Dream Days
by
Kenneth Grahame
Part 1 out of 3
Dream Days
by Kenneth Grahame
Contents
THE TWENTY-FIRST OF OCTOBER
DIES IRAE
MUTABILE SEMPER
THE MAGIC RING
ITS WALLS WERE AS OF JASPER
A SAGA OF THE SEAS
THE RELUCTANT DRAGON
A DEPARTURE
THE TWENTY-FIRST OF OCTOBER
In the matter of general culture and attainments, we youngsters
stood on pretty level ground. True, it was always happening that
one of us would be singled out at any moment, freakishly, and
without regard to his own preferences, to wrestle with the
inflections of some idiotic language long rightly dead; while
another, from some fancied artistic tendency which always failed
to justify itself, might be told off without warning to hammer
out scales and exercises, and to bedew the senseless keys with
tears of weariness or of revolt. But in subjects common to either
sex, and held to be necessary even for him whose ambition soared
no higher than to crack a whip in a circus-ring--in geography,
for instance, arithmetic, or the weary doings of kings and
queens--each would have scorned to excel. And, indeed, whatever
our individual gifts, a general dogged determination to shirk and
to evade kept us all at much the same dead level,--a level of
Ignorance tempered by insubordination.
Fortunately there existed a wide range of subjects, of
healthier tone than those already enumerated, in which we were
free to choose for ourselves, and which we would have scorned to
consider education; and in these we freely followed each his own
particular line, often attaining an amount of special knowledge
which struck our ignorant elders as simply uncanny. For Edward,
the uniforms, accoutrements, colours, and mottoes of the
regiments composing the British Army had a special glamour. In
the matter of facings he was simply faultless; among chevrons,
badges, medals, and stars, he moved familiarly; he even knew the
names of most of the colonels in command; and he would squander
sunny hours prone on the lawn, heedless of challenge from bird or
beast, poring over a tattered Army List. My own accomplishment
was of another character --took, as it seemed to me, a wider and
a more untrammelled range. Dragoons might have swaggered in
Lincoln green, riflemen might have donned sporrans over tartan
trews, without exciting notice or comment from me. But did you
seek precise information as to the fauna of the American
continent, then you had come to the right shop. Where and why the
bison "wallowed"; how beaver were to be trapped and wild turkeys
stalked; the grizzly and how to handle him, and the pretty
pressing ways of the constrictor,--in fine, the haunts and the
habits of all that burrowed, strutted, roared, or wriggled
between the Atlantic and the Pacific,--all this knowledge I took
for my province. By the others my equipment was fully recognized.
Supposing a book with a bear-hunt in it made its way into the
house, and the atmosphere was electric with excitement; still, it
was necessary that I should first decide whether the slot had
been properly described and properly followed up, ere the work
could be stamped with full approval. A writer might have won fame
throughout the civilized globe for his trappers and his realistic
backwoods, and all went for nothing. If his pemmican were not
properly compounded I damned his achievement, and it was heard no
more of.
Harold was hardly old enough to possess a special subject of
his own. He had his instincts, indeed, and at bird's-nesting they
almost amounted to prophecy. Where we others only suspected eggs,
surmised possible eggs, hinted doubtfully at eggs in the
neighbourhood, Harold went straight for the right bush, bough, or
hole as if he carried a divining-rod. But this faculty belonged
to the class of mere gifts, and was not to be ranked with
Edward's lore regarding facings, and mine as to the habits of
prairie-dogs, both gained by painful study and extensive travel
in those "realms of gold," the Army List and Ballantyne.
Selina's subject, quite unaccountably, happened to be naval
history. There is no laying down rules as to subjects; you just
possess them--or rather, they possess you--and their genesis or
protoplasm is rarely to be tracked down. Selina had never so much
as seen the sea; but for that matter neither had I ever set foot
on the American continent, the by-ways of which I knew so
intimately. And just as I, if set down without warning in the
middle of the Rocky Mountains, would have been perfectly at home,
so Selina, if a genie had dropped her suddenly on Portsmouth
Hard, could have given points to most of its frequenters. From
the days of Blake down to the death of Nelson (she never
condescended further) Selina had taken spiritual part in every
notable engagement of the British Navy; and even in the dark days
when she had to pick up skirts and flee, chased by an ungallant
De Ruyter or Van Tromp, she was yet cheerful in the consciousness
that ere long she would be gleefully hammering the fleets of the
world, in the glorious times to follow. When that golden period
arrived, Selina was busy indeed; and, while loving best to stand
where the splinters were flying the thickest, she was also a
careful and critical student of seamanship and of maneuvre. She
knew the order in which the great line-of-battle ships moved into
action, the vessels they respectively engaged, the moment when
each let go its anchor, and which of them had a spring on its
cable (while not understanding the phrase, she carefully noted
the fact); and she habitually went into an engagement on the
quarter-deck of the gallant ship that reserved its fire the
longest.
At the time of Selina's weird seizure I was unfortunately away
from home, on a loathsome visit to an aunt; and my account is
therefore feebly compounded from hearsay. It was an absence I
never ceased to regret--scoring it up, with a sense of injury,
against the aunt. There was a splendid uselessness about the
whole performance that specially appealed to my artistic sense.
That it should have been Selina, too, who should break out this
way--Selina, who had just become a regular subscriber to the
"Young Ladies' Journal," and who allowed herself to be taken out
to strange teas with an air of resignation palpably assumed--this
was a special joy, and served to remind me that much of this
dreaded convention that was creeping over us might be, after all,
only veneer. Edward also was absent, getting licked into shape at
school; but to him the loss was nothing. With his stern practical
bent he wouldn't have seen any sense in it--to recall one of his
favourite expressions. To Harold, however, for whom the gods had
always cherished a special tenderness, it was granted, not only
to witness, but also, priestlike, to feed the sacred fire itself.
And if at the time he paid the penalty exacted by the sordid
unimaginative ones who temporarily rule the roast, he must ever
after, one feels sure, have carried inside him some of the white
gladness of the acolyte who, greatly privileged, has been
permitted to swing a censer at the sacring of the very Mass.
October was mellowing fast, and with it the year itself; full
of tender hints, in woodland and hedgerow, of a course well-nigh
completed. From all sides that still afternoon you caught the
quick breathing and sob of the runner nearing the goal.
Preoccupied and possessed, Selina had strayed down the garden and
out into the pasture beyond, where, on a bit of rising ground
that dominated the garden on one side and the downs with the old
coach-road on the other, she had cast herself down to chew the
cud of fancy. There she was presently joined by Harold,
breathless and very full of his latest grievance.
"I asked him not to," he burst out. "I said if he'd only please
wait a bit and Edward would be back soon, and it couldn't matter
to him, and the pig wouldn't mind, and Edward'd be pleased and
everybody'd be happy. But he just said he was very sorry, but
bacon didn't wait for nobody. So I told him he was a regular
beast, and then I came away. And--and I b'lieve they're doing it
now!"
"Yes, he's a beast," agreed Selina, absently. She had forgotten
all about the pig-killing. Harold kicked away a freshly thrown-up
mole-hill, and prodded down the hole with a stick. From the
direction of Farmer Larkin's demesne came a long-drawn note of
sorrow, a thin cry and appeals telling that the stout soul of a
black Berkshire pig was already faring down the stony track to
Hades.
"D' you know what day it is?" said Selina presently, in a low
voice, looking far away before her.
Harold did not appear to know, nor yet to care. He had laid
open his mole-run for a yard or so, and was still grubbing at it
absorbedly.
"It's Trafalgar Day," went on Selina, trancedly; "Trafalgar
Day--and nobody cares!"
Something in her tone told Harold that he was not behaving
quite becomingly. He didn't exactly know in what manner; still,
he abandoned his mole-hunt for a more courteous attitude of
attention.
"Over there," resumed Selina--she was gazing out in the
direction of the old highroad--" over there the coaches used to
go by. Uncle Thomas was telling me about it the other day. And
the people used to watch for 'em coming, to tell the time by, and
p'r'aps to get their parcels. And one morning--they wouldn't be
expecting anything different--one morning, first there would be a
cloud of dust, as usual, and then the coach would come racing by,
and then they would know! For the coach would be dressed in
laurel, all laurel from stem to stern! And the coachman would be
wearing laurel, and the guard would be wearing laurel; and then
they would know, then they would know!"
Harold listened in respectful silence. He would much rather
have been hunting the mole, who must have been a mile away by
this time if he had his wits about him. But he had all the
natural instincts of a gentleman; of whom it is one of the
principal marks, if not the complete definition, never to show
signs of being bored.
Selina rose to her feet, and paced the turf restlessly with a
short quarter-deck walk.
"Why can't we do something?" she burst out presently. "He--he
did everything--why can't we do anything for him?"
Who did everything?" inquired Harold, meekly. It was useless
wasting further longings on that mole. Like the dead, he
travelled fast.
"Why, Nelson, of course," said Selina, shortly, still looking
restlessly around for help or suggestion.
"But he's--he's dead, isn't he?" asked Harold, slightly
puzzled.
"What's that got to do with it?" retorted his sister, resuming
her caged-lion promenade.
Harold was somewhat taken aback. In the case of the pig, for
instance, whose last outcry had now passed into stillness. he had
considered the chapter as finally closed. Whatever innocent mirth
the holidays might hold in store for Edward, that particular pig,
at least, would not be a contributor. And now he was given to
understand that the situation had not materially changed! He
would have to revise his ideas, it seemed. Sitting up on end, he
looked towards the garden for assistance in the task. Thence,
even as he gazed, a tiny column of smoke rose straight up into
the still air. The gardener had been sweeping that afternoon, and
now, an unconscious priest, was offering his sacrifice of autumn
leaves to the calm-eyed goddess of changing hues and chill
forebodings who was moving slowly about the land that golden
afternoon. Harold was up and off in a moment, forgetting Nelson,
forgetting the pig, the mole, the Larkin betrayal, and Selina's
strange fever of conscience. Here was fire, real fire, to play
with, and that was even better than messing with water, or
remodelling the plastic surface of the earth. Of all the toys the
world provides for right-minded persons, the original elements
rank easily the first.
But Selina sat on where she was, her chin on her fists; and her
fancies whirled and drifted, here and there, in curls and eddies,
along with the smoke she was watching. As the quick-footed dusk
of the short October day stepped lightly over the garden, little
red tongues of fire might be seen to leap and vanish in the
smoke. Harold, anon staggering under armfuls of leaves, anon
stoking vigorously, was discernible only at fitful intervals. It
was another sort of smoke that the inner eye of Selina was
looking upon,--a smoke that hung in sullen banks round the masts
and the hulls of the fighting ships; a smoke from beneath which
came thunder and the crash and the splinter-rip, the shout of the
boarding-party, the choking sob of the gunner stretched by his
gun; a smoke from out of which at last she saw, as through a
riven pall, the radiant spirit of the Victor, crowned with the
coronal of a perfect death, leap in full assurance up into the
ether that Immortals breathe. The dusk was glooming towards
darkness when she rose and moved slowly down towards the
beckoning fire; something of the priestess in her stride,
something of the devotee in the set purpose of her eye.
