The Blue Pavilions, Page 3

  CHAPTER III.

  THE TWO PAVILIONS.

  Captain Barker and Captain Runacles had been friends from boyhood.They had been swished together at Dr. Huskisson's school, hard by theWater Gate; had been packed off to sea in the same ship, andafterwards had more than once smelt powder together. Admiral Blakeand Sir Christopher Mings had turned them into tough fighters by sea;and Margaret Tellworthy had completed their education ashore, andmade them better friends by rejecting both. In an access of misogynythey had planned and built their blue pavilions, beside the Londonroad, vowing to shut themselves up and look on no woman again.This happened but a short time before the first Dutch War, in whichthe one served under Captain Jonings in the _Ruby_ and the other hadthe honour to be cast ashore with Prince Rupert himself, aboard the_Galloper_. Upon the declaration of peace, in the autumn of 1667,they had returned, and, forgetting their vow, laid siege again totheir mistress, who regretted the necessity of refusing them thriceapiece.

  Upon his third rejection, Jeremy Runacles was driven by indignationto offer his hand at once to Mistress Isabel Seaman, sister of thatsame Robert Seaman who, as Mayor of Harwich, admitted Sir AnthonyDeane to the freedom of the Corporation, and had the honour toreceive, in exchange, twelve fire-buckets for the new town-hall.As Mistress Isabel inherited a third of the profits amassed by herfather in the rope-making trade, she was considered a good match.Captain Barker, however, resented the marriage on the ground that shewas out of place in a pavilion expressly designed for a confirmedbachelor. When, after a few months, her husband also began to holdthis view, Mrs. Runacles, instead of reminding him that he, and healone, was to blame for her intrusion, did her best to make matterseasy by quitting this world altogether on St. Bartholomew's Eve,1670, leaving behind her the smallest possible daughter. But as thisdaughter at once required a nurse, the alleviation proved to beinconsiderable--as Mr. Runacles would have delighted to point out tohis wife, had she remained within earshot. As it was, he tookinfinite pains to select a suitable nurse, and forthwith neglectedthe child entirely--a course of conduct which was not so culpable asmight be supposed, since (with the sole exception of Mrs. Runacles)he had never been known to err in choosing a subordinate. In timesof peace he gave himself up to studying the mathematics, in which hewas a proficient, and to the designing of such curious toys assundials, water-clocks, pumps, and the like; which he so multipliedabout the premises, out of pure joy in constructing them, thatSimeon, his body-servant, had much ado to live among the manycontrivances for making his life easier.

  Although the two pavilions were exactly similar in shape andcolour, their gardens differed in some important respects.On Captain Runacles' side of the hedge all was order--trim turfand yews accurately clipped, though stunted by the sea winds.Captain Barker's factotum, Narcissus Swiggs by name, was a slow manwith but a single eye. His orbit in gardening was that of the fourseasons, but he had the misfortune to lag behind them by the space ofthree months; while the two sides of the gravel path, though eachwould be harmonious in itself, could only be enjoyed by shutting oneeye as you advanced from the blue gate to the blue front-door.The particular pride of Captain Barker's garden, however, was acollection of figure-heads set up like statues at regular intervalsaround the hedge. The like of it could be found nowhere.Here, against a background of green, and hanging forward over a greenlawn, were an Indian Chief, a Golden Hind, a Triton, a Centaur, aneffigy of King Charles I., another of Britannia, a third of the godPan, and a fourth of Mr. John Phillipson, sometime alderman andshipowner of Harwich. Though rudely modelled, the majority receivedan extremely lifelike appearance from their colouring, which wasrenewed every now and then under the Captain's own supervision.He asserted them to be beautiful, and his acquaintances were contentwith the qualification that to an unwarned visitor, in an uncertainlight, they might be disconcerting.

  To this paradise Captain Barker introduced his newly adopted son,with the wet-nurse that the Doctor had found for him: and afterexplaining matters to Narcissus--who had heard of the _Wasp's_arrival in port and had been vaguely troubled by a long conversationwith Simeon, next door--installed the new-comers in the two roomsunder the roof of the pavilion and sat down to meditate and wait forthe child's development.

