The story of a short life, Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's dovecot

Front matter

t i

DADDY DARWIN FACES THE BOARD.

THE

CHAPTER I. “ Man — and the horseradish — are most biting when grated.”

— Jean Paul Richter.

“ Most annoying ! ” said the master of the house.

His thick eyebrows were puckered just then with the vexation of his thoughts ; but the lines of annoyance on his forehead were to some extent fixed lines. They helped to make him look older than his age — he was not forty — and they gathered into a fierce frown as his elbow was softly touched by his little son.

The child was defiantly like his father, even to a knitted brow, for his whole face was crumpled with the vigor of some resolve which he found it hard to keep, and which was symbolized by his holding the little red tip of his tongue between finger and thumb.

“ Put your hands down, Leonard ! Put your

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tongue in, sir ! What are you after ? What do you want ? What are you doing here ? Be off to the nursery, and tell Jemima to keep you there. Your mother and I are busy.”

Far behind the boy, on the wall, hung the portrait of one of his ancestors — a youth of sixteen. The painting was by Yandyke, and it was the most valuable of the many valuable things that strewed and decorated the room. A very perfect example of the great master’s work, and uninjured by time. The young cavalier’s face was more interesting than handsome, but so eager and refined that, set off as it was by pale-hued satin and falling hair, he might have been called effeminate, if his brief life, which ended on the field of Naseby, had not done more than common to prove his manhood. A coat-ofarms, blazoned in the corner of the painting, had some appearance of having been added later. Below this was rudely inscribed, in yellow paint, the motto which also decorated the elaborate stone mantelpiece opposite — Logins sorte mea.

Leonard was very fond of that picture. It was known to his childish affections as “ Uncle Bupert.” He constantly wished that he could get into the frame and play with the dog — the dog with the upturned face and melancholy eyes, and odd resemblance to a long-haired cavalier — on whose

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faithful head Uncle Rupert’s slender fingers perpetually reposed.

Though not able to play with the dog, Leonard did play with Uncle Rupert— the game of trying to get out of the reach of his eyes.

“ I play ‘ Puss-in-the- corner ’ with him,” the child was wont to explain ; “ but whichever corner I get into, his eyes come after me. The dog looks at Uncle Rupert always, and Uncle Rupert always

looks at me.” “ To see if you are

growing up a good boy and a gallant young gentleman, such as he was.” So Leonard’s parents and guardians explained the matter to him, and he devoutly believed them.

Many an older and less credulous spectator stood in the light of those painted eyes, and acknowledged their spell. Very marvelous was the cunning which by dabs and streaks of color, had kept the spirit of this long-dead youth to gaze at his descendants from a sheet of canvas and stir the sympathy of strangers, parted by more than two centuries from his sorrows, with the mock melancholy of painted tears. For whether the painter had just overdone some trick of representing their liquidness, or whether the boy’s eyes had brimmed over as he was standing for his portrait (his father and elder brother had died in the civil war before him), there

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remains no tradition to tell. But Vandyke never painted a portrait fuller of sad dignity, even in those troubled times.

Happily for his elders, Leonard invented for himself a reason for the obvious tears.

“ I believe Uncle Bupert knew that they were going to chop the poor king’s head olf, and that’s why he looks as if he were going to cry.”

It was partly because the child himself looked as if he were going to cry — and that not fractiously, but despite a struggle with himself — that, as he stood before the master of the house, he might have been that other master of the same house come to life again at six years of age. His long, fair hair, the pliable, nervous fingers, which he had put down as he was bid, the strenuous tension of his little figure under a sense of injustice, and, above all, his beautiful eyes, in which the tears now brimmed over the eyelashes as the waters of a lake well up through the reeds that fringe its banks. He was very, very like Uncle Bupert when he turned those eyes on his mother in mute reproach.

Lady Jane came to his defense.

“ I think Leonard meant to be good. I made him promise me to try and cure himself of the habit of speaking to you when you are speaking to some one else. But, dear Leonard ” (and she took the hand that had touched his father’s elbow), “ I don’t think you were quite on honor when you interrupted father with this hand, though you were holding your tongue with the other. That is what we call keeping a promise to the ear and breaking it to the sense.”

All the cavalier dignity came unstarched in Leonard’s figure. With a red face he answered bluntly, “ I’m very sorry. I meant to keep my promise.”

“ Next time keep it well , as a gentleman should. Now, what do you want ? ”

“ Pencil and paper, please.”"

“ There they are. Take them to the nursery, as father told you.”

Leonard looked at his father. He had not been spoiled for six years by an irritable and indulgent parent without learning those arts of diplomacy in which children quickly become experts.

