1. THE TWENTY-FIRST OF OCTOBER
IN the matter of general culture and attainments, we
youngsters stood on pretty level ground. True, it was always
happening that one of us would be singled out at any moment,
freakishly, and without regard to his own preferences, to wrestle
with the inflections of some idiotic language long rightly dead;
while another, from some fancied artistic tendency which always
failed to justify itself, might be told off without warning to
hammer out scales and exercises, and to bedew the senseless keys
with tears of weariness or of revolt. But in subjects common to
either sex, and held to be
necessary even for him whose ambition soared no higher than to
crack a whip in a circus-ring—in geography, for instance,
arithmetic, or the weary doings of kings and queens—each would
have scorned to excel. And, indeed, whatever our individual
gifts, a general dogged determination to shirk and to evade kept
us all at much the same dead level,—a level of ignorance
tempered by insubordination.
Fortunately there existed a wide range of subjects, of
healthier tone than those already enumerated, in which we were
free to choose for ourselves, and which we would have scorned to
consider education; and in these we freely followed each his own
particular line, often attaining an amount of special knowledge
which struck our ignorant elders as simply uncanny. For Edward,
the uniforms, accoutrements, colours, and mottoes of the
regiments composing the British Army
had a special glamour. In the matter of facings he was simply
faultless; among chevrons, badges, medals, and stars, he moved
familiarly; he even knew the names of most of the colonels in
command; and he would squander sunny hours prone on the lawn,
heedless of challenge from bird or beast, poring over a tattered
Army List. My own accomplishment was of another character—took,
as it seemed to me, a wider and a
more untrammelled range. Dragoons might have swaggered in
Lincoln green, riflemen might have donned sporrans over tartan
trews, without exciting notice or comment from me. But did you
seek precise information as to the fauna of the American
continent, then you had come to the right shop. Where and why
the bison "wallowed"; how beaver were to be trapped and wild
turkeys stalked; the grizzly and how to handle him, and the
pretty pressing ways of the constrictor,—in fine, the haunts and
the habits of all that burrowed, strutted, roared, or wriggled
between the Atlantic and the Pacific,—all this knowledge I took
for my province. By the others my equipment was fully
recognized. Supposing a book with a bear-hunt in it made its way
into the house, and the atmosphere was electric with excitement;
still, it was necessary that I should first decide whether the
slot had been properly described and properly followed up, ere
the work could be stamped with full approval. A writer might
have won fame throughout the civilized globe for his trappers and
his realistic backwoods, and all went for nothing. If his
pemmican were not properly compounded I damned his achievement,
and it was heard no more of.
Harold was hardly old enough to possess a special subject of
his own. He had
his instincts, indeed, and at bird's-nesting they almost amounted
to prophecy. Where we others only suspected eggs, surmised
possible eggs, hinted doubtfully at eggs in the neighbourhood,
Harold went straight for the right bush, bough, or hole as if he
carried a divining-rod. But this faculty belonged to the class
of mere gifts, and was not to be ranked with Edward's lore
regarding facings, and mine as to the habits of prairie-dogs,
both gained by painful study and extensive travel in those
"realms of gold," the Army List and Ballantyne.
Selina's subject, quite unaccountably, happened to be naval
history. There is no laying down rules as to subjects; you just
possess them—or rather, they possess you—and their genesis or
protoplasm is rarely to be tracked down. Selina had never so
much as seen the sea; but for that matter neither had I
ever set foot on the American continent, the by-ways of which I
knew so intimately. And just as I, if set down without warning
in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, would have been perfectly
at home, so Selina, if a genie had dropped her suddenly on
Portsmouth Hard, could have given points to most of its
frequenters. From the days of Blake down to the death of Nelson
(she never condescended further) Selina had taken spiritual part
in every notable engagement of the British Navy; and even in the
dark days when she had to pick up skirts and flee, chased by an
ungallant De Ruyter or Van Tromp, she was yet cheerful in the
consciousness that ere long she would be gleefully hammering the
fleets of the world, in the glorious times to follow. When that
golden period arrived, Selina was busy indeed; and, while loving
best to stand where the splinters were flying the thickest.
she was also a careful and critical student of seamanship and of
manœuvre. She knew the order in which the great line-of-battle ships moved into action, the vessels they respectively
engaged, the moment when each let go its anchor, and which of
them had a spring on its cable (while not understanding the
phrase, she carefully noted the fact); and she habitually went
into an engagement on the quarter-deck of the gallant ship that
reserved its fire the longest.
