WHICH INTRODUCES SWEET WILLIAM
“If you could let me have the right time, I should be obliged to you,”
said a voice at her elbow. Philomène started, so that the now
dishevelled globe of seeds fell from her hand on to the gravel, and she
turned to see who it was that had spoken to her. By her side stood a
little man in a vivid green suit; in her first surprise she thought it
must be one of the six dwarfs come back to her again, but in another
moment she noticed that his shoes had rounded toes, and that his hat,
although pointed, had a red and white cockade in it.
“That is not the proper way in which to treat a watch, child,” said the
mannikin crossly, and stooping to pick up the dandelion, he blew upon it
gently.
“Five o’clock,” said he, “just about tea-time.” And then Philomène’s
heart gave a sudden throb, for out of his waistcoat pocket he took a
key, which he fitted into the key-hole. A little stone door swung
outwards in the wall, and the mannikin hesitated upon the threshold.
[Illustration:
“‘IF YOU COULD LET ME HAVE THE RIGHT TIME I SHOULD BE OBLIGED TO
YOU.’”
_Page 22_
_The Fairy Latchkey._
]
“All things considered,” he remarked slowly, “and especially the green
ribbons, I think I may do myself the pleasure of asking you to step in.”
He was speaking quite politely this time, and Philomène entered, her
pulse all in a flutter, like some bird that has flown in by the window
and cannot find its way out again. The door shut to behind her, and she
saw that she was in a little square room. The ceiling was of stone, as
indeed was only to be expected, since it was part of the wall, but the
floor was daintily if unevenly paved with shells of different tints and
sizes, while the walls were tapestried with catkins. In the middle of
the room stood a monster mushroom, serving as a table, with big
toadstools to match on either side for chairs. The lighting was supplied
by a will-o’-the-wisp, which hovered about near the ceiling till called
for, when it would settle wherever it was needed. Philomène accepted the
seat offered her on one of the toadstools, while the little man went to
a hollow, mossgrown tree-stump in a corner of the room, and began to
look for something inside it.
“You must excuse my going to the cupboard and waiting upon myself,” he
remarked. “I do keep a tom-tit, but the weather was so fine that I
thought it only fair to give him an afternoon out, so I must lay my own
tea.” He placed one half of a walnut-shell, a few clover blossoms, and a
scrap of honey-comb upon the mushroom table, and sat down on the other
toadstool, opposite to his guest.
“If you have not already had your tea,” he continued, “I can recommend
this dew, which is of the very finest quality, and kept cool by means of
an icicle. I get my honey from an excellent firm, Buzz, Bumble and Buzz,
Limited, and the clover was picked this morning. Plain fare, my dear,
for this luxury-loving age, but thoroughly wholesome, I assure you. Have
some?”
“I have had my tea already, thank you,” said Philomène, “but I do like
the sweet ends of clover very much, if you could spare me one flower.”
“Certainly, certainly,” said the mannikin, and he handed her two, one
white and one pink.
“Would you mind telling me, please,” began Philomène, “what you meant
just now by speaking about green ribbons? Whose green ribbons?”
“Yours, of course,” said the little man. “I shouldn’t need any. If it
hadn’t been for those green ribbons on your christening robe, my young
friend, you wouldn’t be sitting here now. It is only the children that
have worn green ribbons at their christening who can see the fairies at
all.”
“Then you really, really are a fairy?” cried Philomène.
“Should I be living in this house and eating these things if I weren’t?”
retorted her host. “I am a fairy, and my name is Sweet William.”
“Am I to call you that?” asked Philomène, doubtfully.
She could not help feeling that the name sounded very affectionate, and
that it might be forward for her to use it upon so short an
acquaintance.
“I don’t know what else you’re to call me,” said the little man, “it
strikes me as a very good name of its kind. Perhaps I ought to tell you
that I am the fairies’ land- and house-agent for this garden; I chose it
for various reasons, partly so as to be near you, for it is the business
of the fairies to look after lonely children.”
“I suppose I ought to thank him,” thought Philomène, feeling painfully
shy, but Sweet William rattled on and left her no time.
“You have probably no idea how much work even a small garden like this
entails. I have to attend to the housing of all the live creatures, for
one thing, the bees and snails and birds and caterpillars and so on. The
flowers are not troublesome, for they stay in one place for quite a long
time, but the spiders, for instance, are for ever moving house.”
“It must be very interesting work,” said Philomène politely. She had
often heard people make this remark to her father.
“Not bad,” said Sweet William, “if one keeps one’s eyes and ears open.
