Six to Sixteen: A Story for Girls
CHAPTER XXIV.
WE AND THE BOYS--WE AND THE BOYS AND OUR FADS--THE LAMP OF ZEAL--CLEMENTON UNREALITY--JACK'S OINTMENT.
Our life on the moors was, I suppose, monotonous. I do not think we everfound it dull; but it was not broken, as a rule, by striking incidents.
The coming and going of the boys were our chief events. We packed forthem when they went away. We wrote long letters to them, and receivedbrief but pithy replies. We spoke on their behalf when they wantedclothes or pocket-money. We knew exactly how to bring the news of goodmarks in school and increased subscriptions to cricket to bear ineffective combination upon the parental mind, and were amply rewarded byhalf a sheet, acknowledging the receipt of a ten-shilling piece in amatch-box (the Arkwrights had a strange habit of sending coin of therealm by post, done up like botanical specimens), with brief directionsas to the care of garden or collection, and perhaps a rude outline ofthe head-master's nose--"In a great hurry, from your loving and gratefulBro."
We kept their gardens tidy, preserved their collections from dust, damp,and Keziah, and knitted socks for them. I learned to knit, of course.Every woman knits in that village of stone. And "between lights"Eleanor and I plied our needles on the boys' behalf, and counted thedays to the holidays.
We had fresh "fads" every holidays. Many of our plans were ambitiousenough, and the results would, no doubt, have been great had they beenfully carried out. But Midsummer holidays, though long, are limited inlength.
Once we made ourselves into a Field Naturalists' Club. We girls gave upour "spare dress wardrobe" for a museum. We subdivided the shelves, andproposed to make a perfect collection of the flora and entomology of theneighbourhood. Eleanor and I really did continue to add specimens whilstthe boys were at school; but they came home at Christmas devoted, bodyand soul, to the drama. We were soon converted to the new fad. Thewardrobe became a side-scene in our theatre, and Eleanor and Clementlaboured day and night with papers of powdered paint, and kettles of hotsize, in converting canvas into scenery. "Theatricals" promised to be alasting fancy; but the next holidays were in fine weather, and we madethe drop-curtain into a tent.
When the boys were at school, Eleanor and I were fully occupied. We tooka good deal of pains with our room: half of it was mine now. I had myknick-knack table as well as Eleanor, my own books and pictures, my ownphotographs of the boys and of the dear boys, my own pot plants, and myown dog--a pug, given to me by Jack, and named "Saucebox." In Jack'sabsence, Pincher also looked on me as his mistress.
Like most other conscientious girls, we had rules and regulations of ourown devising: private codes, generally kept in cipher, for our ownpersonal self-discipline, and laws common to us both for the employmentof our time in joint duties--lessons, parish work, and so forth. I thinkwe made rather too many rules, and that we re-made them too often. Imake fewer now, and easier ones, and let them much more alone. I wonderif I really keep them better? But if not, may GOD, I pray Him, send meback the restless zeal, the hunger and thirst after righteousness, whichHe gives in early youth! It is so easy to become more thick-skinned inconscience, more tolerant of evil, more hopeless of good, more carefulof one's own comfort and one's own property, more self-satisfied inleaving high aims and great deeds to enthusiasts, and then to believethat one is growing older and wiser. And yet those high examples, thosegood works, those great triumphs over evil, which single hands effectsometimes, we are all grateful for, when they are done, whatever we mayhave said of the doing. But we speak of saints and enthusiasts forgood, as if some special gifts were made to them in middle age which arewithheld from other men. Is it not rather that some few souls keep alivethe lamp of zeal and high desire which GOD lights for most of us whilelife is young?
Eleanor and I worked at our lessons by ourselves. We always had hermother to "fall back upon," as we said. When we took up the study ofItalian in order to be able to read Dante--moved thereto by theattractions of the long volume of Flaxman's illustrations of the 'DivinaCommedia'--we had to "fall back" a good deal on Mrs. Arkwright'sscholarship. And this in spite of all the helps the library afforded us,the best of dictionaries, English "cribs," and about six of thoseelaborate commentaries upon the poem, of which Italians have been soprolific.
During the winter the study of languages was commonly uppermost; insummer sketching was more favoured.
