The day of Ooney’s departure Tom came in to tea at the Lodge as usual,
and found the Missus of the Garland Inn sitting with Sally Drake by the
fire, wringing her hands and telling her tale.
“And what I’m to do for a living, Mrs. Drake, I’m sure I don’t know,”
said she. “The Duke’ll never put me up another Inn to take its place. Ah
dear, dear, dear! to think of him with his Castle ten times as big as
any one man needs, even if he does have to house nine-and-ninety
servants to see to his wants. There now, if he could only spare me a
little bit of what he’s got, I could set myself up again.”
“Wait a bit,” said Tom Cobble, “and don’t worry, Missus.” And he got out
his book and buried his nose in it.
Sally Drake said sharply, “Put that there reading away, uncle, and sup
your tea.”
“There’s no hurry,” said Tom Cobble, and poked the fire three times and
said something to the poker. Then he had his tea, and when the Missus
got back to the village she saw a quarter of the Duke’s Castle planted
where the Garland Inn had stood, and two or three villagers standing
about it waiting for a drink.
Now the Duke had overlooked a good many things, such as the grapes and
the primroses and the squirrels, and a fountain of wine that appeared
one day in the middle of his ornamental lake; and when the stone Cupid
there took to singing “Ringa-ring-a-roses” at seven o’clock every
evening and sat down with a splash at the finish, and when the white
swans began to wear gold crowns on their heads, and every water-lily as
it opened had a Queen-cake inside it, he was really rather proud of it,
though he couldn’t understand it in the least; and he took all his best
visitors to see the swans, and listen to the Cupid, and eat Queen-cakes
to their hearts’ content. But when a quarter of his Castle, including
the armoury, disappeared bodily one day, leaving his own suite of
apartments open to the east wind, he felt that things had gone too far,
and he must take steps.
So he told his Steward to make inquiries, and a week later the Steward
reported that he’d heard there was a rumour of a portion of a Castle,
but of course he couldn’t say whose, that had strayed by accident into
Shortways; so the Duke got on his horse and rode to see for himself, and
sure enough there was the missing bit. It now had a nice sign hanging
out, with a picture, and the words “The Quarter-Castle” painted on it;
and the Missus was serving drinks in the Armoury, using the helmets as
pint-pots.
He called her out, and pointed at the building, and said, “Where did you
pick that up, Missus?”
She curtseyed and replied, “Please, your Grace, it’s Tom Cobble’s
doing.”
“Send for Tom Cobble,” said the Duke; and when Tom came he asked, “Is
this your doing, Cobble?”
“Yes, sir,” said Tom Cobble.
“Is this your only doing, Cobble?” said the Duke.
“No, sir,” said Tom.
[Illustration:
_The Duke discovered he was riding a large white kitten._
]
“Did you do the swans, and the lilies, and the fountain, and the
squirrels, and all the rest of it, Cobble?” said the Duke.
“I did, sir,” said Tom.
The Duke frowned a mighty frown, and said in a voice of thunder, “What
do you think should be the fate of the man who spoils the Duke’s Park
and steals the Duke’s Castle?”
“I think, sir,” said Tom, “that he should marry the Duke’s daughter.”
“I haven’t got a daughter,” said the Duke. “Take a month’s wages, and
go. You’re spoiled as a mortal, Tom Cobble, and no use to Shortways.”
He paid Tom his wages and rode away, and was so upset that he was quite
half-way home before he discovered that he was riding on a large white
kitten with blue eyes.
Tom pocketed his money, said good-bye to the villagers and Sally Drake,
and left Shortways for ever. He hadn’t gone far before he heard a sound
of sobbing on the high-road; and there was Ooney in her silver dress and
check apron, crying her eyes out under a hedge. So he sat down in the
grass beside her, and said, “What’s up?”
“Oh, Tom!” wept Ooney, “they’ve turned me out. I set up the Garland Inn
so nice and proper, and did everything there as I’d learned how of the
Missus, and tried to get them to come in regular for drinks like real
human beings, and they didn’t like it at all. I was spoiled for a fairy,
they said, and no use to Fairyland any more, so they gave me a wish and
told me to go.”
“Where’s the wish?” asked Tom.
“On the tip of my tongue,” said Ooney.
“It’s better than nothing,” said Tom, “so let’s come along together, and
see if we can’t find a place in the world after all.”