The leaves were well alight by this time, and Harold had just
added an old furze bush, which flamed and crackled stirringly.
"Go 'n' get some more sticks," ordered Selina," and shavings,
'n' chunks of wood, 'n' anything you can find. Look here--in the
kitchen-garden there 's a pile of old pea-sticks. Fetch as many
as you can carry, and then go back and bring some more!"
"But I say,--" began Harold, amazedly, scarce knowing his
sister, and with a vision of a frenzied gardener, pea-stickless
and threatening retribution.
"Go and fetch 'em quick!" shouted Selina, stamping with
impatience.
Harold ran off at once, true to the stern system of discipline
in which he had been nurtured. But his eyes were like round O's,
and as he ran he talked fast to himself, in evident disorder of
mind.
The pea-sticks made a rare blaze, and the fire, no longer
smouldering sullenly, leapt up and began to assume the appearance
of a genuine bonfire. Harold, awed into silence at first, began
to jump round it with shouts of triumph. Selina looked on grimly,
with knitted brow; she was not yet fully satisfied. "Can't you
get any more sticks?" she said presently. "Go and hunt about. Get
some old hampers and matting and things out of the tool-house.
Smash up that old cucumber frame Edward shoved you into, the day
we were playing scouts and Mohicans. Stop a bit! Hooray! I know.
You come along with me."
Hard by there was a hot-house, Aunt Eliza's special pride and
joy, and even grimly approved of by the gardener. At one end, in
an out-house adjoining, the necessary firing was stored; and to
this sacred fuel, of which we were strictly forbidden to touch a
stick, Selina went straight. Harold followed obediently, prepared
for any crime after that of the pea-sticks, but pinching himself
to see if he were really awake.
"You bring some coals," said Selina briefly, without any
palaver or pro-and-con discussion. "Here's a basket. I'll manage
the faggots!"
In a very few minutes there was little doubt about its being a
genuine bonfire and no paltry makeshift. Selina, a Maenad now,
hatless and tossing disordered locks, all the dross of the young
lady purged out of her, stalked around the pyre of her own
purloining, or prodded it with a pea-stick. And as she prodded
she murmured at intervals, "I knew there was something we could
do! It isn't much--but still it 's something!"
The gardener had gone home to his tea. Aunt Eliza had driven
out for hers a long way off, and was not expected back till quite
late; and this far end of the garden was not overlooked by any
windows. So the Tribute blazed on merrily unchecked. Villagers
far away, catching sight of the flare, muttered something about
"them young devils at their tricks again," and trudged on
beerwards. Never a thought of what day it was, never a thought
for Nelson, who preserved their honest pint-pots, to be paid for
in honest pence, and saved them from litres and decimal coinage.
Nearer at hand, frightened rabbits popped up and vanished with a
flick of white tails; scared birds fluttered among the branches,
or sped across the glade to quieter sleeping-quarters; but never
a bird nor a beast gave a thought to the hero to whom they owed
it that each year their little homes of horsehair, wool, or moss,
were safe stablished 'neath the flap of the British flag; and
that Game Laws, quietly permanent, made la chasse a terror only
to their betters. No one seemed to know, nor to care, nor to
sympathise. In all the ecstasy of her burnt-offering and
sacrifice, Selina stood alone.
And yet--not quite alone! For, as the fire was roaring at its
best, certain stars stepped delicately forth on the surface of
the immensity above, and peered down doubtfully--with wonder at
first, then with interest, then with recognition, with a start of
glad surprise. They at least knew all about it, they understood.
Among them the Name was a daily familiar word; his story was a
part of the music to which they swung, himself was their fellow
and their mate and comrade. So they peeped, and winked, and
peeped again, and called to their laggard brothers to come quick
and see.
***
"The best of life is but intoxication, and Selina, who during
her brief inebriation had lived in an ecstasy as golden as our
drab existence affords, had to experience the inevitable
bitterness of awakening sobriety, when the dying down of the
flames into sullen embers coincided with the frenzied entrance of
Aunt Eliza on the scene. It was not so much that she was at once
and forever disrated, broke, sent before the mast, and branded as
one on whom no reliance could be placed, even with Edward safe at
school, and myself under the distant vigilance of an aunt; that
her pocket money was stopped indefinitely, and her new Church
Service, the pride of her last birthday, removed from her own
custody and placed under the control of a Trust. She sorrowed
rather because she had dragged poor Harold, against his better
judgment, into a most horrible scrape, and moreover because, when
the reaction had fairly set in, when the exaltation had fizzled
away and the young-lady portion of her had crept timorously back
to its wonted lodging, she could only see herself as a plain
fool, unjustified, undeniable, without a shadow of an excuse or
explanation.
As for Harold, youth and a short memory made his case less
pitiful than it seemed to his more sensitive sister. True, he
started upstairs to his lonely cot bellowing dismally, before him
a dreary future of pains and penalties, sufficient to last to the
crack of doom. Outside his door, however, he tumbled over
Augustus the cat, and made capture of him; and at once his
mourning was changed into a song of triumph, as he conveyed his
prize into port. For Augustus, who detested above all things
going to bed with little boys, was ever more knave than fool, and
the trapper who was wily enough to ensnare him had achieved
something notable. Augustus, when he realized that his fate was
sealed, and his night's lodging settled, wisely made the best of
things, and listened, with a languorous air of complete
comprehension, to the incoherent babble concerning pigs and
heroes, moles and bonfires, which served Harold for a self-sung
lullaby. Yet it may be doubted whether Augustus was one of those
rare fellows who thoroughly understood.
But Selina knew no more of this source of consolation than of
the sympathy with which the stars were winking above her; and it
was only after some sad interval of time, and on a very moist
pillow, that she drifted into that quaint inconsequent country
where you may meet your own pet hero strolling down the road, and
commit what hair-brained oddities you like, and everybody
understands and appreciates.
DIES IRAE
Those memorable days that move in procession, their heads just
out of the mist of years long dead--the most of them are
full-eyed as the dandelion that from dawn to shade has steeped
itself in sunlight. Here and there in their ranks, however, moves
a forlorn one who is blind--blind in the sense of the dulled
window-pane on which the pelting raindrops have mingled and run
down, obscuring sunshine and the circling birds, happy fields,
and storied garden; blind with the spatter of a misery
uncomprehended, unanalysed, only felt as something corporeal in
its buffeting effects.
Martha began it; and yet Martha was not really to blame.
Indeed, that was half the trouble of it--no solid person stood
full in view, to be blamed and to make atonement. There was only
a wretched, impalpable condition to deal with. Breakfast was just
over; the sun was summoning us, imperious as a herald with
clamour of trumpet; I ran upstairs to her with a broken bootlace
in my hand, and there she was, crying in a corner, her head in
her apron. Nothing could be got from her but the same dismal
succession of sobs that would not have done, that struck and hurt
like a physical beating; and meanwhile the sun was getting
impatient, and I wanted my bootlace.
Inquiry below stairs revealed the cause. Martha's brother was
dead, it seemed--her sailor brother Billy; drowned in one of
those strange far-off seas it was our dream to navigate one day.
We had known Billy well, and appreciated him. When an approaching
visit of Billy to his sister had been announced, we had counted
the days to it. When his cheery voice was at last heard in the
kitchen and we had descended with shouts, first of all he had to
exhibit his tattooed arms, always a subject for fresh delight and
envy and awe; then he was called upon for tricks, jugglings, and
strange, fearful gymnastics; and lastly came yarns, and more
yarns, and yarns till bedtime. There had never been any one like
Billy in his own particular sphere; and now he was drowned, they
said, and Martha was miserable, and--and I couldn't get a new
bootlace. They told me that Billy would never come back any more,
and I stared out of the window at the sun which came back, right
enough, every day, and their news conveyed nothing whatever to
me. Martha's sorrow hit home a little, but only because the
actual sight and sound of it gave me a dull, bad sort of pain low
down inside--a pain not to be actually located. Moreover, I was
still wanting my bootlace.
This was a poor sort of a beginning to a day that, so far as
outside conditions went, had promised so well. I rigged up a sort
of jurymast of a bootlace with a bit of old string, and wandered
off to look up the girls, conscious of a jar and a discordance in
the scheme of things. The moment I entered the schoolroom
something in the air seemed to tell me that here, too, matters
were strained and awry. Selina was staring listlessly out of the
window, one foot curled round her leg. When I spoke to her she
jerked a shoulder testily, but did not condescend to the civility
of a reply. Charlotte, absolutely unoccupied, sprawled in a
chair, and there were signs of sniffles about her, even at that
early hour. It was but a trifling matter that had caused all this
electricity in the atmosphere, and the girls' manner of taking it
seemed to me most unreasonable. Within the last few days the time
had come round for the despatch of a hamper to Edward at school.
Only one hamper a term was permitted him, so its preparation was
a sort of blend of revelry and religious ceremony. After the main
corpus of the thing had been carefully selected and safely
bestowed--the pots of jam, the cake, the sausages, and the apples
that filled up corners so nicely--after the last package had been
wedged in, the girls had deposited their own private and personal
offerings on the top. I forget their precise nature; anyhow, they
were nothing of any particular practical use to a boy. But they
had involved some contrivance and labour, some skimping of pocket
money, and much delightful cloud-building as to the effect on
their enraptured recipient. Well, yesterday there had come a
terse acknowledgment from Edward, heartily commending the cakes
and the jam, stamping the sausages with the seal of Smith major's
approval, and finally hinting that, fortified as he now was,
nothing more was necessary but a remittance of five shillings in
postage stamps to enable him to face the world armed against
every buffet of fate. That was all. Never a word or a hint of the
personal tributes or of his appreciation of them. To us--to
Harold and me, that is--the letter seemed natural and sensible
enough. After all, provender was the main thing, and five
shillings stood for a complete equipment against the most
unexpected turns of luck. The presents were very well in their
way--very nice, and so on--but life was a serious matter, and the
contest called for cakes and half-crowns to carry it on, not
gew-gaws and knitted mittens and the like. The girls, however, in
their obstinate way, persisted in taking their own view of the
slight. Hence it was that I received my second rebuff of the
morning.
Somewhat disheartened, I made my way downstairs and out into
the sunlight, where I found Harold playing conspirators by
himself on the gravel. He had dug a small hole in the walk and
had laid an imaginary train of powder thereto; and, as he sought
refuge in the laurels from the inevitable explosion, I heard him
murmur: "'My God!' said the Czar, 'my plans are frustrated!'" It
seemed an excellent occasion for being a black puma. Harold liked
black pumas, on the whole, as well as any animal we were familiar
with. So I launched myself on him, with the appropriate howl,
rolling him over on the gravel.
Life may be said to be composed of things that come off and
things that don't come off. This thing, unfortunately, was one of
the things that didn't come off. From beneath me I heard a shrill
cry of, "Oh, it's my sore knee!" And Harold wriggled himself free
from the puma's clutches, bellowing dismally. Now, I honestly
didn't know he had a sore knee, and, what's more, he knew I
didn't know he had a sore knee. According to boy-ethics,
therefore, his attitude was wrong, sore knee or not, and no
apology was due from me. I made half-way advances, however,
suggesting we should lie in ambush by the edge of the pond and
cut off the ducks as they waddled down in simple, unsuspecting
single file; then hunt them as bisons flying scattered over the
vast prairie. A fascinating pursuit this, and strictly illicit.
