Sweethearts at Home

A sleepy Sunday morning-and no need for any one to go to church.

It was at Neuchatel, under the trees by the lake, that I first became conscious of what wonderful assistance Sweetheart might be to me in my literary work. She corrected me as to the date upon which we had made our pilgrimage to Chaumont, as to the color of the hair of the pretty daughter of the innkeeper whom we had seen there-in her way quite a Swiss Elizabeth Fortinbras. In a word, I became aware that she had kept a diary. Sweetheart, like her nearest literary relative, began with "poetry." That was what we called it then. We have both revised our judgments since. Only Sweetheart has been more wise than I should have been at her age. She has resisted temptation, and rigorously ruled out all verse from the Diary as at present published! This is wonderful. I published mine.

Since then, she and I have been preparing the present volume, just as eagerly as if we had "yielded to the solicitations of numerous friends," as the privately-printed books say.

No, it was quite the contrary with us. Nobody, except one nice publisher, knows anything about it. He asked us to let him print it, and even he has not seen the very least little scrap. All he knows is that Sweetheart has a good many thousand friends scattered up and down two hemispheres, and he believes (as we also are vain enough to believe) that they will not let Sweetheart's Diary go a-begging to be bought.

* * *

There is something curiously dreamy about the Lake of Neuchatel. I knew it and the school down by the pier long ago, when the little town still preserved distinct traces of the hundred and fifty years of Prussian drill-sergeants. Here and there the arms of Brandenburg were to be seen curiously mixed, and almost entwined, with the strong red cross of the Swiss Confederation.

Specially interesting is the opposite side of the lake, for there the Cantons push forward their narrow necks of territory to the very lake shore-possibly as the price of their support against the Eagles of the North, whose claws have never let go their hold but this once. There, within a day's easy walk, you can pass from Canton Vaud into Canton Friburg and back again into Vaud. Then, Morat-way, you come on a little inset square of Canton Berne, whose emblematic bears also have their claws in every pie thereabout. And all the way, never a hotel for the fleecing of the foreigner! Here and there, indeed, one passes a country inn with sanded floor. More often it is only a rather superior house with a bush hung out French-fashion over the threshold.

It is best, as Sweetheart and I found, to make for one of these. Generally I had known them of old, and though since then the years had done some stiff route-marching, most of their hosts and hostesses remembered me.

How do you get there? Well, you cross the lake almost at its narrowest part. A little stream drains into it, slowly and in Dutch fashion, as if it were smoking a peaceful pipe by the way. Indeed, for a little while you might fancy yourself actually in Holland, so thickly are the flowers set. Only-only (and oh! the difference!) they are all wild. For I cannot help my heart beating faster when I set foot on any of the untrodden places of the earth, when I know that the next person I meet will be different from anybody I have ever met before-that he will be as frankly interested and very likely amused by me as I am by the moldy and the quaint about him-things that nobody in his senses has ever thought of looking at in that countryside for a hundred years! Privately there is often a quiet, widespread, wholly unspoken doubt of my entire sanity. That dry smile hovering about the mouth of the courteous mayor of the commune says as much. Just the same with the quick, intelligent glance that shoots betwixt husband and wife when you ask to see their barn-once the chapel of a long-destroyed monastery (Carthusians from the Italian valleys driven out by the religious wars). To them it is a barn, commodious-only a little damp. But it is nothing more. A new model one, now-all burnt brick, floor of concrete, with iron roof pillars-now that would be something worth crossing the lake to look at. Hold-there is one at Estavayer! The farmer there would be glad to show it, if only Monsieur and the young lady...? No! Well, there is no accounting for tastes, and that shrug from Master Pierre said quite plainly that he had the poorest opinion of our mental capacity. But all the same Master Pierre is kind to the infirm-to those (as the Catechism says) "of weaker understanding."

Yes, there is the key. We can take our own time, and when we have done we can hang it up where we got it.

But good Master Pierre is curious too. Where might we be going? If it is a fair question-or, indeed, whether or not! "To Madame Marie Brigue's!" "Yes, but certainly!" "Had we known Madame Marie long?" The Elder of us had known her for some twenty years or more.

