The Young Stagers/Ancient Britons and Modern
II.
ANCIENT BRITONS AND MODERN.
In India, during the monsoon, and at other times, damp clothes are dried by laying them over a vast inverted basket beneath which smoulders a brazier of charcoal.
Ayah was airing clean clothes upon such a basket as the children passed through the big empty landing behind the Club premises—(the Nursery, to wit).
Ayah removed the warm, dry clothes and departed to bestow them in their respective cupboards.
As the eye of the President fell upon the dully glowing charcoal, visible through the large interstices and apertures of the crude basket-work, an idea germinated in her fertile brain.
"I say, Fic," quoth she to the faithful Vice, "how'd you like to play Judgment Day? Or would you rather have the Invasion of Britain, or the Forty Thieves?"
The Invasion he knew, and the Thieves he knew, but what was Judgment Day?
"Will you be a Miserable Sinner, an Ancient Briton, or a Forty Thief?" continued the President.
"What d'you have to do, if you've a Mitherable Thinner?" inquired the Vice.
"Oh, be tried on Judgment Day," was the reply. "If found guilty, you'd go to Hell. That would make a fine Hell for Miserable Sinners," and she pointed to the fire-enclosing basket.
"What would you be, if I was a Mitherable Thinner?" queried the junior official.
"God," was the prompt reply. "I should sit on a Throne and judge you. . . . I might have to send you to Hell."
"What would I do there?" asked the Vice doubtfully.
"Burn," replied the President sepulchrally.
The Vice preferred to bear a hand in the Invasion of Britain, or in resisting the same.
"I wonder what we could have for woad," pondered the President, on finding that her colleague had rooted objections to sustaining the rôle of a Miserable Sinner on Judgment Day.
"Woad is what the Ancient Britons went about in," she said. "Buster told me all about the Invasion of Britain when I showed him the picture. He said they went about in the woady buff and didn't care a blow. Not if it rained. . . . No police and no Grundies, he said,"
"But what is woad?" asked he of the tenacious and inquiring mind.
"Paint. Blue paint. Something like the blue devils and dragons on Buster's arm. Like tattooing."
The Vice's spirit soared, and he produced an idea, simple as all great notions are.
"Paint me blue with the 'pwussian blue' in your box of water colourths," he said, and capered with glee at the very bare idea.
His leader congratulated him upon his quiet brilliance, bade him disrobe to the irreducible minimum the while she disinterred her paint-box and procured a cup of water.
The Vice was quickly rendered woady, and so were his tight, brief, nether garments, as the paint trickled. He was then stood in the sun and breeze of the verandah to dry.
"Try and dry a nice blue," adjured the President, "while I tie the lid of the soap-dish on to a stick for a stone-axe. You'll have to be jolly careful how you chop me with it when I'm the Censurian of the Tenth Legion."
"Might I cut a bit off you?"
"You might break the lid of the soap-dish, silly."
Having provided the Woady One with a stone-axe and a bone-headed spear which had once been a bone-handled umbrella, the President proceeded to set him up in life with even greater opulence. Visions of nothing less than a scythe-axled chariot were floating in her enterprising and inventive mind.
"You know those things in the picture, like milk-carts with grass-scythes on the wheels, don't you?" said she. "They were called chariots, and you stood up in them, and drove them about, cutting people's legs off as you went by. It must have been lovely. . . . I b'lieve I could make one. Only if you fall out you mustn't fall on the scythe—or you'll get into trouble. . . . Your old go-cart and a couple of carving-knives would do."
They toyed with the idea until the Vice became ecstatic, and the President knew the double joy of creation and applause.
It was easier than had been expected, to secure two knives, poke them through the wheels and fasten them with string to the axle. The protruding blades were most realistic, almost too much so when the Vice scratched a woady leg on the point of one, and the President cut her finger. However, there cannot be an Invasion of Britain without the effusion of blood. You couldn't expect it. Besides a good layer of thickish cloggy woad soon stops the bleeding.
The rocking-horse, Amir, having been harnessed to the chariot and a bear-skin rug thrown over it, no one with the imagination of a flea and the soul of a frog could have failed to perceive in it the very last word in scythe-wheeled chariots. Surely the most ancient of the honourable order of Ancient Britons would have described it as a vastly modish war-curricle, in fact the Ancient British War Office sealed-pattern war-car.
