roland and jack were too much my seniors, and yet still too young, to take notice of me. but i could admire them from afar for their gifts and opportunities, their good looks, their bodily prowess, liberty, and apparent lack of all care. their activities were mostly away from home, and rumours, probably, were incomplete. roland ran and jumped at sports, rode a horse, sometimes into the yard, sometimes out to where the fox was hunted (a little beyond our range)—bicycled hither and thither—possessed a gun and used it, doubtless in a magnificent manner—dressed as he should be dressed—was more than once in trouble of some kind, i think in debt, and had once been observed by me in london walking with a dark lady of his own splendid breed, whom i never heard anything of, or saw again. what i first knew of roland was—shortly after i began to frequent abercorran house—a voice singing mightily in the bathroom:
“foul fall the hand that bends the steel
around the courser’s thundering heel,
that e’er shall print a sable wound
on fair glamorgan’s velvet ground.”
never afterwards did he do anything that fell short of the name roland, to which the noble war-song, at that moment, fixed its character for ever. jack and he had been to a famous school until they were sixteen, and did no good there. indoors they learnt very little more than a manner extremely well suited to hours of idleness. out of doors they excelled at the more selfish sports, at athletics, boxing, sculling, shooting. so they had come home and, as mr morgan had nothing to suggest, they had done what suggested itself.
you could see mr morgan thinking as he watched the two, undecided whether it was best to think with or without the cigar, which he might remove for a few seconds, perhaps without advantage, for it was replaced with evident satisfaction. but he was thinking as he stood there, pale, rigid, and abstracted. then perhaps roland would do or say something accompanied by a characteristic free, bold, easy gesture, turning on his heel; and the father gave up thinking, to laugh heartily, and as likely as[256] not step forward to enter the conversation, or ask roland about the dogs, or what he had been doing in the past week. “had a good time? ... suits you?... ha, ha, ... well, this will never do, i must be going. good-bye, good-bye. don’t forget to look in and see how mother is.”
he had only gone upstairs to the library to open one of the new reviews which, except where they caught the sunshine, remained so new. he and his two elder sons always parted with a laugh. either he manœuvred for it, or as soon as the good laugh arrived he slipped away lest worse might befall. he saw clearly enough that “they had no more place in london than bengal tigers,” as he said one day to mr stodham: “they ought to have been in the cavalry. but they aren’t—curse it—what is to be done? why could i not breed clerks?” the immediate thing to be done was to light the suspended cigar. it was lucky if the weather just at that time took a fine turn; if harry and lewis, for a wonder, were persuaded to spend all day and every day at school; if mrs morgan was away in wales; if jessie’s voice was perfect, singing
“the cuckoo is a merry bird ...”
i recall such a time. the wall-flower had[257] turned out to be just the mixture of blood colour and lemon that mr morgan liked best. the water-lilies were out on the pond. the pigeons lay all along under the roof ridge, too idle to coo except by mistake or in a dream. jack and roland were working hard at some machinery in the yard. the right horse, it seems, had won the derby.
on the evenings in such a season philip and i had to bring to light the fishing-tackle, bind hooks on gut and gimp, varnish the binding, mix new varnish, fit the rods together, practise casting in the wilderness, with a view to our next visit, which would be in august, to my aunt rachel’s at lydiard constantine. there would be no eggs to be found so late, except a few woodpigeons’, linnets’, and swallows’, but these late finds in the intervals of fishing—when it was too hot, for example—had a special charm. the nuts would be ripe before we left.... on these evenings we saw only the fishing things, the wilderness, and lydiard constantine.
this weather was but a temporary cure for mr morgan’s curiosity as to what jack and roland were to do. you could tell that he was glad to see roland’s face again, home from canada with some wolf skins after a six months’[258] absence; but it was not enough. the fellow had been in an office once for a much shorter period. the one thing to draw him early from bed was hunting. well, but he was a fine fellow. how should all the good in him be employed? it could not be left to the gods; and yet assuredly the gods would have their way.