"When she was with old Monsieur Alexander-yes, at the Upper Riffel House, and everything in her charge?" Sanity was returned to us like a passport examined doubtfully. We should not this time be committed to a House of Retreat for the mentally infirm-no, not if fifty doctors, all specialists, had so certified. We knew Madame Marie! Master Pierre would lay aside everything and come with us. It was not possible that we could know the way.

I thanked Master Pierre, but for my own reasons preferred to go alone-that is to say, alone with Sweetheart, which is the best kind of loneliness.

"There is going to be a storm!" I said to my Maid, as we paced along side by side. Sweetheart looked at the cloudless September sky, at the boldly-designed splashes of the leaf-shadows making Japanese patterns on the narrow path through the wood. Then she regarded me inquiringly. Of a storm in the heaven above or on the earth beneath there was certainly no visible sign.

Then I explained that the tempest was a moral one, and would certainly break when we met in with Madame Marie. And I set her this riddle to read, for she is fond of such.

I had always been first favorite with Madame Marie. She had spoiled me as a wandering boy. She has assisted me as a callow youth to the sweetmeats under her control. In my earlier manhood she had taken me to see her brother, who was a curé of a great parish in the Valais.

Yes, boy and man, she had always scolded me, railed upon me, declared to my face that I was of a surety "the Last of the Last," and that, altogether apart from my being a heretic, my misdeeds would inevitably render my future far from enviable! According to Madame Marie I was certainly bound for an ice-free port!

"And what had you done to her, father, to make her so angry with you-or at least scold you so much?"

"Only come in late for my meals!" I said. Sweetheart took one look at me, as one who would say, "Pray remember that I am no more a simple child!" But what she said aloud was, "Did all this happen before I was born?"

And I knew instantly that I was underlying an unjust suspicion, from which the very first glimpse of Madame Marie would instantly free me. For even when I knew her Madame had long passed the canonical age, and must now be verging on the three-score years and ten.

It was, however, quiet unlikely that she would ever refrain from scolding me, even in the presence of my eldest daughter.

By and by we came in sight of a little white house, and upon the path which passed beneath it. Over the door, half hidden by the yellow splashes of Canariensis, was the sign, "Madame Marie Brigue ... Restaurant." There was a great quiet everywhere about the place. Some pigeons were coo-cooing in the Basse Cour. A cat regarded us with the sleepy dispassion of its race. However, there was certainly a stirring among earthenware somewhere towards the entrance of the cellar. We could make out the grating of carrots, or, as it might be, the scraping of potatoes. I motioned Sweetheart to get behind me-which she did, eager to take a hand in one of "father's ploys."

Then I went to the front door, and in the loud, confident voice of one who, after a short absence, has come back at the proper hour, to find his dinner not ready, I called out, "Marie, are those chops not done yet?"

A dish clattered on the floor. We could hear the splash of the fragments on the cool flagstones of the inner kitchen.

"Marie, old Lazybones! Here have I been twelve hours on the mountains, and not even an omelette ready!"

"It is the Herr-with-the-Long-Legs-the Herr who kept my good dinner waiting while he ran about the 'bergen'! And now-oh, the Good-for-Nothing, the Vaurien, he come back to old Marie crying hunger-just as he used to do more than a score of years ago up in the Riffel House!"

And before I knew it I was embraced and kissed on both cheeks by this tall, gaunt old woman-greatly, of course, to the joy of Sweetheart. But her turn was yet to come. Madame Marie continued scolding me even in the utmost expansion of her greeting. She held me at arm's length and scolded. She scolded because I had come without warning, and because I had not come sooner. Scolded because I had let the years slip past till her hair was white like the snow on the mountains, on which I had so often tarried till my dinner was burnt to a cinder! While mine-but there-who was this with me? Was I married? "Your daughter!" A daughter like that, and old Marie getting so blind that she had called me bad names-the names of the old time-in her hearing. But Mademoiselle would understand! She would pardon a poor old woman who had known her father, and been a mother to him, years and years before the young lady was born, or even thought of!

