and some in boots, and soon they were all whirling and twisting and
hopping, as the people that they belonged to danced and sang. The news
had spread abroad now, and by the end of the second verse the whole of
the market-place was simply crammed, and by the end of the third verse
all the streets that led into it were bubbling over with people dancing.
There were the ironworks men dancing with their employers, and Mr Joseph
dancing with his girls, and the heads of the cotton-mills dancing in
their pyjamas, arm-in-arm with the people that worked for them. And
there was the French mistress dancing with the two dustmen, and there
was Miss Plum dancing with the chimney-sweep, and there was the
policeman trying to dance with everybody, and everybody trying to dance
with him.
Then a little man with a carroty moustache pushed through the crowd and
caught hold of the stout lady; and she nearly dropped her tambourine,
because he was her long-lost husband. As for the greengrocer, he became
so hungry that he danced into one of Mr Joseph's shops, and Mr Joseph
gave him permission to eat everything that he could see. Funnily enough,
too, both Uncle Joe and Captain Jeremy happened to be in town; and when
Uncle Joe caught sight of the soldier he was so struck with his honest
appearance that he gave him the names of three or four generals who
would be only too glad to have him in their armies. It was the same,
too, with Lancelot, for when Captain Jeremy spoke to him his face became
so gentle that Captain Jeremy resolved at once to give him a job as
bosun's mate.
Then the French mistress came and kissed Doris, and then everybody
cheered everybody else; and the five drummers shouted with joy, because
each of them had found the sense that he had lost. The blind one could
see; and the deaf one could hear; and the one that couldn't feel felt
somebody squeezing him; and the one that couldn't smell suddenly smelt
somebody's tooth powder; and the one that couldn't taste had the biggest
surprise of all. For one of Mr Joseph's girls gave him a box of
chocolates, and it was the loveliest thing that had ever happened to
him; and after that, when she gave him some almond rock, he asked her if
she would marry him, and she said that she would.
For a whole hour Doris played her flute, and then it stopped, and
everybody looked at everybody else; and everybody else looked so queer
and funny that everybody began to shout with laughter. Even the moon
laughed, and the end of it was that they all resolved to make up their
quarrels, because after what had happened it seemed so silly to go on
quarrelling about anything. But what the tune of the song was no one
remembered; and next morning when Doris took the flute to school, none
of the girls could make it play anything, not even Gwendolen, who had a
flute at home.
"_H'shh_," said the man in the moon,
Full-faced and white,
And I listened,
I listened so hard that I heard through the night,
Faint through a crack
In the ice of the whiteness, I heard
Somebody whisper my name
With a magical word.
And the moon and the stars and the sky,
And the roofs of the street,
Fell in fragments of darkness and silver
That danced at my feet.
And we danced, and we danced, and we danced,
And oh! tired was I
When, full-faced and white, the cold moon
Shone again in the sky.
THE IMAGINARY BOY
[Illustration: The Haunted Wood]
VII
THE IMAGINARY BOY
Soon after Doris's adventure with the flute, Marian and Gwendolen made a
most solemn vow. Marian pricked her finger with a needle and made a tiny
drop of blood come, and then she rubbed it into the palm of Gwendolen's
hand and promised to be faithful to her for ever. Then Gwendolen pricked
her own finger and rubbed it into the palm of Marian's hand, and took
her dying oath that Marian should always be her greatest friend. Then
they washed their hands under the nursery tap and cleaned the needle and
put it back in the workbox, and Marian was very pleased, and so was
Gwendolen, and when they told Cuthbert he said that he didn't mind much.
Marian was pleased, because she knew that Gwendolen would ask her to tea
pretty often at the old farmhouse; and Gwendolen was pleased, because
that was the first time that she had ever had a greatest friend; and
Cuthbert didn't mind much, because he had gone to a new school, where
there was a boy called Edward Goldsmith, who was wonderfully strong, and
could dive into the water backward from the top diving-board at the town
baths. He was going to be a barrister like Mr Jenkins, who took the
plate round at St Peter's Church, and after that he was going to be
Lord Chief Justice, like the great Lord Barrington at Fairbarrow Park.
Gwendolen's aunt was pleased too, and so was Captain Jeremy when
Gwendolen told him, and so were her father and mother, who were climbing
the Himalaya Mountains and writing a book called _Two Above the
Snowline_. But Gwendolen didn't know, of course, about her father and
mother being glad till she got a letter from them; and by then she had
become quite used to having Marian for her greatest friend.
