She could have preached a sermon that night, with the stupid sex for her text.
Chapter XIII.
The House-Boat 'Tawny Owl'
'Mr. Angus, what is an egotist?'
'Don't you know, Miss Meredith?'
'Well, I know in a general sort of way, but not precisely.'
'An egotist is a person who—but why do you want to know?'
'Because just now Mr. Abinger asked me what I was thinking of, and when I said of nothing he called me an egotist.'
'Ah! that kind of egotist is one whose thoughts are too deep for utterance.'
It was twilight. Rob stood on the deck of the house-boat Tawny Owl, looking down at Nell, who sat in the stern, her mother beside her, amid a blaze of Chinese lanterns. Dick lay near them, prone, as he had fallen from a hammock whose one flaw was that it gave way when any one got into it. Mr. Meredith, looking out from one of the saloon windows across the black water that was now streaked with glistening silver, wondered whether he was enjoying himself, and Mary, in a little blue nautical jacket with a cap to match, lay back in a camp-chair on deck with a silent banjo in her hands. Rob was brazening it out in flannels, and had been at such pains to select colours to suit him that the effect was atrocious. He had spent several afternoons at Molesey during the three weeks the Tawny Owl had lain there, but this time he was to remain overnight at the Island Hotel.
The Tawny Owl was part of the hoop of house-boats that almost girded Tagg's Island, and lights sailed through the trees, telling of launches moving to their moorings near the ferry. Now and again there was the echo of music from a distant house-boat. For a moment the water was loquacious as dingeys or punts shot past. Canadian canoes, the ghosts that haunt the Thames by night, lifted their heads out of the river, gaped, and were gone. An osier-wand dipped into the water under a weight of swallows, all going to bed together. The boy on the next house-boat kissed his hand to a broom on board the Tawny Owl, taking it for Mrs. Meredith's servant, and then retired to his kitchen smiling. From the boat-house across the river came the monotonous tap of a hammer. A reed-warbler rushed through his song. There was a soft splashing along the bank.
'There was once a literary character,' Dick murmured, 'who said that to think of nothing was an impossibility, but he lived before the days of house-boats. I came here a week ago to do some high thinking, and I believe I have only managed four thoughts—first, that the cow on the island is an irate cow; second, that in summer the sun shines brightly; third, that the trouble of lighting a cigar is almost as great as the pleasure of smoking it; and fourth, that swans—the fourth thought referred to swans, but it has slipped my memory.'
He yawned like a man glad to get to the end of his sentence, or sorry that he had begun it.
'But I thought,' said Mrs. Meredith, 'that the reason you walk round and round the island by yourself so frequently is because you can think out articles on it?'
'Yes,' Dick answered, 'the island looks like a capital place to think on, and I always start off on my round meaning to think hard. After that all is a blank till I am back at the Tawny Owl, when I remember that I have forgotten to think.'
'Will ought to enjoy this,' remarked Nell.
'That is my brother, Mr. Angus,' Mary said to Rob; 'he is to spend part of his holidays here.'
'I remember him,' Rob answered, smiling. Mary blushed, however, remembering that the last time Will and Greybrooke met Rob there had been a little scene.
'He will enjoy the fishing,' said Dick. 'I have only fished myself three or four times, and I am confident I hooked a minnow yesterday.'
'I saw a little boy,' Nell said, 'fishing from the island to-day, and his mother had strapped him to a tree in case he might fall in.'
'When I saw your young brother at Silchester,' Rob said to Mary, 'he had a schoolmate with him.'
'Ah, yes,' Dick said; 'that was the man who wanted to horsewhip you, you know.'
'I thought he and Miss Meredith were great friends,' Rob retorted. He sometimes wondered how much Dick cared for Nell.
'It was only the young gentleman's good-nature,' Abinger explained, while Nell drew herself up indignantly; 'he found that he had to give up either Nell or a cricket match, and so Nell was reluctantly dropped.'
'That was not how you spoke,' Nell said to Dick in a low voice, 'when I told you all about him, poor boy, in your chambers.'
'You promised to be a sister to him, I think,' remarked Abinger. 'Ah, Nell, it is not a safe plan that. How many brothers have you now?'
Dick held up his hand for Mary's banjo, and, settling himself comfortably in a corner, twanged and sang, while the lanterns caught myriads of flies, and the bats came and went.
When Cœlebs was a bolder blade,
And ladies fair were coy,
His search was for a wife, he said,
The time I was a boy.
But Cœlebs now has slothful grown
(I learn this from her mother),
Instead of making her his own,
He asks to be her brother.
Last night I saw her smooth his brow,
He bent his head and kissed her;
They understand each other now,
She's going to be his sister.
Some say he really does propose,
And means to gain or lose all,
And that the new arrangement goes,
To soften her refusal.
He talks so wild of broken hearts,
Of futures that she'll mar,
He says on Tuesday he departs
For Cork or Zanzibar.
His death he places at her door,
Yet says he won't resent it;
Ah, well, he talked that way before,
And very seldom meant it.
Engagements now are curious things,
'A kind of understandin','
Although they do not run to rings,
They're good to keep your hand in.
No rivals now, Tom, Dick, and Hal,
They all love one another,
For she's a sister to them all,
And every one's her brother.
In former days when men proposed,
And ladies said them No,
The laws that courtesy imposed
Made lovers pack and go.
But now that they may brothers be,
So changed the way of men is,
That, having kissed, the swain and she
Resume their game at tennis.
Ah, Nelly Meredith, you may
Be wiser than your mother,
But she knew what to do when they
Proposed to be her brother.
Of these relations best have none,
They'll only you encumber;
Of wives a man may have but one,
Of sisters any number.
Dick