I do think sketching brings one a larger amount of pleasure than almostany other occupation. And like "collecting," it is a very sociablepursuit when one has fellow-sketchers as well as fellow-naturalists. Andthis, I must confess, is a merit in my eyes, I being of a sociabledisposition! Eleanor could live alone, I think, and be happy; but Idepend largely on my fellow-creatures.
Jack and I were talking rather sentimentally the other day about "oldtimes," and I said:
"How jolly it was, that summer we used to sketch so much--all four of ustogether!"
And Jack, who was rubbing some new stuff of his own compounding into hisfishing-boots, replied:
"Awfully. I vote we take to it again when the weather's warmer."
But Jack is so sympathetic, he will agree with anything one says.Indeed, I am sure that he feels what one feels--for the time, at anyrate.
Clement is very different. He always disputes and often snubs what onesays; partly, I am sure, from a love of truth--a genuine desire to keephimself and everybody else from talking in an unreal way, and fromrepeating common ideas without thinking them out at first hand; andpartly, too, from what Keziah calls the "contradictiousness" of histemper. He was in the room when Jack and I were talking, but he was nottalking with us. He was reading for his examination.
All the Arkwrights can work through noise and in company, havingconsiderable powers of mental abstraction. I think they even sometimescombine attention to their own work with an occasional skimming of thetopics current in the room as well.
Some outlying feeler of Clement's brain caught my remark and Jack'sreply.
"My dear Margery," said he, "you are at heart one of the most unaffectedpeople I know. Pray be equally genuine with your head, and do notencourage Jack in his slipshod habits of thought and conversationby----"
"Slipshod!" interrupted Jack, holding his left arm out at full lengthbefore him, the hand of which was shod with a fishing-boot. "Slipshod!They fit as close as your convictions, and would be as stiff andinexorable as logic if I didn't soften them with this newly-invented andabout-to-be-patented ointment by the warmth of a cheerful fire andMargery's beaming countenance."
Clement had been reading during this sentence. Then he lifted his head,and said pointedly:
"What I was going to advise _you_, Margery, is never to get into thehabit of adopting sentiments till you are quite sure you really meanthem. It is by the painful experience of my own folly that I know whattrouble it gives one afterwards. If ever the time comes when you want toknow your real opinion on any subject, the process of getting rid ofideas you have adopted without meaning them will not be an easy one."
I am not as intellectual as the Arkwrights. I can always see throughJack's jokes, but I am sometimes left far behind when Eleanor or Clement"take flight," as Jack calls it, on serious subjects. I really did notfollow Clement on this occasion.
With some hesitation I said:
"I don't know that I quite understand."
"I'm sure you don't," said Jack. "I have feared for some time that yourhair was getting too thick for the finer ideas of this household topenetrate to your brain. Allow me to apply a little of this ointment tothe parting, which in your case is more definite than with Eleanor; andas our lightest actions should proceed from principles, I may mentionthat the principle on which I propose to apply the Leather-softener toyour scalp is that on which the blacksmith's wife gave your choleramedicine to the second girl, when she began with rheumatic fever--'itdid such a deal of good to our William.' Now, this unguent has done 'adeal of good' to the leather of my boots. Why should it not successfullylubricate the skin of your skull?"
Only the drea
d of "a row" between Jack and Clem enabled me to keepanything like gravity.
"Don't talk nonsense, Jack!" said I, as severely as I could. (I fearthat, like the rest of the world, I snubbed Jack rather than Clement,because his temper was sweeter, and less likely to resent it.)"Clement, I'm very stupid, but I don't quite see how what _you_ saidapplies to what _I_ said."
"You said, 'How happy we were, that summer we went sketching!' or wordsto that effect. It's just like a man's writing about the carelesshappiness of childhood, when he either forgets, or refuses to advert to,the toothache, the measles, learning his letters, the heat of thenight-nursery, not being allowed to sit down in the yard whilst hisknickerbockers were new, going to bed at eight o'clock, and having a lieon his conscience. I have striven for more accurate habits of thought,and I remember distinctly that you cried over more than one of yoursketches."
"I got into the 'Household Album' with mine, however," said Jack; "and Idefy an A.R.A. to have had more difficulty in securing his position."
"I'm afraid your appearance in the _Phycological Quarterly_ was betterdeserved," said Mrs. Arkwright, without removing her eye from themicroscope she was using at a table just opposite to Clem's.
But this demands explanation, and I must go back to the time of whichJack and I spoke--when we used to go sketching together.