Thomas Malthus - "Importation of Foreign Corn"

Algernon Blackwood - "A Prisoner in Fairyland"

Charlotte M. Yonge - "The Little Duke"

Charlotte M. Yonge - "The Herd Boy and His Hermit"

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Books: My Young Alcides

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> My Young Alcides




I did try it, and the metrical litany and the hymns happily took
Dora's fancy, so that she submitted to accompany me whenever Harold
was to sit with George Yolland, and would not take her.

One afternoon, when I was not well, I was going to send her with
Colman, and Harold coming in upon her tempest of resistance, and
trying to hush it, she declared that she would only go if he did, and
to my amazement he yielded and she led him off in her chains.

He made no comment, but on the next Sunday I found him pocketing an
immense parcel of sweets. He walked into the town with us, and when
I expected him to turn off to his friend's lodging, he said, "Lucy,
if you prefer the old church, I'll take Dora to the school. I like
the little monkeys."

He went, and he went again and again, towering among the pigmies in
the great room, kneeling when they knelt, adding his deep bass to the
curate's in their songs, responding with them, picking up the sleepy
and fretful to sit on his knee during the little discourse and the
catechising; and then, outside the door, solacing himself and them
with a grand distribution of ginger-bread and all other dainty cakes,
especially presenting solid plum buns, and even mutton pies, where
there were pinched looks and pale faces.

It was delightful, I have been told, to see him sitting on the low
wall with as many children as possible scrambling over him, or
sometimes standing up, holding a prize above his head, to be
scrambled for by the lesser urchins. It had the effect of rendering
this a highly popular service, and the curate was wise enough not to
interfere with this anomalous conclusion to the service, but to
perceive that it might both bless him that gave and those that took.

In the early part of the autumn, one of the little members of the
congregation died, and was buried just after the school service.
Harold did not know of it, or I do not think he would have been
present, for he shrank from whatever renewed the terrible agony of
that dark time in Australia.

But the devotions in the school were full of the thought, the
metrical litany was one specially adapted to the occasion, so was the
brief address, which dwelt vividly, in what some might have called
too realising a strain, upon the glories and the joys of innocents in
Paradise. And, above all, the hymns had been chosen with special
purpose, to tell of those who--


For ever and for ever
Are clad in robes of white.


I knew nothing of all this, but when I came home from my own church,
and went to my own sitting-room, I was startled to find Harold there,
leaning over the table, with that miniature of little Percy, which,
two months before, he had bidden me shut up, open before him, and the
tears streaming down his face.

In great confusion he muttered, "I beg your pardon," and fled away,
dashing his handkerchief over his face. I asked Dora about it, but
she would tell nothing; I believe she was half ashamed, half jealous,
but it came round through Miss Woolmer, how throughout the address
Harold had sat with his eyes fixed on the preacher, and one tear
after another gathering in his eyes. And when the concluding hymn
was sung--one specially on the joys of Paradise--he leant his
forehead against the wall, and could hardly suppress his sobs. When
all was over, he handed his bag of sweets to one of the Sunday-school
teachers, muttering "Give them," and strode home.

>From that time I believe there never was a day that he did not come
to my sitting-room to gaze at little Percy. He chose the time when I
was least likely to be there, and I knew it well enough to take care
that the coast should be left clear for him. I do believe that, ill-
taught and unheeding as the poor dear fellow had been, that service
was the first thing that had borne in upon him any sense that his
children were actually existing, and in joy and bliss; and that when
he had once thus hearkened to the idea, that load of anguish, which
made him wince at the least recollection of them, was taken off. It
was not his nature to speak in the freshness of emotion, and, after a
time, there was a seal upon his feelings; but there was an
intermediate period when he sometimes came for sympathy, but that was
so new a thing to him that he did not quite know how to seek it.

It was the next Sunday evening that I came into my room at a time I
did not expect him to be there, just as it was getting dark, that he
seemed to feel some explanation due. "This picture," he said, "it is
so like my poor little chap."

Then he asked me how old Percy had been when it was taken; and then I
found myself listening, as he leant against the mantelpiece, to a
minute description of poor little Ambrose, all the words he could
say, his baby plays, and his ways of welcoming and clinging to his
father, even to the very last, when he moaned if anyone tried to take
him out of Harold's arms. It seemed as though the dark shadow and
the keen sting had somehow been taken away by the assurance that the
child might be thought of full of enjoyment; and certainly, from that
time, the peculiar sadness of Harold's countenance diminished. It
was always grave, but the air of oppression went away.

