CHAPTER I--MY MOTHER

It happened about six in the morning, in a large red room. A bar of

sunlight streamed in at the window, in which dust-motes were dancing by

the thousand. A man and woman were lying in bed; I was standing up in my

cot, plucking at the woman with my podgy fingers. She stirred, turned,

rubbed her eyes, smiled, stretched out her arms, and drew me under the

bed-clothes beside her. The man slept on.

This is my earliest recollection. If it be true that the soul is born

not at the same time as the body, but at a later period with the first

glimmering of memory, then this was the morning on which my soul groped

its way into the world.

I have sometimes thought that I have never grown wiser than the

knowledge contained in that first recollection. Nothing that I have to

record in this book will carry me much further. The scene is symbolic:

a little child, inarticulate, early awakened in a sunlit room, vainly

striving to make life answer questions. Do we ever get beyond that? The

woman is Nature. The man is God. The room is the world--for me it has

always been filled with sunlight.

My mother I remember as very tall and patient, vaguely beautiful and

smiling. I can recall hardly anything she said--only her atmosphere and

the fragrance of violets which seemed always to cling about her. I know

that she took me out beneath the stars one night; there was frost on the

ground and church-bells were ringing. And I know that one summer’s

day, on a holiday at Ransby, she led me through lanes far out into the

country till my legs were very tired. We came to a large white house,

standing in a parkland. There we hid behind a clump of trees for hours.

A horseman came riding down the avenue. My mother ran out from behind

the trees and tried to make him speak with her. She held me up to show

me to him, and grasped his rein to make him halt. He said something

angrily, set spurs to his horse, and disappeared at a gallop. She began

to cry, telling me that the man was her father. I was too tired to pay

much attention. She had to carry me most of the way home. It was dark

when we entered Ransby.

In London some months later--it must have been wintertime, for we were

sitting by the fire-light--she took me in her arms and asked me if I

would like to have a sister. I refused stoutly. At dawn I was wakened

by hurrying feet on the staircase. Next day I was given a new box of

soldiers to keep me quiet. A lot of strange people stole in and out the

house as if they owned it. I never saw my mother again.

All I had known of her had been so shy and gentle that it was a good

deal of a surprise to me to learn years later that, as a girl, she had

been considered rather dashing. She had been called “The gay Miss Fannie

Evrard” and her marriage with my father had begun with an elopement. Her

father was Sir Charles Evrard, brother-in-law to the Earl of Lovegrove;

my father’s folk were ship-chandlers in Ransby, outfitting vessels for

the Baltic trade.

The inequality of the match, as far as social position was concerned,

made life in Ransby impossible. My father was only a reporter on the

local paper at the time of his escapade; the Evrards lived at Woadley

Hall and were reckoned among the big people in the county. It must have

been to this house that my mother took me on that dusty summer’s day.

After his marriage my father settled down in London, gaining his living

as a free-lance journalist. I believe he was very poor at the start. He

did not re-visit Ransby until years later. Pride prevented. My mother

returned as often as finances would allow, in the vain hope of a

reconciliation with her family. On these occasions she would stay at the

ship-chandler’s, and was an object of curiosity and commiseration among

the neighbors.

Most of the facts which lie outside my own recollection were

communicated to me by my grandmother. She never got over her amazement

at her son’s audacity. It was without parallel in her experience until

I attempted to repeat his performance with an entirely individual

variation. She never tired of rehearsing the details; it was noticeable

that she always referred to my mother as “Miss Fannie.”

“Often and often,” she would say, “have I seen Miss Fannie come

a-prancin’ down the High Street with her groom a-followin’. She was

always mounted on a gray horse, with a touch of red about her. Sometimes

it was a red feather in her hat and sometimes a scarlet cloak. When Sir

Charles rode beside her you could see the pride in his eye. She was his

only child.”

After my small sister failed to arrive someone must have told me that

my mother had gone to find her. I would sit for hours at the window,

watching for her homecoming.

CHAPTER II--THE MAGIC CARPET

I was born in South London on a crowded street lying off the Old

Kent Road. It was here that my mother died. When I was about six, a

false-dawn came in my father’s prospects, on the promise of which he

moved northward to the suburb of Stoke Newington.

At the time of which I write, Stoke Newington still retained a village

atmosphere. The houses, for the most part, were old, bow-windowed,

and quaint. Many of them were occupied by leisured people--retired

city-merchants, maiden-ladies, and widows, who came there because it

was reasonable in price without being shabby. It was a backwater of the

surging stream of London life where one found time to grow flowers, read

books, and be kindly. Its red, tree-shaded streets witnessed many an

old-fashioned love-affair. The early morning was filled with country

sounds--singing of birds, creaking of wooden-gates, and cock-crowing.

Our house was situated in Pope Lane, a blind alley overgrown with limes.

It had posts set up at the entrance to prevent wheel-traffic. You could

not see the houses from the lane, so steeply did the walls rise up on

either side. It led nowhere and was a mere tunnel dotted with doors.

Did the doors open by chance as you were passing, you caught glimpses

of kitchen-gardens, shrubberies, and well-kept lawns. We rarely saw our

neighbors. Each door hid a mystery, on which a child could exercise his

fancy.

My father was too strenuously engaged in wringing an income out of

reluctant editors to pay much attention to my upbringing. In moving to

Pope Lane, he had made an increase in his expenditure which, as events

proved, his prospects did not warrant. The keeping up of appearances was

a continuous and unrelenting fight. Early in the morning he was at his

desk; the last thing in the evening, when I ventured into his study to

bid him good-night, his pen was still toiling industriously across

the page. His mornings were spent in hack-work, preparing special

articles on contemporary economics for a group of daily papers. His

evenings were given over to the writing of books which he hoped would

bring him fame, many of which are still unpublished.

He coveted fame and despised it. He wrote to please himself and

expected praise. He was an unpractical idealist, always planning huge

undertakings for which there was no market. His most important work,

which occupied twenty years of his life, was _The History of Human

Progress_. It was really a history of human selfishness, written

to prove that every act which has dug man out of the mire, however

seemingly sacrificial and noble, had for its initial motive an

enlightened self-interest. He never managed to get it before the public.

It was disillusionizing. We all know that we are selfish, but we all

hope that with luck we could be heroes.

The trouble with my father was that he was an emotionalist ashamed of

his emotions. He wanted to be scrupulously just, and feared that his

sentiments would weaken his judgments. Temperamentally he was willing

to believe everything. But he had read Herbert Spencer and admired the

academic mind; consequently he off-set his natural predisposition to

faith by re-acting from everything accepted, and scrawled across the

page of recorded altruism a gigantic note of interrogation. He gave

to strangers and little boys the impression of being cynical and hard,

whereas he had within him the smoldering enthusiasms and compassion

which go to the kindling of martyrs and saints. He was planned for a man

of action, but had turned aside to grope after phantoms in the mazes of

the mind. His career is typical of the nineteenth century and sedentary

modes of life.

Looking back I often wonder if he would not have been happier as a

ship-chandler, moving among jolly sea-captains, following his father’s

trade. How many hours, mounting into years, he wasted on literary

failures--hours which might have been spent on people and friendships.

As a child I rarely saw him save at meal-times, and then he was

pre-occupied. For some years after my mother’s death he was afraid to

love anyone too dearly.

He solved the problem of my immediate existence by locking the door into

the lane, and giving me the freedom of the garden. I can recall it in

every phase. Other and more recent memories have passed away, but,

when I close my eyes and think back, I am there again. Moss-grown walks

spread before me. Peaches on the wall ripen. I catch the fragrance of

box, basking in sunshine. I see my father’s study-window and the ivy

blown across the pane. He is seated at his desk, writing, writing. His

face is turned away. His head is supported on his hand as though weary.

I am wondering why it is that grown people never play, and why it is

that they shut smaller people up always within walls.

I saw nothing of the outside world except on Sundays. My father used to

lead me as far as the parish church, and call for me when service was

ended. He never came inside. His intellectual integrity forbade it. He

was an agnostic. My mother, knowing this, had made him promise to take

me. He kept his word exactly.

Few friends called on us. My companions were cooks and housemaids. I

borrowed my impressions of life, as most children do, from the lower

orders of society. A servant is a prisoner; so is a child. Both are

subject to tyranny, and both are dependent for their happiness on

omnipotent persons’ moods and fortunes. A maidservant is always dreaming

of a day when she will marry a lord, and drive up in a glittering

carriage to patronize her old employer. A child, sensitive to

misunderstanding, has similar visions of a far-off triumph which will

consist in heaping coals of fire. He will heap them kindly and for his

parents’ good, but unmistakably.

It was in Pope Lane that I first began to dream of a garden without

walls. As I grew older I became curious, and fretted at the narrowness

of my restraint. What happened over there in the great beyond? Rumors

came to me; sometimes it was the roar of London to the southward;

sometimes it was the sing-song of a mower traversing a neighbor’s lawn.

I dreamt of an unwalled garden, through which a child might wander on

forever--an Eden, where each step revealed a new beauty and a fresh

surprise, where flowers grew always and there were no doors to lock.

It was a book which gave the first impulse to this thought; in a sense

it was responsible for the entire trend of my character and life. In

recent years I have tried to procure a copy. All traces of it seem to

have vanished. If I ever knew the name of the author I have forgotten

it. I am even uncertain of the exact title. I believe it was called _The

Magic Carpet_.

Mine was a big red copy. The color came off when your hands got sticky.

It had to be supported on the knees when read, or the arms got tired. It

was a story of children, ordered about by day, who by night went forth

invisible to wander the world, riding on the nursery carpet. Absurd!

Yes, but this carpet happened to be magic. All you had to do was to

seat yourself upon it, hold on tight, and wish where you wanted to be

carried. In a trice you were beyond the reach of adults, flying over

roofs and spires, post-haste to the land of your desire. In that book

little boys ate as much as they liked and never had stomach-ache. They

defeated whole armies of cannibals without a scratch. They rescued fair

ladies, as old as housemaids, but ten times more beautiful, who wanted

to marry them. No one seemed to know that they were little. No one

condescended or told them to run away and wash their faces. Nobody went

to school. Everybody was polite.

The pictures which illustrated the adventures still seem in remembrance

the finest in the world. They typify the spirit of romance, the soul

of youth, the revolt against limitations. They appealed to the lawless

element within me, which still yearns to straddle the stallion of the

world and go plunging bare-back through space.

I tried every carpet in the house, but none of ours were magic. I lay

awake imagining the lands, I would visit if I had it. I would go to

my mother first, and try to bring her back. I remembered vaguely how

care-free my father had been when we had had her with us. Perhaps, if

she returned, he would be happy. Then an inspiration came; there was

one carpet which I had _not_ tested--it lay before the fire-place in

my father’s study. But how should I get at it? Only in the hours of

darkness was it different from any other carpet, and in the evenings my

father was always there. I never doubted but that this was the carpet;

its difficulty of access proved it.

One night I lay awake, pinching myself to stave off sleep. It was

winter. Outside I could hear the trees cracking beneath the weight of

snow upon their boughs. The servants came to bed. I saw them pass my

door, casting long shadows, screening their candles with their hands

lest the light should strike across my eyes and rouse me. I waited to

hear the study-door open and close. In waiting I began to drowse. I came

to myself with a shudder. What hour it was I could not guess. I got

out of bed. Stealing to the top of the stairs I looked down; all was

blackness. Listening, I could hear the heavy breathing of sleepers.

Bare-footed, I crept down into the hall, clinging to the banisters. The

air was bitter. I was frightened. Each step I took seemed to cause the

house to groan and tremble. The door of the study stood open. By the

light of the fire, dying in the grate, I could just make out the carpet.

Darting across the threshold, I knelt upon it. “Take me to Mama,”

I whispered. The minutes ticked by; it did not stir. I spoke again;

nothing happened.

I heard a sound in the doorway--a sudden catching of the breath. I

turned. My father was standing, watching me. I did not scream or

cry out. He came toward me through the darkness. What with fear of

consequences and disappointment, I fell to sobbing.

I think he must have seen and overheard everything, for, with a

tenderness which had something hungry and awful about it, he gathered me

in his arms. Without a word of question or explanation, he carried me up

to bed. Before he left, he halted as though he were trying to utter some

thought which refused to get said. Suddenly he bent above the pillow,

just as my mother used to do, and kissed me on the forehead. His cheeks

were salty.

As my eyes closed, a strange thing happened. The snow lay on the ground

and there were no flowers, but the room was filled with the fragrance of

violets.

CHAPTER III--THE SPUFFLER

One day there was a ring at the door in the lane, followed by a loud

and impatient rat-a-tat. A gentleman, who was a stranger to me, hurled

himself across the threshold. He wore the frown of one who is intensely

in earnest, whose mind is very much occupied. His mustaches were the

fiercest and most eager that I ever saw on any man. They stuck out at

right angles from under his nose like a pair of shaving-brushes. They

were of an extraordinary purplish color, and would have done credit to a

pirate. But his dress was more clerical than sea-faring. It consisted

of a black frock coat, bound with braid at the edges where the cloth was

fretted; his vest was low-cut to display an ocean of white shirt, above

which a small tie of black silk wobbled. Hurrying up the path, tugging

at his bushy eye-brows, he disappeared into the house. The last I saw of

him was a red bandana handkerchief, streaming like a danger-signal

from his coat-tail pocket. I thought he must be one of those hostile

publishers my father talked about or, at the very least, an editor.

Hetty, the maid, came into the garden looking worried. She did not stand

on the steps and yell, as was customary, as though daring me to disobey

her. She caught up her skirts with a dignified air and spoke my name

softly, employing the honeyed tones with which she enticed our milkman

every morning. I perceived at once that something momentous had

occurred, and came out from behind the bushes. Then I saw the reason for

her sudden change of manners--the purple mustached stranger was watching

us from behind the curtains of my father’s study-window. I was

most agreeably and unpresentably grubby. Hetty was distressed at my

appearance; I knew she was by the way she kept hurting my hand and

muttering to me to hide behind her.

When we got inside the house she became voluble, but only in whispers.

“Now, Master Dante, I can’t ’elp it if the soap do get into your

mouth. You’ve got to be a clean boy fer once in yer h’existence. It may

mean h’everythin’. That gent’s some relation o’ yourn. ’E’s goin’ to

take you away wiv him, an’ he may ’ave money. I shall ’ate to lose

yer. Now let’s look at yer neck.”

She scrubbed away at my face till it was scarlet; she let the water from

the flannel trickle down my back. I was too awe-inspired to wriggle; by

some occult power the dreadful personage downstairs might learn about

it. Having been pitched into my Sunday sailor-suit and squeezed into a

pair of new boots and prickly stockings, I was bundled into the august

presence.

When I entered he was straddling the fire-place carpet--the one which

ought to have been magic--and waggling his coat-tails with his hands.

My father rose from his chair. “This is your great-uncle, Obadiah

Spreckles. Come and be introduced, Dante.”

Up to now I had never heard of such a relative, but I came timidly

forward and shook hands.

“A fine little fellow. A very fine little fellow, and the image of his

mother,” said my great-uncle.

My father winced at the mention of my mother. My great-uncle spread his

legs still wider and addressed me in a jerky important manner.

“Got a lot of dogs and cats. Got a goat and a cow. Got some hens. Got up

early this morning. Saw the sun shining. Thought you might like to take

a look at ’em, young man.”

Turning to my father, “Well, Cardover, I must be going. I’ll take good

care of him and all that. I’m very busy--hardly a moment to spare.”

Before I knew what had happened, I had said good-bye to my father and

was standing in the lane alone with my strange uncle.

When the door had banged and he knew that no grownup could see him,

he changed his manner. His hurry left him. Placing his hands on my

shoulders, he looked down into my face, laughing. “Now for a good time,

old chap.”

At the end of the lane, where the posts blocked the passage, stood a

little dog-cart and pony. My bag was stowed under the seat; at a click

of the tongue from my uncle, the little beast started up like the wind.

It was a bright June morning. The sky was intensely blue and cloudless.

The air was full of flower-fragrance and dreamy somnolence. I had seen

so little of the world that everything was vivid to me, and touched with

the vagrant poetry of romance. Tram-lines were streaks of silver down

the streets, shops were palaces, cabbies gentlemen who plied their

trade because they loved horses. Postmen going their rounds were

philanthropists. Everyone was free, doing what he liked, and happy.

In my child’s way I realized that neither my father nor myself was

typical--not all little boys were locked in gardens and not all grown

men slaved from morning to midnight. A great lump came into my throat.

It would have been quite easy to cry, I was so glad.

Uncle Obadiah kept chatting away, telling me that the name of his little

mare was Dollie and how he came to buy her. “Couldn’t afford it, you

know, old chap. She costs me ten shillings a week for fodder. But when I

saw that coster whacking her, and she looked up into my eyes when I went

to stop him, I just couldn’t resist her. She seemed to be asking me to

buy her, and I did. You should have heard what your Aunt Lavinia said.”

All the way along the streets he kept pointing with his whip to things

that he thought were interesting. He engaged me in conversation--a thing

which no one had thought worth doing. He asked me questions which were

not senseless, and seemed to suppose that a child had reasoning powers.

I was flattered, and began to surprise myself by the boldness of the

things I said.

We rattled down the City Road, past the Mansion House, over London

Bridge to the Elephant and Castle, and so out toward Dulwich till we

came within sight of the Crystal Palace.

He began to slow down and grow pensive, as though working out a problem.

“You see, she’ll have lunch ready. She’s expecting us. She’s very

precise about the keeping of hours and won’t like it.” Then, “Hang it

all. We may as well have a holiday now we’re out.”

Shaking loose the reins we started forward again, racing everything we

met upon the road. My uncle’s high spirits returned. I don’t know where

we went. I know there were woods and farm-houses. We stopped for lunch

at a village-inn. It stood on the edge of a gorse-common. On the common

a donkey was grazing. A flock of geese wandered across it. Boys were

playing cricket against a tree-stump. Several great wagons, piled high

with vegetables, were drawn up, the horses with their heads deep in

nose-bags.

We had our meal in the tap-room with the wagoners. While they were

present my uncle assumed his pontifical manner, addressing me as

“young man” and them as “my good fellows.” He was very dignified, and

benevolent, and haughty. They were much impressed. But when they had

left and we were alone, he winked his eye at me solemnly, as much as to

say “that was all pretense. Now let’s be natural,” and entered once more

into my boy’s world of escapades and gilded shadows.

While the mare rested, we strolled round. In a hollow of the woods we

came across a gipsy encampment. Three yellow caravans were drawn up

together. A fire was burning in the open, over which an iron pot was

suspended from a bough. A fierce, gaudily clad woman was bent above it

stirring. She looked up at sound of our approach and the big ear-rings

which dropped upon her neck jangled. Recognizing my uncle she nodded,

and allowed us to sit down and watch her. Presently a rough man came out

of the woods and threw himself down beside us. A young woman returned

from fortune-telling, with her baby in a shawl across her shoulders.

Bowls were brought out, and we had a second lunch from the great pot

bubbling on the fire. Pipes were produced; the women smoked as well as

the men. My uncle asked them where they had been and how they had fared

since last he saw them. I listened intently to their answers; it seemed

that they must have discovered the boundless garden of which I had only

dreamt.

In the dog-cart on the homeward journey, I learnt that my uncle was

acquainted with a number of queer people. “Everybody’s interesting,

Dante,” he said, by way of excuse and explanation; “it’s never safe to

despise anyone.”

In course of conversation he informed me that he had always longed to be

a gipsy, but had never dared. When I asked why not, he answered shortly,

“Your Aunt Lavinia--she’s not like us and wouldn’t understand.”

“But if there wasn’t any Aunt Lavinia--would you dare then?”

“I might have to,” he said, smiling grimly.

I didn’t know at all what he meant. He didn’t intend I should. After all

these years those words, chance-spoken to a child, remain with me. They

were as near to a confession that his wife supported him as was possible

for a proud man.

My grandmother Cardover at Ransby, whose sister he had married, had a

habit of nicknaming people with words of her own invention. She called

my great-uncle The Spuffler. Whether the verb _to Spuffle_ is Suffolk

dialect or a word of her own coining, I have never been able to find

out--but in its hostile sense it described him exactly.

A spuffler is a gay pretender, who hides his lack of success beneath the

importance of his manners. Time is his one possession, and to him it is

valueless; yet he tries to impress the world with its extreme rarity.

A spuffler is always in a hurry; he talks loudly. He plays a game of

make-believe that he is a person of far-reaching authority; he deceives

others and almost deceives himself. He is usually small in stature and

not infrequently bald-headed. In conversing he makes an imaginary lather

with his hands and points his finger, at you. He may splutter and spit

when he gets excited; but this is accidental and not necessary.

The prime requisite is that he should affect the prosperity of a

bank-president and be dependent on some quite obscure source for his

pocket-money. Since I have lived in America I have become familiar with

a word which is very similar--_a bluffer_. But a bluffer is a conscious

liar and may be a humorist, whereas a spuffler does all in his power to

deceive himself and is always in dead earnest.

It is a curious fact that the men whom I loved best as a child were

all three incompetents in the worldly sense. They were clever, but they

lacked the faculty of marketing their talents. They were boys in

men’s bodies. With children they had the hearts of children and were

delightful. With business men their light-heartedness counted as

irresponsibility and was a drawback. In two out of the three cases

named, the disappointments which resulted from continual defeat produced

vices. Only my Uncle Obadiah, clad in his armor of unpierceable

spuffle, rode through the ranks of life scatheless, with his sweetness

unembittered and his integrity untarnished. But they were all good men.

Through the June twilight we returned to the outskirts of London. We

turned in at a ruined gateway, and rode through a tunnel of overhanging

trees where laburnum blazed through the dusk. A long rambling house grew

up before us. At one time it must have been the country estate of some

city-merchant. At sound of our wheels on the gravel, the front-door

opened and a little lady stepped out to greet us. She was neat and

speckless as a hospital nurse. Her body was slim and dainty as a girl’s.

There was an air of decision and restraint about her, which was in

direct opposition to my uncle’s hurried geniality.

When we had halted, she lifted me out of the dog-cart and carried me

into the house to a large room at the back, which looked into a shadowy

garden and a paddock beyond. It seemed older and more opulent than any

house I had known as yet. There was so much space about it.

My uncle came in from stabling Dollie. “Well, Lavinia, I couldn’t get

home to lunch. Very sorry, but it couldn’t be helped.”

He darted a look across at me, wondering how much I had told her.

The secret was established; I knew that I must hold my tongue. I knew

something else--that he was afraid of her. Throughout the meal he kept

up a stream of strenuous pretense, discussing large plans aloud with

himself. What they were I cannot now remember. I suppose my grandmother

would have called them spuffle. Suddenly he rose from the table, saying

that he had a lot of letters to answer and excused himself. But when I

went into his room an hour later to bid him good-night, he was sitting

before his desk, doing nothing in particular, biting the end of his pen.

When my aunt and I were left together I felt very lonely at first. She

had sat so silent all through supper.

But when the door had closed, she turned to me laughing. I knew at once

that, like most grown-ups when they are together, she had only been

shamming. Now she was-going to be real.

“Did you have a good day in the country?” she asked. “Oh, he can’t

deceive me; I could tell by the dust on the wheels.”

Then, realizing, I suppose, that it was not fair to pump me, she stopped

asking questions and began to speak about myself. She drew up a chair

to the window and sat with me in the dark with her arms about me. She

seemed extraordinarily young, and when her silky gray hair touched my

cheek as she bent above me, I wondered what had made my uncle say that

she wasn’t like us and wouldn’t understand.

They each had their secret world of desire: his was the open road, where

liberty was and lack of convention; hers was a home with fire-light and

children. She was childless. Into both these worlds a little boy might

enter. That night as I lay awake in bed I was puzzled. Why was it that

grown people were so funny, and could never be real with one another?

CHAPTER IV--RUTHITA

It was my Uncle Obadiah who first opened my eyes to the mysteries of

the animal world. In so doing he flung wide a door into happiness which

many a wiser man has neglected. He derived nearly all his pleasures from

the cheerful little things of life. A curious sympathy existed between

him and the lower creation. All the cats and dogs in the district were

his friends. He attributed to them almost human personalities, and gave

them special names of his own choosing. It was a wonderful day for me

when he first made me realize that all-surrounding was a kingdom of

beasts and birds of which I, who had always been ruled, might be ruler.

In the paddock which lay between the garden and orchard, he had his

own especial kingdom. His subjects were a cow, a goat, some very

domestically inclined rabbits, about a hundred hens, and innumerable

London sparrows. The latter he had trained to fly down from the trees

and settle on his shoulders when he whistled.

Early in the morning we would go there together; the first duty of

the day was to feed the menagerie. How distinctly I can recall those

scenes--the dewy lawn, dappled golden by sunlight falling through

leaves, the droning of bees setting forth from hives on their day’s

excursion, the smoke slowly rising in the summer stillness from distant

chimney-pots, and my uncle’s voice making excited guesses at how many

eggs we should gather.

Eggs represented almost his sole contribution to the family income.

Among his many Eldorados was the persistent belief that he could make

his fortune at poultryraising. He would talk to me about it for hours

as we worked in the garden, like a man inspired, making lightning

calculations of the sums he would one day realize. He was continually

experimenting and crossing breeds with a view to producing a more

prolific strain of layers. He had a dream that one day he would produce

the finest strain of fowl in the world. He would call it _The Spreckles_

--his name would be immortalized. He would be justified in the eyes of

Aunt Lavinia; and success would justify him in the eyes of all men.

Meanwhile my aunt declared that Obad spent more time and thought on that

blest live-stock than he would ever see back in money. “Obad” was her

contraction for his name; when she spoke to him sharply it sounded like

her opinion of his character. But, in her own way, she was fond of him.

Perhaps she had come to love his very failings as we do the faults of

our friends. She was secretly proud of her own capacity; her thwarted

mother-instinct found an outlet in the sense of his dependence.

Nevertheless, the great fundamental cleavage lay between them: she lived

in an anxious world where tradesmen’s bills required punctual payment;

his world was a careless playground in which no defeat was ever final.

She was stable in her moods, self-reliant and tenaciously courageous.

He was forever changing: with adults he was like a house in mourning,

shuttered, austere, grave; but should a youngster pass by, the blinds

were jerked aside and a laughing face peered out.

His most important make-believe was that he was a benefactor

of humanity. He held honorary positions of secretary to various

philanthropic societies--_The Society for the Housing of Gipsies; The

Society for the Assisting of Decrepit Ladies_, etc. The positions were

honorary because he could find no one willing to pay him. He worked for

nothing because he was ashamed of being forever out of employment. He

got great credit for his services among charitable people; the annual

votes of thanks which he received helped to bolster up his self-respect

throughout the year.

As I grew older and more observant, I used to wonder what had induced my

aunt to marry him. Again it was my Grandmother Cardover who told me, “He

spuffled Lavinia into it, my dear.” It seems that he caught her by the

vast commercial and humanitarian possibilities of one of his many plans.

When she awoke to the fact that her husband was not a man, but the

incarnation of perpetual boyhood, she may have been disappointed, but

she did not show it. Like a sensible woman, instead of crying her eyes

out, she set about earning a livelihood. Uncle Obad had one marketable

asset--his religion and the friends he gained by it. She took a decayed

mansion in Charity Grove and established a Christian Boarding House. All

her lodgers were young men, and by that proud subterfuge of poverty they

were known as paying-guests.

The only Christian feature that I can remember about her establishment

was that my uncle said grace before all meals at which the lodgers

were present. At the midday meal, from which they were absent, it was

omitted. The Christian Boarding House idea caught on with provincial

parents whose sons were moving up to the city for the first time; it

seemed to guarantee home morals. The sons soon perceived how matters

stood and buried their agnostic prejudices beneath good feeding.

A general atmosphere of obligation was created by my aunt in her

husband’s favor; she always spoke as though it was very kind of so

public a man as Mr. Spreckles to squander his scanty privacy by letting

paying-guests share his roof. She made such a gallant show with what she

earned that everyone thought her husband had a private fortune, which

enabled him to live in such style and give so much time to charitable

works. She would hint as much in conversing with her friends, and

invariably feigned the greatest pride and contentment in his activities.

Thanks to his spuffling and her courage, there were not five people

outside the family who ever guessed the true circumstances.

But when all is said, the real business of my Uncle Obad’s life was not

philanthropy or running a boardinghouse, but poultry-raising. It was

he who gave me the old white hen, without which I might never have

met Ruthita. My money-making instincts were roused by his talk of the

profits to be derived from eggs. I was enthusiastic to follow in his

footsteps. To this end, at the hour of parting, when I was returning to

Pope Lane, he gave me an ancient white Leghorn. He did not tell me she

was ancient; he recommended her to me as belonging to a strain that

could never get broody.

On the long drive home across London, my grief at leaving Charity

Grove was partly mitigated by my new possession. It was a tremendous

experience to feel that I had it in my power to make a live thing, even

though it were but a hen, sad or happy. I discussed with Uncle Obad all

the care that was necessary for egg-production. I got him to work out

sums for me. If my hen were to lay an egg every other day throughout the

year, how much money would I make by selling each egg to my father at a

penny? I felt that the foundations of my financial fortunes were secure.

The genuineness of my expectations made my uncle restless and ashamed;

he knew that the hen had passed her first youth, and suggested that

pepper in her food might help matters.

It was supper-time when I arrived home. I let the hen loose on the

lawn to stretch her legs. My father was busy as usual, but he delayed a

little longer over the meal in honor of my home-coming.

Some of the things I blurted out about my uncle must have revealed to

him the comradeship that lay between us. He had risen from the table,

but he sat down again. “You have known your uncle just a fortnight,” he

said, “and yet you seem to have told him more about yourself than you

have told me in all these years. Why is it, Dante? You’re not afraid of

me? It can’t be that.” We were both of us shy. He reached over and took

my hand, repeating, “It can’t be that.”

He knew that it was that and so did I. Yet he was hungry for my

affection. He was making an unaccustomed effort to win my confidence and

draw me out. But he spoke to me as though I was a grown man, whereas my

uncle to get near me had become himself a child. If he had only talked

to me about my white hen, I should have chattered. But I was awed by his

embarrassment, and remained silent and unresponsive.

He went on to tell me that all the time he was away from me in his study

he was working for my sake. “I want to have the money to give you a good

start in life. I never had it. You must succeed where I have failed.”

I understood very little of what he was saying except that money and

success seemed to be the same. That was the way Uncle Obad had talked

about poultry-raising. I had no idea where money came from or how it was

obtained. I must have asked him some question about it, for I recall one

of the phrases he used in replying, “A man succeeds not by what he does,

but by the things at which he has aimed.”

The red sun fell behind the trees while we talked, peered above my

father’s shoulder, and sank out of sight. It was dusk when I ran into

the garden.

I felt prisoned again--the door into the lane was locked and the walls

were all about me. The lamp in my father’s study was kindled and flung a

bar of light across the shrubbery. He was working to get the money that

I might be allowed to work. I didn’t like the idea. I didn’t want to

work. Why couldn’t one drive always through the sunshine, pulling up at

taverns and sitting beside gipsy camp-fires?

I commenced to search for the white hen and so forgot these economic

complications. Here and there I came across places where she had

been scrabbing, but I could see her nowhere. At last I discovered her

roosting on the branch of an apple-tree which grew close by the wall at

the end of the garden. I spoke to her kindly, but she refused to come

down. She was too high up for me to reach her from the ground. When I

scattered grain, she blinked at me knowingly, as much as to say, “Surely

you don’t think I’m as big a fool as that.” It seemed to me that she was

grieving for all the cocks and hens to whom she had said farewell. She

was embittered against me because she was solitary. I explained to her

that, if she’d lay eggs, I’d buy her a husband. She remained skeptical

of my good intentions. There was nothing for it--but to climb. I could

hear the leaves shaking and the apples bumping on the ground; my hand

was stretched out to catch her when, with a hoarse scream of defiance,

she flapped her wings and disappeared into the great nothingness over

our neighbor’s wall.

Unless the white hen had blazed the trail, I might have remained in the

walled-in garden for years without ever daring to discover a way out.

I was too excited at this crisis to measure my temerity. In my fear of

losing her I did a thing undreamt of and unplanned--I swung myself from

the branch on to the top of the brickwork and dropped on the other side.

A bed of currant bushes broke my fall. I got upon my feet scratched and

dazed.

The first thing I saw was a long stretch of grass bordered by flowers.

At the end of it was a small two-storied house, gabled and with verandas

running round it. In one of the upper-story windows a light was burning;

all the rest was in darkness. In the middle of the lawn I could see my

white hen strutting in a very stately manner. I stole up behind her,

but she began clucking. In my fear of discovery, I lost all patience and

commenced to chase her vigorously. I ran her at last into a bed of peas,

where she became entangled. I had her in my arms when I heard a voice,

“Who are you?”

Turning suddenly, I found that a little girl was standing close behind

me.

“My name’s Dante.”

“And mine’s Ruthita.”

We stared at one another through the dusk. I had never spoken to a

little girl and for some reason, difficult to explain, commenced to

tremble. It was not fear that caused it, but something strong and

emotional.

“Dante,” she whispered. “How pretty!” Then, “Where do you live?”

I jerked my thumb in the direction of the wall.

“You climbed over?”

I nodded. She laughed softly. “Could you do it again? Oh, do come often,

often. I’m so lonely, and we could play together.”

Just then the voice of Hetty began to call in the distance,

“Dan-tee, Dan-tee, where are you? Come to bed di-rectly.”

Her voice drew nearer. She was searching for me, and passed quite close

to us on the other side of the wall. We could hear the indignant rustle

of her skirt and her heavy breathing with bending down so low to peer

under bushes.

Ruthita came near to me so that I had my first glimpse of her eyes in

the dark--eyes which were always to haunt me. Her hands were clasped

against her throat in eagerness--she seemed to be standing tiptoe.

“Don’t tell,” she pleaded. “It’s our secret. But come again to-morrow.”

I promised.

She watched me scrambling for a foot-hold in the wall. When I sat

astride it, just before I vanished, she waved her hand.

The white hen had lost her importance in my thoughts;

I bundled her into the tool-house, and then surrendered to Hetty. Hetty

was very cross. She wanted to discover where I had been hiding, but I

wouldn’t tell her. When she left me, I crept out of bed and knelt beside

the window for a long time gazing down into the blackness.

Far away a bird was calling. The tall trees waved their arms. The moon

leapt out of clouds, and the branches reached up to touch her with their

fingers. A little beam of light struggled free and ran about the garden.

I tried to tell myself it was Ruthita.

