They and I

“A lad, clearly,” I continued, “that left to himself would be a comfort to his friends. And the story of the robbers – your invention or his?”

Veronica was generously of opinion that he might have thought of it had he not been chiefly concerned at the moment with the idea of getting home to his mother. As it was, the clothing with romance of incidents otherwise bald and uninteresting had fallen upon her.

“The good child of the story. The fact stands out at every point. His one failing an amiable weakness. Do you not see it for yourself; Veronica? In the book, you, not he, would have tumbled over the mat. In this wicked world it is the wicked who prosper. He, the innocent, the virtuous, is torn into rags. You, the villain of the story, escape.”

“I see,” said Veronica; “then whenever nothing happens to you that means that you’re a wrong ’un.”

“I don’t go so far as to say that, Veronica. And I wish you wouldn’t use slang. Dick is a man, and a man – well, never mind about a man. You, Veronica, must never forget that you’re a lady. Justice must not be looked for in this world. Sometimes the wicked get what they deserve. More often they don’t. There seems to be no rule. Follow the dictates of your conscience, Veronica, and blow – I mean be indifferent to the consequences. Sometimes you’ll come out all right, and sometimes you won’t. But the beautiful sensation will always be with you: I did right. Things have turned out unfortunately: but that’s not my fault. Nobody can blame me.”

“But they do,” said Veronica, “they blame you just as if you’d meant to go and do it.”

“It does not matter, Veronica,” I pointed out, “the opinion of the world. The good man disregards it.”

“But they send you to bed,” persisted Veronica.

“Let them,” I said. “What is bed so long as the voice of the inward Monitor consoles us with the reflection – ”

“But it don’t,” interrupted Veronica; “it makes you feel all the madder. It does really.”

“It oughtn’t to,” I told her.

“Then why does it?” argued Veronica. “Why don’t it do what it ought to?”

The trouble about arguing with children is that they will argue too.

“Life’s a difficult problem, Veronica,” I allowed. “Things are not as they ought to be, I admit it. But one must not despair. Something’s got to be done.”

“It’s jolly hard on some of us,” said Veronica. “Strive as you may, you can’t please everyone. And if you just as much as stand up for yourself, oh, crikey!”

“The duty of the grown-up person, Veronica,” I said, “is to bring up the child in the way that it should go. It isn’t easy work, and occasionally irritability may creep in.”

“There’s such a lot of ’em at it,” grumbled Veronica. “There are times, between ’em all, when you don’t know whether you’re standing on your head or your heels.”

“They mean well, Veronica,” I said. “When I was a little boy I used to think just as you do. But now – ”

“Did you ever get into rows?” interrupted Veronica.

“Did I ever? – was never out of them, so far as I can recollect. If it wasn’t one thing, then it was another.”

“And didn’t it make you wild?” enquired Veronica, “when first of all they’d ask what you’d got to say and why you’d done it, and then, when you tried to explain things to them, wouldn’t listen to you?”

“What used to irritate me most, Veronica,” I replied – “I can remember it so well – was when they talked steadily for half an hour themselves, and then, when I would attempt with one sentence to put them right about the thing, turn round and bully-rag me for being argumentative.”

“If they would only listen,” agreed Veronica, “you might get them to grasp things. But no, they talk and talk, till at the end they don’t know what they are talking about themselves, and then they pretend it’s your fault for having made them tired.”

“I know,” I said, “they always end up like that. ‘I am tired of talking to you,’ they say – as if we were not tired of listening to them!”

“And then when you think,” said Veronica, “they say you oughtn’t to think. And if you don’t think, and let it out by accident, then they say ‘why don’t you think?’ It don’t seem as though we could do right. It makes one almost despair.”

“And it isn’t even as if they were always right themselves,” I pointed out to her. “When they knock over a glass it is, ‘Who put that glass there?’ You’d think that somebody had put it there on purpose and made it invisible. They are not expected to see a glass six inches in front of their nose, in the place where the glass ought to be. The way they talk you’d suppose that a glass had no business on a table. If I broke it, then it was always, ‘Clumsy little devil! ought to have his dinner in the nursery.’ If they mislay their things and can’t find them, it’s, ‘Who’s been interfering with my things? Who’s been in here rummaging about?’ Then when they find it they want to know indignantly who put it there. If I could not find a thing, for the simple reason that somebody had taken it away and put it somewhere else, then wherever they had put it was the right place for it, and I was a little idiot for not knowing it.”

