Джером К. Джером
They and I
“I had got everything finished,” answered Robina. “The duck was in the oven with the pie; the peas and potatoes were boiling nicely. I was feeling hot, and I thought I could trust Veronica to watch the things for awhile. She promised not to play King Alfred.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You know,” said Robina – “King Alfred and the cakes. I left her one afternoon last year when we were on the houseboat to watch some buns. When I came back she was sitting in front of the fire, wrapped up in the table-cloth, with Dick’s banjo on her knees and a cardboard crown upon her head. The buns were all burnt to a cinder. As I told her, if I had known what she wanted to be up to I could have given her some extra bits of dough to make believe with. But oh, no! if you please, that would not have suited her at all. It was their being real buns, and my being real mad, that was the best part of the game. She is an uncanny child.”
“What was the game this time?” I asked.
“I don’t think it was intended for a game – not at first,” answered Robina. “I went into the wood to pick some flowers for the table. I was on my way back, still at some distance from the house, when I heard quite a loud report. I took it for a gun, and wondered what anyone would be shooting in July. It must be rabbits, I thought. Rabbits never seem to have any time at all to themselves, poor things. And in consequence I did not hurry myself. It must have been about twenty minutes later when I came in sight of the house. Veronica was in the garden deep in confabulation with an awful-looking boy, dressed in nothing but rags. His face and hands were almost black. You never saw such an object. They both seemed very excited. Veronica came to meet me; and with a face as serious as mine is now, stood there and told me the most barefaced pack of lies you ever heard. She said that a few minutes after I had gone, robbers had come out of the wood – she talked about them as though there had been hundreds – and had with the most awful threats demanded to be admitted into the house. Why they had not lifted the latch and walked in, she did not explain. It appeared this cottage was their secret rendezvous, where all their treasure lies hidden. Veronica would not let them in, but shouted for help: and immediately this awful-looking boy, to whom she introduced me as ‘Sir Robert’ something or another, had appeared upon the scene; and then there had followed – well, I have not the patience to tell you the whole of the rigmarole they had concocted. The upshot of it was that the robbers, defeated in their attempt to get into the house, had fired a secret mine, which had exploded in the kitchen. If I did not believe them I could go into the kitchen and see for myself. Say what I would, that is the story they both stuck to. It was not till I had talked to Veronica for a quarter of an hour, and had told her that you would most certainly communicate with the police, and that she would have to convince a judge and jury of the truth of her story, that I got any sense at all out of her.”
“What was the sense you did get out of her?” I asked.
“Well, I am not sure even now that it is the truth,” said Robina – “the child does not seem to possess a proper conscience. What she will grow up like, if something does not happen to change her, it is awful to think.”
“I don’t want to appear a hustler,” I said, “and maybe I am mistaken in the actual time, but it feels to me like hours since I asked you how the catastrophe really occurred.”
“I am telling you,” explained Robina, hurt. “She was in the kitchen yesterday when I mentioned to Harry’s mother, who had looked in to help me wash up, that the kitchen chimney smoked: and then she said – ”
“Who said?” I asked.
“Why, she did,” answered Robina, “Harry’s mother. She said that very often a pennyworth of gunpowder – ”
“Now at last we have begun,” I said. “From this point I may be able to help you, and we will get on. At the word ‘gunpowder’ Veronica pricked up her ears. The thing by its very nature would appeal to Veronica’s sympathies. She went to bed dreaming of gunpowder. Left in solitude before the kitchen fire, other maidens might have seen pictured in the glowing coals, princes, carriages, and balls. Veronica saw visions of gunpowder. Who knows? – perhaps even she one day will have gunpowder of her own! She looks up from her reverie: a fairy godmamma in the disguise of a small boy – it was a small boy, was it not?”
“Rather a nice little boy, he gave me the idea of having been, originally,” answered Robina; “the child, I should say, of well-to-do parents. He was dressed in a little Lord Fauntleroy suit – or rather, he had been.”
“Did Veronica know how he was – anything about him?” I asked.
“Nothing that I could get out of her,” replied Robina; “you know her way – how she chums on with anybody and everybody. As I told her, if she had been attending to her duties instead of staring out of the window, she would not have seen him. He happened to be crossing the field just at the time.”
“A boy born to ill-luck, evidently,” I observed. “To Veronica of course he seemed like the answer to a prayer. A boy would surely know where gunpowder could be culled.”
“They must have got a pound of it from somewhere,” said Robina, “judging from the result.”
“Any notion where they got it from?” I asked.