But Harold would none of my overtures, and retreated to the house
wailing with full lungs.
Things were getting simply infernal. I struck out blindly for
the open country; and even as I made for the gate a shrill voice
from a window bade me keep off the flower-beds. When the gate had
swung to behind me with a vicious click I felt better, and after
ten minutes along the road it began to grow on me that some
radical change was needed, that I was in a blind alley, and that
this intolerable state of things must somehow cease. All that I
could do I had already done. As well-meaning a fellow as ever
stepped was pounding along the road that day, with an exceeding
sore heart; one who only wished to live and let live, in touch
with his fellows, and appreciating what joys life had to offer.
What was wanted now was a complete change of environment.
Somewhere in the world, I felt sure, justice and sympathy still
resided. There were places called pampas, for instance, that
sounded well. League upon league of grass, with just an
occasional wild horse, and not a relation within the horizon! To
a bruised spirit this seemed a sane and a healing sort of
existence. There were other pleasant corners, again, where you
dived for pearls and stabbed sharks in the stomach with your big
knife. No relations would be likely to come interfering with you
when thus blissfully occupied. And yet I did not wish--just yet--
to have done with relations entirely. They should be made to feel
their position first, to see themselves as they really were, and
to wish--when it was too late--that they had behaved more
properly.
Of all professions, the army seemed to lend itself the most
thoroughly to the scheme. You enlisted, you followed the drum,
you marched, fought, and ported arms, under strange skies,
through unrecorded years. At last, at long last, your
opportunity would come, when the horrors of war were flickering
through the quiet country-side where you were cradled and bred,
but where the memory of you had long been dim. Folk would run
together, clamorous, palsied with fear; and among the terror-
stricken groups would figure certain aunts. "What hope is left
us?" they would ask themselves, "save in the clemency of the
General, the mysterious, invincible General, of whom men tell
such romantic tales?" And the army would march in, and the guns
would rattle and leap along the village street, and, last of all,
you--you, the General, the fabled hero--you would enter, on your
coal-black charger, your pale set face seamed by an interesting
sabre-cut. And then--but every boy has rehearsed this familiar
piece a score of times. You are magnanimous, in fine--that goes
without saying; you have a coal-black horse, and a sabre-cut, and
you can afford to be very magnanimous. But all the same you give
them a good talking-to.
This pleasant conceit simply ravished my soul for some twenty
minutes, and then the old sense of injury began to well up
afresh, and to call for new plasters and soothing syrups. This
time I took refuge in happy thoughts of the sea. The sea was my
real sphere, after all. On the sea, in especial, you could
combine distinction with lawlessness, whereas the army seemed to
be always weighted by a certain plodding submission to
discipline. To be sure, by all accounts, the life was at first a
rough one. But just then I wanted to suffer keenly; I wanted to
be a poor devil of a cabin boy, kicked, beaten, and sworn at--
for a time. Perhaps some hint, some inkling of my sufferings
might reach their ears. In due course the sloop or felucca would
turn up--it always did--the rakish-looking craft, black of hull,
low in the water, and bristling with guns; the jolly Roger
flapping overhead, and myself for sole commander. By and by, as
usually happened, an East Indiaman would come sailing along full
of relations--not a necessary relation would be missing. And the
crew should walk the plank, and the captain should dance from his
own yardarm, and then I would take the passengers in hand--that
miserable group of well-known figures cowering on the
quarterdeck!--and then--and then the same old performance: the
air thick with magnanimity. In all the repertory of heroes, none
is more truly magnanimous than your pirate chief.
When at last I brought myself back from the future to the
actual present, I found that these delectable visions had helped
me over a longer stretch of road than I had imagined; and I
looked around and took my bearings. To the right of me was a long
low building of grey stone, new, and yet not smugly so; new, and
yet possessing distinction, marked with a character that did not
depend on lichen or on crumbling semi-effacement of moulding and
mullion. Strangers might have been puzzled to classify it; to
me, an explorer from earliest years, the place was familiar
enough. Most folk called it "The Settlement"; others, with quite
sufficient conciseness for our neighbourhood, spoke of "them
there fellows up by Halliday's"; others again, with a hint of
derision, named them the "monks." This last title I supposed to
be intended for satire, and knew to be fatuously wrong. I was
thoroughly acquainted with monks--in books--and well knew the cut
of their long frocks, their shaven polls, and their fascinating
big dogs, with brandy-bottles round their necks, incessantly
hauling happy travellers out of the snow. The only dog at the
settlement was an Irish terrier, and the good fellows who owned
him, and were owned by him, in common, wore clothes of the most
nondescript order, and mostly cultivated side-whiskers. I had
wandered up there one day, searching (as usual) for something I
never found, and had been taken in by them and treated as friend
and comrade. They had made me free of their ideal little rooms,
full of books and pictures, and clean of the antimacassar taint;
they had shown me their chapel, high, hushed, and faintly
scented, beautiful with a strange new beauty born both of what it
had and what it had not--that too familiar dowdiness of common
places of worship. They had also fed me in their dining-hall,
where a long table stood on trestles plain to view, and all the
woodwork was natural, unpainted, healthily scrubbed, and redolent
of the forest it came from. I brought away from that visit, and
kept by me for many days, a sense of cleanness, of the freshness
that pricks the senses--the freshness of cool spring water; and
the large swept spaces of the rooms, the red tiles, and the oaken
settles, suggested a comfort that had no connection with padded
upholstery.
On this particular morning I was in much too unsociable a mind
for paying friendly calls. Still, something in the aspect of the
place harmonized with my humour, and I worked my way round to the
back, where the ground, after affording level enough for a
kitchen-garden, broke steeply away. Both the word Gothic and the
thing itself were still unknown to me, yet doubtless the
architecture of the place, consistent throughout, accounted for
its sense of comradeship in my hour of disheartenment. As I mused
there, with the low, grey, Purposeful-looking building before me,
and thought of my pleasant friends within, and what good times
they always seemed to be having, and how they larked with the
Irish terrier, whose footing was one of a perfect equality, I
thought of a certain look in their faces, as if they had a common
purpose and a business, and were acting under orders thoroughly
recognized and understood. I remembered, too, something that
Martha had told me, about these same fellows doing "a power o'
good," and other hints I had collected vaguely, of renouncements,
rules, self-denials, and the like. Thereupon, out of the depths
of my morbid soul swam up a new and fascinating idea; and at
once the career of arms seemed over-acted and stale, and piracy,
as a profession, flat and unprofitable. This, then, or something
like it, should be my vocation and my revenge. A severer line of
business, perhaps, such as I had read of; something that included
black bread and a hair-shirt. There should be vows, too--
irrevocable, blood-curdling vows; and an iron grating. This iron
grating was the most necessary feature of all, for I intended
that on the other side of it my relations should range
themselves--I mentally ran over the catalogue, and saw that the
whole gang was present, all in their proper places--a sad-eyed
row, combined in tristful appeal. "We see our error now," they
would say; "we were always dull dogs, slow to catch--especially
in those akin to us--the finer qualities of soul! We
misunderstood you, misappreciated you, and we own up to it. And
now "Alas, my dear friends," I would strike in here, waving
towards them an ascetic hand--one of the emaciated sort, that
lets the light shine through at the fingertips--" Alas, you come
too late! This conduct is fitting and meritorious on your part,
and indeed I always expected it of you, sooner or later; but the
die is cast, and you may go home again and bewail at your leisure
this too tardy repentance of yours. For me, I am vowed and
dedicated, and my relations henceforth are austerity and holy
works. Once a month, should you wish it, it shall be your
privilege to come and gaze at me through this very solid grating;
but--" Whack! A well-aimed clod of garden soil, whizzing just
past my ear, starred on a tree-trunk behind, spattering me with
dirt, The present came back to me in a flash, and I nimbly took
cover behind the trees, realizing that the enemy was up and
abroad, with ambuscades, alarms, and thrilling sallies. It was
the gardener's boy, I knew well enough; a red proletariat, who
hated me just because I was a gentleman. Hastily picking up a
nice sticky clod in one hand, with the other I delicately
projected my hat beyond the shelter of the tree-trunk. I had not
fought with Red-skins all these years for nothing. As I had
expected, another clod, of the first class for size and
stickiness, took my poor hat full in the centre. Then, Ajax-like,
shouting terribly, I issued from shelter and discharged my
ammunition. Woe then for the gardener's boy, who, unprepared,
skipping in premature triumph, took the clod full in his stomach!
He, the foolish one, witless on whose side the gods were fighting
that day, discharged yet other missiles, wavering and wide of the
mark; for his wind had been taken with the first clod, and he
shot wildly, as one already desperate and in flight. I got
another clod in at short range; we clinched on the brow of the
hill, and rolled down to the bottom together. When he had shaken
himself free and regained his legs, he trotted smartly off in the
direction of his mother's cottage; but over his shoulder he
discharged at me both imprecation and deprecation, menace mixed
up with an under-current of tears.
But as for me, I made off smartly for the road, my frame
tingling, my head high, with never a backward look at the
Settlement of suggestive aspect, or at my well-planned future
which lay in fragments around it. Life had its jollities, then;
life was action, contest, victory! The present was rosy once
more, surprises lurked on every side, and I was beginning to feel
villainously hungry.
Just as I gained the road a cart came rattling by, and I rushed
for it, caught the chain that hung below, and swung thrillingly
between the dizzy wheels, choked and blinded with delicious-
smelling dust, the world slipping by me like a streaky ribbon
below, till the driver licked at me with his whip, and I had to
descend to earth again. Abandoning the beaten track, I then
struck homewards through the fields; not that the way was very
much shorter, but rather because on that route one avoided the
bridge, and had to splash through the stream and get refreshingly
wet. Bridges were made for narrow folk, for people with aims and
vocations which compelled abandonment of many of life's highest
pleasures. Truly wise men called on each element alike to
minister to their joy, and while the touch of sun-bathed air, the
fragrance of garden soil, the ductible qualities of mud, and the
spark-whirling rapture of playing with fire, had each their
special charm, they did not overlook the bliss of getting their
feet wet. As I came forth on the common Harold broke out of an
adjoining copse and ran to meet me, the morning rain-clouds all
blown away from his face. He had made a new squirrel-stick, it
seemed. Made it all himself; melted the lead and everything! I
examined the instrument critically, and pronounced it absolutely
magnificent. As we passed in at our gate the girls were distantly
visible, gardening with a zeal in cheerful contrast to their
heartsick lassitude of the morning.
"There's bin another letter come toÄday," Harold explained,
"and the hamper got joggled about on the journey, and the
presents worked down into the straw and all over the place. One
of 'em turned up inside the cold duck. And that's why they
weren't found at first. And Edward said, Thanks awfully!"
I did not see Martha again until we were all re-assembled at
tea-time, when she seemed red-eyed and strangely silent, neither
scolding nor finding fault with anything. Instead, she was very
kind and thoughtful with jams and things, feverishly pressing
unwonted delicacies on us, who wanted little pressing enough.