From being the agent in a big garden, just about a hundred and fifty
years ago, I once pieced together a whole love-story. It was an old
manor-house, and had a very fine garden.”
“That is the sort of place I should love to live in,” said Philomène,
“with oriel windows and avenues and things.”
“It is a modern failing to find fault with one’s surroundings,” said
Sweet William pompously, “and young people are especially prone to it.
As I was saying when you interrupted me, it was a fine garden. The
family was very old and very proud, and they kept a peacock on the
terrace. On one side of the lawn ran a green walk and a clipped
yew-hedge, and it was here that my lovers used to walk, up and down, up
and down, at sunset. The hedge overheard every word of what they said,
for you see, being a hedge he could not very well help eavesdropping.
Well, one day they had to say good-bye, and he went away and left her
very sad, and I got to know all about that part of it from a red rose,
which he had picked that last evening, and the girl had pressed the rose
in a big book, and every day she would sit and read in the book, and
would look at the page where the red rose lay. ‘My beloved is mine, and
I am his.’ The rose told me that she had grown desperately tired of
having nothing but this one sentence to read, but the girl never seemed
to tire of it. Then at last her lover came back for her, and they went
away together to the little harbour near by, and one of Mother Carey’s
chickens told me that they were married in the church on the cliff.
After that I heard no more of them for some time, till one day I chanced
to pick up a sea-shell on the beach near the harbour. I had had no
tidings of the mer-folk for ever such a long while, so I put the shell
to my ear and let the sea tell me some, and amongst other things it told
me about those two, and how they had taken ship for the south. The last
news I had of them was from the wind, for he is such a great traveller
that he seldom loses sight of people, but the worst of him is that like
most travellers he is always in a hurry, so he could only stop to tell
me that he had seen them last in another garden, walking up and down an
avenue of cypresses with bits of broken statues on either side; only he
was not holding her hand this time, for she was carrying a white bundle
in her arms. The wind had not waited to find out its precise nature, but
he had overheard a few of their remarks as he went by, and would you
believe it, they were just exactly the same as those which the yew-hedge
had repeated to me.”
“There is a nice big cypress tree at the Cushats,” said Philomène, “but
I have never seen a whole avenue of them. I wish I could. Oh, Sweet
William, I do get so bored sometimes living in a little house with a
little garden, and nothing exciting happening all day long.”
“Boredom,” said Sweet William, “is a modern complaint to which the young
are peculiarly prone.”
“I wish he would call something an ancient complaint to which old people
were prone,” thought Philomène. “And I’m sure it’s just as bad to be
always finding fault with the times in which one lives as with the
house.” But out loud she only said, “And may I come here sometimes,
please, and will you tell me a few more stories? Godmother tells me
beautiful stories which she makes up as she goes along, but she has so
many people to visit and so many things to do that I cannot see her very
often, and I know all my books nearly by heart, and Nurse can only tell
stories about the families she was with before she came to me, and all
those children seem to have been so dull and good.”
“In these days,” replied Sweet William, “next to nothing can be done
without first passing examinations, so if you are willing to come here
to-morrow afternoon at about this time by a reliable clock (don’t go by
the nursery clock, for it is not very well regulated), I will set you an
examination paper all about fairies and fairyland. If you do well in it,
that is to say if your marks add up to 75 per cent, you shall have a
prize.”
“What will the prize be?” asked Philomène, shyly.
“A latchkey just like mine, so that you can let yourself in, whether I
am at home or not. And now,” said Sweet William rising, “I really must
be off. I have a lot of extra work in the spring time, with all the
swallows coming home.”
Philomène rose also, and the little door swung open in the wall. She
stepped out upon the path, and the sunlight dazzled her, so that she had
to shade her eyes with her hand. “I am very glad to have met you, and I
will certainly come again to-morrow,” she was just beginning to say,
when she noticed that Sweet William was gone. For a minute she stood and
stared at the key-hole, which stared back at her. A warm west wind went
past her, the blackbird was still singing his heart out in the lilac
bush, and the air was full of the fragrance of green and growing things.
At her feet lay the dandelion stalk.
Philomène picked up her watering-can and ran with it up the iron
staircase into the schoolroom, where she found Nurse asleep in her
favourite basket chair. “Oh, Nurse, do wake up, dear good old Nurse,”
she called out eagerly, “and tell me who put green ribbons on to my
christening dress!”
“Bless the child,” returned Nurse drowsily, “who ever has been talking
that nonsense to you? It was your godmother, and a heathenish fancy I
thought it too at the time. And there’s no call for you to be speaking
so loud either that I can see; I wasn’t asleep, I was only resting my
eyes.”