Two Maiden Aunts Part 9

There came a day, a bright, frosty day in December, when both the young ladies were in the kitchen helping Penelope with the mince-meat for Christmas pics, and G.o.dfrey had his sum to do in the parlour by himself. Outside the sun was shining. There had been a little sprinkling of snow the day before and a sharp frost at night, and all the garden was white and sparkling like the ice on a sugared cake, while the bare trees shone like fairy land. G.o.dfrey's eyes would not keep on the grey figures and the black slate. It was his first English winter, you see, and it seemed to him like Aunt Betty's stories of enchantment. And besides, only last night, when they sat together in the window seat and watched the stars coming out keen and clear above the white world, she had told him about Arctic discoverers, and how they sailed away over the grey northern seas till the ice barred their way, and how the bones of many brave men had been left behind in that dread, frozen world. Thinking of those great deeds always made G.o.dfrey's cheeks glow and his heart beat quick, and now he laid down his slate and went and leaned with both elbows on the window ledge and looked out. And looking at what we want and oughtn't to have is a first step which takes us a long way, and the end of it was that G.o.dfrey did as I fear many of us have done before him--left what he ought to do for what he wanted to do; that is to say, he went into the hall, took down his hat and coat, and went out into the frosty garden.

He opened the wicket gate into the field, and the first person he saw there was Nancy Rogers, looking like a Christmas card with her red cloak and hood and a basket on her arm, as she came up the steep, snowy path which led across the field to the village.

G.o.dfrey and Nancy were great friends, and she came running directly he called to her.

'Would you like to come for a cruise with me and the _Victory_, Nancy?'

he asked.

Nancy knew as well as G.o.dfrey that she had no business to go. Her mother and Patty had their Christmas preparations to make as well, and wanted the eggs she had been to fetch. But, like G.o.dfrey, she put 'want' before 'ought' that afternoon.

'Mother always likes me to do what the young ladies and Master G.o.dfrey want,' she said to herself, and so she turned her face away from home with G.o.dfrey and the _Victory_.

'Please, where is the cruise, Master G.o.dfrey?' she asked, as she trotted along on the frozen snow.

'We are going to sail the _Victory_ on Farmer White's pond,' said G.o.dfrey, 'and to watch those white ducks' harbours, for they've got ships building there I know.'

'Oh but, Master G.o.dfrey, please we can't,' exclaimed Nancy; 'the pond's frozen and the ship won't float.'

'Frozen!' exclaimed G.o.dfrey; 'do you mean to say all that water's ice like these puddles?'

Nancy nodded.

'I see it as I come along,' she said. 'Pete says two more nights'

frost and we'll be going sliding.'

G.o.dfrey had never been sliding, his thoughts were of Arctic discoverers.

'Very well, Nancy,' he said, 'if we can't watch the harbours we'll find the North-west Pa.s.sage.'

'Yes, Master G.o.dfrey,' said Nancy readily, and without the least idea what he meant.

'Do you know about the Arctic Circle?' asked G.o.dfrey.

Nancy shook her head doubtfully; at the Oakfield Dame School there was not much taught beyond the 'three R's.'

'Please, is it quite round?' she asked respectfully.

'I don't know about round,' said G.o.dfrey, who didn't quite understand the words himself, 'but I think it is a kind of fairy place. The sea is all ice, they have frost and snow there always.'

'Dear now, how bad for the early potatoes!' remarked Nancy, 'and as for sowing beans, why you might as well leave it alone. I suppose they just keep the cows on turnips year in, year out, poor things!'

'Cows!' said G.o.dfrey scornfully; 'of course there aren't any cows, only Polar bears prowling on the ice. And there are icebergs, great mountains of ice all blue, and they come crashing together and grinding up the ships, like a great giant's teeth, Aunt Betty says. And it's always dark, dark all day for months together.'

'Oh dear!' said Nancy, much awe-struck, 'I shouldn't like to be one of the people that lives there, Master G.o.dfrey.'

