The Bantam and I won immunity from bullying in a quite unexpected manner.
Our beds stood next together. Every night the younger boys were sent up to the dormitory at nine; fifteen minutes later the lights were turned out. The upper-classmen didn’t come up till ten. For three-quarters of an hour each night we could whisper together in comparative privacy about IT, going on wildest excursions in our hidden land. Not unnaturally the curiosity of the other small boys of our dormitory was aroused—they wanted to share our secret, and we wouldn’t let them. We were quite their match if it came to a fight, which was all the more irritating. We steadily refused to fight with them, or play with them, or to tell them anything. They became sulky and suspicious; in their opinion our conversation was too low to bear repetition. I suppose one of them must have sneaked to Cow—Cow was monitor of our dormitory. One night he came up early and on tiptoe. The first thing I knew he was standing in the darkness looking down on me, where I lay whispering on the Bantam’s bed. I was fairly caught.
“Young’un, what’s that you’re saying?” he asked sternly.
To have told him would have spoilt everything. Only when my night-shirt had been stripped off and I saw that a grand gala-night of hair-brushing was being planned, did I venture an explanation.
“I was only telling the Bantam a story.”
“That’s a lie. Let’s hear it,” said the Cow.
“I can’t begin when you’ve got my shirt,” I expostulated. “Let me get back into bed; then I’ll tell you.”
It was arranged that I should be given a respite while the older boys undressed. Once safe in bed, I set my imagination galloping.
“Once upon a time,” I commenced, “there was a great pirate and he was known as the Pirate King. He had a wife called One-Eye, and she was the only person he was afraid of in all the world. He sailed the blood-red seas with a crew of smugglers and highwaymen, most of whom he had rescued at the last minute from the gallows. They were devoted to him, and the vessel in which he sailed was calledThe Damn.”
The name of the vessel fetched them. There was no more talk of hair-brushing. At half-past ten the light went out and we heard old Sneard shuffling down the passage, going his final round of inspection. At each door he halted, lifting his candle above his head and craning out his long thin neck. Satisfied that all was in order, he shuffled on to his own quarters and we heard his door slam. That night I must have lain in the darkness recounting the adventures of the Pirate King till long past twelve. Every now and then a voice would interrupt me from one of the narrow white beds, asking a question. I fell asleep in the midst of my recounting.
After that it became a practice that each night a fresh development in the life of this wonderful man should be unfolded. It was a good deal of a tax on the imagination, but the Bantam came to my help, and we told the story turn and turn about. We told howThe Damnsailed into Peru and came back blood-drenched and treasure-laden; how the Pirate King took strange maidens to his breast in coloring all the way from alabaster to ebony, and what his wife One-Eye had to say about it; how the Pirate King could never be defeated and became so strong that he made himself Pope till he got tired of it. Discrepancies in chronology caused us no more inconvenience than they usually do historic novelists. In our world Joan of Arc and Julius Cæsar were contemporaries. They met for the first time as prisoners, when they were introduced by the Pirate King on boardThe Damn. It was owing to the Roman Emperor that the Maid escaped and survived to be burnt.
But the part which found most favor was that which described the sack of London, and how the boys of the Red House enlisted with the pirates and took all the masters, except the Creature, out to sea and made them walk the plank. I refused to allow the Creature to be murdered.
When the story became personal, the Bantam and I discovered ourselves the possessors of unlimited power. We were lords of the other boys’ destinies. We could make them heroes or cowards, give them fair maidens or forget to say anything about them. Frequently we received bribes to let the giver down easily or to make him appear more valiant. I’m afraid we drifted into being tyrants, like Nero and all the other men whose wills have been absolute, and took our revenge with the rod of imagination. In the middle of some thrilling escapade of the pirates, when only courage could save them from calamity, we would tell how one of the boys in a near-by bed turned traitor and went over to the enemy.
Out of the darkness would come an angry voice, “I didn’t, you little beasts. You know quite well, I didn’t.”
“Oh, yes, you did,” we would say, and proceed to make him appear yet more infamous. If he expostulated too frequently, arms would be reached out and a shower of boots would fly about his head.
Our reputation spread beyond the dormitory; the history of the Pirate King, his wife One-Eye, and the good shipDamn, became a kind of school epic in which all the latest happenings at the Red House were chronicled. No one dared to offend us, small as we were. Like Benvenuto Cellini, sniffing his way through Europe and petulantly turning his back on kings and cardinals with impunity, we attained the successful genius’s privilege of being detested for our persons, but treasured for our accomplishments. So at last we were popular in a fashion.
What contrasts of experience we had in those days!
The crestfallen returns to the Red House, with play-boxes stuffed with feeble comfort in the shape of chocolates and cake; the long monotony of term-time with the dull lessons, the birchings, the flashes of excitement on half-holidays and the counting of the weeks till vacations came round; then the wild burst of enthusiasm when trunks were packed and Sneard had offered up his customary prayer in his accustomed language, and we set off shouting on the homeward journey.
All the discipline and captivity were a small price to pay for the gladness of those home-comings. Ruthita would be at the end of the Lane waiting for me, a little shy at first but undeniably happy. The Snow Lady would be on the door-step, her pretty face all aglow with merriment. My father would forsake his study for the night and sit down to talk to me with all the leisure and courtesy that he usually reserved for grown men. Until they got used to me again I could upset my tea at table, slide down the banisters, and tramp through the house with muddy boots—no one rebuked me for fear the welcome should be spoiled. The Snow Lady called me The Fatted Calf, wilfully misinterpreting the Bible parable. Little by little Ruthita would lose her shyness; then we would begin to plan all the things we would do in the seemingly inexhaustible period of freedom that lay before us. In those days weeks were as long as years are now.
There was once a time when I had no secrets from Ruthita. But a change was creeping over us almost imperceptibly, forming little rifts of reserve which widened. Walls of a new and more subtle kind were growing up about us, dividing us for a time from one another and from everybody else.