everybody else did something. aurelius earned a living, though his hands proclaimed him one who was born neither to toil nor spin. higgs, too, did no one knew what, but something that kept him in tobacco and bowler hats, in the times when he was not fishing in the wilderness or looking after his pigeons in the yard. for it so happened—and caused nobody surprise—that all the pigeons at abercorran house were his. mr morgan looked with puzzled disapproval from higgs to roland and jack, and back again to higgs. higgs had arrived and stayed under their shadow. it was a little mysterious, but so it was, and mr morgan could not help seeing and wondering why the two should afflict themselves with patronising one like fat higgs. once when roland struck him, half in play, he bellowed distractedly, not for pain but for pure rabid terror. he went about whistling; for he had[259] a little, hard mouth made on purpose. i thought him cruel, because one day when he saw that, owing to some misapprehension, i was expecting two young pigeons for the price of one, he put the head of one into his mouth and closed his teeth.... whilst i was still silly with disgust and horror he gave me the other bird. but he understood dogs. i have seen roland listen seriously while higgs was giving an opinion on some matter concerning ladas, bully, spot, or granfer; yet roland was reputed to know all about dogs, and almost all about bitches.
that did not console mr morgan. wherever he looked he saw someone who was perfectly content with roland and everything else, just as they were, at abercorran house. mr stodham, for example, was all admiration, with a little surprise. aurelius, again, said that if such a family, house, and backyard, had not existed, they would have to be invented, as other things less pleasant and necessary had been. when rumours were afloat that perhaps mr morgan would be compelled to give up the house aurelius exclaimed: “it is impossible, it is disgraceful. let the national gallery go, let the british museum go, but preserve the morgans and abercorran house.” mr torrance,[260] of course, agreed with aurelius. he wrote a poem about the house, but, said aurelius, “it was written with tears for ink, which is barbarous. he has not enough gall to translate tears into good ink.” higgs naturally favoured things as they were, since the yard at abercorran house was the best possible place for his birds. as for me, i was too young, but abercorran house made london tolerable and often faultless.
ann’s opinion was expressed in one word: “wales.” she thought that the family ought to go back to wales, that all would be well there. in fact, she regarded abercorran house as only a halt, though she admitted that there were unfriendly circumstances. the return to wales was for her the foundation or the coping stone always. she would not have been greatly put out if there had been a public subscription or grant from the civil list to make abercorran house and mr morgan, jessie, ann herself, jack, roland, philip, harry, lewis, ladas, bully, spot, granfer, the pigeons, the yard, the wilderness and the jackdaws, the pond and the water-lilies, as far as possible immortal, and a possession for ever, without interference from board of works, school board inspectors, rate collectors, surveyors of taxes, bailiffs and re[261]coverers of debts, moreover without any right on the part of the public to touch this possession except by invitation, with explicit approval by roland and the rest. it should have been done. a branch of the british museum might have been especially created to protect this stronghold, as doubtless it would have been protected had it included a dolmen, tumulus, or british camp, or other relic of familiar type. as it was not done, a bailiff did once share the kitchen with ann, a short man completely enveloped in what had been, at about the time of albert the good, a fur-lined overcoat, and a silk hat suitable for a red indian. most of his face was nose, and his eyes and nose both together looked everlastingly over the edge of the turned-up coat-collar at the ground. his hands must have been in his coat-pockets. i speak of his appearance when he took the air; for i did not see him at abercorran house. there he may have produced his hands and removed his hat from his head and lifted up his eyes from the ground—a thing impossible to his nose. he may even have spoken—in a voice of ashes. but at least on the day after his visit all was well at abercorran house with man and bird and beast. the jackdaws riding a south-west[262] wind in the sun said “jack” over and over again, both singly and in volley. only higgs was disturbed. he, it seems, knew the visitor, and from that day dated his belief in the perishableness of mortal things, and a moderated opinion of everything about the morgans except the pigeon-house and roland. mr morgan perhaps did not, but everybody else soon forgot the bailiff. on the day after his visit, nevertheless, philip was still indignant. he was telling me about the battle of hastings. all i knew and had cared to know was summed up in the four figures—1066. but philip, armed with a long-handled mallet, had constituted himself the english host on the hill brow, battering the normans downhill with yells of “out, out,” and “god almighty,” and also “out jew.” for his enemy was william of normandy and the jew bailiff in one. with growls of “out, out” through foaming set lips, he swung the mallet repeatedly, broke a windsor chair all to pieces, and made the past live again.