The garden seemed less of a prison now--rather a place of magic and

enchantment.

CHAPTER V--MARRIAGE ACCORDING TO HETTY

Next morning I was up early. Spiders’ webs were still crystal with dew

in the garden; they had not yet been tattered by the sun lifting up the

flowers’ heads. I had no hope that I would see Ruthita, but I wanted to

peep across the wall while everyone was in bed and there was no one to

observe me.

I had covered half the distance to the apple-tree, when I heard a sound

of voices. They came from behind the tool-house. I fisted my hands and

listened. A man and woman were conversing, but in such low tones that I

could hear nothing that was said. I made sure they were thieves who had

heard about my hen, and had come to rob me. I looked back at the windows

of our house. All the blinds were lowered; everyone was sleeping. There

was no sign of life anywhere, save the hopping of early risen blackbirds

between bushes in search of early risen worms. With a quickly beating

heart I crouched beside the wall, advancing under cover of a row of

sunflowers. Looking out from between their stalks, I discovered a man

sitting on a wheelbarrow; a woman was balanced on his knee with her arm

about his neck. The woman was Hetty and the man was our gardener.

Hetty was wearing her starched print-dress, ready to begin her morning’s

work. She wasn’t a bit scornful or solemn, but was laughing and

wriggling and tossing her head. She seemed quite a different person

from the stern, moral housemaid, God’s intimate friend, who told me

everything that God had thought about me through the day when at night

she was putting me to bed. Up to that moment it had never occurred to me

that she was pretty, but now her cheeks were flushed and the sun was

in her rumpled hair. While I watched, our gardener drew her close and

kissed her. She squeaked like a little mouse, and pretended to struggle

to free herself.

I never dreamt that grown people ever behaved like that. I hadn’t the

faintest notion what she was doing or why she was doing it; but I knew

that it was something secret, and silly, and beautiful. I also had the

feeling that it was something pleasant and wrong, just like the things

I most enjoyed doing, for which I was punished. I wanted to withdraw and

tried to; but tripped over the sunflowers and fell.

Hetty and the gardener sprang apart. I knew what was going to happen

next; I had caught them being natural--they were going to commence

shamming. The gardener became very busy, piling his tools into the

barrow. Hetty, talking in her cold and distant manner, said to him, “And

don’t forget the lettuce for breakfast, John. Master’s very partic’lar

about it.”

I came from my hiding, thrusting my hands deep in my pockets, as though

I kept my courage there and was frightened of its dropping out. The

gardener’s back was towards me, but he caught sight of me from between

his legs. He just stopped like that with his face growing redder, his

mouth wide-open, and stared. Hetty didn’t look as pretty as she had been

looking, but before she could say anything I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t

mean to. I came to see my fowl---- but I won’t tell.”

“Bless ’is little ’eart,” cried John; “I thought it were ’is Pa, I

wuz that scared.”

Hetty knelt down beside me and rocked me to and fro half-hysterically,

making me promise again and again that I would never tell.

“Was you doin’ somethin’ wrong?” I asked. “What was you doin’?”

They looked foolishly at one another.

All that day they kept me near them on one pretext or another, afraid

to let me get away from them. I had never known them so sensible and

obliging; they did all kinds of things for me that they had never done

before. After breakfast, while Hetty was dusting, John built me a little

fowl-run. In the afternoon, while he was cutting the grass, Hetty sat

with me beneath the apple-tree and told me what life meant. She spoke

in whispers like a conspirator, and all the time that she was talking, I

could hear Ruthita humming just the other side of the wall.

As I understood it, this was what she told me. When you first get here,

_here_ being the world, you own nothing; and know nothing. Then, as you

grow up, you know something but still own nothing. That’s why you’re

ordered about and told not to do all the things that you want most to

do. You can only please yourself when nobody’s looking and must obey

nearly everyone until you get money. There are several ways of getting

it, and the pleasantest is sweet-hearting.

Here I interrupted her to inquire what was sweet-hearting. “Well,”

she said, turning her face away and looking dreamily at John, who was

pushing the mower across the lawn, “sweet-heartin’s what you saw me and

John doin’.”

“Does it always have to be done before breakfast?”

She threw back her head and laughed, swaying backwards and forwards.

Then she became solemn and answered, “I ’ave to do it before breakfast

’cause I’m a servant. But I does it of evenin’s on my night out.”

She went on to tell me that sweet-hearting was the first step towards

freedom and money. The second step was a honeymoon, which consisted in

going away with a person of the other sex for a week to some place where

you weren’t known. When you came back to the people who knew you, they

said you were married. So marriage was the third and last step. After

that you were given a house, and money, and all the things for which you

had always yearned. You had other people, who were like you were before

you went sweet-hearting, to take your orders, and run your errands, and

say “Sir” or “Madam.” Sometimes when you came back from your honeymoon,

you found children in the house.

So through that long summer’s afternoon beneath the apple-tree, with the

leaves gently stirring and the sound of Ruthita humming across the wall,

I gained my first lesson in sexology and domestic economics. It solved a

good many problems by which I had been puzzled. For instance, why Uncle

Obad had a pony and I hadn’t; why I was sent to bed always at the same

hour and my father went only when he chose; why big people could lose

their tempers without being wicked, whereas God was always angry when

I did it. There was only one thing that I couldn’t understand: why two

boys couldn’t go on a honeymoon together, or two girls, and have the

same results follow. Except for this, the riddle of society was now

solved as far as I was concerned. Marriage seemed a thousand times more

wonderful than the magic carpet.

I was tremendously interested in the possibilities of sweet-hearting and

promised to help Hetty all I could. In return she declared that, when

she was married, she would persuade my father to let her take me out of

the garden.

That evening I crept over the wall and found Ruthita waiting. She was

a slim dainty little figure, clad in a short white dress. She had

great gray eyes, and long black hair and lashes. Her voice was soft and

caressing, like the twittering of a bird in the ivy when one wakens on a

summer morning. I told her in hurried whispers what I had discovered.

It was all news to her. She slipped her hand into mine while I spoke and

nestled closer.

“Little boy,” she whispered when I had ended, “you _are_ funny! You come

climbing over the garden-wall and you tell me everything.”

An old man came out of the house and began to pace up and down the

walks. His head was bent forward on his chest and he had a big red scar

on his forehead. A cloak hung loosely from his shoulders. He carried

a stick in his hand on which he leant heavily. Ruthita said he was her

grandfather. Soon he began to call for her, and she had to go to him.

Little by little I learnt her story. Her grandfather was a French

general. He had fought in the Franco-Prussian War until the Fall of the

Empire and Proclamation of the Republic. Shortly after the flight of the

Empress Eugénie he had come to England in disgust. His son, Ruthita’s

father, had stayed behind and been cut to pieces in the Siege of Paris.

Ruthita’s mother was an Englishwoman. She had never recovered from the

shock of her husband’s death. It was her light that I saw burning in the

bedroom window of evenings. They were almost poor now and lived in great

seclusion. The grandfather had dropped his rank and was known as plain

Monsieur Favart. So Ruthita was even a closer prisoner than myself.

What did we talk about in those first stolen hours of’ childish

friendship? I asked her once when we were grown up, but she could not

tell me. Perhaps we did not say much. We felt together--felt the

mystery of the enchanted unseen world. Why, the pigeons strutting on the

housetops had seen more than we had; and they were not half as old as we

were! They spread their wings, soared up into the clouds, and vanished.

We told one another stories of where they went; but long before the

stories were ended Monsieur Favart would come searching for Ruthita or

the voice of Hetty would ring through the dusk, calling me to bed. Then

I would lie awake and imagine myself a pigeon, and finish the story to

myself.

The great beauty of our meetings was that they were undiscovered. It was

always I who went to Ruthita--she was nothing of a climber, and the red

bricks and green moss would have left tell-tale marks upon her dress. We

had a nest of straw behind the currant bushes. Here, with backs against

the hard wall and fingers digging in the cool damp earth, we would sit

and wonder, talking in whispers, of all the mysteries that lay before

us. Ruthita had vague memories of Paris, of soldiers marching and the

beating of drums. Sometimes she would sing French songs to me, of which

she would translate the meaning between each verse. My contribution

to our little store of knowledge was limited to what I have written in

these few chapters.

I don’t know at what stage in the proceedings our great idea occurred.

It must have been in the early autumn, for the evenings were drawing in

and often it was chilly. I had been talking about Hetty, when suddenly I

exclaimed, “Why can’t we do that?”

“Do what?” she questioned.

“Get married!”

Then I reminded her of the extreme simplicity of marriage as explained

by our housemaid. All we had to do was to slip out of the garden for

a few days, and then come back. We should find a house ready for us.

Perhaps I should have a pony like Uncle Obad, and, instead of dolls,

Ruthita would have real babies. It was the real babies that caught her

fancy. Because of her mother, she needed a little persuading. “What will

she do wivout me?”

“And what would she do if you’d never been borned?” I said.

Ruthita had five shillings in her money-box. I had only a shilling;

for the white hen, in spite of pepper, had failed to lay any eggs. Six

shillings seemed to us a fortune--ample to provide for the honeymoon of

two small children.

The gate from Monsieur Favart’s garden was never locked: that was

evidently our easiest way out.

CHAPTER VI--THE YONDER LAND

What did we hope to find that autumn morning when we slipped through

that narrow door, forsaking the walls? It was all a guess to us--what

lay beyond; but we knew that it must be something splendid. Of one thing

we were quite certain: that at the end of a few days we should have

grown tall; we should return to Pope Lane a man and woman. The little

house would be there waiting, magically built in our hours of absence.

Perhaps work had been begun already upon the babies that Ruthita wanted.

For the first time I had kissed her that morning, awkwardly and shyly,

feeling that somehow it was proper. At any rate, Hetty and our gardener

always kissed when they got the chance and no one was looking.

Monsieur Favart’s door swung to behind us. We ran as quickly as our legs

would carry us. The fear of pursuit was upon us. Pinned to the pillow of

each of our empty beds was a sheet of paper on which was scrawled, “_Gon

to git Maried.”_

When at last we halted for breath, we seemed to have covered many miles

of our journey. We were standing in a long, quaint street. On one side

flowed a river, railed in so we couldn’t get near it. On the other

side stood an irregular row of substantial houses, for the most part

creeper-covered. No faces appeared in the houses’ windows. No one passed

up or down the street. It was as yet too early. It seemed that the world

was empty, and that we and the birds were its only tenants. We turned

to the right, half-walking, half-running. I held Ruthita’s hand tightly;

the feel of it gave me courage.

We must have made a queer pair in the mellow autumn sunlight. Ruthita

wore a white dress with a red cloak flung over it. On her head was a

yellow straw poke-bonnet, which made her face look strangely small.

She had on black shoes, fastened by a single strap, and black and white

socks which, when she ran, kept dropping.

We had no idea of direction, but just hurried on with a vague idea that

we must keep moving forward.

Presently we came across a drover, driving a flock of bewildered, tired

sheep. He was a lame man. He had an inflamed red face and one of his

eyes was out. When he wanted to make his flock move faster, he jabbed

viciously at their tails with a pointed stick and started hopping from

side to side, barking like a dog. He passed right by us, saying nothing,

waving a red flag in his left hand with which he would sometimes mop

his forehead. We followed. We followed him through streets of shops all

shuttered; we followed him up a broad-paved hill; we followed him down a

winding lane to a bridge across a river, beyond which lay marshes. Then

he turned and called to us.

“Little master, where be you goin’ and why be you followin’?”

To the country, I told him, to find the forest. I wanted to show Ruthita

the unwalled garden through which my uncle had led me.

The man screwed up his one eye, and gazed upon us shrewdly. “You be wery

small to be goin’ to the forest. But so be you’re travellin’ along my

route you might as well ’elp an old feller.”

We made our bargain with him. We would help him with his sheep, if he

would guide us to the forest. We ran beside him across the short, crisp

grass, imitating his cries to prevent the sheep from scattering. He told

us that he had driven them from Epping up to London, but that times were

cruel bad and the farmer who employed him had been unable to sell

them. “It’s cruel ’ard on a man o’ my years,” he kept saying, “cruel

’ard.”

When I asked him what was cruel hard, he shook his head as though

language failed to express his wrongs: “The world in gineral.”

There was one of the sheep whose leg was broken. It kept lagging behind

the rest, which made the man jab at it furiously. Ruthita’s eyes filled

with tears of indignation when she saw it. She stamped her little foot

and insisted that he should not do it. The man pushed back his battered

hat and scratched his forehead, staring at her. He seemed embarrassed

and tried to excuse himself. “Humans is humans, miss, and sheep is

sheep. It makes an old chap, made in Gawd’s h’image, kind o’ bitter

to ’ave to spend his days a-scampering after a crowd o’ silly

quadrupeds. But if yer don’t like it, I won’t do it.”

The river wound round about us. Sometimes it would leave us, but always

it came flowing after us, in great circles as though lonely and eager

for our company. On its banks stood occasional taverns, gaily painted,

with wooden tables set before them. The grass about them was trodden

bare, showing that they were often populous; but now they were deserted.

Big barges lay sleepily at anchor, basking in the sun.

The drover commenced speaking again. “I’m an old soldier, I am. I

lost me eye and got lamed in the wars; and now they makes game o’ my

h’infirmities and calls me----”

The name they called him was evidently too dreadful. He sighed heavily.

“Poor man,” said Ruthita, slipping her hand into his horny palm. “What

do they call you?”

“Old-Dot-and-Carry-One, ’cause o’ the way I walks. It’s woundin’. It

’urts me feelin’s, after the way I’ve served me country.”

We seated ourselves by the muddy river-bank, while the sheep grazed and

rested. Far in the distance trees broke the level of the sky-line, so I

knew that we were going in the right direction and our guide was to be

trusted. Dot-and-Carry-One produced a loaf of bread from his pocket and,

dividing it into three pieces, shared it with us.

Little by little he gave us his confidence, telling us of the world

as he knew it. “It’s a place o’ wimen and war. To the h’eye wot’s

prejoodiced there’s nothin’ else in it. But your h’eye ain’t

prejoodiced, and don’t yer never let it git so, young miss and master.

I’ve seen lots. I wuz in the Crimea and I wuz in h’India, but I never

yet seen the country where a man can’t be ’appy if he wants.

There’s music, an’ there’s nature, an’ there’s marriage. Now music for

h’instance.”

He produced from his ragged coat a penny whistle and trilled out a tune

upon it. While he played he looked as merry a fellow as one could hope

to meet in a day’s march. The sheep stopped cropping to gaze at us. We

clapped our hands and asked him to go on.

He shook his head and replaced his pipe. “Then there’s nature. Just now

I wuz complainin’. But supposin’ I do drive sheep back and forth, how

many men wuz up in Lun’non to see the sunrise this mornin’? I never

miss it, ’ceptin’ when I’m drunk. I knows the seasons o’ the bloomin’

flowers, Gawd bless ’em, and can h’imitate the birds’ songs and call

’em to me. That’s somethin’. An’ if I don’t sleep in a stuffy bed, which

would be better, for me rheumatics, I can count the stars and have the

grass for coverin’. And then there’s marriage----”

He paused. His eye became moist and his face gentle. “I ’ad a little

nipper and a girl once.”

That was all. We wanted to ask him questions about marriage, but he

pulled his hat down over his eyes and lay back, refusing to answer.

Ruthita and I guarded the sheep and kept them from straying, while he

slept. We made chains out of flowers, and, taking off our shoes and

socks, paddled in the water. Then Ruthita grew tired and, leaning

against my shoulder, persuaded me to tell her the story of where we were

going. Before the tale was ended, her eyes were closed and her lips were

parted. My arms began to ache terribly; I wondered whether it was with

holding her or because I was growing. I hoped it was because I was

growing.

Dot-and-Carry-One woke up. He looked at the sun. “Time we wuz h’orf,” he

remarked shortly.

We had not gone far along the river-bank when we came to a tavern on our

side of the water. Ruthita said that she was thirsty, so we entered.

The drover spread himself out on a bench and, soliciting my invitation,

called for “a pint of strong.” Good beer, he said, never hurt any man if

taken in moderation.

We must have sat for the best part of the morning, watching him toss off

pot after pot while we gritted our feet on the sanded floor. For each

pot he thanked us, taking off his battered hat to Ruthita and blowing

away the froth from the top in our honor. He explained to all and sundry

that we wuz his little nipper and girl wot he had losht. He losht us

years ago, so long he could hardly remember. The tavern-girl entered

into a discussion with him, saying that we could not be more than nine

and that he was at least seventy. He became angry, demanding whether a

man of seventy hadn’t lived long enough to know his own children, and

what bloody indifference it made to her, anyway.

It occurred to me that it might be just possible that he really was

Ruthita’s father. I had no idea what dying meant. I had been told that

the dead were not really dead--only gone. So I thought that death might

mean not being with your friends in the garden. I half expected to find

my mother in the forest, just as I had hoped to bring her back on the

magic carpet. So when Dot-and-Carry-One was so positive, I asked him if

he had heard of the Siege of Paris. He was in a mood when he had heard

of everything, been everywhere, and had had every important person for a

friend. Of course he had heard of the Siege of Paris; if it hadn’t been

for him, to-day there wouldn’t be any Paris. When I told him of General

Favart, he wept copiously and called for another pot.

The tavern-girl told him that that must be his last, and he said that it

was cruel ’ard the way an old soldier were persecooted. When we had

paid for his drinks, we discovered that we had only three shillings and

eightpence left of our little stock of money. The tavern-girl said we

were poor h’innercent lambs and she should set the police on him. The

drover told her that spring, not autumn, was the lambing season.

All through the long and drowsy afternoon we wandered on.

Dot-and-Carry-One seemed in no great hurry to reach his destination.

Beer had had a transfiguring effect upon him. He lurched along jauntily,

his hat cocked sideways on his head, winking with his one good eye at

any girls we met in our path. His cares and sense of injustice were

forgotten. He told us tales of his wars, painting tremendous and bloody

scenes of carnage. He slew whole armies that afternoon, and at the end

of each battle he was left alone, wounded but dauntless, with the dead

’uns piled high about him. He went into grisly details of the manner

of their dying, and stopped now and then to show us with his stick

the different ways in which you could kill a man with a sword. Cockney

lovers on the river gaped after us, resting on their oars. They saw

nothing but an intoxicated old ruffian in charge of a flock of sheep and

two small children. But we were in hero-land, and Dot-and-Carry-One was

our giant-killer.

When Ruthita got tired, he hoisted her on to his shoulders, where she

rode straddling his neck, with her hands clasped about his forehead.

The forest, like a green silent army, with its flags unfurled marched

nearer. The sun sank lower behind us; our long lean shadows ran on

before us till they lay across the backs of the sheep.

We left the marshes and entered on a white dusty road. Carriages and

coaches and wagons kept passing, which made the sheep bewildered. They

kept turning this way and that, bleating pitifully. Ruthita had to walk

again, while Dot-and-Carry-One barked and waved his stick to keep the

flock from scattering. The night came on and we were hungry. At last

Ruthita’s legs gave out and she sat down by the roadside crying, saying

that she was frightened and could go no further. Then Dot-and-Carry-One

drove his flock into the forest, and borrowed a shilling from me and

left us, promising to go and buy food with it.

The sheep lay down about the roots of the trees, and we pillowed our

heads against their woolly backs. The silence became intense; the last

of the twilight vanished. I was glad when Ruthita put her arms round my

neck, for I too was nervous though I would not own it. We waited for the

drover to return, and in waiting slept.

I woke with a start. The moon was shining; long paths of silver had been

hewn between the trees. The fleece of the kneeling sheep was sparkling

and dewy. Far down one of the paths I could see a limping figure

approaching. He was shouting and singing and stabbing at his shadow. As

he came nearer I could distinctly see that he held a bottle in his hand.

Something warned me. I roused Ruthita, telling her to make no sound. We

ran till we were breathless and the shouting could be no more heard.

Trees grew wider apart where we had halted. Far away a flare of

light shone up; as we watched we saw that people passed before it.

Hand-in-hand we advanced. Something groaned quite near us. We commenced

to run, but, looking back, saw that it was only a tethered donkey. We

came to the outskirts of the crowd. We wanted company badly. Burrowing

under arms and legs we made our way to the front. A great linen sheet

was stretched between two trees. Set up on iron rings before it was a

line of cocoanuts. On either side flaring naphtha-lamps were burning.

About thirty yards away from the sheet a woman was serving out wooden

balls. Between the sheet and the cocoanuts a man was darting up and

down, dodging the balls as they were thrown and returning them. The man

and woman were calling out together, “Two shies a penny. Two shies a

penny. Every ball ’its a cocoanut. Down she goes. ’Ere you are, sir.

Two for the children and one for the missis. Walk up. Walk up. Two shies

a penny.”

Whether a cocoanut went down or stayed up, they continued to assert in

a hoarse, cracked monotone that it had fallen. Their faces were dripping

with perspiration. The man returned the balls and the woman served them

out again mechanically. The throwers took off their coats and hurled

furiously, to the accompaniment of the shrill staccato chatter of the

crowd.

Ruthita and I stood blinking in the semi-darkness, our eyes dazzled

by the lamps. Suddenly I called out, and pushing my way between the

throwers, commenced running up the pitch. The man behind the cocoanuts,

realizing that the balls had ceased coming, stopped dodging and looked

up to see what was the matter. Just then an impatient thrower hurled a

ball which went whizzing over me, missed the cocoanuts, and hit the man

on the head, splitting his eyebrow. I was terribly afraid that he would

topple over and lie still, like Dot-and-Carry-One had told me men did in

battle. Instead of that, when I came within reach of him he clutched me

angrily by the shoulder, asking me what the devil I meant. The blood,

creeping down his face in a slow trickle, made him look twice as fierce

as when I had first met him with my Uncle Obad by the gipsy campfire. He

drew me near to one of the lamps, smearing his forehead with the back of

his hand. He recognized me.

“Oh, it’s you, you young cuss, is it?”

Just then the fortune-telling girl came up, whom I had seen before with

the baby on her back. She was carrying Ruthita.

“Here, Lilith,” he said, speaking gruffly, “take ’im to your tent.”

Then he commenced again, “Two shies a penny. Two shies a penny. Every

ball ’its a cocoanut. Down she goes,” etc.

I was glad to creep into the cool darkness, clinging close to Lilith’s

skirt. I was a little boy now, with scarcely a desire to be a husband.

When I looked across my shoulder the game was in full swing. The woman

was serving out the balls; the crowd was paying its pennies; the man was

dodging up and down before the sheet, avoiding the balls and returning

them. I heaved a sigh of relief; then he had not succumbed--he was not

yet a dead’un.

CHAPTER VII--THE OPEN WORLD

That night in the tent I slept soundly, with the fortuneteller’s arm

about me and my head nearly touching Ruthita’s across her breast. The

soft rise and fall of her bosom made me dream of my mother.

Glimmerings of the early autumn sunrise crept in through holes in the

canvas. I raised myself cautiously and gazed at the woman who had cared

for me. I call her a woman, for she seemed to me a woman then; she

was about seventeen--little more than a girl. Her face was gentle and

passionate; her jet black hair streamed down in a torrent across

her tawny throat and breast. She smiled in her sleep and murmured to

herself; the arm which clasped Ruthita kept twitching, as though to draw

her nearer. While I watched, her eyes opened; she said nothing, but lay

smiling up at me. Presently she put her free arm about my neck, and drew

me down so my cheek rested against hers. She turned her head and I saw

that, though she looked happy, there were tears on her long dark lashes.

Her lips moved and I knew what she wanted. Putting my arms about her, I

kissed her good-morning.

Rousing Ruthita, she raised the flap of the tent and we slipped out.

Mists were drifting across the woodland, pink and golden where the

sunrise caught them, but lavender in the shadows. It was a quiet fairy

world, like the face of a sleeping woman, which was pale with dew upon

the forehead and copper and bronze with the streaming hair of faded

foliage. Outside the door the grass was blackened in a circle where

a gipsy fire had burnt. The yellow caravan stood near. In and out the

bracken rabbits were hopping, nibbling at the cool green turf. The

gipsy’s lurcher watched them, crouched with his nose between his paws,

waiting his opportunity to steal closer. Lilith set about gathering

brushwood for the fire and we helped her.

“Ruthie, am I taller?”

She eyed me judicially and shook her curls. “No. But p’raps we shall

grow tall quite suddenly, when the honeymoon is ended.”

I was beginning to have my doubts of that, so I changed the subject.

“Lilith has a baby. She carries it on her back.”

“Where does she keep it now?” asked Ruthita. “It wasn’t on her back

last night in the tent.” Then she commenced to hop about like an eager,

excited little bird. “I shall ask her. I shall ask her, Dante, and

she’ll let me hold it.”

But when we ran to Lilith her back was straight and unbulgy. And when we

asked her where she kept the baby, she dropped the bundle of sticks she

was carrying and sank to her knees, with her hands pressed against her

breast. She swayed to and fro, with her eyes closed, muttering in a

strange language. Then she bent forward, kissing the ground and chanting

words which sounded like, “Coroon! Coroon! Oh, dearie, come back. Come

back!”

We heard the door of the caravan open. Lilith sprang to her feet and

picked up her sticks as though ashamed of what she had been doing. The

fierce man stood on the caravan steps. He strode across the grass to

Lilith and laid his hand on her shoulder with a rough gesture which was

almost kindly. “The wind blows, sister,” he said, “and it sinks behind

the moon. The flowers grow, sister, and they fall beneath the earth.

Where they have gone there is rest.”

He passed on, whistling to his lurcher. The gaudily dressed woman came

out; while he was gone, the fire was kindled and breakfast was prepared.

During breakfast a great discussion arose in their strange language.

When it was ended, Lilith took us with her into the tent. She closed

the flap carefully and began to undress us. While she was doing it she

explained matters. She told us that the man was too busy just now with

the cocoanut-shies to spare time to go and fetch my uncle to us. In a

few days he would go, but meanwhile we must stay with them in camp. She

said that they were good gipsies, but no one would believe it if they

saw us with them. They would have to make us like gipsy children so

no one would suspect. So she daubed our bodies all over a light brown

color, and she stained my hair because it was flaxen. Then she gave us

ragged clothes, without shoes or stockings, and dug a hole in the ground

and hid ours. She was curious to know what had brought us to the

forest; but we would not tell. We had the child’s feeling that telling

a grown-up would break the spell--we should never be married then, the

little house would never be built, and none of the other pleasant things

would happen. We should have to go back to the garden again and live

always within walls.

Those days spent in our first dash for freedom stand out in my memory as

among the happiest. I ate of the forbidden fruit of romance and reaped

no penalties. Ruthita cried at times for her mother; but I had only to

remind her of the babies she would have, and her courage returned.

The smell of the camp-fire is in my nostrils as I write; I can feel

again the cool nakedness of unpaved woodlands beneath my feet and open

skies above my head. I see Ruthita unsubdued and bare-legged, plunging

shoulder-high into golden bracken, shouting with natural gladness,

followed by the gipsy boys and girls. We tasted life in its fullness for

the first time, she and I, on that fantastic honeymoon of ours. We felt

in our bones and flesh the simple ecstasy of being alive--the wide,

sweet cleanness of the open world. And remembering, I wonder now, as

I wondered then, why men have toiled to learn everything except to be

happy, and have labored with so much heaviness to build cities when the

tent and the camp-fire might be theirs.

Books, schoolmasters, and universities have taught me much since then.

They have spattered the windows of my soul with knowledge to prevent my

looking out. Luckily I discovered what they were doing and stopped the

rascals. But I knew more things that were essentially godlike before

they commenced their work. The major part of what they taught me was a

weariness to the flesh in the learning, and a burden to the brain when

learnt. Of how many days of shouting and sunshine they robbed me with

their mistaken kindness. Of what worth is a Euclid problem at forty,

when compared with the memory of a childhood’s day of flowers, and

meadows, and happiness?

For twenty years my father sat prisoner at a desk, unbeautifully and

doggedly driving his pen across countless pages that he might be able to

buy me wisdom. With all his years of sacrifice and my years of laborious

study, he gave me nothing which was half so valuable as that which a boy

of nine stole for himself in his ignorance in the forest. There I learnt

that the sound of wind in trees is the finest music in the world; that

the power to feel in one’s own body the wholesome beauties of nature is

more rewarding than wealth; that to know how to abandon oneself to

the simple kindness of living people is a wiser knowledge than all the

elaborate and codified wisdom of the dead.

We roamed the countryside with Lilith by day, listening to her telling

fortunes. By night we slept in her arms in the tent. Only one thing

was forbidden us--to speak with strangers. But there was one man who

recognized us in spite of that. It was on the first morning. We were

sitting by the side of the road with the fierce man; he was showing us

how to make a snare for a rabbit. We were so interested that we did not

notice a flock of sheep approaching until they were quite close. Then

I looked up and caught the eye of old Dot-and-Carry One burning in his

head, glaring out at us as if it would fly from its socket. He would

have spoken had he dared, but just then the fierce man saw him. He sank

his chin upon his breast and, for all that he was “a human, made in

Gawd’s h’image,” limped away into the distance in a cloud of dust, as

meekly sheepish as any of the sheep he followed.

Ruthita spent a lot of her time in searching for Lilith’s baby. She

wanted so badly to hold it. We felt quite certain that she had hidden

it somewhere, as she had our clothes. Even if it was a dead’un, it was

absurd to suppose that a person so clever as to tell fortunes should

not know where it might be found. We determined to watch her. We thought

that if her baby was really dead and she went to it by stealth, then

by following her we should be able to find my mother and, perhaps,

Ruthita’s father. Ruthita had already abandoned the dread that

Dot-and-Carry-One had had anything to do with her entrance into the

world.

Naphtha-lamps were extinguished. The crowd of merrymakers had departed.

I was roused by Lilith stirring. Very gently she eased her arm

from under me. I kept my eyes tightly shut and feigned that I was

undisturbed. Cautiously she pulled aside the flap of the tent and stole

out. I rose to my feet when she had gone. Ruthita was sleeping soundly,

her small face cushioned in her hand. Without waking her I followed.

Near to the caravan the camp-fire smoldered, making a splash of red

like a pool of blood in the blackness. As I watched, it was momentarily

blotted out by a moving shadow. The lurcher shook himself and growled.

Lilith’s voice reached me, telling him to lie down. A bank of cloud lay

across the moon, but I knew the way she went by the rustle of the fallen

leaves, turning beneath her tread. I followed her down the glades of the

forest, peering after her, glancing behind me at the slightest sound,

timid lest I might lose her, timid lest I might lose myself, stealing on

tiptoe into the unknown with sobbing, stifled breath. The ground began

to descend into a hollow at the bottom of which a pond lay black and

sullen. A tall beech stood at its edge, spreading out its branches and

leaning across it as if to hide it. The leaves beneath her footsteps

ceased to stir.

When I could no longer hear her, a horrible, choking sense of solitude

took hold of me. What if she had entered into the tree and should never

return? Without her, how should I find my way back? I crept as near

the pond as I dared, and crouched among the dead leaves, trembling.

The water began to splash. “Someone,” I thought, “is rising out of it.”

Little waves, washing in the rushes, caused the brittle reeds to shake

and shiver, whispering in terror among themselves. A low sing-song

muttering commenced. It came from the middle of the pond. I tried to

stop breathing. It seemed quite possible that the baby was hidden there.

The bank of cloud trailed across the sky. The yellow harvest moon

dipped, broad and smiling, into the latticework of boughs which roofed

the dell.

In the middle of the pond, knee-deep, Lilith stood. She had cast aside

her Romany rags and rose from the water tall and splendid. Her tawny

body was a gold statue glistening beneath the moon. Her night-black

hair fell sheer from her shoulders like a silken shadow. She was bending

forward, peering eagerly beneath the water’s surface, whispering hurried

love-words. Of all that she said I could only catch the words, “Coroon.

Coroon. Come back, little dearest. Come back.” She laughed gladly and

held out her arms, as though there drifted up towards her that which she

sought. I could see nothing, for her back was towards me. Still lower

she bent till her lips kissed the water’s surface; plunging her arms in

elbow-deep, she seemed to support the thing which she saw there.

“Lilith, oh Lilith!” I cried.

She started and turned. I feared she was going to be angry. “Show me my

Mama,” I whispered.

She put her finger to her lips, and beckoned, and nodded.

Hastily I undressed, tossing my rags beside hers. I waded out to where

she was standing. The night air was chilly. She gave me her hand and

drew me to her. Placing me before her, so that I could gaze into the

pond like a mirror, she chanted over and over a low, wild tune. She

peered above my shoulders. At first I could see only my own reflection

and hers. Then, as she sang, the water moved, the inky blackness

reddened; I forgot everything, the cold, Lilith, my terror, and lived

only in that which was coming.

In the bottom of the pool, infinitely distant, a picture grew. It came

so near that I thought it would touch me; I became a part of it. I saw

my mother. She was seated by a fire in an unlighted room. A little boy

lay in her lap with his arms about her. She glanced up at me smiling

faintly, gazing into my eyes directly. For a moment I saw her

distinctly, and caught again the fragrance of violets that clung about

her. The water rippled and the vision died away in smoke and cloud.

Lilith gathered me to her cold wet breast and carried me to the shore

and dressed me. Without knowing why, I knew that this was a happening

that I must not tell.

We returned to camp. Woods were stirring. Shadows were thinning. Dawn

was breaking. The coldness in the air became intense. We threw branches

on the fire and blew the smoldering embers, till sparks began to fly

and twigs to crackle. Lilith sat with me in her arms, and hushed and

mothered me. I was not ashamed; for five years I had wanted just that.

I was glad that she understood. Ruthita could not see me; nobody but the

dawn would ever know. So I fell asleep and went back to the fragrance of

violets, the fire, and the cosy darkened room.

CHAPTER VIII--RECAPTURED

Ruthita and I were terribly puzzled about that baby. We couldn’t make

out how it had found its way into the world. We supposed that God had

made a mistake in sending it to Lilith, and that was why He had taken it

back.

Our difficulty rose from the fact that Lilith did not appear ever to

have been married. The fierce man was not her husband. So far as we

could discover from the gipsy children she had never had a husband.

Then she couldn’t have had a honeymoon: and, if she had never had a

honeymoon, she oughtn’t to have had a baby. Our ideas on the question of

birth were utterly disorganized. There was only one explanation--that

we had been misinformed by Hetty and people could have babies

by themselves. The effect of this conjecture on Ruthita was

revolutionizing: it made our honeymoon unnecessary and me entirely

dispensable. She had only been persuaded to elope for the sake of

exchanging dolls for babies, and now it appeared she could have them

and her mother as well. I had no argument left with which to combat her

desire to return. There was only one way of arriving at the truth on the

subject, and that was by inquiring of Lilith. Neither of us would have

done this for worlds after the way she had cried when we found that her

back was no longer bulgy.

