CHAPTER XVI.
DUCKS AND DRAKES.
THE Squire made use of that discretion which is the better part of valour. When Randolph for the second time insisted upon coming to an understanding on family affairs, which meant deciding what was to be done on the Squire’s death, Mr. Musgrave, not knowing how else to foil his son, got up and came away. “You can settle these matters with Mary,” he said, quietly enough. It would not have been dignified to treat the suggestion in any other way. But he went out with a slight acceleration of his pulses, caused half by anger and half by the natural human thrill of feeling with which a man has his own death brought home to him. The Squire knew that there was nothing unnatural in this anticipation of his own end. He was aware that it required to be done, and the emergency prepared for; but yet it was not agreeable to him. He thought they might have awaited the event, although in another point of view it would have been imprudent to await the event. He felt that there was something undesirable, unlovely, in the idea of your children consulting over you for their own comfort “afterwards.” But then his children were no longer children whose doings touched his affections much—they were middle-aged people, as old as he was—and in fact it was important that they should come to an arrangement and settle everything. Only he could not—and this being so, would not—do it; and he said to himself that the cause of his refusal was no reluctance on his own part to consider the inevitable certainty of his own death, but only the intolerableness of the inquiry in other respects. He walked out in a little strain and excitement of feeling, though outwardly his calm was intense. He steadied himself, mind and body, by an effort, putting a smile upon his lip, and walking with a deliberate slow movement. He would have scorned himself had he showed any excitement; but strolled out with a leisurely slow step and a smile. They would talk the matter out, the two whom he had left; even though Mary’s heart would be more with him than with her brother, still she would be bound to follow Randolph’s lead. They would talk of his health, of how he was looking feeble, his age beginning to tell upon him, and how it would be very expedient to know what the conditions of his will were, and whether he had made any provision for the peculiar circumstances, or arrangement for the holding of the estate. “I ought to be the first person considered,” he thought he heard Randolph saying. Randolph had always thought himself the first person to be considered. At this penetration of his own the Squire smiled again, and walked away very steadily, very slowly, humming a bar of an old-fashioned air.
He went thus through the broken woodland towards the east, and strolled into the Chase like a man taking a walk for pleasure. The birds sang overhead, little rabbits popped out from the great tree-trunks, and a squirrel ran up one of them and across a long branch, where it sat peering at him. All was familiar, certain, well known; he had seen the same sights and heard the same sounds for the last seventy years; and the sunshine shone with the same calm assurance of shining as at other times, and all this rustling, breathing life went on as it had always gone on. There was scarcely a leaf, scarcely a moss-covered stone that did not hide or shelter something living. The air was full of life; sounds of all kinds, twitter and hum and rustle, his own step among other movements, his own shadow moving across the sunshine. And he felt well enough, not running over with health and vigour as he had sometimes felt long ago, not disposed to vault over walls and gates in that unlicensed exuberance which belongs to youth only, but well enough—quite well, in short; steady afoot, his breathing easy, his head clear, everything about him comfortable. Notwithstanding which, his children were discussing, as in reference to a quite near and probable event, what was to be done when he should die! The Squire smiled at the thought, but it was a smile which got fixed and painful on his lip, and was not spontaneous or agreeable. The amusement to be got from such an idea is not of a genial kind. He was over seventy, and he knew, who better? that threescore and ten has been set down as the limit of mortal life. No doubt he must die—every man must die. It was a thing before him not to be eluded; the darkness, indeed, was very near, according to all ordinary law; but the Squire did not feel it, was not in his soul convinced of it. He believed it, of course; all other men of his age die, and in their case the precautions of the family are prudent and natural; in his own case it is true he did not feel the necessity; but yet no doubt it must be so. He kept smiling to himself; so living as he was, and everything round, it was an odd sort of discord to think of dying. He felt a kind of blank before him, a sense of being shut in. So one feels when one walks along a bit of road surrounded with walls, a cul de sac from which there is no outlet. A sense of imprisonment is in it, of discouragement, too little air to breathe, too little space to move in—certainly a disagreeable, stifling, choking sensation. Involuntarily a sigh came from his breast; and yet he smiled persistently, feeling in himself a kind of defiance to all the world, a determination to be amused at it all, notwithstanding the sentence they were passing against him.
