The gipsies come from Egypt.
The fiery sun begot them,
Their dam was the desert dry.
She lay there stripped and basking,
And gave them suck for the asking,
And an emperor's bone to play with,
Whenever she heard them cry.
Cuthbert introduced him to Edward Goldsmith, and Tod held out a bony
hand.
"Glad to meet you," he said. "You're just in time for tea. You'll have
to share a mug, but there's lots of bread and jam."
He was thinner than ever, but he had the same old trick of tossing his
hair back from his eyes; and his eyes were as bright and gay and
piercing as if they had just come back from some magic wash. While they
were eating, he sipped his tea and filled his pipe and went on singing:
What did the gipsies do there?
They built a tomb for Pharaoh,
They built a tomb for Pharaoh,
So tall it touched the sky.
They buried him deep inside it,
Then let what would betide it,
They saddled their lean-ribbed ponies
And left him there to die.
He nodded his head toward the sides of the quarry, the overhanging
trees, and the hill beyond.
"And this is where they've left me," he said.
Cuthbert stared at him.
"But you're not going to die, are you?"
"Pretty soon," said Tod. He tapped his chest. "There's not much left,
you know, in this old box of mine."
"Well, you don't seem to mind much," said Edward.
"I don't," said Tod, "and I'll tell you why. I've just found out
something that I've been looking for very nearly all my life."
He lit his pipe and leaned forward, with the fire shining in his eyes.
The days were so short now that the dusk had already come, and the
firelight cast strange shadows over the little quarry. The boys drew
closer to him, and he took from his waistcoat pocket a small box, with a
pinch of red powder in it.
"For twenty years," he said, "I've been trying to make this powder; and
at last I've succeeded--just in time."
They bent over his hand and examined the powder. It was as light as
thistle-down, and smelt like cloves.
"Now look," he said.
He threw some on the fire. But the boys could see nothing except the
crumbling leaves.
Tod laughed.
"Look a little higher," he said; and then, in the smoke, they suddenly
saw a bird hovering, and then another bird and another, and a couple of
nests hanging faintly in the air.
"Now listen," said Tod; and above the whisper of the flames they could
hear the soft sharpening of tiny beaks, and the sound of wings, and the
ghosts of cheepings and chirpings, as if they had been hundreds of miles
away. Then they faded, and Tod leaned back, looking triumphantly at the
two boys.
"But what were they?" said Cuthbert.
"They were memories," said Tod. "They were the memories of those dead
leaves."
"But do leaves remember?" asked Edward.
"Everything remembers," said Tod, "only nobody's been able to prove it.
The ground we're sitting on, the fields you've come across, the hills
above us, they're crammed with memories. And when they die, if they ever
do die, these memories come crowding back to them, just like they do to
a dying man; and it's this powder that makes them visible."
He rose to his feet and looked about him.
"Of course, those leaves," he said, "were only a year old, and all that
they remembered was just those birds. But look at this,"--he picked up a
piece of wood--"this is the core of an old tree. This was a sapling
three hundred years ago." He sprinkled the rest of the powder on it and
threw it on the fire.
For a minute or two nothing happened, and then, high up, they saw some
more birds hovering; but presently, as they looked, they saw the figure
of a man, with his hair in ringlets hanging down over his shoulders. He
wore a plumed hat, and his sleeves were frilled, and there was a sword
at his belt, and he wore knee-breeches and stockings and jewelled
buckles upon his shoes. He stood in mid-air, looking about him, and then
he was joined by the figure of a girl. He took her in his arms, and then
they faded away; and there instead was a peasant in a smock.
They saw him lean forward and carve something in the air, as though he
were cutting somebody's name upon a tree-trunk; and then he too was
gone, and there were two children playing hide-and-seek in the wreathing
smoke. One was a little girl, and she wore a mob cap and a long skirt
dropping almost to her ankles; and the other was a boy with a very short
jacket and trousers that looked as if they had shrunk.
Then they saw a fox, with his ears pricked, and one of his front paws
lifted; and then there was nothing again but the sides of the quarry and
the deepening shadows of the elms.
"That's all," said Tod, "because I've no more powder. All the rest's up
there."
He jerked his thumb toward the top of the hill, hidden away from them by
the trees.
"Why is it up there?" asked Cuthbert.
Tod stared at them as if he were trying to read their hearts.
