IT must surely have served as a boudoir for the ladies of old time, this
little used, rarely entered chamber where the neglected old bureau
stood. There was something very feminine in the faint hues of its faded
brocades, in the rose and blue of such bits of china as yet remained,
and in the delicate old-world fragrance of pot-pourri from the great
bowl,--blue and white, with funny holes in its cover,--that stood on the
bureau's flat top. Modern aunts disdained this out-of-the-way,
backwater, upstairs room, preferring to do their accounts and grapple
with their correspondence in some central position more in the whirl of
things, whence one eye could be kept on the carriage-drive, while the
other was alert for malingering servants and marauding children. Those
aunts of a former generation--I sometimes felt--would have suited our
habits better. But even by us children, to whom few places were private
or reserved, the room was visited but rarely. To be sure, there was
nothing particular in it that we coveted or required. Only a few
spindle-legged, gilt-backed chairs,--an old harp on which, so the legend
ran, Aunt Eliza herself used once to play, in years remote,
unchronicled; a corner-cupboard with a few pieces of china; and the old
bureau. But one other thing the room possessed, peculiar to itself; a
certain sense of privacy--a power of making the intruder feel that he
_was_ intruding--perhaps even a faculty of hinting that some one might
have been sitting on those chairs, writing at the bureau, or fingering
the china, just a second before one entered. No such violent word as
'haunted' could possibly apply to this pleasant old-fashioned chamber,
which indeed we all rather liked; but there was no doubt it was reserved
and stand-offish, keeping itself to itself.
Uncle Thomas was the first to draw my attention to the possibilities of
the old bureau. He was pottering about the house one afternoon, having
ordered me to keep at his heels for company--he was a man who hated to
be left one minute alone,--when his eye fell on it. 'H'm! Sheraton!' he
remarked. (He had a smattering of most things, this uncle, especially
the vocabularies.) Then he let down the flap, and examined the empty
pigeon-holes and dusty panelling. 'Fine bit of inlay,' he went on: 'good
work, all of it. I know the sort. There's a secret drawer in there
somewhere.' Then as I breathlessly drew near, he suddenly exclaimed: 'By
Jove, I do want to smoke!' And, wheeling round, he abruptly fled for the
garden, leaving me with the cup dashed from my lips. What a strange
thing, I mused, was this smoking, that takes a man suddenly, be he in
the court, the camp, or the grove, grips him like an Afreet, and whirls
him off to do its imperious behests! Would it be even so with myself, I
wondered, in those unknown grown-up years to come?
But I had no time to waste in vain speculations. My whole being was
still vibrating to those magic syllables 'secret drawer'; and that
particular chord had been touched that never fails to thrill responsive
to such words as _cave_, _trap-door_, _sliding-panel_, _bullion_,
_ingots_, or _Spanish dollars_. For, besides its own special bliss, who
ever heard of a secret drawer with nothing in it? And O I did want money
so badly! I mentally ran over the list of demands which were pressing me
the most imperiously.
First, there was the pipe I wanted to give George Jannaway. George, who
was Martha's young man, was a shepherd, and a great ally of mine; and
the last fair he was at, when he bought his sweetheart fairings, as a
right-minded shepherd should, he had purchased a lovely snake expressly
for me; one of the wooden sort, with joints, waggling deliciously in the
hand; with yellow spots on a green ground, sticky and strong-smelling,
as a fresh-painted snake ought to be; and with a red-flannel tongue
pasted cunningly into its jaws. I loved it much, and took it to bed with
me every night, till what time its spinal cord was loosed and it fell
apart, and went the way of all mortal joys. _I_ thought it very nice of
George to think of me at the fair, and that's why I wanted to give him a
pipe. When the young year was chill and lambing-time was on, George
inhabited a little wooden house on wheels, far out on the wintry downs,
and saw no faces but such as were sheepish and woolly and mute; and when
he and Martha were married, she was going to carry his dinner out to him
every day, two miles; and after it, perhaps he would smoke my pipe. It
seemed an idyllic sort of existence, for both the parties concerned; but
a pipe of quality, a pipe fitted to be part of a life such as this,
could not be procured (so Martha informed me) for a smaller sum than
eighteenpence. And meantime----!