Indeed it so appealed to its delighted inventor that she hung in doubt as to whether she should side with the Ancient ones and be Boadicea of the Iceni, or undo them in the part of the Centurion of the Tenth Legion, until she decided to play both rôles, seriatim.
"Look here, Hog-and-Magog, which is your Ancient British name, only I shall call you Hog for short, I am going to be Queen Bawdy Seer of the Eye-seen-eye first, and this is my chariot, and Amir has got to reckon himself three horses at once, as is usual in war-chariots. I . . ."
"I thought it was my chariot," interrupted the disappointed Vice.
"You're always thinking," rebuked his senior colleague. "You better thtoppit if we are to get on with things. Your chariot! And I suppose you'd like the Queen of the Eye-seen-eye to walk while you tool along in a chariot! Well art thou named Hog, O Ancient Briton. And aren't you about dry now?"
"Yes. Are you going to be an Ansiatic Briton? Can I paint you? I'm a norful good artith, Buthter thaid tho!" said the Vice hopefully.
"No, Ancient British ladies didn't paint," was the chilling answer. "Besides I am going to be a Queen—not a woady buffer. My name's Bawdy Seer, and you can call me Baw or Bawdy, for short, if you can't remember it all."
"Thanks," returned the Vice, conscious of terrible deficiencies in this direction. He did his best to remember and understand, but realised that his stupidity, ignorance, and inferior histrionic powers often took the gilt off the ginger-bread, when they did not actually take the ginger-bread from under the gilt.
"Now, then, Hog," continued the Queen, "can you surge? If so, crowd round my chariot into a fearful, howling, surging mob, and I will make a stirring speech. . . . Mind you are stirred a lot," she added sotto voce.
"Friends, Britons, Countrybreds, lend me your ears," were the opening words of the stirring speech.
The fearful, howling mob had heard them before, but howled with no less enthusiasm. It was a part in which the Vice was at home and which he supported well. He loved being an army, procession, crowd, retainers, jury or alarums-and-excursions-without. In a collective part he was free from self-consciousness and mauvaise honte. But
"Stop that filthy row," were the following words as the incensed monarch found her voice all but drowned by the superabundant howling of the mob. "Be a fearful howling mob without so much noise while I am talking. Some of you mobs have no more sense than rabbits. I'm always telling you about it. Pukka poggles! Howl every time I stop for breath—not all the time.
Cowed by the Queen's flashing eye and biting words, the mob fell silent—feeling that life was hard even while awaiting so much as a catch in the breath of the Queen, that it might dutifully let its most mobby howl.
"Friends, Britons, Countrybreds," continued Boadicea, "lend me your ears and" (with a nod to the Vice) "your mouths."
Loud and prolonged howls from the surging mob.
"These snifty Romans are about to invade our private country, and we must arise in our might and—er—puck them in the neck."
Loud and prolonged howls from the surging mob.
"I have got it in for them because they scourged me too—you know, gave me an awful hiding. I was licked by the Lictor—lammed like anything."
Loud cheers from the mob.
"That's nothing to cheer about you 'normous Asses. . . . Anyhow, they are about to invade us somewhere about Bournemouth beach, and it is up to all good Ancient Britons to arise in their might and biff them on the napper. . . . (Cheer, you Fat-heads !) . . .! shall lead you in battle and drive this chariot myself. You will see many Romans cut in halves and, if you watch carefully, perhaps Julius Cæsar himself—though perhaps he has got more sense than to get in my way. My faithful armour-bearer, Hog, will have a free ride by my side and pot any Roman seen interfering with the horse—I mean the three horses—as they gallop along. He is Company Marksman"
Wild yelps from the mob.
—"at very short range."
Soft murmurs from mob.
"Thank you, my friends, thank you," concluded the Queen. "The collection will be in aid of the families of me and the Hog."
The next thing was to discover some reasonably satisfactory Romans.
"I don't thuppothe Widdy and Venus would mind taking part," suggested the Vice.
Widdy was a big white Persian cat, and Venus a bigger white bull-dog.
"No," agreed the Vice, "they wouldn't mind obliging. Rout them out."
