody, but just pined and pined and pined away, till one
morning he was found quite dead! But the ducks lived happily ever afterwards!”
This was Edward’s
idea of a jolly story! Down again went the corners of poor Charlotte’s mouth.
Really Edward’s stupid inability to see the real point in anything was TOO
annoying! It was always so. Years before, it being necessary to prepare his
youthful mind for a domestic event that might lead to awkward questionings at a
time when there was little leisure to invent appropriate answers, it was
delicately inquired of him whether he would like to have a little brother, or
perhaps a little sister? He considered the matter carefully in all its
bearings, and finally declared for a Newfoundland pup. Any boy more “gleg at
the uptak” would have met his parents half-way, and eased their burden. As it
was, the matter had to be approached all over again from a fresh standpoint.
And now, while Charlotte turned away sniffingly, with a hiccough that told of
an overwrought soul, Edward, unconscious (like Sir Isaac’s Diamond) of the
mischief he had done, wheeled round on Harold with a shout.
“I want a live
dragon,” he announced: “you’ve got to be my dragon!”
“Leave me go,
will you?” squealed Harold, struggling stoutly. “I’m playin’ at something else.
How can I be a dragon and belong to all the clubs?”
“But wouldn’t you
like to be a nice scaly dragon, all green,” said Edward, trying persuasion,
“with a curly tail and red eyes, and breathing real smoke and fire?”
Harold wavered an
instant: Pall-Mall was still strong in him. The next he was grovelling on the
floor. No saurian ever swung a tail so scaly and so curly as his. Clubland was
a thousand years away. With horrific pants he emitted smokiest smoke and
fiercest fire.
“Now I want a
Princess,” cried Edward, clutching Charlotte ecstatically; “and YOU can be the
doctor, and heal me from the dragon’s deadly wound.”
Of all
professions I held the sacred art of healing in worst horror and contempt.
Cataclysmal memories of purge and draught crowded thick on me, and with
Charlotte—who courted no barren honours—I made a break for the door. Edward did
likewise, and the hostile forces clashed together on the mat, and for a brief
space things were mixed and chaotic and Arthurian. The silvery sound of the
luncheon-bell restored an instant peace, even in the teeth of clenched
antagonisms like ours. The Holy Grail itself, “sliding athwart a sunbeam,”
never so effectually stilled a riot of warring passions into sweet and quiet
accord.
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