Dream Days | Page 3

there would be a cloud of dust, as usual, and then the coach would
come racing by, and then they would know! For the coach would be
dressed in laurel, all laurel from stem to stern! And the coachman
would be wearing laurel, and the guard would be wearing laurel; and
then they would know, then they would know!"
Harold listened in respectful silence. He would much rather have been
hunting the mole, who must have been a mile away by this time if he

had his wits about him. But he had all the natural instincts of a
gentleman; of whom it is one of the principal marks, if not the complete
definition, never to show signs of being bored.
Selina rose to her feet, and paced the turf restlessly with a short
quarter-deck walk.
"Why can't we do something?" she burst out presently. "He--he did
everything--why can't we do anything for him?"
Who did everything?" inquired Harold, meekly. It was useless wasting
further longings on that mole. Like the dead, he travelled fast.
"Why, Nelson, of course," said Selina, shortly, still looking restlessly
around for help or suggestion.
"But he's--he's dead, isn't he?" asked Harold, slightly puzzled.
"What's that got to do with it?" retorted his sister, resuming her
caged-lion promenade.
Harold was somewhat taken aback. In the case of the pig, for instance,
whose last outcry had now passed into stillness. he had considered the
chapter as finally closed. Whatever innocent mirth the holidays might
hold in store for Edward, that particular pig, at least, would not be a
contributor. And now he was given to understand that the situation had
not materially changed! He would have to revise his ideas, it seemed.
Sitting up on end, he looked towards the garden for assistance in the
task. Thence, even as he gazed, a tiny column of smoke rose straight up
into the still air. The gardener had been sweeping that afternoon, and
now, an unconscious priest, was offering his sacrifice of autumn leaves
to the calm-eyed goddess of changing hues and chill forebodings who
was moving slowly about the land that golden afternoon. Harold was
up and off in a moment, forgetting Nelson, forgetting the pig, the mole,
the Larkin betrayal, and Selina's strange fever of conscience. Here was
fire, real fire, to play with, and that was even better than messing with
water, or remodelling the plastic surface of the earth. Of all the toys the
world provides for right-minded persons, the original elements rank

easily the first.
But Selina sat on where she was, her chin on her fists; and her fancies
whirled and drifted, here and there, in curls and eddies, along with the
smoke she was watching. As the quick-footed dusk of the short October
day stepped lightly over the garden, little red tongues of fire might be
seen to leap and vanish in the smoke. Harold, anon staggering under
armfuls of leaves, anon stoking vigorously, was discernible only at
fitful intervals. It was another sort of smoke that the inner eye of Selina
was looking upon,--a smoke that hung in sullen banks round the masts
and the hulls of the fighting ships; a smoke from beneath which came
thunder and the crash and the splinter-rip, the shout of the
boarding-party, the choking sob of the gunner stretched by his gun; a
smoke from out of which at last she saw, as through a riven pall, the
radiant spirit of the Victor, crowned with the coronal of a perfect death,
leap in full assurance up into the ether that Immortals breathe. The dusk
was glooming towards darkness when she rose and moved slowly down
towards the beckoning fire; something of the priestess in her stride,
something of the devotee in the set purpose of her eye.
The leaves were well alight by this time, and Harold had just added an
old furze bush, which flamed and crackled stirringly.
"Go 'n' get some more sticks," ordered Selina," and shavings, 'n' chunks
of wood, 'n' anything you can find. Look here--in the kitchen-garden
there 's a pile of old pea-sticks. Fetch as many as you can carry, and
then go back and bring some more!"
"But I say,--" began Harold, amazedly, scarce knowing his sister, and
with a vision of a frenzied gardener, pea-stickless and threatening
retribution.
"Go and fetch 'em quick!" shouted Selina, stamping with impatience.
Harold ran off at once, true to the stern system of discipline in which he
had been nurtured. But his eyes were like round O's, and as he ran he
talked fast to himself, in evident disorder of mind.

The pea-sticks made a rare blaze, and the fire, no longer smouldering
sullenly, leapt up and began to assume the appearance of a genuine
bonfire. Harold, awed into silence at first, began