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The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales by Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch

A >> Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch >> The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales




For a moment he did not seem to hear; then started and came out of his
day-dream with a furious blush. I looked away.


II.


The second boy wore a well-cut Eton suit, and sat in the smoking
compartment of a padded corridor carriage, with a silk-lined overcoat
beside him and a silver-mounted suit-case in the rack above. He was not
smoking, nor was he reading; but he sat on a great pile of papers and
magazines, and stared straight in front of him--that is to say, straight
at me.

His stare, though constant and unrelenting, was not in the least
offensive--it had no curiosity in it: he had obviously been
contemplating the cushions before I intruded, and since I had chosen to
occupy his field of vision he contemplated me.

I had no speaking acquaintance with the boy; but he bore the features of
his family, and his initials were on the suit-case above. So I knew him
for the only son of a man who had once shown me civility, the youngest
and least extravagantly wealthy of three rich brothers. Since one of
these brothers had never married and now was not likely to, it lay
beyond guessing what wealth the boy would inherit some day.

He was by no means ill-looking, and quite certainly no fool. His face
carried the stamp of his father's ability. It puzzled me what he could
be doing with that pile of papers and magazines; or why, having burdened
himself with them, he should choose to sit and stare instead of reading
them. For his station lay but a twenty minutes' run below mine, and it
was impossible that in the time he could have glanced through the half
of them.

He had been staring at me, or through me, maybe for half an hour, when
our train slowed down and came to a standstill above the steep valley
between Bodmin Road and Doublebois. After a couple of minutes' wait,
the boy rose and went to the window in the corridor to see what was
happening; and I took this opportunity to glance across at the papers
scattered on the vacant seat. They included three or four sixpenny and
threepenny magazines; a large illustrated paper (_Black and White_, I
think); half a dozen penny weeklies--_Tit-bits_, _Answers_, _Pearson's
Weekly_, _Cassell's Saturday Journal_; I forget what others: halfpenny
papers in a heap--all kinds of _Cuts_, _Snippets_, _Siftings_, _Echoes_,
_Snapshots_, and _Side-lights_; _Pars about People_, _Christian
Sweepings_, _Our Happy Fireside_, and _The Masher_. Many lay face
downward, coyly hiding their titles but disclosing such headlines as
"Facts about the Flag," "Books which have influenced the Bishop of
London," "He gave 'em Fits!" "Our Unique Competition," "Mr. Cecil
Rhodes: a Powerful Personality," "What becomes of old Stage Scenery."

In the midst of my survey the train began to move forward again, and the
boy came back to his seat.

"It's only some platelayers on the viaduct," he explained. "They held
up their flag against us. I suppose they were just finishing a job."

"Nasty place to leave the rails," said I, glancing over the parapet upon
the green tree-tops fifty feet below us."

"I was thinking that," said he, and a queer tremor in his young voice
made me glance at him sharply. Then suddenly I understood--or thought I
did.

"You, at any rate, are pretty well insured," said I.

"Twenty thousand pounds, and a little over: the coupons cost four and
twopence altogether, and then at the end of the journey you can use up
all the reading."

"Wonderful!" I kept a serious face. "And I suppose all this time you've
been staring at me, amazed by the recklessness of your elders."

He flushed slightly. "Have I been staring? I beg your pardon, I'm
sure: it's a trick I have. I begin thinking of things, and then--"

"Thinking, I suppose, of how it would feel to be in a collision, or what
it would be like to leap such a parapet as that and find ourselves
dropping--dropping--into space? But you shouldn't, really. It isn't
healthy in a boy like you: and if you'll listen to one who has known
what nerves are, it may too easily grow to mean something worse."

"But it isn't that--exactly," he protested; "though of course all that
comes into it. I'm not a--a funk, sir! I was thinking more of the
--of what would come _afterwards_, you know."

"Oh dear!" I groaned to myself. "It's worse than ever: here's a little
prig worrying about his soul. I shouldn't advise you to trouble about
that, either," I said aloud.

"But I don't _trouble_ about it." He hesitated, and stumbled into a
burst of confidence. "You see, I'm no good at games--athletics and that
sort of thing--"

Again he stopped, and I nodded to encourage him.