So, indeed, Mademoiselle understood very well. No forgiveness was necessary. She was all too happy. And while the dinner was preparing, she set down all these facts in her notebook, so that when Madame Marie came to the door to say that the omelette was ready to be put before us on the table, she called to Sweetheart that she was indeed her father's own daughter. For that in the old days at the Riffel House he had always been like that, sitting down on the very glacier to scribble in his notebook all about nothing, and so letting good food spoil because of his foolishness!

And so it happened that on our way back from Madame Marie's, Sweetheart let me see the first pages of her Diary. I found them so interesting that we arranged on the spot how they were to be published. And so here they are, ready (if you be simple) to please you as well as they pleased me.

* * *

In June-Some Day, 3 o'clock. Cool under the Trees.

Some while ago a book was written about me, called Sweetheart Travelers. It was father who wrote it, and I think he did his best, saying a lot of nice things. But, of course, how could he really understand little girls?

At first I thought I would write a book contradicting the mistakes. But Mr. Dignus, who is a friend of mine and knows about such things, said that would not be very kind to father, and might do him harm in his business. But that if I would write about everything just as it seemed to me as I grew up, he would see to it that it was printed and published.

So when father sees it, won't he just get a surprise? Perhaps he will go into a shop and buy Sweetheart's Diary, thinking that somebody is poaching on his preserves. I can see him tugging at his big mustache, and walking very solid and determined, same as he does when he says to the boys, "You, sir, come into the study along o' me!" Which makes all the rest of us go sort of cold and trembly all over, like a rabbit smelling fresh lettuce.

But it is for what we are NOT going to get that we are sincerely thankful.

Only, after a dreadful lecture the boys are generally let off-"for this time only, mind you!"-whereas the rabbit always ends up by eating the lettuce. [Moral somewhere about, but I can't just make it out.]

And that reminds me. I will tell you the dreadful history of the Blue Delhi Vase. It is one of the first things I can remember and the one that frightened me the most. It used to sit on our brown, carved-oak table in the little drawing-room. It was pale blue like the color of the beady stones you can't see into-oh, yes-thank you very much-turquoise. And somehow I thought that it had come from a fearfully rich uncle in India, who was Prime Minister to a Begum, and would come home one day with an elephant in a huge cattle truck, like what I had seen on the railway. He would then have a scarlet carpet laid to keep his embroidered slippers clean-there is always mud before our station-and he would ride up to our front door on the Begum's state elephant. And the first question he would ask was always, "Is my Blue Delhi Vase in good repair?"

And if it wasn't, then he would demand the name of the miscreant who had done it, and bid the elephant, whose name was quite distinctly Ram Punch, t-r-r-rample him to pieces.

I suppose when I was very young I must have dreamed this, or heard folk talking, without understanding. At any rate I got things pretty mixed in my mind. You see I was very little then, so little that I don't remember there being any boys. Though I suppose Hugh John was a little trundler in a "pram," looking up at the sky with wide solemn eyes and never saying a word. I suppose so, but I don't remember.

All I know is that I wore little red caps, one for Sunday and one for week-days. The Sunday one was put away during the week, and so mostly I had only one.

Now, on this great day I happened to be in the garden, and Somebody sent me in for my cap. Because my hair flew all about and got just fearfully "tuggy"-enough to make any one cry, even Hugh John, who never cries at all. But, then, he has hair short like a door-mat and rough as if made of teased string. He has also a head so hard that he will bounce it right through the panel of a door for a penny-that was, of course, afterwards, not when he used to lie in his "prim-pram." But he got whipped, for the doors had to be mended. So he stopped.

I was in a great hurry. Indeed I flew. I never remember walking in those days. So in I banged as hard as I could, and coming out of the hot sun, the rooms felt all very still and cool. The parlor smelt of old rose leaves, which I sometimes stirred with my finger. They were in a big bowl, all powdery, and smelt nice-especially on hot days. Then I used to think that the poor old dead things were stirring in their sleep, and trying to "blossom in the dust." I don't know where I got those words-in a hymn, most likely. But I used to say them over and over to myself-yes, till I cried. Because I was sorry for the old roses that tried to live and couldn't. Silly, wasn't it? Well, it seems so now. But then, of course, it was different.

