Chapter XIV: All Among the Snow

And what a difference the lad's return made to the dear old house! It scarcely seemed the same. What house ever is the same when the holidays are on and the boys are back again? Nor need the word be in the plural to make the change distinctly felt. One boy is quite sufficient to revolutionise a quiet household, especially when it consists of only women. And in the present case Duke's absence or presence made all the difference in the world, for they all loved him so, and he was so much to all of them, that nothing was too much to do for him. It seemed impossible to make enough of him. The young gentleman was--pardon the vulgarism--distinctly cock of the walk when he was at Tregowan. Fortunately, his was not one of those natures which are easily spoiled by being too well loved. Those who loved him he never failed to love in return. Selfishness was not a vice of his. It was scarcely possible to do more for him than he was anxious on his part to do for others. He idolised his mother. In his judgment such an one had never been known in all the world before, nor could a second like her exist again; and she was a mother worthy to be idolised. There is no more noble word than that word mother, and wise is the son whose mother is dear to him as was Marmaduke's to him. He idolised his sisters. He was not one of those who prate in public of those nearest and dearest to their hearts, and who find relief in exhibiting their most precious treasures to the approval of the world; but had he been--had it been his way to talk of his relations, he would probably have spoken of his sisters thus:--

"Winnie, that's the oldest--Winifred's her name, but we call her Winnie--she's not the sort of girl you can just twist round your finger and get to do just what you please, like lots of girls, you know,--not she. She's got a temper of her own has Win, and when she's made up her mind about a thing, is as hard and obstinate as nails; but she's as true as steel, and truer too; and when she has made up her mind, you bet anything you like that it's made up just in the way it ought to be. I'd trust her a good deal sooner than I would myself, though I shouldn't exactly like to tell her so, you know. A fellow must keep a girl in order, let her be ever such a brick, you see. Then there's Nell--Eleanor's her name--she's one of your meek and gentle sort; sort of girl who would give up anything for any one she cottoned to; would never think of herself at all, but would just lie by, and do whatever a fellow wanted before he ever thought of asking. She's the best girl in the world is Nell; but don't you go flattering yourself that she's the sort of article you can ride it over rough-shod--just because she happens to be gentle. You'd be mixing it slightly, I can tell you. She's got a little way of her own which would just knock you out of time before you could as much as look at her, and a tongue--Nell's got a tongue which just makes you feel the meanest thing in breeches that ever yet was born. And there's Marion--Ria's what we call her--she's the youngest of the three; she's a trump is she! There's no nonsense about her, except that she believes every boy's a hero; and, when you come to think, precious few of them are that, you know. But she's up to every lark that's going, and as plucky as they make them. She's perhaps a little bit too fond of larks, if anything; but what's the odds? There aren't many larks about, and it's not many of the few that are that girls have any chance of joining in."

Such, and in such-like English of his own, would probably have been Duke's verdict on the Mesdemoiselles Tregowan; while they, on their part, would probably have been--Ria would certainly have been--even more enthusiastic in their estimate of him. Indeed, they reached that ideal of what a family should be--bound together by the indissoluble bonds of love by which God intended that every family should be bound. Thus the joys of one were the joys of all, and no one had a sorrow which was not shared in by them all.

They were in the schoolroom after lunch, that schoolroom in which first we made the acquaintance of the girls. No word had yet been exchanged upon the all-engrossing subject between the mother and the son, for Mrs. Tregowan not unwisely judged that on this the first day, especially after the adventure of the previous night, it were best to leave such matters for the time, and not to speak of them, if possible at all, till Duke came with them first to her; for she knew his ways so well, and how it was his habit to come with all his troubles and make a clean breast of them to her; but she did not know, nor could he tell, how actually the fashion was to be in which the matter was to be dwelt upon between they two.

But now the girls and Duke were in the schoolroom after lunch. Duke was standing in a lordly attitude before the fire, hands in pockets, master of the situation, as even the most chivalrous of boys is apt to think himself when all alone with girls. Winnie was seated in an arm-chair, which she had drawn up so that it directly faced the centre of the fire--from the enjoyment of which, however, Duke effectually screened her--an unopened book upon her lap, prepared either to read or gossip. Busy Nell was still engaged upon the work which was to be, when finished, the mother's Christmas present, but she could talk just as well and as sympathetically, even better, perhaps, when working as when she had nothing at all to do. Ria, who was nothing if ceremonious, had placed a footstool in a corner of the great old-fashioned hearth, and was sitting upon that, with her knees drawn almost to her chin, and her hands clasped round her knees. From that coign of vantage she looked up at Duke, towering loftily above her, and basked in the full radiance of the fire.