  On the fourth morning after the installation, Narcissus appeared anddemanded a higher wage. This was granted.

  On the sixth morning, Narcissus appeared again.

  "That there nurse--" he began.

  "What of her?"

  "As touching that there nurse, your instructions were to feed herup."

  "Well?"

  "I've fed her up."

  "Well?"

  "She's ate till she's sick."

  The Captain sent post-haste for Dr. Beckerleg.

  "That woman's green with bile," the Doctor announced. "You've beenover-feeding her."

  "I did it to strengthen the child."

  "No doubt; but this sort of woman will eat all that's put before her.Lower her diet."

  This was done. The woman recovered in a couple of days and resignedher place at once, declaring she was starved.

  A second wet-nurse was sought for and found. The child thrived, wasweaned, and began to cut his teeth without any trouble to mention.Twice a day Captain Barker visited his nursery and studied himattentively.

  "I'll own that I'm boggled," he confessed to Dr. Beckerleg."You see, a child is the offspring of his parents."

  "That is undeniable!" the Doctor answered.

  "And science now asserts that he inherits his parents' aptitudes:therefore, to train him _secundum naturam_, I must discover theseaptitudes and educate or check them."

  "Decidedly."

  "Well, but his mother was an angel, and his father the dirtiest scampthat ever cheated the halter."

  "I should advise you to strike a mean. What of the child himself?"

  "He does nothing but eat."

  "It appears to me that, striking a mean between the two extremes youmention, we arrive at mere man. I perceive a great opportunity.Suppose you teach him exactly what Adam was taught."

  "Gardening?"

  "Precisely. He will start with some advantage over Adam, there beingno Eve to complicate matters."

  "He shall be taught gardening," the little Captain decided.

  "The pursuit will accord well with his temperament, which is notablypacific. The child seldom or never cries. At the same time wecannot quite revert to the Garden of Eden. His life will, almostcertainly, bring him more or less into contact with his fellow-men."

  "We must expect that."

  "Therefore, as a mere measure of precaution, it might be as well toinstruct him in the use of the small-sword."

  "I will look after that. There is nothing I shall enjoy morethan teaching him--precaution. We have now, I think, settledeverything--"

  "By no means." The Doctor put a hand into his tail-pocket, and aftersome difficulty with the lining pulled out a small book bound ingreen leather and tied with a green ribbon. "Here," he announced,"is the first volume of a treatise on education."

  "Plague take your books! You're as bad as Jemmy, yonder. I tell youI'll not addle the boy's head with books."

  "But this treatise has the advantage to be unwritten."

  Dr. Beckerleg untied the ribbon, and holding out the book, turnedover a score of pages. They were all blank.

  "Undoubtedly that is an advantage. But then, it hardly seems to meto be a treatise."

  "No: but it will be when you have written it."

  "I?"

  "Certainly, you intend to train Tristram in accordance with nature.On what do we base our knowledge of nature? On experiment andobservation. For many reasons your experiments with the child mustbe limited; but you can observe him daily--hourly, if you like.In this volume you shall record your observations from day to day,_nulla dies sine linea_. It is the first present I make to him, ashis godfather: and in doing so I set you down to write the mostvaluable book in the world, a complete History of a
Human Creature."

  Captain Barker took the volume.

  "But I shall never live to finish it."

  "We hope not. The beauty, however, of this history will be that atany point in its progress we may consult it for Tristram's good, andlearn all that, up to that point, God has given us eyes to see.It may be that in deciding to make him a gardener we have beenmistaken. That book will enlighten us."

  "There's one blessing," said Captain Barker, tucking the book underhis arm; "whatever pursuit the boy may follow, he'll want to followit unmolested. And therefore, in any case, I must teach him to usethe small-sword."

  During the first few months, almost every entry in the Captain'sgreen volume dealt with Tristram's appetite. Nor did this fluctuateenough to make the record exciting. He was a slow, phlegmaticinfant, with red cheeks and an exuberant crop of yellow curls.He slept all night and a good third of the day, and, beyond cuttingten teeth in as many months, exhibited no precocity. Nothingtroubled him, if we except an insatiable hunger. He was weaned withextreme difficulty, and even when promoted to bread and biscuits andmilk puddings, continued to recognise his nurse's past service andreward it with so sincere an affection that the woman accepted anincrease of wage and cheerfully consented to stay on and take care ofhim.