"Have you courage?" he asked.
It was a difficult question. They told him that they hoped so, but that
they weren't quite sure.
"Well, if you have," he said, "and you'd like to come back here
to-night, just about half-past twelve, you'll be able to see something
that nobody alive has ever seen or will see again."
Cuthbert and Edward looked at one another. It would be a six-mile walk,
and they would have to start about eleven o'clock, and they would have
to go to bed first and creep out of their houses without anybody
knowing. The moon would have sunk, too, so that it would be quite dark.
They both felt a little queer inside. But they promised to come, and
agreed to meet at eleven o'clock near St Peter's Church.
Cuthbert was there first, just before the clock struck. Everybody was in
bed, and he had slipped out unnoticed. But his heart sank a little as he
ran down the empty street and saw no Edward at the corner waiting for
him. But Edward came just as the clock struck, and the night seemed less
dark now that there were two of them, and soon they were out of the town
and running close together between the hedges of the country road. Once
a motor-car came travelling toward them, almost blinding them with the
glare of its head-lamps; but after they had left the road and struck
across the fields the night was so still that they could almost have
heard a star drop.
It was so still that they spoke in whispers, and so dark that they
sometimes tripped; and once when they stopped for a moment to take
breath, a star did drop, and they almost heard it. Presently, when their
eyes became used to the darkness, they could see the dim outline of the
hills, and the faint ribbon of the Milky Way rising like smoke from
Caesar's Camp. At the edge of the bracken they found Tod waiting for
them.
"Come along," he said, "only don't go too fast," and they began to climb
through the belt of trees out on to the hillside beyond. The grass was
short here and slippery with dew, with glimmers of chalk beneath it
where the turf was broken; and it was so steep that half-way up Tod
stopped to fight for his breath.
"It's all right," he said. "I'll be better in a moment," and as they
stood waiting for him and looking back, the country behind them seemed
to have vanished into a lake of darkness. Then they began to climb
again, their boots slipping, and suddenly as they climbed they smelt a
new smell--a strange sort of acrid, sweet smell, as of turf-fires
burning above them.
"Yes," said Tod. "I was up there an hour ago. I've lit half a dozen
fires."
At the top of the hill he dropped down for a moment close to a large
white stone. He lit a match and looked at his watch.
"Ten minutes to one," he said. "We're just in time."
They were now in a sort of trench or grassy moat that encircled the
great mound, and they had climbed into this over a smaller mound that
had once been a barricade. In this trench Tod had dug half a dozen
holes, and in each of these holes there was a turf-fire smouldering; and
now he turned and lifted the white stone, and took from under it a
little bag.
"This is the rest of the powder," he said, "all there is, and all there
ever will be, for the secret will die with me."
He rose to his feet and began to sprinkle it thickly over the burning
turf in each of the little holes. Then he came back and spoke to the two
boys.
"There are great memories," he said, "stored in this hill, but they are
fierce ones, and you'll need all your courage."
Then he moved away from them toward the farthest of the fires, and
Cuthbert felt a sort of change coming over the hill. He could see
nothing, but it felt different, as if it were surrounded by a different
sort of country--a savage country, with no railways in it, or roads, or
parliaments, or policemen. Even the stars seemed to have grown younger,
and nearer the earth, and more lawless; and then he heard voices filling
the air about him, and a man shouting hoarse commands.
He turned with a start and found himself among a crowd of naked and
half-naked men--small men, with hair hanging over their shoulders, and
bearded chins, and glittering eyes. Some of them were painted with
curious patterns, shining in dull colours from their skins; and they
were all pointing toward the darkness that lay like a sea round the
sides of the hill. Then some of them spoke to him and asked him who he
was, and he found that he understood them and could answer them; and the
man who had been shouting, and who seemed to be their leader, came and
looked into his eyes. He laid his hands on Cuthbert's shoulders.
"Son of my sons," he said, "are you ready to fight with us?" And
Cuthbert suddenly felt himself burning with anger, because he knew that
they were going to be attacked.
"Of course I am," he said, and then there was a great shout, and
everybody rushed to the barricade; and there all round them, pricking
out of the darkness, they could see helmets and the rims of shields.
Cuthbert somehow knew that these belonged to the Romans, and that he
hated them for invading his country; and he was so excited that he had
forgotten to notice what had happened to Edward Goldsmith. He only knew
that he had disappeared.
