WHERE WONDER HIDES
The children had never been to London, but they knew the direction in
which it lay--beyond the crumbling kitchen-garden wall, where the
wall-flowers grew in a proud colony. The sky looked different there, a
threatening quality in it. Both snow and thunderstorm came that way,
and the dirty sign-post "London Road" outside the lodge-gates was
tilted into the air significantly.
They regarded London as a terrible place, though a necessity: Daddy's
office was there; Christmas and Birthday presents came from London, but
also it was where the Radical govunment lived--an enormous, evil,
octopus kind of thing that made Daddy poor. Weeden, too, had been known
to say dark things with regard to selling vegetables, hay, and stuff.
"What can yer igspect when a Radical govunment's in?" And the fact that
neither he nor Daddy did anything to move it away proved what a
powerful thing it was, and made them feel something hostile to their
happiness dwelt London-way beyond that crumbling wall.
The composite picture grew steadily in their little minds. When ominous
clouds piled up on that northern horizon, floating imperceptibly
towards them, it was a fragment of London that had broken off and come
rolling along to hover above the old Mill House. A very black cloud was
the Seat of Govunment.
London itself, however, remained as obstinately remote as Heaven, yet
the two visibly connected; for while the massed vapours were part of
London, the lanes and holes of blue were certainly the vestibule of
Heaven. "His seat is in the Heavens" must mean something, they argued.
They were quite sweetly reverent about it. They merely obeyed the
symbolism of primitive age.
"I shall go to Heaven," Tim said once, when they discussed dying as if
it were a game. He wished to define his position, as it were.
"But you haven't been to London yet," came the higher criticism from
Judy. "London's a metropolis."
Metropolis! It was an awful thing to say, though no one quite knew why.
Part of their dread was traceable to this word. Ever since some one had
called it "the metropolis" in their hearing, they had associated vague
awe with the place. The ending "opolis" sounded to them like something
that might come "ontopofus"--and that, again, brought "octopus" into
the mind. It seemed reckless to mention London and Heaven together--yet
was right and proper at the same time. Both must one day be seen and
known, one inevitably as the other. Thus heavenly rights were included
in their minds with a ticket to London, far, far away, when they were
much, much older. And both trips were dreaded yet looked forward to.
Maria, however, held no great opinion of either locality. She disliked
the idea of long journeys to begin with. Having no objection to moving
her eyes, she was opposed to moving her body--unless towards an
approved certainty. Puddings, bonfires, and laps at story-time were
approved certainties; Heaven and London apparently were not. She was
contented where she was. "London's a bother," was her opinion: it meant
a rush in the hall when the dog-cart was waiting for the train and
Daddy was too late to hear about bringing back a new blue eye for a
broken doll. And as for the other place--her ultimatum was hardly
couched in diplomatic language, to say the least. An eternal Sunday was
not her ideal of happiness. Aunt Emily, it was stated, would live in
Heaven when she died, and the place had lost its attractiveness in
consequence. For Aunt Emily used long words and heard their "Sunday
Colics," and the clothes she wore on that seventh workless day reminded
them of village funerals or unhappy women who came to see over the
house when it was to be let, and asked mysterious questions about
something called "the drains." Daddy's top-hat with a black band was
another item in the Sunday and Metropolis picture. London and Heaven,
as stated, were not looked forward to unreservedly.
There were compensations, though. They knew the joy of deciding who
would go there. Stumper, of course, for one: it was the only place he
would not come back from: he would be K.C.B. Uncle Felix, too, because
it was his original source of origin. Mother repeatedly called him
"angel," and even if she hadn't, it was clear he knew all about both
places by the way he talked. Stumper's India was not quite believed in
owing to the way he described it, but Uncle Felix's London was real and
living, while the other marvellous things he told them could only have
happened in some kind of heavenly place. His position, therefore, was
unshakable, and Mother and Daddy also had immemorial rights. Others of
their circle, however, found themselves somewhat equivocally situated.
Thompson and Mrs. Horton were uncertain, for since there was "no
marriage" there, there could be no families to wait upon and cook for.
Weeden, also, was doubtful. Having never been to London, the
alternative happiness was not properly within his grasp, whereas the
Postman might be transferred from the metropolis to the stars at any
minute of the day or night. Those London letters he brought settled his
case beyond all argument whatever.
