True, a fellow-rebel was wanted; and Harold might, as a rule, have been counted on with certainty. But just then Harold was very proud. The week before he had ‘gone into tables,’ and had been endowed with a new slate, having a miniature sponge attached wherewith we washed the faces of Charlotte’s dolls, thereby producing an unhealthy pallor which struck terror into the child’s heart, always timorous regarding epidemic visitations. As to ‘tables,’ nobody knew exactly what they were, least of all Harold; but it was a step over the heads of the rest, and therefore a subject for self-adulation and—generally speaking—airs; so that Harold, hugging his slate and his chains, was out of the question now. In such a matter, girls were worse than useless, as wanting the necessary tenacity of will and contempt for self-constituted authority. So eventually I slipped through the hedge a solitary protestant, and issued forth on the lane what time the rest of the civilised world was sitting down to lessons.
The scene was familiar enough; and yet, this morning, how different it all seemed! The act, with its daring, tinted everything with new strange hues; affecting the individual with a sort of bruised feeling just below the pit of the stomach, that was intensified whenever his thoughts flew back to the ink-stained smelly schoolroom. And could this be really me? or was I only contemplating, from the schoolroom aforesaid, some other jolly young mutineer, faring forth under the genial sun? Anyhow, here was the friendly well, in its old place, half-way up the lane. Hither the yoke-shouldering village-folk were wont to come to fill their clinking buckets; when the drippings made worms of wet in the thick dust of the road. They had flat wooden crosses inside each pail, which floated on the top and (we were instructed) served to prevent the water from slopping over. We used to wonder by what magic this strange principle worked, and who first invented the crosses, and whether he got a peerage for it. But indeed the well was a centre of mystery, for a hornet’s nest was somewhere hard by, and the very thought was fearsome. Wasps we knew well and disdained, storming them in their fastnesses. But these great Beasts, vestured in angry orange, three stings from which—so ’twas averred—would kill a horse, these were of a different kidney, and their dreadful drone suggested prudence and retreat. At this time neither villagers nor hornets encroached on the stillness: lessons, apparently, pervaded all nature. So, after dabbling awhile in the well—what boy has ever passed a bit of water without messing in it?—I scrambled through the hedge, shunning the hornet-haunted side, and struck into the silence of the copse.
If the lane had been deserted, this was loneliness become personal. Here mystery lurked and peeped; here brambles caught and held you with a purpose of their own; here saplings whipped your face with human spite. The copse, too, proved vaster in extent, more direfully drawn out, than one would ever have guessed from its frontage on the lane: and I was really glad when at last the wood opened and sloped down to a streamlet brawling forth into the sunlight. By this cheery companion I wandered along, conscious of little but that Nature, in providing store of water-rats, had thoughtfully furnished provender of right-sized stones. Rapids, also, there were, telling of canoes and portages—crinkling bays and inlets—caves for pirates and hidden treasures—the wise Dame had forgotten nothing—till at last, after what lapse of time I know not, my further course, though not the stream’s, was barred by some six feet of stout wire netting, stretched from side to side just where a thick hedge, arching till it touched, forbade all further view.
The excitement of the thing was becoming thrilling. A Black Flag must surely be fluttering close by? Here was most plainly a malignant contrivance of the Pirates, designed to baffle our gun-boats when we dashed up-stream to shell them from their lair! A gun-boat, indeed, might well have hesitated, so stout was the netting, so close the hedge. But I spied where a rabbit was wont to pass, close down by the water’s edge; where a rabbit could go a boy could follow, howbeit stomach-wise and with one leg in the stream; so the passage was achieved, and I stood inside, safe but breathless at the sight.
Gone was the brambled waste, gone the flickering tangle of woodland. Instead, terrace after terrace of shaven sward, stone-edged, urn-cornered, stepped delicately down to where the stream, now tamed and educated, passed from one to another marble basin, in which on occasion gleams of red hinted at gold-fish poised among the spreading water-lilies. The scene lay silent and slumbrous in the brooding noon-day sun: the drowsing peacock squatted humped on the lawn, no fish leaped in the pools, no bird declared himself from the trim secluding hedges. Self-confessed it was here, then, at last, the Garden of Sleep!