Then there was the fourpence I owed Edward; not that he was bothering me
for it, but I knew he was in need of it himself, to pay back Selina, who
wanted it to make up a sum of two shillings, to buy Harold an ironclad
for his approaching birthday,--H.M.S. _Majestic_, now lying uselessly
careened in the toyshop window, just when her country had such sore need
of her. And then there was that boy in the village who had caught a
young squirrel, and I had never yet possessed one, and he wanted a
shilling for it, but I knew that for ninepence in cash--but what was the
good of these sorry threadbare reflections? I had wants enough to
exhaust any possible find of bullion, even if it amounted to half a
sovereign. My only hope now lay in the magic drawer, and here I was,
standing and letting the precious minutes slip by! Whether 'findings' of
this sort could, morally speaking, be considered 'keepings,' was a point
that did not occur to me.
The room was very still as I approached the bureau; possessed, it seemed
to be, by a sort of hush of expectation. The faint odour of orris-root
that floated forth as I let down the flap, seemed to identify itself
with the yellows and browns of the old wood, till hue and scent were of
one quality and interchangeable. Even so, ere this, the pot-pourri had
mixed itself with the tints of the old brocade, and brocade and
pot-pourri had long been one. With expectant fingers I explored the
empty pigeon-holes and sounded the depths of the softly-sliding
drawers. No books that I knew of gave any general recipe for a quest
like this; but the glory, should I succeed unaided, would be all the
greater.
To him who is destined to arrive, the fates never fail to afford, on the
way, their small encouragements. In less than two minutes, I had come
across a rusty button-hook. This was truly magnificent. In the nursery
there existed, indeed, a general button-hook, common to either sex; but
none of us possessed a private and special button-hook, to lend or to
refuse as suited the high humour of the moment. I pocketed the treasure
carefully, and proceeded. At the back of another drawer, three old
foreign stamps told me I was surely on the highroad to fortune.
Following on these bracing incentives, came a dull blank period of
unrewarded search. In vain I removed all the drawers and felt over every
inch of the smooth surfaces, from front to back. Never a knob, spring or
projection met the thrilling finger-tips; unyielding the old bureau
stood, stoutly guarding its secret, if secret it really had. I began to
grow weary and disheartened. This was not the first time that Uncle
Thomas had proved shallow, uninformed, a guide into blind alleys where
the echoes mocked you. Was it any good persisting longer? Was anything
any good whatever? In my mind I began to review past disappointments,
and life seemed one long record of failure and of non-arrival.
Disillusioned and depressed, I left my work and went to the window. The
light was ebbing from the room, and seemed outside to be collecting
itself on the horizon for its concentrated effort of sunset. Far down
the garden, Uncle Thomas was holding Edward in the air reversed, and
smacking him. Edward, gurgling hysterically, was striking blind fists in
the direction where he judged his uncle's stomach should rightly be; the
contents of his pockets--a motley show--were strewing the lawn. Somehow,
though I had been put through a similar performance myself an hour or
two ago, it all seemed very far away and cut off from me.
Westwards the clouds were massing themselves in a low violet bank;
below them, to north and south, as far round as eye could reach, a
narrow streak of gold ran out and stretched away, straight along the
horizon. Somewhere very far off, a horn was blowing, clear and thin; it
sounded like the golden streak grown audible, while the gold seemed the
visible sound. It pricked my ebbing courage, this blended strain of
music and colour. I turned for a last effort; and Fortune thereupon, as
if half-ashamed of the unworthy game she had been playing with me,
relented, opening her clenched fist. Hardly had I put my hand once more
to the obdurate wood, when with a sort of small sigh, almost a sob--as
it were--of relief, the secret drawer sprang open.
I drew it out and carried it to the window, to examine it in the failing
light. Too hopeless had I gradually grown, in my dispiriting search, to
expect very much; and yet at a glance I saw that my basket of glass lay
in shivers at my feet. No ingots nor dollars were here, to crown me the
little Monte Cristo of a week. Outside, the distant horn had ceased its
gnat-song, the gold was paling to primrose, and everything was lonely
and still. Within, my confident little castles were tumbling down like
so many card-houses, leaving me stripped of estate, both real and
personal, and dominated by the depressing reaction.
[Illustration: '_I drew it out and carried it to the window, to examine
it in the failing light_']
And yet,--as I looked again at the small collection that lay within that
drawer of disillusions, some warmth crept back to my heart as I
recognised that a kindred spirit to my own had been at the making of it.