The days grew shorter and the forest became bare. We could see long

distances now between the tree-trunks; it was as though the branches had

fisted their hands. Holiday-seekers came to the cocoanut-shies less and

less. The fierce man, whom we learnt to call G’liath, had hardly any

bruises on his face and hands; he dodged the balls easily. The few

chance throwers had no crowd to make them reckless; they shied singly

now and not in showers. The gaudily dressed woman lost her hoarseness.

She no longer had to shout night and morning, “Two shies a penny. Two

shies a penny. Every ball ’its a cocoanut. Down she goes,” etc. Why

should she? There was no one to get excited--nobody to pay her pennies.

Instead she sat by the fire, weaving wicker-baskets, watching the

pearl-colored smoke go up in whiffs and eddies. Though she seldom said

anything, she had taken a fancy to Ruthita and would spread for her a

corner of her skirt that she might sit beside her while she worked.

Every day as Ruthita became more sure that she could have a baby all by

herself, she wanted to go home more badly. One evening the gaudy woman

found her crying. She told G’liath that next morning he must harness in

his little moke and go for Mr. Spreckles. I did not hear her tell him,

but Lilith told me when she came to lie down beside me in the tent.

That night she held me closer. I could feel her heart thumping. She

roused me continually in the darkness to ask me needless questions.

Whether I would ever forget her. “No.” Whether I would like to see her

again. “Yes.” Whether I would like to become a gipsy. “Wouldn’t I!”

She was silent for so long that I began to drowse. I awoke with the

tightening of her arms about me. When I lifted my face to hers, she

commenced to kiss me passionately. “You shall. You shall,” she said.

“I’ll make a gipsy of you, so you’ll always remember and never be

content with their closed-in world. They’ll take you from me to-morrow,

but your heart will never be theirs.”

I didn’t understand, but at dawn she showed me. Frost lay on the ground.

Every little blade of grass was stiff and sword-like. It was as though

the hair of the world had turned white from shock and was standing on

end.

She led me away through the tall stark forest to a glade so secret that

no one could observe us. At first I thought she was escaping with me,

carrying me off to her gipsy-land. But she made me kneel down beside

her. As the sun wheeled above the cold horizon she snatched a little

knife from beneath her dress, and pricked her wrist and mine so that

they bled. She held her hand beneath our wrists, catching the blood in

her palm so it mingled. Then she let it drip through her fingers, making

scarlet stains on the frosted turf.

As it fell she spoke to the grass and the trees and the air, telling

them that I was hers and, because our blood was mingled, was one of

them. “Whenever he hears your voice,” she said, “it will speak to him

of me. If he goes where you do not grow, oh grass, then the trees shall

call him back. If he goes where you do not grow, oh trees, then the wind

shall tell him. His hand shall be as ours, against the works of men.

When he hears your voice, oh grass, or your voice, oh trees, or your

voice, oh winds, he shall turn his face from walls and come back. Though

he leaves us he shall always hear us calling, for he is ours!”

And it seemed to me when her voice had ceased that I heard the grass

nodding its head. From the dawn came a breath of wind, sweeping through

the trees, stooping their leafless branches as though they gave assent.

That morning for the first time we had breakfast in the caravan. After

breakfast Lilith and I went out together, hand-in-hand. G’liath was

harnessing in his donkey. We watched him drive down the road and vanish.

I did not want to go back and he knew it; he looked ashamed of

himself. The country was bitter and cheerless; it had an atmosphere of

parting--everything was withered. Birds huddled close on branches with

ruffled feathers. Fields were harsh and cracked.

“Little brother,” Lilith said, “one day you will be a man. Until then

they will keep you prisoner and try to make you forget all the things

which you and I have learnt. They will tell you that the trees have no

voices: that it is only the wind that stirs them. They will tell you

that rivers are only water flowing. But remember that out in the open

they are all waiting for you, and that the other people who have no

bodies are there.”

I thought of the picture I had seen in the pool and knew what she meant.

Towards evening we returned to the camp. The melancholy autumn twilight

lay about us; in the heart of it the fire burnt red. We sat round it in

silence, watching the hard white road through the trees and listening

for G’liath coming back. “Ruthita,” I whispered, “do you think we shall

find the little house?”

She shook her head doubtfully, as if she scarcely cared. She was

thinking of the lighted room, perhaps, and the long white bed, where her

mother was eagerly awaiting her.

Coming up the road we heard a sharp tap-a-tap. Dancing in and out the

tree-trunks we saw the golden eyes of carriage-lamps. The dog-cart and

Dollie came into sight and halted; my Uncle Obad jumped out. He had come

alone to fetch us; I was glad of that. I could explain things to him

so much more easily than to my father, and he was sure to understand.

Catching sight of me by the fire, he ran forward and lifted me up in his

arms. All he could say was, “Well, well, well!” His face was beaming;

every little wrinkle in his face was trembling. He hugged me so tightly

that he took away my breath. I didn’t get a chance to speak until he had

set me down. Then I said, “Uncle Obad, this is Ruthita.”

He held out his hand to her gravely. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs.

Dante Cardover,” he said. Then, because she was such a little girl and

her face looked so thin and wistful, he took her in his arms and hugged

her as well.

Suddenly the gaudy woman remembered that we were still clothed in our

gipsy rags. She wanted to take us into the caravan and dress us, but

Uncle Obad wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted on carrying us off to Pope

Lane just as we were.

It was night when he said, “Dollie is rested; we must be going.” When we

rose to our feet to say good-by, Lilith was not there. He lifted us into

the dog-cart and wrapped rugs about our shoulders to make us cozy. Then

he jumped in beside us and we had our last look at the camp. The gaudy

woman was standing up by the fire with her children huddled about her

skirts. I could see the gleam of her ear-rings shaking, the lighted

window of the caravan in the background, and the lurcher sneaking in and

out the shadows. G’liath and his donkey travelled slowly; they had not

returned when we left. Uncle Obad cracked his whip; we started forward

across the turf and were soon bowling between the dim skeletons of trees

down the hard road homeward.

Ruthita crept closer to me. She may have been cold and she may have been

lonely, but I think she was just feeling how flat things were now

our great adventure was over. She had feared it while it lasted; now,

womanlike, she was wishing that it was not quite ended. Every now and

then she drew her fingers across my face--a little love-trick she had.

She leant her head against my shoulder and was soon sleeping soundly.

“Old chap, why did you do it?”

I looked up at my uncle; I could not see his face because of the

darkness. His voice was very solemn and kindly.

“We couldn’t see anything in the garden,” I said; “we wanted to find

where the pigeons went.”

“But why did you take the little girl?”

I hesitated about telling. It might spoil what was left of the magic;

I still had a faint hope that by the time we reached Pope Lane I might

have grown into a man. And then, in telling, I might do Hetty a damage.

Instead of answering, I asked him a question.

“When you’re married, you get everything you want, don’t you?”

“That depends on what you call everything, Dante.”

“Well, money, and a house, and a pony, and babies.”

“Not always.”

He spoke softly. Then I knew I oughtn’t to have mentioned babies,

because, like Lilith, he hadn’t any.

“It wasn’t I who wanted the babies,” I explained hurriedly; “that was

Ruthie. She wanted them instead of dolls to play with. I wanted to be

allowed to go in and out, like the children with the magic carpet.”

He knew at once what I meant. “You didn’t want to have grown people

always bothering, telling you to do this and not to do that, and locking

doors behind you? You wanted always to be free and jolly, like you and

I are together? And you thought that you could be like that if you were

married?”

He slowed Dollie down to a walk.

“Little man, you’ve been trying to get just what everyone’s reaching

after. When you’re a boy you say, ‘I’ll have it when I’m a man.’ When

you’re a man you say, ‘I’ll have it when I’m married.’ You’ve been

searching for perpetual happiness. You’ll never have it in this world,

Dante. And don’t you see why you’ll never have it? You hurt other people

in trying to get it. Your father and Ruthita’s mother, all of us have

been very anxious. I’ve often been tempted to run away myself because

I’m not much use to anybody. But that would mean leaving someone I love;

so I’ve had to stop on and face it out. You ran away to enjoy yourself,

and other people were sorry. Other people always have to be sorry when a

fellow does that.”

He shook the reins over Dollie and she commenced to trot again.

Presently he said, half-speaking to himself, “There’s a better word than

happiness, and that’s duty. If a chap does his duty the best he can, he

makes other folk happy. Then he finds his own happiness by accident,

within himself. I’m a queer one to be talking--I’m not awfully

successful. I’ve run away a little. But you must do better. And if you

can’t bear things, just _imagine_. What’s the difference between the

things you really have and the things you pretend? Imagination is the

magic carpet; you can pretend yourself anything and anywhere. If you’ve

learnt that secret, they can lock all the doors--it won’t matter. I

can’t put it plainer; there are things that it isn’t right for you to

understand--this business about marriage. You’ll know when you’re a man.

Now promise that you’ll never run away again.”

I promised.

When we got to Pope Lane it must have been very late. I suppose I fell

asleep on the journey, for I remember nothing more until the light

flashed in my eyes and my father was bending over me. Ruthita wasn’t

there; she had been left already at her mother’s house. My father had me

in his arms. He was standing in the hall. The door was wide open and my

uncle was going down the steps, calling “Good-night” as he went. Behind

me I could see Hetty peering over the banisters in a gray flannel

nightdress--her night-dresses were all of gray flannel. When my father

turned, she scuttled away like a frightened rabbit.

He carried me into his study--just as I was, clad in my gipsy rags--and

closed the door behind him with a slam. His lamp on the table was turned

low. The floor was littered with books and papers. A fire in the hearth

was burning brightly. He drew up an easy-chair to the blaze and sat

down, still holding me to him. I was always timid with my father,

especially when we were alone together. This time I was very conscious

of wrong-doing. I waited to hear him say something; but he remained

silent, staring into the fire. The lamp flickered lower and lower, and

went out.

“Father, I--I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Then I saw that he was crying. His tears splashed down. His face had

lost that stem look. I was shaken by his sobs as he held me.

“Little son. My little son,” he whispered.

The room grew fainter. The pictures on the walls became shadowy. My eyes

opened and closed. When I awoke the gray light of morning was stealing

in at the window. The fire had fallen away in ashes. The air was chilly.

My father was sitting in the easy-chair, his head sunk forward--but his

arms were still about me.

CHAPTER IX--THE SNOW LADY

My father never asked me why I had run away or where I had gone.

His tongue was ever stubborn at loving with words. With Hetty it was

different. When my father had wakened and let me out of his arms to go

upstairs and dress, she caught me into her bosom and half-smothered me,

scolding and comforting by turns. Her corsets hurt me and her starched

print-dress was harsh; I was glad when she left off and set me down on

the bed.

“And who ever ’eard the likes o’ that,” she said: “a little boy to run

away from his dear Pa and take with ’im a little sweet-’eart as we

never knew ’e ’ad. Oh, the deceit of children for all they looks so

h’innercent! And ’ere was your dear Pa a-tearin’ all the ’air out of

’is ’ead. And ’ere was me and John--we couldn’t do no work and

we couldn’t do nothin’ for thinkin’ where you’d went. And there was you

a-livin’ with those dirty gipsies and wearin’ their dirty rags------”

“They’re not dirty,” I interrupted, “and I shan’t like you if you talk

like that.”

“Well, I’m only tellin’ you the truth; you was always perwerse and

’eadstrong.”

“You didn’t tell me the truth when you told me about marriage,” I said.

“Everything’s just the same as when we left. We ar’n’t any taller, and

we hav’n’t got a little house, and----”

She sat back on her heels and stared at me. “Oh, Lor,” she burst out,

“was that why you did it?” And then she began to laugh and laugh. Her

face grew red and again she fell upon me, until her corsets cut into me

to such an extent that I called to her to leave off.

“What I told you was gorspel true,” she said solemnly, “but you didn’t

understand. That’s wot ’appens to wimmen when they goes away with men.

I wasn’t speakin’ of little boys and girls. But it’ll never ’appen to

you when you grow up if you tell anybody wot I said.”

That morning after breakfast, instead of going into his study to work,

my father led me round to the Favarts’. As we came up the path I saw

Ruthita at the window watching for us. Monsieur Favart opened the door

to our knock. He said something to my father in French, shook me by the

hand gravely, and led the way upstairs. We entered a room at the back of

the house, overlooking the garden. A lady, almost as small as Ruthita,

was lying on a couch with cushions piled behind her head. She was

dressed completely in white; she had dark eyes and white hair, and a

face that somehow surprised you because it was so young and little. From

the first I called her the Snow Lady to myself.

She held out her hand to me and then, instead, put her arm about my

waist, smiling up at me. “So you are Dante, the little boy who wanted to

marry my little girl?”

Her voice was more soft and emotional than any voice I had ever heard.

It held me, and kept me from noticing anything but her. It seemed as

though all the eagerness of living, which other people spend in motion,

was stored up in that long white throat of hers and delicate scarlet

mouth.

“You can’t marry Ruth yet, you know,” she said; “you hav’n’t any money.

But if you like, you may go and kiss her.”

She turned me about and there was Ruthita standing behind me. I did what

I was told, shyly and perfunctorily. There was no sense of pleasure in

doing what you were ordered to do just to amuse grown people. The Snow

Lady laughed gaily. “There, take him out into the garden, Ruthita, and

teach him to do it properly.”

As I left the room, I saw that my father had taken my place by the

couch. Monsieur Favart was looking out of the window, his hands folded

on the head of his cane and his chin resting on them.

We played in the garden together, but much of the charm had gone out of

our playing now that it was allowed. The game we played was gipsies in

the forest. We gathered leaves and made a fire, pretending we were

again in camp. I was G’liath; Ruthita was sometimes the gaudy woman and

sometimes Lilith telling fortunes. But the pretense was tame after the

reality.

“Ruthie,” I said, “we ar’n’t married. What Hettie told me was all swank.

It’s only true of men and women, and not of boys and girls.”

“But we can grow older.”

“Yes. But it’ll take ages.”

She folded her hands in her pinafore nervously.

“We can go on loving till then,” she said.

On the way home my father told me that he liked Ruthita--liked her so

much that he had arranged with Madam Favart to have a door cut in the

wall between the two gardens so that we could go in and out. I didn’t

tell him that I preferred climbing over; he could scarcely guess it for

himself. There was no excitement in being pushed into the open and told

to go and play with Ruthita. It was all too easy. The fun had been in

no one knowing that I did play with such a little girl--not even knowing

that there was a Ruthita in the world. We tried to overcome this by

always pretending that we were doing wrong when we were together. We

would hide when we heard anybody coming. I despised the door and only

went through it when a grown person was present, otherwise I entered

by way of the apple-tree and the wall. My father caught me at it, and

couldn’t understand why I did it. Hetty said it was because I liked

being grubby.

Through the gray autumn months I wandered the garden, listening to the

dead leaves whispering together. “They’ll take you from me, but your

heart will never be theirs,” Lilith had said, and I tried to fancy that

the rustling of leaves was Lilith’s voice calling. It was curious how

she had plucked out my affections and made them hers.

Often I would steal into the tool-house and tell the white hen all about

it. But she also was a source of disillusionment. After long waiting I

found one egg in her nest. I thought she must be as glad about it as I

was, so left it there a little while for her to look at. I thought the

sight of it would spur her on to more ambitious endeavors. But when

I came back her beak was yellowy and the egg had vanished. After this

unnatural act of cannibalism I told her no more secrets; she had proved

herself unworthy. Shortly afterwards she died--perhaps of remorse. I

made my peace with her by placing her in a cardboard shoe-box for a

coffin and giving her a most handsome funeral.

One evening, when I had been put to bed, I stole to the window to gaze

into the blackness. I saw a man with a lantern go across our lawn and

disappear by the apple-tree through the door in the wall. After that I

watched. Nearly every night it happened. I was always too sleepy to

stay awake to see at what hour he came back. But I knew that he did come

back, for with the first fall of snow I traced his returning

footsteps. They came from Monsieur Favart’s door and entered in at our

study-window. So I guessed that the man was my father.

Madam Favart seemed to be growing stronger; she was able to get up and

walk about. Sometimes I would go into her house for tea, and she would

sit by the firelight and tell Ruthita and myself stories. She used

to try and get me to climb on her knee while she told them. I always

refused, because my mother used to do that. The Snow Lady used to laugh

at me and say, “Ruthita, Dante won’t make love to Mother. Isn’t he

silly?” Then I would grow sulky and sit as far off as I could.

When Christmas came round, the Favarts were invited over to spend it

with us. The Snow Lady brought a bunch of misletoe with her and hung it

about our house. After dinner the General fell asleep in his chair, and

we children played hide and seek together. I wanted to hide so securely

that Ruthita would never catch me. It was getting dark, and I knew

that she wouldn’t hunt for me in my father’s study. I was a little awed

myself at going there. I pushed open the door. The room was unlighted. I

entered, and then halted at the sound of voices whispering. Standing

in the window, silhouetted against the snow, were my father and Madam

Favart. He was holding a sprig of misletoe over her; his arm was about

her, and they were leaning breast to breast. She saw me first and

started back from him, just as Hetty had done when I found her with

John. Then my father, turning sharply, saw me. He called to me sternly,

“Dante, what are you doing, sir?” He sounded almost afraid because I had

been watching. Then he called again more softly, “Dante, my boy, come

here.”

But a strange rebellious horror possessed me. It seemed as though

something were tearing out my heart. I was angry, fiercely angry because

he had been disloyal to my mother. At that moment I hated him, but hated

Madam Favart much worse. I knew now why she had told me stories, and why

she had wanted me to climb on her knee, and why she had tried to force

me to make love to her. I rushed from the room and down the passage.

Ruthita ran out laughing to catch me, but I pushed her aside roughly

and unjustly. I wanted to get away by myself and fled out into the

snow-covered garden. My father came to the door and called. But Madam

Favart was with him; I could see by the gaslight, which fell behind

them, the way she pressed towards him. I could hear her merry contralto

laugh, and refused to answer.

“He’ll come by himself,” she said.

When the door closed and they left me, I felt miserably lonely. They had

been wicked and they were not sorry. Hetty said that God was twice as

angry with you for not being sorry as He was with you for doing wrong.

Hetty knew everything about God; she used to hold long conversations

with Him every night in her gray flannel nightdress. Soon the snow began

to melt into my shoes and the frost to nip my fingers. I wished they

would come out again and call me.

I became pathetic over the fact that it was Christmas. I pictured to

myself a possible death as a result of exposure. I saw myself dying in

a beautiful calm, forgiving everybody, and with everybody kneeling by my

bedside shaken with sobbing; the sobs of Madam Favart and my father were

to be the loudest. I was to be stretching out long white hands, trying

to quiet them; but their sense of guilt was to have placed them beyond

all bounds of consolation. Every time I tried to comfort them they were

to cry twice as hard. Then I saw my funeral and the big lily wreaths:

“From his broken-hearted father”; “From Madam Favart with sincere

regrets”; “From Hetty who told God untruths about him”; “From Ruthita

who loved him.” And in the midst of these tokens of grief I lay fully

conscious of everything, arrayed in a gray flannel nightshirt, opening

one eye when no one was looking, and winking at Uncle Obad.

I began to feel little pangs of hunger, and my pride gave way before

them. Reluctantly I stole nearer the house and peeked into the

study. They were all there seated round the fire, callously enjoying

themselves. The secret was plainly out--my father was holding Madam

Favart’s hand. Ruthita was cuddled against my father’s shoulder; she was

evidently reconciled rather more than stoically. I tapped on the pane.

The old General saw me. He signed to the others to remain still.

He threw up the window and lifted me into the warmth. I believe he

understood. Perhaps he felt just as I was feeling. At any rate, when

it was decreed that I should go to bed at once and drink hot gruel, he

slipped a crown-piece into my hand and looked as though he hadn’t done

it.

Within a month the marriage was celebrated, my father being a methodical

man who hated delays and loved shortcuts. It was a vicarious affair;

Ruthita and I had taken the honeymoon, and our parents were married. If

Uncle Obad hadn’t given me the white hen, and the hen hadn’t flown over

the wall, and I hadn’t followed, these things would never have happened.

I grew to admire the Snow Lady immensely. She always called me her

little lover. She never ordered me to do anything or played the mother,

but flirted with me and trusted to my chivalry to recognize her wants.

We played a game of pretending. It had only one disadvantage, that it

shut Ruthita out from our game, for one couldn’t court two ladies at

once. I learnt to kiss Ruthita as a habit and to take her, as boys will

their sisters, for granted. It is only on looking back that I realize

how beautiful and gentle she really was, and what life would have been

without her.

General Favart lived in the other house through the door in the wall.

He came to visit us rarely. He leant more heavily on his cane, and his

cloak seemed to have become blacker, his hair whiter, and his scar more

prominent. He could scarcely speak a word of English, so I never knew

what he thought. But it seemed to me he was sorrowing. One day we

children were told that he was dead; after that the door between the two

gardens was taken down and the hole in the wall bricked up.

BOOK II--THE PULLING DOWN OF THE WALLS

_And man returned to the ground out of which he was taken, and his wife

bare children and he builded walls. But thou shalt think an evil thought

and say, “I will go up to the land of unwalled villages._”

CHAPTER I--THE RED HOUSE

Dante, it’s time you went to school.”

For the past three years, since he had married the Snow Lady, my father

had given me lessons in his study for the last hour of every morning

before lunch. It had been the Snow Lady’s idea; she said I was growing

up a perfect ignoramus.

My father tilted up his spectacles to his forehead, and gazed across

the table at me thoughtfully. “Yes,” he repeated, “I’ll be sorry to lose

you, my boy; but it’s time you went to school.”

He was to lose me; then I was to go away! My heart sank, and leapt, and

sank again with a dreadful joy of expectation. In my childish way I had

always been impatient of the present--a Columbus ceaselessly watching

for the first trace of seaweed broken loose from the shores of the

unknown. Change, which at mid-life we so bitterly resent, was at that

time life’s great allurement.

The school selected was one of the smaller public-schools, lying fifteen

miles distant from Stoke Newington. It was called the Red House and

stood on Eden Hill. It was situated in lovely country, so my father

said, and had for its head-master a man with whom he was slightly

acquainted, whose name was the Reverend Robert Sneard.

For the next few weeks I was a semi-hero. Ruthita regarded me with the

kind of pitying awe that a bullock inspires in children, when they meet

it being driven lowing along a road to be slaughtered. Everyone became

busy over preparations for my departure--even the Snow Lady, who seldom

worked. I was allowed to sit up quite late, watching her pretty fingers

flashing the needle in and out the flannel that grew into shirts for

me to wear. Ruthita would snuggle up beside me, her long black curls

tickling my cheek. There were lengthy silences. Then Ruthita would look

up at her mother and say, “Mumsie, I don’t know whatever we shall do

without him.” And sometimes, when she said it, the Snow Lady would laugh

in her Frenchy way and answer, “Why, Ruthita, what’s one little boy?

He’s so tiny; he won’t leave much empty space.” But once, it was the

night before I left, she choked in the middle of her laughing and took

us both into her arms, telling us that she loved us equally. “I can’t

think what I’ll do without my little lover,” she said.

Of a sudden I had become a person of importance. The servants no longer

made a worry of doing things for me. They watched me going about the

house as though it were for the last time, and spoke of me to one

another as, “Poor little chap.” I had only to express a want to have it

gratified. I was treated as the State treats a condemned criminal on the

day of his execution, when they let him choose his breakfast. I gloried

in my eminence.

It was arranged that my uncle should drive me to the Red House. Before I

went, I was loaded with good advice. My father sent for me to his study

one night and, with considerable embarrassment, alluded to subjects of

which I had no knowledge, imploring me to listen to no evil companions

but to keep pure. His language was so delicately veiled that I was none

the wiser. I thought he referred to such boyish peccadilloes as jam

stealing and telling lies. Even the Snow Lady, who took delight in being

frivolous, read me a moral story concerning the rapid degeneration,

through cigarettes and beer-drinking, of a boy with the face of an

angel. Neither of these temptations was mine, and I had never regarded

myself as particularly angelic in appearance. They beat about the bush,

hunting ghostly passions with allegories.

I noticed that Ruthita would absent herself for an hour or more at a

stretch. When I followed her up to her room the door was locked, and

she would beseech me with tears in her voice not to peek through the

key-hole. The mystery was explained when she presented me with a knitted

muffler, the wool for which she had purchased from her own savings.

I came across it, moth-eaten and faded, in my old school play-box the

other day. It was cold weather when she made it, for a little girl to

sit in a bedroom without a fire. I hope I thanked her sufficiently and

did not accept her surprise as though it were expected.

On an afternoon in January I departed. Then I realized for the first

time what going away from home meant. The horror of the unknown, not the

adventure, pressed upon me. We all pretended to be very gay--all except

Hetty, who threw her apron over her head and, in the old scripture

phrase, lifted up her voice and wept. They accompanied me out of the

garden, down Pope Lane, to where the dog-cart was tethered. I mounted

reluctantly, stretching out the last moment to its greatest length, and

took my place beside Uncle Obad. My father had his pen behind his ear,

I remember. It seemed to me as though the pen were saying, “Hurry up now

and get off. Your father can’t waste all day over little boys.” Dollie

lifted her head and began to trot. The Snow Lady waved and waved,

smiling bravely. Then Ruthita broke from the group and ran after us down

the long red street for a little way. We turned a corner and they were

lost to sight.

I drew nearer to my uncle, pressing Ruthita’s muffler to my lips and

gazing straight before me.

“What--what’ll it be like?”

He shook his head. “Couldn’t say,” he muttered huskily.

After about an hour’s driving, he broke the silence with a kindly effort

to make conversation. He told me that we were on the Great North Road,

where there used to be highwaymen. He spoke of Dick Turpin and some of

his exploits. He pointed out a public-house at which highwaymen used to

stay. He could not stir my imagination--it was otherwise occupied. I

was wondering why I should be sent to school, if my going made everyone

unhappy. I was picturing the snug nursery, with the lamp unlighted, and

the fire burning, and Ruthita seated all alone on the rug before the

fire.

We left the Great North Road, striking across country, through frosty

lanes. My uncle ceased speaking; he himself was uninterested in what he

had been saying. We passed groups of children playing before clustered

cottages, and laborers plodding homeward whistling. It seemed strange to

me that they should all be so cheerful and should not realize what was

happening inside me.

We came in sight of the Red House. It could be seen at a great distance,

for it stood out gauntly on the crest of Eden Hill, and the sunset lay

behind it. In the lowlands night was falling; lights were springing

up, twinkling cheerfully. But the Red House did not impress me as

cheerful--it had no lights, and struck me with the chill and repression

that one feels in passing by a prison.

“Well, old chap, we’re nearly there,” said my uncle with a futile

attempt to be jolly.

I darted out my hand and dragged on the reins. “Don’t--don’t drive so

fast. Let Dollie walk.”

He looked down at me slantwise. “You’ve got to be brave, old chap.

Nothing’s as bad as it seems at the time. Nothing’s so bad that it

can’t be lived through. Why, one day you’ll be looking back and telling

yourself that these were your happiest days.”

Despite his optimisms, he did as I requested and let Dollie walk the

rest of the way. While she climbed the hill, we got out and walked

beside her. My uncle put his hand in his pocket, and drew out a

half-crown. He balanced it in his palm; tossed it; put it back into his

pocket; drew it out again. “Here, Dante,” he said at last, “see what

I’ve found. You’d best take it.”

As we approached nearer, he was again moved to generosity. He was moved

three times, to be exact; each time he considered the matter carefully,

then rushed the coin at me. He gave me seven shillings in all. I am sure

he could ill afford them.

At the top of the hill he beckoned me to jump into the trap. It was

fitting, I suppose, that we should drive up to my place of confinement

grandly. Then a great idea seized me. My box was under the seat behind.

I had all my belongings with me. There were no walls to restrain us now.

“Uncle,” I whispered, “I don’t want to go there. You once said you were

tired of houses. Why shouldn’t we run away?”

He heard the tremble in my voice. He lifted me in beside him and drove

along the outside of the school-walls, not entering at the gate.

“It’s beastly hard,” he said, “and the trouble is that I can’t explain

it. All through life you’ll be wanting to run away, and all through

life, if you’re not a coward, you won’t be able. You see, people have to

earn a living in this world, and to earn a living they must be educated.

Your father’s trying to give you the best education he can, and he means

to be kind. But it’s a darned shame, this not being able to do what

you like. I can’t run away with you, old chap. There’s nothing for it;

you’ve just got to bear it.”

He stopped, searching for words. He wanted to tell me something really

comforting and wasn’t content with what he had said. He found it.

Turning round in the dogcart, he threw his arm about my shoulder and

pointed above my head, “Look up, there.” I raised my eyes and saw the

blue black sky like an inverted cup, with a red smudge round the western

rim where a mouth of blood had stained it. One by one the silver stars

were coming out and disappearing, like tiny bubbles which break and form

again. As I looked, night seemed to deepen; horizons dropped back; the

earth fell away. The sky was no longer a cup; it was nothing measurable.

It was a drifting sea of freedom, and I was part of it.

“They can rob you of a lot of things,” my uncle said, “but they can

never take that from you. It’s like the world of your imagination,

something that can’t be stolen, and that you can’t sell, and that you

can’t buy. It’s always yours.”

We drove through the gate to the main entrance. My box was deposited

in the hall. My uncle shook hands with me in formal manner when he said

good-by, for the school-porter was present. He turned round sharply to

cut proceedings short, and disappeared into the night. I listened to his

wheels growing fainter. For the first time I was utterly alone.

CHAPTER II--CHILDISH SORROWS AND CHILDISH COMFORTERS

In delicate schoolboy slang, I was a new-bug--a thing to be poked and

despised, and not to be spoken to for the first few days. There were

other new-bugs, which was some consolation; but we were too shy to get

acquainted. We moped about the playground sullen and solitary, like

crows on a plowed field. Every now and then some privileged person, who

was not a new-bug, would bang our shins with a hockey-stick; after which

we would hop about on one leg for a time, looking more like crows than

ever.

The Snow Lady had packed fifty oranges in my box. I made holes in the

tops of them with my thumb and rammed in lumps of sugar, sucking out the

juice. Not because I was greedy, but because there seemed nothing else

to do, I ate every one of the fifty the first day. The following night I

was ill, which did not help my popularity. One dark-haired person, about

my own age, with a jolly freckled face, took particular offense at my

misdemeanor. His real name was Buzzard, but he was nicknamed the Bantam

because of his size and his temper. He never said a word about the

oranges, but he punished me for having been ill by stamping on my toes.

He did this whenever he passed me, looking in the opposite direction in

an absent-minded fashion. My quietness in putting up with him seemed to

irritate him.

The afternoon was frosty; I was hobbling miserably about the playground

with Ruthita’s muffler round my throat. It was a delicate baby-pink, and

the Bantam easily caught sight of it. He came up and jerking it from me,

trod on it. I had never fought in my life, but my wretchedness made me

reckless. I thought of little Ruthita and the long cold hours she

had spent in making it. It seemed that he had insulted her. I hit him

savagely on the nose.

Immediately there were cries of, “A fight! A fight!” Games were stopped.

Boys came running from every direction. Even the new-bugs lifted up

their heads and began to take an interest in the landscape.

“Now you’ve done it,” the Bantam shouted.

He started out, accompanied by the crowd to the bottom of the

playground. I followed. The laboratory, a long black shed, stood there,

with a roof of galvanized iron and rows of bottles arranged in the

windows. Behind it we were out of sight of masters, unless they happened

to be carrying on experiments inside.

A ring was formed. The Bantam commenced to take off his coat and collar.

I did likewise. A horrid sickening sense of defenselessness came over

me. I experienced what the early Christians must have felt when they

gazed round the eager amphitheatre, and heard the lions roaring.

A big fellow stepped up. “Here, new-bug, d’you know how to fight?”

When I shook my head, he grinned at me cheerfully. “Hold your arms well

up, double your fists, and go for him.”

The advice was more easy to give than to put into action. The Bantam was

on top of me in a flash. He made for my face at first, but I lowered my

head and kept my arms up, so he was content to pummel me about the body.

He hurt, and hurt badly; I had never been treated so roughly.

Something happened. Perhaps it was a fierce realization of the injustice

of everything--the injustice of being sent there by people whom I loved,

the injustice of not being spoken to, the injustice of the boys jeering

because I was getting thrashed. I felt that I did not care how much I

got damaged if only I might kill the Bantam. He thumped me on the nose

as I looked up; my eyes filled with tears. I dashed in at him, banging

him about the head. I heard his teeth rattle. I heard the shouting,

“Hurrah! Go it, new-bug. Well done, new-bug.” In front of me the wintry

sunset lay red. I remember wondering whether it was sunset or blood.

Then the Bantam tried to turn and run. I caught him behind the ear. He

tripped up and fell. I stood over him, doubtful whether he were dead.

Just then the door of the laboratory opened. The boys began to scatter,

shouting to one another, “The Creature! Here he comes. The Creature!”

The Bantam picked himself up and followed the crowd.

A man came round the side of the shed. He looked something like

Dot-and-Carry-One, only he was smaller. His hair was the color of a

badger’s, shaggy and unbrushed. His face was stubbly and besmirched with

different colored chalks from his fingers. His clothes were stained and

baggy. He approached sideways, crabwise, in a great hurry, with one hand

stretched out behind and one in front, like flappers. His gestures

were those of a servant in a Chinese etching; they made him absurdly

conspicuous by their self-belittlement. Beyond everything, he was dirty.

“What they been beating you for?” he inquired in his shorthand way of

talking. “You hit him first! What for?” He pulled a stump of a pencil

out of his mouth as though he were drawing a tooth. After that I could

hear him more clearly. “A muffler? He trod on it? Well, that’s nothing

to fight about. Oh, your sister gave it you? That’s different.”

The last two sentences were spoken very gently--quite unlike the rest,

which had been angry. “Humph! His sister gave it him!”

He took me by the hand and led me into the shed, closing the door behind

him. An iron stove was burning. The outside was red hot; it glowered

through the dusk. Running round the sides of the room were taps and

basins, and above them bottles. Ranged on the table in the middle were

stands, bunsen-burners and retorts. He went silently about his work. He

was melting sulphur in a crucible.