Then suddenly, when I was busiest, she disappeared; and Charlotte
whispered me presently that she had heard her go to her room and
lock herself in. This struck me as a funny sort of proceeding.
MUTABILE SEMPER
She stood on the other side of the garden fence, and regarded
me gravely as I came down the road. Then she said, "Hi--o!" and I
responded, "Hullo!" and pulled up somewhat nervously.
To tell the truth, the encounter was not entirely unexpected on
my part. The previous Sunday I had seen her in church, and after
service it had transpired who she was, this new-comer, and what
aunt she was staying with. That morning a volunteer had been
called for, to take a note to the Parsonage, and rather to my own
surprise I had found myself stepping forward with alacrity, while
the others had become suddenly absorbed in various pursuits, or
had sneaked unobtrusively out of view. Certainly I had not yet
formed any deliberate plan of action; yet I suppose I recollected
that the road to the Parsonage led past her aunt's garden.
She began the conversation, while I hopped backwards and
forwards over the ditch, feigning a careless ease.
"Saw you in church on Sunday," she said; "only you looked
different then. All dressed up, and your hair quite smooth, and
brushed up at the sides, and oh, so shiny! What do they put on it
to make it shine like that? Don't you hate having your hair
brushed?" she ran on, without waiting for an answer. "How your
boots squeaked when you came down the aisle! When mine squeak, I
walk in all the puddles till they stop. Think I'll get over the
fence."
This she proceeded to do in a businesslike way, while, with my
hands deep In my pockets, I regarded her movements with silent
interest, as those of some strange new animal.
"I've been gardening," she explained, when she had joined me,
"but I didn't like it. There's so many worms about to-day. I hate
worms. Wish they'd keep out of the way when I'm digging."
"Oh, I like worms when I'm digging," I replied heartily, "seem
to make things more lively, don't they?"
She reflected. "Shouldn't mind 'em so much if they were warm
and dry," she said, "but--" here she shivered, and somehow I
liked her for it, though if it had been my own flesh and blood
hoots of derision would have instantly assailed her,
From worms we passed, naturally enough, to frogs, and thence to
pigs, aunts, gardeners, rocking-horses, and other fellow-citizens
of our common kingdom. In five minutes we had each other's
confidences, and I seemed to have known her for a lifetime.
Somehow, on the subject of one's self it was easier to be frank
and communicative with her than with one's female kin. It must
be, I supposed, because she was less familiar with one's faulty,
tattered past.
"I was watching you as you came along the road," she said
presently, "and you had your head down and your hands in your
pockets, and you weren't throwing stones at anything, or
whistling, or jumping over things; and I thought perhaps you'd
bin scolded, or got a stomachache."
"No," I answered shyly, "it wasn't that. Fact is, I was--I
often--but it's a secret."
There I made an error in tactics. That enkindling word set her
dancing round me, half beseeching, half imperious. "Oh, do tell
it me!" she cried. "You must! I'II never tell anyone else at all,
I vow and declare I won't!"
Her small frame wriggled with emotion, and with imploring eyes
she jigged impatiently just in front of me. Her hair was tumbled
bewitchingly on her shoulders, and even the loss of a front
tooth--a loss incidental to her age--seemed but to add a piquancy
to her face.
"You won't care to hear about it," I said, wavering. "Besides,
I can't explain exactly. I think I won't tell you." But all the
time I knew I should have to.
"But I do care," she wailed plaintively. "I didn't think you'd
be so unkind!"
This would never do. That little downward tug at either corner
of the mouth--I knew the symptom only too well!
"It 's like this," I began stammeringly. "This bit of road
here--up as far as that corner--you know it 's a horrid dull bit
of road. I'm always having to go up and down it, and I know it so
well, and I'm so sick of it. So whenever I get to that corner, I
just--well, I go right off to another place!"
"What sort of a place?" she asked, looking round her gravely.
"Of course it's just a place I imagine," I went on hurriedly
and rather shamefacedly: "but it's an awfully nice place--the
nicest place you ever saw. And I always go off there in church,
or during joggraphy lessons."
"I'm sure it's not nicer than my home," she cried
patriotically. "Oh, you ought to see my home--it 's lovely! We've
got--"
"Yes it is, ever so much nicer," I interrupted. "I mean"--I
went on apologetically--" of course I know your home's beautiful
and all that. But this must be nicer, 'cos if you want anything
at all, you've only got to want it, and you can have it!"
"That sounds jolly," she murmured. "Tell me more about it,
please. Tell me how you get there, first."
"I--don't--quite--know--exactly," replied. "I just go. But
generally it begins by--well, you're going up a broad, clear
river in a sort of a boat. You're not rowing or anything--you're
just moving along. And there's beautiful grass meadows on both
sides, and the river's very full, quite up to the level of the
grass. And you glide along by the edge. And the people are
haymaking there, and playing games, and walking about; and they
shout to you, and you shout back to them, and they bring you
things to eat out of their baskets, and let you drink out of
their bottles; and some of 'em are the nice people you read about
in books. And so at last you come to the Palace steps--great
broad marble steps, reaching right down to the water. And there
at the steps you find every sort of boat you can imagine--
schooners, and punts, and row-boats, and little men-of-war. And
you have any sort of boating you want to--rowing, or sailing, or
shoving about in a punt!"
"I'd go sailing," she said decidedly: "and I 'd steer. No,
you'd have to steer, and I'd sit about on the deck. No, I
wouldn't though; I'd row--at least I'd make you row, and I'd
steer. And then we'd--Oh, no! I'll tell you what we do! We'd just
sit in a punt and dabble!"
"Of course we'll do just what you like," I said hospitably; but
already I was beginning to feel my liberty of action somewhat
curtailed by this exigent visitor I had so rashly admitted into
my sanctum.
I don't think we'd boat at all," she finally decided. "It's
always so wobbly Where do you come to next?"
"You go up the steps," I continued, "and in at the door, and
the very first place you come to is the Chocolate-room!"
She brightened up at this, and I heard her murmur with gusto,
"Chocolate-room!"
"It's got every sort of chocolate you can think of," I went on:
"soft chocolate, with sticky stuff inside, white and pink, what
girls like; and hard shiny chocolate, that cracks when you bite
it, and takes such a nice long time to suck!"
"I like the soft stuff best," she said: "'cos you can eat such
a lot more of it!" This was to me a new aspect of the chocolate
question, and I regarded her with interest and some respect. With
us, chocolate was none too common a thing, and, whenever we
happened to come by any, we resorted to the quaintest devices in
order to make it last out. Still, legends had reached us of
children who actually had, from time to time, as much chocolate
as they could possibly eat; and here, apparently, was one of
them.
"You can have all the creams," I said magnanimously, "and I'll
eat the hard sticks, 'cos I like 'em best."
"Oh, but you mustn't!" she cried impetuously. "You must eat the
same as I do! It isn't nice to want to eat different. I'll tell
you what--you must give me all the chocolate, and then I'll give
you--I'll give you what you ought to have!"
"Oh, all right," I said, in a subdued sort of way. It seemed a
little hard to be put under a sentimental restriction like this
in one s own Chocolate-room.
"In the next room you come to, "I proceeded, "there's fizzy
drinks! There's a marble-slab business all round the room, and
little silver taps; and you just turn the right tap, and have any
kind of fizzy drink you want."
"What fizzy drinks are there?" she inquired.
"Oh, all sorts," I answered hastily, hurrying on. (She might
restrict my eatables, but I'd be hanged if I was going to have
her meddle with my drinks.) "Then you go down the corridor, and
at the back of the palace there's a great big park--the finest
park you ever saw. And there's ponies to ride on, and carriages
and carts; and a little railway, all complete, engine and guard's
van and all; and you work it yourself, and you can go first-
class, or in the van, or on the engine, just whichever you
choose."
"I'd go on the engine," she murmured dreamily. "No, I wouldn't,
I'd--"
"Then there 's all the soldiers," I struck in. Really the line
had to be drawn somewhere, and I could not have my railway system
disorganized and turned upside down by a mere girl. "There's any
quantity of 'em, fine big soldiers, and they all belong to me.
And a row of brass cannons all along the terrace! And every now
and then I give the order, and they fire off all the guns!"
"No, they don't," she interrupted hastily. "I won't have 'em
fire off any guns You must tell 'em not to. I hate guns, and as
soon as they begin firing I shall run right away!"
"But--but that 's what they're there for," I protested, aghast
"I don't care," she insisted. "They mustn't do it. They can
walk about behind me if they like, and talk to me, and carry
things. But they mustn't fire off any guns."
I was sadly conscious by this time that in this brave palace of
mine, wherein I was wont to swagger daily, irresponsible and
unquestioned, I was rapidly becoming--so to speak--a mere lodger.
The idea of my fine big soldiers being told off to "carry
things"! I was not inclined to tell her any more, though there
still remained plenty more to tell.
"Any other boys there?" she asked presently, in a casual sort
of way. "Oh yes," I unguardedly replied. "Nice chaps, too. We'll
have great--" Then I recollected myself. "We'll play with them,
of course," I went on. "But you are going to be my friend, aren't
you? And you'll come in my boat, and we'll travel in the guard's
van together, and I'll stop the soldiers firing off their guns!"
But she looked mischievously away, and--do what I would--I could
not get her to promise.
Just then the striking of the village clock awoke within me
another clamorous timepiece, reminding me of mid-day mutton a
good half-mile away, and of penalties and curtailments attaching
to a late appearance. We took a hurried farewell of each other,
and before we parted I got from her an admission that she might
be gardening again that afternoon, if only the worms would be
less aggressive and give her a chance.
"Remember," I said as I turned to go, "you mustn't tell anybody
about what I've been telling you!"
She appeared to hesitate, swinging one leg to and fro while she
regarded me sideways with half-shut eyes.
"It's a dead secret," I said artfully. "A secret between us
two, and nobody knows it except ourselves!
Then she promised, nodding violently, big-eyed, her mouth
pursed up small. The delight of revelation, and the bliss of
possessing a secret, run each other very close. But the latter
generally wins--for a time.
I had passed the mutton stage and was weltering in warm rice
pudding, before I found leisure to pause and take in things
generally; and then a glance in the direction of the window told
me, to my dismay, that it was raining hard. This was annoying in
every way, for, even if it cleared up later, the worms--I knew
well from experience--would be offensively numerous and frisky.
Sulkily I said grace and accompanied the others upstairs to the
schoolroom; where I got out my paint-box and resolved to devote
myself seriously to Art, which of late I had much neglected.
Harold got hold of a sheet of paper and a pencil, retired to a
table in the corner, squared his elbows, and protruded his
tongue. Literature had always been his form of artistic
expression.
Selina had a fit of the fidgets, bred of the unpromising
weather, and, instead of settling down to something on her own
account, must needs walk round and annoy us artists, intent on
embodying our conceptions of the ideal. She had been looking over
my shoulder some minutes before I knew of it; or I would have had
a word or two to say upon the subject.
"I suppose you call that thing a ship," she remarked
contemptuously. "Who ever heard of a pink ship? Hoo-hoo!"
I stifled my wrath, knowing that in order to score properly it
was necessary to keep a cool head.