There was one holiday in which I became friendly with a butcher-boy. He was a guinea-pig fancier; I arranged to buy one from him for a shilling. My intention was to give it to Ruthita on her birthday. I told no one of my plan—it was to be a surprise. A little hutch was knocked up in the tool-shed which the old white hen had tenanted.
The night before the birthday the butcher-boy came, and smuggled the little creature in at the gate. Next morning I wakened early. Ruthita was standing beside my bed in her long white night-gown, beneath which her rosy toes peeped out. When I had kissed her, she seemed surprised that I had no present for her. I became mysterious. “You wait until I’m dressed,” I said.
Slipping into my clothes I ran into the garden to get things ready. To my unspeakable astonishment when I looked into the hutch, I found three guinea-pigs, two of them very tiny, where only one had been the night before. I felt that something shameful and indelicate had happened. Exactly what I could not say, but something that I could not tell Ruthita. When she traced me down to the tool-shed, I drove her away almost angrily; I felt that I was secretly disgraced.
That morning when the butcher-boy called for orders, I took him aside. I sold him back the three guinea-pigs for ninepence, and thought the loss of threepence a cheap price to pay to rid myself of such embarrassment. The butcher-boy grinned broadly and winked in a knowing manner. To me it was all very serious, and with a boy’s pride I did not invite enlightenment. I took Ruthita out and let her choose her own present up to the value of ninepence. I lied to her, saying that that was what I had intended.
Arguing by analogy from this experience, I gradually came to realize that all about me was a world of passion, the first boundaries of which I was just beginning to traverse.
The Bantam, having no home to go to, would sometimes return with me to Pope Lane for the vacation; the Snow Lady was attracted by his freckled face and impudently upturned nose. In the early years he, Ruthita, and I would play together. Then, as we grew more boyish, we would play games in which she could not share. But at last a time came when I found that it was I who was excluded.
I found that Ruthita and the Bantam had a way of going off and hiding themselves. It was quite evident that they had secrets which they kept from me. An understanding lay between them in which I could not share. I became irritable and began to watch.
One summer evening after tea I could not find them, The gate into the Lane was unlatched; I followed. There was a deserted house no great way distant, standing shuttered in the midst of overgrown grounds. We had found a bar broken in the railings, and there the Bantam and I played highwaymen. Naturally I thought of this haunt first.
Creeping through the long grass I came upon them. The Bantam had his arm about Ruthita’s waist. She was tossing back her hair; her face was radiant. I could only catch a glimpse of her sideways, but it came home to me that the qualities in her which, in my blindness, I had taken for granted, were beautiful and rare. As I watched, the Bantam kissed her. She drew back her head, glad and yet ashamed. I crept away with a strange sense of forlornness in my heart; they had stumbled across a pleasure of which I was ignorant.
Poor little Ruthita!—it was short-lived. Hetty, having quarreled with the gardener, had not married. What I had seen, she also saw a few days later and told my father. He was very angry. I can see Ruthita now, with her long spindly legs and short skirts, standing up demurely to take her scolding. I listened to the scorching words my father spoke to her; the burden of his talk was that her conduct was unladylike. I came to her defense with the remark, “But, father, she only did what I saw you and the Snow Lady doing.”
That night I went to bed supperless and I had no more pocket-money for a week. The Bantam’s visit was cut short; he was bundled back to the Red House. I was sent down to Ransby to stay with my Grandmother Cardover. I have the fixed remembrance of Ruthita’s eyes very red with weeping. The utmost comfort I could give her was the promise that I would carry messages of her eternal faithfulness to her lover on my return to school.
The world had grown very complicated. Love was either wicked or stupid. Hetty had acted as though it was wicked when I caught her with John; my father, when I had caught him, as though it was stupid. Yet he was not ashamed of love now that he was married. I could not see why Ruthita should be so scolded for doing what her mother did every day.
At a distance I had been sorry for the Bantam, but at close quarters his hopeless passion for Ruthita bored me. On my return to the Red House he overwhelmed me with a flood of maudlin confessions. There was nothing pleased him better than to get me alone, so that he could outline to me his impossible plans for an early marriage. He talked of running away to sea and making his fortune in a distant land. It sounded all very easy. His only fear was that in his long absence Ruthita might be forced to marry some other fellow. “Dante,” he would say, “you’re a lucky chap to have been always near her.”
This kind of talk irritated me, partly because I was jealous of an ecstasy which I could not understand, and partly because I had known Ruthita so many years that I thought I knew her exact value a good deal better than the Bantam. There was something very absurd, too, in the contrast between this gawky boy, with his downy face and clumsy hands, and these exaggerated expressions of sentiment. I began to avoid him; at that time I did not know why, but now I know it was because of the herd spirit which shuns abnormality.
Nevertheless he had stirred something latent within me. My days became haunted with alluring conjectures; beneath the cold formality of human faces and manners I caught glimpses of a boisterous ruffianly passion. Sometimes it would repel me, making me unspeakably sad; but more often it swept me away in a torrent of inexplicable riotous happiness. I had come to an age when, shut him up as you may in the garden of unenlightenment, a boy must hear from beyond the walls the pagan pipes and the dancing feet of Pan.
Of nights I would lie awake, still and tense, reasoning my way forward and forward, out of the fairy tales of childhood into reality. Sometimes I would bury my face in my pillow, half glad and half ashamed of my strange, new knowledge. Now all the glory of the flesh in the Classics, which before had slipped by me when encountered as a schoolboy’s task, burned in my brain with the vehement fire of immemorial romance.