"It is a comfort to be at home again," said Duke, benignly looking down upon the three of them, and rattling the keys and money in his trousers' pockets; "it really is a comfort, don't you know. Of course you girls can't understand the feeling; you never are away, you see, or, if you are, you just go visiting about, and that's just a jolly bit of fun."

"I don't know," observed Ria reflectively; "I should think it fun to go to school. I know I would sooner go to school than work at home. When you're at home you don't do any work; you just come to enjoy yourself, while in a way it's school to us."

"Pretty sort of school! What do you know about school? You girls don't know anything at all about it. How should you? I know what you do here. You get up and you have your breakfast, then you do a bit of work with Fräulein, then you have lunch, then you loaf away the afternoon, pottering about with needles and things, then you have your dinner, then you make-believe to prepare some lessons for to-morrow, instead of which you put them all on to Fräulein, and she pre-pares them for you, then you just enjoy yourselves and go to bed. Bah! Don't tell me! I know the sort of thing it is! You have no more idea of what we have to endure than you have of the way in which to twist a ball from the leg stump to take the middle wicket."

"Your fate is very hard; we feel for you, poor Marmaduke," said Nelly demurely. "You have to get up early, because you did no work the night before; you have to beat little boys, very little boys, because they don't get up an hour before you do, and clean your room and make your fire; you have to copy your lessons from a book or a crib, or whatever you call it, because they are too hard for your poor head. You have to do them over again, because the master finds it out, and you have to get another little boy to do them for you. Oh, your fate is very hard, poor Marmaduke! You actually have to do some work yourself, because there are not enough little boys to do it for you."

"We," said Ria, "have to do it all ourselves. There's no such thing as cribbing or copying for us, and it's just slavery from the first thing in the morning to the last at night."

"But we," commented Nelly, still never raising her eyes from her work, "are not to be compared to Marmaduke. His wrongs are of a kind of which no tongue can tell."

"I don't pretend to be equal to you girls at chaff. That's exactly the sort of thing you girls can do. It doesn't suit a man. A man doesn't study the fashion of his speech. What he says is straight from the shoulder."

"A man, of course, is altogether superior to a girl, just as much," and here Nelly bent her head a trifle lower, "as he is superior to a boy."

"Nell, you scamp!" and down went Duke on his knees in front of her. "Just drop that work a moment. I believe you do nothing but work the whole day long." And Nelly perforce resigned her work, for Duke took both her hands in his. "Aren't you glad to see me back again? What an awful tongue you've got! If I were not the mildest-tempered mortal in existence, I'd just cut off a bit; but I know one thing, I'm jolly glad to get another sight of you."

And he looked into her face with the light of laughter in his eyes; and she released one of her hands and laid it on his head, and smoothed his hair, and slipped it round his neck; and then, "Our Duke!" she said; and then again, "Our own boy Duke!" and stopped; and they looked into each other's eyes a time, and then again she said, "You're a very foolish boy, but I'm very glad to see you all the same, and you're to be the best and noblest man that ever lived. You'll try to, won't you, Duke?"

"Oh, yes, I'll try to," he replied, and there was laughter in his voice. "It's the easiest thing to be all that, you know; you've only got to let people know what you intend to do, and there's an end of it upon the spot."

"I should like you to be a Bayard or a Roland. I should like you to do something great and noble, which would live for ever. O Duke!" and she drew him closer to her, "you don't know what great things I would have you do. I would have no one greater than our own boy Duke."

"Here's an unsuspected vein of romance discovering itself upon a sudden," said Duke; but though he said it lightly, his conscience pricked him, for he remembered how bad a beginning he had made, and he had it on his mind to tell them then and there that Dorrincourt had seen the last of him, and, disgraced and shamed, he was bidden from its doors; but he had not the heart to tell them then. So he sat down on the floor at Nelly's feet, and laid his head upon her knee, and she put her cool hand upon his head, and kept it there, and so all of them fell dreaming; and all of them with one accord looked in the fire, as though in its hottest parts were some strange power which told of times and seasons still in the land of dreams; and in that dreamy fashion the minutes passed, until at last Ria said, still in a reverie--

"I wonder what is the best and greatest thing a man can do?"

"I should say there was no actually best and greatest," said Winnie. "It depends upon the man. Many things are noble, but not one is noble over all the others. Every man has his ideal, and to him that ideal is the best and greatest."

