CHAPTER III
THE EVERLASTING BOY
Mitten Island is a place of fine weather, its air is always likestained glass between you and perfection. Always you will find in thehappy ways of Mitten Island a confidence that the worst is left behind,and that even the worst was not so very bad. You can afford to rememberthe winter, for even the winter was beautiful; you can smile in the sunand think of the grey flush that used to overspread the island under itsurgent crises of snow, and it seems that always there was joy runningquickly behind the storms, joy looking with the sun through a tallwindow in a cloud. Even the most dreadful curtain of a winter's day wasalways drawn up at sunset; its straight edge rose slowly, disclosingflaming space, and the dramatic figures of the two island churches,exulting and undying martyrs in the midst of flames.
It is a place of fine weather, and this is a book of fine weather, abook written in Spring. I will not remember the winter and the rain. Itwas the Spring that brought Sarah Brown to Mitten Island, and the Springthat first showed her magic. It was the Spring that awoke her on herfirst morning in the House of Living Alone.
She awoke because it was so beautiful outside, and because there was abeautiful day coming. You could see the day secretly making preparationsbehind a shining mist. She heard a sound of breathless singing, and thewhipping of stirred grass in the garden, the sound of some oneunbearably happy, dancing. Now there is hardly anything but magic abroadbefore seven o'clock in the morning. Only the disciples of magic likegetting their feet wet, and being furiously happy on an empty stomach.
Sarah Brown went to her window. The newborn trembling slants of smokewent up from the houses of the island. There was a sky of that quietdesign which suffices half a day unchanged. A garden of quite a goodmany yards lay behind the house; it contained no potatoes or anythinguseful, only long, very green grass, and a may tree, and a witchdancing. The extraordinary music to which she was dancing was partly thebraying of a neighbouring donkey, and partly her own erratic singing.She danced, as you may imagine, in a very far from grown-up way, ratherlike a baby that has thought of a new funny way of annoying its Nana;and she sang, too, like a child that inadvertently bursts into loudtuneless song, because it is morning and yet too early to get up. Alittle wandering of the voice, a little wandering of the feet.... Themay tree in the middle of the garden seemed to be her partner. A smallblot moved up and down the chequered trunk of the tree, and that was theshadow of a grey squirrel, watching the dancing. The squirrel wore thesame fur as the two-and-a-half-guinea young lady wears, and sometimes itlooked with a tilted head at the witch, and sometimes it buried its facein its hands and sat for a while shaken with secret laughter. There wascertainly something more funny than beautiful about the witch's dancing.She laughed herself most of the time. She was wearing a mackintosh,which was in itself rather funny, but her feet were bare.
A voice broke in: "Good for you, cully."
It was Sarah Brown's fellow-lodger leaning from her window.
The squirrel rippled higher up the may tree.
The pleasure of the thing broke like an eggshell. Sarah Brown turnedback towards her bed. It was too early to get up. It was too late to goto sleep again. Eunice, her hot-water bottle, she knew, lay cold as aserpent to shock her feet if she returned. Besides, the Dog David wasasleep on the middle of the counterpane, and she was too good a motherto wake him. There are a good many things to do when you find yourselfawake too early. It is said that some people sit up and darn theirstockings, but I refer now to ordinary people, not to angels. Utterlyresourceless people find themselves reduced to reading the penny stampson yesterday's letters. There is a good deal of food for thought on apenny stamp, but nothing really uplifting. Some people I know employthis morning leisure in scrubbing their consciences clean, thusthriftily making room for the sins of the coming day. But Sarah Brown'sconscience was dreadfully receptive, almost magnetic; little sins likesmuts lay always deep upon it. There were a few regrettable seconds inevery minute she lived, I think, though she never enjoyed thecompensations attached to a really considerable sin. Anyway herconscience would have been a case for pumice-stone, and when she washappy she always tried to forget it. Yet she was not without a good manyvery small and unessential resources for sleepless moments. Often shewrote vague comments on matters with which she was not familiar, in anexercise-book, always eventually mislaid. She would awake from dear andunspeakable dreams full of hope, and tell herself stories about herself,trying on various lives and deaths like clothes. The result was neverlikely enough even to laugh at.
