His Wifelet had dressed for his tea.
“Now reach me, sweet Atom, my gunlet,
And hurl the old shoelet for luck:
Let me hie to the bank of the runlet,
And shoot thee a Duck!”
She has reached him his minikin gunlet:
She has hurled the old shoelet for luck:
She is busily baking a bunlet,
To welcome him home with his Duck.
On he speeds, never wasting a wordlet,
Though thoughtlets cling, closely as wax,
To the spot where the beautiful birdlet
So quietly quacks.
Where the Lobsterlet lurks, and the Crablet
So slowly and sleepily crawls:
Where the Dolphin’s at home, and the Dablet
Pays long ceremonious calls:
Where the Grublet is sought by the Froglet:
Where the Frog is pursued by the Duck:
Where the Ducklet is chased by the Doglet—
So runs the world’s luck!
He has loaded with bullet and powder:
His footfall is noiseless as air:
But the Voices grow louder and louder,
And bellow, and bluster, and blare.
They bristle before him and after,
They flutter above and below,
Shrill shriekings of lubberly laughter,
Weird wailings of woe!
They echo without him, within him:
They thrill through his whiskers and beard:
Like a teetotum seeming to spin him,
With sneers never hitherto sneered.
“Avengement,” they cry, “on our Foelet!
Let the Manikin weep for our wrongs!
Let us drench him, from toplet to toelet,
With Nursery-Songs!
“He shall muse upon ‘Hey! Diddle! Diddle!’
On the Cow that surmounted the Moon:
He shall rave of the Cat and the Fiddle,
And the Dish that eloped with the Spoon:
And his soul shall be sad for the Spider,
When Miss Muffet was sipping her whey,
That so tenderly sat down beside her,
And scared her away!
“The music of Midsummer-madness
Shall sting him with many a bite,
Till, in rapture of rollicking sadness,
He shall groan with a gloomy delight:
He shall swathe him, like mists of the morning,
In platitudes luscious and limp,
Such as deck, with a deathless adorning,
The Song of the Shrimp!
“When the Ducklet’s dark doom is decided,
We will trundle him home in a trice:
And the banquet, so plainly provided,
Shall round into rosebuds and rice:
In a blaze of pragmatic invention
He shall wrestle with Fate, and shall reign:
But he has not a friend fit to mention,
So hit him again!”
He has shot it, the delicate darling!
And the Voices have ceased from their strife:
Not a whisper of sneering or snarling;
As he carries it home to his wife:
Then, cheerily champing the bunlet
His spouse was so skilful to bake,
He hies him once more to the runlet,
To fetch her the Drake!
“He’s sound asleep now,” said Sylvie, carefully tucking in the edge of a violet-leaf, which she had been spreading over him as a sort of blanket: “good night!”
“Good night!” I echoed.
“You may well say ‘good night’!” laughed Lady Muriel, rising and shutting up the piano as she spoke. “When you’ve been nid—nid—nodding all the time I’ve been singing for your benefit! What was it all about, now?” she demanded imperiously.
“Something about a duck?” I hazarded. “Well, a bird of some kind?” I corrected myself, perceiving at once that that guess was wrong, at any rate.
“Something about a bird of some kind!” Lady Muriel repeated, with as much withering scorn as her sweet face was capable of conveying. “And that’s the way he speaks of Shelley’s Skylark, is it? When the Poet particularly says ‘Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert!’ ”
She led the way to the smoking-room, where, ignoring all the usages of Society and all the instincts of Chivalry, the three Lords of the Creation reposed at their ease in low rocking-chairs, and permitted the one lady who was present to glide gracefully about among us, supplying our wants in the form of cooling drinks, cigarettes, and lights. Nay, it was only one of the three who had the chivalry to go beyond the commonplace “thank you,” and to quote the Poet’s exquisite description of how Geraint, when waited on by Enid, was moved
“To stoop and kiss the tender little thumb
That crossed the platter as she laid it down,”
and to suit the action to the word—an audacious liberty for which, I feel bound to report, he was not duly reprimanded.
As no topic of conversation seemed to occur to anyone, and as we were, all four, on those delightful terms with one another (the only terms, I think, on which any friendship, that deserves the name of intimacy, can be maintained) which involve no sort of necessity for speaking for mere speaking’s sake, we sat in silence for some minutes.
At length I broke the silence by asking “Is there any fresh news from the harbour about the Fever?”
“None since this morning,” the Earl said, looking very grave. “But that was alarming enough. The Fever is spreading fast: the London doctor has taken fright and left the place, and the only one now available isn’t a regular doctor at all: he is apothecary, and doctor, and dentist, and I don’t know what other trades, all in one. It’s a bad outlook for those poor fishermen—and a worse one for all the women and children.”
“How many are there of them altogether?” Arthur asked.
“There were nearly one hundred, a week ago,” said the Earl: “but there have been twenty or thirty deaths since then.”
“And what religious ministrations are there to be had?”
“There are three brave men down there,” the Earl replied, his voice trembling with emotion, “gallant heroes as ever won the Victoria Cross! I am certain that no one of the three will ever leave the place merely to save his own life. There’s the Curate: his wife is with him: they have no children. Then there’s the Roman Catholic Priest. And there’s the Wesleyan Minister. They go amongst their own flocks, mostly; but I’m told that those who are dying like to have any of the three with them. How slight the barriers seem to be that part Christian from Christian, when one has to deal with the great facts of Life and the reality of