He had hardly said this when there was a sound of drums and trumpets on
the road, and round the corner, gorgeous in the sunlight, came the long
procession of Carlo’s Circus—black-and-white ponies, red-and-white
clowns, ladies in spangles, boys in pink tights, Indians on elephants
with feathers in their turbans, a Strong Man with a starry world upon
his shoulders, and Prince Carlo himself in a golden chariot drawn by six
white donkeys with red reins and tassels.
“Is it magic?” asked Ooney.
“No,” said Tom, “it’s the real thing.”
“Really real?” cried Ooney joyfully. “Oh, I _wish_ Prince Carlo would
give us a job!”
No sooner had she wished than Prince Carlo said: “Whoa!” to his donkeys,
stepped down from his chariot, and said:
“Do you happen to be looking for a job?”
“Yes, we do,” said Tom and Ooney in one breath.
“Well,” said the Prince, “my Strong Man’s just leaving me to get married
to my Lady Equestrienne, and if _you_” (he turned to Tom) “think you
could juggle with the world, and _you_” (he turned to Ooney) “can ride a
cream pony on one toe and jump through a paper hoop, I’ll take you on.”
It was settled then and there, and Tom Cobble and Ooney joined the
Circus. And before long, wherever it went, they became the chief
attractions.
For Ooney in her silver dress and wreath of stars rode the pony like a
moonbeam floating in mid-air, sometimes forgetting to stand on him even
on tip-toe, and flying a few inches above his back all round the ring,
so that the little boys and girls on the twopenny benches screamed for
joy.
[Illustration: Black and white illustration depicting a man in formal
attire interacting with a traveling circus group, including performers,
jesters, and a horse-drawn wagon.]
And Tom Cobble in pink tights and a gold belt played with the starry
world as no Strong Man had ever done before, and while he tossed and
caught it, and walked on it and balanced it, all sorts of lovely things
happened to it; skylarks and swallows darted from it as it rolled in the
sawdust, and filled the tent with twittering, or violets and peardrops
fell from it as it tossed on the air, and sprinkled the twopenny
benches, and the stars would dance on its surface and turn all sorts of
colours, so that the little boys and girls screamed louder than ever.
In time Tom Cobble married Ooney, and when Prince Carlo retired they
took the Circus over entirely, for the life exactly suited them.
“Thank goodness,” said Tom, “nobody minds _what_ magic you play in the
Ring!”
And “Thank goodness,” said Ooney, “I’m doing something real at last!”
If ever their Circus comes your way, don’t miss it.
[Illustration: Black and white circus illustration featuring performers
and a horse around the text "The End of the Story".]
POEMS _By HUGH CHESTERMAN_
MERCHANT ADVENTURERS
_Merchant Adventurers off to the East,
What are you trading?_
Leather and cheese and golden grain,
Some for Russia, and some for Spain.
A hundred hides for the Zuyder Zee,
Twice as many for Lombardy,
And tin for the ports of Flanders.
Sacks of sea coal ten times ten,
Wool to sell to the weaver men,
With a cask of cider now and then
To cheer the Merchant Adventurers.
_And what will your ships bring home to port,
Merchant Adventurers?_
Pepper and cinnamon, wine and wheat,
Spice from Egypt, cloves from Crete,
Syrian silks of purest white,
A freight of fur from the Muscovite,
And anything else you want, sir!
_And plenty too, but you’ve forgot
Your ships may sink and your cargoes rot,
Peradventure they will—peradventure not—
Much venturing Merchant Adventurers!_
[Illustration:
_Merchant Adventurers._
]
BROTHER BLAISE
Here sits Brother Blaise
All his days
With paper, paint and pen.
So aged is he, so cramped with age,
He seldom stirs, and turns a page
But now and then.
His eyes are set
On massive book of brave design
Whereon his hand makes, line by line,
Its curious alphabet.
The years go by (so slow
Their come and go
Time scarcely moves at all);
Only the Sun through some high window peeps
To mark the stealing hours, and creeps
From wall to wall.
It’s strange to think
That scribe and script must soon forgotten be—
And all his industry
But faded ink!
HUGH CHESTERMAN.