While the Squire continued his walk, amid the twitter of the birds and the warble and the crackle and rustle and hum in the woods, and all the sounds of living, now and then another sound struck in—a sound not necessarily near, for in that still summer air sounds travel easily—an echo of voices, now one soft cry or laugh, now a momentary babble. It struck the old man as if an independent soul had been put into the scene. He knew very well what it meant—very well—no one better. By very dint of his opposition to them he recognized the sound of the children wherever they were. They were there now, the little things whose presence had moved Randolph to this assault upon his father. They were altogether antagonistic to Randolph, or rather he to them; this gave them a curious perverse interest in their grandfather’s eyes. They offered him an outlet from his cul de sac; the pressure seemed suddenly removed which had bowed him down; in a moment he felt relieved, delivered from that sense of confinement. A new idea was like the opening of a door to the old man; he was no longer compelled to contemplate the certainty before him, but was let softly down into the pleasant region of uncertainty—the world of happy chances. The very character of the smile upon his face changed. It became more natural, more easy, although he did not know the children, nor had any intention of noticing them. But they were there, and Randolph might scheme as he liked; here was one who must bring his schemes to confusion. A vague lightening came into the Squire’s thoughts. He was reprieved, if not from the inevitable conclusion, at least from the necessity of contemplating it; and he continued his walk with a lighter heart. By and by, after a somewhat long round, and making sundry observations to himself about the state of the timber which would bear cutting, and about the birds which, without any keeper to care for them, were multiplying at their own will, and might give some sport in September, Mr. Musgrave found himself by the lake again with that fascination towards the water which is so universal. The lake gleamed through the branches, prolonging the blue of the sky, and calling him with soft plashing upon the beach, the oldest of his friends, accompaniment of so many thoughts, and of all the vicissitudes of his life. He went towards it now in the commotion of feeling which was subsiding into calm, a calm which had something of fatigue in it; for reluctant as he was to enter into the question of age and the nearly approaching conclusion, the fact of age made him easily tired with everything, and with nothing more than excitement. He was fatigued with the strain he had been put to, and had fallen into a languid state which was not unpleasant; the condition in which we are specially disposed to be easily amused if any passive amusement comes in our way.
So it happened that as he walked along the margin of the lake, with the water softly foaming over the pebbles at his feet, Mr. Musgrave’s ear was caught by a series of sharp little repetitions of sound, like a succession of small reports—one, two, three. He listened in the mild, easily-roused, and not very active curiosity of such a moment, and recognized with a smile the sound of pebbles skipping across the water; presently he saw the little missiles gleaming along from ripple to ripple, flung by a skilful but not very strong hand. The Squire did not even ask himself who it was, but went on quietly, doubting nothing. Suddenly turning round a corner upon the edge of a small bay, he saw a little figure between him and the shining water, making ducks and drakes with varying success.
The Squire’s step was inaudible on the turf, and he paused in sympathy with the play. He himself had made ducks and drakes in the Penninghame water as long as he could recollect. He had taught his little boys to do it; he could not tell how it was that this suddenly came to his mind just now—though how it should do so with Randolph, a middle-aged, calculating parson, talking about family arrangements—Pah! but even this recollection did not affect him now as it did before. Never mind Randolph. This little fellow chose the stones with judgment, and really, for such a small creature, launched them well. The Squire felt half disposed to step forward and try his skill too. When one shot failed he was half-sorry, half-inclined to chuckle as over an antagonist; and when there came a great success, a succession of six or seven reports one after another as the flat pebble skimmed over fold after fold of the water, he could not help saying, “Bravo!” in generous applause; generous, for somehow or other he felt as if he were playing on the other side. This sensation aroused him; he had not been so self-forgetting for many a day. “Bravo!” he cried, with something like glee in his voice.