"And I'm no swell at schoolwork, either. I went to school late, and
after home it all seems so _young_--if you understand?"

I thought I did. With his polite grown-up manner I could understand his
isolation among the urchins, the masters, and all the interests of
an ordinary school.

"But my father--you know him, don't you?--he's disappointed about it.
He'd like me to bring home prizes or cups. I don't think he'd mind what
it was, so long as he could be proud about it. Of course he never
_says_ anything: but a fellow gets to know."

"I daresay you're right," I said. "But what has this to do with
insuring yourself for twenty thousand pounds?"

"Well, you see, I'm to go into the Bank some day: and I expect my father
thinks I shall be just as big a duffer at that. I know he does.
But I'm not, if he'd only trust me a bit. So now if we were to smash
up--collide, go off the rails, run over a bridge, or something of that
sort--just think how he'd feel when he found out I'd cleared twenty
thousand by it!"

"So that's what you were picturing to yourself?"

He nodded. "That, and the smash, and all. I kept saying, 'Now--if it
comes this moment?' And I wondered a little how it would take _you_
suddenly: whether you'd start up or fall forward--and if you would say
anything."

"You are a cheerful companion!"

He grinned politely. "And afterwards--just before the train stopped I
had a splendid idea. I began making my will. You see, I know
something about investments. I read about them every day."

"In the _Boy's Own Paper?_"

"We take in the _Standard_ in our school library, and I have it all to
myself unless there's a war on. I've heard my father say often that
it's a very reliable paper, and so it is, for I've tried it for two
years now. So if I left a will telling just how the twenty thousand
ought to be invested, it would open my father's eyes more than ever."

"My dear sir," said I, "don't be in a hurry. Serve out your time among
the barbarians at school, and I'll promise you in time your father's
respectful astonishment."


These were my two boys; and you may wonder why I always think of them
together. I do, though: and, what is more, I find that together they
help to explain to me my country's greatness.



THE SENIOR FELLOW.


There is at Oxford a small college, with a small bursar's garden that in
spring is ablaze with laburnum and scented with lilac; and in the old
wall of this garden, just beneath the largest laburnum-tree, you may
still find a stone with this inscription: "_Jesus have mercy on Miles
Tonken, Fellow. Anno 1545._"

This college, in the days when I knew it, had three marks of
distinction:--It turned out, on hunting mornings, more "pinks" for its
size than any other in Oxford; its boat was head of the river; and its
Senior Fellow was the Rev. Theobald Pumfrey, who knew more of Athenaeus
than any man in the world. He seldom lectured; but day by day, year
after year, sat in the window above this same small garden, and
accumulated notes for the great edition of his pet author that some
day--nobody quite knew when--was to make him famous. He was the son of
a Cumberland farmer; had come up to the University from a local
grammar-school; and since then (it was said) had revisited his native
village twice only--to bury his father and mother. His mother's death--
and that had happened five-and-twenty years before--left him without a
single relative on earth: nor could he be said to have a friend, even
among the dons. He rose early, took a solitary walk in the parks, and
would spend the rest of the day at his desk by the window. People
marvelled sometimes why he had taken Holy Orders. It was hinted that
his scout knew, perhaps; but, if so, his scout never divulged the
reasons.

The scholar was a man, nevertheless; had a humorously wrinkled mouth,
and an eye that twinkled responsive to a jest; and was the best judge of
wine in Oxford. On the strength of this undeniable gift the dons had
long since elected him steward of Common-room; and he valued the
responsibility, abstaining from tobacco--which he loved--to keep pure
his taste for vintages, and preserve a discriminating palate among
sweets. An utterance of his would hint that even his avoidance of
physical exercise was a matter of duty.

"A man," he said, "may work his body, may work his head, and may enjoy
his dinner. Any two of these things he may do, but not all three.
For me, I wish to work my head, and _must_ enjoy my dinner." And once,
when I dined with him, it was made clear to me that his life was ordered
after a plan. It was a summer evening, and he held a glass of claret
against the sunset. "Wife and children!" he cried suddenly, "wife and
children!" Then, with a wave of his left hand from the claret to the
still lawn below us and the lilacs, "These are my wife and children!"