Now, when I had got over the queer little catch in my throat that finding myself alone always gave me, I started looking round under all the sofas and chairs to see that there were no lurking Day Ghosts about. They are the worst kind, and I began to wonder where my cap was.

I had come for it specially, you see. So I could not go out without it. Also there were awfully nice things going on in the garden; the picking of white raspberries, mainly; each shaped like a thimble; the cap coming easily off, and leaving a small dead white spear-point, and with a taste-oh, to make your mouth water for quite a week!

Anyway, mine does now.

For a while I could not see my red cap. Then, all in a minute, I caught sight of it on the top of the Delhi Blue Vase. It was dreadfully high, and as for me, I was dreadfully little. More than that, the table was slippery.

But I had to get the cap, because all the time I was missing the white raspberries out in the garden. I could hear them pattering into the tin pails with a rustle of waving stems and a whish of nice green leaves when you let them go.

So I got up on tiptoe. I was still ever so much too short. Then I took a buffet-the one on which I listened to stories being told. And I mounted on that. I had very nearly got the cap off when the buffet slipped sideways, and-oh, it was dreadful-there on the carpet lay the Delhi Blue Vase all in shreds-no, "shards" is the proper word.

I couldn't think. I couldn't cry. I could not even pray. I forgot how. I grew ice-cold. For I had heard it said that of all the valuable things in the house that was the rarest. I knew it could never be put together again, and it was I who had done it.

For a moment I thought of running away altogether. It was not fear of being punished. No, if it had only been that, I should not have minded. At least not much. Punishments don't last long up at our house. But now I should never see the uncle from India, nor the elephant being unpacked end-foremost out of the cattle truck, nor the crimson carpet, nor the howdah, nor any of these fine things. Or even if I did I might be stamped to death by the elephant, after all. Oh, I was unhappy. I looked in the glass and, I declare, I hardly knew the white, frightened, peeky face I saw there for my own.

You see, I usually see my own face when my hair is being done, or when the soap is just washed off. Then it is shiny and red; but now, in the dusk of the room, it looked very small and pale, and my eyes very big and black, with rims round them.

Now our cat was there, and the thought came of itself that everything might be blamed on her. She was our only not-nice pussy, and if I said it was Mir-row who did it, nobody would be the worse. She was always knocking things down anyway. She would only get chased out, and she was always being chased out. So one extra time would not matter to Mir-row.

Well, I suppose that is what the ministers and grown-up people call temptation-when you think you can do a thing so as not to be found out. When you do a thing and don't care whether you are found out or not-that is different. That's like Sir Toady (he's my brother, as you shall hear) when he goes bird-nesting and has to watch out for the keeper. But he doesn't really care if he is catched.

But the Delhi Vase! Oh, it seemed as if I never could be happy again in this world!

I knew-I mean at the time-that I should have prayed. I had been often and often told that I ought. Still, you can't just always pray when you ought to. However, I did manage to kneel down and grab hold of Mir-row.

I knew that Mir-row was a bad cat, and did all sorts of things she ought not to do. So I took her to the place where the Delhi Vase had been broken, and asked her if she minded. And she said as plain as possible that she did not care a bit. I should get whipped, that was all, and she would be glad.

She was a hard-hearted Thing. For I was in dreadful trouble. But for all that Mir-row would not take a bit of the blame. And she might just as easily, seeing the number of tit-bits I had brought out for her. But cats have no gratitude-at least Mir-row had none. However, I think she must have been a foreign cat, because she could not even pronounce "Mee-ow" properly. And that is the reason why her name was "Mir-row." She said so herself.

So I said to her, "You, Mir-row, will you come up-stairs and 'fess'?"

And Mir-row said just "Fsssst-Mir-row!" to show that she was cross.

Then I said, "Mir-row, you are a horrid nasty cat, and you don't deserve that you should get off breaking that Delhi Vase. But I will take the blame on myself-yes, I will-just to show you what it is to be noble. I will go up-stairs and 'fess.'"

So I said, "Get thee behind me, Mir-row!" as I ought to have done at first. Because Mir-row had always been so naughty that she tempted me to blame her for breaking it. If she had been a good cat, then such a thing would never have entered my head. But her character was against her.

