WHICH WAS THE DREAM?
THE two crossed triangles of white seeds, in the midst Tinkler and the
white seal, lay on the floor of the little empty house, grew dim and
faint before Dickie's eyes, and his eyes suddenly smarted and felt tired
so that he was very glad to shut them. He had an absurd fancy that he
could see, through his closed eyelids, something moving in the middle of
the star that the two triangles made. But he knew that this must be
nonsense, because, of course, you cannot see through your eyelids. His
eyelids felt so heavy that he could not take the trouble to lift them
even when a voice spoke quite near him. He had no doubt but that it was
the policeman come to "take him up" for being in a house that was not
his.
"Let him," said Dickie to himself. He was too sleepy to be afraid.
But for a policeman, who is usually of quite a large pattern, the voice
was unusually soft and small. It said briskly--
"Now, then, where do you want to go to?"
"I ain't particular," said Dickie, who supposed himself to be listening
to an offer of a choice of police-stations.
There were whispers--two small and soft voices. They made a sleepy
music.
"He's more yours than mine," said one.
"You're more his than I am," said the other.
"You're older than I am," said the first.
"You're stronger than I am," said the second.
"Let's spin for it," said the first voice, and there was a humming sound
ending in a little tinkling fall.
"That settles it," said the second voice--"here?"
"And when?"
"Three's a good number."
Then everything was very quiet, and sleep wrapped Dickie like a soft
cloak. When he awoke his eyelids no longer felt heavy, so he opened
them. "That was a rum dream," he told himself, as he blinked in broad
daylight.
He lay in bed--a big, strange bed--in a room that he had never seen
before. The windows were low and long, with small panes, and the light
was broken by upright stone divisions. The floor was of dark wood,
strewn strangely with flowers and green herbs, and the bed was a
four-post bed like the one he had slept in at Talbot House; and in the
green curtains was woven a white pattern, very like the thing that was
engraved on Tinkler and on the white seal. On the coverlet lavender and
other herbs were laid. And the wall was hung with pictures done in
needlework--tapestry, in fact, though Dickie did not know that this was
its name. All the furniture was heavily built of wood heavily carved. An
enormous dark cupboard or wardrobe loomed against one wall. High-backed
chairs with tapestry seats were ranged in a row against another. The
third wall was almost all window, and in the fourth wall the fireplace
was set with a high-hooded chimney and wide, open hearth.
Near the bed stood a stool, or table, with cups and bottles on it, and
on the necks of the bottles parchment labels were tied that stuck out
stiffly. A stout woman in very full skirts sat in a large armchair at
the foot of the bed. She wore a queer white cap, the like of which
Dickie had never seen, and round her neck was a ruff which reminded him
of the cut-paper frills in the ham and beef shops in the New Cross Road.
"What a curious dream!" said Dickie.
The woman looked at him.
"So thou'st found thy tongue," she said; "folk must look to have curious
dreams who fall sick of the fever. But thou'st found thy tongue at
last--thine own tongue, not the wandering tongue that has wagged so fast
these last days."
"But I thought I was in the front room at----" Dickie began.
"Thou'rt here," said she; "the other is the dream. Forget it. And do not
talk of it. To talk of such dreams brings misfortune. And 'tis time for
thy posset."
She took a pipkin from the hearth, where a small fire burned, though it
was summer weather, as Dickie could see by the green tree-tops that
swayed and moved outside in the sun, poured some gruel out of it into a
silver basin. It had wrought roses on it and "Drink me and drink again"
in queer letters round the rim; but this Dickie only noticed later. She
poured white wine into the gruel, and, having stirred it with a silver
spoon, fed Dickie as one feeds a baby, blowing on each spoonful to cool
it. The gruel was very sweet and pleasant. Dickie stretched in the downy
bed, felt extremely comfortable, and fell asleep again.
Next time he awoke it was with many questions. "How'd I come 'ere? 'Ave
I bin run over agen? Is it a hospital? Who are you?"
"Now don't you begin to wander again," said the woman in the cap.
"You're here at home in the best bed in your father's house at Deptford.
And you've had the plague-fever. And you're better. Or ought to be. But
if you don't know your own old nurse----"
"I never 'ad no nurse," said Dickie, "old nor new. So there. You're
a-takin' me for some other chap, that's what it is. Where did you get
hold of me? I never bin here before."
