IT was the day I was promoted to a toothbrush. The girls, irrespective
of age, had been thus distinguished some time before; why, we boys could
never rightly understand, except that it was part and parcel of a system
of studied favouritism on behalf of creatures both physically inferior
and (as was shown by a fondness for tale-bearing) of weaker mental fibre
to us boys. It was not that we yearned after these strange instruments
in themselves. Edward, indeed, applied his to the scrubbing-out of his
squirrel's cage, and for personal use, when a superior eye was grim on
him, borrowed Harold's or mine, indifferently. But the nimbus of
distinction that clung to them--that we coveted exceedingly. What more,
indeed, was there to ascend to, before the remote, but still possible,
razor and strop?
Perhaps the exaltation had mounted to my head; or nature and the perfect
morning joined to hint at disaffection. Anyhow, having breakfasted, and
triumphantly repeated the collect I had broken down in the last
Sunday--'t was one without rhythm or alliteration: a most objectionable
collect--having achieved thus much, the small natural man in me
rebelled, and I vowed, as I straddled and spat about the stable-yard in
feeble imitation of the coachman, that lessons might go to the Inventor
of them. It was only geography that morning, any way: and the practical
thing was worth any quantity of bookish theoric. As for me, I was going
on my travels, and imports and exports, populations and capitals, might
very well wait while I explored the breathing coloured world outside.
True, a fellow-rebel was wanted; and Harold might, as a rule, have been
counted on with certainty. But just then Harold was very proud. The week
before he had 'gone into tables,' and had been endowed with a new slate,
having a miniature sponge attached wherewith we washed the faces of
Charlotte's dolls, thereby producing an unhealthy pallor which struck
terror into the child's heart, always timorous regarding epidemic
visitations. As to 'tables,' nobody knew exactly what they were, least
of all Harold; but it was a step over the heads of the rest, and
therefore a subject for self-adulation and--generally speaking--airs; so
that Harold, hugging his slate and his chains, was out of the question
now. In such a matter, girls were worse than useless, as wanting the
necessary tenacity of will and contempt for self-constituted authority.
So eventually I slipped through the hedge a solitary protestant, and
issued forth on the lane what time the rest of the civilised world was
sitting down to lessons.
The scene was familiar enough; and yet, this morning, how different it
all seemed! The act, with its daring, tinted everything with new strange
hues; affecting the individual with a sort of bruised feeling just below
the pit of the stomach, that was intensified whenever his thoughts flew
back to the ink-stained smelly schoolroom. And could this be really me?
or was I only contemplating, from the schoolroom aforesaid, some other
jolly young mutineer, faring forth under the genial sun? Anyhow, here
was the friendly well, in its old place, half-way up the lane. Hither
the yoke-shouldering village-folk were wont to come to fill their
clinking buckets; when the drippings made worms of wet in the thick dust
of the road. They had flat wooden crosses inside each pail, which
floated on the top and (we were instructed) served to prevent the water
from slopping over. We used to wonder by what magic this strange
principle worked, and who first invented the crosses, and whether he got
a peerage for it. But indeed the well was a centre of mystery, for a
hornet's nest was somewhere hard by, and the very thought was fearsome.
Wasps we knew well and disdained, storming them in their fastnesses. But
these great Beasts, vestured in angry orange, three stings from
which--so 'twas averred--would kill a horse, these were of a different
kidney, and their dreadful drone suggested prudence and retreat. At this
time neither villagers nor hornets encroached on the stillness:
lessons, apparently, pervaded all nature. So, after dabbling awhile in
the well--what boy has ever passed a bit of water without messing in
it?--I scrambled through the hedge, shunning the hornet-haunted side,
and struck into the silence of the copse.
If the lane had been deserted, this was loneliness become personal. Here
mystery lurked and peeped; here brambles caught and held you with a
purpose of their own; here saplings whipped your face with human spite.
The copse, too, proved vaster in extent, more direfully drawn out, than
one would ever have guessed from its frontage on the lane: and I was
really glad when at last the wood opened and sloped down to a streamlet
brawling forth into the sunlight. By this cheery companion I wandered
along, conscious of little but that Nature, in providing store of
water-rats, had thoughtfully furnished provender of right-sized stones.
Rapids, also, there were, telling of canoes and portages--crinkling bays
and inlets--caves for pirates and hidden treasures--the wise Dame had
forgotten nothing--till at last, after what lapse of time I know not,
my further course, though not the stream's, was barred by some six feet
of stout wire netting, stretched from side to side just where a thick
hedge, arching till it touched, forbade all further view.
The excitement of the thing was becoming thrilling. A Black Flag must
surely be fluttering close by? Here was most plainly a malignant
contrivance of the Pirates, designed to baffle our gun-boats when we
dashed up-stream to shell them from their lair! A gun-boat, indeed,
might well have hesitated, so stout was the netting, so close the hedge.
But I spied where a rabbit was wont to pass, close down by the water's
edge; where a rabbit could go a boy could follow, howbeit stomach-wise
and with one leg in the stream; so the passage was achieved, and I stood
inside, safe but breathless at the sight.
Gone was the brambled waste, gone the flickering tangle of woodland.
Instead, terrace after terrace of shaven sward, stone-edged,
urn-cornered, stepped delicately down to where the stream, now tamed
and educated, passed from one to another marble basin, in which on
occasion gleams of red hinted at gold-fish poised among the spreading
water-lilies. The scene lay silent and slumbrous in the brooding
noon-day sun: the drowsing peacock squatted humped on the lawn, no fish
leaped in the pools, no bird declared himself from the trim secluding
hedges. Self-confessed it was here, then, at last, the Garden of Sleep!
Two things, in those old days, I held in especial distrust: gamekeepers
and gardeners. Seeing, however, no baleful apparitions of either
quality, I pursued my way between rich flower-beds, in search of the
necessary Princess. Conditions declared her presence patently as
trumpets; without this centre such surroundings could not exist. A
pavilion, gold-topped, wreathed with lush jessamine, beckoned with a
special significance over close-set shrubs. There, if anywhere, She
should be enshrined. Instinct, and some knowledge of the habits of
princesses, triumphed; for (indeed) there She was! In no tranced repose,
however, but laughingly, struggling to disengage her hand from the
grasp of a grown-up man who occupied the marble bench with her. (As to
age, I suppose now that the two swung in respective scales that pivoted
on twenty. But children heed no minor distinctions. To them, the
inhabited world is composed of the two main divisions: children and
upgrown people; the latter in no way superior to the former--only
hopelessly different. These two, then, belonged to the grown-up
section.) I paused, thinking it strange they should prefer seclusion
when there were fish to be caught, and butterflies to hunt in the sun
outside; and as I cogitated thus, the grown-up man caught sight of me.
'Hallo, sprat!' he said with some abruptness; 'Where do you spring
from?'
'I came up the stream,' I explained politely and comprehensively, 'and I
was only looking for the Princess.'
'Then you are a water-baby,' he replied. 'And what do you think of the
Princess, now you've found her?'
'I think she is lovely,' I said (and doubtless I was right, having
never learned to flatter). 'But she's wide-awake, so I suppose somebody
has kissed her!'
This very natural deduction moved the grown-up man to laughter; but the
Princess, turning red and jumping up, declared that it was time for
lunch.
'Come along, then,' said the grown-up man; 'and you too, water-baby.
Come and have something solid. You must want it.'
I accompanied them without any feeling of false delicacy. The world, as
known to me, was spread with food each several mid-day, and the
particular table one sat at seemed a matter of no importance. The palace
was very sumptuous and beautiful, just what a palace ought to be; and we
were met by a stately lady, rather more grown-up than the
Princess--apparently her mother. My friend the Man was very kind, and
introduced me as the Captain, saying I had just run down from Aldershot.
I didn't know where Aldershot was, but I had no manner of doubt that he
was perfectly right. As a rule, indeed, grown-up people are fairly
correct on matters of fact; it is in the higher gift of imagination that
they are so sadly to seek.
[Illustration: '_Lulled by the trickle of water, I slipped into
dreamland_']
The lunch was excellent and varied. Another gentleman in beautiful
clothes--a lord presumably--lifted me into a high carved chair, and
stood behind it, brooding over me like a Providence. I endeavoured to
explain who I was and where I had come from, and to impress the company
with my own toothbrush and Harold's tables; but either they were
stupid--or is it a characteristic of Fairyland that every one laughs at
the most ordinary remarks? My friend the Man said good-naturedly, 'All
right, Water-baby; you came up the stream, and that's good enough for
us.' The lord--a reserved sort of man, I thought--took no share in the
conversation.
After lunch I walked on the terrace with the Princess and my friend the
Man, and was very proud. And I told him what I was going to be, and he
told me what he was going to be; and then I remarked, 'I suppose you two
are going to get married?' He only laughed, after the Fairy
fashion. 'Because if you aren't,' I added, 'you really ought to':
meaning only that a man who discovered a Princess, living in the right
sort of Palace like this, and didn't marry her there and then, was false
to all recognised tradition.
They laughed again, and my friend suggested I should go down to the pond
and look at the gold-fish, while they went for a stroll. I was sleepy,
and assented; but before they left me, the grown-up man put two
half-crowns in my hand, for the purpose, he explained, of treating the
other water-babies. I was so touched by this crowning mark of friendship
that I nearly cried; and I thought much more of his generosity than of
the fact that the Princess, ere she moved away, stooped down and kissed
me.
I watched them disappear down the path--how naturally arms seem to go
round waists in Fairyland!--and then, my cheek on the cool marble,
lulled by the trickle of water, I slipped into dreamland out of real and
magic world alike. When I woke, the sun had gone in, a chill wind set
all the leaves a-whispering, and the peacock on the lawn was harshly
calling up the rain. A wild unreasoning panic possessed me, and I sped
out of the garden like a guilty thing, wriggled through the rabbit-run,
and threaded my doubtful way homewards, hounded by nameless terrors. The
half-crowns happily remained solid and real to the touch; but could I
hope to bear such treasure safely through the brigand-haunted wood? It
was a dirty, weary little object that entered its home, at nightfall, by
the unassuming aid of the scullery-window: and only to be sent tealess
to bed seemed infinite mercy to him. Officially tealess, that is; for,
as was usual after such escapades, a sympathetic housemaid, coming
delicately by backstairs, stayed him with chunks of cold pudding and
condolence, till his small skin was tight as any drum. Then, nature
asserting herself, I passed into the comforting kingdom of sleep, where,
a golden carp of fattest build, I oared it in translucent waters with a
new half-crown snug under right fin and left; and thrust up a nose
through water-lily leaves to be kissed by a rose-flushed Princess.