Widdy, as usual, was asleep in her basket on the back verandah and Venus was in his kennel. They expressed no objection to sustaining the rôles of Romans. Augmented by a bronze Buddha, a large doll, and a set of big skittles, they made a satisfactory army, and, all being arranged, the Vice climbed carefully into the chariot, and the battle began.
It was evident from the speed at which Amir rocked that they were dashing along at a terrible pace.
Knowing that something was expected of them, Widdy and Venus remained in statu quo ante, but while Widdy sat up and took an intelligent interest, Venus lay down, grinned fatuously, and wumped the floor with his tail in an idiotic manner.
"That's Julius Cæsar—and he's not trying," cried Boadicea pointing at him.
The hint was sufficient, and the armour-bearer raised his mighty bow, drew it to his shoulder—and caught Venus fairly in the stomach. With a yelp of disgust the stricken Cæsar scrambled to his feet and returned to his kennel. Anybody who wanted him to play Romans some more, could come and fetch him. His demoralisation spread, and Widdy followed him, pursued by a grey-goose shaft.
"I think the wily foe have had enough," said Boadicea, several of the skittles having fallen. The bronze Buddha, unperturbed, was captured and bound to the chariot-wheels of the conqueror—and that was that. . . .
"Now I'm going to be the Standard-bearer of the Tenth Legion," stated the President, "also the Censurian. And the battle may end differently this time. Go and get that brown iron paper-knife from the drawing-room because its copper, and this is the Bronze Age."
The Vice obeyed.
"Make a jolly good Roman short sword," observed the President, examining it in this new light. "You'll have to be nippy with your shield, though—it's got rather an edge."
"I'll watch it," replied the Vice—using another of the unfortunate expressions learnt from Buster and his undesirable subaltern friends.
"What is your name?" he inquired. "I can't call you 'Thtandard-blarer of the Tenth Legium' the whole time, nor yet 'Cen-chew-rium'."
"Call me Reginald or Reggie, then," permitted the Vice. "No—Samuel would be nicer, I think, 'Samuel the Standard-bearer' or 'Samuel the Censurian' sounds all-right."
"Right O, Thammy," acquiesced the Vice, and prepared to do battle.
"No—you get in the chariot," directed the President, "and I come ashore in a boat. Then I hop out and make a speech to my soldiers who hang back a bit. They're not for it, at first, you know, and . . ."
"Can I take a pot at you while you speech?" interrupted the Vice.
The President considered this.
"It is battle, you know," urged the Vice, "and I didn't ask you to come invading on my sands when I might want to be fishing or paddling or playing with my children or anything."
"Yes—but I've got to win, you know. It is History, and we can't alter that. . . . Tell you what—you can hit me in the shield while I am making the speech—or knock my helmet off. Yes—make it all the more real. . . ."
An empty drawer provided the Roman galley, and in the prow thereof proudly stood Samuel the Standard-bearer. In his hand he bore the S.P.Q. R. standard of the Tenth. It looked like a curtain-pole and a pinafore—but no matter. Nor matter that his helmet was frankly the paraffin-oil funnel with an ostrich feather stuck down its up-turned nozzle, his shield of card-board, his sword a paper-knife, his cuirass a tea-tray, and his greaves a pair of Daddy's leggings. The play is the thing—and Imagination is life and salvation.
Bravely he leapt into the waves, and turned to his daunted followers as an arrow smote his shield.
"Buck up, you fellows," quoth he, "a little wetting won't hurt you—nor spoil your bronze clothes. Come on, you're not salt nor yet sugar. A bath will do some of you good. . . ."
Still they hung back.
"Behold!" he continued, "I take the Standard of the Tenth Legion among the enemy!"
He did, and another arrow took him well in the centre of the cuirass ere the enemy, leaping from the chariot, rushed upon him with spear and axe. Dropping the axe, the enemy seized the standard with a cry of—
"Leggo, Thamuel!—or die!"
Samuel did neither. He rapped the knuckles of the presumptuous hand sharply, and the enemy drew back with a yelp of anguish.
"Hop it!" cried the Centurion, pressing his advantage and prodding the retreating foe with the butt-end of the standard. "Bung off! Barbarium," and the barbarian fled.
Leaping into the deserted chariot the Centurion said "Home" to a supposititious driver and poked out his tongue at the defeated enemy—and that was that.