“Ye‑es,” I replied, with scholarly hesitation. “Ye‑es. Silvas—woods, wooded spaces, the country generally. Yes. Demens, of course, is de‑mens. ‘Ah, witless fellow! Gods, I say, even gods have dwelt in the woods ere now.’ ”
“But I thought gods always lived in the sky,” said Mrs. Worters, interrupting our lesson for I think the third-and-twentieth time.
“Not always,” answered Miss Beaumont. As she spoke she inserted “witless fellow” as an alternative to “silly ass.”
“I always thought they lived in the sky.”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Worters,” the girl repeated. “Not always.” And finding her place in the notebook she read as follows: “Gods. Where. Chief deities—Mount Olympus. Pan—most places, as name implies. Oreads—mountains. Sirens, Tritons, Nereids—water (salt). Naiads—water (fresh). Satyrs, Fauns, etc.—woods. Dryads—trees.”
“Well, dear, you have learnt a lot. And will you now tell me what good it has done you?”
“It has helped me—” faltered Miss Beaumont. She was very earnest over her classics. She wished she could have said what good they had done her.
Ford came to her rescue, “Of course it’s helped you. The classics are full of tips. They teach you how to dodge things.”
I begged my young friend not to dodge his Virgil lesson.
“But they do!” he cried. “Suppose that long-haired brute Apollo wants to give you a music lesson. Well, out you pop into the laurels. Or Universal Nature comes along. You aren’t feeling particularly keen on Universal Nature so you turn into a reed.”
“Is Jack mad?” asked Mrs. Worters.
But Miss Beaumont had caught the allusions—which were quite ingenious I must admit. “And Croesus?” she inquired. “What was it one turned into to get away from Croesus?”
I hastened to tidy up her mythology. “Midas, Miss Beaumont, not Croesus. And he turns you—you don’t turn yourself: he turns you into gold.”
“There’s no dodging Midas,” said Ford.
“Surely—” said Miss Beaumont. She had been learning Latin not quite a fortnight, but she would have corrected the Regius Professor.
He began to tease her. “Oh, there’s no dodging Midas! He just comes, he touches you, and you pay him several thousand percent, at once. You’re gold—a young golden lady—if he touches you.”
“I won’t be touched!” she cried, relapsing into her habitual frivolity.
“Oh, but he’ll touch you.”
“He shan’t!”
“He will.”
“He shan’t!”
“He will.”
Miss Beaumont took up her Virgil and smacked Ford over the head with it.
“Evelyn! Evelyn!” said Mrs. Worters. “Now you are forgetting yourself. And you also forget my question. What good has Latin done you?”
“Mr. Ford—what good has Latin done you?”
“Mr. Inskip—what good has Latin done us?”
So I was let in for the classical controversy. The arguments for the study of Latin are perfectly sound, but they are difficult to remember, and the afternoon sun was hot, and I needed my tea. But I had to justify my existence as a coach, so I took off my eyeglasses and breathed on them and said, “My dear Ford, what a question!”
“It’s all right for Jack,” said Mrs. Worters. “Jack has to pass his entrance examination. But what’s the good of it for Evelyn? None at all.”
“No, Mrs. Worters,” I persisted, pointing my eyeglasses at her. “I cannot agree. Miss Beaumont is—in a sense—new to our civilization. She is entering it, and Latin is one of the subjects in her entrance examination also. No one can grasp modern life without some knowledge of its origins.”
“But why should she grasp modern life?” said the tiresome woman.
“Well, there you are!” I retorted, and shut up my eyeglasses with a snap.
“Mr. Inskip, I am not there. Kindly tell me what’s the good of it all. Oh, I’ve been through it myself: Jupiter, Venus, Juno, I know the lot of them. And many of the stories not at all proper.”
“Classical education,” I said drily, “is not entirely confined to classical mythology. Though even the mythology has its value. Dreams if you like, but there is value in dreams.”
“I too have dreams,” said Mrs. Worters, “but I am not so foolish as to mention them afterwards.”
Mercifully we were interrupted. A rich virile voice close behind us said, “Cherish your dreams!” We had been joined by our host, Harcourt Worters—Mrs. Worters’ son, Miss Beaumont’s fiancé. Ford’s guardian, my employer: I must speak of him as Mr. Worters.
“Let us cherish our dreams!” he repeated. “All day I’ve been fighting, haggling, bargaining. And to come out on to this lawn and see you all learning Latin, so happy, so passionless, so Arcadian—”
He did not finish the sentence, but sank into the chair next to Miss Beaumont, and possessed himself of her hand. As he did so she sang: “Áh yoù sílly àss góds lìve in woóds!”
“What have we here?” said Mr. Worters with a slight frown.
With the other hand she pointed to me.
“Virgil—” I stammered. “Colloquial translation—”
“Oh, I see; a colloquial translation of poetry.” Then his smile returned. “Perhaps if gods live in woods, that is why woods are so dear. I have just bought Other Kingdom Copse!”
Loud exclamations of joy. Indeed, the beeches in that copse are as fine as any in Hertfordshire. Moreover, it, and the meadow by which it is approached, have always made an ugly notch in the rounded contours of the Worters estate. So we were all very glad that Mr. Worters had purchased Other Kingdom. Only Ford kept silent, stroking his head where the Virgil had hit it, and smiling a little to himself as he did so.
“Judging from the price I paid, I should say there was a god in every tree. But price, this time was no object.” He glanced at Miss Beaumont.
“You admire beeches, Evelyn, do you not?”
“I forget always which they are. Like this?”
She flung her arms up above her head, close together, so that she looked like a slender column. Then her body swayed and her delicate green dress quivered over it with the suggestion of countless leaves.
“My dear child!”