This letter came during the first week of the holidays, while Marian was
staying for a few days with Gwendolen. Both Gwendolen's aunt and Captain
Jeremy were away on a short voyage, and Marian and Gwendolen had the
house to themselves, except for Mrs Robertson, the cook, Amy and Agnes,
the two maids, and Percy, the boot-and-garden boy.
Percy was the boy that used to open the door when Gwendolen's aunt lived
in Bellington Square, and his father was a gamekeeper, called Mr
Williams, who worked for Lord Barrington at Fairbarrow Park. Percy was
sixteen, and was going to marry Agnes as soon as he had saved enough
money, and though he was rather proud, Marian and Gwendolen liked him,
but not so much as they liked his father.
They liked Mr Williams, because he knew all about rabbits, and used to
take them through places marked PRIVATE; and they liked Mrs Williams,
because she gave them peppermints and never minded how many questions
they asked. Mr Williams was tall, with a grey moustache, and his
clothes smelt of tobacco, and he wore gaiters; and Mrs Williams was
short, and her arms smelt of soap, and she was always popping upstairs
to change her apron. They lived in a little cottage near the Park gates,
and they had six children besides Percy, but Mr Williams was nearly
always out, setting traps or counting the young partridges.
Fairbarrow Park was about three miles round, and was half-way to
Fairbarrow Down; and in the middle of it was Lord Barrington's house,
with its thirty bedrooms and all its gardens. There was an Italian
garden and a Dutch garden and a rose-garden and a water-garden; and
there were lawns as smooth as a ballroom floor, over which the peacocks
cried and strutted. But besides all these, and the Park in which they
nestled, most of the country round belonged to Lord Barrington; and it
was in the woods and fields which he let to different farmers that the
pheasants and partridges made their homes.
When they had finished reading Gwendolen's letter, which came just after
their middle-day dinner, Marian and Gwendolen thought that they would go
and see Mr Williams, and watch the young partridges that he was bringing
up by hand. So they set off, and presently they found him just at the
farther edge of Lord Barrington's estate, where there was a little wood
climbing up the side of Fairbarrow Down. There was a sort of grassy
hollow near the wood, and here Mr Williams had placed half a dozen
hen-coops; and in front of these he had built a little mound, made of
lumps of turf dug from the Down. In among these lumps of turf there
were thousands of ants and several ants' nests full of eggs; and a score
of young partridges were scrambling over them, finding their afternoon
meal.
Usually Mr Williams was glad to see the girls, and to let them play with
the young partridges, but this afternoon he only nodded to them and went
on smoking in silence. They were a little surprised, because it was such
a lovely afternoon, with the sky bluer than any ocean, and the fields
all glittering with the leaves of the root crops, or hidden away under
the golden wheat. Here and there the reapers were already at work
cutting the first of the oats and barley, and about a mile away they
could see the chimneys of the great house shining in groups between the
tree-tops.
The only dark spot was the thick and tangled pinewood, known as the
Haunted Wood, into which Lord Barrington never allowed anybody besides
himself to go. It was inside the Park, and round two sides of it ran the
Park wall, with sharp iron spikes on the top; and round the other two
sides there was a barbed-wire fence, with a small gate in it, heavily
padlocked. For twenty years it had never been touched. When a tree fell
over, it lay where it had fallen; between the trunks of the trees there
had grown a jungle of undergrowth; and only Lord Barrington had the key
of the gate.
Mr Williams was still sitting down, staring moodily in front of him,
when Marian asked him what was the matter, and was he angry with them
for coming?
"No, no, it's not that," he said, "but I've just got the push. His
lordship has given me a month's notice. I'm got to quit and find a new
job, after forty-two years here, man and boy."
Marian and Gwendolen stared at him in astonishment.
"Why, whatever have you been doing?" Gwendolen asked.
He took his pipe from his mouth and pointed to the Haunted Wood.
"See that wood there," he said, "the Haunted Wood? Well, last night one
of these here dogs, he bolted into it, and I couldn't get him out, so I
went in to hunt for him. I was only in there for about five minutes, but
just as I was coming out I met his lordship. He stared at me as if I was
a criminal in the dock, and give me a month's notice to leave his
service.
"'You know my rules,' he says, 'and you've broken them. It's no good
arguing,' he says, 'you've got to go.'"
Marian and Gwendolen felt very angry, angrier than they had ever felt
before.
