Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin\'s Dovecot and Other Stories by Juliana Horatio Ewing
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Juliana Horatio Ewing >> Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin\'s Dovecot and Other Stories
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7 Juliet Sutherland, Tonya Allen, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
JACKANAPES
DADDY DARWIN'S DOVECOT
AND OTHER STORIES
By
JULIANA HORATIO EWING.
[Illustration]
"If I might buffet for my love, or bound my horse for her
favors, I could lay on like a butcher, and sit like a
Jackanapes, never off!"
KING HENRY V, Act 5, Scene 2.
JACKANAPES
CHAPTER I.
Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,
Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay,
The midnight brought the signal sound of strife,
The morn the marshalling in arms--the day
Battle's magnificently stern array!
The thunder clouds close o'er it, which when rent
The earth is covered thick with other clay,
Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
Rider and horse:--friend, foe,--in one red burial blent.
Their praise is hymn'd by loftier harps than mine:
Yet one would I select from that proud throng.
----to thee, to thousands, of whom each
And one as all a ghastly gap did make
In his own kind and kindred, whom to teach
Forgetfuluess were mercy for their sake;
The Archangel's trump, not glory's, must awake
Those whom they thirst for.
--BYRON.
[Illustration]
Two Donkeys and the Geese lived on the Green, and all other residents of
any social standing lived in houses round it. The houses had no names.
Everybody's address was, "The Green," but the Postman and the people of
the place knew where each family lived. As to the rest of the world,
what has one to do with the rest of the world, when he is safe at home
on his own Goose Green? Moreover, if a stranger did come on any lawful
business, he might ask his way at the shop.
Most of the inhabitants were long-lived, early deaths (like that of the
little Miss Jessamine) being exceptional; and most of the old people
were proud of their age, especially the sexton, who would be ninety-nine
come Martinmas, and whose father remembered a man who had carried
arrows, as a boy, for the battle of Flodden Field. The Grey Goose and
the big Miss Jessamine were the only elderly persons who kept their ages
secret. Indeed, Miss Jessamine never mentioned any one's age, or
recalled the exact year in which anything had happened. She said that
she had been taught that it was bad manners to do so "in a mixed
assembly."
The Grey Goose also avoided dates, but this was partly because her
brain, though intelligent, was not mathematical, and computation was
beyond her. She never got farther than "last Michaelmas," "the
Michaelmas before that," and "the Michaelmas before the Michaelmas
before that." After this her head, which was small, became confused, and
she said, "Ga, ga!" and changed the subject.
But she remembered the little Miss Jessamine, the Miss Jessamine with
the "conspicuous" hair. Her aunt, the big Miss Jessamine, said it was
her only fault. The hair was clean, was abundant, was glossy, but do
what you would with it, it never looked like other people's. And at
church, after Saturday night's wash, it shone like the best brass fender
after a Spring cleaning. In short, it was conspicuous, which does not
become a young woman--especially in church.
Those were worrying times altogether, and the Green was used for strange
purposes. A political meeting was held on it with the village Cobbler in
the chair, and a speaker who came by stage coach from the town, where
they had wrecked the bakers' shops, and discussed the price of bread. He
came a second time, by stage, but the people had heard something about
him in the meanwhile, and they did not keep him on the Green. They took
him to the pond and tried to make him swim, which he could not do, and
the whole affair was very disturbing to all quiet and peaceable fowls.
After which another man came, and preached sermons on the Green, and a
great many people went to hear him; for those were "trying times," and
folk ran hither and thither for comfort. And then what did they do but
drill the ploughboys on the Green, to get them ready to fight the
French, and teach them the goose-step! However, that came to an end at
last, for Bony was sent to St. Helena, and the ploughboys were sent back
to the plough.
Everybody lived in fear of Bony in those days, especially the naughty
children, who were kept in order during the day by threats of, "Bony
shall have you," and who had nightmares about him in the dark. They
thought he was an Ogre in a cocked hat. The Grey Goose thought he was a
fox, and that all the men of England were going out in red coats to hunt
him. It was no use to argue the point, for she had a very small head,
and when one idea got into it there was no room for another.