“ Oh, he can stay,” said the master of the house, “ and he may say a word now and then, if he doesn’t talk too much. Boys can’t sit mumchance always — can they, Len ? There, kiss your poor old father, and get away, and keep quiet.”

Lady Jane made one of many fruitless efforts on behalf of discipline.

“ 1 think, dear, as you told him to go, he had better go now.”

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“ He will go, pretty sharp, if he isn’t good. How for pity’s sake, let’s talk out this affair, and let me get back to my work.”

“ Have you been writing poetry this morning, father dear ? ” Leonard inquired, urbanely.

He was now lolling against a writing-table of the first empire, where sheets of paper lay like fallen leaves among Japanese bronzes, old and elaborate candlesticks, grotesque letter-clips and paper weights, quaint pottery, big seals, and spring flowers in slender Venetian glasses of many colors.

“ I wrote three lines, and was interrupted four times,” replied his sire, with bitter brevity.

“ I think Til write some poetry. I don’t mind being interrupted. May I have your ink ? ”

“ Ho, you may not ! ” roared the master of the house, and of the inkpot of priceless china which Leonard had seized. “ How, be off to the nursery ! ”

“ I won’t touch anything. I am going to draw out of the window,” said Leonard, calmly.

He had practiced the art of being troublesome to the verge of expulsion ever since he had had a whim of his own, and as skillfully as he had played other games. He was seated among the cushions of the oriel window-seat (colored rays from coats-of-arms in the upper panes falling on his fair hair with a fan-

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ciful effect of canonizing him for his sudden goodness) almost before his father could reply.

“ I advise you to stay there, and to keep quiet.” Lady Jane took up the broken thread of conversation in despair.

“ Have you ever seen him ? ”

“ Yes ; years ago.”

“You know I never saw either. Your sister was much older than you ; wasn’t she ? ”

“ The shadows move so on the grass , and the elms have so many branches, 1 thinh I shall turn round and draw the -fireplace” murmured Leonard.

“Ten years. You may be sure, if I had been grown up I should never have allowed the marriage.

I cannot think what possessed my father ”

“ 1 am doing the inscription ! 1 can print Old

English. What does L dipthong EE T U S mean f ” said Leonard.

“ Lt means joyful , contented , happy. I was at Eton at the time. Disastrous ill-luck ! ”

“ Are there any children ? ”

“ One son. And to crown all, his regiment is at Asholt. Nice family party ! ”

“ A young man ! Has he been well brought up ? ” “ What does ”

“ Will you hold your tongue , Leonard f Is he likely to have been well brought up ? However,

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he’s ‘in the service/ as they say. I wish it didn’t make one think of flunkeys, what with the word service, and the liveries (I mean uniforms), and the legs, and shoulders, and swagger, and tag-rags, and epaulettes, and the fatiguing alertness and attentiveness of ‘ men in the service.’ ”

The master of the house spoke with the pettish accent of one who says what he does not mean, partly for lack of something better to do, and partly to avenge some inward vexation upon his hearers. He lounged languidly on a couch, but Lady Jane sat upright, and her eyes gave an unwonted flash. She came of an ancient Scottish race, that had shed its blood like water on many a battle-field, generations before the family of her English husband had become favorites at the court of the Tudors.

“ I have so many military belongings, both in the past and the present, that I have a respect for the service ”

He got up and patted her head, and smiled.

“ I beg your pardon, my child. Et ego ” — and he looked at IJncle Rupert, who looked sadly back again : “ but you must make allowances for me. Asholt Camp has been a thorn in my side from the first. And now to have the barrack-master, and the youngest subaltern of a marching regiment ”

“ He’s our nephew, Rupert ! ”

“Mine — not yours. You’ve nothing to do with him, thank goodness.”

“ Your people are my people. Now do not worry yourself. Of course I shall call on your sister at once. Will they be here for some time ? ”

“Five years, you may depend. He’s just the sort of man to wedge himself into a snug berth at Asholt. You’re an angel, Jane ; you always are. But fighting ancestors are one thing ; a barrack-master brother-in-law is another.”

“ Has he done any fighting ? ”

“ Oh, dear, yes ! Bemedaled like that Guy Fawkes general in the pawnbroker’s window, that Len was so charmed by. But, my dear, I assure you ”

“ L only just wabt to know what S 0 R T E M E A means," Leonard hastily broke in. u I've done it all now , and shan't want to know anything more'' “sSorte mea is Latin for my fate, or my lot in life. Lcetus sorte mea means happy in my lot. Lt is our family motto. Now, if you ask another question, off you go! After all, Jane, you must allow it’s about as hard lines as could be, to have a few ancestral acres and a nice old place in one of the quietest, quaintest corners of Old England; and for government to come and plant a Camp of Instruction, as they call it, and pour in

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tribes of savages in war-paint to build wigwams within a couple of miles of your lodge-gates ! ”

She laughed heartily.