"What a beast!" they said. "But p'raps he'll think better of it."
Mr Williams shook his head.
"Not he," he said. "I've seen him this morning. 'I'll give you a
pension,' he says, 'and I'll give you a good character. But that wood's
forbidden ground,' he says, 'and I'll have nobody going into it.'"
Mr Williams rose and began to collect the young partridges, and put them
away into the various hen-coops.
"Well, I must be getting along," he said, "and next month you'll have to
make friends with a new keeper."
After he had gone, Marian and Gwendolen sat thinking of all the good
times that they had had with him, and of poor Mrs Williams, who would
have to turn out of her cottage--the gay little cottage that she was so
proud of. Their cheeks were quite red, and there was a hot sort of
prickly feeling at the backs of their noses, and they felt as if they
would like to go to the great house and shoot Lord Barrington dead.
"Dog in the manger," said Gwendolen, "that's what he is, with that great
big house and no wife or children. And he's always going into his old
wood himself. I know he is, because Percy told me."
"Yes, I know," said Marian, "and half his time he never lives at the
Park at all. He's judging people and sending them to prison, or
travelling about and enjoying himself."
"P'raps he doesn't know," said Gwendolen, "what a nice man Mr Williams
really is."
Then she suddenly thought of something.
"Suppose we go and find him," she said, "and ask him to let Mr Williams
off."
Marian was a little frightened. She had never seen Lord Barrington, but
she had once seen his picture in a magazine; and she remembered the grim
look of his eyes and his high-bridged, hawk-like nose. But the thought
of Mr Williams and his sad face soon gave her fresh courage; and as they
drew near the Park wall she was much too excited to feel afraid.
Gwendolen was excited too, but they both knew how important it was to
keep cool; and before they climbed the wall they looked carefully round
to see that nobody was watching them. Then they found a couple of niches
to put their toes in, and they hoisted themselves up till they could see
over the wall; and there they stopped for a moment, holding on to the
spikes, and studying the lie of the land. Just to their right was the
corner of the Haunted Wood, but spreading in front of them was the open
park-land, with its great trees casting their blue shadows, and the
delicate-limbed deer nibbling the grass tips. Beyond these were the
gardens, and the broad terrace in front of the house; and the only
person in sight was a distant gardener with a watering-can.
Then they almost fell down, for round the corner of the wood came the
tall figure of Lord Barrington himself. Marian recognized him at once,
though he was not wearing a wig as he had been in the magazine picture,
and was dressed in a grey flannel suit, carefully pressed, and
russet-brown boots. Luckily he didn't see them, and they crouched behind
the wall, holding on to the edge with their finger-tips; and when they
next peeped over they could see him unlocking the padlock of the little
gate that led into the wood. He went inside and locked it again behind
him, and they saw him begin to push his way between the branches of the
trees.
"Come along," whispered Gwendolen, "let's follow him"; so they climbed
over the wall and dropped into the park. Then they ran across the grass
to the little gate, where they stooped down for a moment and listened.
They could hear Lord Barrington still moving through the wood. And then
very quietly they squeezed through the fence. They both tore their
frocks on the barbed wire, and Marian scratched her arm, but she didn't
mind. And then they began to glide, as softly as possible, deeper and
deeper into the forbidden wood.
Soon it was so dark, owing to the thick-spreading branches and the
overgrown weeds and bushes, that they found themselves creeping through
a sort of twilight, smelling of pine-resin and crushed herbage. But
always, just in front of them, they could hear Lord Barrington's
footsteps, and sometimes they caught a glimpse of his side or back.
Tripping over roots, and stung by nettles, they followed in the track
that he had beaten down; and presently the brushwood began to grow
thinner and the trunks of the trees farther apart.
He was walking more quickly now, and in another three or four minutes
they saw him come out into a sort of clearing, where the ground was
smooth, with a thin growth of grass, and the sun pouring down upon it as
upon a little circus. Here he stopped, and they bent down, each behind
the trunk of a great pine tree; and then, to their surprise, they saw
him take his coat off and fold it carefully and put it on the ground.
Then from under a bush he drew out three wickets, and set them up on the
other side of the clearing, and put the bails on them, and laid down a
bat beside them, and came back tossing a cricket-ball. They could see
his face, still rather stern-looking, but not so stern as it had been
before; and then they heard him say "Ready?" and saw him bowl the ball,
which bounced over the wickets and hit a tree behind. They crept nearer,
until they were almost on the edge of the clearing.
