By RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

WHENEVER I ought to be working especially hard at my desk in the middle of the woodland, where I have built myself a little log house for my books, and my pictures and my pen—because the household down at the bottom of the hill does not want a man indoors writing all day when there are all kinds of important domestic operations afoot, which, when he is there, have to be done softly, with hushed voices and muffled tread, lest the serenity of the great brain with the pen be ruffled—whenever, I say, I ought to be working especially hard up there in the wood, among the pines and the bracken and the dancing leaves and the whistle of birds that seem to call, “What a sin it is to be working on such a day!” there often comes a tiny figure and looks in at the window with three-year-old baby eyes, and watches the mysterious person there at the desk, with, for all her affected innocent look, a definite purpose of seduction in her baby heart. I know too well what she is up to. It is a day all aromatic sunshine, and she wants us to play truant together, hunting butterflies and wild flowers, instead of having to behave properly with nurse, and sitting there at that stupid desk.

She knows perfectly well that she is doing the sweet forbidden thing, for her mother has impressed upon her again and again, with much solemnity, that she must on no account interrupt father when he is busy—on masterpieces. Eva has always listened with an air of enigmatic innocence on her little broad indomitable face. Her blue eyes have worn a look of what I might call stubborn obedience, and then—Well, I am sorry to say that on the first opportunity, when nurse’s back is turned, she has made off as fast as her sturdy little legs will carry her, up among the secrecies of the fern, till at last she has arrived at my window—a baby Eve, offering me the wild apple of idleness and sunshine.

I pretend not to see, I bow my head more sternly over my task in profound absorption; but Eva is not to be taken in by such cheap devices. She knows that she has only to stand long enough at the window—cleverly making no sign, not tapping or calling, but just silently there—for me to give in, and, throwing down my pen, catch her in my arms and carry her up to the gorse-lit moorland that spreads its boundless horizon at the top of our little wood.

The sun has been calling me all day, and the leaves have been whispering invitations upon the pane; but I have found it comparatively easy to resist them. The eternal temptation of the birds calling and calling me away I have steeled my heart to resist also. But Eva! No, I cannot resist her. So, after a sham fight of a few moments, she and I are on our way up the woods as fast as we can, for fear nurse or mother may catch sight of us before we really escape.

But for one particular day, of which at the moment I am thinking, I am afraid I cannot lay the blame on her. No, it was all my fault. I believe that that day she had meant to be a really good girl. I must take the blame of luring her from her arduous duties with her dolls. And yet I cannot blame myself very sincerely; for the forenoon had been so full of sunshine and wafting perfume that I could not have regarded myself as a human being had I stayed at my desk, merely writing, while the sun was shining and the birds singing and the wild-rose opening its dewy heart to the sky.

Deliberately I had decided that I would not work, and strolled up through the green, sun-ascending perfumes to the gorse and heather at the top of the pine wood. As I emerged into the broad, brooding sunshine, a swift rustle stirred in the underbrush, and a zigzag of silver flashed away from my feet, threshing its way, with sinuous, sinister beauty, to shelter in an old bank hard by. I had disturbed an adder taking his noonday sun bath.

Snakes are hardly more common in England than they are said to be in the island of Saint Patrick. When occasionally surprised, they startle one with something like the thrill of an apparition, something of the fear and fascination of the supernatural. They seem to belong to the beautiful wicked side of nature, that at once repels and ensnares. Though I had lived much in the country, I had not previously seen three snakes in my life; so this fleeing, flashing adder was quite an event in my morning’s walk, and my first thought was: If only Eva were here to see it too!

Presently the adder himself gave me my opportunity, by gliding into a hole in the bank, from which there was no outlet except by the way he had entered. I could see him sitting there coiled in the darkness, with his vicious head erect, ready, tiny worm, after all, as he was, to fight the whole big world. He sat there and watched me, unmoving; and then, noticing a big stone that lay near, I closed with it the door of his little cave, and made his imprisonment safe with earth. Then I went down the wood again to bring Eva. I caught sight of her through the garden hedge, sitting on the grass playing with alphabetical bricks. Nurse sat a short way off sewing.

Nurse is such an old friend of ours and so clothed with vice-maternal authority that I am almost as much afraid of her in regard to Eva’s and my truancies as I am of Eva’s mother. Men rightly enough, by natural law, are allowed little to say in the rearing of their own babies, and, however much the master of the house you may deem yourself, your authority stops with the good woman who guards your child. There is something sacred about a nurse—a mother nurse, I mean; not a nursemaid—which it would be profanity, even impertinence, for a mere father to disregard. When the mother is not there, the nurse is the mother, and her word is law.

Realising this, I could not dare openly to cross the lawn and take Eva away with me, as though I had every right to do so. Had I dared to do that, I should have been speedily humiliated by that mysterious authority which is said to rock the cradle and to rule the world. In other words, nurse and I would have had a spirited fight, in which I would have been speedily worsted.

Therefore, I lay in ambush a while behind the hedge of flowering laurel, wondering how to catch Eva’s attention. Presently I found a simple way. Within reach of my hand grew a red rose bush, weighted with fat, heavy roses. One of these I plucked, and threw it with a dexterity on which I prided myself right into Eva’s lap. If there is one thing I love about her, it is the calm way she takes surprises. She looked silently at the rose a moment, then with her strong, quiet eyes gazed around to see where it could have come from. As she did that, I gently shook the rose-bush. She watched it shaking a moment, and then caught sight of me. Even then she kept her presence of mind; but an indefinable twinkle in her eyes, momentarily illuminating her little imperturbable baby face, telegraphed to me that she had understood.

Fortunately for us, nurse was not only deep in her sewing, but deep in some old memories, so that she did not miss Eva till we were both safe together on the woodland side of the garden hedge. Once safe there, we made haste to cover as fast as possible, and, when we had reached one of our secret hiding places in a little hollow of fern surrounded by birches, I set Eva down and told her to wait there and play with the sunbeams, while I ran back down the hill for something which, it had just occurred to me, might make us a little more fun in our truancy. This was nothing more wonderful than a wide-mouthed glass jar, once poignant with pickles, which surreptitiously I procured from the cook with fear and trembling, and the purpose of which will soon appear. Returning up the wood, I found Eva contemplating the red rose I had thrown to her with a quite philosophical absorption.

“Daddy,” she said, “why are some roses red and some white?”

It was the ancient unanswerable question of the mystery of colour. Who is there that has answered or can answer it? A mother might have done better, but what could a mere father do but temporise?

“I will tell you, Eva,” I said, “when you can tell me why sister’s hair is black and yours is golden.”

This sibylline answer, I was relieved to find, made a profound impression upon Eva, and as we continued up the wood she was evidently pondering it in the unfathomable deeps of her baby brain. Her meditation, however, soon gave place to curiosity and questioning about everything that grew or sang or moved in the wood. Every child is a naturalist, and the great charm of naturalists is that they always remain children, never losing their sense of wonder at the little elusive things that run and hop and chirp in the grass, or float flower-like upon the air. The naturalist has come nearer to the secret of eternal youth—which is mainly eternal enthusiasm—than any poet, and he who at fifty still pursues a rare species with unabated ardour need never fear old age.

I can make no pretense of being a learned naturalist, and the names of many a bird and flower I love often escape me—as one often forgets the name of some charming acquaintance, whom none the less one is delighted to meet again. I am content to go up the wood in entire ignorance of the Latin and even English names of the various presences that fill it with leafage and perfume and song; but Eva is of a different temper. She is an exact scientist, and insists on knowing the name and the how and the why of every leaf and flower and insect that crosses our path. She even expects me to know what the birds are saying, as though I were the old Virgilian Asylas, who talked the language of birds as easily as some old scholar can read Latin; or Melapus:

With love exceeding a simple love of the things

That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck;

Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings

From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck.

When I am a little indefinite in my explanations, she gives me a look which makes me tremble for her continued belief in my omniscience; and so, when for the third time she asked me what a certain bird was saying, I felt that I must do something to retain her respect. So I extemporised.

“This is what he is saying,” I answered: “Be quick—Be quick—Be quick—Quick! Be quick!… Sweet!—Sweet!—Sweet!… Sweet-i-ki!—Sweet-i-ki!—Sweet-i-ki!… Chuck-chuck!—Twe-ey—Twe-ey—Twe-ey!”

This translation seemed entirely satisfactory to Eva, and she made me repeat it several times, so that with her rapacious baby memory she might get it by heart. She presently disconcerted me, however, by asking me to tell her what that other bird on the bough there was saying.

“It doesn’t sound the same as the other,” she said, or meant in more babylike words. (The realism of baby talk I am obliged to leave to greater writers.)

“It means just the same, though,” I said. “All the birds are saying the same thing, only they say it in different languages.”

I must explain that Eva has been somewhat of a traveller, and realises that you can ask for the same thing in English, French, or Italian. Therefore, the explanation seemed to bring her some, though I could see not entire, conviction.

However, I was saved further embarrassment by our arriving at our scene of operations. Really I don’t know which of us was more quietly excited as we stood in front of the bank where the angry little prisoner churned his venom in the darkness. Eva, who had been given an illustrated natural history for a present the Christmas before, was evidently expecting a boa constrictor—that, or a beautiful serpent, such as a luridly pictured Bible sent her by a pious aunt had taught her to associate with the garden of Eden.