Besides, the Grey Goose never saw Bony, nor did the children, which
rather spoilt the terror of him, so that the Black Captain became more
effective as a Bogy with hardened offenders. The Grey Goose remembered
_his_ coming to the place perfectly. What he came for she did not
pretend to know. It was all part and parcel of the war and bad times. He
was called the Black Captain, partly because of himself, and partly
because of his wonderful black mare. Strange stories were afloat of how
far and how fast that mare could go, when her master's hand was on her
mane and he whispered in her ear. Indeed, some people thought we might
reckon ourselves very lucky if we were not out of the frying-pan into
the fire, and had not got a certain well-known Gentleman of the Road to
protect us against the French. But that, of course, made him none the
less useful to the Johnson's Nurse, when the little Miss Johnsons were
naughty.
"You leave off crying this minnit, Miss Jane, or I'll give you right
away to that horrid wicked officer. Jemima! just look out o' the windy,
if you please, and see if the Black Cap'n's a-coming with his horse to
carry away Miss Jane."
And there, sure enough, the Black Captain strode by, with his sword
clattering as if it did not know whose head to cut off first. But he did
not call for Miss Jane that time. He went on to the Green, where he came
so suddenly upon the eldest Master Johnson, sitting in a puddle on
purpose, in his new nankeen skeleton suit, that the young gentleman
thought judgment had overtaken him at last, and abandoned himself to the
howlings of despair. His howls were redoubled when he was clutched from
behind and swung over the Black Captain's shoulder, but in five minutes
his tears were stanched, and he was playing with the officer's
accoutrements. All of which the Grey Goose saw with her own eyes, and
heard afterwards that that bad boy had been whining to go back to the
Black Captain ever since, which showed how hardened he was, and that
nobody but Bonaparte himself could be expected to do him any good.
But those were "trying times." It was bad enough when the pickle of a
large and respectable family cried for the Black Captain; when it came
to the little Miss Jessamine crying for him, one felt that the sooner
the French landed and had done with it the better.
The big Miss Jessamine's objection to him was that he was a soldier, and
this prejudice was shared by all the Green. "A soldier," as the speaker
from the town had observed, "is a bloodthirsty, unsettled sort of a
rascal; that the peaceable, home-loving, bread-winning citizen can never
conscientiously look on as a brother, till he has beaten his sword into
a ploughshare, and his spear into a pruning-hook."
On the other hand there was some truth in what the Postman (an old
soldier) said in reply; that the sword has to cut a way for us out of
many a scrape into which our bread-winners get us when they drive their
ploughshares into fallows that don't belong to them. Indeed, whilst our
most peaceful citizens were prosperous chiefly by means of cotton, of
sugar, and of the rise and fall of the money-market (not to speak of
such salable matters as opium, firearms, and "black ivory"),
disturbances were apt to arise in India, Africa and other outlandish
parts, where the fathers of our domestic race were making fortunes for
their families. And, for that matter, even on the Green, we did not wish
the military to leave us in the lurch, so long as there was any fear
that the French were coming. [Footnote: "'The political men declare
war, and generally for commercial interests; but when the nation is thus
embroiled with its neighbors the soldier ... draws the sword, at the
command of his country.... One word as to thy comparison of military and
commercial persons. What manner of men be they who have supplied the
Caffres with the firearms and ammunition to maintain their savage and
deplorable wars? Assuredly they are not military.... Cease then, if thou
would'st be counted among the just, to vilify soldiers."--W. Napier,
Lieut. General, _November_, 1851.]
II
[Illustration]
To let the Black Captain have little Miss Jessamine, however, was
another matter. Her Aunt would not hear of it; and then, to crown all,
it appeared that the Captain's father did not think the young lady good
enough for his son. Never was any affair more clearly brought to a
conclusion. But those were "trying times;" and one moon-light night,
when the Grey Goose was sound asleep upon one leg, the Green was rudely
shaken under her by the thud of a horse's feet. "Ga, ga!" said she,
putting down the other leg, and running away.
By the time she returned to her place not a thing was to be seen or
heard. The horse had passed like a shot. But next day, there was
hurrying and skurrying and cackling at a very early hour, all about the
white house with the black beams, where Miss Jessamine lived. And when
the sun was so low, and the shadows so long on the grass that the Grey
Goose felt ready to run away at the sight of her own neck, little Miss
Jane Johnson, and her "particular friend" Clarinda, sat under the big
oak-tree on the Green, and Jane pinched Clarinda's little finger till
she found that she could keep a secret, and then she told her in
confidence that she had heard from Nurse and Jemima that Miss
Jessamine's niece had been a very naughty girl, and that that horrid
wicked officer had come for her on his black horse, and carried her
right away.
"Will she never come back?" asked Clarinda.