I said something about meeting the child again, to which Harold
replied, "You will, may be."

"And you, Harold." And as he shook his head, and said something
about good people, I added, "It would break my heart to think you
would not."

That made him half smile in his strange, sad way, and say, "Thank
you, Lucy;" then add, "But it's no use thinking about it; I'm not
that sort."

"But you are, but you are, Harold!" I remember crying out with tears.
"God has made you to be nobler, and greater, and better than any of
us, if you only would--"

"Too late," he said. "After all I have been, and all I have done--"

"Too late! Harry--with a whole lifetime before you to do God real,
strong service in?"

"It won't ever cancel that--"

I tried to tell him what had cancelled all; but perhaps I did not do
it well enough, for he did not seem to enter into it. It was a
terrible disadvantage in all this that I had been so lightly taught.
I had been a fairly good girl, I believe, and my dear mother had her
sweet, quiet, devotional habits; but religion had always sat, as it
were, outside my daily life. I should have talked of "performing my
religious duties" as if they were a sort of toll or custom to be paid
to God, not as if one's whole life ought to be one religious duty.
That sudden loss, which left me alone in the world, made me, as it
were, realise who and what my Heavenly Father was to me; and I had in
my loneliness thought more of these things, and was learning more
every day as I taught Dora; but it was dreadfully shallow, untried
knowledge, and, unfortunately, I was the only person to whom Harold
would talk. Mr. Smith's having been a clergyman had given him a
distaste and mistrust of all clergy; nor do I think he was quite
kindly treated by those around us, for they held aloof, and treated
him as a formidable stranger with an unknown ill repute, whose very
efforts in the cause of good were untrustworthy.

I thought of that mighty man of Israel whom God had endowed with
strength to save His people, and how all was made of little avail
because his heart was not whole with God, and his doings were self-
pleasing and fitful. Oh! that it might not be thus with my Harold?
Might not that little child, who had for a moment opened the gates to
him, yet draw him upwards where naught else would have availed?

As to talking to me, he did it very seldom, but he had a fashion of
lingering to hear me teach Dora, and I found that, if he were absent,
he always made her tell him what she had learnt; nor did he shun the
meeting me over Percy's picture in my sitting-room in the twilight
Sunday hour. Now and then he asked me to find him some passage in
the Bible which had struck him in the brief instruction to the
children at the service, but what was going on in his mind was
entirely out of my reach or scope; but that great strength and
alertness, and keen, vivid interest in the world around, still made
the present everything to him. I think his powerfulness, and habit
of doing impossible things, made the thought of prayer and
dependence--nay, even of redemption--more alien to him, as if
weakness were involved in it; and though to a certain extent he had,
with Prometesky beside him, made his choice between virtue and vice
beside his uncle's death-bed; yet it was as yet but the Stoic virtue
of the old Polish patriot that he had embraced.

And yet he was not the Stoic. He had far more of the little child,
the Christian model in his simplicity, his truth, his tender heart,
and that grand modesty of character which, though natural, is the
step to Christian humility. How one longed for the voice to say to
him, "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour."

And so time went on, and we were still in solitude. People came and
went, had their season in London and returned, but it made no
difference to us. Dermot Tracy shot grouse, came home and shot
partridges, and Eustace and Harold shared their sport with him,
though Harold found it dull cramped work, and thought English
gentlemen in sad lack of amusement to call that sport. Lady Diana
and Viola went to the seaside, and came back, and what would have
been so much to me once was nothing now. Pheasant shooting had begun
and I had much ado to prevent Dora from joining the shooting parties,
not only when her brother and cousin were alone, but when they were
going to meet Mr. Tracy and some of the officers to whom he had
introduced them.

On one of these October days, when I was trying to satisfy my
discontented Dora by a game at ball upon the steps, to my extreme
astonishment I beheld a white pony, led by Harold, and seated on the
same pony, no other than my dear little friend, unseen for four
months, Viola Tracy!

I rushed, thinking some accident had happened, but Harold called out
in a tone of exultation, "Here she is! Now you are to keep her an
hour," and she held out her arms with "Lucy, Lucy, dear old Lucy!"
and jumped down into mine.