“No,” explained Robina. “All Veronica can say is that he told her he knew where he could get some, and was gone about ten minutes. Of course they must have stolen it – even that did not seem to trouble her.”
“It came to her as a gift from the gods, Robina,” I explained. “I remember how I myself used to feel about these things, at ten. To have enquired further would have seemed to her impious. How was it they were not both killed?”
“Providence,” was Robina’s suggestion: it seemed to be the only one possible. “They lifted off one of the saucepans and just dropped the thing in – fortunately wrapped up in a brown paper parcel, which gave them both time to get out of the house. At least Veronica got clear off. For a change it was not she who fell over the mat, it was the boy.”
I looked again into the kitchen; then I returned and put my hands on Robina’s shoulders. “It is a most amusing incident – as it has turned out,” I said.
“It might have turned out rather seriously,” thought Robina.
“It might,” I agreed: “she might be lying upstairs.”
“She is a wicked, heartless child,” said Robina; “she ought to be punished.”
I lent Robina my handkerchief; she never has one of her own.
“She is going to be punished,” I said; “I will think of something.”
“And so ought I,” said Robina; “it was my fault, leaving her, knowing what she’s like. I might have murdered her. She doesn’t care. She’s stuffing herself with cakes at this very moment.”
“They will probably give her indigestion,” I said. “I hope they do.”
“Why didn’t you have better children?” sobbed Robina; “we are none of us any good to you.”
“You are not the children I wanted, I confess,” I answered.
“That’s a nice kind thing to say!” retorted Robina indignantly.
“I wanted such charming children,” I explained – “my idea of charming children: the children I had imagined for myself. Even as babies you disappointed me.”
Robina looked astonished.
“You, Robina, were the most disappointing,” I complained. “Dick was a boy. One does not calculate upon boy angels; and by the time Veronica arrived I had got more used to things. But I was so excited when you came. The Little Mother and I would steal at night into the nursery. ‘Isn’t it wonderful,’ the Little Mother would whisper, ‘to think it all lies hidden there: the little tiresome child, the sweetheart they will one day take away from us, the wife, the mother?’ ‘I am glad it is a girl,’ I would whisper; ‘I shall be able to watch her grow into womanhood. Most of the girls one comes across in books strike one as not perhaps quite true to life. It will give me such an advantage having a girl of my own. I shall keep a note-book, with a lock and key, devoted to her.’”
“Did you?” asked Robina.
“I put it away,” I answered; “there were but a few pages written on. It came to me quite early in your life that you were not going to be the model heroine. I was looking for the picture baby, the clean, thoughtful baby, with its magical, mystical smile. I wrote poetry about you, Robina, but you would slobber and howl. Your little nose was always having to be wiped, and somehow the poetry did not seem to fit you. You were at your best when you were asleep, but you would not even sleep when it was expected of you. I think, Robina, that the fellows who draw the pictures for the comic journals of the man in his night-shirt with the squalling baby in his arms must all be single men. The married man sees only sadness in the design. It is not the mere discomfort. If the little creature were ill or in pain we should not think of that. It is the reflection that we, who meant so well, have brought into the world just an ordinary fretful human creature with a nasty temper of its own: that is the tragedy, Robina. And then you grew into a little girl. I wanted the soulful little girl with the fathomless eyes, who would steal to me at twilight and question me concerning life’s conundrums.
“But I used to ask you questions,” grumbled Robina, “and you would tell me not to be silly.”
“Don’t you understand, Robina?” I answered. “I am not blaming you, I am blaming myself. We are like children who plant seeds in a garden, and then are angry with the flowers because they are not what we expected. You were a dear little girl; I see that now, looking back. But not the little girl I had in my mind. So I missed you, thinking of the little girl you were not. We do that all our lives, Robina. We are always looking for the flowers that do not grow, passing by, trampling underfoot, the blossoms round about us. It was the same with Dick. I wanted a naughty boy. Well, Dick was naughty, no one can say that he was not. But it was not my naughtiness. I was prepared for his robbing orchards. I rather hoped he would rob orchards. All the high-spirited boys in books rob orchards, and become great men. But there were not any orchards handy. We happened to be living in Chelsea at the time he ought to have been robbing orchards: that, of course, was my fault. I did not think of that. He stole a bicycle that a lady had left outside the tea-room in Battersea Park, he and another boy, the son of a common barber, who shaved people for three-halfpence. I am a Republican in theory, but it grieved me that a son of mine could be drawn to such companionship. They contrived to keep it for a week – till the police found it one night, artfully hidden behind bushes. Logically, I do not see why stealing apples should be noble and stealing bicycles should be mean, but it struck me that way at the time. It was not the particular steal I had been hoping for.