Old Sneard had a terrifying sermon, which he was fond of preaching on Sunday evenings when the chapel was full of shadows. His heated face, startlingly illumined by the pulpit-lamps, would take on the furious earnestness of an accusing angel as he leant out towards us describing the spiritual tortures of the damned. He spoke in symbolic language of the causes which led up to damnation. Until quite lately I had wondered what in the world he could be driving at. His text was, “Son of man, hast thou seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his chambers of imagery?” The grotesque unreality of likening a group of school-boys to the elders of Israel never occurred to me; I was too carried away by the reality of sin itself and the terror of what was said. When service was ended I would steal up the stone stairway to the dormitory in silence, almost fearful that my guilt might be betrayed by my shadow....
It was summer-time. Those of us who professed an interest in entomology were permitted during the hour between prep and supper to rove the country with butterfly-nets. The results of these expeditions were given to the school natural history museum; most of the boys hunted in pairs. Things being as they were between myself and the Bantam, I preferred to go by myself.
All day it had been raining. The sky was still damp with heavy clouds and the evening fell early. I slipped out into the cool wet dusk, eager to be solitary. Some boys were kicking a ball and called to me to come and play with them. In my anxiety not to be delayed, I doubled up my fists and ran. They followed in pursuit, but soon their shouts and laughter grew fainter, till presently I was alone in a dim, green world. The air was exquisitely fragrant with earth and flower smells. Far away between the trees of Eden Hill a watery sunset faded palely. Nearer at hand dog-roses and convolvuli glimmered in the hedges.
I threw myself down in the dripping grass, lying full-length on my back, so that I could watch the stars struggle out between the edges of clouds. Oh, the sense of freedom and wideness, and the sheer joy of being at large in the world! I listened to the stillness of the twilight, which is a stillness made up of an infinity of tiny sounds—birds settling into their nests, trees whispering together, and flowers drawing closer their fragile petals to shut out the cold night air. I told myself that all the little creatures of the fields and hedgerows were tucking one another safe in bed. Then, as if to contradict me, the sudden passion of the nightingale wandered down the stairway of the silence, each note separately poignant, like glances of a lover who halts and looks back from every step as he descends. From far away the passion was answered, and again it was returned.
A great White Admiral fluttered over my head. I picked up my net and was after it. So, in a second, the boy within me proved himself stronger than the man. But the butterfly refused to let me get near it and would never settle long enough for me to catch it.
I followed from field to field, till at last it came to the cricket-ground and made a final desperate effort to escape me by flying over the hedge into the private garden of Sneard’s house. His garden was forbidden territory, but the twilight made me bold to forget that. Breaking through the hedge I followed, running tiptoe down a path which ended in a summer-house. The White Admiral settled on a rosebush; I was in the act of netting it when I heard someone stirring. Standing in the doorway of the summerhouse was a girl about as tall as myself. We eyed one another through the dusk in silence. Her face was indistinct and in shadow.
“You don’t know how you frightened me.”
Directly she spoke I knew that she was not Beatrice Sneard, as I had dreaded. Her voice was too friendly; it had in it the lazy caressing quality of a summer’s afternoon when bees are humming in and out of flowers. Her way of pronouncing words was halting and slightly foreign. In after years I came to know just how much power of temptation her voice possessed.
“I suppose you’re not allowed in here,” she said; “but you needn’t worry—I shan’t tell.”
The boy in me prompted me to answer, “You can tell if you care to.”
She gave a secret little laugh. “But I shan’t.”
After all my gallant imaginings of what I would do on a like occasion, I stood before her awkwardly, tongue-tied and ungracious—so far removed are dreams from reality. The White Admiral, tired with the long pursuit, still clung to the rose’s petals. Across misty fields nightingales called, casting the love-spell, and the moon, in intermittent flashes, caused the dripping foliage to glisten.
She rested her hand on my arm—such a small white hand—and drew me into the seclusion of the summerhouse.
“You’re not afraid of girls, are you?” she questioned, and then inconsequently, “I’m awfully lonely.”
There was a note of appeal in her tones, so I found my tongue and asked why she was lonely.
“Because I quarrel with Beatrice—we don’t get on together. Do you know, she thinks all you boys are simply horrid persons?”
“Perhaps we are,” I said. “Most people think that.”
“But I don’t,” she answered promptly.
Gradually my constraint left me. She had an easy kindness and assurance in her manner that I had never found in any other girl. She slipped her hand into mine; made bold by the darkness of the summer-house, I held it tightly.
“I like you. I like you very much,” she whispered.
“But you’ve never spoken to me before. Why should you like the?”
She turned her face to mine, so that our lips were quite near together. “I suppose because I’m a girl.”
The bell for supper began to ring. I pretended not to hear it. Through the roses across the lawn I saw Sneard stand in his study-window, struggling into his gown. Then the window became dark and I knew that he had gone to read evening prayers.
“The bell is ringing,” she said at last. “If you don’t go, you’ll get punished.”
“If it’s for your sake, I don’t care.”
She pushed me gently from her. “Go away now. If you get into trouble, you’ll not be able to come back tomorrow.”
She ran down the path with me as far as the hedge. The bell was at its last strokes, swinging slower and slower. At the hedge we halted. I knew what I wanted to do; my whole body ached to take her in my arms and kiss her. But something stronger than will—the habit of restraint—prevented. Some paces away on the other side of the hedge I remembered that I did not even know her name. Without halting I called back to her questioning, and as I ran the answer followed me through the shadows, “Fiesole.”
After the monitors had come up and the lights had been put out, I waited for an hour till all the dormitory was sleeping; then, very stealthily, I edged myself out of bed. Standing upright, I listened to make sure that I was undetected. I stole out into the corridor bare-foot. I feared to dress lest anyone should be aroused. In my long linen night-gown I tiptoed down the corridor, down the stairs, and entered the fifth-form class-room. Throwing up the window I climbed out.