"There is a pink ship," I observed with forced calmness, "lying
in the toyshop window now. You can go and look at it if you like.
D' you suppose you know more about ships than the fellows who
make 'em?"
Selina, baffled for the moment, returned to the charge
presently.
"Those are funny things, too," she observed. "S'pose they 're
meant to be trees. But they're blue."
"They are trees," I replied with severity; "and they are blue.
They've got to be blue, 'cos you stole my gamboge last week, so I
can't mix up any green."
"Didn't steal your gamboge," declared Selina, haughtily, edging
away, however, in the direction of Harold. "And I wouldn't tell
lies, either, if I was you, about a dirty little bit of
gainboge."
I preserved a discreet silence. After all, I knew she knew she
stole my gainboge.
The moment Harold became conscious of Selina's stealthy
approach, he dropped his pencil and flung himself flat upon the
table, protecting thus his literary efforts from chilling
criticism by the interposed thickness of his person. From some-
where in his interior proceeded a heart-rending compound of
squeal and whistle, as of escaping steam,--long-drawn, ear-
piercing, unvarying in note.
"I only just wanted to see," protested Selina, struggling to
uproot his small body from the scrawl it guarded. But Harold
clung limpet-like to the table edge, and his shrill protest
continued to deafen humanity and to threaten even the serenities
of Olympus. The time seemed come for a demonstration in force.
Personally I cared little what soul-outpourings of Harold were
priated by Selina--she was pretty sure to get hold of them sooner
or later--and indeed I rather welcomed the diversion as
favourable to the undisturbed pursuit of Art. But the
clannishness of sex has its unwritten laws. Boys, as such, are
sufficiently put upon, maltreated, trodden under, as it is.
Should they fail to hang together in perilous times, what
disasters, what ignominies may not be looked for? Possibly even
an extinction of the tribe. I dropped my paint brush and sailed
shouting into the fray.
The result for a short space hung dubious. There is a period of
life when the difference of a year or two in age far outweighs
the minor advantage of sex. Then the gathers of Selina's frock
came away with a sound like the rattle of distant musketry; and
this calamity it was, rather than mere brute compulsion, that
quelled her indomitable spirit.
The female tongue is mightier than the sword, as I soon had
good reason to know, when Selina, her riven garment held out at
length, avenged her discomfiture with the Greek-fire of
personalities and abuse. Every black incident in my short, but
not stainless, career--every error, every folly, every penalty
ignobly suffered--were paraded before me as in a magic-lantern
show. The information, however, was not particularly new to me,
and the effect was staled by previous rehearsals. Besides, a
victory remains a victory, whatever the moral character of the
triumphant general.
Harold chuckled and crowed as he dropped from the table,
revealing the document over which so many gathers had sighed
their short lives out. "You can read it if you like," he said to
me gratefully. "It's only a Death-letter."
It had never been possible to say what Harold's particular
amusement of the hour might turn out to be. One thing only was
certain, that it would be something improbable, unguessable, not
to be foretold. Who, for instance, in search of relaxation, would
ever dream of choosing the drawing-up of a testamentary
disposition of property? Yet this was the form taken by Harold's
latest craze; and in justice this much had to be said for him,
that in the christening of his amusement he had gone right to the
heart of the matter. The words "will" and "testament" have
various meanings and uses; but about the signification of "death-
letter" there can be no manner of doubt. I smoothed out the
crumpled paper and read. In actual form it deviated considerably
from that usually adopted by family solicitors of standing, the
only resemblance, indeed, lying in the absence of punctuation.
"my dear edward (it ran) when I die I leave all my muny to you
my walkin sticks wips my crop my sord and gun bricks forts and
all things i have goodbye my dear charlotte when die I leave you
my wach and cumpus and pencel case my salors and camperdown my
picteres and evthing goodbye your loving brother armen my dear
Martha I love you very much i leave you my garden my mice and
rabets my plants in pots when I die please take care of them my
dear--" Catera desunt.
"Why, you 're not leaving me anything!" exclaimed Selina,
indignantly. "You're a regular mean little boy, and I'll take
back the last birthday present I gave you!"
"I don't care," said Harold, repossessing himself of the
document. "I was going to leave you something, but I sha'n't now,
'cos you tried to read my death-letter before I was dead!"
"Then I'II write a death-letter myself," retorted Selina,
scenting an artistic vengeance: "and I sha'n't leave you a single
thing!" And she went off in search of a pencil.
The tempest within-doors had kept my attention off the
condition of things without. But now a glance through the window
told me that the rain had entirely ceased, and that everything
was bathed instead in a radiant glow of sunlight, more golden
than any gamboge of mine could possibly depict. Leaving Selina
and Harold to settle their feud by a mutual disinheritance, I
slipped from the room and escaped into the open air, eager to
pick up the loose end of my new friendship just where I had
dropped it that morning. In the glorious reaction of the sunshine
after the downpour, with its moist warm smells, bespanglement of
greenery, and inspiriting touch of rain-washed air, the parks and
palaces of the imagination glowed with a livelier iris, and their
blurred beauties shone out again with fresh blush and
palpitation. As I sped along to the tryst, again I accompanied my
new comrade along the corridors of my pet palace into which I had
so hastily introduced her; and on reflection I began to see that
it wouldn't work properly. I had made a mistake, and those were
not the surroundings in which she was most fitted to shine.
However, it really did not matter much; I had other palaces to
place at her disposal--plenty of 'em; and on a further
acquaintance with and knowledge of her tastes, no doubt I could
find something to suit her.
There was a real Arabian one, for instance, which I visited but
rarely--only just when I was in the fine Oriental mood for it; a
wonder of silk hangings, fountains of rosewater, pavilions, and
minarets. Hundreds of silent, well-trained slaves thronged the
stairs and alleys of this establishment, ready to fetch and carry
for her all day, if she wished it; and my brave soldiers would be
spared the indignity. Also there were processions through the
bazaar at odd moments--processions with camels, elephants, and
palanquins. Yes, she was more suited for the East, this imperious
young person; and I determined that thither she should be
personally conducted as soon as ever might be.
I reached the fence and climbed up two bars of it, and leaning
over I looked this way and that for my twin-souled partner of the
morning. It was not long before I caught sight of her, only a
short distance away. Her back was towards me and--well, one can
never foresee exactly how one will find things--she was talking
to a Boy.
Of course there are boys and boys, and Lord knows I was never
narrow. But this was the parson's son from an adjoining village,
a red-headed boy and as common a little beast as ever stepped. He
cultivated ferrets--his only good point; and it was evidently
through the medium of this art that he was basely supplanting me,
for her head was bent absorbedly over something he carried in his
hands. With some trepidation I called out,"Hi!" But answer there
was none. Then again I called, "Hi!" but this time with a
sickening sense of failure and of doom. She replied only by a
complex gesture, decisive in import if not easily described. A
petulant toss of the head, a jerk of the left shoulder, and a
backward kick of the left foot, all delivered at once--that was
all, and that was enough. The red-headed boy never even
condescended to glance my way. Why, indeed, should he? I dropped
from the fence without another effort, and took my way homewards
along the weary road.
Little inclination was left to me, at first, for any solitary
visit to my accustomed palace, the pleasures of which I had so
recently tasted in company; and yet after a minute or two I found
myself, from habit, sneaking off there much as usual. Presently I
became aware of a certain solace and consolation in my newly-
recovered independence of action. Quit of all female whims and
fanciful restrictions, I rowed, sailed, or punted, just as I
pleased; in the Chocolate-room I cracked and nibbled the hard
sticks, with a certain contempt for those who preferred the soft,
veneered article; and I mixed and quaffed countless fizzy drinks
without dread of any prohibitionist. Finally, I swaggered into
the park, paraded all my soldiers on the terrace, and, bidding
them take the time from me, gave the order to fire off all the guns.
THE MAGIC RING
Grown-up people really ought to be more careful. Among
themselves it may seem but a small thing to give their word and
take back their word. For them there are so many compensations.
Life lies at their feet, a party-coloured india-rubber ball; they
may kick it this way or kick it that, it turns up blue, yellow,
or green, but always coloured and glistenning. Thus one sees it
happen almost every day, and, with a jest and a laugh, the thing
is over, and the disappointed one turns to fresh pleasure, lying
ready to his hand. But with those who are below them, whose
little globe is swayed by them, who rush to build star-pointing
alhambras on their most casual word, they really ought to be more
careful.
In this case of the circus, for instance, it was not as if we
had led up to the subject. It was they who began it entirely--
prompted thereto by the local newspaper. "What, a circus!" said
they, in their irritating, casual way: "that would be nice to
take the children to. Wednesday would be a good day. Suppose we
go on Wednesday. Oh, and pleats are being worn again, with rows
of deep braid," etc.
What the others thought I know not: what they said, if they
said anything, I did not comprehend. For me the house was
bursting, walls seemed to cramp and to stifle, the roof was
jumping and lifting. Escape was the imperative thing--to escape
into the open air, to shake off bricks and mortar, and to wander
in the unfrequented places of the earth, the more properly to
take in the passion and the promise of the giddy situation.
Nature seemed prim and staid that day, and the globe gave no
hint that it was flying round a circus ring of its own. Could
they really be true. I wondered, all those bewildering things I
had heard tell of circuses? Did long-tailed ponies really walk on
their hind-legs and fire off pistols? Was it humanly possible for
clowns to perform one-half of the bewitching drolleries recorded
in history? And how, oh, how dare I venture to believe that, from
off the backs of creamy Arab steeds, ladies of more than earthly
beauty discharged themselves through paper hoops? No, it was not
altogether possible, there must have been some exaggeration.
Still, I would be content with very little, I would take a low
percentage--a very small proportion of the circus myth would
more than satisfy me. But again, even supposing that history
were, once in a way, no liar, could it be that I myself was
really fated to look upon this thing in the flesh and to live
through it, to survive the rapture? No, it was altogether too
much. Something was bound to happen, one of us would develop
measles, the world would blow up with a loud explosion. I must
not dare, I must not presume, to entertain the smallest hope. I
must endeavour sternly to think of something else.
Needless to say, I thought, I dreamed of nothing else, day or
night. Waking, I walked arm-in-arm with a clown, and cracked a
portentous whip to the brave music of a band. Sleeping, I
pursued--perched astride of a coal-black horse--a princess all
gauze and spangles, who always managed to keep just one
unattainable length ahead. In the early morning Harold and I,
once fully awake, crossexammed each other as to the
possibilities of this or that circus tradition, and exhausted the
lore long ere the first housemaid was stirring. In this state of
exaltation we slipped onward to what promised to be a day of all
white days--which brings me right back to my text, that grown-up
people really ought to be more careful. I had known it could
never
really be; I had said so to myself a dozen times. The vision was
too sweetly ethereal for embodiment. Yet the pang of the
disillusionment was none the less keen and sickening, and the
pain was as that of a corporeal wound. It seemed strange and
foreboding, when we entered the breakfast-room, not to find
everybody cracking whips, jumping over chairs, and whooping In
ecstatic rehearsal of the wild reality to come. The situation
became grim and pallid indeed, when I caught the expressions
"garden-party" and "my mauve tulle," and realized that they both
referred to that very afternoon. And every minute, as I sat
silent and listened, my heart sank lower and lower, descending
relentlessly like a clock-weight into my boot soles.