The little boy turned round hastily. What a strange meeting! Oddly enough it had never occurred to the Squire to think who it was. Strangers were rife enough in these regions, and people would now and then come to Penninghame with their families—who would stray into the Chase, taking it for public property. But for the ducks and drakes which interested him, he would probably have collared the little fellow, and demanded to know what right he had to be here. He was therefore quite unprepared for the encounter, and looked with the strangest emotions of wonder and half-terror into the face which was so familiar to him, but so strange, the face of his grandson and heir. When once he had seen the child no further doubt was possible. He stared at him as if he had been a little ghost. He had not presence of mind to turn on his heel and go away at once, which would have been the only way of keeping up his former tactics; he was speechless and overpowered; and there was nobody by to spy upon him, no grown-up spectators—not even the other child to observe what he did, or listen to what he said. In this case the Squire did not feel the need to be vigilant, which in other circumstances would have given him self-command. Thus the shock and surprise, and the perfect freedom of his position, unwatched and unseen, alike broke down all his defences. After the first start he stood still and gazed at the child, who still, more frankly and with much less emotion, gazed at him.
“Who are you, sir?” the grandfather said, with a tone that was meant to be very peremptory. The jar in it was incomprehensible to Nello: but yet it gave him greater courage.
“I am Ne—that is to say,” the little fellow answered, with a sudden flush and change of countenance, “my name, it is John.”
“John what? Speak up, sir. Do you know you are a little trespasser, and have no business to be here?”
“Oh yes, I have a business to be here,” said Nello. “I don’t know what it is to be a trespasser. I live at the Castle, me. I can come when I please, and nobody has any business to send me away.”
“Do you know who I am?” asked the Squire, bending his brows. Nello looked at him curiously, half amused, though he was half frightened. He had never been so near, or looked his grandfather in the face before.
“I know; but I may not tell,” said Nello. He shook his head, and though he was not very quick-witted, some latent sense of fun brought a mischievous look to his face. “We know very well, but we are never to tell,” he added, shaking his head once more, looking up with watchful eyes, as children have a way of doing, to take his cue from the expression of the elder face; and there was something very strange in that gleam of fun in Nello’s eyes. “We know, but we are never, never to tell.
“Who told you so?”
“It was—Martuccia,” said the boy, with precocious discretion. His look grew more and more inquisitive and investigating. Now that he had the opportunity he determined to examine the old man well and to make out the kind of person he was.
Mr. Musgrave did not answer. He on his side was investigating too, with less keenness and more feeling than the child showed. He would have been unmoved by the beauty of Lilias, though it was much greater than that of Nello. The little girl would have irritated him; but with the boy he felt himself safe, he could not tell how; he was more a child, less a stranger. Mr. Musgrave himself could not have explained it, but so it was. A desire to get nearer to his descendant came into the old man’s mind; old recollections crept upon him, and stole away all his strength. “You know who I am; do you know who you are, little fellow?” he asked, with a strange break in his voice.
“I told you; you are—the old gentleman at home,” said Nello. “I know all about it. And me? I am John. There is no wonder about that. It is just—me. We were not always here. We are two children who have come a long way. But now I know English quite well, and I have lessons every day.”
“Who gives you lessons, my little boy?” The Squire drew a step nearer. He had himself had a little brother sixty years ago, who was like Nello. So it seemed to him now. He would not think he had likewise had a son thirty years ago, whom Nello was like. He crept a little nearer the child, shuffling his foot along the turf, concealing the approach from himself. Had he been asked why he changed his position, he would have said it was a little damp, boggy, not quite sure footing just there.
“Mr. Pen gives us lessons,” said Nello. “I have a book all to myself. It is Latin, it is more easy than English. But it takes a great deal of time; it does not leave so much for play.”
“How long have you been at your lessons, my little man?”
The Squire’s eyes began to soften, a smile came into them. His heart was melting. He gave a furtive glance round, and there was nobody near to make him afraid, not even the little girl.
“Oh, a long, long time,” said Nello. “One whole hour, it was as much as that, or perhaps six hours. I did not think anything could be so long.”
“One whole hour!” the Squire said in a voice of awe; and his eyes melted altogether into smiling, and his voice into a mellow softness which it had not known for years. Ah! this was the kind of son for an old man to have, not such as Randolph. Randolph was a hard, disagreeable equal, superior in so much as he had, or thought he had, many more years before him; but the child was delightful. He did the Squire good. “Or perhaps six hours! And when did this long spell of study happen? Is it long ago?”
“There was no spell,” said Nello. “And it was to-day. I readed in my book, and so did Lily; but as she is a girl it was different from mine. Girls are not clever, Martuccia says. She can’t make the stones skim. That was a good one when you said ‘Bravo!’ Where did you find out to say Bravo? They don’t talk like that here.”