Two tarnished gilt buttons--naval, apparently--a portrait of a monarch
unknown to me, cut from some antique print and deftly coloured by hand
in just my own bold style of brush-work--some foreign copper coins,
thicker and clumsier of make than those I hoarded myself--and a list of
birds'-eggs, with names of the places where they had been found. Also, a
ferret's muzzle, and a twist of tarry string, still faintly aromatic! It
was a real boy's hoard, then, that I had happened upon. He too had found
out the secret drawer, this happy-starred young person; and here he had
stowed away his treasures, one by one, and had cherished them
secretly awhile, and then--what? Well, one would never know now the
reason why these priceless possessions still lay here unreclaimed; but
across the void stretch of years I seemed to touch hands a moment with
my little comrade of seasons--how many seasons?--long since dead.
I restored the drawer, with its contents, to the trusty bureau, and
heard the spring click with a certain satisfaction. Some other boy,
perhaps, would some day release that spring again. I trusted he would be
equally appreciative. As I opened the door to go, I could hear, from the
nursery at the end of the passage, shouts and yells, telling that the
hunt was up. Bears, apparently, or bandits, were on the evening bill of
fare, judging by the character of the noises. In another minute I would
be in the thick of it, in all the warmth and light and laughter. And
yet--what a long way off it all seemed, both in space and time, to me
yet lingering on the threshold of that old-world chamber!
'EXIT TYRANNUS'
THE eventful day had arrived at last, the day which, when first named,
had seemed--like all golden dates that promise anything definite--so
immeasurably remote. When it was first announced, a fortnight before,
that Miss Smedley was really going, the resultant ecstasies had occupied
a full week, during which we blindly revelled in the contemplation and
discussion of her past tyrannies, crimes, malignities; in recalling to
each other this or that insult, dishonour, or physical assault, sullenly
endured at a time when deliverance was not even a small star on the
horizon: and in mapping out the shining days to come, with special new
troubles of their own, no doubt--since this is but a work-a-day
world!--but at least free from one familiar scourge. The time that
remained had been taken up by the planning of practical expressions of
the popular sentiment. Under Edward's masterly direction, arrangements
had been made for a flag to be run up over the hen-house at the very
moment when the fly, with Miss Smedley's boxes on top and the grim
oppressor herself inside, began to move off down the drive. Three brass
cannons, set on the brow of the sunk-fence, were to proclaim our
deathless sentiments in the ears of the retreating foe; the dogs were to
wear ribbons; and later--but this depended on our powers of evasiveness
and dissimulation--there might be a small bonfire, with a cracker or two
if the public funds could bear the unwonted strain.
I was awakened by Harold digging me in the ribs, and 'She's going
to-day!' was the morning hymn that scattered the clouds of sleep.
Strange to say, it was with no corresponding jubilation of spirits that
I slowly realised the momentous fact. Indeed, as I dressed, a dull
disagreeable feeling that I could not define grew up in me--something
like a physical bruise. Harold was evidently feeling it too, for after
repeating 'She's going to-day!' in a tone more befitting the Litany, he
looked hard in my face for direction as to how the situation was to be
taken. But I crossly bade him look sharp and say his prayers and not
bother me. What could this gloom portend, that on a day of days like the
present seemed to hang my heavens with black?
Down at last and out in the sun, we found Edward before us, swinging on
a gate and chanting a farm-yard ditty in which all the beasts appear in
due order, jargoning in their several tongues, and every verse begins
with the couplet:
'Now, my lads, come with me,
Out in the morning early!'
The fateful exodus of the day had evidently slipped his memory entirely.
I touched him on the shoulder. 'She's going to-day!' I said. Edward's
carol subsided like a water-tap turned off. 'So she is!' he replied, and
got down at once off the gate. And we returned to the house without
another word.
[Illustration: '_At breakfast Miss Smedley behaved in a most mean and
uncalled-for manner_']
At breakfast Miss Smedley behaved in a most mean and uncalled-for
manner. The right divine of governesses to govern wrong includes no
right to cry. In thus usurping the prerogative of their victims they
ignore the rules of the ring, and hit below the belt. Charlotte was
crying, of course; but that counted for nothing. Charlotte even cried
when the pigs' noses were ringed in due season; thereby evoking the
cheery contempt of the operators, who asserted they liked it, and
doubtless knew. But when the cloud-compeller, her bolts laid aside,
resorted to tears, mutinous humanity had a right to feel aggrieved, and
think itself placed in a false and difficult position. What would the
Romans have done, supposing Hannibal had cried? History has not even
considered the possibility. Rules and precedents should be strictly
observed on both sides. When they are violated, the other party is
justified in feeling injured.