Throughout my agony I never dreamed of resorting to a direct
question, much less a reproach. Even during the period of joyful
anticipation some fear of breaking the spell had kept me from any
bald circus talk in the presence of them. But Harold, who was
built in quite another way, so soon as he discerned the drift of
their conversation and heard the knell of all his hopes, filled
the room with wail and clamour of bereavement. The grinning
welkin rang with "Circus!" "Cir-cus!" shook the window-panes ;
the mocking walls re-echoed "Circus!" Circus he would have, and
the whole circus, and nothing but the circus. No compromise for
him, no evasions, no fallacious, unsecured promises to pay. He
had drawn his cheque on the Bank of Expectation, and it had got
to be cashed then and there; else he would yell, and yell himself
into a fit, and come out of it and yell again. Yelling should be
his profession, his art, his mission, his career. He was
qualified, he was resolute, and he was in no hurry to retire from
the business.
The noisy ones of the world, if they do not always shout
themselves into the imperial purple, are sure at least of
receiving attention. If they cannot sell everything at their own
price, one thing--silence--must, at any cost, be purchased of
them. Harold accordingly had to be consoled by the employment of
every specious fallacy and base-born trick known to those whose
doom it is to handle children. For me their hollow cajolery had
no interest, I could pluck no consolation out of their bankrupt
though prodigal pledges. I only waited till that hateful, well-
known "Some other time, dear!" told me that hope was finally
dead. Then I left the room without any remark. It made it worse--
if anything could--to hear that stale, worn-out old phrase, still
supposed by those dullards to have some efficacy.
To nature, as usual, I drifted by instinct, and there, out of
the track of humanity, under a friendly hedge-row had my black
hour unseen. The world was a globe no longer, space was no more
filled with whirling circuses of spheres. That day the old
beliefs rose up and asserted themselves, and the earth was flat
again--ditch-riddled, stagnant, and deadly flat. The undeviating
roads crawled straight and white, elms dressed themselves stiffly
along inflexible hedges, all nature, centrifugal no longer,
sprawled flatly in lines out to its farthest edge, and I felt
just like walking out to that terminus, and dropping quietly off.
Then, as I sat there, morosely chewing bits of stick, the
recollection came back to me of certain fascinating
advertisements I had spelled out in the papers--advertisements of
great and happy men, owning big ships of tonnage running into
four figures, who yet craved, to the extent of public
supplication, for the sympathetic co-operation of youths as
apprentices. I did not rightly know what apprentices might be,
nor whether I was yet big enough to be styled a youth; but one
thing seemed clear, that, by some such means as this, whatever
the intervening hardships, I could eventually visit all the
circuses of the world--the circuses of merry France and gaudy
Spain, of Holland and Bohemia, of China and Peru. Here was a plan
worth thinking out in all its bearings; for something had
presently to be done to end this intolerable state of things.
Mid-day, and even feeding-time, passed by gloomily enough, till
a small disturbance occurred which had the effect of releasing
some of the electricity with which the air was charged. Harold,
it should be explained, was of a very different mental mould, and
never brooded, moped, nor ate his heart out over any
disappointment. One wild outburst--one dissolution of a minute
into his original elements of air and water, of tears and outcry
--so much insulted nature claimed. Then he would pull himself
together, iron out his countenance with a smile, and adjust
himself to the new condition of things.
If the gods are ever grateful to man for anything, it is when
he is so good as to display a short memory. The Olympians were
never slow to recognize this quality of Harold's, in which,
indeed, their salvation lay, and on this occasion their gratitude
had taken the practical form of a fine fat orange, tough-rinded
as oranges of those days were wont to be. This he had eviscerated
in the good old-fashioned manner, by biting out a hole in the
shoulder, inserting a lump of sugar therein, and then working it
cannily till the whole soul and body of the orange passed
glorified through the sugar into his being. Thereupon, filled
full of orange-juice and iniquity, he conceived a deadly snare.
Having deftly patted and squeezed the orange-skin till it resumed
its original shape, he filled it up with water, inserted a fresh
lump of sugar in the orifice, and, issuing forth, blandly
proffered it to me as I sat moodily in the doorway dreaming of
strange wild circuses under tropic skies.
Such a stale old dodge as this would hardly have taken me in at
ordinary moments. But Harold had reckoned rightly upon the
disturbing effect of ill-humour, and had guessed, perhaps, that I
thirsted for comfort and consolation, and would not criticize too
closely the source from which they came. Unthinkingly I grasped
the golden fraud, which collapsed at my touch, and squirted its
contents, into my eyes and over my collar, till the nethermost
parts of me were damp with the water that had run down my neck.
In an instant I had Harold down, and, with all the energy of
which I was capable, devoted myself to grinding his head into the
gravel; while he, realizing that the closure was applied, and
that the time for discussion or argument was past, sternly
concentrated his powers on kicking me in the stomach.
Some people can never allow events to work themselves out
quietly. At this juncture one of Them swooped down on the scene,
pouring shrill, misplaced abuse on both of us: on me for
ill-treating my younger brother, whereas it was distinctly I who
was the injured and the deceived; on him for the high offense of
assault and battery on a clean collar--a collar which I had
myself deflowered and defaced, shortly before, in sheer desperate
ill-temper. Disgusted and defiant we fled in different
directions, rejoining each other later in the kitchen-garden; and
as we strolled along together, our short feud forgotten, Harold
observed, gloomily: "I should like to be a cave-man, like Uncle
George was tellin' us about: with a flint hatchet and no clothes,
and live in a cave and not know anybody!"
"And if anyone came to see us we didn't like," I joined in,
catching on to the points of the idea, "we'd hit him on the head
with the hatchet till he dropped down dead."
"And then," said Harold, warming up, "we'd drag him into the
cave and skin him!"
For a space we gloated silently over the fair scene our
imaginations had conjured up. It was blood we felt the need of
just then. We wanted no luxuries, nothing dear-bought nor
far-fetched. Just plain blood, and nothing else, and plenty of
it.
Blood, however, was not to be had. The time was out of joint,
and we had been born too late. So we went off to the greenhouse,
crawled into the heating arrangement underneath, and played at
the dark and dirty and unrestricted life of cave-men till we were
heartily sick of it. Then we emerged once more into historic
times, and went off to the road to look for something living and
sentient to throw stones at.
Nature, so often a cheerful ally, sometimes sulks and refuses
to play. When in this mood she passes the word to her underlings,
and all the little people of fur and feather take the hint and
slip home quietly by back streets. In vain we scouted, lurked,
crept, and ambuscaded. Everything that usually scurried, hopped,
or fluttered--the small society of the undergrowth--seemed to
have engagements elsewhere. The horrid thought that perhaps they
had all gone off to the circus occurred to us simultaneously, and
we humped ourselves up on the fence and felt bad. Even the sound
of approaching wheels failed to stir any interest in us. When you
are bent on throwing stones at something, humanity seems
obtrusive and better away. Then suddenly we both jumped off the
fence together, our faces clearing. For our educated ear had told
us that the approaching rattle could only proceed from a
dog-cart, and we felt sure it must be the funny man.
We called him the funny man because he was sad and serious, and
said little, but gazed right into our souls, and made us tell him
just what was on our minds at the time, and then came out with
some magnificently luminous suggestion that cleared every cloud
away. What was more, he would then go off with us at once and pay
the thing right out to its finish, earnestly and devotedly,
putting all other things aside. So we called him the funny man,
meaning only that he was different from those others who thought
it incumbent on them to play the painful mummer. The ideal as
opposed to the real man was what we meant, only we were not
acquainted with the phrase. Those others, with their laboured
jests and clumsy contortions, doubtless flattered themselves that
they were funny men; we, who had to sit through and applaud the
painful performance, knew better.
He pulled up to a walk as soon as he caught sight of us, and
the dog-cart crawled slowly along till it stopped just opposite.
Then he leant his chin on his hand and regarded us long and
soulfully, yet said he never a word; while we jigged up and down
in the dust, grinning bashfully but with expectation. For you
never knew exactly what this man might say or do.
"You look bored," he remarked presently; "thoroughly bored. Or
else--let me see; you're not married, are you?"
He asked this in such sad earnestness that we hastened to
assure him we were not married, though we felt he ought to have
known that much; we had been intimate for some time.
"Then it's only boredom," he said. "Just satiety and world-
weariness. Well, if you assure me you aren't married you can
climb into this cart and I'll take you for a drive. I'm bored,
too. I want to do something dark and dreadful and exciting."
We clambered in, of course, yapping with delight and treading
all over his toes; and as we set off, Harold demanded of him
imperiously whither he was going.
"My wife," he replied, "has ordered me to go and look up the
curate and bring him home to tea. Does that sound sufficiently
exciting for you?"
Our faces fell. The curate of the hour was not a success, from
our point of view. He was not a funny man, in any sense of the
word.
"--but I'm not going to," he added, cheerfully. "Then I was to
stop at some cottage and ask--what was it? There was nettle-rash
mixed up in it, I'm sure. But never mind, I've forgotten, and it
doesn't matter. Look here, we're three desperate young fellows
who stick at nothing. Suppose we go off to the circus?"
Of certain supreme moments it is not easy to write. The varying
shades and currents of emotion may indeed be put into words by
those specially skilled that way; they often are, at considerable
length. But the sheer, crude article itself--the strong, live
thing that leaps up inside you and swells and strangles you, the
dizziness of revulsion that takes the breath like cold water--who
shall depict this and live? All I knew was that I would have died
then and there, cheerfully, for the funny man; that I longed for
red Indians to spring out from the hedge on the dog-cart, just to
show what I would do; and that, with all this, I could not find
the least little word to say to him.
Harold was less taciturn. With shrill voice, uplifted in solemn
chant, he sang the great spheral circus-song, and the undying
glory of the Ring. Of its timeless beginning he sang, of its
fashioning by cosmic forces, and of its harmony with the stellar
plan. Of horses he sang, of their strength, their swiftness, and
their docility as to tricks. Of clowns again, of the glory of
knavery, and of the eternal type that shall endure. Lastly he
sang of Her--the Woman of the Ring--flawless, complete,
untrammelled in each subtly curving limb; earth's highest output,
time's noblest expression. At least, he doubtless sang all these
things and more--he certainly seemed to; though all that was
distinguishable was, "We're-goin'-to-the-circus!" and then, once
more, "We're-goin'-to-the-circus!"--the sweet rhythmic phrase
repeated again and again. But indeed I cannot be quite sure, for
I heard confusedly, as in a dream. Wings of fire sprang from the
old mare's shoulders. We whirled on our way through purple
clouds, and earth and the rattle of wheels were far away below.
The dream and the dizziness were still in my head when I found
myself, scarce conscious of intermediate steps, seated actually
in the circus at last, and took in the first sniff of that
intoxicating circus smell that will stay by me while this clay
endures. The place was beset by a hum and a glitter and a mist;
suspense brooded large o'er the blank, mysterious arena. Strung
up to the highest pitch of expectation, we knew not from what
quarter, in what divine shape, the first surprise would come.
