Mistress Masham's Repose Page 6

  In spite of Maria’s efforts to keep him talking about the jackdaw bomber, which was an idea that interested her, the Schoolmaster seemed to be ashamed of it, perhaps because it had been a failure, and was more anxious to lecture about his politics.

  There were few laws, he said, but a good deal of public opinion, and there was no death penalty. There were no wars, owing to the fortunate circumstance that there was nobody to have a war against. Writers and bards and musicians were rightly regarded as mechanics, like carpenters, and were valued, like carpenters, for the soundness of their work. There was no revealed religion, because it had been destroyed by the War of Eggs. The mothers were considered to be the heads of their families. They believed that the most important thing in the world was to find out what one liked doing, and then to do it. Thus the people who liked being hunters, were hunters; those who liked fishing, fished; and anybody who did not like doing anything at all was supported by the others with the greatest care and commiseration, for they considered him to be the most unfortunate of mortals.

  They had three meals a night. They went to bed at dawn and rose at sunset. Their children were never taught a word about Algebra, but were, on the contrary, educated in the various sciences of life: that is to say, in Natural History and in their own History and in Oeconomy and in anything else which dealt with being alive. They were never told that their elders were better than themselves.

  Maria could not help feeling that these things sounded wonderful, but she wanted most of all to see the frigate.

  The usual way to reach it was along one of the secret paths through the undergrowth of brambles. Unfortunately, it was a path which she could not follow. So they went down to the punt and sculled round the island, to reach it from outside.

  It was beautifully hidden.

  The channel leading to its harbor was covered with the leaves of water lilies, just like the other lilies round the island, but these leaves were without stems. They were merely flat plates floating on the water, and were renewed once a week. When the frigate was to sail, they were dragged aside.

  At the end of the channel there was a bluff of land which masked the dog-legged entrance to the harbor, and the bushes grew above. She had been round the island many a time without discovering it. It was only after following the channel, under her Schoolmaster’s directions, that she raised the harbor mouth.

  There lay the frigate in her quiet pool. She had gun ports but no guns, no foundry nor gunpowder being available on the island; her cordage was of plaited horsehair stolen from the horses in the Jubilee Field; her canvas was the same as the presentation handkerchief; her Admiral was the tall young husband who had tried to chase her when she first secured his wife and baby; and all the sailors, as a compliment, had gone down by the other path, to man the shrouds.

  CHAPTER IX

  IT was a week after seeing the frigate for the first time that Maria was invited to witness a grand whale hunt, at night. It was not only safer to go by night, when Miss Brown was in bed, but also it was more natural to see the Lilliputians at this season, because they slept by day.

  Maria waited in her bedroom, in a fever of impatience to be gone, but she knew that her governess and the Vicar were sitting in Neptune’s Temple, over an after-dinner cup of coffee. She could see their motionless figures in the moonlight through her window, two small dots squatting under the silver columns, for the Temple had been built to finish one of the Vistas from the palace itself. What made it worse was that the whales of Lilliput were pike, and these fish would only take the bait at mysterious periods, which they chose for themselves. One of these periods had been reported to be passing that evening, for the People had noticed the small roach skipping from the water to save their lives, which was an infallible sign that pike were feeding. They had promised to catch a big one for her, if they could, for there was a famous monster of twenty pounds, which had been seen in the deepest hole. She walked up and down the linoleum of her bedroom, afraid to lie down for fear that she might go to sleep, and wished her pastor and mistress at the bottom of the lake.

  The Vicar was a constant visitor at Malplaquet, generally for tea. In the afternoon she would meet him in the grounds, humming his way from the Vicarage, his body stiff, his hands behind his back, moving at a slow and steady pace with his lips pursed up in disapproval. It was a mystery to discover why he came, for he seldom spoke to Miss Brown when he was there, and did not enjoy what he ate.