To-day she had watched magic dancing in a mackintosh, and she was at aloss.
There was a knock upon her door, and a voice: "Hi, cocky, could youoblige me with a loan of a few 'alfpence for the milkman. I 'aven't abean in me purse."
"Nor have I," said Sarah Brown, opening the door. "But I can pawn--"
"Ow, come awf it, Cuffbut," said the fellow-lodger. "This is arespectable 'ouse, more or less, and you ain't goin' out to pawn nothinkin your py-jams. I'll owe it to the milkman again. Not but what I 'adn'tp'raps better pay 'im after all. I got me money paid yesterday, on'y I'ad thought to put it away for Elbert."
"Are you Peony, the other lodger?"
"Thet's right, dearie."
Peony was not in her first youth, in fact she was comfortably into hersecond. Her voice was so beautiful that it almost made one shy, but herchoice of language, tending as it did in the other direction, reassuredone. She had fine eyes of an absolute grey, and dark hair parted in themiddle and drawn down so as to make a triangle of a face which, left toitself, would have been square. Her teeth spoilt her; the gaps amongthem looked like the front row of the stalls during the first scene ofa revue, or the last scene of a play by Shakspere. On the whole, shelooked like the duckling of the story, serenely conscious of a secretswanhood. She showed unnatural energy even in repose, and lived asthough she had a taxi waiting at the door.
"Who's Elbert?" asked Sarah Brown, and then wished she had not asked,for even without Peony's flush she should have guessed.
"'Arf a mo, kiddie, till I get rid of the milkman. Come an' sit on thestairs, an' I'll tell you a tale. I like no end tellin' this tale."
Harold the Broomstick was desultorily sweeping the stairs. He workedharder when first conscious of being watched, but seeing that theyintended to stay there, on the top step, he made this the excuse todisappear indolently, leaving little heaps of dust on several of thelower steps.
"I come across Elbert first when I was about eight an' twenty," saidPeony, when Sarah Brown, in rather a loud dressing-gown, had taken herseat on the stairs beside her. "Elbert was the ideel kid, an'me--nothing to speak of. Nothin' more than a lump o' mud, I use to say.All my life, if you'll believe me, cully, I've lived in mud--an' kep' meeye on the moon, so to say. I worked in a factory all day, makin' mud,as it were, for muddy Jews, an' every Saturday night I took 'ome twelveshillin's-worth o' mud to keep meself alive in a city o' mud until theSaturday after. But o' nights there was the moon, or else the stars, orelse the sunset, an' anyway all the air between to look at. I 'ad a backroom, 'igh up, and o' nights I use to sit an' breave there, an' look atthe sky. Believe me, dearie, I was mad about breavin'--it was me onlyrecreation, so to say. By Gawd, it's a fair wonder 'ow the sky an' theair keeps on above the mud, and 'ow we looks at it, an' breaves it, an'never pays no rent for it, when all's said an' done. There ain't never apenny put in the slot for the moonlight, when you come to think of it,yet still it all goes on. Well, in those days, I never spoke to a soul,an' 'ated everybody, an' I got very queer, queerer nor many as islocked up in Claybury this minute. I got to thinkin' as 'ow there was adebt 'anging over us all, some'ow the sky seemed like a sort of upperfloor to all our 'ouses, with the stars an' the moon for windows, an' itseemed like as if there did oughter be some rent to pay, though theLandlord was a reel gent and never pressed for it. There might be people'oo lived among flowers in the sunlight, an', so to say, rented theparlour floor, but not me. I 'ad the upper