Two things, in those old days, I held in especial distrust: gamekeepers and gardeners. Seeing, however, no baleful apparitions of either quality, I pursued my way between rich flower-beds, in search of the necessary Princess. Conditions declared her presence patently as trumpets; without this centre such surroundings could not exist. A pavilion, gold-topped, wreathed with lush jessamine, beckoned with a special significance over close-set shrubs. There, if anywhere, She should be enshrined. Instinct, and some knowledge of the habits of princesses, triumphed; for (indeed) there She was! In no tranced repose, however, but laughingly, struggling to disengage her hand from the grasp of a grown-up man who occupied the marble bench with her. (As to age, I suppose now that the two swung in respective scales that pivoted on twenty. But children heed no minor distinctions. To them, the inhabited world is composed of the two main divisions: children and upgrown people; the latter in no way superior to the former—only hopelessly different. These two, then, belonged to the grown-up section.) I paused, thinking it strange they should prefer seclusion when there were fish to be caught, and butterflies to hunt in the sun outside; and as I cogitated thus, the grown-up man caught sight of me.
‘Hallo, sprat!’ he said with some abruptness; ‘Where do you spring from?’
‘I came up the stream,’ I explained politely and comprehensively, ‘and I was only looking for the Princess.’
‘Then you are a water-baby,’ he replied. ‘And what do you think of the Princess, now you’ve found her?’
‘I think she is lovely,’ I said (and doubtless I was right, having never learned to flatter). ‘But she’s wide-awake, so I suppose somebody has kissed her!’
This very natural deduction moved the grown-up man to laughter; but the Princess, turning red and jumping up, declared that it was time for lunch.
‘Come along, then,’ said the grown-up man; ‘and you too, water-baby. Come and have something solid. You must want it.’
I accompanied them without any feeling of false delicacy. The world, as known to me, was spread with food each several mid-day, and the particular table one sat at seemed a matter of no importance. The palace was very sumptuous and beautiful, just what a palace ought to be; and we were met by a stately lady, rather more grown-up than the Princess—apparently her mother. My friend the Man was very kind, and introduced me as the Captain, saying I had just run down from Aldershot. I didn’t know where Aldershot was, but I had no manner of doubt that he was perfectly right. As a rule, indeed, grown-up people are fairly correct on matters of fact; it is in the higher gift of imagination that they are so sadly to seek.
The lunch was excellent and varied. Another gentleman in beautiful clothes—a lord presumably—lifted me into a high carved chair, and stood behind it, brooding over me like a Providence. I endeavoured to explain who I was and where I had come from, and to impress the company with my own toothbrush and Harold’s tables; but either they were stupid—or is it a characteristic of Fairyland that every one laughs at the most ordinary remarks? My friend the Man said good-naturedly, ‘All right, Water-baby; you came up the stream, and that’s good enough for us.’ The lord—a reserved sort of man, I thought—took no share in the conversation.
After lunch I walked on the terrace with the Princess and my friend the Man, and was very proud. And I told him what I was going to be, and he told me what he was going to be; a
nd then I remarked, ‘I suppose you two are going to get married?’ He only laughed, after the Fairy fashion. ‘Because if you aren’t,’ I added, ‘you really ought to’: meaning only that a man who discovered a Princess, living in the right sort of Palace like this, and didn’t marry her there and then, was false to all recognised tradition.
They laughed again, and my friend suggested I should go down to the pond and look at the gold-fish, while they went for a stroll. I was sleepy, and assented; but before they left me, the grown-up man put two half-crowns in my hand, for the purpose, he explained, of treating the other water-babies. I was so touched by this crowning mark of friendship that I nearly cried; and I thought much more of his generosity than of the fact that the Princess, ere she moved away, stooped down and kissed me.