  Captain Barker saw nothing in all this to shake his first resolutionof making the boy a gardener, but rather found in each successive daya reason the more for making haste to learn something abouthorticulture himself, in order that when the time came he might beable to teach it. At length he took counsel with Narcissus Swiggsand unfolded his desire.

  Mr. Swiggs listened sleepily, and as soon as his master had done gavehim a month's notice.

  "What the devil's the use of that?" Captain Barker asked.

  "I thought you weren't satisfied, that's all."

  "If I weren't, I should kick you out without half these words.You've been thinking of yourself all this while."

  "I mostly does."

  "Then don't, while I'm talking." And Captain Barker explained hisscheme a second time.

  "No use," pronounced Mr. Swiggs at the close, shaking his headponderously.

  "Why not?"

  Mr. Swiggs swept his hand before him, summing up the whole landscapewith one majestic semicircle.

  "Where is your soil?" he asked. "And where is your water?Springs?"--he paused a couple of seconds--"There ain't none. Allthat mortal man can do, I does."

  "And what is that?"

  "I does without."

  "But the marsh behind us--"

  "Salt."

  "Narcissus Swiggs, you have been in my service twenty years."

  "Twenty-three."

  "During that time you have once or twice argued with me. I ask you,as a Christian man, to tell me truly what you got by it."

  "Naught."

  "Just so. On this occasion, however, I've listened with greatpatience to all your objections--"

  "Not a tithe of 'em."

  "They're all you'll have a chance of making, at any rate. And Ianswer them thus: If the worst comes to the worst, I'll cover thewhole of this property with a couple of tubs, one to catch rain-waterand t'other filled with garden mould. If the sea rots 'em, I'll havethe whole estate careened, and its bottom pitched and its seamsstopped with oakum. I'll rig up a battery here, and if thewater-butt runs dry you shall blaze away at the guns till you fetchthe rain down, as I've seen it fetched down before now by acannonade. But I mean to have a garden here, and a garden I'llhave."

  Faithful to this resolve, Captain Barker set to work to study the artin which Tristram was to be instructed, and, being by nature a haterof superficiality, determined to begin by acquainting himself witheverything that had been written about the nature and habits ofplants from the earliest ages to that present day. He engaged ayoung demy of Magdalen College, Oxford--son of Mr. Lucas, saddler, ofthe High Street, Harwich--who was much pinched to continue hisstudies at the University, to extract and translate for him whateverAristotle, Theophrastus and others of the Peripatetic school hadwritten on the subject; to search the college libraries forinformation concerning the horticulture of China and Persia, thehanging gardens of Babylon, those planted by the learned Abdullatifat Bagdad, and the European paradises of Naples, Florence, Monza,Mannheim and Leyden to draw up plans and a particular description ofthe Oxford Physic Garden, by Magdalen College, as well as theplantations of Worcester, Trinity and St. John's Colleges; and toransack the bookshops of that seat of learning for such works asmight be procurable in no more difficult tongue than the Latin.In this way Captain Barker became possessed of a vast number ofmonkish herbals, Pliny's _Historia Naturalis_, the _Herbarum VivasEicones_ of Brunsfels, the treatises of Tragus, Fuchsius, Matthiolus,Ebn Beithar and Conrad Gesner, the _Stirpium Adversaria Nova_ and_Plantarum seu Stirpium Historia_ of Matthew Lobel, with the worksof such living botanists as Henshaw, Hook, Grew and Malpighi.As the Captain had no thought of resuming a seafaring life,he felt confident of digesting in time these masses of learning,though it annoyed him at first to find himself capable ofunderstanding but a tenth of what he read. On summer evenings hewould sit out on the lawn, with a folio balanced on his knee, and doviolence to Mr. Swiggs's ears with such learned terms as"Boraginiae," "Cucurbitaceae," "Leguminosae," and as winter drew in,master and man would hold long consultations indoors over certainplants, the portraits of which in the herbals seemed familiar enough,though their habitats often proved, on further reading, to lie nonearer than Arabia Felix or the Spice Islands. Nevertheless, theytook some practical steps. To begin with, the soil of the gardenbefore the Blue Pavilion was entirely changed--Captain Barkerimporting from The Hague no less than thirty tons of the mould mostapproved by the Dutch tulip-growers. A tank, too, was sunk at theback of the building towards the marsh, as a receptacle and reservoirfor rain-water; and by Tristram's fourth birthday his adoptive fatherbegan to build, on the south side of the house, a hibernatory, orgreenhouse, differing in size only from that which Solomon de Caushad the honour to erect for the Elector Palatine in his gardens atHeidelberg.

  Meanwhile Captain Runacles, who watched these operations fromthe other side of the privet hedge and picked up many scraps ofrumour from the antique Simeon, was consumed with scorn and envy.The two friends no longer spoke. At the back of the Fish and Anchor,across the road, there stretched at this time the largest and fairestbowling-green in the east of England--two good acres of smooth turf,stretching almost to the edge of the sea-cliff, on which side thewall was cut down to within a foot of the ground, so that the gossipsas they played, or sat and smoked on the benches about the green,might have a clear view of the ships entering or leaving the harbour,or of others that, hull-down on the horizon, took the sunset on theirsails. Hither it had always been the custom of the two captains torepair at the closing in of the day, and drink their beer together asthey watched this or that vessel more or less narrowly avoiding theshoals below. Nor would they commonly retire, unless the weather wasdirty, until the sea-coal fire was lit above the town-gate and thelesser lighthouse upon the town-green answered with its six candles.Now, however, though they met here as usual, no salutation wasexchanged. On benches as far apart as possible they drank their beerin silence and watched the players. The situation was understood byeverybody at the inn; and at first some awkward attempts were made toheal the breach. But Captain Jeremy's scowl and the light in CaptainJohn's green eyes soon convinced the busybodies that they wereplaying with fire, and likely to burn their fingers.

  In his home Captain Runacles grew restless. To cure this, he set towork and finished a large dial which he had long intended to presentto the Corporation of Harwich, to set up over the town-gate.The Corporation accepted the gift and employed their clerk to write aletter of thanks. The language of this letter was so flattering thatCaptain Runacles made another dial for the Exchange. Being thankedfor this also, he presented an excellent pendulum clock of his ownmaking, to be placed over his Majesty's arms upon the principal gateof the d
ockyard, with a bell above the clock to strike the hours ofthe day, as well as to summon the men to their work; and two moredials, the one for the new town-hall, the other for the almshousesnear St. Helen's Port. Again the Corporation thanked him asprofusely as before, but asked him to be at the expense of affixingthese dials, which, both by their beauty and number, were rapidlymaking Harwich unique among towns of its size. Upon this CaptainRunacles, in a huff, forswore all further munificence, and appliedhimself to the construction of a pair of compasses capable ofdividing an inch into a thousand parts, and to the sinking of a wellin the marsh behind his pavilion. The design of this well wasextremely ingenious. It was worked by means of a wheel, nine feet indiameter, with steps in its circumference like those of a treadmill,and so weighted that by walking upon it, as if up a flight of stairs,a person of eleven or twelve stone would draw up a bucket--twobuckets being so hung, at the ends of a rope surrounding the wheel,that while one ascended, full of water, the other, which was empty,sank down and was refilled. These buckets being too heavy for a manto overturn to pour out the water, he bored a hole in each, andcontrived to plug the holes so that the weight of the bucket as itbumped upon the trough prepared for it at the well's edge jogged outthe plug and sent the water running down the trough into whateverpail or vessel stood ready to catch it. Nor is it astonishing thathe lost his temper when, after these preparations, he found the wellwas not deep enough, and the water as much infected with brine as ifhe had gathered it from the surface of the marsh.

  It was on the day following this disappointment that, while walkingto and fro the length of his turfed garden, between three and four inthe afternoon (for his habits were methodical), he heard a child'svoice lifted on the far side of the party hedge:

  "Dad!"

  "Eh? What is it?" answered the voice of Captain Barker, from his newtulip-bed, across the garden.

  "What thing is this?"