"Don't wander, I tell you," repeated the nurse briskly. "You lie still
and think, and you'll see you'll remember me very well. Forget your old
nurse--why, you will tell me next that you've forgotten your own name."
"No, I haven't," said Dickie.
"What is it, then?" the nurse asked, laughing a fat, comfortable laugh.
Dickie's reply was naturally "Dickie Harding."
"Why," said the nurse, opening wide eyes at him under gray brows, "you
_have_ forgotten it. They do say that the fever hurts the memory, but
this beats all. Dost mean to tell me the fever has mazed thy poor brains
till thou don't know that thy name's Richard ----?" And Dickie heard her
name a name that did not sound to him at all like Harding.
"Is that my name?" he asked.
"It is indeed," she answered.
Dickie felt an odd sensation of fixedness. He had expected when he went
to sleep that the dream would, in sleep, end, and that he would wake to
find himself alone in the empty house at New Cross. But he had wakened
to the same dream once more, and now he began to wonder whether he
really belonged here, and whether this were the real life, and the
other--the old, sordid, dirty New Cross life--merely a horrid dream, the
consequence of his fever. He lay and thought, and looked at the rich,
pleasant room, the kind, clear face of the nurse, the green, green
branches of the trees, the tapestry and the rushes. At last he spoke.
"Nurse," said he.
"Ah! I thought you'd come to yourself," she said. "What is it, my
dearie?"
"If I am really the name you said, I've forgotten it. Tell me all about
myself, will you, Nurse?"
"I thought as much," she muttered, and then began to tell him wonderful
things.
She told him how his father was Sir Richard--the King had made him a
knight only last year--and how this place where they now were was his
father's country house. "It lies," said the nurse, "among the pleasant
fields and orchards of Deptford." And how he, Dickie, had been very sick
of the pestilential fever, but was now, thanks to the blessing and to
the ministrations of good Dr. Carey, on the highroad to health.
"And when you are strong enough," said she, "and the house purged of the
contagion, your cousins from Sussex shall come and stay a while here
with you, and afterwards you shall go with them to their town house, and
see the sights of London. And now," she added, looking out of the
window, "I spy the good doctor a-coming. Make the best of thyself, dear
heart, lest he bleed thee and drench thee yet again, which I know in my
heart thou'rt too weak for it. But what do these doctors know of babes?
Their medicines are for strong men."
The idea of bleeding was not pleasant to Dickie, though he did not at
all know what it meant. He sat up in bed, and was surprised to find that
he was not nearly so tired as he thought. The excitement of all these
happenings had brought a pink flush to his face, and when the doctor, in
a full black robe and black stockings and a pointed hat, stood by his
bedside and felt his pulse, the doctor had to own that Dickie was almost
well.
"We have wrought a cure, Goody," he said; "thou and I, we have wrought a
cure. Now kitchen physic it is that he needs--good broth and gruel and
panada, and wine, the Rhenish and the French, and the juice of the
orange and the lemon, or, failing those, fresh apple-juice squeezed from
the fruit when you shall have brayed it in a mortar. Ha, my cure pleases
thee? Well, smell to it, then. 'Tis many a day since thou hadst the
heart to."
He reached the gold knob of his cane to Dickie's nose, and Dickie was
surprised to find that it smelled sweet and strong, something like
grocers' shops and something like a chemist's. There were little holes
in the gold knob, such as you see in the tops of pepper castors, and the
scent seemed to come through them.
"What is it?" Dickie asked.
"He has forgotten everything," said the nurse quickly; "'tis the good
doctor's pomander, with spices and perfumes in it to avert contagion."
"As it warms in the hand the perfumes give forth," said the doctor. "Now
the fever is past there must be a fumigatory. Make a good brew, Goody,
make a good brew--amber and nitre and wormwood--vinegar and quinces and
myrrh--with wormwood, camphor, and the fresh flowers of the camomile.
And musk--forget not musk--a strong thing against contagion. Let the
vapor of it pass to and fro through the chamber, burn the herbs from the
floor and all sweepings on this hearth; strew fresh herbs and flowers,
and set all clean and in order, and give thanks that you are not setting
all in order for a burying."
With which agreeable words the black-gowned doctor nodded and smiled at
the little patient, and went out.