"I should like Duke to do something for others. It is impossible for anything to be really great and noble which is done for yourself alone. Self-sacrifice! there is nothing nobler than that. I think he is the very noblest man who lives for all the world and never for himself at all."

"I don't! I think the very noblest man a hero. I'd sooner be Richard Cœur de Lion than any one I know. Richard of the Lion Heart! there's a name for you. Or Nelson, or Christopher Columbus, or Barbarossa, or anybody who never counted his life as of any value in the face of difficulty or of danger; an 'Up guards and at 'em' sort of man--a man who would dare anything to do and die. Your Roland was a splendid fellow, so was Bayard; but Roland was a better. I always think of him at Roncesvalles, with night coming on to hide the dead, and Olivier dying in his arms. Olivier and Roland were both splendid fellows, and the Archbishop was a good one too."

It was Ria spoke. Duke lay listening to the girls, listening to them discuss his destiny, the prize which they would wish him to make the mark of his high calling. But he said nothing on his side; he only lay and listened, and listened, if they had only known it, in no very pleasant humour; for all the time while they spoke of a splendid future, he thought only of a miserable past. And while still they talked and dreamed, a knock came at the schoolroom door.

"Come in!" cried Marmaduke. The door was opened, and a servant entered.

"Some young gentlemen to see Mr. Marmaduke," he said; and in an instant Duke was on his feet, and the girls had turned their heads to see who the visitors might be; but before they had time to wonder, in their own graceful way, three young gentlemen came in--Ralph Eva--'Quicksilver' Ralph--Chandos Effingham, and George Trevena.

"It's awfully good of you, you fellows," said Duke, as he went forward to give them greeting. "You, Effingham? Why, I thought you were at Newton Abbott?"

"I daresay you did," replied Chandos in his usual light and cheerful way; "but I'm not at Newton Abbott, and I'm not going to Newton Abbott, if it's all the same to you, though I daresay I should be as well off there as I'm likely to be here."

"Fact is," explained Ralph, "Chandos couldn't stand his aunt. She's a very cheerful sort of party on the whole, but as she's not exactly fond of boys, and thinks Christmas the most horrid season of the year, it's not quite too charming living all alone with her. So I've taken pity on him, and he's going to spend the holidays with me."

"Yes, and pretty sort of holidays they'll be," observed Chandos with peculiar politeness. "A little of you is about as much as anybody can stand."

But Ralph cared neither for his civilities nor for his rudeness. He was already exchanging greetings with the girls, and laughing all the time.

"How are you, Winnie?" They were such old friends that the idea of prefixing "Miss" never entered his imagination. "How are you, Nelly? How are you, Ria? I say, isn't this awfully jolly weather? Something like Christmas, isn't it? Did you ever see such snow? All round Zennor and Towednack you can hardly get along. We found out one drift which is ten foot deep at least; and Spills, that's the coastguardsman, says that a lot more snow is coming yet."

"How did you come?" asked Duke; for Eva lived beyond St. Ives towards Gurnard's Head, and that's a good ten miles from Tregowan.

"Oh, George drove over in the pony trap to fetch us." Trevena lived at the other side of Gwinear, which is about six miles from Tregowan. "We're going to sleep with him to-night. We're going to put up the trap at Abraham's"--(Abraham's is the hotel in Camborne town)--"and are going on by train; but we thought we'd look you up upon the way. I say, we heard all about the accident."

And so the voluble Ralph went on. It was seldom he was at a loss for words. They were a merry party if a noisy one; even the girls did their fair share of talking. All sorts of things were talked about--how they had found the folks at home; plans for the holidays; what parties there were going to be; what was going to be done by every one; what were the prospects for good skating;--all the very varied things which were likely to be of interest to such a company at such a time. Finally, it was proposed that they should go out there and then into the snow and build a castle whose walls should tower to the skies. It was Trevena's proposal. It appeared that they were to rear a similar structure at Gwinear, and he suggested that they should at least commence one at Tregowan now. The idea was taken up at once by Marmaduke.

"Come along!" he cried. "We'll build it right in front there, where the girls can have a look at it; just on that little hillock. There's no time to waste if you fellows mean to catch your train; let's start it now."

And they did so there and then. The schoolroom window was raised conveniently above the ground, so that it was easy for any one with the least agility to spring from it into the open air. The proper entrance was some little distance from the schoolroom, and then they had to go all round the house--and that was quite a walk--to get to the desired spot. So the window was thrown up; hats were forced upon their heads, and one after another of the young gentlemen leapt upon the ground.

"Of course you'll come?" cried Ralph to Ria, well knowing that young lady's peculiarities.