Every now and then the sulphur caught and burnt with a violet flame; and

all the while it made a suffocating smell.

I felt scared. I didn’t know what he was going to do with me. The boys

had called him The Creature, which sounded very dreadful. He had dragged

me into his den just like the ogres the Snow Lady read about.

Presently his experiment ended. He gave me a seat by the stove, and came

and sat beside me. He didn’t look at all fierce now. He struck me as old

and discouraged.

“Always fight for your sister,” he said. Then after a pause, “What’s she

called?”

I found myself telling him that she wasn’t really my sister, that her

name was Ruthita, and that she had knitted me the muffler. He patted me

on the knee as I talked. He might almost have been The Spuffler.

“Boys are horrid beasts,” he said. “They don’t mean to be unkind. They

don’t think--that’s all. Soon you’ll be one of them.”

He led the way out of the laboratory, turning the key behind him. The

bell in the tower was ringing for supper. The school was all lit up.

He climbed the railing which divided the playground from the football

field, telling me to follow. We passed across the meadows to the

village, which lay on the northward side of Eden Hill; it snuggled

among trees. The cottages were straw-thatched. Frost glistened on the

window-panes, behind which lamps were set. Unmelted snow glimmered here

and there in the gardens in patches among cabbage stumps. We turned in

at a gate. The Creature raised the latch of the door and we entered.

How cozy the little house was after the bare stone corridors and cold,

boarded dormitories. All the furnishings of the room into which he led

me were worn and out-of-date; but they had a homelike look about them

which atoned for their shabbiness. The walls bulged. Pictures hung awry

upon them. The springs of the sofa had burst; you sank to an unexpected

depth when you sat upon it. The carpet was threadbare; patch-work rugs

covered the worst places. Yet for all its poverty, you knew that it

was a room in which people had loved and been kind to one another. An

atmosphere of memory hung about it.

The Creature appeared to be his own house-keeper. He left me alone while

he went somewhere into the back to get things ready. I could hear him

striking matches and jingling cups against saucers.

As I sat looking curiously round at wax-fruit in glass-cases and a

stuffed owl on the mantel-shelf, the door was pushed open gently. An

old lady entered. She trod so lightly, gliding her feet along the floor,

that I should not have heard her save for the turning of the handle.

She was dressed from head to foot in clinging muslin. Her face and hands

were so frail and white that you could almost see through them. Her

faded hair fell disordered and scanty about her shoulders. Her eyes were

unnaturally large and luminous. She showed no surprise at seeing me.

She looked at me so stealthily that she seemed to establish a secret.

Crossing her hands on her breast she courtesied, and then asked me as

odd a question as was ever addressed to a little boy. “Are you my Lord?”

“If you please, mam,” I faltered, “I’m Dante Cardover.”

Her look of intense eagerness faded, and one of almost childish

disappointment took its place. She moved slowly about the room, from

corner to corner, bowing to people whom I could not see and whispering

to herself.

My host came shuffling along the passage. He was carrying a tea-tray.

When he saw the woman, he set it hurriedly down on the table and went

quietly towards her. “Gipie,” he said, “Egypt, we’re not alone; we have

a guest. Tell them to go away.”

He spoke to her soothingly, as though she were a child. Her eyes

narrowed, the strained far-away expression left her face. She made a

motion with her hand, dismissing the invisible persons. He led her to

me. It was strange to see a grown woman follow so obediently.

“Gipie,” he said, “I want you to listen to me. This boy is my friend.

They were fighting him up there,” jerking his head in the direction of

the school. “He’s lonely; so I brought him to you. Tell him that you

care.”

The old lady lifted her hands to my shoulders--such pale hands. “I’m

sorry,” she said. It was like a child repeating a lesson.

He introduced us. “This is my sister, Egypt; and this is Dante

Cardover.”

I don’t know what we talked about. I can only remember that the little

old man and woman were kind to me and gave me courage. There are

desolate moments in life when one hour of sympathy calls out more

gratitude than years of easy friendship.

That night as the Creature walked back with me from his cottage, he told

me to come to him whenever I was lonely. At the Red House he explained

my absence to the house-master. I went upstairs to the dormitory, with

its rows of twelve white beds down either side, feeling that I had

parted from a friend.

As I undressed in the darkness the Bantam spoke to me. “Didn’t mean to

fight you, Cardover. Make it up.”

So I made it up that night with the boy whose nose I had punched. He was

a decent little chap when off his dignity. We began to make confidences

in whispers; I suppose the darkness helped us. He told me that his

father was in India and that he hadn’t got a mother. I told him about

the Snow Lady, and Hetty, and Uncle Obad; I didn’t tell him about

Ruthita because of the muffler. Then I began to ask him about the

Creature. I wanted to know if that was his name. The Bantam laughed.

“Course not. He’s Murdoch the stinks’ master. We call him the Creature

’cause he looks like one. Weren’t you funky when he took you to his

rabbit-hutch? Was Lady Zion there?”

“Lady Zion?”

“Yes. Lady Zion Holy Ghost she calls herself. She’s his sister, and

she’s balmy.”

He was going to enter into some interesting details about her, when the

monitor and the elder boys came up. He hid his face in the pillow and

pretended to be sleeping soundly.

“The Bantam needs hair-brushing,” the monitor announced. “Here you, wake

up. You’re shamming.” He pulled the clothes off the Bantam’s bed with

one jerk. The Bantam sat up, rubbing his eyes with a good imitation of

having just awakened.

“Out you come.”

One boy held his hands and another his legs, bending his body into a

praying attitude. He fought like a demon, but to no purpose. They yanked

his night-shirt up, while the monitor laid into him with the bristly

side of a hairbrush. He addressed him between each blow. “That’s one for

bullying a new-bug. And that’s another for fighting. And that’s another

for being licked and getting in a funk, etc.” By the time they had done

he was sobbing bitterly. Then the light went out.

I suppose I ought to have been glad at being avenged; but I wasn’t.

Somehow I felt that the big boys had punished him not from a sense of

justice, but only because they were big and wanted to amuse themselves.

Then I got to thinking what a long way off India was, and how dreadful

it must make a boy feel never to see his father. It had been a long

while dark in the dormitory and almost everyone was breathing heavily.

I stretched out my hand across the narrow alley which separated me from

the Bantam.

“Bantam,” I whispered.

He snuffled.

“Bantam.”

I felt his fingers clutch my hand. I crept out and put my arms about

him. Then I got into his bed and curled up beside him, and so we both

were comforted.

CHAPTER III--THE WORLD OF BOYS

The Bantam and I became great friends. He was a brave daredevil

little chap, prematurely hardened by the absence of home influences

to make the best of life’s vicissitudes. Within an hour of having been

beaten, he would be gay again as ever. He was a soldier’s son, and never

wasted time in pitying himself. He was greedy for joy, as I am to this

day, and we contrived to find it together.

Yet, when I look back, the making of happiness at the Red House seems to

me to have been very much like manufacturing bricks without straw. I am

amazed at our success. Very slight provision was made for our comfort.

Our daily routine was in no way superior to that of a barrack; the only

difference was that they drilled our heads instead of our arms and

legs. The feminine influence was entirely lacking, and a good deal of

brutality resulted. If the parents could have guessed half the shocking

things that their fresh-faced innocent looking darlings did and said in

the three months of each term that they were away from home, they would

have been broken-hearted. And yet they might have guessed. For here

were we, young animals in every stage of adolescence, herded together in

class-rooms and dormitories, uninformed about ourselves, with only paid

people to care for us.

Apart from the masters we governed ourselves by a secret code of honor.

One of the favorite diversions, when things were dull, was to find some

boy who was unpopular, in a breach of schoolboy etiquette. He would

then be led into a class-room, held down over a desk, and thrashed with

hockey-sticks. I have seen a boy receive as many as ninety strokes, laid

on by various young barbarians who took a pride in seeing who could hit

hardest. Usually at the end of it the victim was nearly fainting,

and would be lame for days after. The masters knew all about such

proceedings, but they were too indifferent to interfere. They boasted

that they trusted to the school’s sense of justice.

A boy, who was at all sensitive, went about in a state of terror. If

you escaped hockey-sticks by day, there was always the dormitory and

hair-brush to be dreaded. The way to get beyond the dread of such

possibilities was to make yourself popular, and the easiest way to

become popular was to play ingenious pranks on the masters.

The glorious hours of liberty that broke up the monotonous round of

tasks stand out in vivid contrast to the discipline. We lived for them

and kept charts of the days, because this seemed to bring them nearer.

There were two half-holidays a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays, on

which, if sufficient excuse were given, we were allowed to go out of

the school-grounds. If the permission were withheld, we broke bounds

and took the risk of discovery and consequent thrashings. These stolen

expeditions had a zest about them that made them the more pleasurable.

The Bantam and I did most things together. We had a common fund of

money. His memories of India lent a touch of romance to our friendship.

He would spin long yarns of man-eating tigers and terrible battles with

hill-tribes. He had a lurid imagination and added some fresh detail each

time he told his tales. Not to be behindhand, I narrated my escape to

the forest--leaving out the Ruthita part of it--and how Lilith had made

me a gipsy.

These stories became a secret between us which we shared with no one.

We created for ourselves a mirage world which we called IT. In IT we had

only to speak of things and they happened. In IT there were man-eating

tigers to whom we threw our masters when they had been unpleasant to us.

We would drag them by their feet through the jungle, and then let out

a low blood-thirsty wailing sound. Immediately we had done it, we would

drop our victim and climb trees, for we could hear the tigers coming.

The victim was bound so he couldn’t run away and while he lay there

“in the long rank grass with bulging eyes,” we would remind him of his

crimes committed at the Red House. The account of his tortures and dying

words would become a dialogue between the Bantam and myself.

“Then the tiger seized him by the arm and chawed him,” the Bantam would

say.

“And the other tiger seized him by the leg, pulling in an opposite

direction,” said I.

“Then old Sneard looked up at me, with imploring eyes. ‘I’ve been a

beast,’ he moaned, ‘and you were always a good boy. Call them off for

the sake of my little girl.’ But I only laughed sepulchrally,” said the

Bantam.

“Your little girl will be jolly well glad when you’re dead,” said I.

“Everybody will be glad,” said the Bantam. “And then a third tiger crept

out of the bushes and bit off his head, putting an end to his agony.”

“You needn’t have killed him so soon,” I would expostulate

discontentedly. “I’d got something else I wanted to do to him.”

“All right,” the Bantam would assent cheerfully; “let’s kill him again.”

So real was this land of IT to us, that we would shout with excitement

as we reached the climax of our narrations. The English fields through

which we wandered became swamps, deserts, and forests at will.

It became part of our game to pretend that we might meet Lilith any day.

Often we would break bounds, stealing down country lanes and peering

through hedges, hoping that at the next turn we should discover her

seated before her camp-fire. Hope deferred never curbed our eagerness;

we always believed that we should meet her next time.

If we did not meet Lilith, we met someone equally strange--Lady Zion,

the Creature’s sister. It was the Bantam who told me all about her.

“She’s wrong up there,” he said, tapping his forehead. “She thinks she’s

something out of the Bible; that’s why she calls herself Lady Zion Holy

Ghost. She goes about the country dressed in white, riding on a donkey,

muttering to herself, looking for someone she can never find. She thinks

that she’s in love with old Sneard, and that he don’t care for her. They

say that once he was going to marry her and then threw her over. That’s

what sent her balmy.”

When I grew older I learnt the truth about the Creature and his sister.

He became a firm friend of mine before schooldays were ended. He was a

man who possessed a faculty for not getting on in the world which, had

it been of value, would have amounted to genius. Anyone else with his

brains and instinct for daring guess-work in scientific experiment,

would have made a reputation. Instead of which he pottered his life

out at the Red House, defending his sister and allowing himself to be

imposed on both by boys and masters.

Popularity was the armor which permitted you to do almost anything with

impunity. A boy would take almost any chance to get it. Very early in my

school experience the Bantam thought out a plan which he invited me to

share--with the dire result that I was brought into intimate contact

with Mr. Sneard.

Every night between seven and eight the lower forms assembled to prepare

their next day’s lessons. The Creature usually presided, chiefly because

he was good-natured and the other masters were lazy. It was part of

his penance. The room in which we assembled was illumined by oil-lamps,

which hung low on chains from the ceiling. If the chimney of one of

these broke, the light became so bad in that quarter that work was

suspended until it had been replaced. The Bantam conceived the happy

idea of persuading them to break in an almost undiscoverable manner. It

was simplicity itself--to spit across the room so skilfully as to hit

the chimney, whereupon the moisture on the hot glass would cause it to

crack. We practised at sticks and gate-posts in the fields at first;

having become more or less proficient, we practised aiming at objects

above our heads. This was more difficult. Our progress was slow; it was

dry work. Still, within a month we considered ourselves adepts.

One night in prep we put our plan to the test. The Creature was seated

at his raised desk, absorbed in some scientific work. The Bantam,

judging his distance carefully, took aim and the chimney cracked.

As soon as the lamp-boy had been sent for and the chimney had been

replaced, it was my turn. I was no less successful. For a week prep

was disorganized; every night the same thing happened. I felt secretly

ashamed of myself, for I knew that I was behaving meanly to a man who

had always been kind in his dealings with me; but I was intoxicated with

popularity. The Bantam and I were the heroes of the hour. Boys who had

never condescended to speak to us, now offered us their next week’s

pocket-money to instruct them in an art in which we excelled. Games were

abandoned. All over the play-ground groups of young ruffians might be

seen industriously spitting at some object by the hour together.

I suppose the Creature must have watched us from the laboratory and

put two and two together. One night, when three chimneys had broken in

succession, he caught me in mid-act. I say he caught me, but he did not

so much as look up from the book he was reading. He just said, without

raising his head, “Cardover, you must report yourself to Mr. Sneard

to-morrow.”

To have to report oneself to Mr. Sneard was the worst punishment that

an under-master could measure out. Somehow it had never entered my head

that the Creature would be so severe as that. Why, I might get expelled

or publicly thrashed! My imagination conjured up all sorts of disgraces

and grisly penalties.

That night in the dormitory the Bantam told me of a way in which I might

save myself; it was my first lesson in the value of diplomacy in helping

one out of ticklish situations. It appeared that Mr. Sneard was always

lenient with a boy who professed conversion.

Next day as I was hesitating outside his private room, screwing up my

courage to tap, the Bantam sidled up behind me. “I’m going too,” he

said. Before I could dissuade him, he had turned the handle.

Sneard was a sallow cadaverous person; he affected side-whiskers and

had red hair. He wore clerical attire, the vest of which was very

much spotted through his nearsightedness when he ate at table. He was

probably the least scholarly master in the school, but he owed his

position to his manners. They were unctuous, and had the reputation of

going down with the parents. I suppose that was how he caught my father.

He composed hymns, which he set to music and compelled us to sing on

Sundays. They were mostly of the self-abasement order, in which we spoke

of ourselves as worms and besought the Almighty not to tread on us. For

years my mental picture of God was that of a gigantic school-master in

holy orders, very similar in appearance to Sneard himself.

When we entered, he was seated behind his desk writing. He prolonged our

suspense by pretending not to see us for a while. Suddenly he cast aside

his pen and wheeled round in a storm of furious anger. When he spoke, it

sounded like a dog yapping.

“You young blackguards, what’s this I hear about you?”

He forced us to tell him the stupid details of our offense. He could

have had no sense of humor, for while we were speaking he covered his

eyes with his hand as though staggered with horror at the enormity of

our depravity. Later experience has taught me that what he meant us to

believe was that he was engaged in prayer.

When in small throaty whispers we had finished our confession, he looked

up at us. “Your poor, poor fathers,” he said, “one in India and one my

friend! What shall I tell them? How shall I break this news to them?”

Then he straightened himself in his chair. “There’s nothing else for it;

Cardover, it’s over there. Will you please fetch it?”

He pointed to a cane in the corner, which leant against a book-shelf. It

was at this crisis that the Bantam made use of his stratagem.

“If you please, sir, I’ve been troubled about my soul again.” Then he

added loyally, “And Cardover’s been lying awake of nights thinking about

hell.”

If the truth be told I had been lying awake imagining Sneard being bled

to death very slowly, and very torturingly, by a hill-tribe. But Sneard

caught at the bait. “I am glad to hear it. Cardover, before I cane you,

come here and tell me about your views on hell.”

Before we left him, great crocodile tears were streaming from our eyes

by reason of knuckles rubbed in vigorously. We were not punished.

The last sight I had of Sneard he was gazing with holy joy at a great

oil-painting of himself which hung above his desk.

Most of the boys in the Red House were converted many times--as often

as they came within reach of the birch. Sneard made much coin out of

referring to these touching spiritual experiences in public gatherings

of parents. I have never been able to decide whether we really did

fool him. I am inclined to believe that his eyes were wide open to our

hypocrisy, but that he found it paid to encourage it. Part of his salary

was derived from percentages on the tuition fees of all boys over a

certain number. He found that the best card to play with parents for the

attracting of new pupils, was a statement of the numerous conversions

which were brought about through his influence.

CHAPTER IV--NEW HORIZONS

The Bantam and I won immunity from bullying in a quite unexpected

manner.

Our beds stood next together. Every night the younger boys were sent up

to the dormitory at nine; fifteen minutes later the lights were turned

out. The upper-classmen didn’t come up till ten. For three-quarters

of an hour each night we could whisper together in comparative

privacy about IT, going on wildest excursions in our hidden land. Not

unnaturally the curiosity of the other small boys of our dormitory was

aroused--they wanted to share our secret, and we wouldn’t let them. We

were quite their match if it came to a fight, which was all the more

irritating. We steadily refused to fight with them, or play with them,

or to tell them anything. They became sulky and suspicious; in their

opinion our conversation was too low to bear repetition. I suppose one

of them must have sneaked to Cow--Cow was monitor of our dormitory.

One night he came up early and on tiptoe. The first thing I knew he was

standing in the darkness looking down on me, where I lay whispering on

the Bantam’s bed. I was fairly caught.

“Young’un, what’s that you’re saying?” he asked sternly.

To have told him would have spoilt everything. Only when my night-shirt

had been stripped off and I saw that a grand gala-night of hair-brushing

was being planned, did I venture an explanation.

“I was only telling the Bantam a story.”

“That’s a lie. Let’s hear it,” said the Cow.

“I can’t begin when you’ve got my shirt,” I expostulated. “Let me get

back into bed; then I’ll tell you.”

It was arranged that I should be given a respite while the older boys

undressed. Once safe in bed, I set my imagination galloping.

“Once upon a time,” I commenced, “there was a great pirate and he was

known as the Pirate King. He had a wife called One-Eye, and she was the

only person he was afraid of in all the world. He sailed the blood-red

seas with a crew of smugglers and highwaymen, most of whom he had

rescued at the last minute from the gallows. They were devoted to him,

and the vessel in which he sailed was called _The Damn_.”

The name of the vessel fetched them. There was no more talk of

hair-brushing. At half-past ten the light went out and we heard old

Sneard shuffling down the passage, going his final round of inspection.

At each door he halted, lifting his candle above his head and craning

out his long thin neck. Satisfied that all was in order, he shuffled on

to his own quarters and we heard his door slam. That night I must have

lain in the darkness recounting the adventures of the Pirate King till

long past twelve. Every now and then a voice would interrupt me from one

of the narrow white beds, asking a question. I fell asleep in the midst

of my recounting.

After that it became a practice that each night a fresh development in

the life of this wonderful man should be unfolded. It was a good deal

of a tax on the imagination, but the Bantam came to my help, and we told

the story turn and turn about. We told how _The Damn_ sailed into Peru

and came back blood-drenched and treasure-laden; how the Pirate King took

strange maidens to his breast in coloring all the way from alabaster

to ebony, and what his wife One-Eye had to say about it; how the Pirate

King could never be defeated and became so strong that he made himself

Pope till he got tired of it. Discrepancies in chronology caused us no

more inconvenience than they usually do historic novelists. In our world

Joan of Arc and Julius Cæsar were contemporaries. They met for the first

time as prisoners, when they were introduced by the Pirate King on board

_The Damn_. It was owing to the Roman Emperor that the Maid escaped and

survived to be burnt.

But the part which found most favor was that which described the sack of

London, and how the boys of the Red House enlisted with the pirates and

took all the masters, except the Creature, out to sea and made them walk

the plank. I refused to allow the Creature to be murdered.

When the story became personal, the Bantam and I discovered ourselves

the possessors of unlimited power. We were lords of the other boys’

destinies. We could make them heroes or cowards, give them fair maidens

or forget to say anything about them. Frequently we received bribes to

let the giver down easily or to make him appear more valiant. I’m afraid

we drifted into being tyrants, like Nero and all the other men

whose wills have been absolute, and took our revenge with the rod of

imagination. In the middle of some thrilling escapade of the pirates,

when only courage could save them from calamity, we would tell how one

of the boys in a near-by bed turned traitor and went over to the enemy.

Out of the darkness would come an angry voice, “I didn’t, you little

beasts. You know quite well, I didn’t.”

“Oh, yes, you did,” we would say, and proceed to make him appear yet

more infamous. If he expostulated too frequently, arms would be reached

out and a shower of boots would fly about his head.

Our reputation spread beyond the dormitory; the history of the Pirate

King, his wife One-Eye, and the good ship _Damn_, became a kind of

school epic in which all the latest happenings at the Red House were

chronicled. No one dared to offend us, small as we were. Like Benvenuto

Cellini, sniffing his way through Europe and petulantly turning his

back on kings and cardinals with impunity, we attained the successful

genius’s privilege of being detested for our persons, but treasured for

our accomplishments. So at last we were popular in a fashion.

What contrasts of experience we had in those days!

The crestfallen returns to the Red House, with play-boxes stuffed with

feeble comfort in the shape of chocolates and cake; the long monotony

of term-time with the dull lessons, the birchings, the flashes of

excitement on half-holidays and the counting of the weeks till vacations

came round; then the wild burst of enthusiasm when trunks were packed

and Sneard had offered up his customary prayer in his accustomed

language, and we set off shouting on the homeward journey.

All the discipline and captivity were a small price to pay for the

gladness of those home-comings. Ruthita would be at the end of the Lane

waiting for me, a little shy at first but undeniably happy. The

Snow Lady would be on the door-step, her pretty face all aglow with

merriment. My father would forsake his study for the night and sit down

to talk to me with all the leisure and courtesy that he usually reserved

for grown men. Until they got used to me again I could upset my tea at

table, slide down the banisters, and tramp through the house with muddy

boots--no one rebuked me for fear the welcome should be spoiled. The

Snow Lady called me The Fatted Calf, wilfully misinterpreting the Bible

parable. Little by little Ruthita would lose her shyness; then we would

begin to plan all the things we would do in the seemingly inexhaustible

period of freedom that lay before us. In those days weeks were as long

as years are now.

There was once a time when I had no secrets from Ruthita. But a change

was creeping over us almost imperceptibly, forming little rifts of

reserve which widened. Walls of a new and more subtle kind were growing

up about us, dividing us for a time from one another and from everybody

else.

There was one holiday in which I became friendly with a butcher-boy. He

was a guinea-pig fancier; I arranged to buy one from him for a shilling.

My intention was to give it to Ruthita on her birthday. I told no one of

my plan--it was to be a surprise. A little hutch was knocked up in the

tool-shed which the old white hen had tenanted.

The night before the birthday the butcher-boy came, and smuggled the

little creature in at the gate. Next morning I wakened early. Ruthita

was standing beside my bed in her long white night-gown, beneath which

her rosy toes peeped out. When I had kissed her, she seemed surprised

that I had no present for her. I became mysterious. “You wait until I’m

dressed,” I said.

Slipping into my clothes I ran into the garden to get things ready. To

my unspeakable astonishment when I looked into the hutch, I found three

guinea-pigs, two of them very tiny, where only one had been the night

before. I felt that something shameful and indelicate had happened.

Exactly what I could not say, but something that I could not tell

Ruthita. When she traced me down to the tool-shed, I drove her away

almost angrily; I felt that I was secretly disgraced.

That morning when the butcher-boy called for orders, I took him aside. I

sold him back the three guinea-pigs for ninepence, and thought the loss

of threepence a cheap price to pay to rid myself of such embarrassment.

The butcher-boy grinned broadly and winked in a knowing manner. To me

it was all very serious, and with a boy’s pride I did not invite

enlightenment. I took Ruthita out and let her choose her own present up

to the value of ninepence. I lied to her, saying that that was what I

had intended.

Arguing by analogy from this experience, I gradually came to realize

that all about me was a world of passion, the first boundaries of which

I was just beginning to traverse.

The Bantam, having no home to go to, would sometimes return with me to

Pope Lane for the vacation; the Snow Lady was attracted by his freckled

face and impudently upturned nose. In the early years he, Ruthita, and

I would play together. Then, as we grew more boyish, we would play games

in which she could not share. But at last a time came when I found that

it was I who was excluded.

I found that Ruthita and the Bantam had a way of going off and hiding

themselves. It was quite evident that they had secrets which they kept

from me. An understanding lay between them in which I could not share. I

became irritable and began to watch.

One summer evening after tea I could not find them, The gate into the

Lane was unlatched; I followed. There was a deserted house no great way

distant, standing shuttered in the midst of overgrown grounds. We had

found a bar broken in the railings, and there the Bantam and I played

highwaymen. Naturally I thought of this haunt first.

Creeping through the long grass I came upon them. The Bantam had his

arm about Ruthita’s waist. She was tossing back her hair; her face was

radiant. I could only catch a glimpse of her sideways, but it came home

to me that the qualities in her which, in my blindness, I had taken for

granted, were beautiful and rare. As I watched, the Bantam kissed

her. She drew back her head, glad and yet ashamed. I crept away with

a strange sense of forlornness in my heart; they had stumbled across a

pleasure of which I was ignorant.

Poor little Ruthita!--it was short-lived. Hetty, having quarreled with

the gardener, had not married. What I had seen, she also saw a few days

later and told my father. He was very angry. I can see Ruthita now, with

her long spindly legs and short skirts, standing up demurely to take her

scolding. I listened to the scorching words my father spoke to her; the

burden of his talk was that her conduct was unladylike. I came to her

defense with the remark, “But, father, she only did what I saw you and

the Snow Lady doing.”

That night I went to bed supperless and I had no more pocket-money for

a week. The Bantam’s visit was cut short; he was bundled back to the Red

House. I was sent down to Ransby to stay with my Grandmother Cardover. I

have the fixed remembrance of Ruthita’s eyes very red with weeping.

The utmost comfort I could give her was the promise that I would carry

messages of her eternal faithfulness to her lover on my return to

school.

The world had grown very complicated. Love was either wicked or stupid.

Hetty had acted as though it was wicked when I caught her with John; my

father, when I had caught him, as though it was stupid. Yet he was not

ashamed of love now that he was married. I could not see why Ruthita

should be so scolded for doing what her mother did every day.

CHAPTER V--THE AWAKENING

At a distance I had been sorry for the Bantam, but at close quarters

his hopeless passion for Ruthita bored me. On my return to the Red House

he overwhelmed me with a flood of maudlin confessions. There was nothing

pleased him better than to get me alone, so that he could outline to me

his impossible plans for an early marriage. He talked of running away to

sea and making his fortune in a distant land. It sounded all very easy.

His only fear was that in his long absence Ruthita might be forced to

marry some other fellow. “Dante,” he would say, “you’re a lucky chap to

have been always near her.”

This kind of talk irritated me, partly because I was jealous of an

ecstasy which I could not understand, and partly because I had known

Ruthita so many years that I thought I knew her exact value a good deal

better than the Bantam. There was something very absurd, too, in the

contrast between this gawky boy, with his downy face and clumsy hands,

and these exaggerated expressions of sentiment. I began to avoid him; at

that time I did not know why, but now I know it was because of the herd

spirit which shuns abnormality.

Nevertheless he had stirred something latent within me. My days became

haunted with alluring conjectures; beneath the cold formality of human

faces and manners I caught glimpses of a boisterous ruffianly passion.

Sometimes it would repel me, making me unspeakably sad; but more often

it swept me away in a torrent of inexplicable riotous happiness. I

had come to an age when, shut him up as you may in the garden of

unenlightenment, a boy must hear from beyond the walls the pagan pipes

and the dancing feet of Pan.

Of nights I would lie awake, still and tense, reasoning my way forward

and forward, out of the fairy tales of childhood into reality. Sometimes

I would bury my face in my pillow, half glad and half ashamed of my

strange, new knowledge. Now all the glory of the flesh in the Classics,

which before had slipped by me when encountered as a schoolboy’s task,

burned in my brain with the vehement fire of immemorial romance.

Old Sneard had a terrifying sermon, which he was fond of preaching on

Sunday evenings when the chapel was full of shadows. His heated face,

startlingly illumined by the pulpit-lamps, would take on the furious

earnestness of an accusing angel as he leant out towards us describing

the spiritual tortures of the damned. He spoke in symbolic language of

the causes which led up to damnation. Until quite lately I had wondered

what in the world he could be driving at. His text was, “Son of man,

hast thou seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark,

every man in his chambers of imagery?” The grotesque unreality of

likening a group of school-boys to the elders of Israel never occurred

to me; I was too carried away by the reality of sin itself and the

terror of what was said. When service was ended I would steal up the

stone stairway to the dormitory in silence, almost fearful that my

guilt might be betrayed by my shadow....

It was summer-time. Those of us who professed an interest in entomology

were permitted during the hour between prep and supper to rove the

country with butterfly-nets. The results of these expeditions were given

to the school natural history museum; most of the boys hunted in pairs.

Things being as they were between myself and the Bantam, I preferred to

go by myself.

All day it had been raining. The sky was still damp with heavy clouds

and the evening fell early. I slipped out into the cool wet dusk, eager

to be solitary. Some boys were kicking a ball and called to me to come

and play with them. In my anxiety not to be delayed, I doubled up my

fists and ran. They followed in pursuit, but soon their shouts and

laughter grew fainter, till presently I was alone in a dim, green world.

The air was exquisitely fragrant with earth and flower smells. Far away

between the trees of Eden Hill a watery sunset faded palely. Nearer at

hand dog-roses and convolvuli glimmered in the hedges.

I threw myself down in the dripping grass, lying full-length on my

back, so that I could watch the stars struggle out between the edges

of clouds. Oh, the sense of freedom and wideness, and the sheer joy

of being at large in the world! I listened to the stillness of

the twilight, which is a stillness made up of an infinity of tiny

sounds--birds settling into their nests, trees whispering together, and

flowers drawing closer their fragile petals to shut out the cold night

air. I told myself that all the little creatures of the fields

and hedgerows were tucking one another safe in bed. Then, as if to

contradict me, the sudden passion of the nightingale wandered down the

stairway of the silence, each note separately poignant, like glances of

a lover who halts and looks back from every step as he descends. From

far away the passion was answered, and again it was returned.

A great White Admiral fluttered over my head. I picked up my net and

was after it. So, in a second, the boy within me proved himself stronger

than the man. But the butterfly refused to let me get near it and would

never settle long enough for me to catch it.

I followed from field to field, till at last it came to the

cricket-ground and made a final desperate effort to escape me by flying

over the hedge into the private garden of Sneard’s house. His garden

was forbidden territory, but the twilight made me bold to forget that.

Breaking through the hedge I followed, running tiptoe down a path which

ended in a summer-house. The White Admiral settled on a rosebush; I was

in the act of netting it when I heard someone stirring. Standing in the

doorway of the summerhouse was a girl about as tall as myself. We eyed

one another through the dusk in silence. Her face was indistinct and in

shadow.

“You don’t know how you frightened me.”

Directly she spoke I knew that she was not Beatrice Sneard, as I had

dreaded. Her voice was too friendly; it had in it the lazy caressing

quality of a summer’s afternoon when bees are humming in and out of

flowers. Her way of pronouncing words was halting and slightly foreign.

In after years I came to know just how much power of temptation her

voice possessed.

“I suppose you’re not allowed in here,” she said; “but you needn’t

worry--I shan’t tell.”

The boy in me prompted me to answer, “You can tell if you care to.”

She gave a secret little laugh. “But I shan’t.”

After all my gallant imaginings of what I would do on a like occasion,

I stood before her awkwardly, tongue-tied and ungracious--so far removed

are dreams from reality. The White Admiral, tired with the long pursuit,

still clung to the rose’s petals. Across misty fields nightingales

called, casting the love-spell, and the moon, in intermittent flashes,

caused the dripping foliage to glisten.

She rested her hand on my arm--such a small white hand--and drew me into

the seclusion of the summerhouse.

“You’re not afraid of girls, are you?” she questioned, and then

inconsequently, “I’m awfully lonely.”

There was a note of appeal in her tones, so I found my tongue and asked

why she was lonely.

“Because I quarrel with Beatrice--we don’t get on together. Do you know,

she thinks all you boys are simply horrid persons?”

“Perhaps we are,” I said. “Most people think that.”

“But I don’t,” she answered promptly.

Gradually my constraint left me. She had an easy kindness and assurance

in her manner that I had never found in any other girl. She slipped her

hand into mine; made bold by the darkness of the summer-house, I held it

tightly.

“I like you. I like you very much,” she whispered.

“But you’ve never spoken to me before. Why should you like the?”

She turned her face to mine, so that our lips were quite near together.

“I suppose because I’m a girl.”

The bell for supper began to ring. I pretended not to hear it. Through

the roses across the lawn I saw Sneard stand in his study-window,

struggling into his gown. Then the window became dark and I knew that he

had gone to read evening prayers.

“The bell is ringing,” she said at last. “If you don’t go, you’ll get

punished.”

“If it’s for your sake, I don’t care.”

She pushed me gently from her. “Go away now. If you get into trouble,

you’ll not be able to come back tomorrow.”

She ran down the path with me as far as the hedge. The bell was at its

last strokes, swinging slower and slower. At the hedge we halted. I knew

what I wanted to do; my whole body ached to take her in my arms

and kiss her. But something stronger than will--the habit of

restraint--prevented. Some paces away on the other side of the hedge I

remembered that I did not even know her name. Without halting I called

back to her questioning, and as I ran the answer followed me through the

shadows, “Fiesole.”

After the monitors had come up and the lights had been put out, I waited

for an hour till all the dormitory was sleeping; then, very stealthily,

I edged myself out of bed. Standing upright, I listened to make sure

that I was undetected. I stole out into the corridor bare-foot. I feared

to dress lest anyone should be aroused. In my long linen night-gown I

tiptoed down the corridor, down the stairs, and entered the fifth-form

class-room. Throwing up the window I climbed out.