A thud of unseen hoofs first set us aquiver; then a crash of
cymbals, a jangle of bells, a hoarse applauding roar, and Coralie
was in the midst of us, whirling past 'twixt earth and sky, now
erect, flushed, radiant, now crouched to the flowing mane; swung
and tossed and moulded by the maddening dance-music of the band.
The mighty whip of the count in the frock-coat marked time with
pistol-shots; his war-cry, whooping clear above the music, fired
the blood with a passion for splendid deeds, as Coralie,
laughing, exultant, crashed through the paper hoops. We gripped
the red cloth in front of us, and our souls sped round and round
with Coralie, leaping with her, prone with her, swung by mane or
tail with her. It was not only the ravishment of her delirious
feats, nor her cream-coloured horse of fairy breed, long-tailed,
roe-footed, an enchanted prince surely, if ever there was one! It
was her more than mortal beauty--displayed, too, under conditions
never vouchsafed to us before--that held us spell-bound. What
princess had arms so dazzlingly white, or went delicately clothed
in such pink and spangles? Hitherto we had known the outward
woman as but a drab thing, hour-glass shaped, nearly legless,
bunched here, constricted there; slow of movement, and given to
deprecating lusty action of limb. Here was a revelation! From
henceforth our imaginations would have to be revised and
corrected up to date. In one of those swift rushes the mind makes
in high-strung moments, I saw myself and Coralie, close enfolded,
pacing the world together, o'er hill and plain, through storied
cities, past rows of applauding relations,--I in my Sunday
knickerbockers, she in her pink and spangles.
Summers sicken, flowers fail and die, all beauty but rides
round the ring and out at the portal; even so Coralie passed in
her turn, poised sideways, panting, on her steed; lightly swayed
as a tulip-bloom, bowing on this side and on that as she
disappeared; and with her went my heart and my soul, and all the
light and the glory and the entrancement of the scene.
Harold woke up with a gasp. "Wasn't she beautiful?" he said, in
quite a subdued way for him. I felt a momentary pang. We had been
friendly rivals before, in many an exploit; but here was
altogether a more serious affair. Was this, then, to be the
beginning of strife and coldness, of civil war on the hearthstone
and the sundering of old ties? Then I recollected the true
position of things, and felt very sorry for Harold; for it was
inexorably written that he would have to give way to me, since I
was the elder. Rules were not made for nothing, in a sensibly
constructed universe.
There was little more to wait for, now Coralie had gone; yet I
lingered still, on the chance of her appearing again. Next moment
the clown tripped up and fell flat, with magnificent artifice,
and at once fresh emotions began to stir. Love had endured its
little hour, and stern ambition now asserted itself. Oh, to be a
splendid fellow like this, self-contained, ready of speech, agile
beyond conception, braving the forces of society, his hand
against everyone, yet always getting the best of it! What
freshness of humour, what courtesy to dames, what triumphant
ability to discomfit rivals, frock-coated and moustached though
they might be! And what a grand, self-confident straddle of the
legs! Who could desire a finer career than to go through life
thus gorgeously equipped! Success was his key-note, adroitness
his panoply, and the mellow music of laughter his instant reward.
Even Coralie's image wavered and receded. I would come back to
her in the evening, of course; but I would be a clown all the
working hours of the day.
The short interval was ended: the band, with long-drawn chords,
sounded a prelude touched with significance; and the programme,
in letters overtopping their fellows, proclaimed Zephyrine, the
Bride of the Desert, in her unequalled bareback equestrian
interlude. So sated was I already with beauty and with wit, that
I hardly dared hope for a fresh emotion. Yet her title was tinged
with romance, and Coralie's display had aroused in me an interest
in her sex which even herself had failed to satisfy entirely.
Brayed in by trumpets, Zephyrine swung passionately into the
arena. With a bound she stood erect, one foot upon each of her
supple, plunging Arabs; and at once I knew that my fate was
sealed, my chapter closed, and the Bride of the Desert was the
one bride for me. Black was her raiment, great silver stars shone
through it, caught in the dusky twilight of her gauze; black as
her own hair were the two mighty steeds she bestrode. In a
tempest they thundered by, in a whirlwind, a scirocco of tan; her
cheeks bore the kiss of an Eastern sun, and the sand-storms of
her native desert were her satellites. What was Coralie, with her
pink silk, her golden hair and slender limbs, beside this
magnificent, full-figured Cleopatra? In a twinkling we were
scouring the desert--she and I and the two coal-black horses.
Side by side, keeping pace in our swinging gallop, we distanced
the ostrich, we outstrode the zebra; and, as we went, it seemed
the wilderness blossomed like the rose.
***
I know not rightly how we got home that evening. On the road
there were everywhere strange presences, and the thud of phantom
hoofs encircled us. In my nose was the pungent circus-smell; the
crack of the whip and the frank laugh of the clown were in my
ears. The funny man thoughtfully abstained from conversation, and
left our illusion quite alone, sparing us all jarring criticism
and analysis; and he gave me no chance, when he deposited us at
our gate, to get rid of the clumsy expressions of gratitude I had
been laboriously framing. For the rest of the evening, distraught
and silent, I only heard the march-music of the band, playing on
in some corner of my brain. When at last my head touched the
pillow, in a trice I was with Zephyrine, riding the boundless
Sahara, cheek to cheek, the world well lost; while at times,
through the sand-clouds that encircled us, glimmered the eyes of
Coralie, touched, one fancied, with something of a tender
reproach.
ITS WALLS WERE AS OF JASPER
In the long winter evenings, when we had the picture-books out
on the floor, and sprawled together over them with elbows deep in
the hearth-rug, the first business to be gone through was the
process of allotment. All the characters in the pictures had to
be assigned and dealt out among us, according to seniority, as
far as they would go. When once that had been satisfactorily
completed, the story was allowed to proceed; and thereafter, in
addition to the excitement of the plot, one always possessed a
personal interest in some particular member of the cast, whose
successes or rebuffs one took as so much private gain or loss.
For Edward this was satisfactory enough. Claiming his right of
the eldest, he would annex the hero in the very frontispiece; and
for the rest of the story his career, if chequered at intervals,
was sure of heroic episodes and a glorious close. But his
juniors, who had to put up with characters of a clay more mixed--
nay, sometimes with undiluted villany--were hard put to it on
occasion to defend their other selves (as it was strict etiquette
to do) from ignominy perhaps only too justly merited.
Edward was indeed a hopeless grabber. In the "Buffalo-book,"
for instance (so named from the subject of its principal picture,
though indeed it dealt with varied slaughter in every zone),
Edward was the stalwart, bearded figure, with yellow leggings and
a powder-horn, who undauntedly discharged the fatal bullet into
the shoulder of the great bull bison, charging home to within a
yard of his muzzle. To me was allotted the subsidiary character
of the friend who had succeeded in bringing down a cow; while
Harold had to be content to hold Edward's spare rifle in the
background, with evident signs of uneasiness. Farther on, again,
where the magnificent chamois sprang rigid into mid-air. Edward,
crouched dizzily against the precipice-face, was the sportsman
from whose weapon a puff of white smoke was floating away. A
bare-kneed guide was all that fell to my share, while poor Harold
had to take the boy with the haversack, or abandon, for this
occasion at least, all Alpine ambitions.
Of course the girls fared badly in this book, and it was not
surprising that they preferred the "Pilgrim's Progress" (for
instance), where women had a fair show, and there was generally
enough of 'em to go round; or a good fairy story, wherein
princesses met with a healthy appreciation. But indeed we were
all best pleased with a picture wherein the characters just
fitted us, in number, sex, and qualifications; and this, to us,
stood for artistic merit.
All the Christmas numbers, in their gilt frames on the
nursery-wall, had been gone through and allotted long ago; and in
these, sooner or later, each one of us got a chance to figure in
some satisfactory and brightly coloured situation. Few of the
other pictures about the house afforded equal facilities. They
were generally wanting in figures, and even when these were
present they lacked dramatic interest. In this picture that I
have to speak about, although the characters had a stupid way of
not doing anything, and apparently not wanting to do anything,
there was at least a sufficiency of them; so in due course they
were allotted, too.
In itself the picture, which--in its ebony and tortoise-shell
frame--hung in a corner of the dining-room, had hitherto
possessed no special interest for us, and would probably never
have been dealt with at all but for a revolt of the girls
against a succession of books on sport, in which the illustrator
seemed to have forgotten that there were such things as women in
the world. Selina accordingly made for it one rainy morning, and
announced that she was the lady seated in the centre, whose gown
of rich, flowered brocade fell in such straight, severe lines to
her feet, whose cloak of dark blue was held by a jewelled clasp,
and whose long, fair hair was crowned with a diadem of gold and
pearl. Well, we had no objection to that; it seemed fair enough,
especially to Edward, who promptly proceeded to "grab" the
armour-man who stood leaning on his shield at the lady's right
hand. A dainty and delicate armour-man this! And I confess,
though I knew it was all right and fair and orderly, I felt a
slight pang when he passed out of my reach into Edward's
possession. His armour was just the sort I wanted myself--
scalloped and fluted and shimmering and spotless; and, though he
was but a boy by his beardless face and golden hair, the
shattered spear-shaft in his grasp proclaimed him a genuine
fighter and fresh from some such agreeable work. Yes, I grudged
Edward the armour-man, and when he said I could have the fellow
on the other side, I hung back and said I'd think about it.
This fellow had no armour nor weapons, but wore a plain jerkin
with a leather pouch--a mere civilian--and with one hand he
pointed to a wound in his thigh. I didn't care about him, and
when Harold eagerly put in his claim I gave way and let him have
the man. The cause of Harold's anxiety only came out later. It
was the wound he coveted, it seemed. He wanted to have a big,
sore wound of his very own, and go about and show it to people,
and excite their envy or win their respect. Charlotte was only
too pleased to take the child-angel seated at the lady's feet,
grappling with a musical instrument much too big for her.
Charlotte wanted wings badly, and, next to those, a guitar or a
banjo. The angel, besides, wore an amber necklace, which took her
fancy immensely.
This left the picture allotted, with the exception of two or
three more angels, who peeped or perched behind the main figures
with a certain subdued drollery in their faces, as if the thing
had gone on long enough, and it was now time to upset something
or kick up a row of some sort. We knew these good folk to be
saints and angels, because we had been told they were; otherwise
we should never have guessed it. Angels, as we knew them in our
Sunday books, were vapid, colourless, uninteresting characters,
with straight up-and-down sort of figures, white nightgowns,
white wings, and the same straight yellow hair parted in the
middle. They were serious, even melancholy; and we had no desire
to have any traffic with them. These bright bejewelled little
persons, however, piquant of face and radiant of feather, were
evidently hatched from quite a different egg, and we felt we
might have interests in common with them. Short-nosed, shock-
headed, with mouths that went up at the corners and with an
evident disregard for all their fine clothes, they would be the
best of good company, we felt sure, if only we could manage to
get at them. One doubt alone disturbed my mind. In games
requiring agility, those wings of theirs would give them a
tremendous pull. Could they be trusted to play fair? I asked
Selina, who replied scornfully that angels always played fair.