“It was a very good one,” said the Squire; “suppose we were to try again.”
“Oh! can you do it?” said Nello, with round eyes of wonder. “Can you do it as well as me?”
“When I was a child,” said the Squire, quite overcome, “I had a little brother just like you. We used to come out here, to this very place, and play ducks and drakes. He would make them go half across the water. You should have seen them skimming. As far out as that boat. Do you see that boat—— ”
“When he was no bigger than me? And what did you do? were you little too? did you play against him? did he beat you? I wish I had a brother,” said Nello. “But you can’t have quite forgotten, though you are an old gentleman. Try now! There are capital stones here. I wish I could send one out as far as that boat. Come, come! Won’t you come and try?”
The Squire gave another searching look round. He had a sort of shame-faced smile on his face. He was a little shy of himself in this new development. But there was no one near, not so much as a squirrel or a rabbit, which could watch and tell. The birds were singing high up in the tree-tops, quite absorbed in their own business; nothing was taking any notice. And the child had come close to him, quite confiding and fearless, with eager little eyes, waiting for his decision. He was the very image of that little brother so long lost. The Squire seemed to lose himself for a moment in a vague haze of personal uncertainty whether all this harsh, hard life had not been a delusion, and whether he himself still was not a child.
“Come and try,” cried Nello, more and more emboldened, and catching at his coat. When the old man felt the touch, it was all he could do to suppress a cry. It was strange to him beyond measure, a touch not like any other—his own flesh and blood.
“You must begin then,” he said, a strange falter in his voice, half-laughing, half-crying. That is one sign of age, that it is so much nearer to the springs of emotion than anything else, except youth. Indeed, are not these two the fitting partners, not that middle state, that insolent strength which stands between? The Squire permitted himself to be dragged to the margin of his own water, which lay all smiling in soft ripples before him as it had done when he was a child. Nello was as grave as a judge in the importance of the occasion, breathless with excitement and interest. He sought out his little store of stones with all the solemnity of a connoisseur, his little brows puckered, his red lips drawn in; but the Squire was shy and tremulous, half-laughing, half-crying, ashamed of his own weakness, and more near being what you might call happy (a word so long out of use for him!) than he had been, he could not remember when.
Nello was vexed with his first throw. “When one wants to do very good, one never can,” he said, discomfited as his shot failed. “Now you try, now you try; it is your turn.” How the Squire laughed, tremulous, the broken red in his old cheeks flushing with pleasure and shame! He failed too, which encouraged Nello, who for his part made a splendid shot the second time. “Two, three, four, five, SIX, SEVEN!” cried the child in delight. “Don’t be afraid, you will do better next time. Me too, I could not make a shot at all at first. Now come, now come, it is your turn again.”
What a thing it is to have a real long summer afternoon! It was afternoon when the Squire’s calm was broken by his son Randolph; and it was afternoon still, dropping into evening, but with a sun still bright and not yet low in the sky when Mr. Musgrave warmed to his work, and, encouraged by Nello, made such ducks and drakes as astonished himself. He got quite excited as they skimmed and danced across the water. “Two, three, four, five, six, seven, EIGHT!” Nello cried, with a shriek of delight. How clever the old gentleman was—how much nicer than girls. He had not enjoyed his play so much for—never before, Nello thought. “Come back to-morrow—will you come back to-morrow?” he said at every interval. He had got a playmate now after his own heart—better than Mr. Pen’s Johnnie, who was small and timid—better than any one he had ever seen here.