As for Edward, he had forgotten all about Cuthbert. For he had suddenly
noticed that there were now trees growing half-way up the hillside, and
he had jumped over the barricade and run down to explore them. When he
got there, he had found himself among an army of men marching up the
hill behind locked shields, and a young centurion with merry eyes had
stooped and gripped him by the arm.
"Hullo!" he said; "son of my sons, are you going to fight with us
against these barbarians?" And Edward tingled all over with pride, and
said, "Rather, you bet I am." Then a great stone from the top of the
barricade came leaping down the hillside and crushed one of the men in
the front rank, but the others closed together and never stopped
marching.
When Cuthbert saw them he was blind with anger, but he knew in his heart
that they were bound to win; and next moment they were over the parapet
like a wave of hot and breathing iron. He heard groans and cries and the
shouts of the British chief, and his eyes were full of tears as he beat
at the Roman shields; and then he saw Edward and hit him in the face,
and made his nose bleed, and knocked out two of his teeth. Edward struck
back, and gave Cuthbert a black eye, and the night was full of hewings
and the flashings of swords; and then everything was still again, and
the hill was empty, and the stars were the same stars that they had
always known.
Squatting on the barricade, with his arms round his knees, they saw Tod
the Gipsy laughing at them; and Cuthbert rubbed his eye, and Edward
sniffed hard to try and stop the blood running from his nose. Tod rose
and stretched himself.
"Well, you've had it out," he said, "and so has the hill, and now you'd
better be off home."
So they said good-bye to him, and they never saw him again; and next
morning when Edward came down to breakfast, his father scolded him for
explaining that an ancient Briton had hit him on the nose. But
Cuthbert's daddy only stroked his chin when he heard that the Romans had
given Cuthbert a black eye, because that was just the sort of thing, he
said, that the Romans sometimes did, though they had many good
qualities.
Down the dead centurions' way,
Tod the Gipsy drives his shay.
Roman, Briton, Saxon, Dane,
Tod the Gipsy hears them plain.
Faint beneath the noonday chalk,
Tod can overhear them talk.
Fiercer than the stars at night,
Chin to chin, he sees them fight.
ST UNCUS
[Illustration: Doris and St Uncus]
IX
ST UNCUS
It was now November, and even in the country the last of the leaves had
fallen from the trees, and the bushy hollows between the roots of the
downs were grey with old man's beard. Some people like November, because
it is the quietest month of the year--as quiet as somebody tired, who
has just fallen asleep--and they love to see the fields lying dark and
still, and the empty branches against the sky. But some people hate it,
especially people who live in towns, because of its fogs and falling
rains, and they turn up their coat-collars, and blow their noses, and
call it the worst month of the year.
Doris hated it too, and she hated this particular November more than any
other that she could recall, because it had rained and rained and
rained, and because her mummy was so ill that she had had to go to
hospital. She was also angry with Cuthbert, because she thought that it
wasn't fair for him to have taken Edward to see Tod the Gipsy, and never
even have offered to take her, although she had asked him to over and
over again.
So she hadn't spoken to him for nearly a month, not even after her mummy
had been taken to the hospital; and she hated Auntie Kate, who had come
to look after the home, because she kept asking her how her little
boy-friend was. Auntie Kate had a face like a hen's, with a beaky nose
and bobbly eyes, and she always counted people's pieces of bread and
butter, and wondered what income their father and mother had. Her
husband was a clergyman, so she went to church a lot, on week-days as
well as on Sundays; and now she had gone to a bazaar at St Peter's
Church, just when Doris had meant to go to tea with Gwendolen.
So Doris was very angry, because she had to stay at home and take care
of her five brothers; and the only happy thing that she had to think
about was that Mummy would be home next week. But at half-past three on
a wet Saturday afternoon next week seems a horribly long way off, and
Jimmy and Jocko were being as naughty as ever they knew how. Jimmy was
six and Jocko was five, and they were playing water games in the
bathroom; and Doris knew that they would be soaking their clothes and
making an awful mess, but she didn't care.
"At any rate they're quiet," she thought to herself, "and I don't see
why I should fight with them any more," and then she pressed her nose
against the front-door glass and looked dismally into the street.