At the time of Selina's weird seizure I was unfortunately away
from home, on a loathsome visit to an aunt; and my account is
therefore feebly compounded from hearsay. It was an absence I
never ceased to regret—scoring it up, with a sense of injury,
against the aunt. There was a splendid uselessness about the
whole performance that specially appealed to my artistic sense.
That it should have
been Selina, too, who should break out this way—Selina, who had
just become a regular subscriber to the "Young Ladies' Journal,"
and who allowed herself to be taken out to strange teas with an
air of resignation palpably assumed—this was a special joy, and
served to remind me that much of this dreaded convention that was
creeping over us might be, after all, only veneer. Edward also
was absent, getting licked into shape at school; but to him the
loss was nothing. With his stern practical bent he wouldn't have
seen any sense in it—to recall one of his favourite expressions.
To Harold, however, for
whom the gods had always cherished a special tenderness, it was
granted, not only to witness, but also, priestlike, to feed the
sacred fire itself. And if at the time he paid the penalty
exacted by the sordid unimaginative ones who temporarily rule the
roast, he must ever after, one feels
sure, have carried inside him some of the white gladness of the
acolyte who, greatly privileged, has been permitted to swing a
censer at the sacring of the very Mass.
October was mellowing fast, and with it the year itself; full
of tender hints, in woodland and hedgerow, of a course well-nigh
completed. From all sides that still afternoon you caught the
quick breathing and sob of the runner nearing the goal.
Preoccupied and possessed, Selina had strayed down the garden and
out into the pasture beyond, where, on a bit of rising ground
that dominated the garden on one side and the downs with the old
coach-road on the other, she had cast herself down to chew the
cud of fancy. There she was presently joined by Harold,
breathless and very full of his latest grievance.
"I asked him not to," he burst out. "I said if he'd only
please wait a bit and Edward would be back soon, and it
couldn't matter to
him, and the pig
wouldn't mind, and Edward'd be pleased and everybody'd be happy.
But he just said he was very sorry, but bacon didn't wait for
nobody. So I told him he was a regular beast, and then I came
away. And—and I b'lieve they're doing it now!"
"Yes, he's a beast," agreed Selina, absently. She had
forgotten all about the pig-killing. Harold kicked away a
freshly thrown-up mole-hill, and prodded down the hole with a
stick. From the direction of Farmer Larkin's demesne came a
long-drawn note of sorrow, a thin cry and appeal, telling that
the stout soul of a black Berkshire pig was already faring down
the stony track to Hades.
"D'you know what day it is?" said Selina presently, in a low
voice, looking far away before her.
Harold did not appear to know, nor yet
to care. He had laid open his mole-run for a yard or so, and was
still grubbing at it absorbedly.
"It's Trafalgar Day," went on Selina, trancedly; "Trafalgar
Day—and nobody cares!"
Something in her tone told Harold that he was not behaving
quite becomingly. He didn't exactly know in what manner; still,
he abandoned his mole-hunt for a more courteous attitude of
attention.
"Over there," resumed Selina—she was gazing out in the
direction of the old highroad—"over there the coaches used to go
by. Uncle Thomas was telling me about it the other day. And the
people used to watch for 'em coming, to tell the time by, and
p'r'aps to get their parcels. And one morning—they wouldn't be
expecting anything different—one morning, first there would be a
cloud of dust, as usual, and then the coach would come
racing by, and
then they would know!
For the coach would be dressed in laurel, all laurel from stem to
stern! And the coachman would be wearing laurel, and the guard
would be wearing laurel; and then they would know, then they
would know!"
Harold listened in respectful silence. He would much rather
have been hunting the mole, who must have been a mile away by
this time if he had his wits about him. But he had all the
natural instincts of a gentleman; of whom it is one of the principal
marks, if not the complete definition, never to show signs
of being bored.
Selina rose to her feet, and paced the turf restlessly with a
short quarter-deck walk.
"Why can't we do something?" she
burst out presently. "He—he did
everything—why can't we do anything for him?"
