Sweethearts at Home Part 8

"'I loved all manner of glades, valleys where it was always dusk--and thick woods. I loved heathery hills, ruined pleasaunces, and tumbled rocks fallen in avalanche. Still more I loved vast and shifting sands which never plowshare had furrowed nor human foot crossed--plains abandoned to the mountain doe or the frightened scouring hare. I never liked to sit amid the storming of cataracts, nor on a little hill overlooking a boundless plain. Rather I chose a hiding-place well sheltered, a block of stone wetted lip deep with the brook which glided through the silence of the valley, or better still, a mossy trunk, p.r.o.ne in the deeps of the forest, with the dry rustle of beech-leaves above me which the wind is getting ready to blow down when the time is ripe.

Silently I march, my feet deep in last year's fallen leaves--the little worn footpath full of them from side to side.'

"Oh, and this is finest of all," said Hugh John, hurrying on, "but don't tell any one. I make you a partner of my solitude. It lasts just a little while. It is selfish, if you like, but sometimes it is good to live alone! Do you know what Senancour says love is?"

"No!" I gasped, "how should I know?"

And in truth I was more surprised that already Hugh John should be thinking of such things. But when I told father, he just said to let him alone--that the boy was finding his soul.

Perhaps it might be in this old, sad, hundred-year-old book that he was to find it. For the soul, father says, is just the capacity a man has of thinking for himself.

But Hugh John went on joyously, with his firm, pale, clean-cut face looking out of the Cave's mouth towards the distant sapphire band of the Firth, with the three Lomonds in a paler row of blue mounds behind.

"'Often on the breast of some mountain, when the winds, sweeping down from their wild "hopes" and gorges, ruffle the little high-lying solitary lakes, the eternal clatter of the waves, heard only by myself, makes me feel the instability of things, and the eternal reconstruction of the earth out of her own _debris_.

"'Thus giving myself up to the influence of all about me, bending to the stoop of the bird which pa.s.ses above me, thrilled by the falling stone, conferring only with the moaning of the wind, watching the oncoming mist, I become a part of the Peace of Things which is G.o.d. All reposes, yet all is in motion, and I become part of it--calm as that higher serenity, cool as that shadow--the hum of an insect or the scent of a trampled herb making my communion with Nature. I also am of the great sweet earth. I live its life, and in time I shall die its death.'"

Now, for myself, I did not think that this was the sort of thing a boy ought to be thinking of at Hugh John's age. But, since father said he too had "pa.s.sed that way," and since Hugh John could eat, sleep, run, and play as well as anybody, I did not say anything.

But I foresaw a day of reckoning--yes, I--because I am older, and a girl. And in the world there are other girls. One day Hugh John (or I am greatly mistaken) will turn the leaves of another book, and then Senancour the austere will be forgotten, pa.s.sed by on his shelf like a chance acquaintance whose very name has become strange.

Perhaps I wrong him. But this is what I think. At any rate I resolved to try and guide his thoughts into more cheerful paths (it is a pity we have not Senancour's pretty word '_sentier_'; I have always loved it).

"Do you never observe _people_?" I asked him.

He stared at me in amazement.

"Why, of course I do," he answered, and he got down two more thick copy-books. Everything Hugh John did about this time was original and unexpected.

"People!" he said, holding up the two ma.n.u.script books; "why, these are stuffed full of people. Enough to make a real book!"

Then I confided to Hugh John the great secret that _I_ was making a book.

A look of joy flashed over his face.

"Let's make one together!" he said, "and not tell anybody!"

"Let's!" I answered.

Because I felt that I really owed Hugh John something for showing me the Cave.

And it was arranged that he was to tell me about his People and Things, and I was to write everything down with my thoughts planted in here and there.

VIII

HUGH JOHN'S PEOPLE

_Through a gla.s.s clearly. July, and hot._

If you put your eye to the gla.s.s (said Hugh John) you will see where one of my greatest friends lives--Mr. Butcher Donnan. Or rather he used to be a butcher. For now he has given up his trade to his son Nipper, and regrets it every minute of his waking day.

Yes, that two-storied cottage with the garden in front, ablaze with flowers, with creepers clambering as high as the roof, that is "New Erin Villa," and the home of the most discontented man in Edam. Butcher Donnan has nothing to do. He hangs over his gate, and almost prays stray pa.s.sers-by to stop and gossip. He has nothing to say to them or they to him. But when they are gone, he will pull out his big gold watch with a cluck like the cork drawn from a bottle, and say, "Thank G.o.d! Five minutes gone!"

Then he will stroll down the lanes towards Nipper's shop, making butcher's eyes at all the cows which look at him over the hedges. He is secretly calculating how they will cut up--jealous of Nipper, who has it to do really every day.

He lounges into his son's shop--where not long ago he ruled supreme.

Nipper, serving a customer, nods cheerfully to his father, and the Butcher, whose fingers itch for the ap.r.o.n and the swinging steel, clutches the gold head of his cane more tightly to keep him from applying the supple part of it to "every lazy man-Jack" in the establishment. Ah, things are not as they were in his time. The floor is not so clean and cool, in spite of the black and white marble squares on which Nipper had insisted. The eye of "Mister" Donnan could detect signs of wasteful cutting-up in the dismembered animals a-swing on the hooks.

But Nipper was now "Butcher" Donnan, while he is no more than proprietor of "New Erin Villa," with nothing to do, and too much time and too much money to do it on.

Sadly he goes out again. His place is not there. He could not stay in that shop ten minutes without breaking the head of one of these stupid "a.s.sistants." Even Nipper might not get off scot-free. But Butcher Donnan knows that his son Nipper is of his own temper, a true Donnan, and, young as he is, will be master within his own gates.