An English summer’s night lay before me in all its silver splendor—huge shadows of trees, scented coolness of the air, and damp smoothness of turf beneath my tread. The exultation of life’s bigness and cleanness came upon me. I knew now that it was right to be proud of the body and to love the body. Oh, why had it been left to a glimpse in the dusk of a young girl’s face to teach me that? At a rush I had become possessed of all the codes of mediaeval chivalry. Every woman, however old or unpleasing, was for Fiesole’s sake most perfect—a person to be worshiped; for in serving her I should be serving Fiesole. What a name to have! How all her perfectness was summed up in the beauty of those full vowel sounds,Fi-es-sol-le.
I trespassed again in the garden. In the quiet of the rose-scented night I entered the summer-house.
Far away the nightingales sang on. There were words to their chanting now and their song was no, longer melancholy. And these were the words as I heard them: “Fiesole—Fiesole—Fiesole. Love in the world. Love in the world. Glad—glad—glad.”
My secret was too big and beautiful to keep to myself. There was no one I could tell it to save the Bantam. But the Bantam had grown shy of me; he knew that within myself I had been laughing at him. He turned away when I tried to catch his eye, and bent with unaccustomed diligence above his lessons.
Not till after lunch did I get a chance to approach him. All the other boys had changed into flannels and had hurried off to the cricket-nets. I wandered into the empty playground and there found him seated alone in a corner. His knees were drawn up so that his chin rested on them; in his eyes was a far-away sorrowful expression. I halted before him.
“Bantam.”
He did not look up, but I knew by the twitching of his hands that he had heard.
“Bantam, I’ve got something to tell you.”
Slowly he turned his head. He was acting the part of Hamlet and I was vastly impressed. “Is it about Ruthita?”
“Partly. But it’s happened to me too, Bantam.”
“Wot?”
“A girl.”
A genuine look of live-boy astonishment overspread his countenance. “A girl!” he ejaculated. “But there ar’n’t any about—unless you mean Pigtails.”
Pigtails was Beatrice Sneard, and I felt that an insult was being leveled at me.
“If you say that again, I’ll punch your head.”
“Oh, so it is Pigtails.” He rose to his feet lazily and began to take off his jacket. “Come on and punch it.”
But a fight wasn’t at all what I wanted. So I walked straight up to him with my hands held down.
“Silly ass, how could it be Pigtails? Do I look that sort? It’s another girl. I came to you ’cause you’re in love, and you’ll understand. I’ve been a beast to you—won’t you be friends?”
I held out my hand and he took it with surly defiance. I was too eager for sympathy, however, to be discouraged.
“She’s called Fiesole,” I said. “Isn’t that beautiful?”
“Ruthita’s better.”
“She’s got gold hair with just a little—a little red in it.”
“I prefer black.”
“I’m not talking about Ruthita; I’m telling you about Fiesole.”
“I know that,” said the Bantam; “you never do talk about Ruthita now.”
I walked away from him angrily in the direction I had taken on the previous evening. As I approached the nets I saw a little group of spectators. Then I made out the clerical figure of Sneard and the figure of Pigtails dressed in gray, and between them a slim white girl. Behind me I heard the pit-a-pat of running feet on the turf. The Bantam flung his arm about my shoulders, saying, “I’ve been a beast and you’ve been a beast; but we won’t be beasts any longer.” Then, following the direction of my eyes, “What are you staring at? Is that her? My eye, she’s a topper!”
He prodded me to go forward. When I showed reluctance, he used almost Fiesole’s words, “Why, surely, Dante, you ar’n’t afraid of a girl!”
I was afraid, and always have been wherever my affections are concerned. But I wasn’t going to own it just then. I let him slip his arm through mine, and we sauntered forward together. Through the soft summer air came the sharpclickof the ball as it glanced off the bat, and the long cheer which followed as the wicket went down. Fiesole turned, clapping her hands, and our eyes met. Then she ceased to look at me; her gaze rested on the Bantam, while a half-smile played about her mouth. A pang of jealousy shot through me. With the instinctive egotism of the male, I felt that by the mere fact of loving her I had made her my property. However, Pigtails came to my rescue, for I saw her jolt Fiesole with her elbow; her shocked voice reached me, saying, “Cousin Fiesole, whatever are you staring at?”
I tugged at the Bantam’s sleeve and we turned away.
“My golly, but she is a ripper,” he whispered....
As the distance grew between us and her, he kept glancing across his shoulder and once halted completely to gaze back. I envied him his effrontery. My fate from the beginning has been to run away from the women I love—and then to regret it.
We had entered into another field and were passing a laburnum tree, when the Bantam drew up sharply. He pointed to its blossom all gold and yellow. “The color of her hair,” he said, and promptly threw himself under it, lying on his back, gazing up at its burning foliage. The sun filtered down through its leaves upon us, making fantastic patterns on our hands and faces. The field was tall in hay, ready for the cutting, so we had the boy’s delight of being completely hidden from the world.
“What’s the color of her eyes?” he asked presently.
“Don’t know; it was dusk when I saw her. I expect it’s the same as Ruthita’s.”
“Who is she?”
“Met her in Sneard’s garden—Pigtails called her ‘cousin’ just now.”
“She’s called Fiesole! Pretty name. How it suits her.”
“Not prettier than Ruthita,” I said.
He sat up and grinned at me. “Who’re you getting at? You wanted me to say all that half-an-hour ago in the playground; now I’ve said it. I can think she’s pretty, can’t I, and still love Ruthita best?”
“But you oughtn’t to love her at all,” I expostulated with a growing sense of indignant proprietorship.
“Look here,” explained the Bantam seriously, “you’re jealous. That’s the way I felt about you when you told me that you weren’t Ruthita’s brother; I quite understand. But if I’m to marry Ruthita, I shall be your brother-in-law. Sha’n’t I? And if you marry Fiesole, she’ll be my sister-inlaw. Won’t she? Well then, I’ve got a right to be pleased about her.”