And now Dickie literally did not know where he was. It was all so
difficult. Was he Dickie Harding who had lived at New Cross, and sown
the Artistic Parrot Seed, and taken the open road with Mr. Beale? Or
was he that boy with the other name whose father was a knight, and who
lived in a house in Deptford with green trees outside the windows? He
could not remember any house in Deptford that had green trees in its
garden. And the nurse had said something about the pleasant fields and
orchards. Those, at any rate, were not in the Deptford he knew. Perhaps
there were two Deptfords. He knew there were two Bromptons and two
Richmonds (one in Yorkshire). There was something about the way things
happened at this place that reminded him of that nice Lady Talbot who
had wanted him to stay and be her little boy. Perhaps this new boy whose
place he seemed to have taken had a real mother of his own, as nice as
that nice lady.
The nurse had dropped all sorts of things into an iron pot with three
legs, and had set it to boil in the hot ashes. Now it had boiled, and
two maids were carrying it to and fro in the room, as the doctor had
said. Puffs of sweet, strong, spicy steam rose out of it as they jerked
it this way and that.
"Nurse," Dickie called; and she came quickly. "Nurse, have I got a
mother?"
She hugged him. "Indeed thou hast," she said, "but she lies sick at your
father's other house. And you have a baby brother, Richard."
"Then," said Dickie, "I think I will stay here, and try to remember who
I am--I mean who you say I am--and not try to dream any more about New
Cross and Mr. Beale. If this is a dream, it's a better dream than the
other. I want to stay here, Nurse. Let me stay here and see my mother
and my little brother."
"And shalt, my lamb--and shalt," the nurse said.
And after that there was more food, and more sleep, and nights, and
days, and talks, and silences, and very gradually, yet very quickly,
Dickie learned about this new boy who was, and wasn't, himself. He told
the nurse quite plainly that he remembered nothing about himself, and
after he had told her she would sit by his side by the hour and tell him
of things that had happened in the short life of the boy whose place he
filled, the boy whose name was _not_ Dickie Harding. And as soon as she
had told him a thing he found he remembered it--not as one remembers a
tale that is told, but as one remembers a real thing that has happened.
And days went on, and he became surer and surer that he was really this
other Richard, and that he had only dreamed all that old life in New
Cross with his aunt and in the pleasant country roads with Mr. Beale.
And he wondered how he could ever have dreamed such things.
Quite soon came the day when the nurse dressed him in clothes strange,
but strangely comfortable and fine, and carried him to the window, from
which, as he sat in a big oak chair, he could see the green fields that
sloped down to the river, and the rigging and the masts of the ships
that went up and down. The rigging looked familiar, but the shape of the
ships was quite different. They were shorter and broader than the ships
that Dickie Harding had been used to see, and they, most of them, rose
up much higher out of the water.
"I should like to go and look at them closer," he told the nurse.
"Once thou'rt healed," she said, "thou'lt be forever running down to the
dockyard. Thy old way--I know thee, hearing the master mariners' tales,
and setting thy purpose for a galleon of thine own and the golden South
Americas."
"What's a galleon?" said Dickie. And was told. The nurse was very
patient with his forgettings.
He was very happy. There seemed somehow to be more room in this new life
than in the old one, and more time. No one was in a hurry, and there was
not another house within a quarter of a mile. All green fields. Also he
was a person of consequence. The servants called him "Master Richard,"
and he felt, as he heard them, that being called Master Richard meant
not only that the servants respected him as their master's son, but
that he was somebody from whom great things were expected. That he had
duties of kindness and protection to the servants; that he was expected
to grow up brave and noble and generous and unselfish, to care for those
who called him master. He felt now very fully, what he had felt vaguely
and dimly at Talbot Court, that he was not the sort of person who ought
to do anything mean and dishonorable, such as being a burglar, and
climbing in at pantry windows; that when he grew up he would be expected
to look after his servants and laborers, and all the men and women whom
he would have under him--that their happiness and well-being would be
his charge. And the thought swelled his heart, and it seemed that he was
born to a great destiny. He--little lame Dickie Harding of Deptford--he
would hold these people's lives in his hand. Well, he knew what poor
people wanted; he had been poor--or he had dreamed that he was poor--it
was all the same. Dreams and real life were so very much alike.
So Dickie changed, every hour of every day and every moment of every
hour, from the little boy who lived at New Cross among the yellow houses
and the ugliness, who tramped the white roads, and slept at the Inn of
the Silver Moon, to Richard of the other name who lived well and slept
softly, and knew himself called to a destiny of power and helpful
kindness. For his nurse had told him that his father was a rich man; and
that father's riches would be his one day, to deal with for the good of
the men under him, for their happiness and the glory of God. It was a
great and beautiful thought, and Dickie loved it.
