Noble in Reason (2 page)

Netta as a child was just a round, cosy bundle of love and sweetness; much younger than the rest of us, she remained for years our baby sister. The part suited her. Extremely fair, with a dimpled beaming face and a delightful little snub nose, she was quicker in speech than thought and required a good deal of explanation before she understood anything new. This we were all eager to give her; a familiar picture in my mind from those times is that of John squatting on his heels in front of her, explaining in muddled repetitive terms why, for example, she must not drop a doll inside the tall wire fireguard which surrounded the nursery hearth. Then Henry, exclaiming, “How can you expect the child to understand such a farrago of nonsense?” picked up Netta and set her in her high chair and delivered an admirably phrased harangue on the same theme. On both Netta turned the same sunny uncomprehending smile and the same charming inconsequent babble; it was clear to me that she did not listen to them, but
instead just gazed at her brothers with admiring love. She beat one charming little hand quickly on the side of her chair or stretched out a finger to touch John's nose or Henry's buttons, laughing gleefully and calling out their names the while. John playfully bit her finger and growled, Henry took her hand in his own with gentle firmness. I stood by, a weedy insignificant little boy in a crumpled sailor suit, neither handsome like Henry nor strong like John; my dingy fair hair falling over one eye; my large full mouth slightly open; my big nose slightly askew; my long face pale and harassed, my grey eyes peering out from behind my convex glasses in an expression of timid vexation—for I believed that I understood my little sister better than anyone else; if they would only leave her to me all would be well.

For the happiest times of my childhood were the afternoons when my mother and myself and Netta were alone in the nursery, my father being at the mill and my brothers at school. My mother spent long hours, it seemed to me, playing with Netta, holding her in the air, gently tossing her, crooning to her in soft animal tones. 1 leant against my mother's knee and shared these ancient games, these half-forgotten songs.
Baby, Baby, Baby Bunting, Baby Netta went a-hunting.
. . . My mother took my finger and drew it softly down Netta's warm cheek, or encouraged me to clap Netta's little hands in mine, or to dangle in front of her the rattle or the beads or the doll which were the plaything of the moment. When Netta learned to crawl I sat on the floor with her, when she tried to walk I helped her to stand; I taught her presently to count, to put a button through its hole, to tie a bow. As she grew older I read to her and told her tales, in order to catch her attention introduced into these by name her well-loved dolls. Netta listened with pleased surprise, her mild grey eyes wide, her rosebud mouth slightly opened, silent for once. The fire glowed; the afternoon light faded to a gentle dusk; the sky
outside turned a deep rich blue in which a silver star miraculously twinkled. My mother, silent and half smiling, as usual, rocked her chair with quiet comforting regularity. Everything was beautiful, everything was kind; there was a feeling of relaxation, of ease, of time to play; we all felt safe and happy together. Then the mill buzzer sounded, the school bell rang, we hastily tidied away our cherished games and built up the fire to a black smoking dreariness; the front door opened, there was bustle and noise and disagreement; my father and my brothers had entered the house. At once I became the puny, the unmusical, the inefficient, the disregarded; my father or John or Henry snatched Netta away from my care.

“I'm a pony, I'm a pony!” cried Netta, springing about the nursery and tossing her mane, for I had read her a story about a pony that afternoon.

“Oh, so you're a horse today,” said my father genially.

“I'm not a horse, I'm a pony,” objected Netta.

“It's the same thing,” said John.

Netta's lower lip trembled.

“I don't want to be a horse, I'm a pony,” she wailed.

Then John and Henry confused her with explanations, while I stood by, throbbing with anxious love. How stupid, I thought, preening myself on my perception, not to understand the utterly different meaning, in a child's mind, of the words
pony
and
horse.

This daily interval between the return of my father and brothers and the bedtime of Netta, always a disappointing time for me, was stretched to a protracted ordeal on holidays or half-holidays when they were at home.

