P. C. Wren: Adventure Novels & Tales From the Foreign Legion. P. C. Wren
absolute freedom of action with regard to raisins, tarts, cream, candy-peel, jam, plum-puddings and cakes, making life one vast hamper, and in the other case, boundless opportunity in the matter of leaping on and off moving trains, carrying lighted bull's-eye lanterns, and waving flags.
One of the early lessons that life taught him, without troubling to explain them, and she taught him many and cruel, was that Cooks are Cross.
"What shall we do now, Dam?" asked Lucille, and added, "Let's raid the rotten nursery and rag the Haddock. Little ass! Nothing else to do. How I hate Sunday afternoon…. No work and no play. Rotten."
The Haddock, it may be stated, owed his fishy title to the fact that he once possessed a Wealthy Relative of the name of Haddon. With far-sighted reversionary intent his mother, a Mrs. Berners née Seymour Stukeley, had christened him Haddon.
But the Wealthy Relative, on being informed of his good fortune, had bluntly replied that he intended to leave his little all to the founding of Night-Schools for illiterate Members of Parliament, Travelling-Scholarships for uneducated Cabinet Ministers, and Deportment Classes for New Radical Peers. He was a Funny Man as well as a Wealthy Relative.
And, thereafter, Haddon Berners' parents had, as Cook put it, "up and died" and "Grandfather" had sent for, and adopted, the orphan Haddock.
Though known to Dam and Lucille as "The Haddock" he was in reality an utter Rabbit and esteemed as such. A Rabbit he was born, a Rabbit he lived, and a Rabbit he died. Respectable ever. Seen in the Right Place, in the Right Clothes, doing the Right Thing with the Right People at the Right Time.
Lucille was the daughter of Sylvester Bethune Gavestone, the late and lamented Bishop of Minsterbury (once a cavalry subaltern), a school, Sandhurst, and life-long friend of "Grandfather," and husband of "Grandfather's" cousin, Geraldine Seymour Stukeley.
Poor "Grandfather," known to the children as "Grumper," the ferocious old tyrant who loved all mankind and hated all men, with him adoption was a habit, and the inviting of other children to stay as long as they liked with the adopted children, a craze.
And yet he rarely saw the children, never played with them, and hated to be disturbed.
He had out-lived his soldier-contemporaries, his children, his power to ride to hounds, his pretty taste in wine, his fencing, dancing, flirting, and all that had made life bearable—everything, as he said, but his gout and his liver (and, it may be added, except his ferocious, brutal temper).
"Yes…. Let us circumvent, decoy, and utterly destroy the common Haddock," agreed Dam.
The entry into the nursery was an effective night-attack by Blackfeet (not to mention hands) but was spoilt by the presence of Miss Smellie who was sitting there knitting relentlessly.
"Never burst into rooms, children," she said coldly. "One expects little of a boy, but a girl should try to appear a Young Lady. Come and sit by me, Lucille. What did you come in for—or rather for what did you burst in?"
"We came to play with the Haddock," volunteered Dam.
"Very kind and thoughtful of you, I am sure," commented Miss Smellie sourly. "Most obliging and benevolent," and, with a sudden change to righteous anger and bitterness, "Why don't you speak the truth?"
"I am speaking the truth, Miss—er—Smellie," replied the boy. "We did come to play with the dear little Haddock—like one plays with a football or a frog. I didn't say we came for Haddock's good."
"We needed the Haddock, you see, Miss Smellie," confirmed Lucille.
"How many times am I to remind you that Haddon Berners' name is Haddon, Lucille," inquired Miss Smellie. "Why must you always prefer vulgarity? One expects vulgarity from a boy—but a girl should try to appear a Young Lady."
With an eye on Dam, Lucille protruded a very red tongue at surprising length, turned one eye far inward toward her nose, wrinkled that member incredibly, corrugated her forehead grievously, and elongated her mouth disastrously. The resultant expression of countenance admirably expressed the general juvenile view of Miss Smellie and all her works.
Spurred to honourable emulation, the boy strove to excel. Using both hands for the elongation of his eyes, the extension of his mouth, and the depression of his ears, he turned upon the Haddock so horrible a mask that the stricken child burst into a howl, if not into actual tears.
"What's the matter, Haddon?" demanded Miss Smellie, looking up with quick suspicion.
"Dam made a fathe at me," whimpered the smitten one.
"Say 'made a grimace' not 'made a face,'" corrected Miss Smellie.
"Only God can make faces."
Dam exploded.
"At what are you laughing, Damocles?" she asked sternly.
"Nothing, Miss Smellie. What you said sounded rather funny and a little irrevilent or is it irrembrant?"
"Damocles! Should I be likely to say anything Irreverent? Should I ever dream of Irreverence? What can you mean? And never let me see you make faces again."
"I didn't let you see me, Miss Smellie, and only God can make faces—"
"Leave the room at once, Sir, I shall report your impudence to your great-uncle," hissed Miss Smellie, rising in wrath—and the bad abandoned boy had attained his object. Detention in the nursery for a Sunday afternoon was no part of his programme.
Most unobtrusively Lucille faded away also.
"Isn't she a hopeless beast," murmured she as the door closed.
"Utter rotter," admitted the boy. "Let's slope out into the garden and dig some worms for bait."
"Yes," agreed Lucille, and added, "Parse Smellie," whereupon, with one voice and heart and purpose the twain broke into a paean, not of praise—a kind of tribal lay, and chanted:—
"Smellie—Very common noun, absurd person, singular back number, tutor gender, objectionable case governed by the word I," and so da capo.
And yet the poor lady strove to do her duty in that station of life in which it had pleased Providence (or a drunken father) to place her—and to make the children "genteel". Had she striven to win their love instead, her ministrations might have had some effect (other than infinite irritation and bitter dislike).
She was the Compleat Governess, on paper, and all that a person entrusted with the training of young children should not be, in reality. She had innumerable and admirable testimonials from various employers of what she termed "aristocratic standing"; endless certificates that testified unto her successful struggles in Music, Drawing, Needlework, German, French, Calisthenics, Caligraphy, and other mysteries, including the more decorous Sciences (against Physiology, Anatomy, Zoology, Biology, and Hygiene she set her face as subjects apt to be, at times, improper), and an appearance and manner themselves irrefragible proofs of the highest moral virtue.
She also had the warm and unanimous witness of the children at Monksmead that she was a Beast.
To those who frankly realize with open eyes that the student of life must occasionally encounter indelicacies upon the pleasant path of research, it may be revealed, in confidence, that they alluded to Miss Smellie as "Sniffy" when not, under extreme provocation, as "Stinker".
She taught them many things and, prominently, Deceit, Hate, and an utter dislike of her God and her Religion—a most disastrous pair.
Poor old "Grumper"; advertising, he got her, paid her highly, and gave her almost absolute control of the minds, souls, and bodies of his young wards and "grandchildren".
"The best of everything" for them—and they, at the average age of eight, a band of depressed, resentful babes, had "hanged, drawed, and quartered" her in effigy, within a month of coming beneath her stony ministrations.
In appearance Miss Smellie was