"But Viola, your mother--"

"I could not help it," she said with a laughing light in her eyes.
"No, indeed, I could not. I was riding along the lane by Lade Wood,
on my white palfrey, when in the great dark glade there stood one,
two, three great men with guns, and when one took hold of the
damsel's bridle and told her to come with him, what could she do?"

I think I said something feeble about "Harold, how could you?" but he
first shook his head, and led off the pony to the stable, observing,
"I'll come for you in an hour," and Dora rushing after him.

And when I would have declared that it was very wrong, and that Lady
Diana would be very angry, the child stopped my mouth with, "Never
mind, I've got my darling Lucy for an hour, and I can't have it
spoilt."

Have I never described my Viola? She was not tall, but she had a way
of looking so, and she was not pretty, yet she always looked prettier
than the prettiest person I ever saw. It was partly the way in which
she held her head and long neck, just like a deer, especially when
she was surprised, and looked out of those great dark eyes, whose
colour was like that of the lakes of which each drop is clear and
limpid, and yet, when you look down into the water, it is of a
wonderful clear deep grey.

Those eyes were her most remarkable feature; her hair was light, her
face went off suddenly into rather too short a chin, her cheeks
wanted fulness, and were generally rather pale. So people said, but
plump cheeks would have spoilt my Viola's air, of a wild, half-tamed
fawn, and lessened the wonderful play of her lips, which used often
to express far more than ever came out of them in words. Lady Diana
had done her utmost to suppress demonstrativeness, but unless she
could have made those eyes less transparent, the corners of that
mouth less flexible, and hindered the colour from mantling in those
cheeks, she could not have kept Viola's feelings from being patent to
all who knew her.

And now the child was really lovely, with the sweet carnation in her
cheeks, and eyes dancing with the fear and pretence at alarm, and the
delight of a stolen interview with me.

"Forth stepped the giant! Fee! fo! fum!" said she; "took me by the
bridle, and said, 'Why haven't you been to see my Aunt Lucy?'"

"I must not," she said.

"And I say you must," he answered. "Do you know she is wearying to
see you?"

Then I fancy how Viola's tears would swim in her eyes as she said,
"It's not me; it's mamma."

And he answered, "Now, it is not you, but I, that is taking you to
see her."

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot!" was whistled out of the wood;
and the whistle Viola knew quite well enough to disarm me when I came
to the argument what was to become of her if she let such things be
done with her; and she had quite enough of Dermot's composition in
her to delight in a "little bit of naughtiness that wasn't too bad,"
and when once she had resigned herself into the hands of her captor
she enjoyed it, and twittered like a little bird; and I believe
Harold really did it, just as he would have caught a rare bird or
wild fawn, to please me.

"Then you were not frightened?" I said.

"Frightened? No. It was such fun! Besides, we heard how he
mastered the lion to save that poor little boy, and how he has looked
after him ever since, and is going to bind him apprentice. Oh, mind
you show me his skin--the lion's, I mean. Don't be tiresome, Lucy.
And how he goes on after the children's service with the dear little
things. I should think him the last person to be afraid of."

"I wish your mother saw it so."

Viola put on a comically wise look, and shook her head, as she said,
"You didn't go the right way to work. If you had come back in the
carriage, and consulted her, and said it was a mission--yes, a
mission--for you to stand, with a lily in your hand, and reform your
two bush-ranger nephews, and that you wanted her consent and advice,
then she would have let you go back and be good aunt, and what-not.
Oh, I wish you had, Lucy! That was the way Dermot managed about
getting the lodge at Biston. He says he could consult her into going
out hunting."

"For shame, Viola! O fie! O Vi!" said I, according to an old
formula of reproof.

"Really, I wanted to tell you. It might not be too late if you took
to consulting her now; and I can't bear being shut up from you.
Everything is grown so stupid. When one goes to a garden-party there
are nothing but Horsmans and Stympsons, and they all get into sets of
themselves and each other, and now and then coalesce, especially the
Stympsons, to pity poor Miss Alison, wonder at her not taking mamma's
advice, and say how horrid it is of her to live with her cousins.
I've corrected that so often that I take about with me the word
'nephews' written in large text, to confute them, and I've actually
taught Cocky to say, 'Nephews aren't Cousins.' Dermot is the only
rational person in the neighbourhood. I'm always trying to get him
to tell me about you, but he says he can't come up here much without
giving a handle to the harpies."