"Oh, no!" said Jane decidedly. "Bony never brings people back."
"Not never no more?" sobbed Clarinda, for she was weak-minded, and could
not bear to think that Bony never, never let naughty people go home
again.
Next day Jane had heard more.
"He has taken her to a Green?"
"A Goose Green?" asked Clarinda.
"No. A Gretna Green. Don't ask so many questions, child," said Jane;
who, having no more to tell, gave herself airs.
Jane was wrong on one point. Miss Jessamine's niece did come back, and
she and her husband were forgiven. The Grey Goose remembered it well, it
was Michaelmastide, the Michaelmas before the Michaelmas before the
Michaelmas--but ga, ga! What does the date matter? It was autumn,
harvest-time, and everybody was so busy prophesying and praying about
the crops, that the young couple wandered through the lanes, and got
blackberries for Miss Jessamine's celebrated crab and blackberry jam,
and made guys of themselves with bryony-wreaths, and not a soul troubled
his head about them, except the children, and the Postman. The children
dogged the Black Captain's footsteps (his bubble reputation as an Ogre
having burst), clamoring for a ride on the black mare. And the Postman
would go somewhat out of his postal way to catch the Captain's dark eye,
and show that he had not forgotten how to salute an officer.
But they were "trying times." One afternoon the black mare was stepping
gently up and down the grass, with her head at her master's shoulder,
and as many children crowded on to her silky back as if she had been an
elephant in a menagerie; and the next afternoon she carried him away,
sword and _sabre-tache_ clattering war-music at her side, and the
old Postman waiting for them, rigid with salutation, at the four cross
roads.
War and bad times! It was a hard winter, and the big Miss Jessamine and
the little Miss Jessamine (but she was Mrs. Black-Captain now), lived
very economically that they might help their poorer neighbors. They
neither entertained nor went into company, but the young lady always
went up the village as far as the _George and Dragon_, for air and
exercise, when the London Mail [Footnote: The Mail Coach it was that
distributed over the face of the land, like the opening of apocalyptic
vials, the heart-shaking news of Trafalgar, of Salamanca, of Vittoria,
of Waterloo.... The grandest chapter of our experience, within the whole
Mail Coach service, was on those occasions when we went down from London
with the news of Victory. Five years of life it was worth paying down
for the privilege of an outside place. DE QUINCEY.] came in.
One day (it was a day in the following June) it came in earlier than
usual, and the young lady was not there to meet it.
But a crowd soon gathered round the _George and Dragon_, gaping to
see the Mail Coach dressed with flowers and oak-leaves, and the guard
wearing a laurel wreath over and above his royal livery. The ribbons
that decked the horses were stained and flecked with the warmth and foam
of the pace at which they had come, for they had pressed on with the
news of Victory.
Miss Jessamine was sitting with her niece under the oak-tree on the
Green, when the Postman put a newspaper silently into her hand. Her
niece turned quickly--"Is there news?"
"Don't agitate yourself, my dear," said her aunt. "I will read it aloud,
and then we can enjoy it together; a far more comfortable method, my
love, than when you go up the village, and come home out of breath,
having snatched half the news as you run."
"I am all attention, dear aunt," said the little lady, clasping her
hands tightly on her lap.
Then Miss Jessamine read aloud--she was proud of her reading--and the
old soldier stood at attention behind her, with such a blending of pride
and pity on his face as it was strange to see:--
"DOWNING STREET,
"_June_ 22, 1815, 1 A.M."
"That's one in the morning," gasped the Postman; "beg your pardon, mum."
But though he apologized, he could not refrain from echoing here and
there a weighty word. "Glorious victory,"--"Two hundred pieces of
artillery,"--"Immense quantity of ammunition,"--and so forth.
"The loss of the British Army upon this occasion has unfortunately been
most severe. It had not been possible to make out a return of the killed
and wounded when Major Percy left headquarters. The names of the
officers killed and wounded, as far as they can be collected, are
annexed.
"I have the honor----"
"The list, aunt! Read the list!"
"My love--my darling--let us go in and----"
"No. Now! now!"
To one thing the supremely afflicted are entitled in their sorrow--to be
obeyed--and yet it is the last kindness that people commonly will do
them. But Miss Jessamine did. Steadying her voice, as best she might,
she read on, and the old soldier stood bareheaded to hear that first
Roll of the Dead at Waterloo, which began with the Duke of Brunswick,
and ended with Ensign Brown. [Footnote: "Brunswick's fated chieftain"
fell at Quatre Bras, the day before Waterloo, but this first (very
imperfect) list, as it appeared in the newspapers of the day, did begin
with his name, and end with that of an Ensign Brown.] Five-and-thirty
British Captains fell asleep that day on the bed of Honor, and the Black
Captain slept among them.