  "A nymph." Captain Runacles guessed by this that the four-year-old'squestion had reference to one of the figure-heads disposed along thehedge.

  "What is a nymph?"

  "A sort of girl."

  "I don't like this sort of girl. She's got no legs."

  "Come over here and look at this tulip."

  "There's a much better sort of girl next door," Tristram continued,unheeding.

  "What do you know about her?" sharply inquired his guardian.

  "Oh, I see her often at the top window, and sometimes out walking.Nurse says we're not to speak, so we put out our tongues at eachother."

  "Tristram, come over here and look--"

  "She's got funny curls, and puts her doll to bed in the window-seatevery night. I like that sort of girl. When I grow up," the youngbashaw proceeded, "I shall have lots of that sort of girl all overthe garden, instead of these wooden things."

  Captain Barker treated this Oriental day-dream with silence.

  "Dad--why am I worth more than all the girls in the world?"

  "Who said you were?"

  "Nurse. She says you think so. She says the big man next door wouldgive his eyes to have a boy like me; but he can't make nothing of agirl, and don't try. Narcissus--"

  "Hallo!" replied the heavy voice of Mr. Swiggs.

  "Have you got a boy?"

  "No, sir: 'nmarried."

  "What did you give your eye for, then?"

  "Losh!" ejaculated Narcissus, as Captain Barker pounced on theyoungster and haled him off to the tulip-bed. The interrogatory wasstayed for a while.

  Captain Runacles, who had caught every word, strode half a dozentimes up and down his grass-plot: then summoned Simeon.

  "Tell nurse to send Miss Sophia down to me."

  Five minutes later a small child of seven appeared in the doorway,and, after hesitating there for a moment, stepped timidly across theturf. Her figure and movements were ungainly and her complexionappeared unnaturally sallow against a dark grey frock. A wet brush,applied two minutes before with inconsiderate zeal, had taken all thecurl out of her dark hair and smoothed it in preposterous bands oneither side of her brow. Her arms hung stiff and perpendicular, andshe fidgeted with her short skirt as she advanced.

  Captain Runacles stopped short in his walk and surveyed her.

  "H'm," he said. "Don't shuffle."

  The little girl looked up, dropped her eyes again quickly, and lether hands hang limp beside her. She was shaking from head to foot.

  "You are a girl."

  "Pardon, father," she mumbled in a low whisper.

  "Next door there lives a small boy. You are in the habit of puttingout your tongue at him. Why?"

  "I--I--"

  Her voice wavered and she broke into a fit of sobbing.

  "Tut, tut! Stop that noise; I haven't scolded you. On the contrary,I sent for you in the hope that you might always be able to put outyour tongue at that boy. Sophia, dry your eyes and attend, please.Would you like to be an accomplished woman?"

  "If it please you, father."

  "Now may the devil fly away with the whole sex! If they _do_ happento desire anything good in itself, it's always to please some man oranother. Sophia, I ask you if, for your own sake, and for the sakeof knowledge, you will be my pupil; if you care to pursue--" CaptainRunacles checked himself, not because he had any idea that he wastalking over the head of a girl of seven, but because a generalproposition had occurred to him.

  "Woman's notion of a pursuit," he said, clasping his hands behind himand regarding his daughter's tear-stained face with severity--"woman's notion of a pursuit is entirely passive. Her only idea isto be pursued, and even so her mind runs on ultimate capture.Sophia," he continued, himself forgetting for the moment his view ofknowledge as _sui causa optandum_, "would you like to please me bylicking that boy across the hedge into a cocked-hat?"

  "But--oh, father!"

  "What is it?"

  She could not answer for a moment. Nor did he know that she besoughtGod every night to change her into a boy that she might find somegrace in his sight.

  "You have one advantage," said her father coldly, as she struggled tokeep down her tears. "Your rival across the hedge is in a fair way tobe turned into a fool. We will begin to-morrow. In a week or so Ishall be able to pronounce some opinion on your capacity. Now runindoors to your nurse--why, bless my soul!"

  The child had trotted forward, and, taking his hand, kissed itpassionately. He looked into her face, and, finding it white as asheet, lifted her in his arms and carried her into the pavilion.