“ Dear Eupert ! You are a born poet ! You do magnify your woes so grandly. What was the brother-in-law like when you saw him ? ”

“ Oh, the regular type. Hair cut like a pauper, or a convict” (the master of the house tossed his own locks as he spoke), “ big, swaggering sort of fellow, swallowed the poker and not digested it, rather good features, acclimatized complexion, tight fit of hot-red cloth, and general pipeclay.”

“ Then he must be the sapper ! ” Leonard announced, as he advanced with a firm step and kindling eyes from the window. “ Jemima’s other brother is a gunner. He dresses in blue. But they both pipeclay their gloves, and I pipeclayed mine this morning, when she did the hearth. You’ve no idea how nasty they look while it’s wet, but they dry as white as snow, only mine fell among the cinders. The sapper is very kind, both to her and to me. He gave her a brooch, and he is making me a wooden fort to put my cannon in. But the gunner is such a funny man ! I said to him, ‘ Gunner ! why do you wear white gloves ? ’ and he said, ‘Young gentleman, why does a miller wear a white hat % ’ He’s very funny. But I think

I like the tidy one best of all. He is so very beautiful, and I should think he must be very brave.”

That Leonard was permitted to deliver himself of this speech without a check can only have been due to the paralyzing nature of the shock which it inflicted on his parents, and of which he himself was pleasantly unconscious. His whole soul was in the subject, and he spoke with a certain grace and directness of address, and with a clear and facile enunciation, which were among the child’s most conspicuous marks of good breeding.

“ This is nice ! ” said the master of the house between his teeth with a deepened scowl.

The air felt stormy, and Leonard began to coax. He laid his curls against his father’s arm, and asked, “ Did you ever see a tidy one , father dear ? He is a very splendid sort of man.”

“ What nonsense are you talking ? What do you mean by a tidy one f ”

There was no mistake about the storm now ; and Leonard began to feel helpless, and, as usual in such circumstances, turned to Lady Jane.

“ Mother told me ! ” he gasped.

The master of the house also turned to Lady Jane.

“ Do you mean you have heard of fore?”

this be-

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She shook her head, and he seized his son by the shoulder.

“If that woman has taught you to tell untruths ”

Lady Jane firmly interposed.

“Leonard never tells untruths, Rupert. Please don’t frighten him into doing so. Row, Leonard, don’t be foolish and cowardly. Tell mother quite bravely all about it. Perhaps she has forgotten.”

The child was naturally brave ; but the elements of excitement and uncertainty in his up-bringing were producing their natural results in a nervous and unequable temperament. It is not the least serious of the evils of being “ spoiled,” though, perhaps, the most seldom recognized. Many a fond parent justly fears to overdo “ lessons,” who is surprisingly blind to the brain-fag that comes from the strain to live at grown-up people’s level ; and to the nervous exhaustion produced in children, no less than in their elders, by indulged restlessness, discontent, and craving for fresh excitement, and for want of that sense of power and repose which comes with habitual obedience to righteous rules and regulations. Laws that can be set at naught are among the most demoralizing of influences which can curse a nation ; and their effects are hardly less disastrous in the nursery. Moreover, an

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uncertain discipline is apt to take even the spoiled by surprise ; and, as Leonard seldom fully understood the checks he did receive, they unnerved him. He was unnerved now ; and, even with his hand in that of his mother, he stammered over his story with illrepressed sobs and much mental confusion.

“ W — we met him out walking. I m — mean we were out walking. He was out riding. He looked like a picture in my t — t — tales from Froissart. He had a very curious kind of a helmet — n — not quite a helmet, and a beautiful green feather — at least, n — not exactly a feather, and a beautiful red waistcoat, only n — not a real waistcoat, b — but ”

“ Send him to bed ! ” roared the master of the house. “ Don’t let him prevaricate any more ! ”

“Ho, Rupert, please ! I wish him to try and give a straight account. How, Leonard, don’t be a baby ; but go on and tell the truth, like a brave boy.”

Leonard desperately proceeded, sniffing as he did so.