An English summer’s night lay before me in all its silver splendor--huge

shadows of trees, scented coolness of the air, and damp smoothness of

turf beneath my tread. The exultation of life’s bigness and cleanness

came upon me. I knew now that it was right to be proud of the body and

to love the body. Oh, why had it been left to a glimpse in the dusk of a

young girl’s face to teach me that? At a rush I had become possessed

of all the codes of mediaeval chivalry. Every woman, however old

or unpleasing, was for Fiesole’s sake most perfect--a person to be

worshiped; for in serving her I should be serving Fiesole. What a name

to have! How all her perfectness was summed up in the beauty of those

full vowel sounds, _Fi-es-sol-le_.

I trespassed again in the garden. In the quiet of the rose-scented night

I entered the summer-house.

Far away the nightingales sang on. There were words to their chanting

now and their song was no, longer melancholy. And these were the words

as I heard them: “_Fiesole--Fiesole--Fiesole. Love in the world. Love in

the world. Glad--glad--glad._”

CHAPTER VI--WHAT IS LOVE?

My secret was too big and beautiful to keep to myself. There was no one

I could tell it to save the Bantam. But the Bantam had grown shy of me;

he knew that within myself I had been laughing at him. He turned away

when I tried to catch his eye, and bent with unaccustomed diligence

above his lessons.

Not till after lunch did I get a chance to approach him. All the other

boys had changed into flannels and had hurried off to the cricket-nets.

I wandered into the empty playground and there found him seated alone

in a corner. His knees were drawn up so that his chin rested on them; in

his eyes was a far-away sorrowful expression. I halted before him.

“Bantam.”

He did not look up, but I knew by the twitching of his hands that he had

heard.

“Bantam, I’ve got something to tell you.”

Slowly he turned his head. He was acting the part of Hamlet and I was

vastly impressed. “Is it about Ruthita?”

“Partly. But it’s happened to me too, Bantam.”

“Wot?”

“A girl.”

A genuine look of live-boy astonishment overspread his countenance.

“A girl!” he ejaculated. “But there ar’n’t any about--unless you mean

Pigtails.”

Pigtails was Beatrice Sneard, and I felt that an insult was being

leveled at me.

“If you say that again, I’ll punch your head.”

“Oh, so it is Pigtails.” He rose to his feet lazily and began to take

off his jacket. “Come on and punch it.”

But a fight wasn’t at all what I wanted. So I walked straight up to him

with my hands held down.

“Silly ass, how could it be Pigtails? Do I look that sort? It’s another

girl. I came to you ’cause you’re in love, and you’ll understand. I’ve

been a beast to you--won’t you be friends?”

I held out my hand and he took it with surly defiance. I was too eager

for sympathy, however, to be discouraged.

“She’s called Fiesole,” I said. “Isn’t that beautiful?”

“Ruthita’s better.”

“She’s got gold hair with just a little--a little red in it.”

“I prefer black.”

“I’m not talking about Ruthita; I’m telling you about Fiesole.”

“I know that,” said the Bantam; “you never do talk about Ruthita now.”

I walked away from him angrily in the direction I had taken on the

previous evening. As I approached the nets I saw a little group of

spectators. Then I made out the clerical figure of Sneard and the figure

of Pigtails dressed in gray, and between them a slim white girl. Behind

me I heard the pit-a-pat of running feet on the turf. The Bantam flung

his arm about my shoulders, saying, “I’ve been a beast and you’ve been a

beast; but we won’t be beasts any longer.” Then, following the direction

of my eyes, “What are you staring at? Is that her? My eye, she’s a

topper!”

He prodded me to go forward. When I showed reluctance, he used almost

Fiesole’s words, “Why, surely, Dante, you ar’n’t afraid of a girl!”

I was afraid, and always have been wherever my affections are concerned.

But I wasn’t going to own it just then. I let him slip his arm through

mine, and we sauntered forward together. Through the soft summer air

came the sharp _click_ of the ball as it glanced off the bat, and the

long cheer which followed as the wicket went down. Fiesole turned,

clapping her hands, and our eyes met. Then she ceased to look at me; her

gaze rested on the Bantam, while a half-smile played about her mouth.

A pang of jealousy shot through me. With the instinctive egotism of

the male, I felt that by the mere fact of loving her I had made her

my property. However, Pigtails came to my rescue, for I saw her jolt

Fiesole with her elbow; her shocked voice reached me, saying, “Cousin

Fiesole, whatever are you staring at?”

I tugged at the Bantam’s sleeve and we turned away.

“My golly, but she is a ripper,” he whispered....

As the distance grew between us and her, he kept glancing across his

shoulder and once halted completely to gaze back. I envied him his

effrontery. My fate from the beginning has been to run away from the

women I love--and then to regret it.

We had entered into another field and were passing a laburnum tree,

when the Bantam drew up sharply. He pointed to its blossom all gold and

yellow. “The color of her hair,” he said, and promptly threw himself

under it, lying on his back, gazing up at its burning foliage. The sun

filtered down through its leaves upon us, making fantastic patterns on

our hands and faces. The field was tall in hay, ready for the cutting,

so we had the boy’s delight of being completely hidden from the world.

“What’s the color of her eyes?” he asked presently.

“Don’t know; it was dusk when I saw her. I expect it’s the same as

Ruthita’s.”

“Who is she?”

“Met her in Sneard’s garden--Pigtails called her ‘cousin’ just now.”

“She’s called Fiesole! Pretty name. How it suits her.”

“Not prettier than Ruthita,” I said.

He sat up and grinned at me. “Who’re you getting at? You wanted me to

say all that half-an-hour ago in the playground; now I’ve said it. I can

think she’s pretty, can’t I, and still love Ruthita best?”

“But you oughtn’t to love her at all,” I expostulated with a growing

sense of indignant proprietorship.

“Look here,” explained the Bantam seriously, “you’re jealous. That’s

the way I felt about you when you told me that you weren’t Ruthita’s

brother; I quite understand. But if I’m to marry Ruthita, I shall be

your brother-in-law. Sha’n’t I? And if you marry Fiesole, she’ll be my

sister-inlaw. Won’t she? Well then, I’ve got a right to be pleased about

her.”

I took him at his word and told him everything that had happened and all

that I knew about her. Continually he would break in with feverish words

of surprise and flattery, leading me on still further to confess myself.

In the magic world of that summer’s afternoon no difficulties seemed

insuperable. Married we could and would be. Parents and schoolmasters

only existed for one purpose--to prevent boys and girls who fell in love

from marrying: that was why grown-ups had all the money. In a natural

state of society, where men lived in the woods, and wore skins, and

carried clubs, these injustices would not happen.

So we unbosomed ourselves, only understanding vaguely the immensities

that love and marriage meant. Then the bell for four o’clock school

began calling and, like the slaves we were, we returned, on the run, to

the Red House.

We found that we were not the only persons to be inflamed by the beauty

of Fiesole. All the boys were talking about her. One of our chief fears

was set at rest--her surname was not Sneard, but Cortona. Her father

had been a famous Italian actor married to Sneard’s sister, and both her

parents fortunately were dead. She had quite a lot of money and had come

from a convent at Tours, where she was being educated, to stay with

her uncle on a visit of undetermined length or brevity. This news had

all been gathered by the Cow, who had that curious faculty for worming

out information which some boys possess. He had extracted it from

the groundman, who had extracted it from Sneard’s gardener, who had

extracted it from Sneard’s housemaid, with whom he was on more than

friendly terms--so of course it was authentic.

That evening after prep I again stole out. The Bantam showed himself

very impertinent--he wanted to come with me. I had great difficulty

in persuading him that it wasn’t necessary. I found Fiesole in the

summer-house. She was subdued and wistful, and insisted on asking

questions about that nice boy she had seen with me. I told her frankly

that he was engaged to my sister, and gave her a graphic account of

how my father had turned him out of Pope Lane. I fear I made him seem

altogether too romantic. She made careful inquiries about the appearance

of Ruthita, which I took as a sign of encouragement--a foreknowledge

that sooner or later I intended to ask her to become one of my family.

When the bell rang for prayers and we parted, I held her hand a little

longer, but experienced my old reluctance in the matter of kissing.

Next morning fate played me a scurvy trick; I woke with a bad sore

throat, due I suppose to my escapade of the night earlier, and was sent

to the infirmary. On the evening of the day I came out, which was four

days later, I was summoned after prep to report myself to the doctor.

This made me late in getting to the summer-house.

The bell for prayers had commenced to ring as I got there. I was

climbing through the hedge when I heard footsteps on the garden path.

There were two children standing hushed amid the roses, the one with

face tremulously uplifted, the other looking down with eager eyes. As I

watched their lips met. It was impossible for me to stir without making

my presence known. One of them came bolting into me, going out by the

way I was entering. We rolled over and I recognized the Bantam. Fiesole,

hearing the angry voices of two boys quarreling, ran. And so I got my

first experience of the lightness of woman’s affection.

However, if I was seeking a revenge, I got it. Before the end of the

summer term Pigtails became suspicious, and discovered the Cow in the

summer-house with the fickle Fiesole. The Cow, because he was a monitor,

was expelled and I was appointed in his place--Mordecai and Haman after

a fashion. Fiesole, on account of her kissing propensities, was regarded

as a dangerous person and sent away. I was a grown man when next I met

her.

CHAPTER VII--THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE SPUFFLER

It was during the last week of the summer term, while I was

convalescing from Fiesole’s sudden exit and was beginning to forgive the

Bantam his treachery, that the magic personality of George Rapson first

flashed into my little world.

I was sitting listlessly at my desk one sunshiny morning. The window at

my side was open, commanding a view of the school garden, the driveway

leading through it, and beyond that of the sleepy village street. Below

the window grew a bed of lavender whose fragrance, drifting in, made

me forgetful of the book which lay before me and of the master at the

black-board chalking up dull problems in algebra. I was dreaming as

usual, telling myself a story of what I would do if old Sneard should

pop his head inside the door and say, “My dear Cardover, you have worked

so well that I intend to make an example of you by giving you this day

as a holiday.”

Just then the master at the board turned round and jumped me into a

realization of the present. “Cardover, you will please stand up and

repeat my explanation of this problem.”

I stood up and gazed stupidly at the medley of signs and abbreviated

formulae, hoping to discover some clue of reasoning in their apparent

meaninglessness. “Well?”

“If you please, sir, I wasn’t attending.”

“I thought not. If you had been, you would have known that I have not

explained it yet. You will come to me after class and--”

But his sentence was never ended. At that moment the head of every boy

turned as one head; yes, and even the head of the master turned. Up the

driveway came the sound of prancing hoofs, the soft crunch of wheels in

the gravel, and cries of, “Whoa, girl! Steady there, steady.”

Past the window flashed a high yellow dog-cart, drawn by a tandem of

spirited chestnuts. A tiger in livery and top-hat sat behind with arms

folded, superbly aware of his own magnificence. Between the wheels ran

a Dalmatian, a plum-pudding dog as we used to call them. On the high

front-seat were two men, equally gorgeous. The one who drove wore a

large fawn coat with enormous pearl buttons, distinctly horsey in cut

and fashion. On his head was a tall beaver hat. He was a massively built

man and had the appearance of a sporting aristocrat. To make him more

splendid, he was young, with a bronzed complexion, full red lips, and

finely chiseled features. His companion looked like a Methodist parson,

trying to pass as a racing gent. He was attired in a light tweed suit of

a rather pronounced black and white check. On his head was a gray

felt hat, and in his button-hole blazed a scarlet geranium. They were

laughing in deep full-throated guffaws as they whizzed past, with the

sun flashing on their wheels and harness. The tiger and the Dalmatian

were the only solemn things about them. What was my surprise to have

recognized in the second man a relative?

“It’s my uncle!”

Even the master, so recently bent on my humiliation, seemed to hold

his breath in regarding the nephew of so resplendent a person. Here was

poetic justice with a vengeance. Most of the boys’ friends, if they were

too rich to walk from the station when they came to visit them, crawled

up the hill in a musty creaking cab, with hard wooden seats, and two or

three handfuls of straw on the floor, more or less dirty. In the history

of the Red House no boy’s relative had dashed up to visit him with such

a barbaric clatter and display of wealth. Ah, if Fiesole had been there

to envy me, how she would have blamed herself for her falseness!

“Cardover, you may sit down.”

The master turned again to the black-board, forgetting the threatened

penalty. The boys eyed me above the covers of their books, and awaited

further developments.

The door opened and Sneard peered round on us shortsightedly. A pleased

smile played about the corners of his diplomatic mouth. His happiness at

receiving such distinguished callers seemed to have had an effect upon

his hair, turning it to a yet more fiery red. Usually when he spoke he

snapped, but now his tones were as fluty as he could make them with so

little practice.

Turning to the master, “Is Dante Cardover here?” he inquired. When I was

pointed out to him he said, “Mr. George Rapson is here and with him your

uncle, Mr. Spreckles. You may take a holiday, Dante, and go out with

them.”

I rose from my seat in an ecstasy of bewilderment. What under the sun

had happened that old Sneard should call me Dante, and who was Mr.

George Rapson? As I picked my way through the labyrinth of forms and

desks; getting glimpses of my school-mates’ lengthened faces, I felt

that I was taking the sunlight from the room by my good fortune as I

left.

I followed Sneard to his study, which I had so often visited on such

different errands. Even now as I crossed its threshold, I could not

quite shake off my accustomed clammy dread. The Spuffler, catching sight

of me, ran forward in his gayest manner. “Ah, Dante, old chap, it’s good

to see you. Rapson’s heard so much about you that he couldn’t keep away

any longer. ‘Spreckles,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to introduce me. It’s

Dante, Dante, all day long. You can’t talk of anyone else.’ So here we

are. Rapson, this is my nephew.”

Mr. Rapson grabbed me by the shoulder with a large white hand and gazed

down on me. There was a jolly-dog air about him combined with a big

healthy strength, which made one both like and fear him from the first.

And there was so much of him to like; he was over six foot in height and

proportionately built in breadth. “Hm! Dante. Glad to meet you. Let’s

get out.”

Sneard wanted me to put on my Sunday suit, but Mr. Rapson wouldn’t

hear of it. “Hated clothes when I was a kid. Still think we ought to go

naked. Let him be as he is. He’s got nothing to spoil and therefore’ll

enjoy himself.”

Without waiting for a reply, he nodded to Sneard, heaved his great

shoulders through the doorway, so down the hall and out on to the steps

where the tiger was holding the horses’ heads.

“Just like Rapson,” my uncle said. “Masterful fellow. Makes up his mind

and then goes ahead. Good-day, Mr. Sneard. Oh, yes, we’ll take care of

him and bring him back.”

They took me up in front beside them; the whip cracked and the tiger

sprang away from the leader. Off we sped, down the hill and into the

valley, winding in and out of overgrown lanes where we had to duck our

heads to avoid the boughs; then out again with fields on either side of

us, up hill and down dale never slackening, with the wind on our cheeks

and the sun in our faces. Mr. Rapson’s attention was completely taken

up with his driving; it needed to be, for he swung round corners and

squeezed between farm-wagons in outrageously reckless fashion. I watched

his strong masterful hands, how they gathered in the reins and forced

the horses to obedience. My eyes wandered up him and rested on his face:

the face of a man a little over thirty, calm and yet when stern almost

cruelly determined, with a shapely beak of a Roman nose planted squarely

in the middle of it--a sign-post to his purpose.

Then I glanced at my uncle with his fashionable checks and scarlet

geranium. I remembered that my grandmother called him the Spuffler, and

wondered what she would call him now, could she see him. That nervous

air he had had, of at once asserting and apologizing for himself with

a pitiful display of bluster, had vanished. He carried himself with the

jaunty confidence of a middle-aged gentleman unsubdued by the world--one

who knew how to be dignified when necessary, but who preferred

at present to relax. Above all he conveyed the impression of one

beautifully fond of life’s simple pleasures and quietly composed in a

happy self-respect. What had done it? Was it George Rapson, or had he at

last had success with one of his poultry experiments?

Perhaps he guessed some of the inquiries that were running through my

head, for, as I crouched near him in the little space allotted me on our

high up perch, he squeezed my hand, hinting at some great secret, for

the telling of which we must be alone by our two selves.

With foam flying from the horses’ mouths we entered Richmond and

glittered down those quaint and narrow streets, which have always seemed

to me more like streets of a seaport than of an inland town. We turned

a corner; full before us drifted up the long and shadowy quiet of the

Thames.

Mr. Rapson refused to be sociable until he had seen to the rubbing down

and stabling of his horses; so we two wandered off together along the

miniature quays, where boatmen with a deep-sea sailor’s swagger pulled

clay pipes from their mouths and wished us a cheerfully mercenary

“Good-mornin’.”

My curiosity was inarticulate with a multitude of crowding questions. I

couldn’t make my choice which to ask first. I watched the swans sail

in and out the tethered boats, and racked my brain for words. Then I

blurted out, “What does it all mean, Uncle Obad?”

His eyes filled with tears. “My boy, it means success.”

I mumbled something typically boylike and inadequate about being “jolly

glad.” He slipped his arm through mine with that endearing familiarity

he had, as though I were a man. He was too excited to sit down, so we

strolled along the quays, under the creeper-covered redbrick walls of

the houses, and out of Richmond along the open river-bank.

“No one ever believed that I’d do it, Dante. I don’t think you did

yourself. They all said, ‘Oh, Spreckles! Ha, the fellow who twiddles his

thumbs while his wife works!’ They didn’t say it to my face--they didn’t

dare. But that was what they thought about me. I seemed a failure--a

good-natured incompetent. Even people who liked me felt ashamed of

me--I mean people who were dear to me, living in the same house. Women

want their husbands to measure up to the standards of other men. It’s

natural--I don’t blame ’em. But, you know, I never had a chance, old

chap--never seemed to find my right kind of work. I couldn’t do little

things well. I’m one of those imperial men who need something big to

bring the best out of’ ’em. And now I’ve got it--I’ve got it, Dante.”

I caught his excitement, and begged him to tell me what this wonderful

something was that had so suddenly transformed him from a nobody into

a powerful person. I felt sure he was powerful, apart from anything he

said, for he radiated opulence. He halted in the middle of the tow-path,

gripping me by the shoulders, laughing into my face and bidding me

guess. I guessed everything possible and impossible. Losing patience,

“It’s diamond mines,” he burst out.

“But how did you get ’em, Uncle Obad, and where?”

For an instant I had a wild vision of men with pickaxes, shovels, and

miners’ lamps, digging down into the bowels of the Christian Boarding

House.

We seated ourselves on the bank with legs dangling above the water,

and he told me. It seemed that Mr. George Rapson was the cause of this

meteoric rise to prosperity. In April he had come to stay at Charity

Grove as an ordinary paying-guest. From the first he was extraordinary

and had amazed them with his wealth--his horses, his clothes, his

friends, and his lavish manners. Most of his fellow boarders were

struggling young men, who earned two pounds a week in the City and paid

twenty-five shillings for their keep and lodging. On the start they only

knew that he was a South African, holiday-making in England. Little by

little he let out that he was interested in diamond mines, and later

that he owned _The Ethiopian_, one of the most promising properties

of its kind in the world. The more communicative he became, the more

surprised they were that he should make his head-quarters at a Christian

Boarding House. There seemed no reason why he should not pay a higher

price and enjoy the advantages of a secular environment.

One night he took my uncle into his room, locked the door, and let

the cat out of the bag. It was my uncle and his personality that had

attracted him. He had seen his name as secretary to so many thriving

philanthropic societies that he had been led to appreciate his worth

as an organizer. He wanted his help. He had come to England to unload a

number of shares in _The Ethiopian_ diamond mines, but it had to be

done quietly and without advertisement. He had a number of unscrupulous

enemies in the mining world who wanted to merge his property with

theirs. They had tried to crowd him out in various ways--once by

bringing about a law-suit to dispute his title to his holdings. If they

should get wind that shares in _The Ethiopian_ were to be bought in the

open market, they would buy up every share in sight in an effort to gain

control. Therefore it was necessary that business should be carried on

in a private manner, and as far as possible through channels of personal

friendship rather than those of the City and the Stock Exchange.

He had studied my uncle carefully and was convinced that he was just the

man for the work. He proposed giving him a salary of one thousand pounds

a year to act as his English agent, and a five-per-cent commission on

all sales of shares that he was instrumental in effecting. His chief

service was to consist in supplying lists of names and addresses of

the moneyed religious public, and in applying his influence to the

attracting of purchasers. The lists were of course to be culled mainly

from the contributors to the charitable societies of which he was

secretary. In fact, what the proposal amounted to, as I see it now, was

that my uncle’s integrity, well-known among religious circles, was to

guarantee the worth of the shares.

“It’s a close secret, Dante,” my uncle said. “Rapson won’t let me tell

anyone, not even your Aunt Lavinia, the basis of our understanding.

But I had to tell somebody; happiness isn’t happiness when you keep its

reason to yourself. So I’ve told you, because we’ve had so many secrets

together.”

We sat on, quite forgetful of time, watching the sleepy flowing of the

river, building castles in the air. Last month they had declared their

half-yearly dividend and it had amounted to twenty per cent. Since

then the sale of shares had quickened enormously. Why, there was one

morning’s mail when my uncle’s commissions alone had amounted to fifty

pounds. Think of that--and it was only the beginning! Then we commenced

to reckon how much he would have in five years, if his commissions

amounted always to fifty pounds a morning, and he made a rule to spend

nothing but his salary. It was the old childish game which had first

made us chummy, of so many hens laying so many eggs, and how much would

we have at the end of a twelvemonth.

He could afford to joke now concerning the penury of his lean years

before the great Rapson had put in an appearance. He even made fun of

his own _spuffing_, and laughed as he told me how much economy those

odd shillings and half-crowns, which he used to give me in such a large

manner, had cost him.

“But it’s all over now,” he said cheerfully, “and I’m going to be

an important man. People are beginning to look up to me already. Who

knows?--one day I may enter Parliament. I’m moving in a different social

set--Rapson’s friends. He’s very well-connected. They’re a little gay

and larky, you know; your Aunt Lavinia don’t quite know what to make of

’em. She’ll get over that. Oh, but it’s a big new world for me, Dante,

and there’s heaps of things to do in it that I never knew about.”

On our way back the great George Rapson himself met us, and we found

that we’d been gone an hour. He told us that he’d ordered lunch at a

little inn, called _The White Cross_--one which hung over the river.

How proud I was to walk beside him as we re-entered Richmond! Everyone

turned to stare after him as he passed, with his long fawn coat open and

flapping, his easy rollicking laugh, his great height and distinguished

presence. And I, Dante Cardover, was by way of being the friend of such

a man! The gates of romance were indeed opening.

_The White Cross Inn_ had separate balconies, built out from each of

its second-story windows. In one of these our table was set. The little

tiger helped the maid of the inn to wait upon us. And what a meal we

had!--salmon and salad and fowl, stuffed veal and pine-apple, dates,

almonds, and raisins--everything that a boy could ask to have. Up the

walls of the inn climbed rambler roses and tumbled over the sides of the

balcony. Beneath us lay the river, like a silver snake, lazily uncurled,

sunning itself in great green meadows.

“This is to be your day, Dante,” Mr. Rapson said. “We brought some of

these things from London because we knew you liked ’em. You discovered

your Uncle Obad before I did, and when no one else had. He’s told me all

about it. Here’s your very good health.”

The tiger, who had been drawing the cork out of a large green bottle

about half as tall as himself, now poured out a golden foamy liquid. I

found one glass of it had the same care-freeing effect that the holding

of Fiesole’s hand in the summer-house had had. I felt myself at ease in

the world, and began to speak of the Reverend Robert Sneard as “jolly

old Sneard,” and of all people who had authority over me with tolerant

contempt. I gazed back from the security of my temporary Canaan, and

gave my entertainers a whimsical account of my perilous journey through

the wilderness of boyhood. It was wonderful even to myself how suddenly

my shyness had vanished.

Mr. Rapson seemed highly amused. “You’ll do, young’un,” he said.

Then, little by little, he began to speak of Africa--the dust, the

Kaffirs, and the wide, parched veldt. He spoke of adventures with lions

far up in the interior, and of how he had once been an ivory-hunter

before he struck it lucky in the south. “I ran away from home when I was

a youngster of twenty and all because of a girl.” He nodded at me wisely

across the table, “Keep clear of the girlies, they’re the devil.”

I thought of Fiesole and inquired if some girls weren’t quite attractive

devils. My uncle looked shocked in a genial fashion at this very free

use of a forbidden word--the fear of Aunt Lavinia purged his vocabulary

even when she was absent. But Mr. Rapson went red in the face and

smacked his hands together, laughing loudly. “Of course they’re

attractive; else how’d they tempt us?”

A punt, which had stolen up beneath our balcony, now caught his

attention. A girl in a gown of flowered muslin, with a broad pink sash

about her waist, was standing in the stern. She was alone, and all the

river formed a landscape for her daintiness.

Mr. Rapson stared hard at her; her back was towards us. “Seem to know

her hair,” he muttered. He half rose. “By George, it’s Kitty!”

Leaning far out over the balcony he called to her impulsively, “Kitty!

Kitty!”

Very leisurely she lifted up to him a small flushed face, all laughter

and naughtiness, and waved her hand. She was as pretty as love and a

summer’s day could make a woman--but I wasn’t supposed to be old enough

to observe such things as that.

She brought her punt in to the bank, while Mr. Rapson went down to help

her out. When he gave her his hand to steady her, she kept it in hers.

As she glanced mischievously up at him I heard her say, “Why, George,

you terror, who’d have thought of meeting you here!”

He whispered something to her with a frown; she dropped him a mocking

courtesy.

When he brought her up on to the balcony, he introduced her as his

cousin Kitty. She bowed to us with a roguish grace, clinging close to

his arm. “Now, Kitty,” he said, freeing himself, “you’ve got to behave.”

Seeing that my uncle was looking at her in a puzzled manner, she took

the center of the stage without embarrassment, explaining, “Georgie and

I are very old friends and I’ve not seen him, oh, for ages.”

When they had told her how they happened to be there and that it was my

day, and that they had stolen me away from my lessons, she swung round

on me with a kind of rapture. “Oh, what darlings to do that! And what a

nice boy!” Without further ado she patted my face and kissed me. It was

a new sensation. I blushed furiously, and was both pleased and abashed.

“You may be older than I am,” I thought; “but you’re only a girl. In

three years I could marry you.”

She was like a happy little dog in a meadow; never still, sending up

birds--following nothing and chasing everything. In her conversation she

gamboled about and never ceased gamboling. She didn’t sit quietly like

the Snow Lady and all the other ladies of my acquaintance, putting in

a word now and then, but letting the men do the talking. She made

everybody look at her--perhaps, because she was so well worth looking

at. Even before she had kissed me I was in love with her.

Mr. Rapson seemed a little nervous, and she appeared to delight in his

fear of her daring.

“Georgie’s always had a passion for me,” she said, “though he won’t own

it.” Then suddenly, seeing the troubled expression on his face, “How

much has the poor dear told you about himself?”

She wriggled out of me something of the story of his doings. She eyed

him archly from under her big hat and, when I had ended, leant across

the table so their faces nearly met. “How many lions did my Georgie kill

in Africa?”

“Be quiet, you little devil,” he laughed, seizing her by the hands.

The employment of that forbidden word set me wondering whether this was

the girl for love of whom he first went wandering. But she looked too

young for that.

We went into her punt and drifted down the river with the current. She

played the madcap all the way, speaking to him often in baby language.

He seemed to be amused by it, as a St. Bernard might be amused by the

impertinence of a terrier. When she got too bold he would hold her hands

until she was quiet, overpowering her with his great strength much the

same as he did his horses. Then she would turn her attentions to me for

a time, and I would make believe to myself she was Fiesole. My uncle

looked on like a benevolent Father Christmas, dignified and smiling.

Dusk was settling when we started on the return journey. We found that

we had drifted further than we had intended. Mr. Rapson took the pole

and did the punting. Miss Kitty sang to him, she said to encourage him.

I think it must have been then that I first heard _Twickenham Ferry_.

She had to leave off part way through the last verse I remember. She

said that the mist from the river choked her; but I, lying on the

cushions beside her, somehow gathered the impression that she was nearly

crying. When she broke down, under cover of darkness I got my hand into

hers, and then she slipped her arm about me. After that she was very

subdued and silent. My uncle fell off to sleep, and Mr. Rapson kept his

face turned away from us, busy with his punting. I wondered if, after

all, Miss Kitty was happy.

It was night when we arrived. She insisted on parting with us at the

landing, saying that her houseboat was just across the river and she

could take the punt home quite well unaccompanied. We had said good-by

and were walking along the quay, when Rapson left us and ran back. I saw

him come close and bend over her. They seemed to be whispering together.

Then she pushed out into the river; the lights of the town held her for

a time; darkness closed in behind her and she vanished.

On the drive back to the Red House I grew drowsy.

I tried to keep my eyes open, but even the soft moonlight seemed

dazzling. The meadows and tall trees stealing by, ceased to stand out

separate, but became a blur. The sharp _trit-trot, trit-trot_ of the

horses’ hoofs on the hard macadam road lulled me by their monotonous

regularity.

When I came to myself I heard my uncle saying, “I like that little

cousin of yours, Rapson; she’s charming and different from any woman

that I ever met.”

“Daresay she is,” Rapson answered, dryly; “you’ve led such a sheltered

life. Of course she isn’t my cousin.”

“Who is she, then?”

“Oh, a nymph.”

“A nymph! You have the better of me there. That’s a classical allusion,

no doubt. I don’t understand.”

“Never mind, papa,” Mr. Rapson said cheerfully; “I didn’t think you

would understand. It’s just as well.”

Then he commenced speaking to his horses. “So, girl! Steady there!

Steady!”

I rubbed my eyes, and saw that we were ascending Eden Hill.

CHAPTER VIII--MONEY AND HAPPINESS

Deep down in their secret hearts all the Spuffler’s relations had felt

that his permanent failure to get on in the world was a kind of disgrace

to themselves. They resented it, but as a rule kept quiet about it

“for the sake of poor Lavinia.” My aunt was always “poor Lavinia,” when

mentioned by her family. Before strangers, needless to say, they helped

him to keep up his pretense of importance and spoke of him with respect.

But the thought that a man who had intermarried with them, should have

lowered his wife to the keeping of a boarding-house rankled. Even as

a child I was conscious that my close attachment to my uncle Obad was

regarded with disapprobation. He was the Ishmael of our tribe.

At first none of his relatives would believe in his mushroom prosperity.

Perhaps, they did not want to believe in it; it would entail the

sacrifice of life-long prejudices. They pooh-poohed it as the most

extravagant example of his fantastic spuffling. On my return home

for the summer holidays I very soon became aware of an atmosphere of

half-humorous contempt whenever his name was mentioned. Once when I took

up the cudgels for him, declaring that he was really a great man, the

Snow Lady patted my hand gently, calling me “a blessed young optimist.”

My father, who rarely lost his temper, told me I was speaking on a

subject concerning which I was profoundly ignorant.

On a visit to Charity Grove I was grieved to find that even Aunt Lavinia

was skeptical. Despite the jingling of money in my uncle’s pockets, she

insisted on living in the old proud hand-to-mouth fashion, making the

spending capacity of each penny go its furthest. Her house was still

understaffed in the matter of servants--servants who could be procured

at the lowest wages. She still did her shopping in the lower-class

districts, where men cried their wares on the pavement beneath flaring

naphtha-lamps and slatternly women elbowed your ribs and mauled

everything with dirty hands before they purchased. Here housekeeping

could be contrived on the smallest outlay of capital.

Uncle Obad might go to fashionable tailors; she clothed herself in

black, because it wore longest and could be turned. She listened to his

latest optimisms a little wearily with a sadly smiling countenance, as

a mother might listen to the plans for walking of a child hopelessly

crippled. She had heard him speak bravely so many, many times, and had

been disappointed, that she had permanently made up her mind that she

would have to go on earning the living for both of them all her life.

Yet she loved him as well as a woman could a man for whom she was

only sorry; she was constantly on the watch to defend him from the

disapprobation of the world. But she refused ever again to be beguiled

into believing that he would take his place with other men. So, when

he told her that they didn’t need to keep on the boarding-house, she

scarcely halted long enough in her work to listen to him. And when he

said that he could now afford her a hundred pounds for dress, she bent

her head lower to hide a smile, for she didn’t want to wound him. And

when he brought her home a diamond bracelet, she tried to find out where

it had been purchased in order that she might return it on the quiet.

Gradually, however, she began to be persuaded that this time it wasn’t

all bluster. The gallantry of his attitude towards herself was the

unaccountable element. Not so long ago it had been she who was the man

about the house, and he had been a kind of grown-up boy. Once she had

allowed him to kiss her; now he kissed her masterfully as by right of

conquest. He had become a man at last, after halting at the hobbledehoy

stage for fifty years. He treated her boldly as a lover, striving to

draw out her womanhood. He was making up the long arrears of affection

which, up to this time, he had not felt himself worthy to display.

One evening in the garden he tore the bandage of doubt from her eyes. I

was there when it happened. We were down in the paddock, the home of

the fowls, where so many of our dreams had taken place. The gaunt London

houses to the right of us were doing their best to shut out the sunset.

Aunt Lavinia began to wonder how much the little hay-crop would fetch

this year. She was disappointed because it had grown so thin, and there

seemed no promise of rain.

“It doesn’t matter, my dear,” said my uncle cheerfully.

“Obad, how can you say that!”

He pressed up to her flushing like a boy, placing his arms about her and

lifting her face. “Lavinia, are you never going to trust me?”

The sudden tenderness and reproach in his voice stabbed her heart into

wakefulness. When she spoke, her words came like a cry: “Oh, Obad, how I

wish I could believe it true this time!”

“But it is true, my dearest.”

I stole away, and did not see them again till an hour later when they

wandered by me arm-in-arm through the wistful twilight. Within a week I

knew that she had accepted his prosperity as a fact, for he gave her a

blue silk dress and she wore it. But he had harder work in getting

her to give up the boarding-house. His great argument was that Rapson

advised it--it would advance their social standing. She fenced and

hesitated, but finally promised on the condition that he was still

succeeding in November.

I think it must have been the news of her surrender that sapped the last

foundation of my father’s skepticism. At any rate, shortly after this,

when my uncle by special invitation came over to Pope Lane, he was given

one of my father’s best cigars as befitted a rich relative. The best

glass and silver were put out. We all had unsoiled serviettes and

observed uncomfortable company manners. In the afternoon he was carried

off to my father’s study and remained there till long past the tea-hour.

Later my father told me the subject of their discussion. By dint of

hard saving he had put by two thousand pounds for planting me out in the

world, part of which was to pay for my Oxford education. Having heard of

that half-yearly twenty-per-cent dividend which the _Ethiopian_ shares

had paid and that they were still being issued privately, at par value,

he was inclined to entrust his money to my uncle, if he could prove the

investment sound. If the mines were as good as they appeared to be, he

would get four hundred pounds a year in interest--which would make all

the difference to our ease of life. There was another consultation; the

next thing I knew the important step had been taken.

All our power of dreaming now broke loose. It became our favorite

pastime to sit together and plan how we would spend the four hundred

pounds.

“Why, it’s an income in itself,” my father would exclaim; “I shall be

freed forever from the drudgery of hack-work.”

And the Snow Lady would say, “Now you’ll be able to turn your mind to

the really important things of life--the big books which you’ve always

hoped to write.”

And Ruthita would sidle up to him in her half-shy way, and rub her cheek

against his face, saying nothing.

A wonderful kindliness nowadays entered into all our domestic relations.

My father’s weary industry, which had sent us all tiptoeing about

the house, began to relax. Even for him work lost something of its

sacredness now that money was in sight. He no longer frowned and refused

to look up if anyone trespassed into his study. On the contrary, he

seemed glad of the excuse for laying aside his pen and discussing what

place in the whole wide world we should choose, when we were free to

live where we liked.

It should be somewhere in Italy--Florence, perhaps. For years it had

been his unattainable dream to live among olive-groves of the Arno

valley. We read up guide-books and histories about it. Soon we were

quite familiar with the Pitti Palace, the Ponte Vecchio, and the

view from the Viale dei Colli at sundown. These and many places with

beautiful and large-sounding names, became the stock-in-trade of

our conversation. And the brave, looked-down-on Spuffler was the

faery-godmother who had made these dreams realities.

A tangible proof of the promised change in our financial status was

experienced by myself on my return to school in a more liberal

allowance of pocket-money. As yet it was only a promised change, for the

half-yearly dividend would not be declared until January, and would not

be paid till a month later.

What one might call “a reflected proof” came when we went over to spend

Christmas with Uncle Obad at Chelsea.

Yes, Aunt Lavinia had succumbed to her good fortune. The Christian

Boarding House had been abandoned and a fine old house had been rented,

standing nearly at the corner of Cheyne Row, looking out across the

river to Battersea.

On Christmas Eve my uncle’s carriage came to fetch us. That was a

surprise in itself. It was his present to Aunt Lavinia, all brand new--a

roomy brougham, with two gray horses, and a coachman in livery. From

this it will be seen that he had not kept his bargain with himself, made

that day at Richmond, to live only on his salary.

A slight fall of snow was on the ground; across London we drove, the

merriest little family in all that shopping crowd. We had scarcely

pulled up against the pavement and had our first peep of the fine big

house, when the front-door flew open, letting out a flood of light

which rippled to the carriage like a golden carpet unrolled across white

satin.

There stood Uncle Obad, frock-coated and glorious, with Aunt Lavinia

beside him, dressed all in lavender--not at all the prim, businesslike

little woman, half widow, half hospital nurse, of my earliest

recollection. She was as beaming and excited as a young girl, and

greeted the Snow Lady by throwing her arms about her and whispering,

“Oh, doesn’t it seem all too good to be true?”

The Snow Lady kissed her gaily on both cheeks, saying, “True enough, my

dear. At any rate, Obad’s carriage was very real.”

How changed we were from the solemn polite personages who had considered

it a point in our favor that we knew how to bottle our emotions. We

laughed and rollicked, and made quite poor jokes seem brilliant by the

sparkle with which we told or received them. And all this was done

by money; in our case, merely by the promise of money! When a boy

remembered what we all had been, it was a transformation which called

for reflection.

My uncle with his jolly rich-relative manner was the focus-point of our

attentions. Aunt Lavinia and, in fact, we all felt flat whenever he went

out of the room. She followed after him like a little dog, with dumb

admiring eyes, waiting to be petted. She told the Snow Lady that she

couldn’t blame herself enough and could never make it up to him, for

having lived with him in the same house all those years without having

discovered his goodness. Then, as ladies will, they kissed for the

twentieth time and did a little glad crying together.

So the stern grayness, which comes of a too frequent pondering on a

diminishing bank-account, had vanished from the faces of our elders.

Ruthita and I looked on and wondered. A great house had something to

do with it, and heavy carpets, and wide fire-places, and fine shiny

furniture, but underlying it all was money.

Christmas Eve I was awakened by the playing of waits outside my window.

I looked out at the broad black river, with the ropes of stars, which

were the lights of bridges, flung across it. And I looked at the

untrodden snow, stretching far down the Embankment, gleaming and

shadowy, making London seem a far-away, forgotten country. Then fumbling

in the darkness, I looked in my stocking and drew out a slip of paper.

By the light of a match, I discovered it to be a check from my aunt and

uncle for fifty pounds. Comparing notes in my night-gown with Ruthita

next morning, I found that she had another for the same amount.

Ah, but that was something like a Christmas! Never a twenty-fifth of

December comes round but I remember it. My father summed it all up when

he said, “Well, Obad, now you’ve struck it lucky, you certainly know how

to be generous.”

He certainly did, and proved amply that only poverty had prevented him

in former days from being the best loved man in the family. Only one

person roused more admiration than my uncle, and that was Mr. Rapson.

My father had never met him, so he had been invited to the Christmas

dinner. At the last moment he had excused himself, saying that he had

an unavoidable engagement with a lady. However, he turned up late in the

evening with Miss Kitty on his arm and a fur-coat on his back. Somehow

they both seemed articles of clothing; he wore them with such perfect

assurance, as though they were so much a part of himself. In the hall he

took off his fur-coat, and then he had only Miss Kitty to wear.

It was awe-inspiring to see the deference that was paid him and the ease

with which he accepted every attention. My father, with the sincerest

simplicity, almost thanked him to his face for selling him _The

Ethiopian_ shares.

Of course he had to tell his lion-stories and how he went hunting

ivory in Africa. My uncle trotted him about as though he were a horse,

reminding him of all his paces. Mr. Rapson was _his_ discovery--_his_

property. We all sat round and hero-worshiped. Miss Kitty seemed

overwhelmed by the greatness of the house and the general luxury.

She appeared particularly shy of the ladies. After she had gone they

declared her to be a dumb, doll-like little creature, with her quiet

eyes and honey-colored hair. I sniggered, and they said, “What’s the

matter with the boy? Why are you gurgling, Dante?”

I was thinking of another occasion, when she was neither dumb nor

doll-like.

Now, quite contrary to her behavior at Richmond, she remained almost

motionless on the chair in which Mr. Rapson had placed her, looking like

a beautiful obedient piece of jewelry, waiting till her owner got ready

to claim her. Only at parting did she show me any sign of recollection

and then, while all eyes were occupied with Mr. Rapson, she whispered,

“You were good to me at Richmond. I don’t forget.”

We stayed with my uncle four days. To us children it was a kind of

tragedy when we left. “We must do this every year,” my uncle said.

“If we ar’n’t in Florence,” my father replied gaily.

Going back to school this time was a sore trial--it meant moving out

of the zone of excitement. It seemed that every day something new must

happen; and then there was so much to talk about. However, I got my

pleasure another way--by the things I let out at school, with a boy’s

natural boastfulness, about my uncle. I found myself, what I had always

desired to be, genuinely and extremely popular. Money again! I let them

know that they would probably only have the privilege of my society for

a little while as, in all likelihood, I should be living in Florence

next year.

This term two events happened, intimately related to one another in

their effect upon my career, though at the time no one could have

suspected any connection between them.

Lady Zion, the Creature’s sister, had certainly got more crazy in the

years that had elapsed since I first met her. The winter was a heavy

one and the snow fell far into February; yet nothing could restrain her,

short of an asylum, from wandering about in the bleakest weather all

over the countryside. Sometimes she would stay out far into the night,

and on several occasions the Creature and I had to go out and search for

her. I have seen her pass me five miles from home, riding on her little

ass, talking to herself, all unaware of anything around her.

She was a temptation to the village-boys, and they would frequently

torment her. The antagonism between the Red House and the village ran

high. In a sense she was school property; we would make a chance of

rescuing her an excuse for a free-fight. This meant that when the enemy

found her alone, they took the opportunity of displaying their spite.

On the fourteenth of February she had been out all day. No one had seen

her; by nightfall she had not returned. The Creature got permission to

have me go out with him to hunt for her. It was necessary that someone

should go with him because he was short-sighted. We investigated all her

favorite haunts, but found not a trace of her. We inquired of farmers

and travelers on the road, but heard nothing satisfactory. If she had

gone by field-routes this was not remarkable, for all the country was

covered with snow. Her white draped figure against the white landscape

made it easy for her to escape observation.

The poor old Creature was getting worried; we had been three hours

searching and hadn’t got a clue. I did my best to cheer him, and at last

proposed that we should return to his cottage as sometimes the donkey

had brought her back of himself.

From the point where we then stood our shortest route lay cross-country

through a wood, skirting a little dell. Under the trees it was very dark

although the moon was shining, for the trees grew close together. We

were passing by the dell when I happened to look aside. The moonlight,

falling across it, showed me something standing there. I asked the

Creature to wait while I went and examined it. As I got nearer, I saw it

was alive; then I recognized Lady Zion’s donkey. It had halted over what

appeared to be a drift of snow. On coming closer I saw that it was Lady

Zion herself. Something warned me not to call her brother.

Bending down, I turned her over and drew the straggling hair from off

her face. There was a red gash in her forehead and red upon the snow. By

the fear that seized me when I touched her, I knew.

Coming back to the Creature I told him it was nothing--I had been

mistaken. At the school-house I made an excuse to leave him while he

went on to the cottage. When he was out of sight I ran panic-stricken

to Sneard’s study and told him. The two of us, without giving the alarm,

returned to the wood and brought her home. The Creature was just setting

out again when we reached the cottage. By the limp way in which she hung

across the donkey’s back, he realized at a glance what had happened.

Catching her in his arms, he dragged her down on to the road and,

kneeling over her, commenced to sob and sob like an animal, not using

any words, in a low moaning monotone.

One by one windows in the village-street were thrown open; frowsy heads

stuck out; lights began to grope across the panes; the sleeping houses

woke and a promiscuous crowd of half-clad people gathered. Above the

intermittent babel of questions and answers was the constant sound of

the Creature’s sobbing.

Next morning the news of Lady Zion’s death was common property.

Detectives came down from London and a thorough effort was made to trace

the murderer. Near the spot in the dell where she had been discovered,

half-a-dozen snowballs lay scattered. It was supposed that a village-boy

had come across her there, and in one of the snowballs he had thrown,

purposely or accidentally, had buried a stone; then, seeing her fall,

had run away in terror.

At the school various rumors went the round. The one which found most

favor, though we all knew it to be untrue, was that Sneard had done

it. His supposed motive was his well-known annoyance at Lady Zion’s

irritating obsession that he had once loved her.

In the midst of this excitement, while the London detectives were

still hunting, I received a telegram from my father, unexplained and

peremptory, “_Return immediately. Bring all belongings._”

CHAPTER IX--THE DECEITFULNESS OF RICHES

Of course the telegram was connected in some way with the payment of the

first half-yearly dividend. Perhaps my father had decided on an instant

removal to Italy. So my schoolmates thought as they stood enviously

watching me pack.

Towards evening I stepped into the village’s one and only cab. I shook

the dust of the Red House from my feet without regret. With the

intense selfishness of youth, my own hope for the future made me almost

forgetful of the Creature’s tragedy.

It was about eight o’clock when I reached Pope Lane. All the front of

the house was in darkness. I tugged vigorously at the bell, feeling a

little slighted that none of them had been on the look-out. Directly

the door opened, I rushed in with a mouthful of excited questions. Hetty

stared at me disapprovingly. “Don’t make so much noise, Master Dante,”

she said; “your mother and Miss Ruthita ’ave ’ad a worryin’ day and

’ave gorn to bed. They didn’t know you was comin’.”

I noticed that the stairway was unlighted, that the gas in the hall was

on the jet, and that Hetty herself was partly prepared for bed. I was

beginning to explain to her about the telegram, speaking below my breath

the way one does when death is in the house. Just then my father came

out from his study. His pen was behind his ear and his shoulders looked

stoopy. His face had the worn expression of the old days, which came

from overwork.

“Father, why did you send for me?”

He led me into the study, closing the door behind him.

“You’ve got to be brave.”

At his words my heart sank. My eyes retreated from his face. I wanted to

lengthen out the minutes until I should know the worst.

“My boy, your Uncle Obad’s gone to smash. We’ve lost everything.”

He seated himself at the table, his head supported on his hand. He had

tried to speak in a matter-of-fact manner, as much as to say, “Of course

this is just what we all expected.” But I could see that hope had

gone out of him. I wanted to say something decent and comforting; but

everything that came to me seemed too grandiloquent. There was nothing

adequate that could be said. Florence, realization of dreams, respite

from drudgery--all the happiness that money alone could purchase and

that had seemed so accessible, was now placed apparently forever beyond

reach of his hand.

He took his pen from behind his ear and commenced aimlessly stabbing the

blotting-pad.

He spoke again, looking away from me. “That money was yours. I saved it

for you. It was for giving you a chance in the world. I ought to have

known that your uncle wasn’t to be trusted--he’s never been able to earn

a living by honest work. But there, I don’t blame him as much as I blame

myself. I must have been mad.”

“Shan’t we get anything back?”

He shook his head. “This fellow Rapson is a common swindler, from what

I can make out. He simply used your uncle. He may never have had any

diamond mines. If he had, they were worthless. He doesn’t appear to have

had any capital except what he got by your uncle selling his shares. He

paid his one dividend last summer in order to tempt investors, and now

he’s decamped. We shan’t see a penny back.”

I tried to tell him that he needn’t worry for my sake--I could work.

“Yes, yes,” he said, “that’s why I sent for you. Of course your fees are

all paid for this term; but if you’ve got to enter the commercial world,

the sooner the better. You’ve come to an age when every day spent at

school is a day wasted, unless you’re going to enter a profession. You

can’t get a University education without money and, in any case, it’s

worse than valueless unless you have the money to back it.”

“But I don’t mind working,” I assured him; “I shall be glad to work.

P’raps by starting early I’ll be able to earn a lot of money and help

you one day, Dad.”

He frowned at my cheerfulness; he had finished with optimism forever.

“You don’t know what you’re saying. Money isn’t so easily earned. It

took me fifteen years of pinching and scraping to save two thousand

pounds.” Then, conscious of ungraciousness, he added, “But I like your

spirit, Dante, and it was good of you to say that.”

His fear of heroics and sentiment made him rise quickly and turn out the

lamp.

“Best go to bed.”

I groped my way upstairs through the darkened house. There was

something unnatural about its darkness. Its silence was not the silence

of a house in which people were sleeping, but one in which they lay

without rest staring into the shadows. In my bedroom I felt it indecent

to light the gas. I sat by the window, looking out across gardens to

our neighbors’ illumined windows. Someone was playing a piano; it seemed

disgustingly bad taste on their part to do that when we had lost two

thousand pounds.

My thought veered round. What after all were two thousand pounds to

be so miserable about! I began to feel annoyed with my father that he

should have made such a fuss about it. I was sure that neither the Snow

Lady nor Ruthita had wanted to go to bed so early. Probably he didn’t

really want to himself. He just got the idea into his head, and had

forced it on the family. In our house, until Mr. Rapson came along, it

had always been like that: he punished us, instead of the people who had

hurt him, by the moods that resulted from his disappointments. Why, if

it was simply a matter of my going to work, I rather liked the prospect.

Anyhow, it was for the most part my concern. And then I remembered how

sad he had looked, and was sorry that such thoughts had come into my

head.

A tap at my door made me jump up conscience-stricken. “It’s only

Ruthita,” a low voice said.

She crept in noiselessly as a shadow. Her warm arms went about my

neck, drawing my face down to hers. “Oh, Dannie, I’m so, so sorry,” she

whispered.

“What about?”

“Because I’ve never missed welcoming you home ever since you went to

school, and you needed me most of all this evening--and because you’ve

got to go to work.”

“That doesn’t matter, Ruthie. If I go to work I’ll earn money, and then

I’ll be able to do things for you.”

“For me! Oh, you darling!” Then she thought a minute and her face

clouded. “But no, if you go to work you’ll marry. That’s what always

happens.”

She stood gazing up at me, her face looking frailer and purer than ever

in the darkness. She had slipped on a long blue dressing-gown to come

and see me, and her long black hair hung loose about her. Just below the

edge of her gown her small pale feet showed out. Then I realized for

the first time that she had changed as I had changed; we were no longer

children. Perhaps the same wistful imaginings, exquisite and alluring,

had come to her. For her also the walls of childhood, which had shut out

the far horizon, were crumbling. Then, with an overwhelming reverence, I

became aware of the strange fascination of her appealing beauty.

She snuggled herself beside me in the window. We spoke beneath our

breath in the hushed voices of conspirators, lest we should be heard by

my father.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said apologetically. “I was lonely, so I came to

you. Everything and everybody seem so sad.”

“It was your thoughts that were sad, Ruthie. What were you thinking

about?”

She rubbed her cheek against mine shyly and I felt her tremble. “I

was thinking about you. We’re growing up, Dante. You may go away and

forget--forget all about me and the Snow Lady.”

“I shan’t,” I denied stoutly.

To which she replied, “But people do.”

“Do what?”

“Forget. And then I’m not your sister really--only by pretense.”

“Look here,” I said, “you say that when boys earn money they marry. I

don’t think I ever shall because--well, because of something that has

happened. So why shouldn’t you and I agree to live always together, the

same as we do now?”

She said that that would be grand; she would be a little mother to me.

But she wanted to know what made me so sure that I would always be a

bachelor. With the sincere absurdity of youth, the more absurd because

of its sincerity, I confided my passion for Fiesole. “After what she

has done,” I said, “I could never marry her; and yet I love her too well

ever to marry anybody else. I can only love golden hair now, and the

golden hair of another girl would always remind me of Fiesole.”

Ruthita was silent. Then I remembered that her hair was black and saw

that I had been clumsy in my sentiment, so I added, “But, Ruthie, in a

sister I think black hair is the prettiest color in the world.”

After she had tiptoed away to her room and I had crept into bed, I lay

awake thinking over her words--that she was only my sister by pretense.

Next day my father called me to him. “You had fifty pounds given you

last Christmas. I want you to let me have it.”

I supposed that he wanted me to lend it to him, so I gave him my book

and we went together to the savings bank and drew it out. I noticed that

he drew out Ruthita’s fifty pounds as well. We climbed on to the top of

an omnibus; nothing was said about where we were going.

He had bought a paper and I read it across his arm as we journeyed.

As he turned over from the first page my eye caught a column headed

DISAPPEARANCE OF GEORGE RAPSON. Underneath was a complete account of the

whole affair.

My uncle had been interviewed by a reporter and had given a generously

indiscreet history of the catastrophe from beginning to end. He tried to

defend Rapson, and by his own innocent disclosures pilloried himself

as a sanguine, gullible old ass. He insisted on believing in Rapson’s

integrity. Things looked queer of course, but sooner or later there

would be an explanation, satisfactory to everybody. What the nature of

that explanation was likely to be he could not tell, but he hoped for

the best. He was reported as having said that Mr. Rapson had repeatedly

referred to secret enemies in the financial world. This was the reason

he had given to Mr. Spreckles for not disposing of his shares through

the ordinary channels.

Mr. Spreckles stated in his interview that, on the evening of the third

of January, Rapson had called at his house. He seemed excited and said

that certain plots were culminating against his interests which made an

instant and secret visit to South Africa essential. He had not hinted at

anything definitely serious, but, on the contrary, had given orders for

the declaration of the half-yearly dividend, payment of which would

not fall due till February. That evening he had disappeared; since then

nothing had been heard of him. When four weeks later Mr. Spreckles drew

checks on Rapson’s bank-account for payment of the dividends, they were

all returned to him dishonored. A month previously, on the morning of

January the third, Rapson had withdrawn every penny.

All the names of the people who had lost money in the adventure were

appended. For the most part they were wealthy widows and spinsters,

heavy contributors to various philanthropies, just the kind of people

who would lack the business judgment which would have prevented them

from entering into such a gamble. My father’s name was the exception,

and was given special attention, being headed _A Hard Case_. “Mr.

Cardover, having endured in his early life the humiliations and

struggles which not infrequently fall to the lot of an ambitious

penniless young man, had determined that his son, Dante, should not

suffer a like embittering experience. To this end he had saved two

thousand pounds to start his son on a professional career. This boy was

Mr. Spreckles’ favorite nephew. Mr. Spreckles quotes the fact that it

was he who induced Mr. Cardover to invest this money in _The Ethiopian

Diamond Mines_ as proof of his own honest belief in the value of the

shares. The boy will probably now have to be withdrawn from the Red

House, where he is being educated. Was it likely, Mr. Spreckles asked,

that he would have been a party to the ruin of those whom he loved best,

if he had for a moment suspected that the investment was not all that it

was represented?”

I had proceeded so far with my reading, when my father crushed the paper

viciously into a ball and tossed it over the side of the bus. For the

first time within my remembrance I heard him swear. He was so overcome

with irritation that he had to alight and walk it off. He kept throwing

out jerky odds and ends of exclamations, speaking partly to me, partly

to himself.

“The bungling ass!”

“Why did he need to drag our names into it?”

“A regular windbag!”

“First picks my pocket, then advertises my poverty. Thinks that he

can prove himself honest by doing that!” I put in a feeble word for my

uncle, hinting that he didn’t mean any harm and that it was easy to be

wise after the event.

“That’s the worst of people like your Uncle Spreckles,” my father

retorted hotly; “they never do mean any harm, and yet they’re always

getting into interminable messes.” The storm worked itself out; we

climbed on to another bus. At the end of an hour the streets became

familiar, and I knew that we were nearing Chelsea.

We got down within a stone’s throw of my uncle’s house. There it stood

overlooking the river, shut in with its wrought-iron palings, red and

comfortable, and outwardly prosperous as when we had parted on its

steps, promising to come again next Christmas if we weren’t in Florence.

But when we attempted to enter, we had proof that its outward

appearance was a sham. The glory had departed, and with it had gone the

white-capped servants.

The door was opened to us on the chain. A slatternly kitchen-maid peered

out through the crack. She commenced to address us at once in a voice of

high-pitched, impudent defiance.

“Wot yer want? Mr. Spreckles ain’t ’ere, I tell yer. Yer the fortieth

party this mornin’ that’s come nosin’ rawnd. D’ye think I’ve got nothin’

ter do ’cept run up and darn stairs h’answering bells? It’s a shime

the waie yer all piles inter one man. I calls it disgustin’. A better

master a girl never ’ad.”

I loved her for those words. They were the first that I had heard spoken

in my uncle’s defense. She was uttering all the pent up anger and sense

of injustice that I had been too cowardly to express. Even on my father

her fierce working-class loyalty to the under-dog had its effect.

“My good girl,” he said, “you mustn’t talk to me like that. I’m Mr.

Cardover, who was staying here last Christmas.”

Her manner changed audibly, literally audibly, at his tone of implied

sympathy. She boo-hooed unrestrainedly as she slipped back the chain,

permitting us to enter.

“I begs yer pardon, Mr. Cardover,” she sniveled, dusting her eyes with

her dirty apron. “I’m kind o’ unnerved. My poor dear master’s got so

many h’enemies nar; I didn’t rekernize yer as ’is friend. Yer see, the

moment this ’ere ’appened all the other servants left like a pack o’

rats. They didn’t love ’im the waie I did; I come along wiv ’im

from the boardin’ ’arse. This mornin’ ’e gives me notice, ’e did.

‘Car’line, I carn’t pay yer no more wyges,’ ’e says. ‘Gawd bless yer,’

says I, ‘an’ if yer carn’t, wot does that matter? I ain’t one of yer

’igh and mighty, lawdy-dah hussies that I should desert yer.’ Oh,

Mr. Cardover, it’s a shime the loife they’re leadin’ the poor man.

But there, if they sends ’im to prison, I’ll never agen put me nose

h’insoide a church nor say no prayers. I’ll just believe there ain’t no

Gawd in the world. The landlord, ’e’s in there h’at present wiv’im,

a-naggin’ at ’im. I was listenin’ at the key’ole when yer rang the

bell. But there, I’m keepin’ yer witin’! Won’t yer step into the drarin’

room till ’e’s by ’imself? H’excuse me dirty ’ands. I ’as to do

h’everythin’ for ’im--there’s only me and the master; even the Missis

’as left.”

As she was closing the door behind her, my father called after her,

“Mrs. Spreckles left! That’s astounding. Why has she done that?”

The tousled hair and red eyes re-appeared for a second. “Gorn back to

start up the bo-ordin’ ’arse,” she stammered with a sob.

How different the room looked from when we were last in it! The cushions

on the sofa were awry. The windows winked at you wickedly, one blind

lowered and the other up. It had the bewildered, disheveled swaggerness

of a last night’s reveler betrayed by the sunrise.

Since Caroline had spoken my mind out for me, I felt awkward alone with

my father. I was afraid of what he might say presently.

I picked up a small, handsomely bound volume from the table while

we were waiting. I began turning the pages, and found that it was

a collected edition of tracts, written by my uncle and ostensibly

addressed to young men. They had been a kind of stealthy advertisement

of The Christian Boarding-House, calculated to make maiden aunts, into

whose hands they fell, sit up and feel immediately that the author

was the very person for influencing the morals of their giddy nephews.

Through the persuasive saintliness expressed in these tracts Uncle Obad

had procured many of his paying-guests. My eye was arrested by the

title of one of them, THE DECEITFULNESS OF RICHES. I read, “One of our

greatest poets has written of finding love in huts where poor men lie.

Oh, that young men might be brought to ponder the truth contained in

those words! What is more difficult to obtain than love in the whole

world? Can riches buy love? Nay, but on the contrary love and wealth are

rarely found together. Many a powerful financier and belted earl would

give all that he has in exchange for love. Young men, when you come

to die, which of all your possessions can you carry with you to an

after-world? Then, at least, you will learn the deceitfulness of riches.

You thought you had everything; too late you know that you had nothing.

Even in this life some men live to learn that gold is but a phantom--a

vampire phantom destroying friendship.”

I had got so far when footsteps and voices, loud in contention, sounded

in the hall. “You’ve got to be out of here in a fortnight, d’yer

understand? You’re letting down my property the longer you stay here.

You’re giving my house a bad name. The address is in all the papers;

people are already pointing it out. I won’t stand it. That’s my last

word.”

The front door slammed. I heard the chain being put up. The handle of

the drawing-room door turned hesitatingly and my uncle entered. He still

wore the clothes of affluence, and yet the impression he made was one of

shabbiness. He seemed to have shrunk. His jolly John Bull confidence

had vanished and had been replaced by the hurried, appeasing manner of a

solicitor of charity. He avoided our eyes and commenced talking at once,

presumably to prevent my father from talking. He did not offer to shake

hands. “Well, Cardover, this is good of you. I hardly expected it. And,

’pon my word, there’s Dante. I’ve been having a worried time of it.

I’m a badly misunderstood man. But there, adversity has one advantage:

it teaches us who _are_ our friends. When the little storm has blown

over I shall know who to drop from my acquaintance. This sudden

departure of Rapson has had a very unfortunate effect--most

unfortunate. I expect a letter from him by every mail; then I’ll be able

to explain matters. A good fellow, Rapson. A capital fellow. As straight

as they make ’em. One of the best. Still, I wish he’d told me more

of his movements; for the moment affairs are a trifle awkward, I must

confess.”

He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief and sank down on the sofa

with the air of one who, being among pleasant companions, brushes aside

unpleasant topics. “Well, how’s Dante?” he asked, turning to me, “and

how’s the Red House?”

I didn’t know how to answer. The question seemed so inappropriate and

irrelevant. All the kindness which lay between us made such conversation

a cruel farce. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was, and yet I daren’t

in my father’s presence. I realized that such cheeriness on my uncle’s

part was an insult, and yet I understood its motive.

My father’s face had hardened. He had expected some apology, some sign

of humility, or at least some direct appeal to his sympathy. If any of

these things had happened after what Caroline had said, I believe he

would have responded. But this insincere praise of the archculprit and

ostrich-like refusal to face facts simply angered him. He rose to his

feet with the restrained impatience of a just man; the drawn sternness

of his mouth was terrible. His voice had a steely coldness that pierced

through all pretenses.

“Stop this nonsense, Obad,” he said sharply. “Don’t you realize that

you’ve ruined me? Won’t you ever play the man? You know very well that

Rapson will never come back, unless the police bring him. You’ve been

the tool of a conspiracy to swindle the public; it was your religious

standing that made the swindle possible. No one’s called you a thief as

yet, but that’s what everyone’s thinking. I know you’re not a thief, but

you’ve been guilty of the grossest negligence. Can’t you bring home

to yourself the disgrace of that? You’ve always been a shirker of

responsibility. For years you’ve let your wife do all the work. And now,

when through your silly optimism you’ve brought dishonor on the family,

you still persist in hiding behind shams. I tell you, Obad, you’re a

coward; you’re trying to evade the moral consequences of your actions.

If you can’t feel shame now, you must be utterly worthless. Your

attitude is an offense against every right-thinking man. I didn’t set

out this morning with the intention of speaking to you like this. But

your present conduct and that idiotic interview in the newspapers have

made me alter my mind about you. To many men they would prove you nearly

as big a rascal as Rapson.”

My uncle had sat with his body crouched forward, his knees apart, his

hands knitted together, and his eyes fixed on the carpet while my father

had been talking. Now that there was silence he did not stir. I watched

the bald spot on his head, how the yellow skin crinkled and went tight

again as he bunched up and relaxed his brows. He looked so kindly and

yet so ineffectual. My father had flayed him naked with his words. He

had accused him of not being a man; but that was why I loved him. It was

his unworldliness that had made it possible for him to penetrate so

far into a child’s world. Caroline snuffled on the other side of the

keyhole.

My uncle pulled apart his hands and raised his head. “You’ve said some

harsh things, Cardover. You’ve reminded me about Lavinia; I didn’t need

to be told that. I may be a fool, but I’m not a scoundrel. I can only

say that I’m sorry for what’s happened. I was well-meaning; I did it for

the best. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

“There’s just this.” My father handed him an envelope. “It may help you

to do the right thing in paying the investors a little of what’s left.

Of course you’ll have to sell off everything and pay them as much as you

can.

“But what is this you’ve given me?”

“The hundred pounds you gave to Dante and Ruthita at Christmas.”

He flushed crimson; then the blood drained away from his hands and face,

leaving them ashy gray. His lip trembled, so that I feared terribly he

was going to cry with the bitterness of his humiliation.

“But--but it was a gift to them. I didn’t expect this. Won’t you let

them keep it? I should like them to keep it. It’ll make so little

difference to the whole amount.”

“My dear Obad, when will you appreciate the fact that everything you

have given away or have, is the result of another man’s theft?”

My uncle glanced round the room furtively, taking in the meaning of

those words. It had been my father’s purpose to make him ashamed; that

was amply accomplished now. He huddled back into the sofa, a broken man.

He had been stabbed through his affections into a knowledge of reality.

My father beckoned to me and turned. I stretched out my hand and touched

my uncle. He took no notice. The sunlight streamed in on the creased

bald head, the dust, and the forfeited splendor. Reluctantly I tiptoed

out and was met in the hall by the hot indignant eyes of Caroline,

accusing me of treachery across the banisters.

CHAPTER X--THE LAST OF THE RED HOUSE

In after years it became a habit with my father to say grimly that

Uncle Obad’s Christmas dinner was the most expensive he had ever

eaten--it had cost him two thousand pounds. This was the only reference

to the unfortunate past that he permitted himself. On calm reflection

I think he was a little sorry for the caustic frankness of some of his

remarks; he was willing to forget them. Besides, as it happened, one of

my uncle’s least forgivable offenses--the mentioning of our names to the

newspaper men--resulted in an extraordinary stroke of luck.

A week after our visit to Chelsea, my father received a letter. It was

from a firm of lawyers and stated that a friend, who had read of our

loss, was anxious to provide the money for my education; the only

condition made was that he should be allowed to remain anonymous.

At first my father flatly refused to put himself under such an

obligation to an unknown person. “One would think that we were paupers,”

he said; “such an offer may be kindly meant, but it’s insulting.”

He was so sensitive on the subject that we none of us dared to argue the

matter. We considered the affair as closed, and began to consider what

walk of business I should enter. Then we discovered that my father had

gone off on the quiet and interviewed the lawyers; as a consequence,

a second and more pressing letter arrived, stating that the anonymous

benefactor would be gravely disappointed if we did not accept. He was

childless and had often wished to do something for me. My father’s

misfortune was his opportunity.

Our curiosity was piqued. Who of our friends or acquaintance was

childless? We ran over the names of all possible benefactors--a task not

difficult, for we had few friends.

The name of my mother’s father, Sir Charles Evrard, was suggested. He

fitted the description exactly; the long estrangement which had resulted

from my father’s elopement supplied the motive for his desire to

suppress his personality.

Out of this guess Ruthita wove for me a romantic future, opening to my

astonished imagination a career more congenial than any I had dreamt in

my boldest moments. Up to this time, save for whispered hints from my

grandmother Cardover, no mention had been made of my mother’s family.

My father’s plebeian pride had never recovered from the shock and

humiliation of his early years. At first out of jealous purpose,

latterly from force of habit and the delicacy which men feel after

re-marriage, he had allowed me to grow up in almost entire ignorance of

my maternal traditions.

Now that the subject had to be discussed he became obstinately silent to

the point of sullenness. The Snow Lady came to the rescue. “Leave him to

me,” she said; “I know how to manage him, my dear.”

She laid it tactfully before him that he had no right to let his

personal likes or dislikes prevent me from climbing back into my

mother’s rank in society. I was my grandfather’s nearest kin and, if our

surmise proved correct, this might be Sir Charles’s first step towards

a reconciliation--a step which might end in his making his will in my

favor.

Grandmother Cardover was communicated with and instructed to report on

the lie of the country. She replied that folks said that old Sir Charles

was wonderfully softened. She also informed us that Lord Halloway, the

next of kin to myself, had been up to some more of his devilry and

was in disgrace with his uncle. This time it was to do with a Ransby

bathing-machine man’s daughter. Lord Halloway was my second-cousin, the

Earl of Lovegrove’s son and heir. His Christian name was Denville; I

came to know him less formally in later days as Denny Halloway.