  At tea they would sit on either side of the fireplace in the North-northwest Drawing Room, with one of those pagoda-like cake stands between them, and a low table with the silver tea things. Sometimes they said nothing. At most they said eight sentences: “This bread is cut too thick,” “I will speak to Cook,” “More tea?”, “Thanks,” “Cake?”, “Thank you,” “The child was late for luncheon again today,” “Inconsiderate.” Miss Brown used to eat three cream buns greedily, with a fork, but the Vicar used to choose the nastiest cake on the pagoda, apparently to spite himself. After tea, he would walk mysteriously for hours through the palace rooms.

  So there they were on the steps of Neptune’s Temple, in the lovely moonlight, while the precious time was slipping away. It was the famous Temple in which Dr. Johnson had written the fourth stanza of his immortal Pomphoilugoppaphlasmagoria, the one which begins “Ponder the aweful Hippopotamos”—but little they cared for this. It was June and the nightingales of Malplaquet were in full voice. They did not hear them. Six fluted columns rose on either side, bearing the pediment on which Neptune, in high relief, was awarding a wreath of seaweed to Viscount Torrington, after the battle of Cape Passaro, amid the applause of several dolphins. They had never looked at it. Before them, on the silver sward of the Arcadian Valley, the thousand wild rabbits of Malplaquet were nibbling and hopping forward and nibbling again, while the owls hunted food for their babies, gliding with soundless feather. The Vicar and Miss Brown stared out with oyster or pebble eye, to where the towering pillar of the Newton Monument closed the sweet curve of the valley with its slender finger, glittering like salt under the moon; but they did not see this either.

  They were thinking about Maria, just as she was thinking about them, and they had reason to do so. There was something which they did not want her to find out, but which they wanted to find, or rather to alter, for themselves. They did not like the idea of her talks with the Professor—who was an authority on ancient laws and enjoyed nothing better than a good bout of nolle prosequi—because their mystery was connected with a missing parchment, concerning the inheritance of Malplaquet. The Vicar was humming softly.

  “It is a question of mort d’ancestre,” he said at last.

  “No child could understand it.”

  “She will come of age.”

  “Not for many years.”

  “But by talking to the old man, Miss Brown?”

  “I shall forbid it.”

  “M-m-m-m-m.”

  “More coffee?”

  A long time afterward the Vicar said: “You should watch her.” Then he stood up heavily, and paced off sullenly to bed.

  Maria crept down the moonlit corridor, as soon as her governess was safely asleep. Down the various staircases she went, creaking on the bare boards of the less important ones, patting on the bare marble of the company ones, passing from one bar of moonlight to another. On the ground floor she took a short cut through the Grand Ballroom, where her feet shuffled in the fallen plaster from the Adam ceiling, and the three-ton chandeliers, too big to sell, gave out a mysterious note of crystal; through the Third Duke’s Library, which had a monstrous plaster Garter on the ceiling, in gold relief, in celebration of the Order of the Garter which that duke had at last obtained after twenty years of chicanery—and which he had subsequently worn round his neck, even while bathing at Brighton; through the Main Dining Room she went, which had once housed a mahogany table exactly as long as a cricket pitch; through the Little Drawing Room, where the two Grinling Gibbons mantelpieces had been wrenched fro
m the walls to sell, leaving caverns which looked frightening at night; and through the Absolutely Insignificant Morning Room, which was a room with only one fireplace, and that was plain marble. Maria passed from dark to light, from light to dark, down the rows of shuttered windows, until she began to look like a cinema film, flickering badly. She went too slowly for the Persistence of Vision. At last she came to the great double doors which led to the South Front, hauled them open enough to let herself through, and appeared in full moonshine between two colossal stone caryatids, with an antique frieze, stolen by the Fourth Duke from Herculaneum, thirty feet above her head, and the forty-five marble steps which led to the Terrace stretched below her feet.

  She had been thinking.

  Whatever the Professor says, she thought, I don’t see why I should not give presents to the People, since they give presents to me.