"You ought to have stopped that one," they heard him say; and still the
bat lay in front of the wickets, and there wasn't a sound but the murmur
of the trees.
For a long time--almost ten minutes, they thought--he went on bowling
and fetching back the ball; and every now and then he spoke a few words
as if there were somebody really batting. And then a strange thing
happened, for slowly, as they watched, they saw the bat rise from the
ground; and then they saw the figure of a little boy taking guard with
it in front of the wickets.
He was about fourteen, with short fair hair, and he was dressed in a
flannel shirt and trousers; and the shirt was unbuttoned, showing the
upper part of his chest, and its sleeves were rolled back over his
sturdy arms. They looked at the judge and saw that his whole face had
altered, as if the sun had come down and were shining through it; and
the boy smiled at him, and then tucked his lips in, as the judge bowled
him a difficult ball.
"Well played," said the judge, and they saw the boy look up and begin to
colour a little at the words of praise; and then Gwendolen got a cramp
in her foot and couldn't help moving and making a sound.
Lord Barrington turned sharply toward her.
"Who's there?" he asked in a terrible voice.
Gwendolen stood up, and so did Marian. It was no good hiding. They were
both too frightened to speak.
When he saw them, he stood quite still. A wood-pigeon flew across the
clearing. The little boy was no longer there.
"Come here," he said, and they had to obey him.
He stood looking at them. His face was like marble, and his eyes
searched them through and through.
"Well," he said, "what have you got to say for yourselves?"
They hung their heads and said nothing.
Then Marian tried to speak, though her voice sounded funny.
"Please, sir," she said, "we wanted to ask you something, but you were
playing with the boy."
"The boy?" he said: "did you see the boy?"
They lifted their eyes to him.
"Why, of course," they answered.
For a moment he was silent. Then his voice changed a little.
"Come and sit down," he said, "and tell me what you saw."
When they had told him, he just nodded, and sat, as Mr Williams had
done, staring in front of him.
"Well, now you know," he said, "why this wood is private, and why I
never allow anybody to come into it."
"Because of the boy?" asked Marian.
"Because of the boy," he said. "I'll try to explain to you, but I doubt
if you'll understand. You see, I had a notion that if we human beings
could only imagine anything hard enough, the thing that we imagined
might become actually real, if only just for a minute or two."
He moved his hand, with its heavy gold signet-ring.
"This is the place," he said, "where I come to imagine."
"I see," said Marian. "But why do you imagine the boy?"
He reached for his coat and took something out of a pocket-book.
"This is his photograph," he said. "He was my only son."
The two children looked at it, and then gave it back to him.
"He was fond of cricket," he said. "He died at school."
Then he rose to his feet, and they followed him out of the wood.
"Well, what was it," he said, "that you wanted to ask me?"
They told him, and his face became stern again.
"But he knew the rule," he said, "and he was older than you; and rules
are made to be kept, you know. I can't have them broken."
They were silent for a moment, and then Gwendolen had a rather awful and
irreverent idea.
"But p'raps if God hadn't broken one of His rules," she said, "you might
never have seen the boy."
He stood looking at her for a long time, or at least it seemed long,
though it was only twelve seconds. Then he glanced at his watch.
"What are your names?" he asked.
They told him their names, and he held out his hand.
"Well, good-bye, Marian and Gwendolen," he said; "and you can tell Mr
Williams that I've changed my mind."
Deep within the wood I know,
There's a place where mourners go,
Just as, in the twilight cool,
Crept they to Siloam's pool.
There, with one accord, they bring
Sorrows for a healing wing;
And each hushed and stooping leaf
Lays its hand on their heart's grief.
THE HILL THAT REMEMBERED
[Illustration: Caesar's Camp]
VIII
THE HILL THAT REMEMBERED
Cuthbert's friend, Edward Goldsmith, was six months older than Cuthbert,
but they were in the same form, which was the lowest but one, in Mr
Pendring's school. Most of the other boys thought him conceited, and so
did Cuthbert, and so he was. But Cuthbert had once been conceited
himself, and so he was able to sympathize with him. Besides being strong
too, and able to dive backward, Edward had given Cuthbert his
second-best pocket-knife; and that was why Cuthbert resolved at last to
introduce him to Tod the Gipsy.