“And of course you mustn’t say anything,” commented Veronica. “Oh, no! If they do something silly and you just point it out to them, then there is always a reason for it that you wouldn’t understand. Oh, yes! And if you make just the slightest mistake, like what is natural to all of us, that is because you are wicked and unfeeling and don’t want to be anything else.”

“I will tell you what we will do, Veronica,” I said; “we will write a book. You shall help me. And in it the children shall be the wise and good people who never make mistakes, and they shall boss the show – you know what I mean – look after the grown-up people and bring them up properly. And everything the grown-up people do, or don’t do, will be wrong.”

Veronica clapped her hands. “No, will you really?” she said. “Oh, do.”

“I will really,” I answered. “We will call it a moral tale for parents; and all the children will buy it and give it to their fathers and mothers and such-like folk for their birthdays, with writing on the title-page, ‘From Johnny, or Jenny, to dear Papa, or to dear Aunty, with every good wish for his or her improvement!’”

“Do you think they will read it?” doubted Veronica.

“We will put in it something shocking,” I suggested, “and get some paper to denounce it as a disgrace to English literature. And if that won’t do it we will say it is a translation from the Russian. The children shall stop at home and arrange what to have for dinner, and the grown-up people shall be sent to school. We will start them off each morning with a little satchel. They shall be made to read ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales’ in the original German, with notes; and learn ‘Old Mother Hubbard’ by heart and explain the grammar.”

“And go to bed early,” suggested Veronica.

“We will have them all in bed by eight o’clock, Veronica, and they will go cheerfully, as if they liked it, or we will know the reason why. We will make them say their prayers. Between ourselves, Veronica, I don’t believe they always do. And no reading in bed, and no final glass of whisky toddy, or any nonsense of that sort. An Abernethy biscuit and perhaps if they are good a jujube, and then ‘Good night,’ and down with their head on the pillow. And no calling out, and no pretending they have got a pain in their tummy and creeping downstairs in their night-shirts and clamouring for brandy. We will be up to all their tricks.”

“And they’ll have to take their medicine,” Veronica remembered.

“The slightest suggestion of sulkiness, the first intimation that they are not enjoying themselves, will mean cod liver oil in a tablespoon, Veronica.”

“And we will ask them why they never use their commonsense,” chirped Veronica.

“That will be our trouble, Veronica; that they won’t have any sense of any sort – not what we shall deem sense. But, nevertheless, we will be just. We will always give them a reason why they have got to do everything they don’t want to do, and nothing that they want to do. They won’t understand it and they won’t agree that it is a reason; but they will keep that to themselves, if they are wise.”

“And of course they must not argue,” Veronica insisted.

“If they answer back, Veronica, that will show they are cursed with an argumentative temperament which must be rooted out at any cost,” I agreed; “and if they don’t say anything, that will prove them possessed of a surly disposition which must be checked at once, before it develops into a vice.”

“And whatever we do to them we will tell them it’s for their own good,” Veronica chortled.

“Of course it will be for their own good,” I answered. “That will be our chief pleasure – making them good and happy. It won’t be their pleasure, but that will be owing to their ignorance.”

“They will be grateful to us later on,” gurgled Veronica.

“With that assurance we will comfort them from time to time,” I answered. “We will be good to them in all ways. We will let them play games – not stupid games, golf and croquet, that do you no good and lead only to language and dispute – but bears and wolves and whales; educational sort of games that will aid them in acquiring knowledge of natural history. We will show them how to play Pirates and Red Indians and Ogres – sensible play that will help them to develop their imaginative faculties. That is why grown-up people are so dull; they are never made to think. But now and then,” I continued, “we will let them play their own games, say on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. We will invite other grown-ups to come to tea with them, and let them flirt in the garden, or if wet make love in the dining-room, till nurse comes for them. But we, of course, must choose their friends for them – nice, well-behaved ladies and gentlemen, the parents of respectable children; because left to themselves – well, you know what they are! They would just as likely fall in love with quite undesirable people – men and women we could not think of having about the house. We will select for them companions we feel sure will be the most suitable for them; and if they don’t like them – if Uncle William says he can’t bear the girl we have invited up to love him – that he positively hates her, we till tell him that it is only his wilful temper, and that he’s got to like her because she’s good for him; and don’t let us have any of his fretfulness. And if Grandmamma pouts and says she won’t love old man Jones merely because he’s got a red nose, or a glass eye, or some silly reason of that sort, we will say to her: ‘All right, my lady, you will play with Mr. Jones and be nice to him, or you will spend the afternoon putting your room tidy; make up your mind.’ We will let them marry (on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons), and play at keeping house. And if they quarrel we will shake them and take the babies away from them, and lock them up in drawers, and tell them they sha’n’t have them again till they are good.”