  She had found out that the silk handkerchiefs had been distributed by tickets in a lottery, since there had only been enough material to make dresses for about twenty women. The rest had been forced to go without.

  If I were rich, she thought, and could afford to live in some respectable little cottage with a bit of money in hand, how I would like to dress them all! I would give the men old-fashioned dresses like the ones their ancestors had: blue coats and canary waistcoats and white breeches and silk stockings and tiny swords! And the women should have flowered gowns of the same century, and I would get coaches made for them which the rats could draw, or even sedan chairs, and all would look as bright and beautiful as a bed of flowers....

  Alas, Maria only had three shillings and ninepence half-penny left. It would not even buy enough handkerchiefs to dress the other women.

  One thing, she thought, cheering up, is that I can scrounge things for them from Cook. An old saucepan with the handle broken off might be of value to them, as a boiler for the farm animals. I must think of all the broken things which are of no more use to humans, but which might be treasures to the People: things like used toothbrushes, for brooms, or jam jars for barrels, or even an ounce or two of salt and pepper, which would go far and scarcely be missed. But the three and ninepence halfpenny must be kept, for a special present, and what is that to be?

  Presents can be of two kinds, she decided, flickering once more as she trotted down the chestnut avenue: Either they can be useful, or else ornamental. How I wish I had some real money, say a pound!

  She was still considering as she sculled the punt toward the Repose, and had only got so far as this: A useful present would be to buy them a pair of guinea-pigs to breed draught horses, or even for meat, while an ornamental present would be to purchase Christmas cards—so long as they were not sloppy, but showed pictures of sailing ships, or of eighteenth-century coaches in the snow, or of anything else which the People could recognize from their Annals—and to frame these in passe partout, so that they could be hung round the walls of the council room. In the middle, they would hang the ancient portrait of the Emperor, with his Austrian lip and costume partly Asiatick, party European. They might look grand by rushlight, hoped Maria.

  And then she thought again: Or I could teach them to grow potatoes, like Sir Walter Raleigh. You could probably get plenty of potatoes for three and nine.

  The People were relieved when she arrived, for they had almost given her up.

  The frigate was on the lake—how beautiful she looked, too, with her white sails spread in the silver light—and the sailors were at their stations, and they were only waiting for their guest to let the expedition begin.

  The sad thing was that she could not go in the ship. It was hardly five feet long. However, they advised her to stand in the punt at the end of the larch, to watch from there, and the Schoolmaster offered to be carried in the barrel, so that he could explain the maneuvers.

  The Quincunx was so overgrown that it was only in the deepest parts, near the middle, that it was free from weeds—for most water weeds, except duckweed, need roots in the bottom, and these cannot grow below a certain depth. It was in the largest of these holes that the big pike lived, and it was consequently to these latitudes that the frigate sailed. When she had got there, a live bait with the appropriate hooks was thrown over from the bows, and the frigate herself sailed to the nearest lilies, where she anchored in deep water. The live bait was on an eight-ply cable of horsehair, which came in through a hawser in the bows and went over a drum which could be braked.

  She had scarcely anchored, and the poor live bait was still wriggling in a baitly way, when there was a snap and swirl in the water. The drum was allowed to run out while Maria’s Schoolmaster excitedly counted ten; then the brake was thrown into gear and the drum crew rapidly began to wind against it, to drive the hooks home. After a dozen of these turns, they put her out of gear and used the brake.

  The whole frigate went ahead two or three feet from her moorings—the Schoolmaster said that it was thirty-five glumgluffs—and began yawing one way or the other as the monster tugged. It was given a freedom on the brake when it struggled too hard, but at any sign of weakening the brake was increased, while, if it lay motionless for a moment, the crew began to wind.

  The Admiral directed from the poop.

  It was a ticklish business in many ways, for the pike was really being played, not from the frigate, but from her anchor. There were two holds which needed attention, instead of one.