'n.o.body does live there but the Polar bears, and there's a sort of red light comes in the sky that they can see to prowl by, I suppose, and the stars, I should think they're brighter than even they were last night; weren't they bright last night, Nancy, just about supper time?'

Nancy couldn't say she had noticed; there had been sausages for supper, father had killed a pig.

'But if n.o.body lives there how do they know about it?' she asked.

'Because brave men have gone there to see,' said G.o.dfrey, with the eager light coming into his eyes. 'Aunt Betty says that country is full of the graves of brave men who have gone up there and died away in the dark and the cold.'

'Poor things!' sighed Nancy. 'I daresay now their friends will have put up nice handsome stones over their graves, won't they?'

'No, there aren't any stones,' said G.o.dfrey; 'Aunt Betty says their deeds are their monuments.'

Nancy looked as if she thought such monuments rather unsatisfactory.

'Father put up a nice stone with a vase a-top of it to his great-uncle,' she remarked, 'and the captain's grandfather he's got two angels crying and a skull at the bottom; it's a nice handsome grave, that is.'

They had reached the pond by this time, a piece of dark water over-hung by willows and covered with black ice, which had been broken at one end for the cattle to drink. G.o.dfrey began at once to invent.

'We'll put the _Victory_ here,' he said, launching his boat into the dark hole; 'this is the last piece of open water, Nance, and from here we must just take to the ice, you and I, and leave the crew to take care of the ship till we get back. Take your rifle, I see there are Polar bears prowling over there among the icebergs.'

'Where?' asked Nancy, rather alarmed.

'Why there, things with turned-up tails and what you'd p'r'aps take for yellow bills when first you saw them. I should like their fur for Aunt Angel. Now we are going to start to find the North-west Pa.s.sage.

Beyond that place where the Polar bears are no one has ever been, and no one knows what is there.'

'Oh yes, please, Master G.o.dfrey, I do,' exclaimed Nancy, ready as usual with information; 'the pig-sty.'

'n.o.body knows that comes with me on the _Victory_', persisted G.o.dfrey firmly, 'or if they do they've got to think they don't know as soon as possible. Now, say good-bye to the crew and come along.'

Nancy did not find it so easy as G.o.dfrey seemed to do to imagine the empty decks of the little _Victory_ fully manned, so her good-byes did not take long. But when she found that her captain's intention was to cross the pond on the ice, she hung back.

'It won't bear, Master G.o.dfrey; Pete said it wasn't going to bear to-day.'

'What's bear?' asked G.o.dfrey, with a foot on the ice.

'You can't walk on it, it'll break,' urged Nancy.

'What'll happen if it does?' asked G.o.dfrey, with interest. That dark smooth surface, the first ice he had ever trodden on, had a strange attraction for him.

'You'll be drowned,' said Nancy solemnly; 'Pete knew a man whose brother was drowned through the ice. He'd had a drop too much beer and he got off the path.'

'There isn't any path here and I don't drink beer,' said G.o.dfrey loftily. 'Are you coming?'

'Oh, if you please, Master G.o.dfrey, I think I'd sooner stop with the crew!' faltered Nancy.

'Very well,' said G.o.dfrey calmly; 'if I leave my bones in the Arctic Circle, go home in the _Victory_ and take the news to my countrymen in England.'

'Oh, Master G.o.dfrey, do come back!' screamed Nancy, for the ice was really swaying; 'it won't be only your bones, it will be all of you if it breaks.'

'I can't hear you,' said G.o.dfrey, with his back to her; 'you and the crew are miles away, I'm beyond where the foot of anything ever trod except Polar bears. Why, what's that?' and he doubled up his hand and looked through it for a telescope.

'It's the tub they used to use for the pig-wash,' exclaimed Nancy; 'it's frozen into the ice. Oh, Master G.o.dfrey, do come back!'

'Some other discoverer has been here before me,' said G.o.dfrey gravely, without noticing her. 'I see the hulk of a vessel locked in the ice, and unless I am mistaken she flies English colours. I must board her and see whether----'