I was packed off to my grandmother, ostensibly for a week’s holiday at

Ransby--in reality to put our hazard to the test.

Ransby to-day is a little sleepy seaside town. The trade has gone away

from it. Every summer thousands of holiday-makers from London invade it

with foreign, feverish gaiety; when they are gone it relapses into its

contented old-world quiet. In my boyhood, however, it was a place of

provincial bustle and importance. The sailing vessels from the Baltic

crowded its harbor, lying shoulder to shoulder against its quays,

unloading their cargoes of tallow and timber and hemp. Now all that

remains is the herring fishery and the manufacture of nets.

Grandmother Cardover’s house stood near the harbor; from the street we

could see the bare masts of the shipping lying at rest. In the front

on the ground-floor was the shop, piled high with the necessaries of

sea-going travel. There were coils of rope in the doorway, and anchors

and sacks of ship’s biscuits; a little further in tarpaulin and oil-skin

jackets hung from the ceiling, interspersed with smoked hams; and, at

the back, stood rows of cheeses and upturned barrels on which ear-ringed

sailor-men would sit and chat.

Behind the counter was a door, with windows draped with red curtains.

It led into what was called the keeping-room, a cozy parlor in which we

took our meals, while through the window in the door we could watch

the customers enter. The keeping-room had its own peculiar smell,

comfortable and homelike. I scarcely know how to describe it; it was a

mixture of ozone, coffee, and baking bread. Out of the keeping-room lay

the kitchen, with its floor of red bricks and its burnished pots and

pans hung in rows along the walls. It was my grandmother’s boast that

the floor was so speckless that you could eat a meal off it. Across the

courtyard at the back lay the bakehouse, with its great hollow ovens and

troughs in which men with naked feet trod out the dough.

Grandmother had never been out of Ransby save to visit us at Pope Lane,

and this rarely. Even then, after a fortnight she was glad to get back.

She said that Ransby was better than London; you weren’t crowded

and knew everyone you met. The streets of London were filled with

stranger-windows and stranger-faces, whereas in Ransby every house was

familiar and had its story.

She carried, strung from a belt about her waist, all the keys of

her bins and cupboards. You knew when she was coming by the way they

jangled. She was a widow, and perfectly happy. On Sundays she attended

the Methodist Chapel in the High Street, with its grave black pulpit and

high-backed pews. On week-days she marshaled her sea-captains, handsome

bearded men, and entertained them at her table. In spite of younger

rivals, who tried to win their patronage from her by cuts in prices, she

held their custom by her honest personality. I believe many of them made

her offers of marriage, for she was still comely to look at; she refused

them as lovers and kept them as friends. She usually dressed in black,

with a gold locket containing the hair of her husband, many years dead,

hung about her neck. Her hair was arranged in two rows of corkscrew

curls, which reached down to her shoulders from under a prim white cap.

She had a trick of making them waggle when she wished to be emphatic.

She was a good deal of a gossip, was by instinct an antiquary, and had

a lively sense of wit which was kept in check by a genuine piety--in

short, she was a thoroughly wholesome, capable, loving woman. The type

to which she belonged is now quickly vanishing--that of the more than

middle-aged person who knows how to grow old usefully and graciously:

a woman of the lower-middle class not chagrined by her station, who

acknowledged cheerfully that she had her superiors and, demanding

respect from others, gave respect ungrudgingly where it was due. She was

a shop-keeper proud of her shop-keeping.

That week at Ransby was a kind of tiptoe glory. My Grannie took me very

seriously; she had under her roof a boy who would surely be a baronet,

perhaps a lord, and maybe an earl. What had only been an expectation

with us was for her a certainty. The floodgate of her reminiscence

was opened wide; she swept me far out into the romantic past with her

accounts of my mother’s ancestry. The Evrards were no upstart nobility;

they had their roots in history. She could tell me how they returned

from exile with King Charles, or how they sailed out with Raleigh to

destroy the Armada. But I liked to hear best about my mother, how she

rode into Ransby under her scarlet plumes, on her great gray horse, with

her flower face; and how my father caught sight of her and loved her.

I began to understand my father in a new way, entirely sympathetic.

He was a man who had tasted the best of life at the first. There was

something epic about his sorrow.

These conversations usually took place in the keeping-room at night. The

shutters of the shop had been put up. The gas was unlighted. The flames

of the fire, dancing in the grate, split the darkness into shadows which

groped across the walls. Everything was hushed and cozy. My Grannie,

seated opposite to me, on the other side of the fireplace, would bend

forward in her chair as she talked; when she came to exciting passages

her little gray curls would bob, or to passages of sentiment she would

remove her shiny spectacles to wipe her eyes. If she stopped at a loss

for the next topic, all I had to say was, “And how did Sir Charles

Evrard look, Grannie, when he came to you that first morning after they

had run away?”

“He looked, as he has always looked, my dear, an aristocrat.”

“But how did he treat you? Wasn’t he angry?”

“Angry with a woman! Certainly not. He treated me like a courtly

gentleman--with respect. He dismounts and comes into my shop as

leisurely as though he had only stepped in to exchange the greetings

of the day. He raises his hat to me as he enters. ‘A fine day, Mrs.

Cardover,’ he says.

“‘A fine day, Sir Charles, but inclined to blow up squally,’ says I.

“Then he turns his face away and inquires, ‘If it’s not troubling you,

can I see your son this morning?’

“‘He went to London early,’ says I.

“He puts his hand to his throat quickly, as if he were choking. Then he

asks huskily, still not looking at me, ‘Did he go alone?’

“‘That, Sir Charles, is more than I can say.’

“‘Quite right. Quite right.’ And he speaks so quickly that he startles

me.

“Then he turns round, trying to smile, and shows me a face all old and

pale. ‘A very fine day for someone; but it’s true what you say, it’ll

blow up squally later.’

“And with that he leaves me, raising his hat, and rides away.”

“And you knew all the time?” I ask.

“We both knew all the time,” she replies.

During the daytime we went through the flat wind-swept country on

excursions to Woadley Hall. Our hope was that we might meet Sir Charles,

and that he would recognize me. Unfortunately, on the afternoon of my

arrival he had a hunting accident, and kept the house during all the

period of my stay. My nearest approach to seeing him was one evening,

when the winter dusk had gathered early; I hid in the shrubbery outside

the library and saw his shadow fall across the blind. He seemed to stand

near the window listening. We were not more than two yards separated. I

wonder, did some instinct, subtler than the five senses, let him know of

the starved yearning that was calling to him out there in the dark?

How those long watches in Woadley Park stirred up memories, and made my

mother live again!

When the week had expired, I returned to Pope Lane. The offer was

re-debated and at last accepted. I went back to the Red House and there

learnt the fickleness of popularity. My uncle’s downfall had caused me

to become a far less exalted person. My influence was gone; a period of

persecution threatened. The Bantam alone stood by me; even in his eyes I

was a Samson shorn of his glory. The renewed, half-shy interest taken in

me by the Creature was a doubtful asset. Our friendship was a coalition

of two weaknesses, and resulted in nothing profitable in the way of

social strength. He did his best to make things up to me. He was almost

womanly in his kindness. Now that Lady Zion was gone he felt a great

emptiness in life; he borrowed me that, in some measure, I might fill

her place. He told Sneard that he wished to coach me that I might sit

for a scholarship at Oxford. Permission was granted, so we both got off

prep.

Evening after evening I would spend at his cottage, the lamp lighted and

the books spread out on the table. He decided that I was not much good

at natural science, and declared that I must specialize in history. He

was a genius in his way, and had amazing stores of information. When he

overcame his hesitating shyness, he showed himself a scholar of erudite

knowledge and intrepid imagination. He had a passion for antiquity that

amounted to idolatry, and a faculty which was almost uncanny for making

the dead world live again. While he spoke I would forget his shabbiness,

his chalk-stained hands, uncouth gestures, and revolting untidiness. He

was a magician who unlocked the doors of the storied past; he owned the

right-of-way through all men’s minds, from Homer to Herbert Spencer.

When he spoke of soldiers, his air was bullying and defiant. But it was

when he spoke of women that he spoke with his heart. Then, all unaware

of what he was doing, he pulled aside the curtains and let me gaze in

upon the empty rooms of his life. It was he who pointed out to me that,

with rare exceptions, it is not the virtuous but only the beautiful

women that the world remembers.

It was odd to think what images of loveliness went to and fro behind

that soiled mask of outward personality, in the hidden temples of

his brain. The Creature was a man you had to love or dislike, to know

altogether or not to know at all. In that last year and a half at the

Red House, when he tapped me on the shoulder and led me away by the

revelation of his curious secret charm, I got both to know and to love

him.

And yet there was always fear in my friendship. He was queer like his

sister before him. Her death seemed to have unbalanced his reason; it

was a weakness that grew upon him. He seemed to have lost his power of

distinguishing between the present and the imaginary or the past. Often

in the cottage he would forget that his sister was not still alive and,

rising from the table, would look beyond me as if he saw her, or would

go out into the passage and call to her. Nothing in the cottage had been

changed since her departure. Her belongings lay untouched, just where

she had left them, as though her return was hourly expected.

He fell into the way of imitating her gestures, and humming snatches of

her crazy songs. He would tumble over the precipice into the abyss of

insanity without warning, in the middle of being rational; and would

clamber back just as suddenly, apparently without knowledge of where he

had gone. Of one of her songs he was extremely fond. I had often heard

Lady Zion sing it as she rode between the hedges, and had been made

aware of her approach long before I caught sight of her:--

“All the chimneys in our town

Wake from death when the cold comes down;

Through the summer against the sky

Tall, and silent, and stark they lie--

But every chimney in our town

Starts to breathe when the cold comes down.”

Some safe-guarding astuteness prevented him from showing his weakness

at the Red House; and I was too fond of him to tell. To the rest of the

boys he was only the grubby, somewhat eccentric little “stinks” master.

Nevertheless, sane or insane, it was through the Creature’s efforts

that, after a year of coaching, I won a history scholarship at Lazarus

for eighty pounds.

Still, eighty pounds would not carry me to Oxford. It became a worrying

problem to my family exactly what my grandfather, if he were my

benefactor, had meant by “undertaking the expenses of my education.” His

generosity might be co-terminous with my school-days. A month after the

winning of the scholarship the lawyers wrote, setting our minds at rest

and congratulating me on my success in the name of their client. This

letter was gratifying in more than a monetary sense--it was a sign that

the anonymous friend was keeping a close watch on my doings.

Since the interview at Chelsea there had been no intercourse between my

father and Uncle Obad. I had once contrived to see my uncle by stealth,

but the first question he had asked me was, did I come with my father’s

knowledge. When I could not give him that assurance, he had sorrowfully

refused to have anything to do with me. At the time I shrank from

mentioning the matter to my father; so for a year and a half my uncle

and his doings had dropped completely out of my life.

But my treatment of him weighed on my conscience. My last term at school

had ended. It was August, and in October I expected to go up to Oxford.

With my scholarship and the money the lawyers sent me I should soon be

a self-supporting person. Already I thought myself a man. I felt that on

the whole my father’s quarrel with my uncle was reasonable, but I could

not see why I should be made to share it. So one day as I got up from

breakfast, I mentioned casually that I was going to run over to Charity

Grove.

It was just such another golden morning as the one of ten years earlier,

when I had driven for the first time across London behind Dollie. What

a big important person the Spuffler had seemed to me then! How wonderful

that he, a grown-up, should take so much trouble to be friendly to

a little chap! Then my mind wandered back over all his repeated

kindness--all that he had stood for in the past as a harbor of refuge

from the stormy misunderstandings of childhood. He and the Creature,

both failures and generally despised, were two of the best men that I

had ever met. Whatever his faults, he still was splendid.

I came to the Christian Boarding House, and passed up the driveway shut

in with heavy evergreens. Caroline, tousled of hair, all loose ends,

girt about her middle with a sackcloth apron, was on her knees bricking

the steps. She did not recognize me. The Mistress was out shopping, she

said, but the Master was in the paddock. “Ah, yes,” I thought, “feeding

the fowls.”

I passed through the decayed old rooms, with their heavy shabby

furniture, so evidently picked up cheap at auctions; then I passed out

through the French windows into the cool garden, where sunshine dappled

the lawn, struggling with difficulty through the crowded branches. At

the gate into the paddock I halted. There he was with a can of water in

his hand, fussing, in and out his coops and hutches, so extremely busy,

as though the future of the world depended on his efforts. I suppose

he was still evolving that strain of perpetually laying hens, The

Spreckles, which was to bring him fame and fortune.

I called to him, “Uncle Obad.”

When he had recovered from his emotion, I soon found that the old fellow

had long ago emerged from all personal sense of disgrace with his usual

corklike irrepressibility. He chatted with me cheerily, calling me, “Old

chap,” just as though nothing painful had happened to separate us.

On being ousted from Chelsea, he had immediately dropped back, with

something like a sigh of relief, into his former world of momentous

trifles--philanthropy and fowls. “We lived at a terrible pace, old chap.

It was wearing us out. We couldn’t have stood it.”

He spoke as if the abdication of his brief period of affluence had

been voluntary. I scented here one of his spuffling explanations to his

neighbors for his precipitate return to the boarding-house.

On inquiry I found that all his philanthropic societies had forgiven

and taken him back. After sulking a while and flirting with various

paid secretaries, they had agreed for economy’s sake to let bygones be

bygones. They had been unable to find any other person who would serve

them as loyally without salary, and who at the same time was able

to offer up such beautiful extempore prayers. The list of their

contributors had afforded Rapson his happiest hunting-ground. Procuring

my uncle’s services for nothing was their only way of getting anything

back.

“And what about Rapson?” I asked. “Do you still believe in him?”

He shook his head dolefully. “I begin to lose faith, Dante; I begin to

doubt.”

“But have you heard from him since he went away?”

“Never a word.”

He hesitated and then he said, “There’s Kitty, you know. He didn’t do

the straight thing by her. No, I’m afraid Rapson wasn’t a good man.”

At mention of Kitty I pricked up my ears; I had often wondered about

her. “What had Kitty to do with him?” I asked. “Were they engaged?”

“No, unfortunately.”

“In love?”

“Perhaps.”

“Married?”

“I wish they had been. After he’d left her, she was awfully cut up. I

did what I could for her. You remember that hundred pounds?”

“My father--at Chelsea--the Christmas present?”

“Yes. I couldn’t keep it. I gave it to her.”

“You always have to be giving something,” I said.

We were sitting on an upturned barrow in the paddock when this

conversation took place. I thought how characteristic of Uncle Obad that

was--to be helping others at a time when he himself was most in need of

help. But his kindness knew no seasons. Then I began, as a very young

man will, to think of Kitty, and, because of her frailty, to picture her

through a haze of romance.

“Where’s Kitty now?” I asked.

“She’s in a photographer’s at Oxford. She serves behind a counter. But,

come, you’ve not told me yet what you think of my fowls.”

CHAPTER XI--STAR-DUST DAYS

The walls of the garden had fallen. Childhood was ended and with it all

those absurd, aching fears lest I should never be a man and lest time

might be a stationary, unescapable present, with no trap-doors giving

access to the future. The experiment of life had begun in earnest, and

the adventure.

That first October night of my residence at Oxford is forever memorable.

Before leaving Pope Lane I had been led aside by my father. He had taken

it for granted that I was now capable of a man’s follies and had warned

me against them. Somehow his assumption that I had it in my choice to

become a Don Juan warmed my heart; it impressed me as a tribute to my

manhood--a tacit acknowledgment that I was a free agent. Free at last!

I did not understand one-tenth part of all that he hinted at. But his

presumption that I did understand seemed to me a form of compliment. To

ask for an explanation was a heroism of which I was not capable. So I

left home clad in the armor of ignorance to do battle with the world.

Ruthita wanted to accompany me to the station. I would not let her. She

was weepy in private; I knew that in public she would be worse. I had

inherited my father’s dread of sentiment and his fear lest other people

should construe it as weakness.

At Paddington I met the Bantam; we were entering the same college

and traveled up together. We chose our places in a “smoker” by way of

emphasizing to ourselves our emancipation. We tried to appear ordinary

and at ease; beneath our mask of carelessness we felt delightfully bold

and bad. In our carriage were three undergraduates, finished products

of indifferent haughtiness. Though no more than a year our seniors, they

loaded their pipes and puffed away without fear or furtiveness. They

affected to be unaware of us. They were infinitely bored in manner and

addressed the porters in a tone of lackadaisical, frigid tolerance. What

masterfulness! And yet one term of Oxford would give us the right to

be like that!--we, who so recently had been liable to be told that

children must be seen and not heard. The assurance of these youthful men

imperiled our courage.

As we neared Iffley, the domes and spires of the Mecca of dreamers swam

up. The sky was pearl-colored without a cloud. Strewn throughout its

great emptiness was the luminous dust of stars. All the tinsel ambitions

which had lately stirred me were forgotten as the home of lost causes

claimed me. I grew large within myself as, in watching its advance

behind the river above the tree-tops, I merged my personality in this

vision of architectural romance. Leaning against the horizon, stretching

up and up, out of the murk of dusk and the blood-red decay of foliage,

it symbolized for me all the yearning after perfection and the

passionate desire for freedom that had always lain hidden in my heart.

I wanted to be like that--the thing that gray pyramided stone seen at

twilight can alone express--wise, unimpassioned, lovely, immutable.

We came to a standstill in the shabby station, which of all stations is

probably the best beloved.

“Thank the Lord, we’re here at last.”

In a hansom, with a sporting cabby for our driver, we rattled through

the ancient lamp-lit town where the ghosts of the dead summer rustled

and reddened against the walls. Past the Castle we sped, through Carfax,

down the High, past Oriel and Christ Church till we drew up with a jerk

at Lazarus. Whatever we had suffered in the train in the way of lowered

opinion of self was now made up to us; the servility of the College

porter and scouts was eloquent of respect. We were undoubtedly persons

of importance. If we wanted further proof of it, this awaited us in the

pile of communications from Oxford tradesmen, notified beforehand of our

coming, humbly soliciting our patronage.

The Bantam’s room and mine were next door to one another in Augustine’s

Quad; fires were burning in the grates to bid us welcome. The scout, who

acted as guide, seized the opportunity to sell us each a second-hand

tin bath, a coal-scuttle, and a kettle at very much more than their

first-hand prices. We felt no resentment. His deferential manner was

worth the extra.

Just as we had commenced unpacking, the bell began to toll. We slipped

on our gowns and followed the throng into a vaulted, dimly-lighted

hall, where we dined at long tables off ancient silver, and had beer set

before us. Surely we were men!

That night the Bantam and I sat far into the small, cold hours of the

morning; there was no one to worry us to go to bed. When the Bantam had

left, I lay awake in a state of bewildered ecstasy. I had become aware

in the last ten hours of my unchartered personality. I realized that

my life was my own to command, to make or mar. As the bells above the

sleeping city rang out time’s progress, all the pageant of the lads of

other ages, who had come up to Oxford star-eyed, as I had come, passed

before me. When the withered leaves tapped against the walls, I could

fancy that it was their footfall. They had come with a chance equal to

mine; at the end of a few years they had departed. Some had succeeded

and some had failed. Of all that great army which now stretched

bivouacked throughout eternity, only the latest recruits were in sight.

The scholar-monks, the soldier-saints, the ruffian-students of early

centuries, the cavaliers, the philosophers, and the statesmen,

together with the roisterers of the rank and file, were all equally and

completely gone.

In the silence of my narrow room, with the flickering fire dying in the

hearth, there brooded over me the shadowy darkness of the ages. What

religion does for some men, for me the gray poetry of this poignant

city accomplished. I had become aware that from henceforth the ultimate

responsibility for my actions must rest forever with myself. I was

strangely unafraid of this knowledge.

They were dim dawn-days that followed, when the air was filled with

star-dust--neither with suns, nor moons, nor stars, only with the

excitement of their promise. My world was at twilight, blurred and

mysterious; only the huge design was clearly discernible--the cracks

and imperfections were concealed from me, shrouded in dusk. I lived in

a land of ideals, drawing my rules of conduct from the realism of the

classics--a realism which even to the Greeks and Romans was only an

aspiration, never a practice. Existence had for me all the piquant

fascination which comes of half-knowledge--the charming allurement,

leaving room for speculation, which the glimpse of a girl’s face has at

nightfall. It was an age when all things seemed possible, because all

were untested.

Gradually, out of the wilderness of strange faces, some became more

familiar than others; little groups of friends began to form. The

instinctive principle on which my set came together was enthusiastic

rebellion against convention and eager curiosity concerning existence.

One by one, without appointing any place of meeting, we would drift into

some man’s room. This usually occurred about eight in the evening, after

dinner in hall. The lamp would be left unlighted; the couch would be

drawn near the fire; then we would commence a conversation which was

half jesting and half confessional.

Under the cloak of laughing cynicism we hid a desperate purpose. We

wanted to know about life. We sought in each new face to discover if

it could tell us. We had nothing to guide us but the carefully prepared

disclosures which had been vouchsafed us in our homes. We had risen at

a bound into a man’s estate, and still retained a boy’s knowledge. We

realized that life was bigger, bolder, more adventurous, more disastrous

than we had reckoned. Why was it that some men failed, while others had

success? What external pressures caused the difference in achievement

between Napoleon, for instance, and Charles Lamb? Who was responsible

for our varying personalities? Where did our own responsibility begin,

and where did it end?

The problems we argued predated the Decalogue, yet to us they were

eternally original and personal. We attacked them with youthful

insolence. The authority of no social institution was safe from our

irreverence. We accepted nothing, neither religion, nor marriage; we had

to go back to the beginning and re-mint truth for ourselves. Our real

object in coming together was that we might pool our scraps of actual

experience, and out of these materials fashion our conjectures.

There was one topic of inexhaustible interest. It permeated all our

inquiry--_woman_. We knew so little about her; but we knew that she held

the key opening the door to all romance. What gay cavaliers we could

be in discussing her, and how sheepish in the presence of one concrete

specimen of her sex--especially if she were beautiful, and not a

relative!

All the adventures we had ever heard of seemed now within our grasp.

Woman was the great unknown to us. We knew next to nothing of the

penalties--only the romance.

Little by little the boldest among us, recognizing that talk led

nowhere, began to put matters to the test. The same shy restraint that

had made me afraid of Fiesole when she had tempted me to kiss her, made

me an onlooker now. A saving common sense prompted me to await the proof

of events. I acted on instinct, not on principle. The difference between

myself and some of my friends was a difference of temperament. Perhaps

it was a difference between daring and cowardice. There are times when

our weaknesses appear to be virtues, preserving us from shipwreck. I was

capable of tempestuous thoughts; while they remained thoughts I could

clothe them with idealism and glamor. But I was incapable of impassioned

acts; their atmosphere would be beyond my control--the atmosphere

of inevitable vulgarity which results from contemporary reality. My

observation of unrestraint taught me that unrestraint was ugly. In

short, I had a pagan imagination at war with a puritan conscience.

In my day, there was no right or wrong in undergraduate Oxford--no moral

or immoral. Every conventional principle of conduct which we had learnt,

we flung into the crucible of new experience to be melted down and, out

of the ordeal, minted afresh.

We divided ourselves into two classes: those who experimented and

those who watched. There was only one sin in our calendar--not to be

a gentleman. To be a gentleman, in our sense of the word, was to be a

sportsman and to have good manners.

In our private methods of thought we were uninterfered with by those in

authority. The University’s methods of disciplining our actions were,

and still are, a survival of mediævalism. If an undergraduate was seen

speaking to a lady, he had to be able to prove her pedigree or run the

risk of being sent down. At nine o’clock Big Tom rang; ten minutes later

every college-door was shut and a fine was imposed for knocking in or

out. In the streets the proctors and their bulldogs commenced to go the

rounds. Until twelve a man was safe in the streets, provided he appeared

to be innocently employed and wore his cap and gown. Knocking into

college after twelve was a grave offense.

If a man observed these rules or was crafty, he might investigate life

to his heart’s content. Public opinion was extremely lenient. Conduct

was a purely personal matter as long as it did not inconvenience anybody

else. If a man had the all-atoning social grace, and was careful not to

get caught in an incriminating act, though everybody knew about it from

his own lips afterwards, he was not censured.

My cousin, Lord Halloway, had been a Lazarus man. Oxford still treasured

the memory of his amorous exploits.

He had been a good deal of a dare-devil and was regarded as something of

a hero; he inspired us with awe, for, despite his recklessness, he had

played the game gaily and escaped detection. The impression that this

kind of thing created was that indiscretions were only indiscreet when

they were bungled. Punishment seemed the penalty for discovery--not for

the sin itself. Naturally it was the foolish and less flagrant sinners

who got caught. For instance, there was the Bantam.

The first term the Bantam watched and listened. There were occasions

when he was a little shocked. When Christmas came round, having no home

to go to, he kept on his rooms in college, and spent the vacation in

residence. I returned to Pope Lane, and found that the womanliness of

Ruthita and the Snow Lady had a sanitary effect. The wholesome sweetness

of their affection, after the hot-house discussions of a group of

boyish men, came like a breath of pure air. I fell back into the old

trustfulness. I recognized that society had secret restraints and

delicacies, a disclosure of the motives for which was not yet allowable;

at the proper season life would explain itself.

When college re-assembled I noticed a change in the Bantam. He was

soulful and sentimental--he took more pains with his dressing. He was

continually slipping off by himself; when he returned he volunteered no

information as to the purpose of his errand. When the eternal problem

of woman was discussed, he smiled in a wise and melancholy manner. If

he contributed a remark, it was not a guess, but had the air of

authoritative finality. One night I tackled him. “What have you been up

to, Bantam? You know too much.”

He twisted his pipe in his mouth pensively. “She’s the sweetest little

girl in the world.”

He would not tell me her name. He had pledged her his word not to do

that. There was a reason--she was working, and she belonged to too high

a rank in society to work. She wished to remain obscure, until she could

re-instate herself. She was a Cinderella who would one day emerge from

poverty into splendor. The Bantam said his emotions were almost too

sacred to talk about. Nevertheless, he meandered on with his mystery

from midnight to three o’clock. She was a lady and terribly persecuted.

He had come to her rescue just at the identical moment when a good

influence was most needed. All through the Christmas Vac he had

acted the big brother’s part, shielding her from temptation. She was

lovely--there lay the pity of it.

I pointed out that there were ten thousand ways of flirting with girls,

and that this was the most dangerous. His white knighthood was

affronted by that word _flirting_. He became indignant and said I was no

gentleman.

As time went on, acquaintance after acquaintance would drop in to see

me, and would hint gravely at a deep and romantic passion which the

Bantam had imparted to them alone. When I informed them that I also

was in his confidence, they would repeat to me the same vague story of

persecuted loveliness, but always with embellishments. By and by, the

embellishments varied so irreconcilably that I began to suspect that

they referred to more than one girl.

Most of us were in love with love in those days; we were all quite

certain that an incandescent purifying passion lay ahead of us. It might

knock at our door any hour--and then our particular problem would be

solved. This hope was rarely mentioned. To one another we strove to give

the impression of being cynical and careless. Yet always, beneath our

pose of flippancy, we were seeking the face pre-destined to be for us

the most beautiful in all the world. For myself, I was feverishly

eager in its quest. I would scour the green-gray uplands of the Thames,

telling myself that she might lie hidden in the cheerful quiet of some

thatched farm. Every new landscape became the possible setting for

my individual romance. I lived each day in expectancy of her coming.

Sometimes at nightfall I would pause outside a lighted shop-window,

arrested by a girl’s profile, and would pretend to myself that I had

found her. That was how Rossetti found Miss Siddall; perhaps that was

how it would happen to myself. One thing was certain: whenever and

wherever I found her, whether in the guise of shop-girl, dairy-maid, or

lady, for me the golden age would commence. I stalked through life on

the airy stilts of an æsthetic optimism.

Ah, but the Bantam, he was all for doing! If he could not find the love

he wanted, he would seize the next best. Yet he would never admit that

he was in love. He deceived himself into believing that he acted on the

most altruistic motives. If others misunderstood him, it was because

they were of grosser fiber. Other men, doing the things he did,

laughingly acknowledged their rakishness; he, however, considered

himself a self-appointed knight-errant to ladies in distress. He became

involved in endless entanglements. It was by appealing to his higher

nature with some pitiful story, that his transient attractions caught

him.

I never knew a man so unfortunate in his genius for discovering lonely

maidens in need of his protection. He always meant to be noble and

virtuous, but his temperament was not sufficiently frigid to carry him

safely through such ticklish adventures. He never learnt when to leave

off; his fatal and theatric conception of chivalry continually led him

on to situations more powerfully tempting. It would be easy to explain

him by saying that he was a sentimental ass. But so were we all. The

Bantam came to his ruin because he was lonely, because he had no social

means of meeting women who were his equals, and because he was

too kind-hearted; but mainly because he attributed to all women

indiscriminately a virtue which unfortunately they do not all possess.

He sinned accidentally and therefore carelessly--not wisely, but too

well. A man like Lord Halloway sinned of set purpose and laid his plans

ahead; so far as society’s opinion of him was concerned he came off

comparatively scatheless. The worst that was ever said of him was that

he was a gay dog. Women even seemed to like him for it. I suppose he

intrigued their fancy, and made them long to reform him. From this I

learnt that the gaping sins of a gay dog are more easily forgiven than

the peccadilloes of a sentimental donkey.

In the Easter Vacation of our first year at Oxford, the Bantam stayed at

Putney. In the same house was an actress, very beautiful and more sorely

used by the world than even the first girl. In the summer-time there

was a widow at Torquay. In the beginning of our second year of residence

there was a bar-maid at Henley. After that they followed in rapid

succession. Wherever he went he found some woman starving for his

sympathy. They were all ladies and phenomena of beauty, to judge from

his accounts.

When he came to make confession to me, it was a little difficult to

follow which particular lady he was talking about. He never mentioned

them by name, and seemed to try to give the impression that they were

one composite person.

One evening I got him with his back to the wall. “Bantam, who is this

Oxford girl--the first one you got to know about?”

Then he admitted that she was a shop-girl. I knew what that meant: some

of the Oxford tradesmen engaged girls for the prettiness of their faces,

that they might attract custom by flirting with the undergrads. Little

by little I narrowed him down in his general statements till I had

guessed the shop in which she worked.

“Is she a good girl?” I asked.

Instead of taking offense, he answered, “Dante, the thought of her

goodness often makes me ashamed of myself.”

It was evident, though he would not admit it, that this affair at least

was serious.

“Then why does she stay there?”

“She can’t help herself.”

“Why can’t she help herself?”

“She’s an orphan and has a living to earn. She’s afraid to get out of a

situation.”

“But what good are you doing her?”

“Helping her to keep up her courage by letting her know that one man

respects her.”

“Don’t you think she may get to expect more than that?”

“Certainly not. Why should she?”

“Just because girls do,” I said. “Do you write her letters?”

“Sometimes.”

“What do you write about?”

He wouldn’t tell me that. Next day I went down to the shop to

investigate matters. Since the Bantam wouldn’t listen to sense, I

intended to hint to the girl the danger of what she was doing. Of course

she could never marry him; but I was morally certain that that was what

she was aiming at.

The shop was a stationer’s. I had chosen an hour in the afternoon

when it was likely to be empty, everyone being engaged in some form

of athletics. I entered and saw a daintily gowned woman with her back

turned towards me. She was all in white. Her waist was of the smallest.

She had a mass of honey-colored hair. She swung about at sound of my

footstep.

“Why, Kitty, of all people in the world! I didn’t expect to find you

here.”

“As good as old times,” she said. “I’ve often seen you pass the window,

but I thought you wouldn’t want to know me.”

“And why not?”

“Because of what happened.”

“Rapson?”

She flushed and hung her head. I wondered if she meant what I thought

she meant.

I hated to see her sad; she looked so young and pretty. I began to ask

her what she was doing.

“Doing! Minding shop, remembering, growing old, and earning my living.

It’s just horrid to be here, Dante. I have to watch you ’Varsity men

having a good time--and once I belonged to your set. And they come in

and stare at me, and pay me silly compliments--and I have to smile and

pretend I like it. That’s what I’m paid for. They don’t know how I hate

them. When they have their sweethearts and sisters up, they walk past me

as though they never knew me.”

“But are they all like that?”

She smiled, and I knew she loved him. When she spoke her voice trembled.

“There’s one of them is different.”

“Kitty, he’s the one I came to talk about.”

With instinctive foreknowledge of the purpose of my errand, her face

became tragic. “His father’s in India,” I explained. “From what I hear

of him he’s very proud. If the Bantam made a marriage that could in any

way be regarded as imprudent, he’d cut him off. He’d be ruined. You know

how it would be; the world would turn its back on him.”

“What do we care about the world?” she said. “The world’s a coward.”

It was wonderful how coldly practical I could become in dealing with

another man’s heart affairs--I, who spent my time dreaming of the most

extraordinarily unconventional marriages.

“The world may be a coward, Kitty, but you have to live in it. Besides,

are you sure that the Bantam really cares for you? Have you told him

everything?”

She stared into my eyes across the counter with frightened fascination.

I knew that I was acting like a brute and I despised myself. I had

hardly meant to ask her the last question--it had slipped out. While we

gazed at one another there drifted through my memory all the scenes of

that day at Richmond--the gaiety of it, and the hunger with which she

had clutched me to her as we punted back in the dark. I understood

what this little bit of love must mean to her after her experience of

disillusion.

“No, I have not told him. I daren’t. I’m afraid to lose him. Oh, Dante,

don’t tell him; it’s my one last chance to be good.”

“But you’ve got to tell him, Kitty. If his love’s worth anything, he’ll

forgive you. He’d be sure to find out after marriage.”

“I don’t care about marriage,” she whispered desperately.

“Even then, you ought to tell him.”

A customer came into the shop. We tumbled from our height of emotion. It

was another example of how reality makes all things prosaic. She had

to compose herself, and go and serve him. He had come to admire her

and showed a tendency to dawdle. His purchase was the excuse for his

presence. I had an opportunity to watch her--how charmingly fresh

she looked and how girlish. And yet she was three years older than

myself--that seemed incredible. At last the customer went.

“Kitty, I feel I’ve been a horrid beast to you--it’s so often like that

when one speaks the truth. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I want to see you

happy. I’ll not interfere. You must do what you feel to be right about

it.” And with that I left her.

