SALLY ALSO HAS A DREAM.
Sounds of music in the air; strange and fantastic shapes and forms;
blooming flowers, and grass of rarest shades of green; glittering
water, for white swans and paper ships to sail on; waving branches
laden with dew-diamonds; birds flying on silver threads that reach
from heaven to earth; and standing in the midst of all these wonders,
little Sally Chester herself, in her ragged clothes. Comes a
procession from the skies, heralded by a glittering white star, which
widens into an avenue of light, through which the actors move. Comes a
small drummer-boy in the British army, with a drum slung round his
shoulders; behind him trots a donkey, familiar to the neighbourhood,
who smiles grotesquely at Sally, and asks her when she is going to
faint dead away again. The entire contents of a toy and cake shop
follow the eccentric donkey. First appear the royal beefeaters,
represented by men cut out of rich brown gingerbread, with features
formed of Dutch metal, their legs and arms also being magnificently
slashed with strips of the same; their features are diabolical, but
this does not lessen their attractiveness. Then come a legion of
wooden dolls, with not a vestige of clothing on their bodies, their
staring expressionless features testifying to their shamelessness and
their indifference to public opinion; then the animals from Noah's
arks, so indiscriminately coupled as to betray a disgraceful
Scriptural ignorance; then tin soldiers on slides, their outstretched
swords proclaiming that they are on the straight road to glory;
concluding with an army of wooden grenadiers with fixed bayonets, who
march without bending a joint. All these move through the avenue of
light, and the drummer-boy appears arm-in-arm with a little girl with
whom, until she died twelve months ago, Sally used to play at grocers'
shops in dark kitchens and on back-window sills. With a grand
fanfaronade of trumpets, on marches a gay troop of soldiers, followed
by men carrying huge flags, the devices in which are quick with life.
Upon the waving folds of silk, fish are swimming, horses are prancing,
artizans are following their trades, and the lion and the unicorn are
fighting for the crown. These precede more soldiers and carriages and
flags, until the shouts that rend the air proclaim the approach of the
principal figure in the procession. This proves to be a gilt coach of
antique shape, with coachmen and footmen blazing with gold lace, and
Sally jumps up and down in frantic excitement as she recognises the
inmate of the coach, who is staring in wonder out of the window at the
people huzzaing and waving their hats in her honour. It is her own
baby-treasure, with flushed and beautiful face, and with eyes bluer
and more beautiful than the brightest and bluest clouds. In the midst
of this triumphant display a man suddenly appears, and with sinister
looks, stands by the coach in which the child is sitting. It is the
new tenant who has taken the bedroom in her mother's house, and his
menacing attitude proclaims that he is bent on mischief. The child
looks imploringly towards Sally for protection, and instantaneously
Sally is on the donkey's back, riding full tilt at their common enemy,
who goes down in great confusion before her. Upon this the crowd and
the entire pageant melt away like vapour from a glass, and Sally, with
her baby-treasure safe in her arms, is walking along a dark street,
the houses in which are so tall that they shut out the sky. The night
is cold, the rain is falling, and they are alone, walking for many
hours through the dreary thoroughfares, until from an archway a shadow
steals and strives to seize the child. It is the new tenant again.
Sally, terror-stricken, flies from him as fast as her little legs will
allow her--and flies so swiftly, and through so many streets, for
seemingly-interminable hours, that her breath fails, and life is
leaving her: and all through this terrible flight the pursuer is at
her heels, with flashing eyes and with death in his face. Sally knows
that this is expressed in him, and that he is bent on destruction,
although her back is towards him. She feels his hot breath on her
neck; she hears a hissing sound from remorseless lips; closer and
closer he comes, and his arms are about to close around her, when she
falls over a precipice, down, down, into the spreading branches of a
tree, where she places her baby safely in a cradle of flowers, and
watches the form of their enemy flash, like a glance of light, into
the abyss, the yawning mouth of which closes upon him with a snap. As
the light of the child's golden hair falls on the green branches, they
become magically transformed into the likeness of Sally's playmates
and acquaintances round and about Rosemary Lane. There is Jane Preedy
without any boots, and Ann Taylor without any stockings, and Jimmy
Platt with the hair of his head falling over his weak eyes and
sticking through the peak of his cap, and Young Stumpy with bits of
his shirt thrusting themselves forward from unwarrantable places, and
Betsy Newbiggin selling liquorice-water for pins; and there, besides,
is the sailor-beggar without legs, who lives next door to the
Chesters, comfortably strapped to his little wooden platform on
wheels. Then the actors in the Lord Mayor's procession loom out on
other branches, conspicuous among them being the drummer-boy, standing
on his head on the donkey's back, and valiantly playing the drum in
that position. The cradle of flowers fades, and its place is occupied
by a square piece of carpet, upon which Sally's baby-treasure is
dancing. The child is now dressed in the oddest fashion, her garments
being composed of stray bits of silk and ribbon, which hang about her
incongruously, but with picturesque effect. As she dances, the
drummer-boy, who is now, in addition to his drum, supplied with
pandean pipes, beats and pipes to the admiration of the audience.
Carried away by the applause, he, in an inadvertent moment, bangs
so loudly on his drum that he bangs the entire assemblage into air,
and Sally is again alone, sitting in the tree by the side of the
empty flower cradle. As she looks disconsolately around for her
baby-treasure, comes a vision in the clouds. Thousands of angels, with
bright wings and faces of lustrous beauty, are clustered about a
cobbler, a friend of Sally's, who occupies a stall in Rosemary Lane,
and who for the nonce transferred to a heavenly sphere, now plies his
awl on Olympian heights. Very busy is he, with his shirt-sleeves
tucked up to his shoulders, mending shoes for the angels, who are
flying to him from every bright cloud in the heavens, with old shoes
and slippers in their hands. And presently all the lustrous shapes are
gazing tenderly on Sally's baby-treasure, upon whose tiny feet the
cobbler is fitting a pair of shining slippers. A sudden clap of
thunder inspires multitudinous images of beauty, all of which
presently merge into the sound of falling water, and the air is filled
with a myriad slender lines of flashing light. Fainter and fainter
they grow, and Sally awakes from her dream.
She hears the rain falling softly in the streets, and hears her mother
ask her if she is awake. Almost unconscious, she murmurs she knows not
what in reply, and pressing the baby closer to her, is in a moment
asleep again; but her sleep now is dreamless.