I watched them disappear down the path—how naturally arms seem to go round waists in Fairyland!—and then, my cheek on the cool marble, lulled by the trickle of water, I slipped into dreamland out of real and magic world alike. When I woke, the sun had gone in, a chill wind set all the leaves a-whispering, and the peacock on the lawn was harshly calling up the rain. A wild unreasoning panic possessed me, and I sped out of the garden like a guilty thing, wriggled through the rabbit-run, and threaded my doubtful way homewards, hounded by nameless terrors. The half-crowns happily remained solid and real to the touch; but could I hope to bear such treasure safely through the brigand-haunted wood? It was a dirty, weary little object that entered its home, at nightfall, by the unassuming aid of the scullery-window: and only to be sent tealess to bed seemed infinite mercy to him. Officially tealess, that is; for, as was usual after such escapades, a sympathetic housemaid, coming delicately by back-stairs, stayed him with chunks of cold pudding and condolence, till his small skin was tight as any drum. Then, nature asserting herself, I passed into the comforting kingdom of sleep, where, a golden carp of fattest build, I oared it in translucent waters with a new half-crown snug under right fin and left; and thrust up a nose through water-lily leaves to be kissed by a rose-flushed Princess.
SAWDUST AND SIN
A belt of rhododendrons grew close down to one side of our pond; and along the edge of it many things flourished rankly. If you crept through the undergrowth and crouched by the water’s rim, it was easy—if your imagination were in healthy working order—to transport yourself in a trice to the heart of a tropical forest. Overhead the monkeys chattered, parrots flashed from bough to bough, strange large blossoms shone all round you, and the push and rustle of great beasts moving unseen thrilled you deliciously. And if you lay down with your nose an inch or two from the water, it was not long ere the old sense of proportion vanished clean away. The glittering insects that darted to and fro on its surface became sea-monsters dire, the gnats that hung above them swelled to albatrosses, and the pond itself stretched out into a vast inland sea, whereon a navy might ride secure, and whence at any moment the hairy scalp of a sea-serpent might be seen to emerge.
It is impossible, however, to play at tropical forests properly, when homely accents of the human voice intrude; and all my hopes of seeing a tiger seized by a crocodile while drinking (vide picture-books, passim) vanished abruptly, and earth resumed her old dimensions, when the sound of Charlotte’s prattle somewhere hard by broke in on my primæval seclusion. Looking out from the bushes, I saw her trotting towards an open space of lawn the other side the pond, chattering to herself in her accustomed fashion, a doll tucked under either arm, and her brow knit with care. Propping up her double burthen against a friendly stump, she sat down in front of them, as full of worry and anxiety as a Chancellor on a Budget night.
Her victims, who stared resignedly in front of them, were recognisable as Jerry and Rosa. Jerry hailed from far Japan: his hair was straight and black, his one garment cotton of a simple blue; and his reputation was distinctly bad. Jerome was his proper name, from his supposed likeness to the holy man who hung in a print on the staircase; though a shaven crown was the only thing in common ’twixt Western saint and Eastern sinner. Rosa was typical British, from her flaxen poll to the stout calves she displayed so liberally; and in character she was of the blameless order of those who have not yet been found out.
I suspected Jerry from the first. There was a latent devilry in his slant eyes as he sat there moodily; and knowing what he was capable of, I scented trouble in store for Charlotte. Rosa I was not so sure about; she sat demurely and upright, and looked far away into the tree-tops in a visionary, world-forgetting sort of way; yet the prim purse of her mouth was somewhat overdone, and her eyes glittered unnaturally.
‘Now, I’m going to begin where I left off,’ said Charlotte, regardless of stops, and thumping the turf with her fist excitedly: ‘and you must pay attention, ’cos this is a treat, to have a story told you before you’re put to bed. Well, so the White Rabbit scuttled off down the passage and Alice hoped he’d come back ’cos he had a waistcoat on and her flamingo flew up a tree—but we haven’t got to that part yet, you must wait a minute, and—where had I got to?’
Jerry only remained passive until Charlotte had got well under way, and then began to heel over quietly in Rosa’s direction. His head fell on her plump shoulder, causing her to start nervously.
Charlotte seized and shook him with vigour. ‘O Jerry,’ she cried piteously, ‘if you’re not going to be good, how ever shall I tell you my story?’
Jerry’s face was injured innocence itself. ‘Blame if you like, Madam,’ he seemed to say, ‘the eternal laws of gravitation, but not a helpless puppet, who is also an orphan and a stranger in the land.’