"Of course I shall," said Ria; and of course she did, and in her own fashion too. A pair of thick woollen gloves were thrust upon her hands, an old hat upon her head, a thick cloth jacket on her back, and then Miss Marion, deeming herself prepared for all emergencies, did as the boys had done, climbed upon the window-ledge and sprang down upon the ground.

How they worked! There was no thought of idleness with them just then. Winnie and Nellie, not feeling strongly tempted to rush about with Ria up to their knees in snow, and deeming the weather hardly of a kind to render it desirable to have the window up as high as it would go, drew it down, and placing their chairs in front of it, sat there, and from the cosy schoolroom watched the scene without. Winnie had her book and Nelly had her work, and as they worked and read they talked. And without they got spades and shovels, and proceeded in a thoroughly scientific way to rear a tower.

First they cleared the ground entirely of snow, shovelling it away with might and main. That which they cleared away went to form the base and sides. Ria and Ralph did this, for it was deemed better that the young lady should stand as much as possible on solid ground. Then when the snow was cleared they still stayed within the tower, finding plenty of employment in beating down the supplies which those outside kept throwing in, and being careful to see that the walls were ship-shape and solid and strong. Duke and George both worked like troopers, but Effingham was by no means as laborious; in fact, his enthusiasm never was remarkable. He had been heard to observe as he followed the others through the window, that it was just the sort of thing to give a fellow his death of cold, and that it was a cheerful way of spending the Christmas holidays; and very soon he declared that he had had enough of it, and thrust his hands into his pockets in a vain attempt to keep them warm.

"Now then, Chandos, why aren't you working?" inquired George Trevena, perceiving the young gentleman did nothing but survey the proceedings with an air of the deepest dudgeon.

"I'm not a galley-slave," said Chandos, "and I'm not a fool; and when my idea of holidays consists of going in for extra slavery all among this messing snow, I'll let you shut me up in an asylum. Idiots you fellows are!"

"Holloa, Effingham!" cried Duke, when the walls were already beginning to raise themselves above the ground, "don't you seem to find it cold doing nothing but standing there? Why don't you lend a hand? This is the sort of thing to put life into you, my boy."

It was unmistakably the sort of thing to put life into him, judging from the colour on his cheeks and the sparkle in his eyes; but Chandos had a point of view entirely his own.

"Yes, I daresay," was his reply. "About the beastliest thing in all the world is snow. I would a good deal sooner make mud-pies than make such a donkey of myself as you; it's healthier and cleaner too. And if you want some life put in you, why don't you go in for being navvies right away?"

And so they let him grumble by himself. As it was plain that he would not help them, it was equally plain that it was vain to hope to help him to a pleasanter mood, so they worked on alone.

"It must be two feet high," cried Ria soon. "Isn't it splendid fun?"

"Splendid!" agreed Ralph, and he banged still harder at the snow. It really promised to be quite a respectable sort of tower after all. The walls were at least twelve inches thick. It was as nearly as possible circular in shape, and bid fair, if they continued operations at the rate they had begun, soon to conceal any average-sized person who might be standing in the interior. An entrance was to be left on one side, but only large enough to admit an individual of moderate dimensions upon his hands and knees.

"When we've finished it we'll have a regular attack," declared Trevena, pausing for a moment to survey the work. "We'll have some other fellows down, and we'll let somebody defend the fort inside, and we'll do our best to rout them out of it."

"We will," said Duke. "But you'll have all your work cut out for you, my boy. You'll find it a good deal easier to build it up than to knock it down again; that's to say, unless there comes a sudden thaw. And another thing, if anybody has got to defend the fort, we shall have to put loopholes, and pretty big ones too, so that they can aim through them."

And so they did. Here and there they left open spaces--loopholes--in the tower, about twelve inches in length and five or six in height, to facilitate the task of the defenders; for it was plain that if it were not for some such contrivance they would be as though fastened in a trap; for while the besiegers would be able to send an endless rain of balls upon their undefended heads, they would have to pitch their balls straight up into the air, in ignorance even of the whereabouts of their opponents.

And the work went on. Higher and higher rose the tower walls. Deeper and deeper became Chandos's deep dudgeon.

"I wish to goodness," he declared in his frank way, "that I had gone to Newton Abbott, and never come near this beastly place at all. It's the most wretched hole I ever saw. Talk about holidays! why, I'd sooner be in school ten thousand times."

And the afternoon went on and the night came near, and it was plain that if George and his friends intended to be at home for dinner that they would have to be starting soon.