So he says sadly, "So long, Nipper!" And, what is the greatest proof of his changed condition, goes out without offering any criticism. Then he "troddles" round the village on the look-out for little jobs, which he considers as his specialities, or even perquisites--though he takes no money for doing them. He can graft rose-trees better than any gardener in the parish. At least he _says_ he can, and by reason of his repeating it often enough and offering to fight anybody who thinks otherwise, people have got to say so too. You believe an old middle-weight champion when he tells you a thing like that, his little eyes twinkling out suspiciously at you, and a fist the size of a mutton ham thrust under your nose.

Just now--"Watch him, Sis!" he is on the look-out for wasp nests. Edam is the most wasp-free parish for miles, all owing to him. He marks them down in the daytime, and then in the evening he will come with his utensils and a dark lantern to make an end. With hung nests under eaves, or attached to branches of trees, he deals by drenching them with petroleum and setting a match to them. Sometimes he will drop a big one into a pail of water and stand ready to clap on the lid. The swarming deep-sunk nests in dry banks he attacks more warily. He brings a little apparatus for heating pitch, and pours it, liquid and sinuous, into the hole till the startled hum sinks into silence. Since an accident which happened last year (owing to the wasp-nest operated upon having a back-door) Butcher Donnan has always taken a quick-sighted boy or two to spy out the land. I suspect our Sir Toady has acted as scout pretty often. Do you remember when he came home all bulgy about the eyes and with one of his ears swelled up double? _He_ said he thought he must have taken cold, and I saw from the twinkle in Fuz's eye that he thought he had been fighting. But _I_ took my magnifying gla.s.s and got out two of the wasp-stings. Sir Toady had been doing "scout" for Butcher Donnan.

He had not "scouted" quite quick enough--that was all.

Butcher Donnan, born Irish, had spent some time in America. So he started politics here, and as he hoists the green flag with a harp, and hauls down the Union Jack on the occasion of every Irish debate in Parliament, you may be sure that he gets his windows broken.

He does not object. He likes putting the panes in again himself, because it is something for him to do. Sometimes he catches some local Unionist patriot and (what he calls) "lathers" him! Afterwards he supports him liberally during a prolonged convalescence. It is counted rather a good thing to be loyal and get battered by that furious Irish Revolutionary, Butcher Donnan. He has illuminations, too, and has stood for the School Board and County Council on purely Fenian lines. He said nothing, however, when young Nipper was elected instead of him, on that most popular of all munic.i.p.al tickets which consists in "keeping down the rates."

In despair of other employment Butcher Donnan has married a second time, and his wife is a buxom woman, overcome with the glory of living in a villa. But she makes regular first-cla.s.s custards, I tell you. And for toffee and shortcake there is not the like of her in the whole village of Edam. If it were not for Butcher Donnan's (senior's) dignity, he might be a happy man. For Mrs. Donnan could conduct the finest confectioner's shop that ever was, and if the Butcher could be kept from cutting up a mince-pie with a cleaver, and sharpening a jelly-spoon on a "steel," he might be the best of salesmen and the happiest of men.

Meanwhile, he has found the big wasp-nest behind the Mains entrance gate, and he will be off to get his pitch-kettle ready, the mask for his face, and the gloves for his hands. He does not mean to suffer if he can help it.

His wife, who cannot be all the time in the kitchen, is miserable because she has to do fancy work and receive callers (or at least sit waiting for them) in the fruit season, which is a clear waste of time.

She has been so long making a green Berlin wool cushion for a bazaar--the "Sons of Clan-na-Gael Mutual a.s.sistance Sale"--that it is just chock-full of moths, and in time will pollute the entire household into which it is "raffled." It is wrong to raffle, anyway, says the chief of police, so it will serve them quite right--_I_ shall not take a ticket. Now (said Hugh John, shaking his wise head) if they would only listen to me and start a confectioner's shop, they would both be chirpy as the day is long, and in the winter time long after dark--she over her dishes and patty-pans in the kitchen, and he in a white cap and ap.r.o.n behind the counter, talking to everybody, busy as honey-bees in clover-time, radiating sweetness and coining money.

And underneath the white ap.r.o.n Donnan could wear the butcher's "steel"

if he liked, just to make him feel like himself.

Oh, I could arrange for people to be happy if they would only let me!

"And why don't you tell him?" I said to Hugh John, a little impatiently.

"Oh," said Hugh John, "you see, I have fought Nipper so long that there is a kind of hereditary household enmity."

"Nonsense," I said; "why, I saw Fuz talking to the old fellow for an hour the other day, the two of them sitting and smoking as thick as thieves. Besides, there's Toady!"

"Yes," said Hugh John. "Father has no sense of the dignity of the house or of what a 'vendetta' means. He always says that if he has a chance of getting to heaven on that clause about forgiving your enemies, he does not care a dump. Or words that mean just the same. And as for Sir Toady--well, give him liberty to go into the woods at night--only an excuse, mind you, and there is no sin that he will not commit--short, that is, of mutiny. Neither of them knows how to conduct a family quarrel on proper lines. I--you and I, I mean, have to sustain the honor of the house, eh, Sis?"

"Oh, nonsense, Hugh John," I said; "you know you have always been good friends with Nipper. And it was you that brought the whole of them here to listen to the Scott Redcap Tales at the Feudal Tower!"

"_That_ was quite another matter," said Hugh John, hard pushed for an explanation. "It was a sort of Ossianic gathering where all the chiefs came to Morven, and made truce to listen to the tales and songs of the minstrel!"

"Oh, very likely," I said; "but why not put father or Sir Toady on to advise Butcher Donnan? There is need of such a shop as that in Edam. I have often felt the want myself."