I took him at his word and told him everything that had happened and all that I knew about her. Continually he would break in with feverish words of surprise and flattery, leading me on still further to confess myself. In the magic world of that summer’s afternoon no difficulties seemed insuperable. Married we could and would be. Parents and schoolmasters only existed for one purpose—to prevent boys and girls who fell in love from marrying: that was why grown-ups had all the money. In a natural state of society, where men lived in the woods, and wore skins, and carried clubs, these injustices would not happen.
So we unbosomed ourselves, only understanding vaguely the immensities that love and marriage meant. Then the bell for four o’clock school began calling and, like the slaves we were, we returned, on the run, to the Red House.
We found that we were not the only persons to be inflamed by the beauty of Fiesole. All the boys were talking about her. One of our chief fears was set at rest—her surname was not Sneard, but Cortona. Her father had been a famous Italian actor married to Sneard’s sister, and both her parents fortunately were dead. She had quite a lot of money and had come from a convent at Tours, where she was being educated, to stay with her uncle on a visit of undetermined length or brevity. This news had all been gathered by the Cow, who had that curious faculty for worming out information which some boys possess. He had extracted it from the groundman, who had extracted it from Sneard’s gardener, who had extracted it from Sneard’s housemaid, with whom he was on more than friendly terms—so of course it was authentic.
That evening after prep I again stole out. The Bantam showed himself very impertinent—he wanted to come with me. I had great difficulty in persuading him that it wasn’t necessary. I found Fiesole in the summer-house. She was subdued and wistful, and insisted on asking questions about that nice boy she had seen with me. I told her frankly that he was engaged to my sister, and gave her a graphic account of how my father had turned him out of Pope Lane. I fear I made him seem altogether too romantic. She made careful inquiries about the appearance of Ruthita, which I took as a sign of encouragement—a foreknowledge that sooner or later I intended to ask her to become one of my family. When the bell rang for prayers and we parted, I held her hand a little longer, but experienced my old reluctance in the matter of kissing.
Next morning fate played me a scurvy trick; I woke with a bad sore throat, due I suppose to my escapade of the night earlier, and was sent to the infirmary. On the evening of the day I came out, which was four days later, I was summoned after prep to report myself to the doctor. This made me late in getting to the summer-house.
The bell for prayers had commenced to ring as I got there. I was climbing through the hedge when I heard footsteps on the garden path. There were two children standing hushed amid the roses, the one with face tremulously uplifted, the other looking down with eager eyes. As I watched their lips met. It was impossible for me to stir without making my presence known. One of them came bolting into me, going out by the way I was entering. We rolled over and I recognized the Bantam. Fiesole, hearing the angry voices of two boys quarreling, ran. And so I got my first experience of the lightness of woman’s affection.
However, if I was seeking a revenge, I got it. Before the end of the summer term Pigtails became suspicious, and discovered the Cow in the summer-house with the fickle Fiesole. The Cow, because he was a monitor, was expelled and I was appointed in his place—Mordecai and Haman after a fashion. Fiesole, on account of her kissing propensities, was regarded as a dangerous person and sent away. I was a grown man when next I met her.
It was during the last week of the summer term, while I was convalescing from Fiesole’s sudden exit and was beginning to forgive the Bantam his treachery, that the magic personality of George Rapson first flashed into my little world.
I was sitting listlessly at my desk one sunshiny morning. The window at my side was open, commanding a view of the school garden, the driveway leading through it, and beyond that of the sleepy village street. Below the window grew a bed of lavender whose fragrance, drifting in, made me forgetful of the book which lay before me and of the master at the black-board chalking up dull problems in algebra. I was dreaming as usual, telling myself a story of what I would do if old Sneard should pop his head inside the door and say, “My dear Cardover, you have worked so well that I intend to make an example of you by giving you this day as a holiday.”
Just then the master at the board turned round and jumped me into a realization of the present. “Cardover, you will please stand up and repeat my explanation of this problem.”
I stood up and gazed stupidly at the medley of signs and abbreviated formulae, hoping to discover some clue of reasoning in their apparent meaninglessness. “Well?”
“If you please, sir, I wasn’t attending.”
“I thought not. If you had been, you would have known that I have not explained it yet. You will come to me after class and—”
But his sentence was never ended. At that moment the head of every boy turned as one head; yes, and even the head of the master turned. Up the driveway came the sound of prancing hoofs, the soft crunch of wheels in the gravel, and cries of, “Whoa, girl! Steady there, steady.”
Past the window flashed a high yellow dog-cart, drawn by a tandem of spirited chestnuts. A tiger in livery and top-hat sat behind with arms folded, superbly aware of his own magnificence. Between the wheels ran a Dalmatian, a plum-pudding dog as we used to call them. On the high front-seat were two men, equally gorgeous. The one who drove wore a large fawn coat with enormous pearl buttons, distinctly horsey in cut and fashion. On his head was a tall beaver hat. He was a massively built man and had the appearance of a sporting aristocrat. To make him more splendid, he was young, with a bronzed complexion, full red lips, and finely chiseled features. His companion looked like a Methodist parson, trying to pass as a racing gent. He was attired in a light tweed suit of a rather pronounced black and white check. On his head was a gray felt hat, and in his button-hole blazed a scarlet geranium. They were laughing in deep full-throated guffaws as they whizzed past, with the sun flashing on their wheels and harness. The tiger and the Dalmatian were the only solemn things about them. What was my surprise to have recognized in the second man a relative?
“It’s my uncle!”
Even the master, so recently bent on my humiliation, seemed to hold his breath in regarding the nephew of so resplendent a person. Here was poetic justice with a vengeance. Most of the boys’ friends, if they were too rich to walk from the station when they came to visit them, crawled up the hill in a musty creaking cab, with hard wooden seats, and two or three handfuls of straw on the floor, more or less dirty. In the history of the Red House no boy’s relative had dashed up to visit him with such a barbaric clatter and display of wealth. Ah, if Fiesole had been there to envy me, how she would have blamed herself for her falseness!