"Who did everything?" inquired
Harold, meekly. It was useless wasting further longings on that
mole. Like the dead, he travelled fast.
"Why, Nelson, of course," said Selina, shortly, still looking
restlessly around for help or suggestion.
"But he's—he's dead, isn't he?"
asked Harold, slightly puzzled.
"What's that got to do with it?" retorted his sister, resuming
her caged-lion promenade.
Harold was somewhat taken aback. In the case of the pig, for
instance, whose last outcry had now passed into stillness, he had
considered the chapter as finally closed. Whatever innocent
mirth the holidays might hold in store for Edward, that
particular pig, at least, would not be a contributor. And now he
was given to understand that the situation had not materially
changed! He would have to
revise his ideas, it seemed. Sitting up on end, he looked
towards the garden for assistance in the task. Thence, even as
he gazed, a tiny column of smoke rose straight up into the still
air. The gardener had been sweeping that afternoon, and now, an
unconscious priest, was offering his sacrifice of autumn leaves
to the calm-eyed goddess of changing hues and chill forebodings
who was moving slowly about the land that golden afternoon.
Harold was up and off in a moment, forgetting Nelson, forgetting
the pig, the mole, the Larkin betrayal, and Selina's strange
fever of conscience. Here was fire, real fire, to play with, and
that was even better than messing with water, or remodelling the
plastic surface of the earth. Of all the toys the world provides
for right-minded persons, the original elements rank easily the
first.
But Selina sat on where she was, her
chin on her fists; and her fancies whirled and drifted, here and
there, in curls and eddies, along with the smoke she was
watching. As the quick-footed dusk of the short October day
stepped lightly over the garden, little red tongues of fire might
be seen to leap and vanish in the smoke. Harold, anon staggering
under armfuls of leaves, anon stoking vigorously, was discernible
only at fitful intervals. It was another sort of smoke that the
inner eye of Selina was looking upon,—a smoke that hung in
sullen banks round the masts and the hulls of the fighting ships;
a smoke from beneath which came thunder and the crash and the
splinter-rip, the shout of the boarding party, the choking sob of
the gunner stretched by his gun; a smoke from out of which at
last she saw, as through a riven pall, the radiant spirit of the
Victor, crowned with the coronal of a perfect
death, leap in full assurance up into the ether that Immortals
breathe. The dusk was glooming towards darkness when she rose
and moved slowly down towards the beckoning fire; something of
the priestess in her stride, something of the devotee in the set
purpose of her eye.
The leaves were well alight by this time, and Harold had just
added an old furze bush, which flamed and crackled stirringly.
"Go 'n' get some more sticks," ordered Selina, "and shavings,
'n' chunks of wood, 'n' anything you can find. Look here—in the
kitchen-garden there's a pile of old pea-sticks. Fetch as many
as you can carry, and then go back and bring some more!"
"But I say,—" began Harold, amazedly, scarce knowing his
sister, and with a vision of a frenzied gardener, pea-stickless
and threatening retribution.
"Go and fetch 'em quick! " shouted Selina, stamping with
impatience.
Harold ran off at once, true to the stern system of discipline
in which he had been nurtured. But his eyes were like round O's,
and as he ran he talked fast to himself, in evident disorder of
mind.
The pea-sticks made a rare blaze, and the fire, no longer
smouldering sullenly, leapt up and began to assume the appearance
of a genuine bonfire. Harold, awed into silence at first, began
to jump round it with shouts of triumph. Selina looked on
grimly, with knitted brow; she was not yet fully satisfied.
"Can't you get any more sticks?" she said presently. "Go and
hunt about. Get some old hampers and matting and things out of
the tool-house. Smash up that old cucumber frame Edward shoved
you into, the day we were playing scouts and Mohicans. Stop a
bit! Hooray! I know. You come along with me."
Hard by there was a hot-house, Aunt Eliza's special pride and
joy, and even grimly approved of by the gardener. At one end, in
an out-house adjoining, the necessary firing was stored; and to
this sacred fuel, of which we were strictly forbidden to touch a
stick, Selina went straight. Harold followed obediently,
prepared for any crime after that of the pea-sticks, but pinching
himself to see if he were really awake.