He loved, indeed, everything in this new life--the shapes and colors of
furniture and hangings, the kind old nurse, the friendly, laughing
maids, the old doctor with his long speeches and short smiles, his bed,
his room, the ships, the river, the trees, the gardens--the very sky
seemed cleaner and brighter than the sky that had been over the Deptford
that Dickie Harding had known.
And then came the day when the nurse, having dressed him, bade him walk
to the window, instead of being carried, as, so far, he had been.
"Where ..." he asked, hesitatingly, "where's my...? Where have you put
the crutch?"
Then the old nurse laughed.
"Crutch?" she said. "Come out of thy dreams. Thou silly boy! Thou wants
no crutch with two fine, straight, strong legs like thou's got. Come,
use them and walk."
Dickie looked down at his feet. In the old New Cross days he had not
liked to look at his feet. He had not looked at them in these new days.
Now he looked. Hesitated.
"Come," said the nurse encouragingly.
He slid from the high bed. One might as well try. Nurse seemed to
think.... He touched the ground with both feet, felt the floor firm and
even under them--as firm and even under the one foot as under the other.
He stood up straight, moved the foot that he had been used to move--then
the other, the one that he had never moved. He took two steps, three,
four--and then he turned suddenly and flung himself against the side of
the bed and hid his face in his arms.
"What, weeping, my lamb?" the nurse said, and came to him.
"Oh, Nurse," he cried, clinging to her with all his might. "I dreamed
that I was lame! And I thought it was true. And it isn't!--it isn't!--it
isn't!"
* * * * *
Quite soon Dickie was able to walk down-stairs and out into the garden
along the grassy walks and long alleys where fruit trees trained over
trellises made such pleasant green shade, and even to try to learn to
play at bowls on the long bowling-green behind the house. The house was
by far the finest house Dickie had ever been in, and the garden was more
beautiful even than the garden at Talbot Court. But it was not only the
beauty of the house and garden that made Dickie's life a new and full
delight. To limp along the leafy ways, to crawl up and down the carved
staircase would have been a pleasure greater than any Dickie had ever
known; but he could leap up and down the stairs three at a time, he
could run in the arched alleys--run and jump as he had seen other
children do, and as he had never thought to do himself. Imagine what you
would feel if you had lived wingless all your life among people who
could fly. That is how lame people feel among us who can walk and run.
And now Dickie was lame no more.
His feet seemed not only to be strong and active, but clever on their
own account. They carried him quite without mistake to the blacksmith's
at the village on the hill--to the centre of the maze of clipped hedges
that was the centre of the garden, and best of all they carried him to
the dockyard.
Girls like dolls and tea-parties and picture-books, but boys like to see
things made and done; else how is it that any boy worth his salt will
leave the newest and brightest toys to follow a carpenter or a plumber
round the house, fiddle with his tools, ask him a thousand questions,
and watch him ply his trade? Dickie at New Cross had spent many an hour
watching those interesting men who open square trap-doors in the
pavement and drag out from them yards and yards of wire. I do not know
why the men do this, but every London boy who reads this will know.
And when he got to the dockyard his obliging feet carried him to a man
in a great leather apron, busy with great beams of wood and tools that
Dickie had never seen. And the man greeted him as an old friend, kissed
him on both cheeks--which he didn't expect, and felt much too old
for--and spread a sack for him that he might sit in the sun on a big
baulk of timber.
"Thou'rt a sight for sore eyes, Master Richard," he said; "it's many a
long day since thou was here to pester me with thy questions. And all's
strong again--no bones broken? And now I'll teach thee to make a
galleon, like as I promised."
"Will you, indeed?" said Dickie, trembling with joy and pride.
"That will I," said the man, and threw up his pointed beard in a jolly
laugh. "And see what I've made thee while thou'st been lazying in bed--a
real English ship of war."
He laid down the auger he held and went into a low, rough shed, and next
moment came out with a little ship in his hand--a perfect model of the
strange high-built ships Dickie could see on the river.
[Illustration: "'TIS THE PICTURE,' SAID HE PROUDLY, 'OF MY OLD SHIP,
"THE GOLDEN VENTURE"'"
[_Page 97_]
"'Tis the picture," said he, proudly, "of my old ship, _The Golden
Venture_, that I sailed in with Master Raleigh, and help to sink the
accursed Armada, and clip the King of Spain his wings, and singe his
beard."