“Cardover, you may sit down.”
The master turned again to the black-board, forgetting the threatened penalty. The boys eyed me above the covers of their books, and awaited further developments.
The door opened and Sneard peered round on us shortsightedly. A pleased smile played about the corners of his diplomatic mouth. His happiness at receiving such distinguished callers seemed to have had an effect upon his hair, turning it to a yet more fiery red. Usually when he spoke he snapped, but now his tones were as fluty as he could make them with so little practice.
Turning to the master, “Is Dante Cardover here?” he inquired. When I was pointed out to him he said, “Mr. George Rapson is here and with him your uncle, Mr. Spreckles. You may take a holiday, Dante, and go out with them.”
I rose from my seat in an ecstasy of bewilderment. What under the sun had happened that old Sneard should call me Dante, and who was Mr. George Rapson? As I picked my way through the labyrinth of forms and desks; getting glimpses of my school-mates’ lengthened faces, I felt that I was taking the sunlight from the room by my good fortune as I left.
I followed Sneard to his study, which I had so often visited on such different errands. Even now as I crossed its threshold, I could not quite shake off my accustomed clammy dread. The Spuffler, catching sight of me, ran forward in his gayest manner. “Ah, Dante, old chap, it’s good to see you. Rapson’s heard so much about you that he couldn’t keep away any longer. ‘Spreckles,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to introduce me. It’s Dante, Dante, all day long. You can’t talk of anyone else.’ So here we are. Rapson, this is my nephew.”
Mr. Rapson grabbed me by the shoulder with a large white hand and gazed down on me. There was a jolly-dog air about him combined with a big healthy strength, which made one both like and fear him from the first. And there was so much of him to like; he was over six foot in height and proportionately built in breadth. “Hm! Dante. Glad to meet you. Let’s get out.”
Sneard wanted me to put on my Sunday suit, but Mr. Rapson wouldn’t hear of it. “Hated clothes when I was a kid. Still think we ought to go naked. Let him be as he is. He’s got nothing to spoil and therefore’ll enjoy himself.”
Without waiting for a reply, he nodded to Sneard, heaved his great shoulders through the doorway, so down the hall and out on to the steps where the tiger was holding the horses’ heads.
“Just like Rapson,” my uncle said. “Masterful fellow. Makes up his mind and then goes ahead. Good-day, Mr. Sneard. Oh, yes, we’ll take care of him and bring him back.”
They took me up in front beside them; the whip cracked and the tiger sprang away from the leader. Off we sped, down the hill and into the valley, winding in and out of overgrown lanes where we had to duck our heads to avoid the boughs; then out again with fields on either side of us, up hill and down dale never slackening, with the wind on our cheeks and the sun in our faces. Mr. Rapson’s attention was completely taken up with his driving; it needed to be, for he swung round corners and squeezed between farm-wagons in outrageously reckless fashion. I watched his strong masterful hands, how they gathered in the reins and forced the horses to obedience. My eyes wandered up him and rested on his face: the face of a man a little over thirty, calm and yet when stern almost cruelly determined, with a shapely beak of a Roman nose planted squarely in the middle of it—a sign-post to his purpose.
Then I glanced at my uncle with his fashionable checks and scarlet geranium. I remembered that my grandmother called him the Spuffler, and wondered what she would call him now, could she see him. That nervous air he had had, of at once asserting and apologizing for himself with a pitiful display of bluster, had vanished. He carried himself with the jaunty confidence of a middle-aged gentleman unsubdued by the world—one who knew how to be dignified when necessary, but who preferred at present to relax. Above all he conveyed the impression of one beautifully fond of life’s simple pleasures and quietly composed in a happy self-respect. What had done it? Was it George Rapson, or had he at last had success with one of his poultry experiments?
Perhaps he guessed some of the inquiries that were running through my head, for, as I crouched near him in the little space allotted me on our high up perch, he squeezed my hand, hinting at some great secret, for the telling of which we must be alone by our two selves.
With foam flying from the horses’ mouths we entered Richmond and glittered down those quaint and narrow streets, which have always seemed to me more like streets of a seaport than of an inland town. We turned a corner; full before us drifted up the long and shadowy quiet of the Thames.
Mr. Rapson refused to be sociable until he had seen to the rubbing down and stabling of his horses; so we two wandered off together along the miniature quays, where boatmen with a deep-sea sailor’s swagger pulled clay pipes from their mouths and wished us a cheerfully mercenary “Good-mornin’.”
My curiosity was inarticulate with a multitude of crowding questions. I couldn’t make my choice which to ask first. I watched the swans sail in and out the tethered boats, and racked my brain for words. Then I blurted out, “What does it all mean, Uncle Obad?”
His eyes filled with tears. “My boy, it means success.”
I mumbled something typically boylike and inadequate about being “jolly glad.” He slipped his arm through mine with that endearing familiarity he had, as though I were a man. He was too excited to sit down, so we strolled along the quays, under the creeper-covered redbrick walls of the houses, and out of Richmond along the open river-bank.
“No one ever believed that I’d do it, Dante. I don’t think you did yourself. They all said, ‘Oh, Spreckles! Ha, the fellow who twiddles his thumbs while his wife works!’ They didn’t say it to my face—they didn’t dare. But that was what they thought about me. I seemed a failure—a good-natured incompetent. Even people who liked me felt ashamed of me—I mean people who were dear to me, living in the same house. Women want their husbands to measure up to the standards of other men. It’s natural—I don’t blame ’em. But, you know, I never had a chance, old chap—never seemed to find my right kind of work. I couldn’t do little things well. I’m one of those imperial men who need something big to bring the best out of’ ’em. And now I’ve got it—I’ve got it, Dante.”