I remember for instance one wintry afternoon, the events of which, though slight enough, seemed to epitomise all my childhood's difficulties and discontents. I suppose the date would be in the early 1900's. It was Saturday, and the whole family was in the house. We young Jarmaynes were in the upstairs
nursery together. Outside, snow fell with quiet insistence. John on the floor by the window was busy reassembling the interior of a handsome steamboat, a recent Christmas present. Henry at the table was ruling lines across a piece of paper to make musical clefs. I was reading
Tanglewood Tales,
while Netta played on the hearthrug with her dolls. It was a moment of unusual peace and harmony.

Then Netta, tiring of her play, ran over to me and began to clamber up my knees. (“I'm climbing a wall, Chris, I'm climbing a high wall.” “Ever such a high wall,” I agreed sympathetically.) I took her by the waist and helped her up, stuffing my book behind me so that she should not tread on it as she trampled over my lap. She stretched up towards Sambo on the mantelpiece but could not reach him; I lifted her up towards him and she balanced herself on the stuffed arm of my chair. Suddenly there was a sharp scream and Netta fell backwards into my arms, followed by a metal object—she had dragged Sambo off the mantelpiece.

Sambo was a money-box. The head and shoulders of a negro clad in a red coat, he was hollow within. One upper arm was moulded to his body, but the other arm, bent, offered a flat palm which would hold a penny. The theory was that one placed a coin on his hand and pressed a lever in his rear; Sambo then raised his hand to his mouth and the coin passed through his large smile and fell within. Sambo was not much used for his proper purpose, except reluctantly under parental direction by me—John had no coins to spare from our meagre pocket-money, Henry's proud reserve scorned so public a management of his finances. But as a paperweight, buttress, support and so on Sambo, on account of his substantial weight, was often in demand in our activities. A red mark and an abrasion appeared on Netta's smooth temple now as Sambo struck her a glancing blow and fell with a clang to the floor, and poor Netta, both frightened and hurt, screamed
again and tossed herself wildly in my lap. Henry and John both ran to her.

“Don't cry, Netta,” said John, jerking her from my knee into his arms. “You're not hurt, love.”

“Why tell the child lies? She
is
hurt,” said Henry hotly, passing his long fingers over her forehead.

Though his touch was gentle, Netta winced and struck his hand away and began a loud sobbing wail which I realized, with a sinking of my heart, would penetrate to our parents' ears downstairs. Sure enough the door of the dining-room was abruptly thrown open and my father called in his sharp impatient tones:

“What is the matter up there?”

“Nothing!” shouted John, smothering Netta's cries
by
burying her face against his shoulder.

“Don't be absurd, John—we must tell, and get the doctor to Netta,” said Henry.

“The doctor? Don't be such a fool. You are a
fool,
Henry,” shouted John as Henry tore open the nursery door and ran down the stairs.

We heard Henry's explanation in passing to my father: “Netta's hurt her head—I'm going for the doctor,” and then the bang of the front door.

“Bring the child here!” cried out my father, at the same time beginning to run upstairs.

“This is all your fault, you silly little fathead,” said John crossly to me as he went out of the room.

I followed, sunk in shame and anxiety, and witnessed the meeting of father and son on the half-landing. My father snatched Netta from John's arms; frightened by the serious view taken by her family of her accident, Netta screamed, and large tears rolled down her rosy cheeks.

“Bring her here, Edward,” cried my mother in sleepy tones.

Exclaiming angrily—which made Netta cry the louder—
my father hurried into our front room. John scowling, and myself trembling, followed him. My mother lay on a settee pulled in front of the fire, her dark hair (as usual) flowing in disorder over the cushions behind her head. She held out her arms.

“Come to me, my darling,” she drawled in her slow rich tones.

My father frowned and hesitated, but those outstretched arms could not be denied; he handed Netta over. My mother making soft sounds of comfort drew Netta to her breast; the child's wail sank to a soft whimper and by the time the new doctor from next door, the huge bearded Dr. Darrell, came in —at the run, led by a breathless and snow-covered Henry— she was asleep. Not for the first time I admired my mother's aristocratic calm as opposed to my father's vehement fuss, which struck me as excessive, useless, vulgar. (How I hated scenes in those days!)