"The Armada!" said Dickie, with a new and quite strange feeling, rather
like going down unexpectedly in a lift. "The _Spanish_ Armada?"
"What other?" asked the ship-builder. "Thou'st heard the story a
thousand times."
"I want to hear it again," Dickie said. And heard the story of England's
great danger and her great escapes. It was just the same story as the
one you read in your history book--and yet how different, when it was
told by a man who had been there, who had felt the danger, known the
escape. Dickie held his breath.
"And so," the story ended, "the breath of the Lord went forth and the
storm blew, and fell on the fleet of Spain, and scattered them; and they
went down in our very waters, they and their arms and their treasure,
their guns and their gunners, their mariners and their men-of-war. And
the remnant was scattered and driven northward, and some were wrecked on
the rocks, and some our ships met and dealt with, and some poor few made
shift to get back across the sea, trailing home like wounded mallards,
to tell the King their master what the Lord had done for England."
"How long ago was it, all this?" Dickie asked. If his memory served it
was hundreds of years ago--three, five--he could not remember how many,
but hundreds. Could this man, whose hair was only just touched with
gray, be hundreds of years old?
"How long?--a matter of twenty years or thereabouts," said the
ship-builder. "See, the pretty little ship; and thy very own, for I made
it for thee."
It was indeed a pretty little ship, being a perfect model of an
Elizabethan ship, built up high at bow and stern, "for," as Sebastian
explained, "majesty and terror of the enemy", and with deck and orlop,
waist and poop, hold and masts--all complete with forecastle and cabin,
masts and spars, port-holes and guns, sails, anchor, and carved
figure-head. The woodwork was painted in white and green and red, and at
bow and stern was richly carved and gilded.
"For me," Dickie said--"really for me? And you made it yourself!"
"Truth to tell, I began it long since in the long winter evenings," said
his friend, "and now 'tis done and 'tis thine. See, I shall put an apron
on thee and thou shalt be my 'prentice and learn to build another quaint
ship like her--to be her consort; and we will sail them together in the
pond in thy father's garden."
Dickie, still devouring the little _Golden Venture_ with his eyes,
submitted to the leather apron, and felt in his hand the smooth handle
of the tool Sebastian put there.
"But," he said, "I don't understand. You remember the Armada--twenty
years ago. I thought it was hundreds and hundreds."
"Twenty years ago--or nearer eighteen," said Sebastian; "thou'lt have to
learn to reckon better than that if thou'st to be my 'prentice. 'Twas in
the year of grace 1588, and we are now in the year 1606. This makes it
eighteen years, to my reckoning."
"It was 1906 in my dream," said Dickie--"I mean in my fever."
"In fever," Sebastian said, "folk travel far. Now, hold the wood so, and
the knife thus."
Then every day Dickie went down to the dockyard when lessons were done.
For there were lessons now, with a sour-faced tutor in a black gown,
whom Dickie disliked extremely. The tutor did not seem to like Dickie
either. "The child hath forgot in his fever all that ever he learned of
me," he complained to the old nurse, who nodded wisely and said he would
soon learn all afresh. And he did, very quickly, learn a great deal, and
always it was more like remembering than learning. And a second tutor,
very smart in red velvet and gold, with breeches like balloons and a
short cloak and a ruff, who was an extremely jolly fellow, came in the
mornings to teach him to fence, to dance, and to run and to leap and to
play bowls, and promised in due time to teach him wrestling, catching,
archery, pall-mall, rackets, riding, tennis, and all sports and games
proper for a youth of gentle blood.
And weeks went by, and still his father and mother had not come, and he
had learned a little Greek and more Latin, could carve a box with the
arms of his house on the lid, and make that lid fit; could bow like a
courtier and speak like a gentleman, and play a simple air on the viol
that hung in the parlor for guests to amuse themselves with while they
waited to see the master or mistress.
And then came the day when old nurse dressed him in his best--a suit of
cut velvet, purple slashed with gold-color, and a belt with a little
sword to it, and a flat cap--and Master Henry, the games-master, took
him in a little boat to a gilded galley full of gentlemen and ladies all
finely dressed, who kissed him and made much of him and said how he was
grown since the fever. And one gentleman, very fine indeed, appeared to
be his uncle, and a most charming lady in blue and silver seemed to be
his aunt, and a very jolly little boy and girl who sat by him and talked
merrily all the while were his little cousins. Cups of wine and silver
dishes of fruit and cakes were handed round: the galley was decked with
fresh flowers, and from another boat quite near came the sound of music.
The sun shone overhead and the clear river sparkled and more and more
boats, all gilded and flower-wreathed, appeared on the water. Then there
was a sound of shouting, the river suddenly grew alive with the glitter
of drawn swords, the butterfly glitter of ladies waved scarves and
handkerchiefs, and a great gilded barge came slowly down-stream,
followed by a procession of smaller craft. Every one in the galley stood
up: the gentlemen saluted with their drawn swords, the ladies fluttered
their scarves.
[Illustration: "THE GALLEY WAS DECKED WITH FRESH FLOWERS"
[_Page 102_]
"His Majesty and the Queen," the little cousins whispered as the State
Barge went by.
Then all the galleys fell into place behind the King's barge, and the
long, beautiful procession went slowly on down the river.
Dickie was very happy. The little cousins were so friendly and jolly,
the grown-up people so kind--everything so beautiful and so clean. It
was a perfect day.
The river was very beautiful; it ran between banks of willows and alders
where loosestrife and meadowsweet and willow-herb and yarrow grew tall
and thick. There were water-lilies in shady back-waters, and beautiful
gardens sloping down to the water.
At last the boats came to a pretty little town among trees.
"This is where we disembark," said the little girl cousin. "The King
lies here to-night at Sir Thomas Bradbury's. And we lie at our
grandfather's house. And to-morrow it is the Masque in Sir Thomas's
Park. And we are to see it. I am glad thou'st well of thy fever,
Richard. I shouldn't have liked it half so well if thou hadn't been
here," she said, smiling. And of course that was a very nice thing to
have said to one.
"And then we go home to Deptford with thee," said the boy cousin. "We
are to stay a month. And we'll see thy galleon, and get old Sebastian to
make me one too...."
"Yes," said Dickie, as the boat came against the quay. "What _is_ this
place?"
"Gravesend, thou knowest that," said the little cousins, "or hadst thou
forgotten that, too, in thy fever?"
"Gravesend?" Dickie repeated, in quite a changed voice.
"Come, children," said the aunt--oh, what a different aunt to the one
who had slapped Dickie in Deptford, sold the rabbit-hutch, and shot the
moon!--"you boys remember how I showed you to carry my train. And my
girl will not forget how to fling the flowers from the gilt basket as
the King and Queen come down the steps."
The grandfather's house and garden--the stately, white-haired
grandfather, whom they called My Lord, and who was, it seemed, the
aunt's father--the banquet, the picture-gallery, the gardens lit up by
little colored oil lamps hung in festoons from tree to tree, the blazing
torches, the music, the Masque--a sort of play without words in which
every one wore the most wonderful and beautiful dresses, and the Queen
herself took a part dressed all in gauze and jewels and white swan's
feathers--all these things were like a dream to Dickie, and through it
all the words kept on saying themselves to him very gently, very
quietly, and quite without stopping--
"Gravesend. That's where the lodging-house is where Beale is waiting for
you--the man you called father. You promised to go there as soon as you
could. Why haven't you gone? Gravesend. That's where the lodging-house
is where Beale----" And so on, over and over again.
And how can any one enjoy anything when this sort of thing keeps on
saying itself under and over and through and between everything he sees
and hears and feels and thinks? And the worst of it was that now, for
the first time since he had found that he was not lame, he felt--more
than felt, he knew--that the old New Cross life had not been a fever
dream, and that Beale, who had been kind to him and taken him through
the pleasant country and slept with him in the bed with the green
curtains, was really waiting for him at Gravesend.
"And this is all a dream," said Dickie, "and I _must_ wake up."
But he couldn't wake up.
And the trees and grass and lights and beautiful things, the kindly
great people with their splendid dresses, the King and Queen, the aunts
and uncles and the little cousins--all these things refused to fade away
and jumble themselves up as things do in dreams. They remained solid and
real. He knew that this must be a dream, and that Beale and Gravesend
and New Cross and the old lame life were the real thing, and yet he
could not wake up. All the same the light had gone out of everything,
and it is small wonder that when he got home at last, very tired indeed,
to his father's house at Deptford he burst into tears as nurse was
undressing him.
"What ails my lamb?" she asked.
"I can't explain; you wouldn't understand," said Dickie.
"Try," said she, very earnestly.
He looked round the room at the tapestries and the heavy furniture.
"I can't," he said.
"Try," she said again.
"It's ... don't laugh, Nurse. There's a dream that feels real--about a
dreadful place--oh, so different from this. But there's a man waiting
there for me that was good to me when I was--when I wasn't ... that was
good to me; he's waiting in the dream and I want to get back to him. And
I can't."
"Thou'rt better here than in that dreadful place," said the nurse,
stroking his hair.
"Yes--but Beale. I know he's waiting there. I wish I could bring him
here."
"Not yet," said the nurse surprisingly; "'tis not easy to bring those we
love from one dream to another."
"One dream to another?"
"Didst never hear that all life is a dream?" she asked him. "But thou
shalt go. Heaven forbid that one of thy race should fail a friend. Look!
there are fresh sheets on thy bed. Lie still and think of him that was
good to thee."
He lay there, very still. He had decided to wake up--to wake up to the
old, hard, cruel life--to poverty, dulness, lameness. There was no other
thing to be done. He _must_ wake up and keep his promise to Beale. But
it was hard--hard--hard. The beautiful house, the beautiful garden, the
games, the boat-building, the soft clothes, the kind people, the
uplifting sense that he was Somebody ... yet he must go. Yes, if he
could he would.
The nurse had taken burning wood from the hearth and set it on a silver
plate. Now she strewed something on the glowing embers.
"Lie straight and still," she said, "and wish thyself where thou wast
when thou leftest that dream."
He did so. A thick, sweet smoke rose from the little fire in the silver
plate, and the nurse was chanting something in a very low voice.
"Men die,
Man dies not.
Times fly,
Time flies not."
That was all he heard, though he heard confusedly that there was more.
He seemed to sink deep into a soft sea of sleep, to be rocked on its
tide, and then to be flung by its waves, roughly, suddenly, on some hard
shore of awakening. He opened his eyes. He was in the little bare front
room in New Cross. Tinkler and the white seal lay on the floor among
white moonflower seeds confusedly scattered, and the gas lamp from the
street shone through the dirty panes on the newspapers and sacking.
"What a dream!" said Dickie, shivering, and very sleepy. "Oh, what a
dream!" He put Tinkler and the seal in one pocket, gathered up the
moon-seeds and put them in the other, drew the old newspapers over him
and went to sleep.
* * * * *
The morning sun woke him.
"How odd," said he, "to dream all that--weeks and weeks, in just a
little bit of one little night! If it had only been true!"
He jumped up, eager to start for Gravesend. Since he had wakened out of
that wonderful dream on purpose to go to Gravesend, he might as well
start at once. But his jump ended in a sickening sideways fall, and his
head knocked against the wainscot.
"I had forgotten," he said slowly. "I shouldn't have thought any dream
could have made me forget about my foot."
For he had indeed forgotten it, had leaped up, eagerly, confidently, as
a sound child leaps, and the lame foot had betrayed him, thrown him
down.
He crawled across to where the crutch lay--the old broom, cut down, that
Lady Talbot had covered with black velvet for him.
"And now," he said, "I must get to Gravesend." He looked out of the
window at the dismal, sordid street. "I wonder," he said, "if Deptford
was ever really like it was in my dream--the gardens and the clean river
and the fields?"
He got out of the house when no one was looking, and went off down the
street.
"Clickety-clack" went the crutch on the dusty pavement.
His back ached; his lame foot hurt; his "good" leg was tired and stiff,
and his heart, too, was very tired. About this time, in the dream he had
chosen to awaken from, for the sake of Beale, a bowl of porridge would
be smoking at the end of a long oak table, and a great carved chair be
set for a little boy who was not there.
Dickie strode on manfully, but the pain in his back made him feel sick.
"I don't know as I can do it," he said.
Then he saw the three gold balls above the door of the friendly
pawnbroker.
He looked, hesitated, shrugged his shoulders, and went in.
"Hullo!" said the pawnbroker, "here we are again. Want to pawn the
rattle, eh?"
"No," said Dickie, "but what'll you give me on the seal you gave me?"
The pawnbroker stared, frowned, and burst out laughing.
"If you don't beat all!" he said. "I give you a present, and you come to
pledge it with me! You should have been one of our people! So you want
to pledge the seal. Well, well!"