“ He c — carried a spear, like an old warrior. He truthfully did. On my honor ! One end was on the tip of his foot, and there was a flag at the othe? end— a real fluttering pennon — there truthfully was ! He does poke with his spear in battle, I do believe ; but he didn’t poke us. He was b — b — beautiful to

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b — b — be — hold ! I asked Jemima, ‘ Is he another brother, for you do have such very nice brothers ? ’ and she said, ‘ No, he’s ’ ”

“ Hcmg Jemima!” said the master of the house. “ Now listen to me. You said your mother told you. What did she tell you ? ”

“Je — Je — Jemima said, ‘No, he’s a orderly;’ and asked the way — I qu — quite forget where to — I truthfully do. And next morning I asked mother what does orderly mean ? And she said tidy. So I call him the tidy one. Dear mother, you truthfully did — at least,” added Leonard chivalrously, as Lady Jane’s face gave no response, “ at least, if you’ve forgotten, never mind ; it’s my fault.”

But Lady Jane’s face was blank because she was trying not to laugh. The master of the house did not try long. He bit his lip, and then burst into a peal.

“ Better say no more to him,” murmured Lady Jane. “ I’ll see Jemima now, if he may stay with you.”

He nodded, and throwing himself back on the couch, held out his arms to the child.

“ Well, that’ll do. Put these men out of your head, and let me see your drawing.”

Leonard stretched his faculties, and perceived that the storm was overpast. He clambered on to his father’s knee, and their heads were soon bent lovingly together over the much-smudged sheet of paper, on which the motto from the chimney-piece was irregularly traced.

“You should have copied it from Uncle Rupert’s picture. It is in plain letters there.”

Leonard made no reply. His head now lay back on his father’s shoulder, and his eyes were fixed on the ceiling, which was of Elizabethan date, with fantastic flowers in raised plaster-work. But Leonard did not see them at that moment. His vision was really turned inwards. Presently he said, “ I am trying to think. Don’t interrupt me, father, if you please.”

The master of the house smiled and gazed complacently at the face beside him. Ho painting, no china in his possession, was more beautiful. Suddenly the boy jumped down and stood alone with his hands behind his back and his eyes tightly shut.

“ I am thinking very hard, father. Please tell me again what our motto means.”

Lcetus sorte mea — Happy in my lot.’ What are you puzzling your little brains about ? ”

“ Because I know I know something so like it, and I can’t think what! Yes — no! Wait a minute! I’ve just got it! Yes, I remember now: it was my Wednesday text]”

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He opened wide shining eyes, and clapped his hands, and his clear voice rang with the added note of triumph, as he cried, “ 4 The lot is fallen unto me in a fair ground. Yea, I have a goodly heritage.’ ” The master of the house held out his arms without speaking ; but when Leonard had climbed back into them, he stroked the child’s hair slowly, and said, 44 Is that your Wednesday text ? ”

44 Last Wednesday’s. I learn a text every day. Jemima sets them. She says her grandmother made her learn texts when she was a little girl. Now, father dear, I’ll tell you what I wish you would do : and I want you to do it at once — this very minute.”

44 That is generally the date of your desires. What is it?”

44 1 don’t know what you are talking about, but I know what I want. Now you and I are all alone to our very selves, I want you to come to the organ and put that text to music like the anthem you made out of those texts mother chose for you, for the harvest festival. I’ll tell you the words for fear you don’t quite remember them, and I’ll blow the bellows. You may play on all-fours with both your feet and hands ; you may pull out trumpet handle ; you may make as much noise as ever you like — you’ll see how I’ll blow ! ”

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Satisfied by the sounds of music that the two were happy, Lady Jane was in no haste to go back to the library ; but, when she did return, Leonard greeted her warmly.

He was pumping at the bellows handle of the chamber organ, before which sat the master of the house, not a ruffle on his brow, playing with “ all-fours,” and singing as he played.

Leonard’s cheeks were flushed and he cried impatiently :

“ Mother! Mother dear! I’ve been wanting you ever so long! Father has set my text to music, and I want you to hear it ; but I want to sit by him and sing too. So you must come and blow.”

“Nonsense, Leonard! Your mother must do nothing of the sort. Jane! Listen to this ! — In a fa — air grou — nd. Bit of pure melody, that, eh? The land flowing with milk and honey seems to stretch before one’s eyes ”

“No ! father, that is unfair. You are not to tell her bits in the middle. Begin at the beginning, and — mother dear, will you blow, and let me sing ? ”

“Certainly. Yes, Rupert, please. I’ve done it before ; and my back isn’t aching to-day. Do let me ! ”

“ Yes, do let her,” said Leonard, conclusively ;

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and he swung himself up into the seat beside his father without more ado.

“Now, father, begin! Mother, listen! And when it comes to ‘ Yea] and I pull trumpet handle out, blow as hard as ever you can. This first bit; — when he only plays — is very gentle, and quite easy to blow.”