The two players did not in the growing excitement of their game think any more of the chance of spectators; and did not see a second little figure which came running across the grass through the maze of the trees, and stopped wondering in the middle of the brushwood, holding back the branches with her hands to gaze at the strange scene. Lilias was never quite clear of the idea that this wood was fairy-land: so she was not surprised at anything she saw. Yet at this, for the first moment, she was tempted to be surprised. The old gentleman! playing at ducks and drakes with Nello! He who pretended never to see them, who looked over their heads whenever they appeared, for whom they always had to run out of the way, who never took any notice! Lilias stood for two or three whole minutes, holding the branches open, peeping through with a rapt gaze of wonder; yet not surprised. She applied her little faculties at once, on the instant, to solve the mystery; and what so natural as that the old gentleman had been “only pretending” all the time? Half the pleasure which Lilias herself had in her life came from “pretending.” Pretending to be Queen Elizabeth, pretending to be a fairy and change Nello into a lion or a mouse, both of which things Nello “pretended” to be with equal success; pretending to be Mr. Pen preaching a sermon, pretending to be Mary, pretending even now and then to be “the old gentleman” himself, sitting up in a chair with a big book, just like him. She stood and peeped through the branches, and made up her mind to this in a way that took away all her surprise. No doubt he was “only pretending” when he would not let it be seen that he saw them. Motives are not necessary to investigators of twelve; there was nothing strange in it; for was not pretending the chief occupation, the chief recreation of life? She stood and made this out to her own satisfaction, and then with self-denial and with a sigh went back to Martuccia. It was very tempting to see the pebbles skimming across the water, and so easy it seemed! “Me too, me too,” Lilias could scarcely help calling out. But then it came into her head that perhaps it was herself whom the old gentleman disliked. Perhaps he would not go on playing if she claimed a share, perhaps he would begin “pretending” not to see her. So Lilias sighed, and with self-denial gave up this new pleasure. It was very nice for Nello to have some one to play with—some one new. He was always the lucky one; but then he was the youngest, such a little fellow. She went back and told Martuccia he was playing, he was coming soon, he was not in any mischief—which was what the careful elder sister and mild indulgent nurse most feared.
When Lilias let the branches go, however, with self-denial which was impulsive though so true, the sweep with which they came together again made more sound than could have been made by a rabbit or squirrel, and startled the Squire, who was quite hot and excited in his new sport. He came to himself with a start, and with the idea of having been seen, felt a pang of shame and half-anger. He looked round him and could see nobody; but the branches still vibrated as if some one had been there; and his very forehead, weather-beaten as it was, flushed red with the idea of having been seen, perhaps by Randolph himself. This gave him a kind of offence and resentment and self-assertion which mended matters. Why should he care for Randolph? What had Randolph to do with it? Was he to put himself under tutelage, and conform to the tastes of a fellow like that, a parson, an interloper? But all the same this possibility stopped the Squire. “There, my little man,” he said with some confusion, dropping his stone, “there! I think it is time to stop now.”
“Oh!—was it some one come for you?” said Nello, following the direction of the old gentleman’s eyes. “Stay a little longer, just a little longer. Can’t you do just what you please—not like me—— ”
“Can you not do what you please, my little boy?” The Squire was a little tremulous with the unusual exertion. Perhaps it was time to stop. He stooped down to lave his hand in the water where it came shallow among the rocks, and that act took away his breath still more, and made him glad to pause a moment before he went away.
“It is a shame,” said Nello, “there is Lily, and there is Martuccia, and there is Mary,—they think I am too little to take care of myself; but I am not too little—I can do a great many things that they can’t do. But come to-morrow, won’t you try to come to-morrow?” said the child, coming close up to his grandfather, and taking hold of the skirt of his coat. “Oh please, please try to come! I never have any one to play with, and it has been such fun. Say you will come! Don’t you think you could come if you were to try?”
The Squire burst out into a broken laugh. It would have been more easy to cry, but that does not do for a man. He put his soft old tremulous hand upon the boy’s head. “Little Johnny,” he said, “little Johnny!—that was my little brother’s name, long, long ago.”
“Did he play with you? I wish I had a little brother. I have nothing but girls,” said Nello. “But say you will come to-morrow—do say you will try!”
The Squire gave another look round him. Nobody was there, not a mouse or a bird. He took the child’s head between his trembling hands, and stooped down, and gave him a hasty kiss upon his soft round forehead—“God bless you, little man!” he said, and then turned round defiant, and faced the world—the world of tremulous branches and fluttering leaves, for there was nothing else to spy upon the involuntary blessing and caress. Then he plunged through the very passage in the brushwood where the branches had shaken so strangely—feeling that if it was Randolph he could defy him. What right had Randolph to control his actions? If he chose to acknowledge this child who belonged to him, who was the image of the little Johnny of sixty years ago, what was that to any one? What had Randolph,—Randolph, of all men in the world,—to do with it? He would tell him so to his face if he were there.