“I wanted him wild; the hero of the book was ever in his college days a wild young man. Well, he was wild. It cost me three hundred pounds to keep that breach of promise case out of Court; I had never imagined a breach of promise case. Then he got drunk, and bonneted a bishop in mistake for a ‘bull-dog.’ I didn’t mind the bishop. That by itself would have been wholesome fun. But to think that a son of mine should have been drunk!”
“He has never been drunk since,” pleaded Robina. “He had only three glasses of champagne and a liqueur: it was the liqueur – he was not used to it. He got into the wrong set. You cannot in college belong to the wild set without getting drunk occasionally.”
“Perhaps not,” I admitted. “In the book the wild young man drinks without ever getting drunk. Maybe there is a difference between life and the book. In the book you enjoy your fun, but contrive somehow to escape the licking: in life the licking is the only thing sure. It was the wild young man of fiction I was looking for, who, a fortnight before the exam., ties a wet towel round his head, drinks strong tea, and passes easily with honours. He tried the wet towel, he tells me. It never would keep in its place. Added to which it gave him neuralgia; while the strong tea gave him indigestion. I used to picture myself the proud, indulgent father lecturing him for his wildness – turning away at some point in the middle of my tirade to hide a smile. There was never any smile to hide. I feel that he has behaved disgracefully, wasting his time and my money.”
“He is going to turn over a new leaf;” said Robina: “I am sure he will make an excellent farmer.”
“I did not want a farmer,” I explained; “I wanted a Prime Minister. Children, Robina, are very disappointing. Veronica is all wrong. I like a mischievous child. I like reading stories of mischievous children: they amuse me. But not the child who puts a pound of gunpowder into a red-hot fire, and escapes with her life by a miracle.”
“And yet, I daresay,” suggested Robina, “that if one put it into a book – I mean that if you put it into a book, it would read amusingly.”
“Likely enough,” I agreed. “Other people’s troubles can always be amusing. As it is, I shall be in a state of anxiety for the next six months, wondering, every moment that she is out of my sight, what new devilment she is up to. The Little Mother will be worried out of her life, unless we can keep it from her.”
“Children will be children,” murmured Robina, meaning to be comforting.
“That is what I am complaining of, Robina. We are always hoping that ours won’t be. She is full of faults, Veronica, and they are not always nice faults. She is lazy – lazy is not the word for it.”
“She is lazy,” Robina was compelled to admit.
“There are other faults she might have had and welcome,” I pointed out; “faults I could have taken an interest in and liked her all the better for. You children are so obstinate. You will choose your own faults. Veronica is not truthful always. I wanted a family of little George Washingtons, who could not tell a lie. Veronica can. To get herself out of trouble – and provided there is any hope of anybody believing her – she does.”
“We all of us used to when we were young,” Robina maintained; “Dick used to, I used to. It is a common fault with children.”
“I know it is,” I answered. “I did not want a child with common faults. I wanted something all my own. I wanted you, Robina, to be my ideal daughter. I had a girl in my mind that I am sure would have been charming. You are not a bit like her. I don’t say she was perfect, she had her failings, but they were such delightful failings – much better than yours, Robina. She had a temper – a woman without a temper is insipid; but it was that kind of temper that made you love her all the more. Yours doesn’t, Robina. I wish you had not been in such a hurry, and had left me to arrange your temper for you. We should all of us have preferred mine. It had all the attractions of temper without the drawbacks of the ordinary temper.”
“Couldn’t use it up, I suppose, for yourself, Pa?” suggested Robina.
“It was a lady’s temper,” I explained. “Besides,” as I asked her, “what is wrong with the one I have?”
“Nothing,” answered Robina. Yet her tone conveyed doubt. “It seems to me sometimes that an older temper would suit you better, that was all.”
“You have hinted as much before, Robina,” I remarked, “not only with reference to my temper, but with reference to things generally. One would think that you were dissatisfied with me because I am too young.”
“Not in years perhaps,” replied Robina, “but – well, you know what I mean. One wants one’s father to be always great and dignified.”
“We cannot change our ego,” I explained to her. “Some daughters would appreciate a father youthful enough in temperament to sympathise with and to indulge them. The solemn old fogey you have in your mind would have brought you up very differently. Let me tell you that, my girl. You would not have liked him, if you had had him.”
“Perhaps not,” Robina agreed. “You are awfully good in some ways.”