You see, I knew that I had only to say, "Mir-row did it," to get believed. Because she was always doing wicked things like that.

Then I went up-stairs, running as hard as I could to get away from the wicked Mir-row, who was tempting me to tell a story. I ran to find Somebody to 'fess' to. And I found Somebody. And Somebody listened, and then rose up looking quite grave, but very kind. Oh, I was shaking ever so, till Somebody took me in such nice strong arms, and said that as I had come at once, and had not even thought of trying to escape the blame or to put it on anybody else, I should not be punished-though it certainly was a great, great pity.

But I never told about Mir-row, or how nearly it had happened otherwise.

And as for Mir-row, she said nothing either. She just curled herself up on the carpet among the broken pieces of the vase, and when we went down was peacefully dreaming of catching mice. I knew she was by the way she had of thrusting out her claws and pulling them in again.

No, Mir-row did not deserve all that I had done for her.

But, after all, honesty is a better policy than blaming things on Mir-row.

This is the story of my first temptation, and how I was saved from the wickedness of Mir-row.

* * *

June again. Aged ten. Afternoon of the Day when the first Strawberry was Half-ripe.

It will never be whole-ripe, owing to an accident which happened to it. However, none of the Grown-ups knew except Sandy the gardener, and he only tells us not to. But we don't really mind.

Which makes me wonder sometimes if Grown-ups have a world of their own, same as us Children. I don't think so. If they had, they wouldn't always be writing and reading, or paying calls and sitting on chairs, and looking Nim-Pim-Pimmany! They can't really have good times all by themselves, same as us. What do you think? I suppose it is account-books, and postmen, and having to understand the sermon that makes them look like that.

But at any rate they have not an idea that children really are thinking-nor how much they know. Perhaps that is just as well. For, as they say about the monkeys, if they only knew how we talk among ourselves, they might set us to work. At least they would not be so ready to believe in us when next they saw us with our "behaving faces" on.

Now I will tell you about our house. It is a nice one, and I have a bedroom with greeny paper, and out of the window you can see the Pentland hills and the flagstaff in front of them. The flagstaff is on the drying green, but the hills are a good deal farther away. Maid Margaret and I live there-that is, at nights, and I tell her stories if she will lie on her right side and not kick.

Sometimes we have fights, but not such ones as the boys have up above. Often we can hear them stamping and thumping, and then coming down with a huge "bang" that you would think would shake down the house. That is when they clutch and wrestle. Outside there is just the Low Garden and the High Garden, a road between big old yew-trees, and then you are at the library, which is made of wood. And mostly there is a ticking sound inside, which is the typewriter-tick-a-tack-tick-a-tack! Then a pause, a few growls, and then the noise of a book being pulled out, rustling leaves, more stamps, more growls, and again-tick-a-tack!

It goes on like that most of the time, except when the Animal inside must be fed, or on fine afternoons, when he comes out to play.

Then we have quite lovely times in the woods and hunting for things, or picnicking. And it is nice to see the white tablecloth, which Somebody has arranged on the green grass or under the shade, all covered with nice things for you to eat.

Then all about there are woods-oh! miles and miles of them. There is the Low Park, where there are lots of apples-rather crabby, but not much the worse for that when you are really hungry.

The Low Park is pretty big, and has a stream running through it, quite slowly and steadily. Then down below is the river-bed, all rocks and pools. Because the water is drawn off for the mills below. We can play there in the summer-time, and keep fish as safe as in an aquarium.

Of course there are nice places higher up-where Esk goes along lipping over the pebbles, tugging at the overhanging branches of trees, or opening out to make a mirror for the purple heather on the slopes above. But of all these you shall hear before I have done. Oh, yes, I mean that you shall.

And in the evening all is lovely dark purple except the hills, which are light purple and green in patches, the shape of cloud-shadows.

I wonder if ever you got to love words, colors, and things till they grew to be part of yourself? What do I mean? Well, I will try and explain.

When I was little, the word "purple" somehow nearly made me cry. Oh, no-I did not like dresses that color, nor even ribbons-much. Only just the word. Sometimes funnily, as in the line-

"A pleasant purple Porpoise,

From the Waters of Chili."