But there was nothing to see except the falling rain, and the dirty
brown fronts of the opposite houses, and a strip of mud-coloured sky,
and the milkman's cart with its yellow pony. Behind her, in a dark
cupboard under the stairs, Teddy and George, the twins, were playing at
Hell; and every now and then she could hear a faint clicking sound, as
they practised gnashing their teeth. As for Christopher Mark, who was
three and a half, she had forgotten all about him; and by now, if it
hadn't been for Auntie Kate, she might have been playing in Gwendolen's
big barn. Then she thought of Cuthbert again and of his exciting
adventure on the top of Caesar's Camp, and she breathed on the glass, and
drew a picture of Cuthbert, making him as ugly as she could.
"I hate him," she thought, "and I hate Auntie Kate, and I hate the
twins, and I hate everybody," and then she turned round, and her heart
stood still--or at least she felt as if it did--and her cheeks became
white. For there was Christopher Mark at the top of the stairs, with a
rabbit under one arm and an engine under the other; and she suddenly saw
him slip and begin to pitch head-long down, with a sickening thud, thud,
thud.
For a moment she was so frightened that she could hardly breathe, but
just as she sprang forward an odd thing happened, for he stopped short,
almost as if somebody had caught him, and didn't even begin to cry.
"My goodness!" she said, and then she stopped short too, for squatting
down on the topmost stair was the strangest little man that she had ever
seen, hanging on to Christopher Mark. He was a little man with a bald
head and a big mouth and a crooked back; and his right arm was only a
stump, with a very long hook at the end of it. His left arm was odd too,
almost as crooked as his back, and he had curled it round one of the
banisters, while he hooked Christopher Mark up with the other.
"Good afternoon," he said. "I see you have recognized me. That's very
clever of you. Most people don't."
Doris was too surprised at first to be able to answer him. But he didn't
seem to mind, and went on smiling; while as for Christopher Mark, he
climbed upstairs again, just as if the little man hadn't been there.
"I'm afraid I don't recognize you," said Doris at last; "but I'm
frightfully obliged to you for saving Christopher Mark."
"Not at all," he said. "That's what I'm for. I'm St Uncus."
Doris frowned a little.
"St Uncus?" she asked.
"Latin for hook," he said. "Excuse me half a moment."
For a flicker of an eyelid he disappeared.
"Just been to China," he said, "to hook another one."
Doris opened her eyes.
"But are you a _real_ saint?" she asked.
The little man flushed.
"Why, of course I am. I'm a patron saint. I'm the patron saint of
staircases."
"But I didn't know," said Doris, "that staircases had patron saints."
"They don't," he said. "They have only one."
"I mean," said Doris--"it's frightfully rude, I'm afraid--but I didn't
know that they had even one."
He smiled again.
"Very likely not," he said. "Lots of people don't. But they have."
He disappeared once more.
"Baby in Jamaica," he said, "just beginning to fall from the top
landing."
Then he stroked his chin and looked at her thoughtfully.
"I suppose you've been left here," he said, "to look after the
children."
Doris nodded.
"Well, then, you ought to know," he said, "that there are two things
that children love more than anything else. One of them's water and the
other's staircases. And they're both a bit dangerous. So they each have
a patron saint."
"I see," said Doris. "And who's the patron saint of water?"
"Fellow called Fat Bill," he said. "He's my younger brother."
"That seems a queer name," said Doris, "for a saint."
"Well, he's a queer fellow," said St Uncus, "but we've both been lucky."
Doris couldn't help looking at his crooked back, and his deformed left
arm, and his right stump.
"Ah, yes," he said; "but you mustn't judge by those. That's the very
mistake that I made. You see, I once fell down a staircase myself, two
or three years after staircases were invented."
He looked at Doris and nodded his head.
"It was when I was a small boy," he said, "as small as your little
brother; and that's why I grew up crooked and deformed. I was very
unhappy about it. It was thousands of years ago. But I can still
remember how unhappy I was. I used to watch the other children playing
games, and when I grew up I watched the men go hunting. And I had to
stay at home, and the women despised me; and at last I died, and then I
saw how silly I had been."
"Why had you been silly?" asked Doris.
"Well, I'd wasted the whole of my life, you see, thinking about the
staircase and how miserable I was; and so when the good Lord God asked
me what I wanted to do next, there was hardly anything that I could turn
my hand to. But I told you I was lucky, and so I was, for as it happened
I had a great idea; and that was to try and save as many children as I
could from being as miserable as I had been. Of course, I couldn't
expect much of a job, seeing how I'd thrown away all my chances, so I
asked the good Lord God if He would allow me to look after the world's
staircases."