[Illustration:
_Brother Blaise._
]
THE BOWMAN
It’s jolly to play at Make-Believe
And think what you might have been
An Anglo-Norman aristocrat
With his feudal this and his feudal that;
A stern Crusader, tough and tanned,
Jogging along to the Holy Land;
A Roundhead trooper, spick and span,
Yeoman, Knight or Javelin man.
But best of the bunch, as it seems to me,
The jolliest fellow of all was he
Who covered the whole of his six foot three
In a suit of Lincoln green.
Foemen knew the twang of his bow
And bowed them down at the patter
Of dropping arrows, designed to put
The fear of the Lord in Horse and Foot,
(You’ll hear them still, wherever you look,
Hissing about in the history book).
But only the laughing bowman knew
Just where they’d go and what they’d do.
For often enough a Knight would find
A hole in his front—and one behind—
And the mess that it made of his peace of mind
Was hardly a laughing matter.
HUGH CHESTERMAN.
[Illustration:
_The Bowman._
]
THE BAFFLED BARD
In the palmy old days when a King went to war
A Minstrel was paid to make songs by the score,
To rhyme and tell stories
Of War and its glories;
He chanted the praises
Of fighting like blazes,
The pleasure of sticking
Your spear in a Viking
(What rapture to tap a
Real Dane on the “napper”!).
He rhymed about rallies,
And sorties and sallies,
And parleys and truces,
And sang their excuses
If either side lost: he piped like a linnet
And rhymed all the time without stopping a minute.
But, between you and me, all this musical prattle
Was easy enough with a nice sounding battle
Like Beaugé or Bampton,
Dundalk or Northampton;
His tongue would go curling
Round Senlac or Stirling,
While “trodden” and “sodden”
Are fine rhymes for Flodden,
Though I’m bound to confess he
Had trouble with Crecy;
But that’s not as hard as
The job that _this_ Bard has:
For Uffa the Angle,
Has just had a wrangle
With Sleddha the Saxon—Oh, didn’t they go it!
And Wiht-gara-burh was the Battle (poor Poet!).
HUGH CHESTERMAN.
[Illustration:
_The Baffled Bard._
]
[Illustration: A colorful illustration of a witch in a patterned robe
and black hat on a ladder, painting the side of a house at night.]
[Illustration:
_He nearly forgot to pull in the tides._
]
THE MAN IN THE MOON _By ROSE FYLEMAN_
The Man in the Moon was very busy repainting the outside of his house.
It was a fine clear night, and of course it’s always pretty light up
there anyway. He had a ladder and a pail of luminous paint. The paint
was bright yellow, and he put it on thick. While he painted he sang,
very loudly and cheerfully. This was the song he sang:
Oh, I am the Man in the Moon;
Won’t you visit me soon?
Should you be taking a trip to the stars
Please drop in on the way to Mars,
Morning or afternoon.
I am the Man in the Moon;
Put on your seven-league shoon.
The road is plain and you can’t go wrong;
Or if you think it would take too long,
Why not have a balloon?
I am the Man in the Moon
(How do you like my tune?)
I’ll give you a platter of good moon-cheese
Ripe and rich and as much as you please,
Crystal fruit from my orchard trees,
And silver honey from silver bees
To eat with an ivory spoon.
Presently Diana, his wife, came to the door.
“Mind the paint, Di,” said the Man in the Moon.
“That’s just what I _do_ mind,” said his wife. “They’re threatening to
turn us out of the house because we can’t pay the rent, and you can find
nothing better to do than to waste your time over an unnecessary job
like that. And all the children wanting new shoes too! It’s scandalous.
I’m not so young as I was, else I’ve half a mind to buckle-to myself and
go out a-hunting again.”
“I’d love to see you,” said the Man in the Moon. “I’d just _love_ it. It
would seem like old times. My dear, you’d create an enormous sensation.”
“And that’s just like your foolishness again,” said his wife. “I
couldn’t even so much as get into the things, let alone run about in
’em. No, I’ve got some sense, if you haven’t. As to painting the house,
I can’t imagine what you’re doing it for.”
“My dear,” said the Man in the Moon (whose name by the way is Tobias),
“if you’ll wait a minute I’ll come down and tell you.”
He climbed down the ladder and sat down on a low cloudbank in front of
the house.