Sometimes seriously, as in two lines which have always brought the tears to my eyes-I do not know why. I think I must have put them together myself when I was thinking in sermon-time (which is a very good time to think in). Because the first is the line of a Scottish psalm, and the rest is-I know not what-some jingle that ran in my head, I suppose. But they made me cry-they do still, I confess, and it is the color-word that does it!-that, and the feeling that it is years and years ago since first I began to say them over to myself. It seems as if there would never again be such hues on the mountains, never such richness on the heather, never sunsets so arrogant (yes, I got the word that time) as those when I was little.

But what, you ask, are the lines? Well, you won't think anything of them. I know you will laugh.

They are just-but oh! I am ashamed to put them down to be printed. For they are just altogether mine-all little girls who have been lonely little girls will know what I mean. Boys are pigs and will laugh-except Hugh John.

However, I can't put off any longer, can I? Oh, yes, I could, but-it is better to be over and done with it.

MY POEM.

Made up when I was (about) Four.

"I to the hills will lift mine eyes-

The purple hills of Paradise."

That's all! Now laugh! And if you do, I shan't ever love you again. Father smiles and says that very likely I did put them together, but that the last line is in a book of poems by a man named Trowbridge.

Well, what if it is? Can't I think it and Mr. Trowbridge too? I never saw his old book. Why, I could not read then, and he couldn't know what a little girl was thinking, sitting down by Esk-waterside and watching the purple hills-till I was told to come in and haste-me-fast, because the dew was falling.

But of course I don't tell this to everybody. They would call it sentiment. But I pity the little lonely girl who doesn't have "thinks" like that all to herself, which she would die sooner than tell to anybody except to her Dear Diary.

After the boys got bigger and could romp, I didn't have nearly so many thinks-not time enough, I suppose. Boys need a heap of watching. At first they have no soul-only a mouth to be silly with, teeth to eat with, and a Little Imp inside each to make them pesterful and like boys.

Well, little by little, I made a collection of things that were of my color-all in my head, of course.

"League upon rolling league of imperial purple!"

I think it was father who wrote that, and I believe his heart was pretty big and proud within him, seeing his own heathery country spread out before him when he did it. I wonder if something went cluck-cluck (like a hen) at the bottom of his throat? It does in mine sometimes.

Then there is "the Purple Wine of the Balkans," and "the wine-hearted sea"-but that last I only heard of at school.

And I liked a story about an Irish patriot who, when they brought him an address of honor with a green cover, told them to take it away and bind it in purple, the color of the heather.

Also I loved to read about heroines with "eyes like the purple twilight," though just at present these are scarce in our part of the country. One of our forbears (funny word-for we are the Four Bears, the little ones! Somebody I know is the Big Big Growly-only don't tell him!) well, one of our ancestors-immediate ancestors, I mean-left us blue eyes, but as we grew older they all turned gray, which I think unfair.

Later on, I loved to be told about the "purple Codex"-that is, the Gospels written out on purple vellum in letters all gold. That must be lovely. I tried to stain a sheet with Amethystine ink, and print on it in gold paint. But it only looked blotchy and stupid-you never saw such a mess. So I thought it was better just to dream about the Codex.

I wasn't born in the purple myself, but I resolved early never to marry anybody that wasn't. And I should have a purple nursery, and purple bibs, and a purple "prim-pram," and a nurse with purple strings to her caps, and baby should live exclusively on preserved violets (candied) and beautiful purple jelly.

Then wouldn't she be a happy child? Not commonplace like me, and compelled to wear a clean white pinafore. They don't half know how to bring up children now-a-days.

Oh, how I do wish that I had been "born in the purple!"

But I wasn't, and white soils so easily. You see, if the purple were only dark enough, you wouldn't get scolded half so much, and they wouldn't all the time be telling you that milk food is "so wholesome"! Oh, how tired I am of being told that!

Still, after all, chocolate isn't bad, and you can easily make believe that it is purple instead of brown.

At least I can. And it tastes just the same.

Good-by, Dear, my Diary. There's Nurse calling.

* * *