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Six to Sixteen: A Story for Girls, a novel by Juliana Horatia Ewing |
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Chapter 24. We And The Boys... |
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_ CHAPTER XXIV. WE AND THE BOYS--WE AND THE BOYS AND OUR FADS--THE LAMP OF ZEAL--CLEMENT ON UNREALITY--JACK'S OINTMENT Our life on the moors was, I suppose, monotonous. I do not think we ever found 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 for them when they went away. We wrote long letters to them, and received brief but pithy replies. We spoke on their behalf when they wanted clothes or pocket-money. We knew exactly how to bring the news of good marks in school and increased subscriptions to cricket to bear in effective combination upon the parental mind, and were amply rewarded by half a sheet, acknowledging the receipt of a ten-shilling piece in a match-box (the Arkwrights had a strange habit of sending coin of the realm by post, done up like botanical specimens), with brief directions as to the care of garden or collection, and perhaps a rude outline of the head-master's nose--"In a great hurry, from your loving and grateful Bro." 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 the days to the holidays. We had fresh "fads" every holidays. Many of our plans were ambitious enough, and the results would, no doubt, have been great had they been fully carried out. But Midsummer holidays, though long, are limited in length. Once we made ourselves into a Field Naturalists' Club. We girls gave up our "spare dress wardrobe" for a museum. We subdivided the shelves, and proposed to make a perfect collection of the flora and entomology of the neighbourhood. Eleanor and I really did continue to add specimens whilst the boys were at school; but they came home at Christmas devoted, body and soul, to the drama. We were soon converted to the new fad. The wardrobe became a side-scene in our theatre, and Eleanor and Clement laboured day and night with papers of powdered paint, and kettles of hot size, in converting canvas into scenery. "Theatricals" promised to be a lasting fancy; but the next holidays were in fine weather, and we made the drop-curtain into a tent. When the boys were at school, Eleanor and I were fully occupied. We took a good deal of pains with our room: half of it was mine now. I had my knick-knack table as well as Eleanor, my own books and pictures, my own photographs of the boys and of the dear boys, my own pot plants, and my own dog--a pug, given to me by Jack, and named "Saucebox." In Jack's absence, Pincher also looked on me as his mistress. Like most other conscientious girls, we had rules and regulations of our own devising: private codes, generally kept in cipher, for our own personal self-discipline, and laws common to us both for the employment of our time in joint duties--lessons, parish work, and so forth. I think we made rather too many rules, and that we re-made them too often. I make fewer now, and easier ones, and let them much more alone. I wonder if I really keep them better? But if not, may GOD, I pray Him, send me back the restless zeal, the hunger and thirst after righteousness, which He gives in early youth! It is so easy to become more thick-skinned in conscience, more tolerant of evil, more hopeless of good, more careful of one's own comfort and one's own property, more self-satisfied in leaving high aims and great deeds to enthusiasts, and then to believe that one is growing older and wiser. And yet those high examples, those good works, those great triumphs over evil, which single hands effect sometimes, we are all grateful for, when they are done, whatever we may have said of the doing. But we speak of saints and enthusiasts for good, as if some special gifts were made to them in middle age which are withheld from other men. Is it not rather that some few souls keep alive the lamp of zeal and high desire which GOD lights for most of us while life is young? Eleanor and I worked at our lessons by ourselves. We always had her mother to "fall back upon," as we said. When we took up the study of Italian in order to be able to read Dante--moved thereto by the attractions of the long volume of Flaxman's illustrations of the 'Divina Commedia'--we had to "fall back" a good deal on Mrs. Arkwright's scholarship. And this in spite of all the helps the library afforded us, the best of dictionaries, English "cribs," and about six of those elaborate commentaries upon the poem, of which Italians have been so prolific. During the winter the study of languages was commonly uppermost; in summer sketching was more favoured. I do think sketching brings one a larger amount of pleasure than almost any other occupation. And like "collecting," it is a very sociable pursuit when one has fellow-sketchers as well as fellow-naturalists. And this, I must confess, is a merit in my eyes, I being of a sociable disposition! Eleanor could live alone, I think, and be happy; but I depend largely on my fellow-creatures. Jack and I were talking rather sentimentally the other day about "old times," and I said: "How jolly it was, that summer we used to sketch so much--all four of us together!" And Jack, who was rubbing some new stuff of his own compounding into his fishing-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 any rate. Clement is very different. He always disputes and often snubs what one says; partly, I am sure, from a love of truth--a genuine desire to keep himself and everybody else from talking in an unreal way, and from repeating common ideas without thinking them out at first hand; and partly, too, from what Keziah calls the "contradictiousness" of his temper. He was in the room when Jack and I were talking, but he was not talking with us. He was reading for his examination. All the Arkwrights can work through noise and in company, having considerable powers of mental abstraction. I think they even sometimes combine attention to their own work with an occasional skimming of the topics current in the room as well. Some outlying feeler of Clement's brain caught my remark and Jack's reply. "My dear Margery," said he, "you are at heart one of the most unaffected people I know. Pray be equally genuine with your head, and do not encourage Jack in his slipshod habits of thought and conversation by----" "Slipshod!" interrupted Jack, holding his left arm out at full length before him, the hand of which was shod with a fishing-boot. "Slipshod! They fit as close as your convictions, and would be as stiff and inexorable as logic if I didn't soften them with this newly-invented and about-to-be-patented ointment by the warmth of a cheerful fire and Margery'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 the habit of adopting sentiments till you are quite sure you really mean them. It is by the painful experience of my own folly that I know what trouble it gives one afterwards. If ever the time comes when you want to know your real opinion on any subject, the process of getting rid of ideas you have adopted without meaning them will not be an easy one." I am not as intellectual as the Arkwrights. I can always see through Jack'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 not follow 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 your hair was getting too thick for the finer ideas of this household to penetrate to your brain. Allow me to apply a little of this ointment to the parting, which in your case is more definite than with Eleanor; and as our lightest actions should proceed from principles, I may mention that the principle on which I propose to apply the Leather-softener to your scalp is that on which the blacksmith's wife gave your cholera medicine to the second girl, when she began with rheumatic fever--'it did such a deal of good to our William.' Now, this unguent has done 'a deal of good' to the leather of my boots. Why should it not successfully lubricate the skin of your skull?" Only the dread of "a row" between Jack and Clem enabled me to keep anything like gravity. "Don't talk nonsense, Jack!" said I, as severely as I could. (I fear that, 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_ said applies to what _I_ said." "You said, 'How happy we were, that summer we went sketching!' or words to that effect. It's just like a man's writing about the careless happiness of childhood, when he either forgets, or refuses to advert to, the toothache, the measles, learning his letters, the heat of the night-nursery, not being allowed to sit down in the yard whilst his knickerbockers were new, going to bed at eight o'clock, and having a lie on his conscience. I have striven for more accurate habits of thought, and I remember distinctly that you cried over more than one of your sketches." "I got into the 'Household Album' with mine, however," said Jack; "and I defy an A.R.A. to have had more difficulty in securing his position." "I'm afraid your appearance in the _Phycological Quarterly_ was better deserved," said Mrs. Arkwright, without removing her eye from the microscope she was using at a table just opposite to Clem's. But this demands explanation, and I must go back to the time of which Jack and I spoke--when we used to go sketching together. _ |
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