“When I’ve finished,” he said, “it’ll look so beautiful that everyone
will notice. ‘Oh, do look at the moon,’ they’ll say. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’
And then I shall paint a big sign and put it on the roof. And I shall
write on it: ‘CHEESE FOR SALE.’ You know, Diana, there’s no end to the
cheese. The cellar’s one solid mass, and we could dig some out of the
walls. They’re very thick. And everyone will rush to buy cheese. It’ll
become quite the rage. All the sky people will come, and I shouldn’t
wonder if the earth people came, too, before long. It will be _the_
thing to do. We shall make our fortunes in a couple of months.”
“And who’s going to pay the rent meanwhile?” said his wife. “The
collector’s coming to-morrow.”
The Man in the Moon looked a little crestfallen. “Oh, something’ll turn
up,” he said. “We’ll put him off for a few days. Give him a pound of
cheese.”
“He’s had pounds and pounds already,” said his wife. “_That’s_ no use.”
And she went in and slammed the door so hard that it began to rain a
little.
The Man in the Moon finished the first coat of paint. Then he went to
have a look at the tide-ropes in order to see whether they were running
out properly, and after that he sat down on the doorstep and lighted his
pipe, peering about to see whether the children were coming in.
His wife came to the window.
“Time those youngsters were in, isn’t it?” said the Man in the Moon.
“They’re all safe in bed,” she said. “All except Seven; she’s not back
yet. She ought to be home. It’ll soon be dawn. Just like you, Tobias,
not to see them come in.” Which was hardly fair, for the Moonbeams had
all come in the back way, and they’re the quietest little things
imaginable.
[Illustration:
_Held up a glittering string of beads._
]
Five minutes later Seven came softly slipping round the edge of the
house.
“Hullo, Daddy,” she said.
“Hullo, Seven,” said her father, and made room for her on the step
beside him, for of all his ninety-nine daughters she is the favourite.
“I’ve had a lovely night,” she said. “And look what I’ve found.”
She held up a glittering string of beads. “It was lying at the bottom of
a deep, deep well. There was a big frog in the well and when I danced
for him he fetched it out for me. Isn’t it pretty?”
The Man in the Moon took it in his hands. “It _is_ pretty,” he said. And
he turned it about in his fingers. One of the beads slipped off the
thread. He threw it up into the air and caught it. It glittered
wonderfully in the pale light.
Seven clapped her hands.
“Let’s play at marbles with them in the yard,” said the Man in the Moon.
But Seven was afraid her mother would see them from the house and send
her to bed.
“Then let’s throw them at the stars,” said her father. “It would be such
fun to hit one, and they’ll look so jolly flying through the sky.”
[Illustration:
_I danced for him._
]
Seven clapped her hands again. “Oh, yes, Daddy,” she cried.
But her mother heard her and put her head out of the window again.
“Come to bed at once,” she said, and she came bustling down the stairs.
But when she caught sight of the necklace lying on the step in a shining
heap, she became intensely excited.
“Where did that come from?” she asked.
“I found it at the bottom of a well on earth,” said Seven. “Isn’t it
pretty?”
“Well, I never ... I declare ... of all the extraordinary things ...”
gasped out her mother. “Give them to me, give them to me. For goodness’
sake take care none of them get lost.” She gathered up the beads in her
apron and rushed indoors, but was out again in a moment, brandishing the
evening paper in her free hand. “Listen to this,” she said:
SENSATION AT COURT.
FAIRY QUEEN LOSES HER STATE
NECKLACE.
SUBSTANTIAL REWARD TO
FINDER.
And she showed them the great black head-lines in the Fairy Mail.
[Illustration: Black and white illustration showing a person in a
polka-dot skirt reading a paper titled "THE FAIRY MAIL."]
“Do you really think it’s the Queen’s necklace?” said the Man in the
Moon, who had been staring at her open-mouthed.
“Of course it is,” said his wife rather snappishly. “Anybody could see
with half an eye that that’s no ordinary piece of jewelry. I shall
telephone to the Court immediately. What a lucky thing that Seven found
it! I wonder how it came there. I daresay the Queen dropped it. They say
she’s dreadfully careless about her things.” She hurried away into the
house, and they could presently hear her trying to get through to the
Fairy Queen. Seven and her father sat looking at one another rather
guiltily. “What a good thing we didn’t throw them away,” whispered the
Man in the Moon. “Don’t tell your mother.”