“And the more they try to be good, the more it will turn out that they ain’t been good,” Veronica reflected.

“Their goodness and their badness will depend upon us in more senses than one, Veronica,” I explained. “When Consols are down, when the east wind has touched up our liver, they will be surprised how bad they are.”

“And they mustn’t ever forget what they’ve ever been once told,” crowed Veronica. “We mustn’t have to tell ’em the same thing over and over again, like we was talking to brick walls.”

“And if we meant to tell them and forgot to tell them,” I added, “we will tell them that they ought not to want us to tell them a simple thing like that, as if they were mere babies. We must remember all these points.”

“And if they grumble we’ll tell them that’s ’cos they don’t know how happy they are. And we’ll tell them how good we used to be when – I say, don’t you miss your train, or I shall get into a row.”

“Great Scott! I’d forgotten all about that train, Veronica,” I admitted.

“Better run,” suggested Veronica.

It sounded good advice.

“Keep on thinking about that book,” shouted Veronica.

“Make a note of things as they occur to you,” I shouted back.

“What shall we call it?” Veronica screamed.

“‘Why the Man in the Moon looks sat upon,’” I shrieked.

When I turned again she was sitting on the top rail of the stile conducting an imaginary orchestra with one of her own shoes. The six-fifteen was fortunately twenty minutes late.

I thought it best to tell Ethelbertha the truth; that things had gone wrong with the kitchen stove.

“Let me know the worst,” she said. “Is Veronica hurt?”

“The worst,” I said, “is that I shall have to pay for a new range. Why, when anything goes amiss, poor Veronica should be assumed as a matter of course to be in it, appears to me unjust.”

“You are sure she’s all right?” persisted Ethelbertha.

“Honest Injun – confound those children and their slang – I mean positively,” I answered. The Little Mother looked relieved.

I told her all the trouble we had had in connection with the cow. Her sympathies were chiefly with the cow. I told her I had hopes of Robina’s developing into a sensible woman. We talked quite a deal about Robina. We agreed that between us we had accomplished something rather clever.

“I must get back as soon as I can,” I said. “I don’t want young Bute getting wrong ideas into his head.”

“Who is young Bute?” she asked.

“The architect,” I explained.

“I thought he was an old man,” said Ethelbertha.

“Old Spreight is old enough,” I said. “Young Bute is one of his young men; but he understands his work, and seems intelligent.”

“What’s he like?” she asked.

“Personally, an exceedingly nice young fellow. There’s a good deal of sense in him. I like a boy who listens.”

“Good-looking?” she asked.

“Not objectionably so,” I replied. “A pleasant face – particularly when he smiles.”

“Is he married?” she asked.

“Really, it did not occur to me to ask him,” I admitted. “How curious you women are! No, I don’t think so. I should say not.”

“Why don’t you think so?” she demanded.

“Oh, I don’t know. He doesn’t give you the idea of a married man. You’ll like him. Seems so fond of his sister.”

“Shall we be seeing much of him?” she asked.

“A goodish deal,” I answered. “I expect he will be going down on Monday. Very annoying, this stove business.”

“What is the use of his being there without you?” Ethelbertha wanted to know.

“Oh, he’ll potter round,” I suggested, “and take measurements. Dick will be about to explain things to him. Or, if he isn’t, there’s Robina – awkward thing is, Robina seems to have taken a dislike to him.”

“Why has she taken a dislike to him?” asked Ethelbertha.

“Oh, because he mistook the back of the house for the front, or the front of the house for the back,” I explained; “I forget which now. Says it’s his smile that irritates her. She owns herself there’s no real reason.”