The Bantam was rowing in the college crew that summer. What with

training, going to bed early, and keeping up with his work, I saw little

of him. The night before the races he came into my room. He looked

brilliantly healthy--lean and tanned.

“Are you alone?”

“You can see I am. What’s the trouble?”

He sank into a chair and grinned at me. “It’s all up. I’ve been an awful

ass.”

“How?”

“I wrote two letters; one to the widow at Torquay and the other to the

actress. They were nice friendly letters, but far too personal. I put

’em in the wrong envelopes.”

“And they’ve sent them back with bitter complaints against your

infidelity. Poor old Bantam!”

“They haven’t. They’re keeping them as proof. They’ve both struck out

the same line of action and talk about a breach of promise suit. They’re

both coming to see me to-morrow, and they’re sure to meet. There’ll be a

gay old row, and I shall get kicked out of Lazarus.”

I whistled.

“You may well whistle,” he said, ridiculously puckering his mouth; “it’s

a serious affair. Here have I been trying to be decent to two women, and

they’re going to try to make me out a kind of letter-writing Bluebeard.

I know quite well I’ve written silly things to them that could be

construed in a horribly damaging manner. I only meant to be cheery,

you know, but I see now that there’ve been times when I’ve crossed the

boundary of mere friendship. They can both make a case against me I

suspect and so can all the other girls. Once the thing leaks into the

papers, they’ll all swoop down like a lot of vultures to see what they

can get.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I can run away to-night without leaving any address. That would leave

the crew in the lurch; we’d get bumped every night on the river--so I

can’t do that. I can stop and face it out--let my pater in for all kinds

of expense in the way of damages, and get sent down. Or I can marry one

of ’em, and so shut all the others’ mouths. It isn’t money they’re

wanting--it’s me as a husband. Isn’t it a gay old world?”

He pushed his hands deep into his trouser-pockets and thrust out

his legs. He didn’t seem adequately desperate--in fact he gave the

impression of being glad this thing had happened. I was puzzling over

what I ought to say to him, when it occurred to me that I hadn’t offered

any expression of sympathy; I told him I was awfully sorry.

“Needn’t be. You see, there’s only one girl I greatly care about,

and she’s just all the world. She had a mishap some years back with

a cad--she only told me a month ago, and because of it she refused to

marry me. She’s got it into her head that I’m too good for her. Well,

now I can prove to her that it’s the other way about.”

The Bantam ruffled his hair. He spoke with genuine feeling; this was

quite different from any of his former confessions. He moistened his

lips nervously, and turned away his eyes from me. “There are some

girls,” he said, “who never need to be forgiven. Whatever they’ve done

and whatever they’re doing, doesn’t matter. They seem always too pure

for us men.”

I leant forward and took his hand. I felt proud of him. “I’ll stand by

you, old chap. How can I help?”

“By being awfully decent to these two women to-morrow. Take ’em out on

the river and keep ’em quiet. Drug ’em with flattery. They’re both

of them immensely good-looking. P’raps if you treat ’em well, they’ll

be ashamed to make a row. Then, when Eights’ Week is over and the crew

doesn’t want me any longer, I’ll slip up to London, and establish a

residence, and get married.”

As he was going out of the room I called him back. “What’s the name of

the girl you’re going to marry?”

“Kitty,” he whispered below his breath, as though it were a word too

sacred to mention.

The widow from Torquay arrived next morning; so did the actress from

Putney. I let each one suppose that the other was my near relative, and

never left them for a moment together, lest they should discover their

error. I gave them separately to understand that their troubles would

be satisfactorily settled. I made much of the rigors of training, which

compelled the Bantam to absent himself. They didn’t meet him until after

they had seen him racing, by which time he had become a kind of hero to

them. I saw them safely off at the station by different trains--so the

crash was averted. When Eights’ Week was ended the Bantam vanished,

without explanation to the college. A month later I attended his

wedding.

Kitty had asked permission to invite one guest--she wouldn’t tell us

his name. When we three had assembled in the little Church of Old St.

Mary’s, Stoke Newington, who should come fussing up the aisle but

my uncle, the Spuffler. He wore a frayed frock-coat; the end of his

handkerchief was hanging out of his tail-pocket, as usual.

All through the service he gave himself such important airs that the

clergyman took it for granted that the bride was his daughter.

We jumped into a couple of hansoms and drove down to Verrey’s to lunch.

The Bantam said he knew he couldn’t afford it, but he was determined to

have one good meal before he busted. We had a private room set apart

for us. The Spuffler tasted the best champagne he had drunk since his

fiasco. It made him reflective. He kept on telling us that life was

a switchback--an affair of ups and downs. The Bantam cut him short by

proposing a toast to all the ladies he hadn’t married. And I sat and

stared at Kitty, with her cornflower eyes and sky-blue dress, and

wondered where my eyes had been that I hadn’t married her myself.

We went to the Parks and took a boat on the Serpentine. It was there

that the Bantam let his bomb burst: he was sailing on the _Celtic_,

via New York, for Canada. He felt sure his father would disown him for

having spoilt his Oxford opportunities, so he was going to start life

afresh in a land where no one would remember.

In the autumn, when I returned to Lazarus, I had an opportunity to judge

how the world treats breakers of convention. No one had a good word

to say for the Bantam. Everybody was eager to disclaim him as his

friend--he had married a shop-girl. Yet Halloway, who sinned cavalierly

without twinge of conscience or attempt at reparation, was spoken

of, even by persons who had never known him, with a kind of tolerant,

admiring affection. So much for what this taught me of social morality.

Playing safe, and not ethical right or wrong, was the standard of

conventional righteousness.

Star-dust days were drawing to an end. The grim, inevitable facts of

life were looming larger and nearer. Romance was slowly giving way

before reality. It was the last year at Oxford for most of the men in

my set. Conversations began to take a practical turn, as to how a living

might be earned. For myself, I listened with a languid interest. These

discussions did not concern my future. I expected that my grandfather

would continue my allowance. I should not be forced to sell myself by

doing uncongenial, remunerative kinds of work. I should have time to

mature. I wanted to make a study of the Renaissance. About twenty years

hence I should publish a book; then I should be famous. Meanwhile I

should collect my facts, and probably enter Parliament as member for

Ransby.

It was wonderful how bravely confident we were. We gazed into the

future without fear or tremor. We all knew that we were sure of success.

Already we were picking out the winners--the naturally great men, who

would arrive at the top of the tree with the first effort. It was

a belief among us that genius was nothing more than concentrated

will-power. Then something happened which startled me into a novel

display of energy.

Ever since leaving the Red House, the Creature had written me once a

week, usually on a Sunday, with clockwork regularity. One Monday I went

to the porter’s lodge for my mail and missed his letter. The following

morning, glancing down the paper, my eye was attracted by a headline

which read, TRAGIC DEATH OF A SCHOOLMASTER. The news-item announced the

death of Mr. Murdoch, science master of the Red House. It appeared that

the boys had gone down to the laboratory to attend the experimental

chemistry class. On opening the door they had been driven back by a

powerful smell of gas, but not before they had caught a glimpse of Mr.

Murdoch fallen in a heap upon the floor. When the room was entered it

was quite evident that the death was not accidental. Every burner in the

room was full on, and the ventilators were stopped with rags.

Some days later I received a legal letter informing me that the Creature

had left a will in my favor. His total estate amounted to three hundred

pounds. I was requested to call at the lawyer’s office. I got leave of

absence from my college and went to London. There I learnt that at the

time that the will had been made, a little over five years ago, the

value of the estate had been a thousand pounds. Of this I had already

received over seven hundred, remitted to me by his lawyers from time to

time according to his instructions. He had originally saved the money

in order that he might provide for his sister in the event of his dying

first. On her death, he had executed the present will, making me his

heir.

So Sir Charles Evrard was not the author of my prosperity! The

disappointment of the discovery robbed me for an instant of all sense

of gratitude. I felt almost angry with the Creature for having been the

innocent cause of all this building of air-castles. This was the second

time that fortune had led me on to expect, only to trick me when the

future seemed secure. The uncertainty of everything unnerved me. Life

seemed to pucker its brows and stare down at me with a frown. All

the money that had been spent on my education had taught me nothing

immediately useful--and now I had a living to earn.

Luckily, just about this time, it was suggested to me that, after I had

taken my Finals, I should enter for some of the history fellowships in

the autumn. It was expected that I would gain an easy First; if I did

that, I had a fair chance of winning a fellowship at my own college.

Now that my fool’s paradise had melted into nothingness, I felt the

spur of necessity, and commenced to work strenuously. Gradually a higher

motive than the mere hope of reward began to actuate my energy. I wanted

to be what the Creature had hoped for me. Now that he was gone, he

became very near to me. He was always haunting my memory. He had robbed

himself that he might give me my chance. I felt humbled that I should

have spent his money with so free a hand, while he had been living in

comparative poverty. I could picture just how he looked that morning

when the boys burst into the laboratory. His hands were stained with

chalk. His uncombed hair fell back from his wrinkled forehead. He

was wearing the same old clothes--the tweed jacket and gray flannel

trousers--that I knew so well. Probably he looked both tired and dirty,

and a little disreputable.

I reproached myself for the shortness of my letters to him. I saw now,

in the light of after events, how I might have been a strength to him.

He had given me everything; I had given him nothing. His fineness of

feeling had led him to prevent my gratitude. Never by the slightest hint

had he left me room to guess that I was beholden to him. And now he was

beyond reach of thanks.

I recalled how I had teased him as a youngster, and had courted

popularity at his expense. When I was most angry against myself, I would

drift back into the class-room where the boys were baiting him, and

would hear him making his peace-offering, “Penthil, Cardover? Penthil,

Buzzard? Want a penthil?” And then, in spite of indignation, I had to

laugh.

When Finals came on I won my First and in the autumn gained a history

fellowship at Lazarus. It was worth two hundred pounds a year. It

allowed me ample time to travel and was tenable for seven years, on the

condition that I did not marry.

BOOK III--THE GARDEN WITHOUT WALLS

_And behind them a flame burneth: and the land is as the garden of Eden

before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness._

CHAPTER I--I MEET HER

It was June and wind was in the tree-tops. All the world was rustling

and birds were calling.

For the past seven months, since the winning of my fellowship, I had

been over-working and making myself brain-sick with thought. I was

twenty-three, and had arrived at “the broken-toy age” when a young man,

having pulled this plaything of a universe to pieces, begins to doubt

his own omniscience--his capacity to put it together. The more I sought

help from philosophies, the more I came to see that they were all

imperfect. No one had yet evolved a theory which had not at some point

to be bridged by faith--that beautiful optimism which is nothing less

than the hearsay of the heart. I was all for logic these days.

So, when I heard the June wind laughing in the trees, I tossed my books

aside. I left my doubts all disorderly upon the shelves to grow dusty,

and ran away. I would seek for the garden without walls. Having failed

to find it in libraries, I would search for it through the open country.

I had only two certainties to guide me--that I was young, and that the

world was growing lovelier every day.

I came down to quaint little Ransby, perched high and red above the old

sea-wall. Life was taken so much for granted there. No one inquired into

its why or wherefore. Everything that happened was accepted with a quiet

stoicism, as “sent from God.” When the waves rumbled on the shore, they

said the sea was talking to itself. When a crew sailed out and never

returned, they said “God took them.” When times were bad, they looked

back and remembered how times were worse before. No one ever really

died there, for in the small interests of a quiet community nothing was

forgotten--all the characteristic differences and shades of personality

were treasured in memory, and so the dead lived on. Life for them was

an affair of compensations. “If there weren’t no partin’s, there’d be no

meetin’s,” my grandmother used to say. And death was explained after the

same simple fashion. Every pious Ransbyite believed that heaven would be

another Ransby, with no more storms and an empty churchyard.

I traveled down from London by an afternoon train. Shortly after six we

struck the Broads, or inland waterways, which now narrow into rivers,

now widen into lakes, flowing sluggishly through fat marshes to the sea.

On the left hand as we flashed by, one caught glimpses of the spread

arms of windmills slowly turning, pumping meadows dry, or jutting

above gray sedges the ochre-colored sails of wherries plodding like

cart-horses from Ransby up to Norwich. Startled by the clamor of our

passage, a lonely heron would spring up and float indignantly away

into the distant quiet. Now we would come to a field of wheat faintly

yellowing in the summer sunshine. Between green-gold stalks would flash

the scarlet of the Suffolk poppy. Across the desecrated silence we

hurled the grime and commotion of cities, leaving an ugly blur of

gradually thinning smoke behind.

The evening glow was beginning. Picked out in gold, windows of thatched

cottages and steeples of sleeping hamlets burnt for an instant splendid

in the landscape. A child, warned of our approach, clambered on a

stile, and waved; laborers, plodding homeward with scythes across their

shoulders, halted to watch us go by. We burst as a disturbing element

into the midst of these rustic lives; in our sullen hurry, they had

hardly noticed us before we had vanished.

With the country fragrance of newly-mown hay there began to mingle the

tar and salt of a seaport. We swayed across the tresseled bridge, where

the Broads met the harbor. Ozone, smell of fish and sea-weed assailed

our nostrils. Houses grew up about us. Blunt red chimneys, like

misshapen thumbs, jabbed the blue of the horizon; above them tall masts

of ships speared the sky. With rush and roar we invaded the ancient

town, defiling its Dutch appearance of neatness, and affronting with

our gadabout swagger its peaceful sense of home-abiding. We came to a

standstill in the station; all was clatter and excitement.

The visitors’ season was just commencing. The platform was crowded

with Londoners greeting one another. Drawn up on the other side of the

platform, parallel with the train, was a line of cabbies, most of whom

were standing up in their seats, shouting and gesticulating. They had a

touch of the sea about them--a weatherbeaten look of jolliness.

As I got out, my eye was attracted to a little girl who was climbing

down from a neighboring compartment. She was unlike any English

child--she lacked the sturdy robustness. My attention was caught by the

dainty faeriness of her appearance. She wore a foamy white muslin dress,

cut very short, with spreading flounces of lace about it. It was caught

up here and there with pink baby-bows of ribbon. Her delicate arms were

bare from the elbow. She was small-boned and slender. Her skirt scarcely

reached to her knees, so that nearly half her tiny height seemed to

consist of legs. She had the slightness and moved with the grace of

a child-dancer escaped from a ballet. But what completed her baby

perfection was the profusion of flaxen curls, which streamed down from

her shoulders to her waist. She saw me looking at her and laughed up

with roguish frankness.

Having secured my luggage, I was pushing my way out of the station

through the long line of visitors and porters, when I saw the child

standing bewildered by herself. In the crowd she had become separated

from whoever was taking care of her. I spoke to her, but she was crying

too bitterly to answer. Setting down my bags, I tried to comfort her,

saying that I would stay with her till she was found. Suddenly her face

lit up and she darted from my side. I had a hurried vision of a lady

pushing her way towards her. While she was stooping to take the little

girl in her arms, I made off as quickly as I was able. Like my father, I

detested a scene, and had a morbid horror of being thanked.

How good it was to smell the salt of the sea again. I passed up the

harbor where the fishing-fleet lay moored against the quay-side, and

sailormen, with hands deep in trouser-flaps, leant against whatever came

handiest, pulling meditatively at short clay pipes. The business of the

day was over. Folk were tenacious of their leisure in Ransby; they had a

knack, peculiarly their own, of filling the evening with an undercurrent

sense of gaiety. Though townsmen, they were villagers at heart. When

work was done, they polished themselves up and sat outside their houses

or came into the streets to exchange the news of the day. I turned from

the harbor and passed down the snug quiet street in which stood the

house with CARDOVER painted above the doorway.

As I approached, the bake-house boy was putting the last shutter into

place against the window. I entered the darkened shop on tiptoe, picking

my way through anchors, sacks of ships’ biscuit, and coils of rope, till

I could peer through the glass-panel of the door into the keeping-room.

I loved to surprise the little old lady with the gray corkscrew curls

and rosy cheeks, so that for once she might appear undignified. But, as

I peered through, I met her eyes.

“Why, Dante, my boy,” she cried, reaching up to put her arms round me,

“how you have grown!”

I was always a boy to her; she would never let herself think that I had

ceased to grow, for then I should have ceased to be a child.

We sat down to a typically Ransby meal, which they call high-tea. There

were Ransby shrimps and Ransby bloaters on the table; everything was of

local flavor, and most of it was home-made. “You can’t get things like

them in Lun’non,” Grandmother Cardover said, falling back into her

Suffolk dialect.

That night we talked of Sir Charles Evrard. Rumor proclaimed that Lord

Halloway had finally ruined his chances in that direction by his latest

escapade. It concerned a pretty housemaid at Woadley Hall, and the

affair had actually been carried on under Sir Charles’s very nose, as

one might say. The girl was the daughter of a gamekeeper on the estate

and----! Well there, my Grannie might as well tell me everything!--there

was going to be a baby. All that was known for certain was that Mr.

Thomas, the gamekeeper--a ’ighly respectable man, my dear--had gone up

to the Hall with a whip in his hand and had asked to see Master Denny.

The old Squire, hearing him at the door, had gone out to give him some

instructions about the pheasantry. Mr. Thomas had given him a piece of

his mind. And Sir Charles, having more than he could conveniently do

with, had made a present to Denny Halloway of a bit of his mind. After

which Master Denny had left hurriedly for parts unknown. It was said

that he had returned to Oxford, to read for Holy Orders as a sort of

atonement. It was my grandmother’s opinion that the marriage-service

wasn’t much in his line.

So we rambled on, and the underlying hint of it all was that I had come

to Ransby in the nick of time to make hay while the sun was shining.

“Grannie, you’ll never get me worked up over that again,” I told her.

“Well but, if his Lordship don’t inherit, who’s goin’ to?” she

persisted. “I tell you, Dante, he’s got to make you his heir--he can’t

help it. The whole town’s talking about it. Sir Evrard’s bailiff hisself

was in here to-day and I says to him, ‘Mr. Mobbs, who’s going to be

master now at Woadley Hall when the dear old Squire dies?’ And he

answers me respectful-like, ‘It don’t do to be previous about such

matters, Mrs. Cardover; but if you and me was to speak out our minds,

I daresay we should guess the same.’ ‘Is Sir Charles as wild with Lord

Halloway as folks do say?’ I asks him. Like a prudent man he wouldn’t

commit hisself to words; but he throws up his hands and rolls his eyes.

Now what d’you think of that? If you knew Mobbs as I know him, you’d see

it was a sign which way the wind is blowing.”

I was trying to think otherwise. I had banished this expectation from my

mind and wasn’t anxious to court another disappointment.

“If it happens that way, it will happen that way,” said I.

But my grandmother wasn’t in favor of such indifferent fatalism. She

loved to picture me in possession of Woadley. She commenced to describe

to me all its farmlands and broad acres. She spoke so much as if they

were already mine that at last I began to dream again. So we rambled

on until at five minutes to midnight the grandfather clock cleared its

throat, getting ready to strike.

“Lawks-a-daisy me,” she exclaimed, “there’s that clock crocking for

twelve! How you do get your poor old Grannie on talking!”

We lit our candles and climbed the narrow stairs to bed. Outside my

bedroom-door she halted. I wondered what else she had to tell me.

Holding her candle high, so that its light fell down upon her laughing

face, she made me a mocking courtesy, saying, “Good-night, Sir Dante

Cardover.”

Next morning I was up early. As I dressed I could smell the bread being

carried steaming out of the bakehouse. Looking out of my window into the

red-brick courtyard I could see men’s figures, white with flour-dust,

going to and fro. The morning was clear and sparkling, as though washed

clean by rain. The sun was dazzling and the wind was blowing. From the

harbor came the creaking of sails being hoisted, and the cheery bustle

of vessels getting under way. Of all places this was home. My spirits

rose. I laughed, remembering the cobwebs of theories which had tangled

up my brain. Nothing seemed to matter here, save the wholesome fact of

being alive.

After breakfast I stepped out into the street and wandered up toward the

harbor. The townsmen knew me and greeted me as I went by. I caught them

looking after me with a new curiosity in their gaze. I began to

wonder whether I had made some absurd mistake in my dressing. I grew

uncomfortable and had an insane desire to see what kind of a spectacle

my back presented. I tried to use shop-windows as mirrors, twisting

my neck to catch glimpses of myself. Then there occurred to me what my

grandmother had said to me on the previous night. So it _was_ true, and

all the town was talking about me!

As I approached the chemist shop at the top of the road, Fenwick, the

chemist, was sunning himself in the doorway.

“Why, Mr. Cardover!” he exclaimed, stepping out on to the pavement

and seizing my hand with unaccustomed effusiveness. Then, lowering his

voice, “Suppose you’ve heard about Lord Halloway?”

I nodded.

“It’s lucky to be you,” he added knowingly. “But, there, I always did

tell your Grannie that luck would turn your way.”

I passed on through the sunshine in a wild elation. What if it were true

this time? I asked myself. What if it were really true?

Ransby is built like a bent arm, jutting out into the sea, following the

line of the coast. At the extreme point of the elbow, where I was now

standing, is the wooden pier, on which the visitors parade. Running

from the elbow to the shoulder is the sheltered south beach and the

esplanade, given up to visitors and boarding-houses. These terminate in

the distance in a steep headland, on which stands the little village

of Pakewold. On the other side of the pier is the harbor, entering

or departing out of which fishing vessels and merchantmen may be seen

almost any hour of the day. From the elbow to the finger tips, running

northward, is the bleak north beach, gnawed at by the sea and bullied

by every wind that blows. Here it is that most of the wrecks take place.

The older portion of the town, climbing northward from the harbor,

overhangs it, scarred and weather-beaten. Where the town ends, seven

miles of crumbling gorse-grown cliff continue the barricade.

Separating the town from the north beach, stretch the denes--a broad

strip of grassy sand, on which fishing-nets are dried. Parallel with

the denes is the gray sea-wall; and beyond the wall a shingle beach,

low-lying and defended at intervals by breakwaters. Here the waves are

continually attacking: on the calmest day there is anger in their moan.

From far away one can hear the scream of pebbles dragged down as the

waves recede, the long sigh which follows the weariness of defeat, and

the loud thunder as the water hurls itself in a renewed attack along the

coast. On the denes stands a lighthouse, warning vessels not to come too

close; for, when the east wind lashes itself into a fury, the sea leaps

the wall and pours across the denes to the foot of the town, like an

invading host. A vessel caught in the tide-race at such a time, is flung

far inland and left there stranded when the waves have gone back to

their place. Facing the denes, lying several miles out in the German

Ocean, are a line of sand-banks; between them and the shore is a

channel, known as the Ransby Roads, which affords safe anchorage to

vessels. Beyond the Roads and out of sight, lies the coast of Holland.

I turned my steps to the northward, passing through the harbor where

groups of ear-ringed fisher-folk were unloading smacks, encouraging one

another with hoarse, barbaric cries. I stopped now and then to listen to

the musical sing-song conversation of East Anglia, so neighborly and so

kindly. Here and there mounds of silver herring gleamed in the morning

sunshine. The constant sound of ropes tip-tapping as the breeze stirred

them, sails flapping and water washing against wooden piles, filled the

air with the energy and adventure of sturdy life.

The exultation of living whipped the wildness in my veins. As I left

the harbor, striking out across the denes, I caught the sound of

breakers--the long, low rumble of revolt. Girls were at work, their hair

tumbled, their skirts blown about, catching up nets spread out on

the grass beneath their feet and mending the holes. Some of them were

singing, some of them were laughing, some of them were silent, dreaming,

perhaps, of sailor-lovers who were far away.

As I advanced, I left all human sounds behind. The red town, piled high

on the cliff, grew dwarfed in the distance. I entered into a world of

nature and loneliness. Larks sprang from under my feet and rose into the

air caroling. Overhead the besom of the wind was busy, sweeping the

sky. From cliffs came the shy, old-fashioned fragrance of wall-flowers

nestling in crannies. Yellow furze ran like a flame through the bracken.

Far out from shore waves leapt and flashed, clapping their hands in

the maddening sunshine. My cheeks were damp and my lips were salt with

in-blown spray. It was one of those mornings of exultation which come to

us rarely and only in youth, when the joy of the flesh is roused within

us, we know not why, and every nerve is set tingling with health--and

the world, as seen through our eyes, clothes itself afresh to symbolize

the gay abandon of our mood.

The fluttering of something white, low down by the water’s edge, caught

my attention. Out of sheer idleness I became curious. It was about a

quarter of a mile distant when I first had sight of it. Just behind it

lay the battered hull of an old wreck, masts shorn away and leaning

over on its side. A sea-gull wheeled above the prow, flew out to sea and

returned again, showing that it had been disturbed and was distressed.

As I approached, I discovered the white thing to be the stooping figure

of a child; by her hair I recognized her. Her skirts were kilted up

about her tiny waist and she was bare-legged. I could see no one with

her, so I waited till she should look up, lest I should frighten her.

Then, “Hulloa, little ’un,” I shouted. “Going to let me come and play

with you?”

She spread apart her small legs, like an infant Napoleon, and brushed

back the curls from her eyes. Her cheeks were flushed with exertion. She

looked even prettier and more faery than she had on the previous night.

“Why, you ith the man what found me!” she cried.

She made such speed as she could across the pebbles to greet me. It was

hard going for her bare little feet. When she came opposite to me, she

halted with a solemn childish air of dignity. “I want to fank you,” she

said, “and tho doth Vi.”

She stood gazing at me shyly. When I bent down to take her hand in mine,

she pursed her mouth, showing me what was expected.

I asked her what she was playing. She shook her curls, at a loss for

words. “Jest thomething,” she said, and invited me to come and join.

I took her in my arms to save her the rough return journey. She showed

no fear of me. Soon we were chatting on the lonely beach, firm friends,

quite gaily together. She showed me the channel she had scooped out,

leading into the miniature harbor. Every time the surf ran up the shore

the harbor filled with water. In the basin was a piece of wood, which

floated when the surf ran in, and stranded when it receded.

“What’s that?” I asked her.

“That’s our thip.”

“What’s the name of our ship?”

“I fordet--it’s the big thip in what we came over.”

“Who’s we?”

“Why, me and Vi.”

We set to work to make the harbor wider, going on our knees side by

side. I thought of a fine plan--to start the ship at the beginning of

the channel, that so it might ride in on the in-rush of the water. The

little girl was delighted and leant over my shoulder, brushing my face

with her blown about hair, and clapping her hands as she watched

the success of the experiment. In the excitement of the game, we had

forgotten about everyone but our two selves, when we heard a voice

calling, “Dorrie, darling! Dorrie, darling! Are you all right?”

I turned round, but could see no one--only the lonely length of the

shore and the black wreck blistering in the wind and sunshine.

“Yeth, I’m all right,” piped the little girl.

Then she explained to me, “That wath Vi.”

“And who are you?” I asked her.

“I’m Dorrie.”

For me the zest had gone out of the game. I kept turning my head, trying

to catch a glimpse of the owner of the voice. It had sounded so lazy and

pleasant that I was anxious to see what Vi looked like; but then I was

not sure that my company would prove so welcome to a grownup as it had

to Dorrie. To run away would have looked foolish--as though there were

something of which to be ashamed; and then there was nowhere to run to

in that wide open space. Yet my intrusion was so unconventional that I

did not feel comfortable in staying.

A slim figure in a white sailor dress came out from the wreck. She had

been bathing, for she wore neither shoes nor stockings, and her hair was

hanging loose about her shoulders to dry. She started at sight of me,

and seemed, for a moment, to hesitate as to whether she should retire. I

rose from my knees, holding Dorrie’s hand, and stood waiting.

I could not help gazing at her; we looked straight into one another’s

eyes. Hers were the color of violets, grave and loyal. They seemed to

stare right into my mind, reading all that I had thought and all that I

had desired. Her face was of the brilliant and transparent paleness that

goes with fair complexions sometimes. In contrast her lips were scarlet,

and her brows delicately but firmly penciled. Her features were softly

molded and regular, her figure upright and lithe. She appeared brimful

of energy, a good deal of which was probably nervous. And her hair was

glorious. It was flaxen like Dorrie’s; the salt of the sea had given to

it a bronzy touch in the shadows. She was neither short nor tall, but

straight-limbed and superbly womanly. She possessed Dorrie’s own fragile

daintiness. The likeness between them was extraordinary; I judged them

at once to be sisters. As for her age, she looked little more than

twenty.

She stood gazing down on me from the sullen wreck, with La Gioconda’s

smile, incarnating all the purity of passion that I had ever dreamt

should be mine. “Gold and ivory, with poppies for her lips,” was the

thought that described her.

Dorrie cut short our silence. Letting go my hand, she stumbled up the

beach, explaining the situation in her lisping way. “Deareth, thith

gentleman hath been playing with me. He’th the man what found me

yetherday.”

Noticing that neither of us uttered a word, she turned on me

reproachfully. “I thought you wath kind,” she said. “Come thith minute,

and thpeak to Vi.”

Her air of baby imperiousness made us smile. That broke the ice.

She placed her arm about Dorrie, hugging her against her side. As I

came up to the wreck, she held out her hand frankly. “This is very

unconventional,” she said, “but things sometimes happen this way. I was

so sorry you wouldn’t stop to let me thank you yesterday. I was hoping

we would meet again.”

It seemed quite natural to sit down beside this stranger. Usually in the

presence of women I was tongue-tied and had to rack my brains to think

what to say. When the opportunity to escape came, I always took it,

and spent the next hour in kicking myself for having behaved like a

frightened boy. On this occasion it was quite otherwise. Sprawled out

in the shadow of the wreck, gazing up into her girlish face while she

cuddled Dorrie to her, I found myself talking with a fearlessness and

freedom which I was not aware of at the time.

“You were bathing?”

She shook out her hair. “Looks like it?”

“But you shouldn’t bathe here, you know. It’s dangerous. The south beach

is the proper place.”

“I’m rather a good swimmer. I’m not afraid.”

“That doesn’t matter. You oughtn’t to do it. You might get drowned. I’m

awfully serious. I wish you wouldn’t.”

She seemed amused at my concern for her. Yet I knew she liked it. Her

eyes were saying to me, “Oh, you nice, funny boy! You’ve known me less

than an hour. If I were to drown, what difference would it make to you?”

She looked down at Dorrie. “If Vi were to go out there, and sink beneath

a wave, and never come back again, would Dorrie mind?”

“You won’t,” said Dorrie; “don’t be thtupid.”

We talked about a good many things that morning as the wind blew, and

the waves broke, and the sun climbed higher. I wanted to find out who

she was, so that I might make certain of meeting her again.

“Do you live in Ransby?” I asked.

“No. We only arrived yesterday. I never was in England till a week ago.

We’ve been traveling on the Continent. I wanted a place in which to be

quiet. I heard someone in the hotel at which we stayed in London talking

about Ransby. They said it was old-world and bracing--that was why I

came.”

“I’ve never been out of England in my life,” I said; “I’d like to break

loose some time.”

“Where would you go?”

When we began to talk of foreign countries, she amazed me with her

knowledge. She seemed to have been in every country of Europe except

Russia. Last winter, she told me, she had spent in Rome and the spring

in Paris. She always spoke as if she had been unaccompanied, except

for Dorrie. It struck me as strange that so young and beautiful a woman

should have traveled so widely without an escort or chaperon of any

kind. I was striving to place her. She spoke excellent English, and yet

I was certain she was not an Englishwoman. For one thing, her manner in

conversation with a man was too spontaneous and free from embarrassment.

She had none of that fear of talking about herself which hampers the

women of our nation; nor did she seek to flatter me and to hold my

attention by an insincere interest in my own past history. She had

an air of self-possession and self-poise which permitted her to make

herself accessible. I longed to ask her to tell me more about herself,

but I did not dare. We skimmed the surface of things, evading one

another’s inquisitiveness with veiled allusions.

The child looked up. “Dorrie’s hungry,” she said plaintively. .

Pulling out my watch I discovered that it was long past twelve. Making

the greatest haste, I could not get back to my grandmother’s till lunch

was over.

“You needn’t go unless you want,” said Vi. “I’ve enough for the three of

us. It was Dorrie and I who delayed you; so we ought to entertain you.

That’s only fair.”

Dorrie wriggled her toes and clambered over me, insisting that I accept

the invitation. And so I stayed.

They disappeared for ten minutes inside the wreck; when they came out

they had completed their dressing. Vi had piled her hair into a

gold wreath about her head. She was still hatless, but her feet were

decorously stockinged and shod in a shiny pair of high-heeled slippers.

When the meal was ended, I had told myself, I ought to take my

departure; but Dorrie gave me an excuse for stopping. She curled herself

up in my arms, saying she was “tho thleepy.” I could not rise without

waking her.

When the child no longer kept guard between us, we began to grow

self-conscious. In the silences which broke up our whispered

conversation, we took slow glances at one another and, when we caught

one another’s eyes, looked away sharply. I thought of the miracle of

what had happened, and wondered if the same thought occupied her mind.

Here were she and I, who that morning had been nothing to one another;

by this afternoon every other interest had become dwarfed beside her.

I knew nothing of her. Most of the words which we had interchanged had

been quite ordinary. Yet she had revealed to me a new horizon; she had

made me aware of an unsuspected intensity of manhood, which gave to the

whole of life a richer tone and more poignant value.

She took her eyes from the sea and looked down at Dorrie. “You hold her

very tenderly. You are fond of children.”

“I suppose I am; but I didn’t know it until I met your little sister.”

A warm tide of color spread over her pale face and throat. She leant

over me and kissed Dorrie. When the child opened her eyes she said,

“Come, darling, it’s nearly time for tea. We must be going.”

I helped her to gather up her things, taking all the time I could in the

hope that she would ask me to accompany her.

She offered me her hand, saying, “Perhaps we shall meet again.”

“I’m sure I hope so. Ransby is such a little place.”

“Yes, but our movements are so uncertain. I don’t know how long we may

be staying.”

“At any rate we’ve had a good time to-day.”

“Yes. You have been very kind. I’m sure Dorrie will remember you.

Good-by.”

I watched them grow smaller across the sands, till they entered into the

shadow of the cliff. I had a mad impulse to pursue them--to follow them

at a distance and find out where they lived. How did I know that they

had not vanished forever out of my life? I called myself a fool for not

having seized my opportunities, however precipitately, while they were

mine.

The wreck looked desolate now; all the romance had departed from it.

The long emptiness of the shore filled me with loneliness. As I walked

homeward, I strove to memorize her every tone and gesture. Their memory

might be all that I should ever have of her. I was mortally afraid that

we should never meet again.