But I went back and had another look at the brown-faced one
peeping over the back of the lady's chair, and still I had my
doubts.
When Edward went off to school a great deal of adjustment and
re-allotment took place, and all the heroes of illustrated
literature were at my call, did I choose to possess them. In this
particular case, however, I made no haste to seize upon the
armour-man. Perhaps it was because I wanted a fresh saint of my
own, not a stale saint that Edward had been for so long a time.
Perhaps it was rather that, ever since I had elected to be
saintless, I had got into the habit of strolling off into the
background, and amusing myself with what I found there. A very
fascinating background it was, and held a great deal, though so
tiny. blue and red, like gems. Then a white road ran, with
wilful, uncalled-for loops, up a steep, conical hill, crowned
with towers, bastioned walls, and belfries; and down the road the
little knights came riding, two and two. The hill on one side
descended to water, tranquil, farreaching, and blue; and a very
curly ship lay at anchor, with one mast having an odd sort of
crow's-nest at the top of it.
There was plenty to do in this pleasant land. The annoying
thing about it was, one could never penetrate beyond a certain
point. I might wander up that road as often as I liked, I was
bound to be brought up at the gateway, the funny galleried,
top-heavy gateway, of the little walled town. Inside, doubtless,
there were high jinks going on; but the password was denied to
me. I could get on board a boat and row up as far as the curly
ship, but around the headland I might not go. On the other side,
of a surety, the shipping lay thick. The merchants walked on the
quay, and the sailors sang as they swung out the corded bales.
But as for me, I must stay down in the meadow, and imagine it all
as best I could.
Once I broached the subject to Charlotte, and found, to my
surprise, that she had had the same joys and encountered the same
disappointments in this delectable country. She, too, had walked
up that road and flattened her nose against that portcullis; and
she pointed out something that I had overlooked--to wit, that if
you rowed off in a boat to the curly ship, and got hold of a
rope, and clambered aboard of her, and swarmed up the mast, and
got into the crow's-nest, you could just see over the headland,
and take in at your ease the life and bustle of the port. She
proceeded to describe all the fun that was going on there, at
such length and with so much particularity that I looked at her
suspiciously. "Why, you talk as if you'd been in that crow's-nest
yourself!" I said. Charlotte answered nothing, but pursed her
mouth up and nodded violently for some minutes; and I could get
nothing more out of her. I felt rather hurt. Evidently she had
managed, somehow or other, to get up into that crow's-nest.
Charlotte had got ahead of me on this occasion.
It was necessary, no doubt, that grownup people should dress
themselves up and go forth to pay calls. I don't mean that we saw
any sense in the practice. It would have been so much more
reasonable to stay at home in your old clothes and play. But we
recognized that these folk had to do many unaccountable things,
and after all it was their life, and not ours, and we were not in
a position to criticize. Besides, they had many habits more
objectionable than this one, which to us generally meant a free
and untrammelled afternoon, wherein to play the devil in our own
way. The case was different, however, when the press-gang was
abroad, when prayers and excuses were alike disregarded, and we
were forced into the service, like native levies impelled toward
the foe less by the inherent righteousness of the cause than by
the indisputable rifles of their white allies. This was
unpardonable and altogether detestable. Still, the thing
happened, now and again; and when it did, there was no arguing
about it. The order was for the front, and we just had to shut up
and march.
Selina, to be sure, had a sneaking fondness for dressing up and
paying calls, though she pretended to dislike it, just to keep on
the soft side of public opinion. So I thought it extremely mean
in her to have the earache on that particular afternoon when Aunt
Eliza ordered the pony-carriage and went on the war-path. I was
ordered also, in the same breath as the pony-carriage; and, as we
eventually trundled off, it seemed to me that the utter waste of
that afternoon, for which I had planned so much, could never be
made up nor atoned for in all the tremendous stretch of years
that still lay before me.
The house that we were bound for on this occasion was a "big
house;" a generic title applied by us to the class of residence
that had a long carriage-drive through rhododendrons; and a
portico propped by fluted pillars; and a grave butler who bolted
back swing-doors, and came down steps, and pretended to have
entirely forgotten his familiar intercourse with you at less
serious moments; and a big hall, where no boots or shoes or upper
garments were allowed to lie about frankly and easily, as with
us; and where, finally, people were apt to sit about dressed up
as if they were going on to a party.
The lady who received us was effusive to Aunt Eliza and
hollowly gracious to me. In ten seconds they had their heads
together and were hard at it talking clothes. I was left high and
dry on a straight-backed chair, longing to kick the legs of it,
yet not daring. For a time I was content to stare; there was lots
to stare at, high and low and around. Then the inevitable fidgets
came on, and scratching one's legs mitigated slightly, but did
not entirely disperse them. My two warders were still deep in
clothes; I slipped off my chair and edged cautiously around the
room, exploring, examining, recording.
Many strange, fine things lay along my route--pictures and
gimcracks on the walls, trinkets and globular old watches and
snuff-boxes on the tables; and I took good care to finger
everything within reach thoroughly and conscientiously. Some
articles, in addition, I smelt. At last in my orbit I happened on
an open door, half concealed by the folds of a curtain. I glanced
carefully around. They were still deep in clothes, both talking
together, and I slipped through.
This was altogether a more sensible sort of room that I had got
into; for the walls were honestly upholstered with books, though
these for the most part glimmered provokingly through the glass
doors of their tall cases. I read their titles longingly,
breathing on every accessible pane of glass, for I dared not
attempt to open the doors, with the enemy encamped so near. In
the window, though, on a high sort of desk, there lay, all by
itself, a most promising-looking book, gorgeously bound. I raised
the leaves by one corner, and like scent from a pot-pourri jar
there floated out a brief vision of blues and reds, telling of
pictures, and pictures all highly coloured! Here was the right
sort of thing at last, and my afternoon would not be entirely
wasted. I inclined an ear to the door by which I had entered.
Like the brimming tide of a full-fed river the grand, eternal,
inexhaustible clothes-problem bubbled and eddied and surged
along. It seemed safe enough. I slid the book off its desk with
some difficulty, for it was very fine and large, and staggered
with it. to the hearthrug--the only fit and proper place for
books of quality, such as this.
They were excellent hearthrugs in that house ; soft and wide,
with the thickest of pile, and one's knees sank into them most
comfortably. When I got the book open there was a difficulty at
first in making the great stiff pages lie down. Most fortunately
the coal-scuttle was actually at my elbow, and it was easy to
find a flat bit of coal to lay on the refractory page. Really, it
was just as if everything had been arranged for me. This was not
such a bad sort of house after all.
The beginnings of the thing were gay borders--scrolls and
strap-work and diapered backgrounds, a maze of colour, with small
misshapen figures clambering cheerily up and down everywhere. But
first I eagerly scanned what text there was in the middle, in
order to get a hint of what it was all about. Of course I was
not going to waste any time in reading. A clue, a sign-board, a
finger-post was all I required. To my dismay and disgust it was
all in a stupid foreign language! Really, the perversity of some
people made one at times almost despair of the whole race.
However, the pictures remained; pictures never lied, never
shuffled nor evaded; and as for the story, I could invent it
myself.
Over the page I went, shifting the bit of coal to a new
position; and, as the scheme of the picture disengaged itself
from out the medley of colour that met my delighted eyes, first
there was a warm sense of familiarity, then a dawning
recognition, and then--O then! along with blissful certainty came
the imperious need to clasp my stomach with both hands, in order
to repress the shout of rapture that struggled to escape--it was
my own little city!
I knew it well enough, I recognized it at once, though I had
never been quite so near it before. Here was the familiar
gateway, to the left that strange, slender tower with its grim,
square head shot far above the walls; to the right, outside the
town, the hill--as of old--broke steeply down to the sea. But
to-day everything was bigger and fresher and clearer, the walls
seemed newly hewn, gay carpets were hung out over them, fair
ladies and long-haired children peeped and crowded on the
battlements. Better still, the portcullis was up--I could even
catch a glimpse of the sunlit square within--and a dainty company
was trooping through the gate on horseback, two and two. Their
horses, in trappings that swept the ground, were gay as
themselves; and they were the gayest crew, for dress and bearing,
I had ever yet beheld. It could mean nothing else but a wedding,
I thought, this holiday attire, this festal and solemn entry;
and, wedding or whatever it was, I meant to be there. This time I
would not be balked by any grim portcullis; this time I would
slip in with the rest of the crowd, find out just what my little
town was like, within those exasperating walls that had so long
confronted me, and, moreover, have my share of the fun that was
evidently going on inside. Confident, yet breathless with
expectation, I turned the page.
Joy! At last I was in it, at last I was on the right side of
those provoking walls; and, needless to say, I looked about me
with much curiosity. A public place, clearly, though not such as
I was used to. The houses at the back stood on a sort of
colonnade, beneath which the people jostled and crowded. The
upper stories were all painted with wonderful pictures. Above the
straight line of the roofs the deep blue of a cloudless sky
stretched from side to side. Lords and ladies thronged the
foreground, while on a dais in the centre a gallant gentleman,
just alighted off his horse, stooped to the fingers of a girl as
bravely dressed out as Selina's lady between the saints; and
round about stood venerable personages, robed in the most
variegated clothing. There were boys, too, in plenty, with tiny
red caps on their thick hair; and their shirts had bunched up and
worked out at the waist, just as my own did so often, after
chasing anybody; and each boy of them wore an odd pair of
stockings, one blue and the other red. This system of attire went
straight to my heart. I had tried the same thing so often, and
had met with so much discouragement; and here, at last, was my
justification, painted deliberately in a grown-up book! I looked
about for my saint-friends--the armour-man and the other fellow--
but they were not to be seen--Evidently they were unable to get
off duty, even for a wedding, and still stood on guard in that
green meadow down below. I was disappointed, too, that not an
angel was visible. One or two of them, surely, could easily have
been spared for an hour, to run up and see the show; and they
would have been thoroughly at home here, in the midst of all the
colour and the movement and the fun.
But it was time to get on, for clearly the interest was only
just beginning. Over went the next page, and there we were, the
whole crowd of us, assembled in a noble church. It was not easy
to make out exactly what was going on; but in the throng I was
delighted to recognize my angels at last, happy and very much at
home. They had managed to get leave off, evidently, and must have
run up the hill and scampered breathlessly through the gate; and
perhaps they cried a little when they found the square empty, and
thought the fun must be all over. Two of them had got hold of a
great wax candle apiece, as much as they could stagger under, and
were tittering sideways at each other as the grease ran
bountifully over their clothes. A third had strolled in among the
company, and was chatting to a young gentleman, with whom she
appeared to be on the best of terms. Decidedly, this was the
right breed of angel for us. None of your sick-bed or night
nursery business for them!
Well, no doubt they were now being married, He and She, just as
always happened. And then, of course, they were going to live
happily ever after; and that was the part I wanted to get to.
Storybooks were so stupid, always stopping at the point where
they became really nice; but this picture-story was only in its
first chapters, and at last I was to have a chance of knowing
how people lived happily ever after. We would all go home
together, He and She, and the angels, and I; and the armour-man
would be invited to come and stay. And then the story would
really begin, at the point where those other ones always left
off. I turned the page, and found myself free of the dim and
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