“When will you be going down again?” Ethelbertha asked.

“On Thursday next,” I told her; “stove or no stove.”

She said she would come with me. She felt the change would do her good, and promised not to do anything when she got there. And then I told her all that I had done for Dick.

“The ordinary farmer,” I pointed out to her, “is so often a haphazard type of man with no ideas. If successful, it is by reason of a natural instinct which cannot be taught. St. Leonard has studied the theory of the thing. From him Dick will learn all that can be learnt about farming. The selection, I felt, demanded careful judgment.”

“But will Dick stick to it?” Ethelbertha wondered.

“There, again,” I pointed out to her, “the choice was one calling for exceptional foresight. The old man – as a matter of fact, he isn’t old at all; can’t be very much older than myself; I don’t know why they all call him the old man – has formed a high opinion of Dick. His daughter told me so, and I have taken care to let Dick know it. The boy will not care to disappoint him. Her mother – ”

“Whose mother?” interrupted Ethelbertha.

“Janie’s mother, Mrs. St. Leonard,” I explained. “She also has formed a good opinion of him. The children like him. Janie told me so.”

“She seems to do a goodish deal of talking, this Miss Janie,” remarked Ethelbertha.

“You will like her,” I said. “She is a charming girl – so sensible, and good, and unselfish, and – ”

“Who told you all this about her?” interrupted Ethelbertha.

“You can see it for yourself,” I answered. “The mother appears to be a nonentity, and St. Leonard himself – well, he is not a business man. It is Janie who manages everything – keeps everything going.”

“What is she like?” asked Ethelbertha.

“I am telling you,” I said. “She is so practical, and yet at the same time – ”

“In appearance, I mean,” explained Ethelbertha.

“How you women,” I said, “do worry about mere looks! What does it matter? If you want to know, it is that sort of face that grows upon you. At first you do not notice how beautiful it is, but when you come to look into it – ”

“And has she also formed a high opinion of Dick?” interrupted Ethelbertha.

“She will be disappointed in him,” I said, “if he does not work hard and stick to it. They will all be disappointed in him.”

“What’s it got to do with them?” demanded Ethelbertha.

“I’m not thinking about them,” I said. “What I look at is – ”

“I don’t like her,” said Ethelbertha. “I don’t like any of them.”

“But – ” She didn’t seem to be listening.

“I know that class of man,” she said; “and the wife appears, if anything, to be worse. As for the girl – ”

“When you come to know them – ” I said.

She said she didn’t want to know them. She wanted to go down on Monday, early.

I got her to see – it took some little time – the disadvantages of this. We should only be adding to Robina’s troubles; and change of plan now would unsettle Dick’s mind.

“He has promised to write me,” I said, “and tell me the result of his first day’s experience. Let us wait and hear what he says.”

She said that whatever could have possessed her to let me take those poor unfortunate children away from her, and muddle up everything without her, was a mystery to herself. She hoped that, at least, I had done nothing irrevocable in the case of Veronica.

“Veronica,” I said, “is really wishful, I think, to improve. I have bought her a donkey.”

“A what?” exclaimed Ethelbertha.

“A donkey,” I repeated. “The child took a fancy to it, and we all agreed it might help to steady her – give her a sense of responsibility.”

“I somehow felt you hadn’t overlooked Veronica,” said Ethelbertha.

I thought it best to change the conversation. She seemed in a fretful mood.

CHAPTER VIII

Robina’s letter was dated Monday evening, and reached us Tuesday morning.

“I hope you caught your train,” she wrote. “Veronica did not get back till half-past six. She informed me that you and she had found a good deal to talk about, and that ‘one thing had led to another.’ She is a quaint young imp, but I think your lecture must have done her good. Her present attitude is that of gentle forbearance to all around her – not without its dignity. She has not snorted once, and at times is really helpful. I have given her an empty scribbling diary we found in your desk, and most of her spare time she remains shut up with it in the bedroom. She tells me you and she are writing a book together. I asked her what about. She waved me aside with the assurance that I would know ‘all in good time,’ and that it was going to do good. I caught sight of just the title-page last night. It was lying open on the dressing-table: ‘Why the Man in the Moon looks sat upon.’ It sounds like a title of yours. But I would not look further, though tempted. She has drawn a picture underneath. It is really not bad. The old gentleman really does look sat upon, and intensely disgusted.