With almost as much caution as though Eva’s imaginations were likely to be realised, and some winged dragon snorting flame was ready to leap out upon us, I removed the stone and peered into the tiny dungeon, Eva standing at my side, her blue eyes serious with expectancy. Yes, my prisoner was still there! Apparently he had not moved since I had shut him in, and his small wicked eyes gleamed at me with concentrated hate out of the darkness. He showed no disposition to escape, so there was no difficulty in my using my glass pickle jar, as I had proposed to myself when I stole with it from the kitchen.

Placing its broad mouth in the entrance to the little cave, I banked it securely round with earth; Eva, meanwhile, an admiring, mystified spectator. Thus the adder had no choice but to stay where he was or to remove into the glass jar, the hospitality of which, however, he showed no disposition to accept. He still sat on, mystic, unmoving, making no sign. Eva and I watched him a long while in silence, and then at length, his immobility growing monotonous, I cut a stout twig from a neighbouring bush, and, pushing it through the soft earth at the side of the jar, poked him gently with it. Even then he would not stir, but his black tongue went in and out of his tiny jaws like black lightning. There was something quite pathetic in his miniature fury at this indignity being put upon him.

“My! but he is cross! Isn’t he, Daddy?” exclaimed Eva, peering with me at the angry little creature. Presently he moved farther into the darkness, away from the tormenting twig, but, as it could still reach him there, his patience at last became exhausted, and suddenly he had uncoiled himself and was gliding, with all the grace of his evil beauty, into the glass jar.

Eva gave a little scream of delight and clapped her hands. “O isn’t he pretty?” she cried. “Let me take hold of him.” Snakes were evidently among the multitude of things of which Eva knows no fear. However, as Eva is not Saint Paul—though in my heart I had a feeling that her courageous innocence would have protected her—I had to deny her that indulgence; one of the few I ever denied her, for I know of few with which she is not strong enough to be intrusted—though that, I suppose, is a father’s point of view.

As we went down the wood with our captive securely shut in his glass cage, I explained to Eva why it was just as well not to hold snakes in your hand, and when we reached my log hut I illustrated my explanation by the old familiar method. Cutting a forked stick from a tree hard by, I set the jar down on the grass, and when the adder, believing that freedom had come at last, began to glide through the loophole I had made for him, I pinned him down to the earth at the back of his wicked head. In vain he lashed his body like a silver whip with rage; and while I thus held him I took my penknife and forced open his cruel mouth, so that Eva could see his evil forked tongue. Then we let him go back into his bottle, and dropped green leaves down to him, so that he might feel comfortable, and looked about for beetles and such small insects as we thought might appeal to his appetite and console him for his captivity. But these attentions he received with sullen indifference. Whether it was that he was too angry to eat, or that we had made a mistake in his diet, our limited knowledge of natural history did not enable us to decide.

Nor were we left much more time to consider; for, suddenly as we knelt together side by side on the grass, our eyes intent on our captive, and the alarmed scrambling of the various small insects tumbling over each other to get out of his way, we heard a voice behind us.

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?” the voice said.

Eva and I looked at each other. It was her mother’s voice. We were caught! In our hearts we were not in the least ashamed; but we bent our heads in mock penitence, pretending that we were afraid to look up.

“Really I don’t know which is the biggest baby,” the voice continued, with direct personal application to myself.

Then Eva and I took courage and looked up into the bluebell eyes above us, and all three of us broke into laughter.

“It’s all very well to laugh,” said Eva’s mother, with a sudden affectation of severity, mindful of the necessity of impressing Eva, “but this is a very demoralising little girl. Haven’t I told you, Eva, that you were not to disturb father at his work?”

Eva was a brick and didn’t give me away. She kept a set little face of respectful rebellion, imperturbable, unapologetic. She wasn’t going to betray me.

“Really it was not her fault,” I said shamefacedly; “it was all mine. Punish me, if you must; but not her.” And then we laughed again.

“What are you going to do with this poor beast here?” asked Eva’s mother, pointing to the glass jar. “Let him go, I suppose,” I said.

I saw Eva’s eyes light up for a moment. There was just one last bit of fun left before she must return to the humdrum of the nursery.

So then we took the lid from the jar, and presently the adder, sniffing the air, stole cautiously out on the grass, and then at length, realising that he was really at liberty, flashed his way from our sight into the underbrush, with the joy of all natural things at being free once more—a bird released from his cage, or a happy fish thrown back into the stream. The beetles and the various other bugs seemed no less to appreciate their freedom.

Alas! it was poor Eva’s turn to go back into captivity. Mine too, for my desk gloomed there inside. We gave each other a parting look, as her mother took her off down the wood. So two exiles condemned to Siberia might exchange glances of sympathy. But all the same we had had a good time, and we both knew that, in spite of all law and authority, we intended to have many more up there in the woodland, Eva and I.