AT THE GREEN DRAGON V
By Beatrice Hararden
PASTRY AND PERSONAL MONARCHY.
Joan sat in the parlor of the Green Dragon, waiting until Hieronymus had finished eating a third jam-puff, and could pronounce himself ready to begin dictating. A few papers were scattered about on the table, and Gamboge was curled up on the hearth-rug. Joan was radiant with pleasure, for this was her nearest approach to intellectuality; a new world had opened to her as though by magic. And she was radiant with another kind of pleasure: this was only the third time she had seen the historian, and each time she was the happier. It was at first a little shock to her sense of intellectual propriety that the scholar yonder could condescend to so trivial a matter as pastry; but then Hieronymus had his own way about him, which carried conviction in the end.
“Well,” he said cheerily. “I think I am ready to begin. Dear me! What excellent pastry!”
Joan smiled, and dipped her pen in the ink.
“And to think that David nearly ate it!” she said to herself. And that was about the first time she had thought of him since yesterday.
Then the historian began. His language was simple and dignified, like the man himself. His subject was “An Introduction to the Personal Monarchy, which began with the reign of Henry VIII.” Everything he said was crystal-clear. Moreover, he had that rare gift, the power of condensing and of suggesting too. He was nothing if not an impressionist. Joan had no difficulty in keeping pace with him, for he dictated slowly. After nearly two hours he left off, and gave a great sigh of relief.
“There now,” he said, “that’s enough for to-day.” And he seemed just like a schoolboy released from lessons.
“Come, come,” he added, as he looked over the manuscript. “I shall be quite proud to send that in to the printer. You would make a capital little secretary. You are so quiet and you don’t scratch with your pen: qualities which are only too rare. Well, we shall be able to go on with this work, if you can spare the time and will oblige me. And we must make some arrangements about money matters.”
“As for that,” said Joan hastily, “it’s such a change from the never-ending fowls and that everlasting butter.”
“Of course it is,” said Hieronymus, as he took his pipe from the mantel-shelf. “But all the same, we will be business-like. Besides, consider the advantage; you will be earning a little money with which you can either buy books to read, or fowls to fatten up. You can take your choice, you know.”
“I should choose the books,” she said, quite fiercely.
“How spiteful you are to those fowls!” he said.
“So would you be, if you had been looking after them all your life,” Joan answered, still more fiercely.
“There is no doubt about you being a volcanic young lady,” Hieronymus remarked thoughtfully. “But I understand. I was also a volcano once. I am now extinct. You will be extinct after a few years, and you will be thankful for the repose. But one has to go through a great many eruptions as preliminaries to peace.”
“Any kind of experience is better than none at all,” Joan said, more gently this time. “You can’t think how I dread a life in which nothing happens. I want to have my days crammed full of interests and events. Then I shall learn something; but here–what can one learn? You should just see Auntie Lloyd, and be with her for a quarter of an hour. When you’ve seen her, you’ve seen the whole neighborhood. Oh, how I dislike her!”
Her tone of voice expressed so heartily her feelings about Auntie Lloyd that Hieronymus laughed, and Joan laughed too.
She had put on her bonnet, and stood ready to go home. The historian stroked Gamboge, put away his papers, and expressed himself inclined to accompany Joan part of the way.
He ran to the kitchen to tell Mrs. Benbow that he would not be long gone.
“Dinner won’t be ready for quite an hour,” she said, “as the butcher came so late. But here is a cup of beef-tea for you. You look rather tired.”
“I’ve had such a lot of pastry,” Hieronymus pleaded, and he turned to Mr. Benbow, who had just come into the kitchen followed by his faithful collie. “I don’t feel as though I could manage the beef-tea.”
“It’s no use kicking over the traces,” said Mr. Benbow, laughing. “I’ve found that out long ago. Sarah is a tyrant.”
But it was evidently a tyranny which suited him very well, for there seemed to be a kind of settled happiness between the host and hostess of the Green Dragon. Some such thought passed through Hieronymus’ mind as he gulped down the beef-tea, and then started off happily with Joan.
“I like both the Benbows,” he said to her. “And it is very soothing to be with people who are happy together. I’m cozily housed there, and not at all sorry to have had my plans altered by the gypsies; especially now that I can go on with my work so comfortably. My friends in Wales may wait for me as long as they choose.”
Joan would have wished to tell him how glad she was that he was going to stay. But she just smiled happily. He was so bright himself that it was impossible not to be happy in his company.
“I’m so pleased I have done some dictating to-day,” he said, as he plucked an autumn leaf and put it into his buttonhole. “And now I can enjoy myself all the more. You cannot think how I do enjoy the country. These hills are so wonderfully soothing. I never remember being in a place where the hills have given me such a sense of repose as here. Those words constantly recur to me:
‘His dews drop mutely on the hill,
His cloud above it saileth still,
(Though on its slopes men sow and reap).
More softly than the dew is shed,
Or cloud is floated overhead,
He giveth His beloved sleep.’
“It’s all so true, you know, and yonder are the slopes cultivated by men. I am always thinking of these words here. They match with the hills and they match with my feelings.”
“I have never thought about the hills in that way,” she said.
“No,” he answered kindly, “because you are not tired yet. But when you are tired, not with imaginary battlings, but with the real campaigns of life, then you will think about the dews falling softly on the hills.”
“Are you tired, then?” she asked.
“I have been very tired,” he answered simply.
They walked on in silence for a few minutes, and then he added: “You wished for knowledge, and here you are surrounded by opportunities for attaining to it.”
“I have never found Auntie Lloyd a specially interesting subject for study,” Joan said obstinately.
Hieronymus smiled.
“I was not thinking of Auntie Lloyd,” he said. “I was thinking of all these beautiful hedges, these lanes with their countless treasures, and this stream with its bed of stones, and those hills yonder; all of them eloquent with the wonder of the earth’s history. You are literally surrounded with the means of making your minds beautiful, you country people. And why don’t you do it?”
Joan listened. This was new language to her.
Hieronymus continued:
“The sciences are here for you. They offer themselves to you, without stint, without measure. Nature opens her book to you. Have you ever tried to read it? From the things which fret and worry our souls, from the people who worry and fret us, from ourselves who worry and fret ourselves, we can at least turn to Nature. There we find our right place, a resting place of intense repose. There we lose that troublesome part of ourselves, our own sense of importance. Then we rest, and not until then.
“Why should you speak to me of rest?” the girl cried, her fund of patience and control coming suddenly to an end. “I don’t want to rest. I want to live a full, rich life, crammed with interests. I want to learn about life itself, not about things. It is so absurd to talk to me of rest. You’ve had your term of unrest–you said so. I don’t care about peace and repose! I don’t—-”
She left off as suddenly as she had begun, fearing to seem too ill-mannered.
“Of course you don’t,” he said gently, “and I’m a goose to think you should. No, you will have to go out into the world, and to learn for yourself that it is just the same there as everywhere: butter and cheese making, prize-winning and prize-losing, and very little satisfaction either over the winning or the losing; and a great many Auntie Lloyds, probably a good deal more trying than the Little Stretton Auntie Lloyd. Only, if I were you, I should not talk about it any more. I should just go. Saddle the white horse and go! Get your experiences, thick and quick. Then you will be glad to rest.”
“Are you making fun of me?” she asked half suspiciously, for he had previously joked about the slow pace of the white horse.
“No,” he answered, in his kind way; “why should I make fun of you? We cannot all be content to go on living a quiet life in a little village.”
At that moment the exciseman passed by them on horseback. He raised his hat to Joan, and looked with some curiosity at Hieronymus. Joan colored. She remembered that she had not behaved kindly to him yesterday; and after all, he was David, David who had always been good to her, ever since she could remember.
“Who was that?” asked Hieronymus. “What a trim, nice-looking man!”
“He is David Ellis, the exciseman,” Joan said, half reluctantly.
“I wonder when he is going to test the beer at the Green Dragon,” said the historian anxiously. “I wouldn’t miss that for anything. Will you ask him?”
Joan hesitated. Then she hastened on a few steps, and called “David!”
David turned in his saddle, and brought his horse to a standstill. He wondered what Joan would have to say to him.
“When are you going to test the beer at the Green Dragon?” she asked.
“Some time this afternoon,” he answered. “Why do you want to know?”
“The gentleman who is staying at the inn wants to know,” Joan said.
“Is that all you have to say to me?” David asked quietly.
“No,” said Joan, looking up at him. “There is something more: about the pastry–”
But just then Hieronymus had joined them.
“If you’re talking about pastry,” he said cheerily, “I never tasted any better than Miss Hammond’s. I ate a dishful this morning!”
The exciseman looked at Joan, and at the historian.
“Yes,” he said, as he cracked his whip, “it tastes good to those who can get it, and it tastes bad to those who can’t get it.”
And with that he galloped away, leaving Joan confused, and Hieronymus mystified. He glanced at his companion, and seemed to expect that she would explain the situation; but as she did not attempt to do so he walked quietly along with her until they came to the short cut which led back to the Green Dragon. There he parted from her, making an arrangement that she should come and write for him on the morrow. But as he strolled home he said to himself, “I am much afraid that I have been eating some one else’s pastry! Well, it was very good, especially the jam-puffs!”