I had scarcely said how good it was in Dermot, when he sauntered in.
"There you are, Vi; I'm come to your rescue, you know," he said, in
his lazy way, and disposed himself on the bear-skin as we sat on the
sofa. I tried again to utter a protest. "Oh Dermot, it was all your
doing."

"That's rather too bad. As if I could control your domestic lion-
tamer."

"You abetted him. You could have prevented him."

"Such being your wish."

"I am thinking of your mother."

"Eh, Viola, is the meeting worth the reckoning?"

"You should not teach her your own bad ways," said I, resisting her
embrace.

"Come, we had better be off, Dermot," she said, pouting; "we did not
come here to be scolded."

"I thought you did not come of your own free will at all," I said,
and then I found I had hurt her, and I had to explain that it was the
disobedience that troubled me; whereupon they both argued seriously
that people were not bound to submit to a cruel and unreasonable
prejudice, which had set the country in arms against us.
"Monstrous," Dermot said, "that two fellows should suffer for their
fathers' sins, and such fellows, and you too for not being unnatural
to your own flesh and blood."

"But that does not make it right for Viola to disobey her mother."

"And how is it to be, Lucy?" asked Viola. "Are we always to go on in
this dreadful way?"

By this time Eustace could no longer be withheld from paying his
respects to the lady guest, and Harold and Dora came with him,
bringing the kangaroo, for which Viola had entreated; and she also
made him fetch the lion-skin, which had been dressed and lined and
made into a beautiful carriage-rug; and to Dora she owed the
exhibition of the great scar across Harold's left palm, which, though
now no inconvenience, he would carry through life. It was but for a
moment, for as soon as he perceived that Dora meant anything more
than her usual play with his fingers, he coloured and thrust his hand
into his pocket.

We all walked through the grounds with Viola, and when we parted she
hung about my neck and assured me that now she had seen me she should
not grieve half so much, and, let mamma say what she would, she could
not be sorry; and I had no time to fight over the battle of the
sorrow being for wrongdoing, not for reproof, for the pony would bear
no more last words.

Eustace had behaved all along with much politeness; in fact, he was
always seen to most advantage with strangers, for his manners had
some training, and a little constraint was good for him by repressing
some of his sayings. His first remark, when the brother and sister
were out of hearing, was, "A very sweet, lively young lady. I never
saw her surpassed in Sydney!"

"I should think not," said Harold.

"Well, you know I have been presented and have been to a ball at
Government House. There's an air, a tournure about her, such as
uncle Smith says belongs to the real aristocracy; and you saw she was
quite at her ease with me. We understand each other in the higher
orders. Don't be afraid, Lucy, we shall yet bring back your friend
to you."

"I'm glad she is gone," said Dora, true to her jealousy. "I like
Dermot; he's got some sense in him, but she's not half so nice and
pretty as Lucy."

At which we all laughed, for I had never had any attempt at beauty,
except, I believe, good hair and teeth, and a habit of looking good-
humoured.

"She's a tip-topper," pronounced Eustace, "and no wonder, considering
who she is. Has she been presented, Lucy?"

Though she had not yet had that inestimable advantage, Eustace showed
himself so much struck with her that, when next Harold found himself
alone with me, he built a very remarkable castle in the air--namely,
a wedding between Eustace and Viola Tracy. "If I saw him with such
happiness as that," said Harold, "it would be all right. I should
have no fears at all for him. Don't you think it might be, Lucy?"

"I don't think you took the way to recommend the family to Lady
Diana," I said, laughing.

"I had not thought of it then," said Harold; "I'm always doing
something wrong. I wonder if I had better go back and keep out of
his way?"

He guessed what I should answer, I believe, for I was sure that
Eustace would fail without Harold, and I told him that his cousin
must not be left to himself till he had a good wife. To which Harold
replied, "Are all English ladies like that?"

He had an odd sort of answer the next day, when we were all riding
together, and met another riding party--namely, the head of the
Horsman family and his two sisters, who had been on the Continent
when my nephews arrived. Mamma did not like them, and we had never
been great friends; but they hailed me quite demonstratively with
their eager, ringing voices: "Lucy! Lucy Alison! So glad to see
you! Here we are again. Introduce us, pray."