That was rather a special thing to do, because Tod was rather a special
sort of gipsy; and Cuthbert had never introduced him to anybody, not
even to Doris, although she had asked him to. It was in the hospital,
just before he had had his tonsils out, that Cuthbert had first met Tod;
and Tod had told him not to be frightened, because there was no need to
be, and it wouldn't do any good. Tod himself was often in hospital,
because he had consumption and had lost one of his lungs; and besides
that he was always getting knocked down or run over, through being
absent-minded. He was tall and thin, with a lot of black hair that kept
tumbling over his eyes, and his eyes were brown, like a dog's eyes, only
they were brighter and always laughing.
When Cuthbert next met Tod, he had been living in his little tent on the
other side of Fairbarrow Down; and Cuthbert had stayed there all night
with him, and Tod had told him the names of the stars. Very early in the
morning, when Cuthbert woke up, he had seen Tod kneeling in the dew, and
a couple of wild rabbits nestling in his arms and smelling his clothes,
just as if they had been tame ones.
Then Tod had beckoned him with his head and whistled a peculiar sweet
whistle, and a hare near by had pricked up her ears and come through the
grass to have her back stroked. That whistle was one of Tod's secrets,
and he knew lots more, and was always learning new ones; and when
Cuthbert had told him about In-between Land he said that he had been
there too, by another way.
So it was rather a great thing for Cuthbert to promise Edward that he
would introduce him to Tod the Gipsy; and Edward was naturally rather
impatient to go and find him, and talk to him. But the difficulty was
that Tod was always travelling about, and Cuthbert never knew where he
was likely to be; and it wasn't until tea-time on the third Monday of
October that at last they found him, quite by accident.
Owing to one of Mr Pendring's boys having won a medal for helping to
save somebody's life, the whole school had been given an extra
half-holiday, and Cuthbert and Edward had gone for a country walk.
Already in the town most of the leaves had fallen, and were lying in
dirty heaps by the roadside, and the scraps of gardens in front of the
houses were sodden and empty of flowers. But out in the country, where
the harvest was stacked, and men were drilling seed into the
moist-smelling earth, the oaks and elms were still glowing with coppery
or rusty-red leaves. The cottage gardens, too, were full of
flowers--clumps of starry Michaelmas daisies, and sheaves of dark-eyed
golden sunflowers, like bumble-bees on fire. But there were real fires
about also, as there always are when summer is over--fires of weeds at
the ends of the plough-furrows, and fires of potato stems in the
kitchen-gardens; and it was over a little fire of sticks and dead leaves
that they suddenly came upon Tod the Gipsy.
They were now about six miles from home, at the foot of the long range
of hills, of which Fairbarrow Down, with its close-cropped turf, was the
nearest to the town. Behind this the ground dipped a little, and then
became a hill called Simon's Nob, and behind Simon's Nob rose the
highest hill of all, known as Caesar's Camp. From Caesar's Camp, on a very
clear day, it was just possible to see the sea; and battles had been
fought on all these hills hundreds and thousands of years before.
Sometimes they had been held by the ancient Britons when they were
fighting against each other; and sometimes they had been held by the
ancient Britons when they were fighting against the Romans. Sometimes
the Romans had held them when they were attacked by the Britons, and
once the Britons had held them against the Saxons; and then in their
turn the Saxons had held them when they had been attacked by the Danes.
After that they had slept for hundreds of years, with only the sheep to
nibble their grass, and an occasional shepherd shouting across them to
his shaggy and wise-eyed sheep-dog.
The fiercest battle of all had been fought on Caesar's Camp, from which
the Romans had driven away the Britons, and there was a great mound on
it, covered with grass, in which the dead soldiers had been buried. But
that was nearly two thousand years ago, and it had never looked more
peaceful than on this autumn afternoon, with the baby moon peeping above
it and growing brighter as the daylight faded. It was a steep climb to
the top of Caesar's Camp, and the hill was guarded at the bottom by a
fringe of elm trees; and in front of these elm trees there was a belt of
bracken, reddening with decay, and reaching to the boys' shoulders. It
had been rather fun to push their way through it, startling the rabbits,
and listening to the rooks; and it was in a little quarry among the elms
that Tod the Gipsy had made his fire.
Close to the fire he had spread some branches and a heap of bracken to
make a mattress, and over this he had thrown his blanket and the little
tarpaulin that made his tent. When they first caught sight of him, he
was humming a song and beating an accompaniment to himself on an empty
biscuit-box: