Once Aboard The Lugger | Page 8

concluded upon this July
day that opens our history, and thus we return to Mr. Marrapit, to
George, and to the line of smoke uprising from the tobacco.
Mr. Marrapit indicated the smouldering wedge.
George bent forward. "Tobacco," he announced.
"My nose informed me. My eyes affirm. Yours?"
"I am afraid so."
"My simple rule. In the vegetable garden you may smoke; here you
may not. Is it so hard to observe?"
"I quite forgot myself."
Mr. Marrapit cried: "Adjust that impression. You forgot me.
Consistently you forget me. My desires, my interests are nothing to
you."
"It's a rotten thing to make a fuss about."
"That is why I make a fuss. It is a rotten thing. A disgusting and a
noisome thing. Bury it."
Into a bed of soft mould George struck a sullen heel; kicked the tobacco
towards the pit. Mr. Marrapit chanted over the obsequies: "I provide
you with the enormous expanse of my vegetable garden in which to
smoke. Yet upon my little acre you intrude. I am Naboth."
Ahab straightened his back; sighed heavily. Naboth started against the
prick of a sudden recollection:
"I had forgotten. Your examination?"
George half turned away. The bitterest moment of a sad day was come.
He growled:
"Pipped."
"_Pipped?_"
"Pilled."
"_Pilled?_"
"Spun."
"_Spun?"_
"Three months."
Mr. Marrapit put his hands to his head: "I shall go mad. My brain reels
beneath these conundrums. I implore English."
The confession of defeat is a thousandfold more bitter when made to
unkind ears. George paled a little; spoke very clearly: "I failed. I was
referred for three months."

"I am Job," groaned Mr. Marrapit. "I expected this. The strain is
unendurable. It is unnatural. The next chance shall be your last. What is
the fee for re-examination?"
"Five guineas."
"My God!" said Mr. Marrapit.
He tottered away up the path.

CHAPTER II
Excursions In Melancholy.

I.
Gloom brooded over Herons' Holt that evening. Gloom hung thickly
about the rooms: blanketed conversation; veiled eyes that might have
sparkled; choked appetites.
Nevertheless this was an atmosphere in which one member of the
household felt most comfortable.
Margaret, Mr. Marrapit's only child, was nineteen; of sallow
complexion, petite, pretty; with large brown eyes in which sat always a
constant quest--an entreaty, a wistful yearning.
Hers was a clinging nature, readily responsive to the attraction of any
stouter mind. Enthusiasm was in this girl, but it lay well-like-- not as a
spring. To stir it the influence of another was wanted; of itself,
spontaneous, it could not leap. Aroused, there was no rush and surge of
emotion--it welled, rose deeply; thickly, without ripple; crestless,
flinging no intoxicating spume. Waves rush triumphant, hurtling
forward the stick they support: the pool swells, leaving the stick
quiescent, floating.
Many persons have this order of enthusiasm; it is a clammy thing to
attract. A curate with a glimpse at Shelley's mind once roused
Margaret's enthusiasm for the poet. It welled so suffocatingly about
him that he came near to damning Shelley and all his works; threw up
his hat when opportunity put out a beckoning finger and drew him
elsewhere.
Margaret walked in considerable fear of her father; but she clung to

him despite his oppressive foibles, because this was her nature. She
loved church; incense; soft music; a prayer-book tastefully bound. She
"wrote poetry."
Warmed by the gloom that lay over Herons' Holt upon this evening, she
sat brooding upon her cousin George's failure until a beautiful picture
was hatched. He had gone to his room directly after dinner; during the
meal had not spoken. She imagined him seated on his bed, hands deep
in pockets, chin sunk, brow knitted, wrestling with that old devil
despair. She knew that latterly he had worked tremendously hard. He
had told her before the examination how confident of success he was,
had revealed how much in the immediate prospect of freedom he
gloried. She recalled his gay laugh as he had bade her good-bye on the
first day, and the recollection stung her just as, she reflected, it must
now be stinging him.... Only he must a thousand times more fiercely be
feeling the burn of its venom....
Margaret moved impatiently with a desire to shake into herself a
profounder sense of her cousin's misfortune. By ten she was plunged in
a most pleasing melancholy.

II.
She was of those who are by nature morbid; who deceive themselves if
they imagine they have enjoyment from the recreations that provoke
lightness of heart in the majority. Only the surface of their spirits
ripples under such breezes; to stir the whole, to produce the counterpart
of a hearty laugh in your vigorous animal, a feast on melancholy must
be provided. This is a quality that is common among the lower classes
who