So I did. Mr. Horsman, Miss Hippolyta, and Miss Philippa Horsman--
Baby Jack, Hippo, and Pippa, as they were commonly termed--and we all
rode together as long as we were on the Roman road, while they
conveyed, rather loudly, information about the Dolomites.

They were five or six years older than I, and the recollection of
childish tyranny and compulsion still made me a little afraid of
them. They excelled in all kinds of sports in which we younger ones
had not had nearly so much practice, and did not much concern
themselves whether the sport were masculine or feminine, to the
distress of the quiet elder half-sister, who stayed at home, like a
hen with ducklings to manage.

They spoke of calling, and while I could not help being grateful, I
knew how fallen my poor mother would think me to welcome the notice
of Pippa and Hippo.

Most enthusiastic was the latter as she rode behind with me, looking
at the proportions of Harry and his horse, some little way on before,
with Dora on one side, and Pippa rattling on the other.

"Splendid! Splendiferous! More than I was prepared for, though I
heard all about the lion--and that he has been a regular stunner in
Australia--eh, Lucy, just like a hero of Whyte-Melville's, eh?"

"I don't think so."

"And, to complete it all, what has he been doing to little Viola
Tracy? Oh, what fun! Carrying her off bodily to see you, wasn't it?
Lady Diana is in such a rage as never was--says Dermot is never to be
trusted with his sister again, and won't let her go beyond the garden
without her. Oh, the fun of it! I would have gone anywhere to see
old Lady Di's face!"




CHAPTER V. THE CAPTURE IN THE SNOW.



I do not recollect anything happening for a good while. Our chief
event was the perfect success of Mr. Yolland's concentrated fuel,
which did not blow up anything or anybody, and the production of some
lovely Etruscan vases and tiles, for which I copied the designs out
of a book I happily discovered in the library. They were sent up to
the porcelain shops in London, and orders began to come in, to the
great exultation of Harold and Co., an exultation which I could not
help partaking, even while it seemed to me to be plunging him deeper
and deeper in the dangerous speculation.

We put the vases into a shop in the town and wondered they did not
sell; but happily people at a distance were kinder, and native genius
was discovered in a youth, who soon made beautiful designs. But I do
not think the revived activity of the unpopular pottery did us at
that time any good with our neighbours.

Harold and Eustace sent in their subscriptions to the hunt and were
not refused, but there were rumours that some of the Stympsons had
threatened to withdraw.

I had half a mind to ride with them to the meet, but I could not tell
who would cut me, and I knew the mortification would be so keen to
them that I could not tell how they would behave, and I was afraid
Eustace's pride in his scarlet coat might be as manifest to others as
to us, and make me blush for him. So I kept Dora and myself at home.

I found that by the management of Dermot Tracy and his friends, the
slight had been less apparent than had been intended, when all the
other gentlemen had been asked in to Mr. Stympson's to breakfast, and
they had been left out with the farmers; Dermot had so resented this
that he had declined going into the house, and ridden to the village
inn with them.

To my surprise, Eustace chose to go on hunting, because it asserted
his rights and showed he did not care; and, besides, the hard riding
was almost a necessity to both the young men, and the Foling hounds,
beyond Biston, were less exclusive, and they were welcomed there. I
believe their horsemanship extorted admiration from the whole field,
and that they were gathering acquaintance, though not among those who
were most desirable. The hunting that was esteemed hard exercise
here was nothing to them. They felt cramped and confined even when
they had had the longest runs, and disdained the inclosures they were
forced to respect. I really don't know what Harold would have done
but for Kalydon Moor, where he had a range without inclosures of some
twelve miles. I think he rushed up there almost every day, and thus
kept himself in health, and able to endure the confinement of our
civilised life.

A very hard winter set in unusually early, and with a great deal of
snow in December. It was a great novelty to our Australians, and was
not much relished by Eustace, who did not enjoy the snow-balling and
snow fortification in which Harold and Dora revelled in front of the
house all the forenoon. After luncheon, when the snowstorm had come
on too thickly for Dora to go out again, Harold insisted on going to
see how the world looked from the moor. I entreated him not to go
far, telling him how easy it was to lose the way when all outlines
were changed in a way that would baffle even a black fellow; but he
listened with a smile, took a plaid and a cap and sallied forth. I
played at shuttle-cock for a good while with Dora, and then at
billiards with Eustace; and when evening had closed darkly in, and
the whole outside world was blotted out with the flakes and their
mist, I began to grow a little anxious.