Yes, there were plenty of kind people in the world, and one of the best
proofs of it was that, in that busy, wonderful place through which all
the world seemed passing, and where, on every side, were a thousand
things to attract attention, and so fill eyes and mind that
forgetfulness and carelessness of small things might not have been quite
unnatural, these two small things, utterly insignificant and unknown to
the crowds they threaded, met many a passing friend of the moment, and
found themselves made happier by many a kindly and helpful word or look.
Officials were good-natured to them, guides were good-humored, motherly
women and fatherly men protected them in awkward crowds. They always saw
that those who noticed them glanced about for their chaperons, and again
and again they were asked who was taking care of them; but Robin’s
straightforward, civil little answer, “We’re taking care of ourselves,”
never failed to waken as much friendly interest as surprise.
They kept up their fairy story of the Great Genius, and called things by
fairy-story names, and talked to each other of their fairy-story fancies
about them. It was so much more delightful to say: “Let us go to the
Palace of the Genius of the Sea,” than to say, “Let us go to the
Fisheries’ building.” And once in the palace, standing among great rocks
and pools and fountains, with water splashing and tumbling over strange
sea-plants, and strange sea-monsters swimming beneath their eyes in
green sea-water, it was easy to believe in the Genius who had brought
them all together.
“He was very huge,” Meg said, making a picture of him. “He had monstrous
eyes, that looked like the sea when it is blue; he had great, white
coral teeth, and he had silver, scaly fishskin wound round him, and his
hair was long sea-grass and green and brown weeds.”
They stood in grottoes and looked down into clear pools, at
swift-darting things of gold and silver and strange prismatic colors.
Meg made up stories of tropical rivers, with palms and jungle cane
fringing them, and tigers and lions coming to lap at the brink. She
invented rushing mountain streams and lakes, with speckled trout
leaping; and deep, deep seas, where whales lay rocking far below, and
porpoises rolled, and devil-fish spread hideous, far-reaching tentacles
for prey.
Oh, what a day it was! What wonders they saw and hung over, and dwelt on
with passions of young delight! The great sea gave up its deep to them;
great forests and trackless jungles their wonderful growths; kings’
palaces and queens’ coffers their rarest treasures; the ages of long ago
their relics and strange legends, in stone and wood and brass and gold.
They did not know how often people turned and stopped to look at their
two little, close-leaning figures and vivid, dark, ecstatic-eyed faces.
They certainly never chanced to see that one figure was often behind
them at a safe distance, and seemed rather to have fallen into the habit
of going where they went and listening to what they said. It was their
man, curiously enough, and it was true that he was rather a
gloomy-looking man, when one observed him well. His keen, business-like,
well-cut face had a cloud resting upon it; he looked listless and
unsmiling, even in the palaces that most stirred the children’s souls;
and, in fact, it seemed to be their odd enthusiasm which had attracted
him a little, because he was in the mood to feel none himself. He had
been within hearing distance when Meg had been telling her stories of
the Genius of the Palace of the Sea, and a faint smile had played about
his mouth for a moment. Then he had drawn a trifle nearer, still keeping
out of sight, and when they had moved he had followed them. He had been
a hard, ambitious, wealth-gaining man all his life. A few years before
he had found a new happiness, which softened him for a while, and made
his world seem a brighter thing. Then a black sorrow had come upon him,
and everything had changed. He had come to the Enchanted City, not as
the children had come, because it shone before them, a radiant joy, but
because he wondered if it would distract him at all. All other things
had failed; his old habits of work and scheme, his successes, his
ever-growing fortune, they were all as nothing. The world was empty to
him, and he walked about it feeling like a ghost. The little dark, vivid
faces had attracted him, he did not know why, and when he heard the
story of the Palace of the Sea, he was led on by a vague interest.
He was near them often during the day, but it was not until late in the
afternoon that they saw him themselves, when he did not see them. They
came upon him in a quiet spot where he was sitting alone. On a seat near
him sat a young woman, resting, with a baby asleep in her arms. The
young woman was absorbed in her child, and was apparently unconscious of
him. His arms were folded and his head bent, but he was looking at her
in an absent, miserable way. It was as if she made him think of
something bitter and sad.
Meg and Robin passed him quietly.
[Illustration: HE WAS LOOKING AT HER IN AN ABSENT, MISERABLE WAY.]
“I see what you meant, Meg,” Robin said. “He does look as if something
was the matter with him. I wonder what it is?”
When they passed out of the gates at dusk, it was with worn-out bodies,
but enraptured souls. In the street-car, which they indulged in the
extravagance of taking, the tired people, sitting exhaustedly in the
seats and hanging on to straps, looked with a sort of wonder at them,
their faces shone so like stars. They did not know where they were going
to sleep, and they were more than ready for lying down, but they were
happy beyond words.
They went with the car until it reached the city’s heart, and then they
got out and walked. The streets were lighted, and the thoroughfares were
a riot of life and sound. People were going to theatres, restaurants,
and hotels, which were a blaze of electric radiance. They found
themselves limping a little, but they kept stoutly on, holding firmly to
the satchel.
“We needn’t be afraid of going anywhere, however poor it looks,” Robin
said, with a grave little elderly air. He was curiously grave for his
years, sometimes. “Anybody can see we have nothing to steal. I think any
one would know that we only want to go to bed.”
It was a queer place they finally hit upon. It was up a side street,
which was poorly lighted, and where the houses were all shabby and
small. On the steps of one of them a tired-looking woman was sitting,
with a pale, old-faced boy beside her. Robin stopped before her.
“Have you a room where my sister could sleep, and I could have a
mattress on the floor, or lie down on anything?” he said. “We can’t
afford to go anywhere where it will cost more than fifty cents each.”
The woman looked at them indifferently. She was evidently very much worn
out with her day’s work, and discouraged by things generally.
“I haven’t anything worth more than fifty cents, goodness knows,” she
answered. “You must be short of money to come here. I’ve never thought
of having roomers.”
“We’re poor,” said Robin, “and we know we can’t have anything but a poor
room. If we can lie down, we are so tired we shall go to sleep anywhere.
We’ve been at the Fair all day.”
The pale little old-faced boy leaned forward, resting his arm on his
mother’s knee. They saw that he was a very poor little fellow, indeed,
with a hunch back.
“Mother,” he said, “let ’em stay; I’ll sleep on the floor.”
The woman gave a dreary half laugh, and got up from the step. “He’s
crazy about the Fair,” she said. “We hain’t no money to spend on Fairs,
and he’s most wild about it. You can stay here to-night, if you want
to.”
She made a sign to them to follow her. The hunchback boy rose too, and
went into the dark passage after them. He seemed to regard them with a
kind of hunger in his look.
They went up the narrow, steep staircase. It was only lighted by a dim
gleam from a room below, whose door was open. The balustrades were
rickety, and some of them were broken out. It was a forlorn enough
place. The hunchback boy came up the steps, awkwardly, behind them. It
was as if he wanted to see what would happen.
They went up two flights of the crooked, crazy stairs, and at the top of
the second flight the woman opened a door.
“That’s all the place there is,” she said. “It isn’t anything more than
a place to lie down in, you see. I can put a mattress on the floor for
you, and your sister can sleep in the cot.”
“That’s all we want,” replied Robin.
But it was a poor place. A room, both small and bare, and with broken
windows. There was nothing in it but the cot and a chair.
“Ben sleeps here,” the woman said. “If I couldn’t make him a place on
the floor, near me, I couldn’t let it to you.” Meg turned and looked at
Ben. He was gazing at her with a nervous interest.
“We’re much obliged to you,” she said.
“It’s all right,” he said, with eager shyness. “Do you want some water
to wash yourselves with? I can bring you up a tin basin and a jug. You
can set it on the chair.”
“Thank you,” they both said at once. And Robin added, “We want washing
pretty badly.”
Ben turned about and went down-stairs for the water as if he felt a sort
of excitement in doing the service. These two children, who looked as
poor as himself, set stirring strange thoughts in his small, unnourished
brain.
He brought back the tin basin and water, a piece of yellow soap, and
even a coarse, rather dingy, towel. He had been so eager that he was out
of breath when he returned, but he put the basin on the chair and the
tin jug beside it, with a sort of exultant look in his poor face.
“Thank you,” said Meg again; “thank you, Ben.”
She could not help watching him as his mother prepared the rather
wretched mattress for Robin. Once he caught the look of her big,
childish, gray eyes as it rested upon him with questioning sympathy, and
he flushed up so that even by the light of the little smoky lamp she saw
it. When the woman had finished she and the boy went away and left them,
and they stood a moment looking at each other. They were both thinking
of the same thing, but somehow they did not put it into words.
“We’ll wash off the dust first,” said Robin, “and then we’ll eat some of
the things we have left from what the woman gave us. And then we’ll go
to bed, and we shall drop just like logs.”
And this they did, and it was certainly a very short time before the
smoky little lamp was out, and each had dropped like a log and lay
stretched in the darkness, with a sense of actual ecstasy in limbs laid
down to rest and muscles relaxed for sleeping.
“Robin,” said Meg, drowsily, through the dark that divided them,
“everybody in the world has something to give to somebody else.”
“I’m thinking that, too,” Robin answered, just as sleepily; “nobody is
so poor—that—he—hasn’t anything. That—boy——”
“He let us have his hard bed,” Meg murmured, “and he—hasn’t seen——”
But her voice died away, and Robin would not have heard her if she had
said more. And they were both fast, fast asleep.