“‘Sir Robert’ – his name being Theodore, which doesn’t seem to suit him – turns out to be the only son of a widow, a Mrs. Foy, our next-door neighbour to the south. We met her coming out of church on Sunday morning. She was still crying. Dick took Veronica on ahead, and I walked part of the way home with them. Her grandfather, it appears, was killed many years ago by the bursting of a boiler; and she is haunted, poor lady, by the conviction that Theodore is the inheritor of an hereditary tendency to getting himself blown up. She attaches no blame to us, seeing in Saturday’s catastrophe only the hand of the Family Curse. I tried to comfort her with the idea that the Curse having spent itself upon a futile effort, nothing further need now be feared from it; but she persists in taking the gloomier view that in wrecking our kitchen, Theodore’s ‘Doom,’ as she calls it, was merely indulging in a sort of dress rehearsal; the finishing performance may be relied upon to follow. It sounds ridiculous, but the poor woman was so desperately in earnest that when an unlucky urchin, coming out of a cottage we were passing, tripped on the doorstep and let fall a jug, we both screamed at the same time, and were equally surprised to find ‘Sir Robert’ still between us and all in one piece. I thought it foolish to discuss all this before the child himself; but did not like to stop her. As a result, he regards himself evidently as the chosen foe of Heaven, and is not, unnaturally, proud of himself. She called here this (Monday) afternoon to leave cards; and, at her request, I showed her the kitchen and the mat over which he had stumbled. She seemed surprised that the ‘Doom’ had let slip so favourable a chance of accomplishing its business, and gathered from the fact added cause for anxiety. Evidently something much more thorough is in store for Master Theodore. It was only half a pound of gunpowder, she told me. Doctor Smallboy’s gardener had bought it for the purpose of raising the stump of an old elm-tree, and had left it for a moment on the grass while he had returned to the house for more brown paper. She seemed pleased with the gardener, who, as she said, might, if dishonestly inclined, have charged her for a pound. I wanted to pay for – at all events – our share, but she would not take a penny. Her late lamented grandfather she regards as the person responsible for the entire incident, and perhaps it may be as well not to disturb her view. Had I suggested it, I feel sure she would have seen the justice of her providing us with a new kitchen range.

“Wildly exaggerated accounts of the affair are flying round the neighbourhood; and my chief fear is that Veronica may discover she is a local celebrity. Your sudden disappearance is supposed to have been heavenward. An old farm labourer who saw you pass on your way to the station speaks of you as ‘the ghost of the poor gentleman himself;’ and fragments of clothing found anywhere within a radius of two miles are being preserved, I am told, as specimens of your remains. Boots would appear to have been your chief apparel. Seven pairs have already been collected from the surrounding ditches. Among the more public-spirited there is talk of using you to start a local museum.”

These first three paragraphs I did not read to Ethelbertha. Fortunately they just filled the first sheet, which I took an opportunity of slipping into my pocket unobserved.

“The new boy arrived on Sunday morning,” she continued. “His name – if I have got it right – is William. Anyhow, that is the nearest I can get to it. His other name, if any, I must leave you to extract from him yourself. It may be Berkshire that he talks, but it sounds more like barking. Please excuse the pun; but I have just been talking to him for half an hour, trying to make him understand that I want him to go home, and maybe, as a result, I am feeling a little hysterical. Anything more rural I cannot imagine. But he is anxious to learn, and a fairly wide field is in front of him. I caught him after our breakfast on Sunday calmly throwing everything left over onto the dust-heap. I pointed out to him the wickedness of wasting nourishing food, and impressed upon him that the proper place for victuals was inside us. He never answers. He stands stock still, with his mouth as wide open as it will go – which is saying a good deal – and one trusts that one’s words are entering into him. All Sunday afternoon he was struggling valiantly against an almost supernatural sleepiness. After tea he got worse, and I began to think he would be no use to me. We none of us ate much supper; and Dick, who appears able to understand him, helped him to carry the things out. I heard them talking, and then Dick came back and closed the door behind him. ‘He wants to know,’ said Dick, ‘if he can leave the corned beef over till to-morrow. Because, if he eats it all to-night, he doesn’t think he will be able to walk home.’