He disappeared again.
"Been to Port Jacobson," he said. "Well, the good Lord God thought that
it was rather a fine idea; and so He laid His hand upon me and gave me a
new name; and my new name was St Uncus."
"Shall I have a new name too?" asked Doris.
St Uncus beamed.
"Why, of course," he said. "Everybody has a new name, only it generally
depends, to a certain extent, upon what they did with their old ones."
Doris thought for a moment.
"But wouldn't you rather be in Heaven," she said, "than sitting about on
these silly old staircases?"
St Uncus laughed.
"But Heaven's not a place, my dear. Heaven's being employed by the good
Lord God."
Then he looked at his watch.
"And now I wonder," he said, "if you'd mind doing me a good turn?"
"Oh, I should love to!" said Doris; "but how can I?"
"Well, you see," he said, "the worst of my job is that I can never get a
chance of seeing my brother Bill. He's always busy by the edges of ponds
and things, and I'm always stuck on somebody's staircase; and I thought
perhaps, if you wouldn't mind taking my hook for a bit, I could slip off
for a moment and have a talk to him."
Doris felt a little shy.
"But should I be able to use it?" she asked. "And how could I tell
whether somebody wanted me?"
"Oh, that'll be all right," he said, "as soon as you catch hold of the
hook; and perhaps you won't be wanted at all. The only trouble is when
two children are falling at once, and then you have to decide which
you'll go for. But that doesn't happen very often, considering how many
children there are."
So Doris went upstairs, and he unbuttoned the hook, and when she caught
hold of it she felt a strange sort of thrill. She felt like Cuthbert had
felt when he went into In-between Land; and indeed that was where she
really was. St Uncus had vanished, and she saw Christopher Mark like a
little fat ghost, with his soul shining inside him. Then she suddenly
heard a cry in a strange foreign language, and she saw a dark-eyed
mother at the bottom of some stone steps, and a small round baby, with
an olive-coloured skin, tumbling down them one by one. She felt a hot
wind, full of the odour of spices, blowing faintly against her cheek;
and then she bent forward and hooked up the baby, and saw the look of
terror die out of the mother's face.
Never in her life had Doris felt so pleased. She felt as if she could
shout and sing with joy. No wonder, she thought, that St Uncus looked so
happy. She began to understand what being in Heaven meant. And then she
heard a shout, and smelt a smell of herrings, and she saw a man in a
blue jersey, and a curly-headed boy, about four years old, pitching head
first down a dark staircase. Through a dirty window-pane she could see
the mouth of a river, full of fishing-smacks floating side by side; and
she saw a woman, with rolled-up sleeves, run out of a kitchen and stand
beside the man.
Then she hooked up the boy, and she heard the woman say "Thank God!" and
the man say "You little rascal, you!" and then she was back again, and
there was St Uncus sitting beside her and rubbing his hands.
"Ever so many thanks," he said. "I haven't seen old Bill for nearly
three hundred years. He says he'd like to meet you, but of course it's
only now and again that anybody like you is able to see us."
Then he said good-bye to her, and she never saw him again, but she knew
that he was there, and once she actually heard him; and that was very
late on this same evening, long after everyone had gone to bed. For soon
after midnight, when Auntie Kate was dreaming about clergymen and
bazaars, and when Teddy and George were dreaming about bears, and Jimmy
and Jocko about bathrooms, and when Christopher Mark was dreaming about
rabbits, and Doris wasn't dreaming at all--soon after midnight a little
red-hot cinder suddenly popped out of the kitchen grate.
It fell on a bit of matting, and burnt its way through to the
floor-boards below; and presently a wisp of smoke, with a wicked pungent
smell, began to twist upward and flatten against the ceiling. Fuller and
fuller grew the kitchen of smoke, and Teddy and George began to dream of
camp-fires, but Auntie Kate still dreamt of bazaars and pincushions
marked tenpence halfpenny. Teddy and George were sleeping by themselves,
and Christopher Mark slept in a little room turning out of Auntie
Kate's. These rooms were above the sitting-room in the front of the
house, and it was Teddy and George who slept over the kitchen; while
Doris herself and Jimmy and Jocko shared a little room under the roof.