floor, an' breaved the lighto' the moon. As for flowers--bless you, I'd never 'ardly seen a flowerstuck proper to the ground until a year ago. Well, dearie, I use to makebelieve as 'ow we'd all get a charnce, all to ourselves, to pay what weowed. Some people, I thought, runs away from the debt, an' some pays itin bad money, but, I ses to meself, if ever my charnce come, I'll pay itthe very best I can. Lawd, 'ow I 'ated everybody in those days. Itseemed like people was all rotten, an' as if all the churches an' allthe cherities was the rottenest of all the lot. Well, then, dearie,Elbert blew in. You know what kids is mostly like in the Brown Borough,but Elbert--'e never was. Straight legs 'e 'ad, an' never a chilblainnor a sore, an' a small up-lookin' face, an' yallery 'air--what youcould see of it, for of course I always made 'im keep it nicely croppedto the pink. You never see sich a clean boy, you never see 'im but what'e seemed to 'ave sponged 'is collar that minute, an' the little seat to'is breeks always patched in the right colour, an' all. Yet 'e wasn'tone of them choir-boy kinds, 'e could 'ave 'is little game with the bestof 'em, an' often kicked up no end of a row when we was playin'pretendin' games of a wet Sunday. 'E 'ad one little game 'e loved bestof all--not marbles, it wasn't, nor peg-tops--but there, I won't tellyou what it was, for you'd laugh like the gal at the shop did when Ispoke of it. I don't often get talkin', but I'd 'ad a nip of brandy atthe time. Laugh fit to bust, she did--'avin' 'ad a nip of the same'erself--an' as't if Elbert wasn't blind as well, an' if 'e wore anyclothes besides wings.... The funny thing was thet Elbert did 'ave badsight, it always seemed odd to me thet with 'is weak eyes 'e shouldchoose to play the little game 'e did. I use to take 'im to the 'Eath ofa summer Sunday, an' 'e use to stand on them little ridges below theSpaniards Road, with 'is eyes shut against the sun, never botherin' totake no aim. I can see 'im now, a-pulling of the string of 'is bow--it'ad an 'igh note, like the beginnin' of a bit o' music--an' then awf'e'd go like a rebbit, to see where the arrer fell. It was always amarvel to me 'e didn't put somebody's eye out, but I didn't mind--I'ated everybody. 'E didn't live with me, 'e just came in an' out. 'Enever tol' me 'is name was Elbert--I just called 'im thet, the prettiestname I knew. 'E never tol' me 'oo 'is people were; I shouldn't thinkthey could 'ave bin Brown Borough people, for Elbert seemed to 'ave binabout a lot, seen mountains an' oceans an' sichlike, an' come acrost alot of furriners--even Germans. 'E talked a lot about people--as good asa novelette 'is stories was, but bloody 'igh-flavoured. Children knows alot in the Brown Borough. 'Ow 'e'd noticed the things 'e 'ad with themblindish eyes of 'is, I don't know. I got to count on that boy no end.Fair drunk with satisfaction, I use to feel. Call me a fool if you like,cully, but it was three or four year before I got the idee that therewas anythink funny about Elbert. It was when it begun to look as if theWar 'ad come to stop, an' one couldn't look at any boy without countin'up to see 'ow long 'e 'ad before the Army copped 'im. An' then Icalc'lated that Elbert should be rising fourteen now, an' I saw thenthet 'e 'adn't grown an inch since I first see 'im, nor 'e hadn'tchanged 'is ways, but still 'e run about laughin', playin' 'is littlekiddy-game, with 'is face to the sun. An' then I remembered 'ow often'e'd tol' me things thet seemed too 'istorical for sich as 'im to comeby honest, tales about blokes in 'istory--nanecdotes 'e'd use to passacrost about Admiral Nelson, or Queen Bess--she use to make 'im chuckle,she did--an' a chap called Shilly or Shally, 'oo was drownded. An' I gotstruck all of an 'eap, to think 'e was some sort of an everlasting boy,an' p'raps 'e was a devil, I thought, an' p'raps I'd sold me soulwithout knowin' it. I never took much stock of me soul, but I always'ad that debt o' mine in me mind, an' I wanted to pay it clean. For themLondon mists agin the sky in the Spring, an' for the moonlight, an' forthe sky just before a thunderstorm--all them things seemed to 'ave comeout of the same box, like, an' I didn't like feelin' as 'ow they was alljest charity.... 