It was whispered at length that his commentary on the first book of the
Deipnosophists was all but ready. All through a golden summer and a
quiet Long Vacation it had been maturing, and on the first night of the
October term he arranged his piles of notes about him, set a quire of
clean manuscript paper on his table, dipped pen in inkpot, and began to
muse on the first sentence.


An hour passed, and the page was not soiled. Across the still garden
came the sound of cab-wheels rattling over the distant streets.
The undergraduates were coming up for a fresh term. He had heard the
sound a hundred times, almost; and it did not concern him. He had no
lectures to prepare.

Another hour passed, and another. The noise of the cabs had died out,
and over him was creeping a sick fear, a certainty, that he could not
write a word. The subject was too immense. He had given his life to
Athenaeus, and now Athenaeus was a monster that one man's life and
knowledge would not suffice for. Having withheld his pen till he might
write adequately, he awoke to find that writing was impossible.
A horror took him as he pushed back his chair among the litter of
note-books, and, stepping to the window, threw the sash open.

Many stars were shining; and between them and the sleeping garden echoed
the clamour of a distant supper-party. He heard no words, only the
noise; but it filled his brain with a sense of the many thousand
supper-parties that the garden had listened to, of the generations that
had come and gone since his own first term, of the boys who had grown
into men while he was working at Athenaeus--always Athenaeus.
His forehead was burning, and as he pushed his hand across it, he seemed
to read in the darkness under the laburnum-tree, "_Jesus have mercy on
Miles Tonken, Fellow. Anno 1545," and found a new meaning--an irony--in
the words.

Then, because more and more the task of his life became a hopeless
weight, he gave a look at his notebooks and escaped out of the room,
downstairs into the fresh air of the quad, and across it towards the
porter's lodge. He found the porter napping, and, having a private key,
he let himself through the big gate and out into the street. No soul
was abroad: only the gas-lamps threw queer shadows of him on the
pavement, and the night-breeze struck coldly into him as he hurried
along, hating whatever he saw.

Soon, under a window in St. Giles's, he pulled up. There was a party of
young men inside--perhaps the same supper-party whose voices he had
heard just now. The light from the room flared across the street; but
by keeping close under the sill he stood in darkness, and he paused,
listening eagerly. Above, they were singing a chorus, noted in those
days--


It was pale dawn, and the sun was touching St. Mary's spire into flame
when the heavy-eyed porter heard a key turn in the wicket. It was the
Senior Fellow, and in about half an hour he appeared again at the lodge,
carrying a small bag, and handed the porter a letter addressed to the
President of the College. He then stepped out into the street, and
hurried off towards the railway station.

For a fortnight we heard nothing of him. Then suddenly he appeared
again--on an evening when the College, having won the "Fours," was
commemorating its success by a bonfire in the big quad. A certain
freshman, stealing down his staircase with a can of colza oil to feed
the flames, was confronted by our missing Senior Fellow.

"No," said the great scholar, "don't be afraid, and don't seek to hide
that oil-can; but come in here." And he led the way to his room.

This much is mere rumour; for the freshman was always reticent on the
encounter, and what followed. But many who were present that night can
bear witness that a big portmanteau appeared suddenly on the summit of
the bonfire, and blazed merrily to ashes, having clearly been saturated
with oil. Not until long after were its contents divined.


The Senior Fellow went back to his window above the bursar's garden,
though henceforward he dined but rarely in Common-room; and year by year
scholars expected his edition of Athenaeus, until he died and left his
desk full of notebooks to the youth who had carried the oil-can, and who
in course of years had become junior don. Also his will expressed a
wish that this, his favourite pupil, might be elected to succeed him as
steward of Common-room.

The new steward, eager to fulfil his duties, made it his first business
to inspect the college cellars. He found there abundance of old port,
much fair claret, a bin of inestimable Madeira, several casks of more
curious wines, and among them one labelled "For the Poor."

It struck him as a pleasant trait in his dead friend, thus to have
dispensed in charity that wine which doubtless had gone beyond its age,
and become unfit for the Fellows' palates. He drew a glassful and
tasted it.

The first sip was a revelation. He returned to his rooms, wrote a score
of letters inviting to dinner all the acknowledged connoisseurs of other
colleges. When they had dined with him, and fallen into easy attitudes
around the table, he introduced this wine casually among half a dozen
others, and watched the result.