There were no lessons that morning, naturally--another grievance! The
fitness of things required that we should have struggled to the last in
a confused medley of moods and tenses, and parted for ever, flushed with
hatred, over the dismembered corpse of the multiplication-table.
But this thing was not to be; and I was free to stroll by myself through
the garden, and combat, as best I might, this growing feeling of
depression. It was a wrong system altogether, I thought, this going of
people one had got used to. Things ought always to continue as they had
been. Change there must be, of course; pigs, for instance, came and went
with disturbing frequency--
'Fired their ringing shot and passed,
Hotly charged and sank at last'--
but Nature had ordered it so, and in requital had provided for rapid
successors. Did you come to love a pig, and he was taken from you, grief
was quickly assuaged in the delight of selection from the new litter.
But now, when it was no question of a peerless pig, but only of a
governess, Nature seemed helpless, and the future held no litter of
oblivion. Things might be better, or they might be worse, but they would
never be the same; and the innate conservatism of youth asks neither
poverty nor riches, but only immunity from change.
Edward slouched up alongside of me presently, with a hangdog look on
him, as if he had been caught stealing jam. 'What a lark it'll be when
she's really gone!' he observed, with a swagger obviously assumed.
'Grand fun!' I replied dolorously; and conversation flagged.
We reached the hen-house, and contemplated the banner of freedom lying
ready to flaunt the breezes at the supreme moment.
'Shall you run it up,' I asked, 'when the fly starts, or--or wait a
little till it's out of sight?'
Edward gazed round him dubiously. 'We're going to have some rain, I
think,' he said; 'and--and it's a new flag. It would be a pity to spoil
it. P'raps I won't run it up at all.'
Harold came round the corner like a bison pursued by Indians. 'I've
polished up the cannons,' he cried, 'and they look grand! Mayn't I load
'em now?'
'You leave 'em alone,' said Edward severely, 'or you'll be blowing
yourself up' (consideration for others was not usually Edward's strong
point). 'Don't touch the gunpowder till you're told, or you'll get your
head smacked.'
Harold fell behind, limp, squashed, obedient. 'She wants me to write to
her,' he began presently. 'Says she doesn't mind the spelling, if I'll
only write. Fancy her saying that!'
'O, shut up, will you?' said Edward savagely; and once more we were
silent, with only our thoughts for sorry company.
'Let's go off to the copse,' I suggested timidly, feeling that something
had to be done to relieve the tension, 'and cut more new bows and
arrows.'
'She gave me a knife my last birthday,' said Edward moodily, never
budging. 'It wasn't much of a knife--but I wish I hadn't lost it!'
'When my legs used to ache,' I said, 'she sat up half the night, rubbing
stuff on them. I forgot all about that till this morning.'
'There's the fly!' cried Harold suddenly. 'I can hear it scrunching on
the gravel.'
Then for the first time we turned and stared each other in the face.
* * * * *
The fly and its contents had finally disappeared through the gate, the
rumble of its wheels had died away. Yet no flag floated defiantly in the
sun, no cannons proclaimed the passing of a dynasty. From out the
frosted cake of our existence Fate had cut an irreplaceable segment:
turn which way we would, the void was present. We sneaked off in
different directions, mutually undesirous of company; and it seemed
borne in upon me that I ought to go and dig my garden right over, from
end to end. It didn't actually want digging; on the other hand no amount
of digging could affect it, for good or for evil; so I worked steadily,
strenuously, under the hot sun, stifling thought in action. At the end
of an hour or so, I was joined by Edward.
'I've been chopping up wood,' he explained, in a guilty sort of way,
though nobody had called on him to account for his doings.
'What for?' I inquired stupidly. 'There's piles and piles of it chopped
up already.'
'I know,' said Edward, 'but there's no harm in having a bit over. You
never can tell what may happen. But what have you been doing all this
digging for?'
'You said it was going to rain,' I explained hastily. 'So I thought I'd
get the digging done before it came. Good gardeners always tell you
that's the right thing to do.'
'It did look like rain at one time,' Edward admitted; 'but it's passed
off now. Very queer weather we're having. I suppose that's why I've felt
so funny all day.'
'Yes, I suppose it's the weather,' I replied. '_I've_ been feeling funny
too.'
The weather had nothing to do with it, as we well knew. But we would
both have died rather than admit the real reason.
[Illustration]