'Owever, I got this idee about Elbert, an' I didn'tsleep a wink thet night, an' couldn't enjoy me starlight. In the mornin''e come as usual, with 'is pretty blind smile, an' I ses to 'im:'Elbert,' I ses, 'You ain't a crool boy, are you? You wouldn't doanythink to 'urt me?' Lookin' at 'im, I couldn't believe it. ''Urt you?''e ses quite 'appily; 'an' why wouldn't I 'urt you? I'd as lief send youto the Devil as not,' 'e ses. Well, cocky, I don't mind tellin' you Ilost me 'ead at that. I run awiy--run awiy from my Elbert--Oh, Gosh! Ibin an' give up me bits o' sticks to a neighbour, an' got a place, an'went into service. I sneaked out one night, when Elbert 'ad gone 'ome. Igot a place up Kilburn way, an ol' couple, retired from the pawnbrokin'line. The ol' man 'ad softening in 'is brain, an' said one thing all theblessed time, murmurin' like a bee. The ol' woman never spoke, never didno work, lef' it all to me. She was always a-readin' of 'er postcardalbum, shiftin' the cards about--she 'ad thousands, besides one 'olebook full of seaside comics. A beautiful collection. Well, I was dishin'up the tea one night in the kitchen, an' I 'eard a laugh--Elbert'slaugh, like three little bells--an' there was Elbert lookin' in at thewindow. I run after 'im--there wasn't nobody there. When I come back thetripe was burnt an' I lef' it on the fire an' run away, thet minute.They owed me wages, but I didn't stop for nothink. I was frightened. Igot a place afterwards up Islington, three ol' sisters, kep' a fancyshop, fought with each other every minute of their lives. I 'adn't binthere two days before Elbert walked in, jest as laughin' an' lovin' asever. I see then it was no use, good or bad 'e'd got me. I let 'im sitin my kitchen, an' give 'im some sugar-bread. An' one of the ol'cat-sisters come in. ''Oo's this?' she ses. 'A young friend o' mine,' Ises. 'You're a liar,' she ses, 'I seed from the first minute as youwasn't no respectable gal,' she ses, 'an' now per'aps me sisters'llbelieve me. So out I 'ad to go, an' I wasn't sorry. It seemed like therewasn't nothink in the world mattered but Elbert, like as if damnationwas worth while. 'Ow, Elbert,' I ses, 'I'd go to the Devil for you, an'smile all the way.' 'E laughed an' laughed. 'Come on,' 'e ses, 'to-day'san 'oliday.' Though it wasn't, it was a Tuesday in August. 'Come on,' 'eses, 'get yer best 'at on,' an' 'e gives me a yaller rose, for mebutton-'ole. A year ago come August, thet was. I follered Elbert at arun all up the City Road, an' near the Angel we took a taxi. 'Tell 'imEuston Station,' ses Elbert, an' so I did. You know the 'uge top o' thetstation from the 'ill by the Angel--well, kid, I tell you I saw a reelmountain for the first time, when I saw thet. It was the 'eat mist, an'a sort o' pink light made a reel 'ighland landscape out of it. I paidthe taxi-man over 'alf of all the money I 'ad, an' we went to theticket-awfice. 'Elbert,' I ses, 'where shell we book to,' I ses, likethat, though I 'adn't 'ardly a bloody oat in me purse. 'Take a platformticket,' 'e ses, an' so I did. But 'e run on to the platform without noticket, an' begun dancin' up an' down among the people like a mad thing,but nobody seemed to mind 'im. I set down on a seat to watch 'im. Ithought: 'Blimey,' I thought, 'if I ain't under thet blinkin' mountainnow, an' all these people,' I ses, 'is the Little People they tell of,that lives inside 'ills, an' on'y comes out under the moon.' Iremembered thet moonlight debt o' mine, an' I thought--'I'm done withthe mud now, I'm comin' alive now,' I ses, 'and this'll be my charnce.'Presently Elbert come back to me, an' 'e was draggin' a soldier by the'and. 'This is a magic man,' ses Elbert, 'come back from livin' underthe sky. Can't you feel the magic?' 'e ses.