* * * * *
There are killed and wounded by war, of whom no returns reach Downing
Street.
Three days later, the Captain's wife had joined him, and Miss Jessamine
was kneeling by the cradle of their orphan son, a purple-red morsel of
humanity, with conspicuously golden hair.
"Will he live, Doctor?"
"Live? GOD bless my soul, ma'am! Look at him! The young Jackanapes!"
CHAPTER II.
And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old Nurse.
LONGFELLOW.
[Illustration]
The Grey Goose remembered quite well the year that Jackanapes began to
walk, for it was the year that the speckled hen for the first time in
all her motherly life got out of patience when she was sitting. She had
been rather proud of the eggs--they are unusually large--but she never
felt quite comfortable on them; and whether it was because she used to
get cramp, and got off the nest, or because the season was bad, or what,
she never could tell, but every egg was addled but one, and the one that
did hatch gave her more trouble than any chick she had ever reared.
It was a fine, downy, bright yellow little thing, but it had a monstrous
big nose and feet, and such an ungainly walk as she knew no other
instance of in her well-bred and high-stepping family. And as to
behavior, it was not that it was either quarrelsome or moping, but
simply unlike the rest. When the other chicks hopped and cheeped on the
Green all at their mother's feet, this solitary yellow one went waddling
off on its own responsibility, and do or cluck what the spreckled hen
would, it went to play in the pond.
It was off one day as usual, and the hen was fussing and fuming after
it, when the Postman, going to deliver a letter at Miss Jessamine's
door, was nearly knocked over by the good lady herself, who, bursting
out of the house with her cap just off and her bonnet just not on,
fell into his arms, crying--
"Baby! Baby! Jackanapes! Jackanapes!"
If the Postman loved anything on earth, he loved the Captain's
yellow-haired child, so propping Miss Jessamine against her own
door-post, he followed the direction of her trembling fingers and made
for the Green.
Jackanapes had had the start of the Postman by nearly ten minutes. The
world--the round green world with an oak tree on it--was just becoming
very interesting to him. He had tried, vigorously but ineffectually, to
mount a passing pig the last time he was taken out walking; but then he
was encumbered with a nurse. Now he was his own master, and might, by
courage and energy, become the master of that delightful, downy, dumpy,
yellow thing, that was bobbing along over the green grass in front of
him. Forward! Charge! He aimed well, and grabbed it, but only to feel
the delicious downiness and dumpiness slipping through his fingers as he
fell upon his face. "Quawk!" said the yellow thing, and wobbled off
sideways. It was this oblique movement that enabled Jackanapes to come
up with it, for it was bound for the Pond, and therefore obliged to come
back into line. He failed again from top-heaviness, and his prey escaped
sideways as before, and, as before, lost ground in getting back to the
direct road to the Pond.
[Illustration]
And at the Pond the Postman found them both, one yellow thing rocking
safely on the ripples that lie beyond duck-weed, and the other washing
his draggled frock with tears, because he too had tried to sit upon the
Pond, and it wouldn't hold him.
CHAPTER III.
... If studious, copie fair what time hath blurred,
Redeem truth from his jawes; if souldier,
Chase brave employments with a naked sword
Throughout the world. Fool not; for all may have,
If they dare try, a glorious life, or grave.
* * * * *
In brief, acquit thee bravely: play the man.
Look not on pleasures as they come, but go.
Defer not the least vertue: life's poore span
Make not an ell, by trifling in thy woe.
If thou do ill, the joy fades, not the pains.
If well, the pain doth fade, the joy remains.
GEORGE HERBERT.
[Illustration]
Young Mrs. Johnson, who was a mother of many, hardly knew which to pity
more; Miss Jessamine for having her little ways and her antimacassars
rumpled by a young Jackanapes; or the boy himself, for being brought up
by an old maid.
Oddly enough, she would probably have pitied neither, had Jackanapes
been a girl. (One is so apt to think that what works smoothest works to
the highest ends, having no patience for the results of friction.) That
Father in GOD, who bade the young men to be pure, and the maidens brave,
greatly disturbed a member of his congregation, who thought that the
great preacher had made a slip of the tongue.