"You bring some coals," said Selina briefly, without any
palaver or pro-and-con discussion. "Here's a basket.
I'll manage the faggots!"
In a very few minutes there was little doubt about its being a
genuine bonfire and no paltry makeshift. Selina, a Mænad
now, hatless and tossing disordered locks, all the dross of the
young lady purged
out of her, stalked around the pyre of her own purloining, or
prodded it with a pea-stick. And as she prodded she murmured at
intervals, "I
knew there was
something we could do! It isn't much—but still it's
something!"
The gardener had gone home to his tea. Aunt Eliza had driven
out for hers a long way off, and was not expected back till quite
late; and this far end of the garden was not overlooked by any
windows. So the Tribute blazed on merrily unchecked. Villagers
far away, catching sight of the flare, muttered something about
"them young devils at their tricks again," and trudged on beer-wards. Never a thought of what day it was, never a thought for
Nelson, who preserved their honest pint-pots, to be paid for in
honest pence, and saved them from
litres and decimal coinage. Nearer at
hand, frightened rabbits popped up and vanished with a flick of
white tails; scared birds fluttered among the branches, or sped
across the glade to quieter sleeping-quarters; but never a bird
nor a beast gave a thought to the hero to whom they owed it that
each year their little homes of horsehair, wool, or moss, were
safe stablished 'neath the flap of the British flag; and that
Game Laws, quietly permanent, made
la
chasse a terror only to their betters. No one seemed to
know, nor to care, nor to sympathise. In all the ecstasy of her
burnt-offering and sacrifice, Selina stood alone.
And yet—not quite alone! For, as the fire was roaring at its
best, certain stars stepped delicately forth on the surface of
the immensity above, and peered down doubtfully—with wonder at
first, then with interest, then with recognition, with a start of
glad surprise. They at least knew
all about it, they understood. Among
them the Name was a daily
familiar word; his story was a part of the music to which they
swung, himself was their fellow and their mate and comrade. So
they peeped, and winked, and peeped again, and called to their
laggard brothers to come quick and see.
. . . . . . .
"The best of life is but intoxication;" and Selina, who during
her brief inebriation had lived in an ecstasy as golden as our
drab existence affords, had to experience the inevitable
bitterness of awakening sobriety, when the dying down of the
flames into sullen embers coincided with the frenzied entrance of
Aunt Eliza on the scene. It was not so much that she was at once
and forever disrated, broke, sent before the mast, and branded as
one on whom no reliance could be placed, even with Edward safe at
school, and myself under the distant vigilance of an aunt; that
her pocket money was stopped
indefinitely, and her new Church Service, the pride of her last
birthday, removed from her own custody and placed under the
control of a Trust. She sorrowed rather because she had dragged
poor Harold, against his better judgment, into a most horrible
scrape, and moreover because, when the reaction had fairly set
in, when the exaltation had fizzled away and the young-lady
portion of her had crept timorously back to its wonted lodging,
she could only see herself as a plain fool, unjustified,
undeniable, without a shadow of an excuse or explanation.
As for Harold, youth and a short memory made his case less
pitiful than it seemed to his more sensitive sister. True, he
started upstairs to his lonely cot bellowing dismally, before him
a dreary future of pains and penalties, sufficient to last to the
crack of doom. Outside his door, however, he tumbled over
Augustus
the cat, and made capture of him; and at once his mourning was
changed into a song of triumph, as he conveyed his prize into
port. For Augustus, who detested above all things going to bed
with little boys, was ever more knave than fool, and the trapper
who was wily enough to ensnare him had achieved something
notable. Augustus, when he realized that his fate was sealed,
and his night's lodging settled, wisely made the best of things,
and listened, with a languorous air of complete comprehension, to
the incoherent babble concerning pigs and heroes, moles and
bonfires, which served Harold for a self-sung lullaby. Yet it
may be doubted whether Augustus was one of those rare fellows who
thoroughly understood.
But Selina knew no more of this source of consolation than of
the sympathy with which the stars were winking above her; and it
was only after some sad interval of
time, and on a very moist pillow, that she drifted into that
quaint inconsequent country where you may meet your own pet hero
strolling down the road, and commit what hair-brained oddities
you like, and everybody understands and appreciates.
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