“What we have got to do in this world, Robina,” I said, “is to take people as they are, and make the best of them. We cannot expect everybody to be just as we would have them, and maybe we should not like them any better if they were. Don’t bother yourself about how much nicer they might be; think how nice they are.”
Robina said she would try. I have hopes of making Robina a sensible woman.
CHAPTER VII
Dick and Veronica returned laden with parcels. They explained that “Daddy Slee,” as it appeared he was generally called, a local builder of renown, was following in his pony-cart, and was kindly bringing the bulkier things with him.
“I tried to hustle him,” said Dick, “but coming up after he had washed himself and had his tea seemed to be his idea of hustling. He has got the reputation of being an honest old Johnny, slow but sure; the others, they tell me, are slower. I thought you might care, later on, to talk to him about the house.”
Veronica took off her things and put them away, each one in its proper place. She said, if no one wanted her, she would read a chapter of “The Vicar of Wakefield,” and retired upstairs. Robina and I had an egg with our tea; Mr. Slee arrived as we had finished, and I took him straight into the kitchen. He was a large man, with a dreamy expression and a habit of sighing. He sighed when he saw our kitchen.
“There’s four days’ work for three men here,” he said, “and you’ll want a new stove. Lord! what trouble children can be!”
Robina agreed with him.
“Meanwhile,” she demanded, “how am I to cook?”
“Myself, missie,” sighed Mr. Slee, “I don’t see how you are going to cook.”
“We’ll all have to tramp home again,” thought Dick.
“And tell Little Mother the reason, and frighten her out of her life!” 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 Dick; “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 Saturday night,” argued Dick; “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 Dick. 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 Berkshire. 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 Dick 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, “Dick 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, Dick can knock up a partition. 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 Dick 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 assumes 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. Dick 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-class 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 débris. 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; Dick, 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 chastisement 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 God 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?”
Veronica claimed that the inspiration had been hers.
“I can easily believe it. And was he anxious to steal the gunpowder and put it on the fire, or did he have to be persuaded?”
Veronica admitted that in the qualities of a first-class hero he was wanting. Not till it had been suggested to him that he must at heart be a cowardy cowardy custard had he been moved to take a hand in the enterprise.
“A lad, clearly,” I continued, “that left to himself would be a comfort to his friends. And the story of the robbers – your invention or his?”
Veronica was generously of opinion that he might have thought of it had he not been chiefly concerned at the moment with the idea of getting home to his mother. As it was, the clothing with romance of incidents otherwise bald and uninteresting had fallen upon her.
“The good child of the story. The fact stands out at every point. His one failing an amiable weakness. Do you not see it for yourself; Veronica? In the book, you, not he, would have tumbled over the mat. In this wicked world it is the wicked who prosper. He, the innocent, the virtuous, is torn into rags. You, the villain of the story, escape.”
“I see,” said Veronica; “then whenever nothing happens to you that means that you’re a wrong ’un.”
“I don’t go so far as to say that, Veronica. And I wish you wouldn’t use slang. Dick is a man, and a man – well, never mind about a man. You, Veronica, must never forget that you’re a lady. Justice must not be looked for in this world. Sometimes the wicked get what they deserve. More often they don’t. There seems to be no rule. Follow the dictates of your conscience, Veronica, and blow – I mean be indifferent to the consequences. Sometimes you’ll come out all right, and sometimes you won’t. But the beautiful sensation will always be with you: I did right. Things have turned out unfortunately: but that’s not my fault. Nobody can blame me.”
“But they do,” said Veronica, “they blame you just as if you’d meant to go and do it.”
“It does not matter, Veronica,” I pointed out, “the opinion of the world. The good man disregards it.”
“But they send you to bed,” persisted Veronica.
“Let them,” I said. “What is bed so long as the voice of the inward Monitor consoles us with the reflection – ”
“But it don’t,” interrupted Veronica; “it makes you feel all the madder. It does really.”
“It oughtn’t to,” I told her.
“Then why does it?” argued Veronica. “Why don’t it do what it ought to?”
The trouble about arguing with children is that they will argue too.
“Life’s a difficult problem, Veronica,” I allowed. “Things are not as they ought to be, I admit it. But one must not despair. Something’s got to be done.”
“It’s jolly hard on some of us,” said Veronica. “Strive as you may, you can’t please everyone. And if you just as much as stand up for yourself, oh, crikey!”
“The duty of the grown-up person, Veronica,” I said, “is to bring up the child in the way that it should go. It isn’t easy work, and occasionally irritability may creep in.”
