Part 16 (2/2)
retorted Robina indignantly.
Robina had other ideas. Mr. Slee departed, promising that work should be commenced at seven o'clock on Monday morning. Robina, the door closed, began to talk.
”Let Pa have a sandwich,” said Robina, ”and catch the six-fifteen.”
”We might all have a sandwich,” suggested d.i.c.k; ”I could do with one myself.”
”Pa can explain,” said Robina, ”that he has been called back to town on business. That will account for everything, and Little Mother will not be alarmed.”
”She won't believe that business has brought him back at nine o'clock on a Sat.u.r.day night,” argued d.i.c.k; ”you think that Little Mother hasn't any sense. She'll see there's something up, and ask a hundred questions.
You know what she is.”
”Pa,” said Robina, ”will have time while in the train to think out something plausible; that's where Pa is clever. With Pa off my hands I sha'n't mind. We three can live on cold ham and things like that. By Thursday we will be all right, and then he can come down again.”
I pointed out to Robina, kindly but firmly, the utter absurdity of her idea. How could I leave them, three helpless children, with no one to look after them? What would the Little Mother say? What might not Veronica be up to in my absence? There were other things to be considered. The donkey might arrive at any moment-no responsible person there to receive him-to see to it that his simple wants would be provided for. I should have to interview Mr. St. Leonard again to fix up final details as regarded d.i.c.k. Who was going to look after the cow, about to be separated from us? Young Bute would be down again with plans. Who was going to take him over the house, explain things to him intelligibly?
The new boy might turn up-this simple son of the soil Miss Janie had promised to dig out and send along. He would talk Berks.h.i.+re. Who would there be to understand him-to reply to him in dialect? What was the use of her being impetuous and talking nonsense?
She went on cutting sandwiches. She said they were not helpless children. She said if she and d.i.c.k at forty-two hadn't grit enough to run a six-roomed cottage it was time they learned.
”Who's forty-two?” I demanded.
”We are,” explained Robina, ”d.i.c.k and I-between us. We shall be forty-two next birthday. Nearly your own age.”
”Veronica,” she continued, ”for the next few days won't be a child at all. She knows nothing of the happy medium. She is either herself or she goes to the opposite extreme, and tries to be an angel. Till about the end of the week it will be like living with a vision. As for the donkey, we'll try and make him feel as much at home as if you were here.”
”I don't mean to be rude, Pa,” Robina explained, ”but from the way you put it you evidently regard yourself as the only one among us capable of interesting him. I take it he won't mind for a night or two sharing the shed with the cow. If he looks shocked at the suggestion, d.i.c.k can knock up a part.i.tion. I'd rather for the present, till you come down again, the cow stopped where she was. She helps to wake me in the morning. You may reckon you have settled everything as far as d.i.c.k is concerned. If you talk to St. Leonard again for an hour it will be about the future of the Yellow Races or the possibility of life in Jupiter. If you mention terms he will be insulted, and if he won't let you then you will be insulted, and the whole thing will be off. Let me talk to Janie. We've both of us got sense. As for Mr. Bute, I know all your ideas about the house, and I sha'n't listen to any of his silly arguments. What that young man wants is someone to tell him what he's got to do, and then let there be an end of it. And the sooner that handy boy turns up the better. I don't mind what he talks. All I want him to do is to clean knives and fetch water and chop wood. At the worst I'll get that home to him by pantomime. For conversation he can wait till you come down.”
That is the gist of what she said. It didn't run exactly as I have put it down. There were points at which I interrupted, but Robina never listens; she just talks on, and at the end she a.s.sumes that, as a matter of course, you have come round to her point of view, and persuading her that you haven't means beginning the whole thing over again.
She said I hadn't time to talk, and that she would write and tell me everything. d.i.c.k also said he would write and tell me everything; and that if I felt moved to send them down a hamper-the sort of thing that, left to themselves, Fortnum & Mason would put together for a good-cla.s.s picnic, say, for six persons-I might rely upon it that nothing would be wasted.
Veronica, by my desire, walked with me to the end of the lane. I talked to her very seriously. Her difficulty was that she had not been blown up. Had she been blown up, then she would have known herself she had done wrong. In the book it is the disobedient child that is tossed by the bull. The child that has been sent with the little basket to visit the sick aunt may be right in the bull's way. That is a bit of bad luck for the bull. The poor bull is compelled to waste valuable time working round carefully, so as not to upset the basket. If the wicked child had sense (which in the book does not happen), it would, while the bull was dodging to get past the good child, seize the opportunity to move itself quickly. The wicked child never looks round, but pegs along steadily; and when the bull arrives it is sure to be in the most convenient position for receiving moral lessons. The good child, whatever its weight, crosses the ice in safety. The bad child may turn the scale at two stone lighter; the ice will have none of him. ”Don't you talk to me about relative pressure to the square inch,” says the indignant ice.
”You were unkind to your little baby brother the week before last: in you go.” Veronica's argument, temperately and courteously expressed, I admit, came practically to this:
”I may have acted without sufficient knowledge to guide me. My education has not, perhaps, on the whole, been ordered wisely. Subjects that I feel will never be of the slightest interest or consequence to me have been insisted upon with almost tiresome reiteration. Matters that should be useful and helpful to me-gunpowder, to take but one example-I have been left in ignorance concerning. About all that I say nothing; people have done their best according to their lights, no doubt. When, however, we come to purity of motives, singleness of intention, then, I maintain, I am above reproach. The proof of this is that Providence has bestowed upon me the seal of its approval: I was not blown up. Had my conduct been open to censure-as in certain quarters has been suggested-should I be walking besides you now, undamaged-not a hair turned, as the saying is? No. Discriminating Fate-that is, if any reliance at all is to be placed on literature for the young-would have made it her business that at least I was included in the _debris_. Instead, what do we notice!-a shattered chimney, a ruined stove, broken windows, a wreckage of household utensils; I, alone of all things, miraculously preserved. I do not wish to press the point offensively, but really it would almost seem that it must be you three-you, my dear parent, upon whom will fall the bill for repairs; d.i.c.k, apt to attach too much importance, maybe, to his victuals, and who for the next few days will be compelled to exist chiefly upon tinned goods; Robina, by nature of a worrying disposition, certain till things get straight again to be next door to off her head-who must, by reason of conduct into which I do not enquire, have merited chastis.e.m.e.nt at the hands of Providence. The moral lesson would certainly appear to be between you three. I-it grows clear to me-have been throughout but the innocent instrument.”
Admit the premise that to be virtuous is to escape whipping, the argument is logical. I felt that left uncombated it might lead us into yet further trouble.
”Veronica,” I said, ”the time has come to reveal to you a secret: literature is not always a safe guide to life.”
”You mean-” said Veronica.
”I mean,” I said, ”that the writer of books is, generally speaking, an exceptionally moral man. That is what leads him astray: he is too good.
This world does not come up to his ideas. It is not the world as he would have made it himself. To satisfy his craving for morality he sets to work to make a world of his own. It is not this world. It is not a bit like this world. In a world as it should be, Veronica, you would undoubtedly have been blown up-if not altogether, at all events partially. What you have to do, Veronica, is, with a full heart, to praise Heaven that this is not a perfect world. If it were I doubt very much, Veronica, your being here. That you are here happy and thriving proves that all is not as it should be. The bull of this world, feeling he wants to toss somebody, does not sit upon himself, so to speak, till the wicked child comes by. He takes the first child that turns up, and thanks G.o.d for it. A hundred to one it is the best child for miles around. The bull does not care. He spoils that pattern child. He'd spoil a bishop, feeling as he does that morning. Your little friend in the velvet suit who did get himself blown up, at all events as regards the suit- Which of you was it that thought of that gunpowder, you or he?”
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