Deep breathing of the organ filled a brief silence, then a prelude stole about the room. Leonard’s eyes devoured his father’s face, and the master of the house looking down on him, with the double complacency of father and composer, began to sing:

“ The lot — the lot is fallen un-to me ; ” and, his mouth wide-parted with smiles, Leonard sang also : “ The lot — the lot is fallen — fallen un-to me.”

“ In a fa — air grou — nd.”

“ Yea !” (Now, mother dear, blow ! and fancy you hear trumpets ! )

“ Yea ! YEA ! I have a good-ly her — i — tage ! ”

And after Lady Jane had ceased to blow, and the musician to make music, Leonard still danced and sang wildly about the room.

“ Isn’t it splendid, mother ? Father and I made it together out of my Wednesday text. Uncle Rupert, can you hear it ? I don’t think you can. I believe you are dead and deaf, though you seem to see.”

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And standing face to face with the young cavalier, Leonard sang bis Wednesday text all through :

“ The lot is fallen unto me in a fair ground ; yea, I have a goodly heritage.”

But Uncle Bupert spoke no word to his young kinsman, though he still “ seemed to see ” through eyes drowned in tears.

no

THE STOliT OF A SHOUT LIFE

Chapter II

“ an acre of barren ground ; ling, heath, broom, furze,

anything. ”

— Tempest , Act 1. Scene 1.

“Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife !

To all the sensual world proclaim,

One crowded hour of glorious life ♦

Is worth an age without a name.”

- -Scott.

Take a highwayman’s heath.

Destroy every vestige of life with fire and axe, from the pine that has longest been a landmark, to the smallest beetle smothered in smoking moss.

Burn acres of purple and pink heather, and pare away the young bracken that springs verdant from its ashes.

Let flame consume the perfumed gorse in all its glory, and not spare the broom, whose more exquisite yellow atones for its lack of fragrance.

In this common ruin be every lesser flower involved ; blue beds of speedwell by the wayfarer’s path — the daintier milkwort, and rougher red rattle

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— down to the very dodder that clasps the heather, let them perish, and the face of Dame Nature be utterly blackened! Then:

Shave the heath as bare as the back of your hand, and if you have felled every tree, and left not so much as a tussock of grass or a scarlet toadstool to break the force of the winds ; then shall the winds come, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, and shall raise on your shaven heath clouds of sand that would not discredit a desert in the heart of Africa.

By some such 'recipe the ground was prepared for that Camp of Instruction at Asholt which was, as we have seen, a thorn in the side of at least one of its neighbors. Then a due portion of this sandy oasis in a wilderness of beauty was mapped out into lines, with military precision, and on these were built rows of little wooden huts, which were painted a neat and useful black.

The huts for married men and officers were of varying degrees of comfort and homeliness, but those for single men were like toy-boxes oi wooden soldiers ; it was only by doing it very tidily that you could (so to speak) put your pretty soldiers away at night when you had done playing with them, and get the lid to shut down.

But then tidiness is a virtue which — like

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patience — is its own reward. And nineteen men who keep themselves clean and their belongings cleaner ; who have made their nineteen beds into easy chairs before most people have got out of bed at all ; whose tin pails are kept as bright as average teaspoons (to the envy of housewives and the shame of housemaids !) ; who establish a common and a holiday side to the reversible top of their one long table, and scrupulously scrub both : who have a place for everything and a discipline which obliges everybody to put everything in its place — nineteen men, I say, with such habits, find more comfort and elbow-room in a hut than an outsider might believe possible, and hang up a photograph or two into the bargain.

But it may be at once conceded to the credit of the camp, that those who lived there thought better of it than those who did not, and that those who lived there longest were apt to like it best of all.

It was, however, regarded by different people from very opposite points of view, in each of which was some truth.

There were those to whom the place and the life were alike hateful.

They said that, from a soldier’s standpoint, the

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life was one of exceptionally hard work, and uncertain stay, with no small proportion of the hardships and even risks of active service, and none of the more glorious chances of war.

That you might die of sunstroke on the march, or contract rheumatism, fever, or dysentery, under canvas, without drawing Indian pay and allowances ; and that you might ruin your uniform as rapidly as in a campaign, and never hope to pin a ribbon over its inglorious stains.

That the military society was too large to find friends quickly in the neighborhood, and that as to your neighbors in camp, they were sure to get marching orders just when you had learned to like them. And if you did not like them? (But for that matter, quarrelsome neighbors are much the same everywhere. And a boundary road between two estates will furnish as pretty a feud as the pump of a common back-yard.)