The Blue Pavilions by Arthur Quiller-Couch (most read books .txt) 📖

window, and sometimes out walking. Nurse says we're not to speak, so we put out our tongues at each other."

"Tristram, come over here and look—"

"She's got funny curls, and puts her doll to bed in the window-seat every night. I like that sort of girl. When I grow up," the young bashaw proceeded, "I shall have lots of that sort of girl all over the garden, instead of these wooden things."

Captain Barker treated this Oriental day-dream with silence.

"Dad—why am I worth more than all the girls in the world?"

"Who said you were?"

"Nurse. She says you think so. She says the big man next door would give his eyes to have a boy like me; but he can't make nothing of a girl, and don't try. Narcissus—"

"Hallo!" replied the heavy voice of Mr. Swiggs.

"Have you got a boy?"

"No, sir: 'nmarried."

"What did you give your eye for, then?"

"Losh!" ejaculated Narcissus, as Captain Barker pounced on the youngster and haled him off to the tulip-bed. The interrogatory was stayed for a while.

Captain Runacles, who had caught every word, strode half a dozen times up and down his grass-plot: then summoned Simeon.

"Tell nurse to send Miss Sophia down to me."

Five minutes later a small child of seven appeared in the doorway, and, after hesitating there for a moment, stepped timidly across the turf. Her figure and movements were ungainly and her complexion appeared unnaturally sallow against a dark grey frock. A wet brush, applied two minutes before with inconsiderate zeal, had taken all the curl out of her dark hair and smoothed it in preposterous bands on either side of her brow. Her arms hung stiff and perpendicular, and she fidgeted with her short skirt as she advanced.

Captain Runacles stopped short in his walk and surveyed her.

"H'm," he said. "Don't shuffle."

The little girl looked up, dropped her eyes again quickly, and let her hands hang limp beside her. She was shaking from head to foot.

"You are a girl."

"Pardon, father," she mumbled in a low whisper.

"Next door there lives a small boy. You are in the habit of putting out your tongue at him. Why?"

"I—I—"

Her voice wavered and she broke into a fit of sobbing.

"Tut, tut! Stop that noise; I haven't scolded you. On the contrary, I sent for you in the hope that you might always be able to put out your tongue at that boy. Sophia, dry your eyes and attend, please. Would you like to be an accomplished woman?"

"If it please you, father."

"Now may the devil fly away with the whole sex! If they do happen to desire anything good in itself, it's always to please some man or another. Sophia, I ask you if, for your own sake, and for the sake of knowledge, you will be my pupil; if you care to pursue—" Captain Runacles checked himself, not because he had any idea that he was talking over the head of a girl of seven, but because a general proposition had occurred to him.

"Woman's notion of a pursuit," he said, clasping his hands behind him and regarding his daughter's tear-stained face with severity— "woman's notion of a pursuit is entirely passive. Her only idea is to be pursued, and even so her mind runs on ultimate capture. Sophia," he continued, himself forgetting for the moment his view of knowledge as sui causa optandum, "would you like to please me by licking that boy across the hedge into a cocked-hat?"

"But—oh, father!"

"What is it?"

She could not answer for a moment. Nor did he know that she besought God every night to change her into a boy that she might find some grace in his sight.

"You have one advantage," said her father coldly, as she struggled to keep down her tears. "Your rival across the hedge is in a fair way to be turned into a fool. We will begin to-morrow. In a week or so I shall be able to pronounce some opinion on your capacity. Now run indoors to your nurse—why, bless my soul!"

The child had trotted forward, and, taking his hand, kissed it passionately. He looked into her face, and, finding it white as a sheet, lifted her in his arms and carried her into the pavilion.

 

CHAPTER IV. THE TWO PAVILIONS (continued).

"We must have an apiarium," Captain Barker announced a week later.

"What's that?" Mr. Swiggs asked.

"Half a dozen beehives, at least."

"No room."

"There is nothing," pursued Captain Barker, "that gives such character to a garden as an apiarium unless it be fishponds. I will have both."

"No water."

"The fishponds shall be constantly supplied with running water. I will have three ponds at different levels, connected with miniature waterfalls and approached by an allee verte. The glimpse of water between green hedges will be extremely refreshing to the eye. The apiarium shall stand close to these ponds—as Virgil commends:"

At liquidi fontes et stagna virentia musco
Adsint, et tenuis fugiens per gramina rivus

"—And shall be surrounded with beds of violets and lavender and such blue flowers as bees especially love. When, Narcissus, I glance over the hedge at the back of the house and behold Captain Runacles' two acres lying waste, cumbered like a mining country with the ruins of his mechanical toys, I have a mind to—"

"He'll neither sell nor lend."

"I perceive that in time we must set about draining so much of the marsh outside as belongs to me. There, if anywhere, the fishponds must lie. In the meantime there is a full rood of ground beyond the northern hedge that we may consider. By cutting a path through the privet there and enclosing this parcel, we gain for our bees a quadrangle which will not only give them their proper seclusion, but may be planted in the classical style without detriment to the general effect of our garden. The privet serving as a screen.&#8230"

Invigorated by Mr. Swiggs's opposition, the little man continued for twenty minutes to revel in details, and ended by rushing his companion off to examine the ground. In his hot fit he forgot all about Tristram, who, tired of listening, had slipped away among the gooseberry-bushes, with a half-eaten slice of bread and butter in his hand.