I caught his excitement, and begged him to tell me what this wonderful something was that had so suddenly transformed him from a nobody into a powerful person. I felt sure he was powerful, apart from anything he said, for he radiated opulence. He halted in the middle of the tow-path, gripping me by the shoulders, laughing into my face and bidding me guess. I guessed everything possible and impossible. Losing patience, “It’s diamond mines,” he burst out.
“But how did you get ’em, Uncle Obad, and where?”
For an instant I had a wild vision of men with pickaxes, shovels, and miners’ lamps, digging down into the bowels of the Christian Boarding House.
We seated ourselves on the bank with legs dangling above the water, and he told me. It seemed that Mr. George Rapson was the cause of this meteoric rise to prosperity. In April he had come to stay at Charity Grove as an ordinary paying-guest. From the first he was extraordinary and had amazed them with his wealth—his horses, his clothes, his friends, and his lavish manners. Most of his fellow boarders were struggling young men, who earned two pounds a week in the City and paid twenty-five shillings for their keep and lodging. On the start they only knew that he was a South African, holiday-making in England. Little by little he let out that he was interested in diamond mines, and later that he ownedThe Ethiopian, one of the most promising properties of its kind in the world. The more communicative he became, the more surprised they were that he should make his head-quarters at a Christian Boarding House. There seemed no reason why he should not pay a higher price and enjoy the advantages of a secular environment.
One night he took my uncle into his room, locked the door, and let the cat out of the bag. It was my uncle and his personality that had attracted him. He had seen his name as secretary to so many thriving philanthropic societies that he had been led to appreciate his worth as an organizer. He wanted his help. He had come to England to unload a number of shares inThe Ethiopiandiamond mines, but it had to be done quietly and without advertisement. He had a number of unscrupulous enemies in the mining world who wanted to merge his property with theirs. They had tried to crowd him out in various ways—once by bringing about a law-suit to dispute his title to his holdings. If they should get wind that shares inThe Ethiopianwere to be bought in the open market, they would buy up every share in sight in an effort to gain control. Therefore it was necessary that business should be carried on in a private manner, and as far as possible through channels of personal friendship rather than those of the City and the Stock Exchange.
He had studied my uncle carefully and was convinced that he was just the man for the work. He proposed giving him a salary of one thousand pounds a year to act as his English agent, and a five-per-cent commission on all sales of shares that he was instrumental in effecting. His chief service was to consist in supplying lists of names and addresses of the moneyed religious public, and in applying his influence to the attracting of purchasers. The lists were of course to be culled mainly from the contributors to the charitable societies of which he was secretary. In fact, what the proposal amounted to, as I see it now, was that my uncle’s integrity, well-known among religious circles, was to guarantee the worth of the shares.
“It’s a close secret, Dante,” my uncle said. “Rapson won’t let me tell anyone, not even your Aunt Lavinia, the basis of our understanding. But I had to tell somebody; happiness isn’t happiness when you keep its reason to yourself. So I’ve told you, because we’ve had so many secrets together.”
We sat on, quite forgetful of time, watching the sleepy flowing of the river, building castles in the air. Last month they had declared their half-yearly dividend and it had amounted to twenty per cent. Since then the sale of shares had quickened enormously. Why, there was one morning’s mail when my uncle’s commissions alone had amounted to fifty pounds. Think of that—and it was only the beginning! Then we commenced to reckon how much he would have in five years, if his commissions amounted always to fifty pounds a morning, and he made a rule to spend nothing but his salary. It was the old childish game which had first made us chummy, of so many hens laying so many eggs, and how much would we have at the end of a twelvemonth.
He could afford to joke now concerning the penury of his lean years before the great Rapson had put in an appearance. He even made fun of his ownspuffing, and laughed as he told me how much economy those odd shillings and half-crowns, which he used to give me in such a large manner, had cost him.
“But it’s all over now,” he said cheerfully, “and I’m going to be an important man. People are beginning to look up to me already. Who knows?—one day I may enter Parliament. I’m moving in a different social set—Rapson’s friends. He’s very well-connected. They’re a little gay and larky, you know; your Aunt Lavinia don’t quite know what to make of ’em. She’ll get over that. Oh, but it’s a big new world for me, Dante, and there’s heaps of things to do in it that I never knew about.”
On our way back the great George Rapson himself met us, and we found that we’d been gone an hour. He told us that he’d ordered lunch at a little inn, calledThe White Cross—one which hung over the river.
How proud I was to walk beside him as we re-entered Richmond! Everyone turned to stare after him as he passed, with his long fawn coat open and flapping, his easy rollicking laugh, his great height and distinguished presence. And I, Dante Cardover, was by way of being the friend of such a man! The gates of romance were indeed opening.
The White Cross Innhad separate balconies, built out from each of its second-story windows. In one of these our table was set. The little tiger helped the maid of the inn to wait upon us. And what a meal we had!—salmon and salad and fowl, stuffed veal and pine-apple, dates, almonds, and raisins—everything that a boy could ask to have. Up the walls of the inn climbed rambler roses and tumbled over the sides of the balcony. Beneath us lay the river, like a silver snake, lazily uncurled, sunning itself in great green meadows.
“This is to be your day, Dante,” Mr. Rapson said. “We brought some of these things from London because we knew you liked ’em. You discovered your Uncle Obad before I did, and when no one else had. He’s told me all about it. Here’s your very good health.”
The tiger, who had been drawing the cork out of a large green bottle about half as tall as himself, now poured out a golden foamy liquid. I found one glass of it had the same care-freeing effect that the holding of Fiesole’s hand in the summer-house had had. I felt myself at ease in the world, and began to speak of the Reverend Robert Sneard as “jolly old Sneard,” and of all people who had authority over me with tolerant contempt. I gazed back from the security of my temporary Canaan, and gave my entertainers a whimsical account of my perilous journey through the wilderness of boyhood. It was wonderful even to myself how suddenly my shyness had vanished.
Mr. Rapson seemed highly amused. “You’ll do, young’un,” he said.
