Dream Days | Page 2

days when she
had to pick up skirts and flee, chased by an ungallant De Ruyter or Van
Tromp, she was yet cheerful in the consciousness that ere long she
would be gleefully hammering the fleets of the world, in the glorious
times to follow. When that golden period arrived, Selina was busy
indeed; and, while loving best to stand where the splinters were flying
the thickest, she was also a careful and critical student of seamanship
and of maneuvre. She knew the order in which the great line-of-battle
ships moved into action, the vessels they respectively engaged, the
moment when each let go its anchor, and which of them had a spring
on its cable (while not understanding the phrase, she carefully noted the

fact); and she habitually went into an engagement on the quarter-deck
of the gallant ship that reserved its fire the longest.
At the time of Selina's weird seizure I was unfortunately away from
home, on a loathsome visit to an aunt; and my account is therefore
feebly compounded from hearsay. It was an absence I never ceased to
regret--scoring it up, with a sense of injury, against the aunt. There was
a splendid uselessness about the whole performance that specially
appealed to my artistic sense. That it should have been Selina, too, who
should break out this way--Selina, who had just become a regular
subscriber to the "Young Ladies' Journal," and who allowed herself to
be taken out to strange teas with an air of resignation palpably
assumed--this was a special joy, and served to remind me that much of
this dreaded convention that was creeping over us might be, after all,
only veneer. Edward also was absent, getting licked into shape at
school; but to him the loss was nothing. With his stern practical bent he
wouldn't have seen any sense in it--to recall one of his favourite
expressions. To Harold, however, for whom the gods had always
cherished a special tenderness, it was granted, not only to witness, but
also, priestlike, to feed the sacred fire itself. And if at the time he paid
the penalty exacted by the sordid unimaginative ones who temporarily
rule the roast, he must ever after, one feels sure, have carried inside him
some of the white gladness of the acolyte who, greatly privileged, has
been permitted to swing a censer at the sacring of the very Mass.
October was mellowing fast, and with it the year itself; full of tender
hints, in woodland and hedgerow, of a course well-nigh completed.
From all sides that still afternoon you caught the quick breathing and
sob of the runner nearing the goal. Preoccupied and possessed, Selina
had strayed down the garden and out into the pasture beyond, where, on
a bit of rising ground that dominated the garden on one side and the
downs with the old coach-road on the other, she had cast herself down
to chew the cud of fancy. There she was presently joined by Harold,
breathless and very full of his latest grievance.
"I asked him not to," he burst out. "I said if he'd only please wait a bit
and Edward would be back soon, and it couldn't matter to him, and the

pig wouldn't mind, and Edward'd be pleased and everybody'd be happy.
But he just said he was very sorry, but bacon didn't wait for nobody. So
I told him he was a regular beast, and then I came away. And--and I
b'lieve they're doing it now!"
"Yes, he's a beast," agreed Selina, absently. She had forgotten all about
the pig-killing. Harold kicked away a freshly thrown-up mole-hill, and
prodded down the hole with a stick. From the direction of Farmer
Larkin's demesne came a long-drawn note of sorrow, a thin cry and
appeals telling that the stout soul of a black Berkshire pig was already
faring down the stony track to Hades.
"D' you know what day it is?" said Selina presently, in a low voice,
looking far away before her.
Harold did not appear to know, nor yet to care. He had laid open his
mole-run for a yard or so, and was still grubbing at it absorbedly.
"It's Trafalgar Day," went on Selina, trancedly; "Trafalgar Day--and
nobody cares!"
Something in her tone told Harold that he was not behaving quite
becomingly. He didn't exactly know in what manner; still, he
abandoned his mole-hunt for a more courteous attitude of attention.
"Over there," resumed Selina--she was gazing out in the direction of
the old highroad--" over there the coaches used to go by. Uncle Thomas
was telling me about it the other day. And the people used to watch for
'em coming, to tell the time by, and p'r'aps to get their parcels. And one
morning--they wouldn't be expecting anything different--one morning,
first