"Well, dearie, take it 'ow you will, thet's 'ow I met my Sherrie. Amagic man 'e was, for 'e 'ad my ticket taken, an' never seemedsurprised. Ten days leave 'e 'ad, an' we spent it at an inn in a villageon a moor, jest a mile out o' sound of the sea. The moor an' the sea,touchin' each other. ... Oh Gawd!... The sea was like my sky at nightcome nearer--come near enough to know better, like. In between the mooran' the sea there was the beach--it looked like a blessed boundary roadbetween two countries, an' it led away to where you couldn't see nothingmore except a little white town, sort of built 'igh upon a mist, morelike a star.... Oh Gawd!...
"Anyway, Cuffbut, thet was me charnce, an' thet's 'ow I come to know 'owmy debt was goin' to be paid. Sherrie understood all thet. 'E was amagic man, 'e was. At least, 'e was mostly magic, but some of 'im wasnothin' but a fool when all's said an' done--l
ike any other man. Icouldn't 'ave done with an all-magic bloke. Ow, 'e was a fool.... Allthe things 'e might 'ave bin able to do, like polishin' 'is equipment,or findin' 'is clean socks, 'e use to forever be askin' me to do. Iloved doin' it. But all the things 'e couldn't do at all, like drawin'me likeness, or cuttin' out a blouse for me, 'e was forever tryin' todo."
She spoke of Sherrie as a naturalist would speak of a new animal,gradually finding out the pretty and amusing ways of the creature.
"I called 'im Sherrie because thet's what 'e called me. A French word itwas, 'e ses, meaning 'dearie,' as it were. 'E was a reel gent, wasSherrie. I as't 'im once why 'e took up with a woman like me, instead ofwith a reel young lady. 'E ses as 'ow 'e'd never met before anybody 'ooseed themselves from outside an' yet was fairly honest. I know what 'emeant, for I was always more two people than one, an' I watch meselfsometimes as if I was a play. I wouldn't be tellin' you this story,else. Well, dearie, Elbert was always in an' out, an' always a-hollerin'an' a-laughin' an' a-playin' 'is game. 'E stayed with us all them tendays, an' 'e come with me to Victoria, to see Sherrie off to France.It's Sherrie's allotted money what I fetch every week. But I won't touchit, I puts it away for Elbert. I don't want to owe nothin' to nobody,for I'm payin' sich a big debt. Elbert, when 'e comes back to me, 'e'sgoing to be my payment to the world, an' it's got to be good money. ForElbert left me after Sherrie went. 'E said as 'ow 'e was going 'ome, an'as 'ow 'e would come back to me in the Spring, an' stay with me always.It wasn't like partin', e' ses, 'im an' me could never do thet. I knowwhat 'e meant, now...."
"And what about Sherrie?" asked Sarah Brown.
"Oh, Sherrie, 'e never writes to me. But 'e promised too to come back inthe Spring, an' so 'e will, for there ain't no Boche bullet that can 'ita magic man."
"It's springtime now," said Sarah Brown.
"It's springtime now," repeated Peony. "Ow, it's wonderful, seems likeas if I was gettin' too much given me, so as I can never repay. But I'mkeepin' count, I'm not forgettin'. It ain't long now before I'll pay mydebt. Come the middle o' May...."