The fruit proved green and hard—for it was now the third week of May—and by the time his bread and butter was eaten the boy had a fancy to explore farther. He wandered through the strawberry-beds, and, finding nothing there but disappointment, allowed himself to run lazily after a white butterfly, which led him down to the front of the pavilion, over the parterres of budding tulips and across to an east border gay with heart's-ease, bachelor's buttons, forget-me-nots and purple honesty. The scent of budding yews met him here, blown softly across from Captain Runacles' garden. The white butterfly balanced himself on this odorous breeze, and, rising against it, skimmed suddenly over the hedge and dropped out of sight.

Now there was set, under an archway in this hedge, a blue door, the chinks of which were veiled with cobwebs and the panels streaked with the silvery tracks of snails. By this pervius usus (as Captain Runacles called it) the two friends had been used to visit each other, but since the quarrel it had never been opened. No lock had been fixed upon it, however. Only the passions of two obstinate men had kept it shut for four years and more.

The child contemplated this door for a minute, then lifted himself on tip-toe and stretched his hand up towards the rusty latch. It was a good six inches above his reach.

He glanced back over his shoulder. Nobody was in sight. His eyes fell on a stack of flower-pots left by Narcissus beside the path. He fetched one, set it upside-down in front of the door and climbed atop of it.

This time he reached the latch and lifted it with some difficulty. His weight pressed the door open and he fell forward, sprawling on hands and knees, into the next garden.

He picked himself up, and was on the point of fetching a prolonged howl, but suddenly thought better of it and began to stare instead.

Barely six paces in front of him, and in the centre of a round garden-bed, a small girl was kneeling. She held a rusty table-knife, the blade of which was covered with mould; and as she gazed back at him the boy saw that her face was stained with weeping.

"Hallo!"

"Hallo!"

"I was just thinking of you, little boy, and beginning to despise you, when plump—in you tumbled."

"But, I say—look here, you know—I've been told what despising is, and if you despise me you ought to say why."

"Because I've been ordered to. I'm going to do it out of this book here. Listen: 'A point is that which has no parts and no magnitude,' and that's only the beginning. Oh, my dear, I'll wither you up—you just wait a bit!"

She dug the knife viciously into the earth.

"I don't care," said Tristram affably.

"P'r'aps you don't know what 'Don't Care' came to?"

"No, I don't."

"Well, he came to—a place. It was a good deal deeper down than this hole I'm digging."

"What's the hole for?"

"My doll, here. I've got to put away childish things; so I'm going to cover her right up and never see her face again. Oh! oh!"

She began to sob as if her heart would break.

"I wouldn't cry if I were you. I didn't cry just now when I tumbled off the flower-pot."

"You don't know what it is to be a mother."

"No, but I can dig ever so much better than you. Look here. I've got a spade of my own, and I'll show you how to dig properly, if you like."

He ran off and returned with it in less than a minute. In another minute they were engrossed in the burial rites, the girl still playing at tragedy, but enjoying herself immensely.

"We must read something over the remains," she announced.

"Why?"

"Because it's always done, unless the dead person is buried with a stake through his inside."

"Then we'd better take her out again and put a stake through her; because I can't read."

"Haven't you begun to learn yet?"

"No."

"Well," said Sophia, picking up the Euclid, "you can hold a corner of the book and listen to what I read, and perhaps you can repeat some of it after me, you contemptible boy."

They were standing over the doll's grave, side by side, and chanting in antiphon the fourth proposition of the First Book of Euclid, when Captain Runacles came round the corner of the house and halted to rub his eyes.

At the sound of his footstep on the gravel Sophia snatched the book from Tristram and looked desperately round. It was too late. Her father was glaring down upon them both, with his hands behind him and his chin stuck forward.

"You miserable child!"

He pronounced it deliberately, syllable by syllable, and turned upon Tristram.

"Will you kindly explain, sir, to what I owe the honour of your presence in my garden?"

Tristram, who had never before been addressed with harshness, failed to understand the tone of this speech, and answered with amiable directness—

"I tumbled in, off a flower-pot."

"Indeed!"

"Yes; and I stayed because I liked the girl here."

"You do her infinite honour."

"I'm going away now because I'm hungry. But I'll come back again after dinner, all right."

"No," said Captain Runacles grimly; "on that point you must allow me to correct you. You infernal young cub, if I catch you here again—"

"Hi! Captain!" interrupted a voice at the foot of the garden.

Doctor Beckerleg stood beside the blue gate and held it open to admit another visitor, whose dress and appearance were unfamiliar to the Captain. He paused midway in his threat and removed his eyes from the children. Sophia crept towards the house, while Tristram seized his opportunity and slipped away to the safe side of the privet hedge.

"Let me present," said the Doctor, "Mr. Josias Finch, of Boston, New England."

"Attorney-at-law," Mr. Finch added, lifting his hat politely.

He was a little man with a triple chin and small, intelligent eyes that twinkled deep in a round, fat face. His dress was of a slate-coloured material, decorated with silver buttons, and he wore a voluminous wig.

"With news for you, Captain."

"Important news," Mr. Finch echoed. He pulled out a silver snuff-box and offered it to Captain Runacles. "You don't indulge? But you will suffer me, no doubt. Ah," he went on, inhaling a pinch, "it has been a long journey, sir, and my