All of which needs mention because there was a place called the End of
the World, and the title has of course to do with it. For the End of
the World is the hiding-place of Wonder.
Beyond that crumbling kitchen-garden wall was a very delightful bit of
the universe. A battered grey fence kept out the road, but there were
slits between the boards through which the Passers-by could be secretly
observed. All Passers-by were criminals or heroes on their way to
mysterious engagements; the majority were disguised; many of them could
be heard talking darkly to themselves. They were a queer lot, those
Passers-by. Those who came _from_ London were escaping, but those going
north were intent upon awful business in the sinister
metropolis--explosions, murders, enormous jewel robberies, and
conspiracies against the Radicalgovunment. The solitary policeman who
passed occasionally was in constant terror of his life. They longed to
warn him. Yet he had his other side as well--his questionable side.
This neglected patch of kitchen-garden, however, possessed other claims
to charm as well as the tattered fence. It was uncultivated. Some rows
of tangled currant bushes offered excellent cover; there was a fallen
elm tree whose trunk was "home"; a pile of rubbish that included
scrap-iron, old wheel-barrows, broken ladders, spades, and
wire-netting, and, chief of all, there was the spot behind the currant
bushes where Weeden, the Gardener, burnt dead leaves. It was sad, but
mysterious and beautiful too, this burning of the leaves; though,
according to Uncle Felix, who gave the Gardener's explanation, it was
right and necessary. They loved the smoke, too, hanging in the air
above the lawn, with its fragrant smell and shadowy distances:
"Oh, Gardener! How can you let them burn?"
"Because," he explained, "they've 'ad their turn, And nobody wants
their shade.
These withered-up messes
Is worn-out old dresses
I tuck round the boots
Of the shiverin' roots
Till the Spring makes 'em over
Like roses and clover--
But nobody wants dead leaves, dead leaves,
Nor nobody wants their shade!"
A deserted corner, yet crowded gloriously with life. Adventure lurked
in every inch. There was danger, too, terror, wonder, and excitement.
And since for them it was the beginning of all things, they called it,
naturally, The End of the World. To escape to the End of the World,
unaccompanied by grown-ups, and, if possible, their whereabouts unknown
to anybody, was a daily duty second to no other. It was a duty, wet or
fine, they seldom left, neglected.
Besides themselves, two others alone held passes to this sanctuary:
Uncle Felix, because he loved to go there (he wrote his adventure
stories there, saying anything might happen in such a lonely place),
and the Gardener, because he was obliged to. Come-Back Stumper was
excluded. They had taken him once, and he had said such an abominable
thing that he was never allowed to visit it again. "A messy hole," he
called it. Mr. Jinks had never even seen it, but, after his death in
the railway accident, his remains, recovered without charge from the
Hospital, had been buried somewhere in the scrap-heap. From this point
of view alone he knew the End of the World; he was worthy of no other.
His epitaph was appalling--too horrible to mention really. Tim composed
it, but Uncle Felix distinctly said that it never, _never_ must be
referred to audibly again:
Here Matthew Jinks
Just lies and st--
"It's _not_ nice," he said emphatically, "and you mustn't say it.
Always speak well of the dead." And, as they couldn't honestly do that,
they obeyed him and left Mr. Jinks in his unhonoured grave, with a
broken wheel-barrow for a headstone and a mass of wire-netting to make
resurrection difficult. In order to get the disagreeable epitaph out of
their minds Uncle Felix substituted a kinder and gentler one, and made
them learn it by heart:
Old Jinks lies here
Without a tear;
He meant no wrong,
But we didn't get along;
So Jinks lies here,
And we've nothing more to fear.
He's all right:
Jinks
Sinks
Out of sight!
It was the proud colony of wallflowers that first made Uncle Felix like
the place. Their loveliness fluttered in the winds, and their perfume
stole down deliciously above the rubbish and neglect. They seemed to
him the soul of ruins triumphing over outward destruction. Hence the
delicate melancholy in their scent and hence their lofty chosen perch.
Out of decay they grew, yet invariably above it. Both sun and stars
were in their flaming colouring, and their boldness was true courage.