Then, little by little, he began to speak of Africa—the dust, the Kaffirs, and the wide, parched veldt. He spoke of adventures with lions far up in the interior, and of how he had once been an ivory-hunter before he struck it lucky in the south. “I ran away from home when I was a youngster of twenty and all because of a girl.” He nodded at me wisely across the table, “Keep clear of the girlies, they’re the devil.”
I thought of Fiesole and inquired if some girls weren’t quite attractive devils. My uncle looked shocked in a genial fashion at this very free use of a forbidden word—the fear of Aunt Lavinia purged his vocabulary even when she was absent. But Mr. Rapson went red in the face and smacked his hands together, laughing loudly. “Of course they’re attractive; else how’d they tempt us?”
A punt, which had stolen up beneath our balcony, now caught his attention. A girl in a gown of flowered muslin, with a broad pink sash about her waist, was standing in the stern. She was alone, and all the river formed a landscape for her daintiness.
Mr. Rapson stared hard at her; her back was towards us. “Seem to know her hair,” he muttered. He half rose. “By George, it’s Kitty!”
Leaning far out over the balcony he called to her impulsively, “Kitty! Kitty!”
Very leisurely she lifted up to him a small flushed face, all laughter and naughtiness, and waved her hand. She was as pretty as love and a summer’s day could make a woman—but I wasn’t supposed to be old enough to observe such things as that.
She brought her punt in to the bank, while Mr. Rapson went down to help her out. When he gave her his hand to steady her, she kept it in hers. As she glanced mischievously up at him I heard her say, “Why, George, you terror, who’d have thought of meeting you here!”
He whispered something to her with a frown; she dropped him a mocking courtesy.
When he brought her up on to the balcony, he introduced her as his cousin Kitty. She bowed to us with a roguish grace, clinging close to his arm. “Now, Kitty,” he said, freeing himself, “you’ve got to behave.”
Seeing that my uncle was looking at her in a puzzled manner, she took the center of the stage without embarrassment, explaining, “Georgie and I are very old friends and I’ve not seen him, oh, for ages.”
When they had told her how they happened to be there and that it was my day, and that they had stolen me away from my lessons, she swung round on me with a kind of rapture. “Oh, what darlings to do that! And what a nice boy!” Without further ado she patted my face and kissed me. It was a new sensation. I blushed furiously, and was both pleased and abashed. “You may be older than I am,” I thought; “but you’re only a girl. In three years I could marry you.”
She was like a happy little dog in a meadow; never still, sending up birds—following nothing and chasing everything. In her conversation she gamboled about and never ceased gamboling. She didn’t sit quietly like the Snow Lady and all the other ladies of my acquaintance, putting in a word now and then, but letting the men do the talking. She made everybody look at her—perhaps, because she was so well worth looking at. Even before she had kissed me I was in love with her.
Mr. Rapson seemed a little nervous, and she appeared to delight in his fear of her daring.
“Georgie’s always had a passion for me,” she said, “though he won’t own it.” Then suddenly, seeing the troubled expression on his face, “How much has the poor dear told you about himself?”
She wriggled out of me something of the story of his doings. She eyed him archly from under her big hat and, when I had ended, leant across the table so their faces nearly met. “How many lions did my Georgie kill in Africa?”
“Be quiet, you little devil,” he laughed, seizing her by the hands.
The employment of that forbidden word set me wondering whether this was the girl for love of whom he first went wandering. But she looked too young for that.
We went into her punt and drifted down the river with the current. She played the madcap all the way, speaking to him often in baby language. He seemed to be amused by it, as a St. Bernard might be amused by the impertinence of a terrier. When she got too bold he would hold her hands until she was quiet, overpowering her with his great strength much the same as he did his horses. Then she would turn her attentions to me for a time, and I would make believe to myself she was Fiesole. My uncle looked on like a benevolent Father Christmas, dignified and smiling.
Dusk was settling when we started on the return journey. We found that we had drifted further than we had intended. Mr. Rapson took the pole and did the punting. Miss Kitty sang to him, she said to encourage him. I think it must have been then that I first heardTwickenham Ferry. She had to leave off part way through the last verse I remember. She said that the mist from the river choked her; but I, lying on the cushions beside her, somehow gathered the impression that she was nearly crying. When she broke down, under cover of darkness I got my hand into hers, and then she slipped her arm about me. After that she was very subdued and silent. My uncle fell off to sleep, and Mr. Rapson kept his face turned away from us, busy with his punting. I wondered if, after all, Miss Kitty was happy.
It was night when we arrived. She insisted on parting with us at the landing, saying that her houseboat was just across the river and she could take the punt home quite well unaccompanied. We had said good-by and were walking along the quay, when Rapson left us and ran back. I saw him come close and bend over her. They seemed to be whispering together. Then she pushed out into the river; the lights of the town held her for a time; darkness closed in behind her and she vanished.
On the drive back to the Red House I grew drowsy.
I tried to keep my eyes open, but even the soft moonlight seemed dazzling. The meadows and tall trees stealing by, ceased to stand out separate, but became a blur. The sharptrit-trot, trit-trotof the horses’ hoofs on the hard macadam road lulled me by their monotonous regularity.
When I came to myself I heard my uncle saying, “I like that little cousin of yours, Rapson; she’s charming and different from any woman that I ever met.”
“Daresay she is,” Rapson answered, dryly; “you’ve led such a sheltered life. Of course she isn’t my cousin.”
“Who is she, then?”
“Oh, a nymph.”
“A nymph! You have the better of me there. That’s a classical allusion, no doubt. I don’t understand.”
“Never mind, papa,” Mr. Rapson said cheerfully; “I didn’t think you would understand. It’s just as well.”
Then he commenced speaking to his horses. “So, girl! Steady there! Steady!”
I rubbed my eyes, and saw that we were ascending Eden Hill.