"That the girls should have purity, and the boys courage, is what you
would say, good Father?"
"Nature has done that," was the reply; "I meant what I said."
In good sooth, a young maid is all the better for learning some robuster
virtues than maidenliness and not to move the antimacassars. And the
robuster virtues require some fresh air and freedom. As, on the other
hand, Jackanapes (who had a boy's full share of the little beast and the
young monkey in his natural composition) was none the worse, at his
tender years, for learning some maidenliness--so far as maidenliness
means decency, pity, unselfishness and pretty behavior.
And it is due to him to say that he was an obedient boy, and a boy whose
word could be depended on, long before his grandfather the General came
to live at the Green.
He was obedient; that is he did what his great aunt told him. But--oh
dear! oh dear!--the pranks he played, which it had never entered into
her head to forbid!
It was when he had just been put into skeletons (frocks never suited
him) that he became very friendly with Master Tony Johnson, a younger
brother of the young gentleman who sat in the puddle on purpose. Tony
was not enterprising, and Jackanapes led him by the nose. One summer's
evening they were out late, and Miss Jessamine was becoming anxious,
when Jackanapes presented himself with a ghastly face all besmirched
with tears. He was unusually subdued.
"I'm afraid," he sobbed; "if you please, I'm very much afraid that Tony
Johnson's dying in the churchyard."
Miss Jessamine was just beginning to be distracted, when she smelt
Jackanapes.
"You naughty, naughty boys! Do you mean to tell me that you've been
smoking?"
"Not pipes," urged Jackanapes; "upon my honor, Aunty, not pipes. Only
segars like Mr. Johnson's! and only made of brown paper with a very,
very little tobacco from the shop inside them."
Whereupon, Miss Jessamine sent a servant to the churchyard, who found
Tony Johnson lying on a tomb-stone, very sick, and having ceased to
entertain any hopes of his own recovery.
If it could be possible that any "unpleasantness" could arise between
two such amiable neighbors as Miss Jessamine and Mrs. Johnson--and if
the still more incredible paradox can be that ladies may differ over a
point on which they are agreed--that point was the admitted fact that
Tony Johnson was "delicate," and the difference lay chiefly in this:
Mrs. Johnson said that Tony was delicate--meaning that he was more
finely strung, more sensitive, a properer subject for pampering and
petting than Jackanapes, and that, consequently, Jackanapes was to blame
for leading Tony into scrapes which resulted in his being chilled,
frightened, or (most frequently) sick. But when Miss Jessamine said that
Tony Johnson was delicate, she meant that he was more puling, less
manly, and less healthily brought up than Jackanapes, who, when they got
into mischief together, was certainly not to blame because his friend
could not get wet, sit a kicking donkey, ride in the giddy-go-round,
bear the noise of a cracker, or smoke brown paper with impunity, as he
could.
Not that there was ever the slightest quarrel between the ladies. It
never even came near it, except the day after Tony had been so very sick
with riding Bucephalus in the giddy-go-round. Mrs. Johnson had explained
to Miss Jessamine that the reason Tony was so easily upset, was the
unusual sensitiveness (as a doctor had explained it to her) of the
nervous centres in her family--"Fiddlestick!" So Mrs. Johnson
understood Miss Jessamine to say, but it appeared that she only said
"Treaclestick!" which is quite another thing, and of which Tony was
undoubtedly fond. It was at the fair that Tony was made ill by riding on
Bucephalus. Once a year the Goose Green became the scene of a carnival.
First of all, carts and caravans were rumbling up all along, day and
night. Jackanapes could hear them as he lay in bed, and could hardly
sleep for speculating what booths and whirligigs he should find fairly
established; when he and his dog Spitfire went out after breakfast. As a
matter of fact, he seldom had to wait long for news of the Fair. The
Postman knew the window out of which Jackanapes' yellow head would come,
and was ready with his report.
"Royal Theayter, Master Jackanapes, in the old place, but be careful o'
them seats, sir; they're rickettier than ever. Two sweets and a
ginger-beer under the oak tree, and the Flying Boats is just a-coming
along the road."
No doubt it was partly because he had already suffered severely in the
Flying Boats, that Tony collapsed so quickly in the giddy-go-round. He
only mounted Bucephalus (who was spotted, and had no tail) because
Jackanapes urged him, and held out the ingenious hope that the
round-and-round feeling would very likely cure the up-and-down
sensation. It did not, however, and Tony tumbled off during the first
revolution.
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