They caught the wind, they held the sunset and the dawn; they turned
the air into a shining garden. They stood somehow for a yearning beauty
in his own heart that expressed itself in his stories.
"If you pick them," he warned Tim, who climbed like a monkey, and was
as destructive as his age, "the place will lose its charm. They grow
for the End of the World, and the End of the World belongs to them.
This wonderful spot will have no beauty when they're gone." To wear a
blossom in the hair or buttonhole was to be protected against decay and
ugliness.
Most wonderful of all, however, was the door in the old grey fence; for
it was a Gateway, and a Gateway, according to Uncle Felix, was a solemn
thing. None knew where it led to, it was a threshold into an unknown
world. Ordinary doors, doors in a house, for instance, were not
Gateways; they merely opened into rooms and other familiar places.
Dentists, governesses, and bedrooms existed behind ordinary, indoor
doors; but out-of-doors opened straight into the sky, and in virtue of
it were extraordinary. They were Gateways. At the End of the World
stood a stupendous, towering door that was a Gateway. Another, even
more majestic, rose at the end of life. This door in the grey fence was
a solemn, mysterious, and enticing Gateway--into everything worth
seeing.
It was invariably kept locked; it led into the high-road that slithered
along secretly and sedulously--to London. For the children it was out
of bounds. Here the Policeman lived in constant terror of his life, and
here went to and fro the strange world of Passers-by. The white road
flowed past like a river. It moved. From the lower branches of the
horse-chestnut tree they could just see it slide; also when the swing
went extra high, and from the end of the prostrate elm. It went in both
directions at once. It encircled the globe, going under the sea too.
The door leading into it was a quay or port. But the brass knob never
turned; the Gardener said there was no key; and from the outer side the
handle had long since been removed, lest Passers-by might see it and
come in. Even the keyhole had been carefully stuffed up with that
stringy stuff the Gardener carried in his pockets.
Till, finally, something happened that made the End of the World seem
suddenly a new place. Tim noticed that the stringy stuff had been
removed.
The day had been oppressively hot, and tempers had been sorely tried.
Mother had gone to lie down with a headache; Aunt Emily was visiting
the poor with a basket; Daddy was inaccessible in his study; all
Authorities were doing the dull things Authorities have to do. It was
September, and the world stood lost in this golden haze of unexpected
heat. Very still it stood, the yellow leaves quite motionless and the
smoke from the kitchen chimney hanging stiff and upright in the air.
There was no breath of wind.
"There's simply _nothing_ to do," the children said--when suddenly
Uncle Felix arrived, and their listlessness was turned to life and
interest. He had gone up in the morning to London, and the suddenness
of his return was part of his prerogative. Stumper, Jinks, and other
folk were announced days and days beforehand, but Uncle Felix
just--came.
"We'll go to the End of the World," he decided gravely, the moment he
had changed. "There's something going on there. Quick!" This meant, as
all knew, that he had an idea. They stole out, and no one saw them go.
Across the lawn and past the lime trees humming busily with tired bees,
they crept beneath the shadow of the big horse-chestnut, where the
staring windows of the house could no longer see them. They
disappeared. The Authorities might look and call for ever without
finding them.
"Slower, please, a little," said Maria breathlessly, and was at once
picked up and carried. Moving cautiously through the laurel shrubbery,
they left the garden proper with its lawns and flower-beds, and entered
the forbidden region at the End of the World. They stood upright. Uncle
Felix dropped Maria like a bundle.
"Look!" he said below his breath. "I told you so!"
He pointed. The colony of wallflowers were fluttering in the windless
air. Nothing stirred but these. The stillness was unbroken. Sunshine
blazed on the rubbish-heap. The currant bushes watched. Deep silence
reigned everywhere. But the flowers on the crumbling wall waved
mysteriously their coloured banners of alarm.
"It looks different," said Judy in a hushed aside.
"Something's happened," whispered Tim, staring round him.
Maria watched them from the ground, prepared to follow in any
direction, but in no hurry until a plan was decided.
"The keyhole!" cried Tim loudly, and at the same moment a huge
blackbird flew out of the shrubberies behind them, and flashed across
the open space toward the orchard on the other side. It whistled a
long, shrill scream of warning. It was bigger by far than any ordinary
blackbird.