Netta was unhurt save for a small bruise, said Dr. Darrell as he bent over her; the only casualty was Henry, who caught a severe cold. He was already sneezing as we three brothers returned to the nursery upstairs. My father followed, and harangued us sharply.

“To think that sons of mine care so little for their sister that she injures herself under their very eyes! I'm disgusted—yes, disgusted!” concluded my father. He turned and stalked from the room, leaving the door open behind him.

I hung my head; Henry and John glared at each other in anger.

“It's hardly fair to blame me, however,” said Henry in a low tone of suppressed rage. “I did all I could to help Netta.”

“None of this row need have happened if you hadn't been such a prig,” said John. “You like yourself too much, Henry Jarmayne. You always want to be better than everybody else. There was no need to rush off and tell father.”

“You'd rather Netta's skull had been cracked, I suppose,” returned Henry.

“No, I would not!” shouted John, crimsoning, and suddenly snatching up Henry's pencil which lay on the table, he dashed it back and forth in great scrawls across the sheet of music paper just laboriously ruled by Henry.

“You are an unmannerly boor, John,” said Henry contemptuously.

John, his heavy lower lip protruding with rage, threw down the pencil and raised his fist. I gave a cry of alarm. My two brothers turned on me.

“Come to that,” said John in a much milder tone, “the whole thing was Christopher's fault, really.”

Both my brothers turned and gazed at me. I stood and suffered.

“Yes, I'm afraid that is true,” said Henry.

“He probably didn't see what was happening,” said John.

This stung me into protest. “It was Sambo's fault,” I cried.

“Sambo! That's good!” said John with his jeering laugh. “If you looked about you a bit instead of always having your nose stuck in a book, Chris, you'd be a lot more use in the world.”

“You shouldn't try to escape blame which you've deserved, Christopher,” said Henry sternly.

Trembling with fear and shame, I slunk away and hid in the lavatory—it was the only safe place in our house, I often thought. How was I to explain that Sambo, a money-box for children's savings, was a contemptible phenomenon in my view, a symbol of my father's parsimonious and grasping attitude to money, which I despised? How could I express my theory that people liked doing what they liked, and that if Netta wanted to play with Sambo or be a pony she should be allowed to do so? (I was never, it seemed to me, allowed to do what I liked.) How could I indicate that John's jeering coarseness
and Henry's puritanic strictness both found their target in my continually lacerated heart?

At this moment I heard sounds in the hall below: the turning of the front door latch, the howling of the wind, the soft slurr of snow; a light pretty laugh, the precise Scottish speech of Dr. Darrell, the purring tones my father kept for company which pleased him.

“Boys!” called my father commandingly.

My brothers burst obediently out of the nursery; Henry ran quickly, John lumbered, down the stairs. I crept quietly out of my refuge and followed them.

Dr. Darrell stood on our hearthrug, beaming. (It gave me an extraordinary feeling in the pit of my stomach, half joy, half fear, to see how he towered above my father.) Mrs. Darrell, a small sweet quiet woman with a soft voice and very large dark eyes, elegantly dressed in a sealskin cape and a hat (
toque,
I believe, was then the word) to match, with a bunch of violets at her throat, sat on the couch beside my mother. At Dr. Darrell's side stood a girl of about Henry's age, whom I had seen in the distance and knew as Dr. Darrell's daughter.

“Beatrice has come to bring a doll for the little girl who hurt her head,” explained the doctor.

“How very kind!” exclaimed my parents, as Beatrice with a quick smile advanced and put a parcel into Netta's arms.

The doll when unwrapped appeared new and expensive; it was dressed in gold brocade and had a quantity of fair hair and brown eyes which opened and shut. Netta in my mother's arms at first took the doll with an air of diffidence, then suddenly hugged it to her in an ecstasy and passionately kissed the pink china cheek. Her childish pleasure was moving, and we all smiled.

“It really is
most
kind of you, Mrs. Darrell,” said my mother, stroking Netta's hair.

“Oh, it was all Beatrice's own idea,” explained the doctor proudly. “The snow's so thick, I went in my new sleigh to fetch Beatrice and Mrs. Darrell from the dancing-class and I told her about little Netta and she insisted on bringing a doll to her.”