"I'd much rather not," said Dickie seriously, "because I love it very
much. But I must have my fare to Gravesend. My father's there, waiting
for me. And I don't want to leave Tinkler behind."
He showed the rattle.
"What's the fare to Gravesend?"
"Don't know. I thought you'd know. Will you give me the fare for the
seal?"
The pawnbroker hesitated and looked hard at him. "No," he said, "no. The
seal's not worth it. Not but what it's a very good seal," he added,
"very good indeed."
"See here," said Dickie suddenly, "I know what honor is now, and the
word of a gentleman. You will not let me pledge the seal with you. Then
let me pledge my word--my word of honor. Lend me the money to take me to
Gravesend, and by the honor of a gentleman I will repay you within a
month."
The voice was firm; the accent, though strange, was not the accent of
Deptford street boys. It was the accent of the boy who had had two
tutors and a big garden, a place in the King's water-party, and a
knowledge of what it means to belong to a noble house.
The pawnbroker looked at him. With the unerring instinct of his race, he
knew that this was not play-acting, that there was something behind
it--something real. The sense of romance, of great things all about them
transcending the ordinary things of life--this in the Jews has survived
centuries of torment, shame, cruelty, and oppression. This inherited
sense of romance in the pawnbroker now leaped to answer Dickie's appeal.
(And I do hope I am not confusing you; stick to it; read it again if you
don't understand. What I mean is that the Jews always see the big
beautiful things; they don't just see that gray is made of black and
white; they see how incredibly black black can be, and that there may be
a whiteness transcending all the whitest dreams in the world.)
"You're a rum little chap," was what the pawnbroker said, "but I like
your pluck. Every man's got to make a fool of himself one time or the
other," he added, apologizing to the spirit of business.
"You mean you will?" said Dickie eagerly.
"More fool me," said the Jew, feeling in his pocket.
"You won't be sorry; not in the end you won't," said Dickie, as the
pawnbroker laid certain monies before him on the mahogany counter.
"You'll lend me this? You'll trust me?"
"Looks like it," said the Jew.
"Then some day I shall do something for you. I don't know what, but
something. We never forget, we----" He stopped. He remembered that he
was poor little lame Dickie Harding, with no right to that other name
which had been his in the dream.
He picked up the coins, put them in his pocket--felt the moon-seeds.
"I cannot repay your kindness," he said, "though some day I will repay
your silver. But these seeds--the moon-seeds," he pulled out a handful.
"You liked the flowers?" He handed a generous score across the red-brown
polished wood.
"Thank you, my lad," said the pawnbroker. "I'll raise them in gentle
heat."
"I think they grow best by moonlight," said Dickie.
* * * * *
So he came to Gravesend and the common lodging-house, and a weary, sad,
and very anxious man rose up from his place by the fire when the
clickety-clack of the crutch sounded on the threshold.
"It's the nipper!" he said; and came very quickly to the door and got
his arm round Dickie's shoulders. "The little nipper, so it ain't! I
thought you'd got pinched. No, I didn't, I knew your clever ways--I knew
you was bound to turn up."
"Yes," said Dickie, looking round the tramps' kitchen, and remembering
the long, clean tapestry-hung dining-hall of his dream. "Yes, I was
bound to turn up. You wanted me to, didn't you?" he added.
"Wanted you to?" Beale answered, holding him close, and looking at him
as men look at some rare treasure gained with much cost and after long
seeking. "Wanted you? Not 'arf! I _don't_ think," and drew him in and
shut the door.
"Then I'm glad I came," said Dickie. But in his heart he was not glad.
In his heart he longed for that pleasant house where he was the young
master, and was not lame any more. But in his soul he was glad, because
the soul is greater than the heart, and knows greater things. And now
Dickie loved Beale more than ever, because for him he had sacrificed his
dream. So he had gained something. Because loving people is the best
thing in the world--better even than being loved. Just think this out,
will you, and see if I am not right.
There were herrings for tea. And in the hard bed, with his clothes and
his boots under the pillows, Dickie slept soundly.
But he did not dream.
Yet when he woke in the morning, remembering many things, he said to
himself--
"Is this the dream? Or was the other the dream?"
And it seemed a foolish question--with the feel of the coarse sheets
and the smell of the close room, and Mr. Beale's voice saying, "Rouse
up, nipper, there's sossingers for breakfast."