  After the first minute, the Schoolmaster said sadly that it was not the big pike. He had been able to tell from the splashing, to some extent, for the big one would have been more sullen, and also from the working of the ship. He added that he thought she would prove to be of about four hundred snorrs, or nine pounds, at which weight they were usually fierce.

  The real danger was that the pike’s teeth might cut the cable. They needed a metal cable at the end, like a fisherman’s trace, but there was no suitable wire to be found in the Park. The barbed wire used by the farmer who rented the land was much too thick.

  When the monster had been played for about two minutes, it began to give in. It was towed slowly to the ship’s side, made one more dart to get away when it saw its captors, was brought in again, and this time actually rolled right over in the water before it lay on its side, looking vanquished. It was far from being so. Pikes have great vitality, with which they live for hours even after they are on the bank, and the real difficulties of whaling were only beginning.

  As soon as the gleaming body was stretched beside the frigate, five picked harpooners set to work. The harpoons were driven deep into its back at intervals of six inches or so, and, by means of the ropes attached to these, it was drawn firmly to the ship’s side. Then the Admiral came down from the poop—he always took the last hazard himself—and went over the side on a rope ladder with the sixth harpoon. His business was to drive it through the backbone, near the head.

  Now the pike had grown furious as each harpoon drove home, threshing with a great clap on the water at each thrust. If the Admiral could find a joint in the backbone at the first blow, its spinal column would be cut and the danger would be over. If not, there was a good chance of his being thrown into the water by the commotion, where he would run the risk of being snapped up by the pike itself, for these ferocious creatures would grab at food even as they were dying, and would sometimes seize the bait again, if they had escaped from it.

  He chose his place and thrust. The huge body, more than half the length of the ship, bent like a bow, opening its wide jaws, with row on row of skinny teeth. Then it lay slack.

  Three of the harpoon cables were drawn up on either side of the vessel, and the sinking body was secured by these, under her bottom, before she sailed for home. The passage of water through its gills made the fish lively as she sailed, but the severed spine prevented it from making a flurry. All it could do was to clash its jaws, which, as the Schoolmaster told Maria, was often felt through the ship’s fabric.

  In the meantime, the cables were sent ashore. A team of rats, and twenty men on each cable
, dragged the still gnashing body through the shallow water to the bank, where the flensing could begin. The Admiral drove his rapier, tempered from one of the cupola nails, into its brain.

  Maria paddled round, to see the capture brought in. She wanted to help with the victory, and was so excited that she nearly trod on the haulers, as the rats strained wisely at the seven ropes, under whips which cracked with a noise she could have made between her finger nails. She cried: “Here, give it to me! Let me pull! I can get him out!” She snatched several of the cables to tug, and each one broke in her hand. She was too big for them. The many small fists could control the horsehair, which only snapped in hers. The dead fish sank heavily beneath the water-lilies, and was lost. The precious harpoons would have to be dived for. She stopped when she saw what she had done, and the People tried to be polite.

  CHAPTER X

  MARIA’S misfortunes with the Island of Repose dated from the night on which she had interfered with the whale hunt. Although she was decent, as was shown by her offer to carry the Schoolmaster in the barrel, she was still young. The more she adored and wondered at the doings of her six-inch People, the more she wanted to take control of them. She wanted to play with them, like lead soldiers, and even dreamed of being their queen. She began to forget what the Professor had said, about not being an owner.

  But the Lilliputians were not toys. They were grown up, however short they were, and they were civilized. Lilliput and Blefuscu had been countries of high civilization; and so had England been in the eighteenth century, when they had been brought to it by Captain Biddel. They had painters, who did wonderful formal pictures of old-fashioned shepherds and shepherdesses in pannier skirts and ribbons, painted on stretched puff-ball skins. They had poets who still wrote the original meters of their native land. These latter had found the heroic couplet too cumbrous for them in English, so they wrote the smaller verses of the other language: a highly polished form of poetry. The first words of the line rhymed as well as the last ones, and, as there were seldom more than two words in a line, or four lines in a poem, it was not easy to write. This was one of their love poems: