The Children.

manner of charms with a lavish hand. Here are found blue rivers and bluer skies, and pale splendours of moonlit nights and exquisite dawns and fair noons. Here Nature runs the whole gamut of beauty—through the laughing loveliness of spring mornings, the capricious sweetness of summer days, when the landscape hides itself, like a sulky beauty, in white mists and silvery rains, to the cold glory of the winter nights; there is no discord nor anything unlovely. But in the harvest time it is most gracious and love-compelling. There is something ineffably gay in harvest, and the n*****s, those children of the sun, sang as merrily and as naturally as the grasshoppers that chirped in the green heart of the woods. The long row of black reapers swung their scythes in rhythm, their voices rising and falling in cadence with the cutting of the wheat. The head man led the singing as he led the reapers. After them came a crowd of n***o women, gathering up the wheat and tying it into bundles—it was as primitive as the harvesting in the days of Ruth and Boaz. It was not work, it was rather play. The song of the reapers had an accompaniment of shrill laughter from the women, who occasionally joined in the singing:- When I was young, I used to wait, Behind the old master's hand & plate, And pass the bottle when he finished it, And brush away that old blue tail. The men’s voices rolled this out sonorously and melodiously. Then came the chorus, in which the high sweet voices of the women soared like the larks and the thrushes:- Jim, crack & corn, I drink beer, Jim, crack & corn, I drink beer, Jim, crack & corn, I drink beer, Old marster’s gone away!” the blackberry-bushes and the grass and undergrowth. And in a shady place under a hawthorn bush sat a black-eyed little boy with a dog across his knees. They had for company a Latin book, which the boy made a lazy pretence of studying, wearing all the time a sulky scowl. But when he found that he could put the book to a better use than studying, by propping the dog’s head upon it so as to bring the tawny, intelligent eyes upon a level with his own, the scowl cleared away. His face, then, though full of archness and sweetness, was not altogether happy. He gazed into the dog’s eyes wistfully, for, although many people gazed upon him kindly, no creature in[4] the wide world ever gazed upon him so affectionately as this one poor brute of a dog. —you always have him about.” “You shouldn’t drat him, Mr. Bulstrode,” answered Lewis, “because old Service likes Latin better than I do. He has scarcely blinked since I put the book in his paw.” “Dogs do like Latin,” answered Bulstrode, with a wink; “let me show you, sir.” Lewis burst out laughing at the idea that dogs had any taste for the classics; and the dog, withdrawing his head, showed his teeth in a snarl. “Snarl away, my friend,” said Bulstrode jovially, seating himself, with awkward comfort, on the grass. “I lay I’ll make you change your tune. Do you know—” Bulstrode’s pronunciation was not equal to the music of his voice, and he said “D’ye know.”[5] “D’ye know, boy, that the two great powers to charm women and dogs are the eye and the voice? Now, as for my eyes—Lord, I never had any charm in ’em, and the life I’ve led wasn’t calculated to give ’em any. But see if that damned dog doesn’t stop his growling when I give him some first-class Latin.” Bulstrode took the book and began to read sonorously one of the longer odes. Lewis, whose black eyes were wonderfully expressive, was laughing to himself, the more so when, as Bulstrode rolled out the lines of rhythmic beauty, old Service ceased his growling and appeared to be listening gravely. Bulstrode put out his hand and drew the dog toward him, and in a little while Service was resting his head on Bulstrode’s knee and blinking placidly and solemnly into his face. Skelton now, shut up in that musty library yonder”—jerking his thumb toward the Deerchase house—“grinding away at his system of philosophy; and here am I, the true philosopher, enjoying this infernally glorious harvest and these picturesque black people, that I never can get used to, no matter how long I live in this odd country. D’ye know what Kant says? Of course you don’t; so I’ll tell you. He says that two men, like him over yonder”—Bulstrode jerked his thumb again over his shoulder—“and your humble servant, engaged in pursuing abstract philosophy, are like two idiots who want a drink of milk; so one milks a post, while the other holds a sieve. That’s philosophy, my dear boy.” Bulstrode slapped his hand down on his knee as he brought out the “never” in a ringing voice; the dog gave a single loud yelp, and Lewis Pryor jumped up in surprise. “You don’t mean it, Mr. Bulstrode!” he cried[7] breathlessly, for he had been bred upon the expectation that a great work was being then written in the Deerchase library by Mr. Skelton, and when it was given to the world the planet would stop revolving for a time at least. Bulstrode had an ungovernable indiscreetness, and, the string of his tongue being loosed, he proceeded to discuss Skelton’s affairs with great freedom, and without regarding in the least the youth of his companion. fly. “Mrs. Blair, you know, jilted the Great Panjandrum fifteen years ago, and ran away with Blair; and they’ll pay for it with every acre of land and stick of timber they’ve got in the world!” Lewis pondered a moment or two. “But I thought Mr. Skelton and the Blairs were so friendly and polite, and—” “O Lord, yes. Deuced friendly and polite![8] That’s the way with gentlefolks—genteel brutality—shaking hands and smiling one at the other, and all the time a knife up the sleeve. Don’t understand gentlefolks myself.” This rather shocked Lewis, who was accustomed to hearing everybody he knew called a gentleman, and the title insisted upon tenaciously. see, as long as I’m sober I remember the mews, and my father in his black weepers driving the hearse, and the delight I used to feel when the young sprigs of the nobility and gentry at the university would ask me to their wine parties to hear me spout Ovid and Anacreon, for they knew I wasn’t a gentleman. But when I’m drunk, I only remember that I was a ‘double first’; that every Greek and Latinist in England knows Wat Bulstrode’s name; and when this precious philosopher[9] Skelton was scouring the universities to find a man to help him out with his—ha! ha!—great work, he could not for love or money get any better man than ragged, drunken, out-at-elbows Wat Bulstrode. I tell you, boy, when I’m drunk I’m a king! I’m more—I’m a gentleman! There is something in Greek which provokes an intolerable thirst. You say that Latin is dry; so it is, so it is, my boy—very dry and musty!” and then Bulstrode, in a rich, sweet, rollicking voice, as delicious as his speaking voice, trolled out the fag end of a song that echoed and re-echoed through the green woods:- I went to Strasburg, when I got drunk, With the most learned Professor Brunck. I went to Wortz, where I got more drunken, With the more learned Professor Bruncken. those of the boy standing by him. He was in riding dress, and held a little whip in his[11] hand; he had ridden out to the harvest field, and then dismounted and left his horse while he walked through the stubble and clover. He had overheard much that Bulstrode had last said, and, in spite of his invincible composure, his face showed a silent rage and displeasure. Bulstrode and Lewis knew it by the sultry gleam of his black eyes. Bulstrode instantly lost his air of independence, and all of his efforts to retain it only resulted in a half-cowed swagger. “Bulstrode,” said Skelton in a cool voice, “how often have I recommended you not to discuss me or my affairs?” “Don’t know, I’m sure,” blustered Bulstrode, his hands still in his pockets. Both of them had realised the boy’s presence. As Bulstrode really loved him, he hated to be cowed before Lewis. The boy was looking downwards, his eyes on the ground; the dog nestled close to him. Both Skelton and Bulstrode remained silent for a moment or two. “You know,” said Skelton after a pause, “I am not a man to threaten.” “Yes, by Jove, I do,” answered Bulstrode, breaking into a complaining whine. “I don’t know why it is, Skelton, that you can always bully me; unless it’s because you’re a gentleman, and I ain’t. You dashed patricians always have us plebes under the hack—always, always. The fellows that went ahorseback were always better than those who went afootback. Sometimes, by George, I wish I had been born a gentleman!” Bulstrode’s collapse was so rapid and complete that wrath could not hold against him. Skelton[12] merely said something about an unbridled tongue being a firebrand, and then, turning to Lewis, said: “The harvest is the black man’s holiday. Come with me, and we will see him enjoy it.” Skelton’s tone to Lewis was peculiar; although his words were cold, and his manner reserved, his voice expressed a strange fondness. Lewis felt sorry for Bulstrode, standing alone and ashamed, and after he had gone a little way by Skelton’s side he turned back and ran toward Bulstrode, holding out his book. “Won’t you have my Horace for company, Mr. Bulstrode?” he cried; “though I believe you know every word in it. But a book is company—when one can’t get a dog, that is.” awe of Skelton. He could not altogether make out his own feelings in the matter. He knew of no relationship between them, and thought he knew he was the son of Thomas Pryor, in his lifetime a tutor of Skelton’s. He called Skelton “Mr. Skelton,” and never remembered to have had a caress from him in all his life. But he never looked into Skelton’s eyes, which were precisely like his own, that he did not feel as if some strong and secret bond united them. Meanwhile, Bulstrode stood in his careless attitude, looking after them, his eyes fixed on Skelton’s straight, well set-up figure. “There you go,” he apostrophised. “Most men think they could advise the Almighty; but you, Richard Skelton, think yourself the Lord Almighty Himself! Unbridled tongue, indeed! I lay odds that I’ll make you write that sixth section of your Introduction over again before this day is out. I know a weak spot in your theory that knocks that chapter into flinders, and I’ve been saving it up for just such an occasion as this. But go your way, and I’ll go mine.” “Fair and free is the king’s highway!” he sang, loudly and sweetly.