Not a man who tasted it would taste any other.

As for the notebooks--those priceless materials for the final edition of
Athenaeus--they were empty, mere blank pages! Only in that labelled
"No. 1" was there a scrap of the old scholar's handwriting, and it
began--

"Dulce cum sodalibus
Sapit vinum bonum:
Osculari virgines
Dulcius est donum:
Donum est dulcissimum
Musica tironum--
Qui tararaboomdeat,
Spernit regis thronum!"



BALLAST.


Under the green shore that faces the port, and at a point that, as the
meeting-place of river and harbour, may be called indifferently by
either name, lay a slim-waisted barque at anchor, with a sand-barge
alongside. The time was a soft and sunny morning in early January--
a day that was Nature's breathing space after a week of sleet and
boisterous winds. The gulls were back again from their inland shelters.
Across the upland above the cliff a ploughman drove leisurably forth and
back, and always close behind his heels the earth was white with these
birds inspecting the fresh-turned furrow. The furze-bushes below him
were braided with cobwebs, and the stays, lifts, and braces of the
barque might have passed also for threads of gossamer spun from her
masts and yards, so delicately were the lines indicated against the
hillside. In the sand-barge, three men were chanting as they worked;
and their song, travelling across still sky and water, rose audibly
above the stir of traffic even in the narrow streets of the town.

The barque was taking in ballast; and the three men sang as they
shovelled,--for three reasons. It helped them to keep time; it kept
each from shirking his share of the work; and lastly, perhaps, the song
cheered them. They knew it as "The Long Hundred," and it ran--

"There goes one.
One there is gone.
Oh, the rare one!
And many more to come
For to make up the sum
Of the hundred so long."

"There goes two--"

--and so on, up to twenty. With each line, a shovelful of ballast was
pitched on board by every man; so that, when the twenty six-line stanzas
were ended, each man had thrown one hundred and twenty (a "long
hundred") shovelfuls of sand. Thereupon they paused, "touched pipe" for
a minute or two, and, brushing the back of the hand across their
foreheads to wring off the sweat, started afresh.

Along the barque's side ran a narrow line of blue paint, signifying that
the vessel was in mourning, that somebody belonging to captain or owner
was lately dead. But in this case it was the captain and owner himself:
and his chief mourner was a bright-eyed woman with a complexion of cream
and roses, who now leant over the bulwarks and looked down
contemplatively upon the three labourers. She was a Canadian, and her
husband, too, had been a Canadian--rich, more than twice her age, and
luxurious. Since his marriage she had accompanied him on all his
voyages. Three months ago his vessel had brought him, sick and
suffering from congestion of the lungs, into this harbour, where his
cargo of timber was to be unloaded: and in this harbour, a week later,
he had died, without a doubt of his wife's affection. From the deck
where she stood she could see between the elms on the hill above the
port the white wall of the cemetery where he lay. The vessel was hers,
and a snug little fortune in Quebec: and she was going back to enjoy it.
For the homeward voyage she had deputed the captain's responsibilities
to the first mate, and had raised his pay slightly, but the captain's
dignity she reserved for herself.

She wore a black gown, of course, but not a widow's cap: and, though in
fact a widow of twenty-five, had very much more the appearance of a maid
of nineteen as she looked down over the barque's side. Her lips were
parted as if to smile at the first provocation. On either side of her
temples a short brown curl had rebelled and was kissing her cheek.
The sparkle in her eyes told of capacity to enjoy life. Behind her a
coil of smoke rose from the deck-house chimney. She had left the midday
meal she was cooking, and ought to be back looking after it.
Instead, she lingered and looked upon the three men at work below.

Two of them were old, round-shouldered with labour, their necks burnt
brown with stooping in the sun. The third was a young giant--tall,
fair, and straight--with yellowish hair that curled up tightly at the
back of his head, and lumbar muscles that swelled and sank in a pretty
rhythm as he pitched his ballast and sang--

"There goes nine.
Nine there is gone . . ."

It was upon this man that the woman gazed as she lingered.
His shirt-collar was cut low at the back, and his freckled neck was
shining with sweat. She wanted him to look up, and yet she was afraid
of his looking up. She wondered if he were married--"at his age," she
phrased it to herself--and, if so, what manner of wife he had. She told
herself after a while that she really dreaded extremely being caught
observing these three labourers; that she hated even in seeming to lose
dignity. And still she bent and heard the song to the twentieth and
last verse.

The young giant, when the spell was over, leant on his shovel for a
moment and then reached out a hand for the cider-keg. One of his
comrades passed it to him. He wiped the orifice, tilted his head back
and drank as a man drinks at midday after a long morning. Some of the
cider trickled down his crisp yellow beard and he shook his head,
scattering the drops off. Then the keg was tilted again, and suddenly
lowered as he was on the point of drinking. His eyes had encountered
those of the woman on deck.

As they did so, the woman recovered all her boldness. Without in the
least knowing what prompted her, she bent a little further forward and
asked--

"What is your name, young man?"

"William Udy, ma'am."

"Do you mind breaking off work for a moment and stepping up here?"

"Cert'nly, ma'am." William Udy laid down his shovel at once.

A shiver of fear went through the young widow. Why had she asked him
up? Why, on a mere impulse; because she wanted to see him closer--
nothing more. What possible excuse could she give? She heard the sound
of his heavy boots on the ship's ladder: he would be before her in a
moment, expecting, of course, to be set to work on some odd job or
other. She cast about wildly and could think of no job that wanted
doing. It was appalling: she could not possibly explain--

As has happened before now to women, her very weakness saved her in
extremity. William Udy, clambering heavily over the ship's side, found
her leaning against the deck-house, with a face as white as the painted
boards against which her palm rested.

"What be I to do, ma'am?" he inquired, after a pause, and then added
slowly, "Beggin' your pardon, but be you taken unwell?"

"Yes," she panted, speaking very faintly, "I was over there--by the
bulwarks, and suddenly--I felt queer--a faintness--I looked over and saw
you--I called the first person I saw. I wanted help."

William Udy was puzzled. He had not noticed any pallor in the face that
had looked down on him from the ship's side. On the contrary, he seemed
to remember that it struck him as remarkably fresh and rosy. But he saw
no reason for doubting he had been mistaken.

"Can I do aught for 'ee? Fetch a doctor?"

"If you wouldn't mind helping me down--down to my cabin--"

William took her arm gently and led her aft to the companion ladder.
At the top of it she put out a hand vaguely and closed her eyes.

"I don't think," she murmured, "that I can walk. My head is going round
so. Could you--would it be too heavy--if you carried me?"

At any other time William would have considered this a good joke.
As it was he took her up like a feather in his arms and carried her down
to the cabin. There he set her down on the sofa and was about to
withdraw, blushing. He was a very shy youth and had never carried a
woman before, let alone one who was his superior in station.

"Thank you," she said in a voice that was little above a whisper.
"How easily you carried me. It's plain to see you're a married man."

William started. "There you're wrong, ma'am, pardon me for sayin' it."

"No? You were so gentle: so gentle although so big"--she smiled
faintly. "Would you mind stepping to the cupboard there and pouring me
out a wineglassful of sherry? It's in the decanter just inside."

William poured out a glassful and set it on the table in front of her.
She put it to her lips, and having scarcely moistened them, set it down
again.

"A glass for yourself," she said. "Come now--do! I see you are shocked
at the number of bottles I keep here. But they were my husband's.
He died, you know, a week after we came into harbour."

William's face worked to express mute sympathy.

"It's a fearful responsibility," she went on, "being left alone like
this with a vessel to look after, and all his property waiting over
there, on the other side of the water; and I daresay the lawyers, there,
waiting, too, to take advantage of me. I think it's having all this
on my mind that makes my head so giddy at times. . ."

William stood opposite to her, and thought. It is not known at what
moment the brilliant idea struck him, that as a husband he might be a
tower of strength to the fragile young creature on the sofa.
His comrades after waiting some time for him began their chant again--

"There goes one.
One there is gone . . ."

And while they sang it William began that courtship which ended, three
weeks later, in his sailing for Canada. He went as a bridegroom; or
perhaps (if we must reckon him as part of the ship's equipment), as
ballast.



The End.

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