‘Now we’ll go on,’ began Charlotte once more. ‘So she got into the garden at last—I’ve left out a lot but you won’t care, I’ll tell you some other time—and they were all playing croquet, and that’s where the flamingo comes in, and the Queen shouted out, “Off with her head!”’
At this point Jerry collapsed forward, suddenly and completely, his bald pate between his knees. Charlotte was not very angry this time. The sudden development of tragedy in the story had evidently been too much for the poor fellow. She straightened him out, wiped his nose, and, after trying him in various positions, to which he refused to adapt himself, she propped him against the shoulder of the (apparently) unconscious Rosa. Then my eyes were opened, and the full measure of Jerry’s infamy became apparent. This, then, was what he had been playing up for! The rascal had designs, had he? I resolved to keep him under close observation.
‘If you’d been in the garden,’ went on Charlotte reproachfully, ‘and flopped down like that when the Queen said “Off with his head!” she’d have offed with your head; but Alice wasn’t that sort of girl at all. She just said, “I’m not afraid of you, you’re nothing but a pack of cards”—O dear! I’ve got to the end already, and I hadn’t begun hardly! I never can make my stories last out! Never mind, I’ll tell you another one.’
Jerry didn’t seem to care, now he had gained his end, whether the stories lasted out or not. He was nestling against Rosa’s plump form with a look of satisfaction that was simply idiotic; and one arm had disappeared from view—was it round her waist? Rosa’s natural blush seemed deeper than usual, her head inclined shyly—it must have been round her waist.
‘If it wasn’t so near your bedtime,’ continued Charlotte reflectively, ‘I’d tell you a nice story with a bogy in it. But you’d be frightened, and you’d dream of bogies all night. So I’ll tell you one about a White Bear, only you mustn’t scream when the bear says ‘Wow,’ like I used to, ’cos he’s a good bear really—’
Here Rosa fell flat on her back in the deadest of faints. Her limbs were rigid, her eyes glassy. What had Jerry been doing? It must have been something very bad, for her to take on like that. I scrutinised him carefully, while Charlotte ran to comfort the damsel. He appeared to be whistling a tune and regarding the scenery. If I only possessed Jerry’s command of feature, I thought to myself, half regretfull
y, I would never be found out in anything.
‘It’s all your fault, Jerry,’ said Charlotte reproachfully, when the lady had been restored to consciousness: ‘Rosa’s as good as gold except when you make her wicked. I’d put you in the corner, only a stump hasn’t got a corner—wonder why that is? Thought everything had corners. Never mind, you’ll have to sit with your face to the wall—so. Now you can sulk if you like!’
Jerry seemed to hesitate a moment between the bliss of indulgence in sulks with a sense of injury, and the imperious summons of beauty waiting to be wooed at his elbow; then, overmastered by his passion, he fell sideways across Rosa’s lap. One arm stuck stiffly upwards, as in passionate protestation; his amorous countenance was full of entreaty. Rosa hesitated—wavered—yielded, crushing his slight frame under the weight of her full-bodied surrender.
Charlotte had stood a good deal, but it was possible to abuse even her patience. Snatching Jerry from his lawless embraces, she reversed him across her knee, and then—the outrage offered to the whole superior sex in Jerry’s hapless person was too painful to witness; but though I turned my head away the sound of brisk slaps continued to reach my tingling ears. When I dared to look again, Jerry was sitting up as before; his garment, somewhat crumpled, was restored to its original position; but his pallid countenance was set hard. Knowing as I did, only too well, what a volcano of passion and shame must be seething under that impassive exterior, for the moment I felt sorry for him.
Rosa’s face was still buried in her frock; it might have been shame, it might have been grief for Jerry’s sufferings. But the callous Japanese never even looked her way. His heart was exceeding bitter within him. In merely following up his natural impulses he had run his head against convention, and learned how hard a thing it was; and the sunshiny world was all black to him. Even Charlotte softened somewhat at the sight of his rigid misery. ‘If you’ll say you’re sorry, Jerome,’ she said, ‘I’ll say I’m sorry, too.’