"Home! Quick! Run for your lives!" cried some one, as they dashed for
the safety of the elm tree. Even Maria ran. They scrambled on to the
slippery, fallen trunk and gasped for breath as they stood balancing in
an uneasy row, all holding hands.
"It was bigger than a hen," exclaimed Judy inconsequently. "It couldn't
have come through any keyhole." She stared with inquiring, startled
eyes at her brother. The bird and the keyhole were somehow lumped
together in her mind.
"They've stopped," observed Maria, and sat down in the comfortable
niche between the lopped branch and the trunk. It was true. The
wallflowers were as motionless now as painted outlines on a nursery
saucer.
"Because we're safe," said Uncle Felix. "It was a warning."
And then all turned their attention to Tim's discovery of the keyhole.
For the stuffing had been removed. The white, dusty road gleamed
through the hole in a spot of shining white.
"Hush!" whispered their guide. "There's something moving."
"Perhaps it's Jinks in his cemetery," thought Judy after a pause to
listen.
"No," said Uncle Felix with decision. "It's outside. It's on the--road!"
His earnestness on these occasions always thrilled them; his gravity
and the calm way he kept his head invariably won their confidence.
"The London Road!" they repeated. That meant the world.
"Something going past," he added, listening intently. They listened
intently with him. All four were still holding hands.
"The great High Road outside," he repeated softly, while they moved
instinctively to the highest part of the tree whence they could see
over the fence. They craned their necks. The dusty road was flowing
very swiftly, and like a river it had risen. Never before had it been
so easily visible. They saw the ruts the carts had made, the hedge upon
the opposite bank, the grassy ditch where the hemlock grew in feathery
quantities. They even saw loose flints upon the edge. But the actual
road was higher than before. It certainly was rising.
"Metropolis!" cried Tim. "I see an eye!"
Some one was looking through the keyhole at them.
"An eye!" exclaimed several voices in a hushed, expectant tone.
There was a pause, during which every one looked at every one else.
"It's probably a tramp," said Uncle Felix gravely. "We'll let him in."
The proposal, however, alarmed them, for they had expected something
very different. To stuff the keyhole, run away and hide, or at least to
barricade the fence was what he ought to have advised. Instead of this
they heard the very opposite. The excitement became intense. For them a
tramp meant danger, robbery with violence, intoxication, awful dirt,
and an under-the-bed-at-midnight kind of terror. It was so long since
they had seen the tramp--their own tramp--that they had forgotten his
existence.
"They'll kill us at once," said Maria, using the plural with the
comprehensive and anticipatory vision of the child.
"They're harmless as white mice," said her Uncle quickly, "once you
know how to treat them, and full of adventures too. I do," he added
with decision, referring to the treatment. And he stepped down to unbar
the gate.
The children, breathless with interest, watched him go. On the trunk,
of course, they felt comparatively safe, for it was "home"; but none
the less the "girls" drew up their skirts a little, and Tim felt
premonitory thrills run up his spidery legs into his spine. The
wallflowers shook their tawny heads as a sudden breath of wind swept
past them across the End of the World. It seemed an age before the
audacious thing was accomplished and the door swung wide into the road
outside. Uncle Felix might so easily have been stabbed or poisoned or
suffocated--but instead they saw a shabby, tangled figure come
shuffling through that open gate upon a cloud of dust.
"Quick! he's a perjured man!" cried Judy, remembering a newspaper
article. "Shut the gate!" She sprang down to help. "He'll be arrested
for a highway violence and be incarc-"
There was confusion in her mind. She felt pity for this woebegone
shadow of a human being, and terror lest the Policeman, who lived on
the white, summery high road, would catch him and send him to the
gallows before he was safe inside. Her love was ever with the under dog.
There was a rush and a scramble, the gate was shut, and the Tramp stood
gasping before them in the enchanted sanctuary of the End of the World.
"He's ours!" exclaimed Judy. "It's our old tramp!"
"Be very polite to him," Uncle Felix had time to whisper hurriedly,
seeing that all three stood behind him. "He's a great Adventurer and a
Wanderer too."