By this time all the other Moonbeams were thoroughly aroused. They put
their shining flaxen heads out of the windows.
“Come up, Seven,” they said. “Have you heard? We’re all to have new
slippers. And Mother’s promised to take us for a picnic to the Milky Way
to-morrow. Come up and tell us all about the necklace.”
[Illustration: Black and white illustration of a woman in a polka-dot
dress using a vintage candlestick telephone.]
Dear me! What a state of excitement they were all in! The Man in the
Moon very nearly forgot to pull in the tides, and that would have been a
catastrophe indeed.
I know you will be pleased to hear that it did turn out to be the Fairy
Queen’s necklace, and the reward was an exceedingly handsome one, so
that the children got not only new slippers but a new Sunday frock
apiece. There was enough over besides to pay the rent for a year, and
even something to put by for a rainy day.
But the Man in the Moon hasn’t given up his wonderful plan of selling
cheese. I heard the other day that he was very busy painting his sign.
So look out for it, won’t you?
[Illustration:
CHEESE FOR SALE.
]
POEMS _By B. K. PYKE_
THE DREAM
All up the mountains,
All down the vale
Ran Pretty Polly,
Chased by a snail.
Down where the streamlet
Flowed to the sea
Ran Pretty Polly
Fast as could be.
Then our poor Polly,
Turning her head,
Found she had fallen
Out of her bed.
[Illustration:
_Alec Buckels_
“_Chased by a snail._”
]
[Illustration:
_Alec Buckels_
]
FRIENDLESS
I want a wiry pony
With a wild dark mane,
Who’d gallop me
To Anglesea
An’ then come home again.
I want a yellow doggie
With a wet black nose,
Who’d bathe with me
At Anglesea
An’ lick my little toes.
B. K. PYKE.
[Illustration:
_Alec Buckels_
]
JOHNNY MUNNS
Hark to the wailing!
’Tis poor Johnny Munns
Calling for apples
And sugary buns.
B. K. PYKE.
[Illustration:
_Alec Buckels_
]
RESPECTABLE PEOPLE
It’s very nice to eat your tea,
As Mother does, in company.
But oh, I think it better far
To grab for jam straight from the jar.
And if they send me up to bed
At least I go there feeling fed.
B. K. PYKE.
[Illustration: A colorful scene features a person in green holding a
barrel, while another person in red stands in the distance with a
sword.]
[Illustration: A black and white illustration shows two people sitting
on a beach while another person sits nearby, pointing out toward the
sea.]
PARSON’S TWINS _By HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE_
CHAPTER I
Old Ben Rossiter’s cottage lay in a hollow of the cliff, where the
heather ran down to the gorse, and Ben was sitting at his door in the
evening sunlight, spinning yarns to the boy and girl who lay stretched
at ease, their elbows in the heather and their chins in their hands as
they watched Rossiter’s face.
Ben could remember much that had happened in the wildest days of Norland
village—could invent when memory failed—and of all listeners he liked
best these two who were known as Parson’s Twins to all the fisherfolk.
They were twins in looks, though Nora’s face was like an elf’s and the
boy’s was hardened by the free life of the coast. They were certainly
twins in what Ben called “sheer devilment, just for love of it.”
“As I was saying, there _was_ a deal of smuggling in these parts, Master
Dick. The best o’ them all, to my mind, was Black Garrowby, who hailed
from Neasby-over-Bay yonder, though we can scarce see the headland now.
True, there’s bad weather coming. It’s getting grey with the sundown.”
“But Black Garrowby?” asked Dick.
“Nay, it would fright Miss Nora here, if I told all I knew.”
“I like to be frightened, Ben. It tingles all down my back.”
“Well, this was the sort of lad he was, if you must know. There was a
Preventive chap—name of Glendyke—and there wasn’t much love lost ’twixt
him and Black Garrowby. No, there wasn’t much love lost.”
He paused to shift his quid of baccy from the left cheek to the right.
“They met on the cliff-top one moonlight night,” he went on. “The
Preventive came on Garrowby just as he climbed up-cliff with a keg of
brandy on his shoulders. There was a big moon rising over the moor, so
they saw each other, plain as daylight almost. And the Preventive says
to Garrowby, ‘We’re quits at last,’ says he. ‘We are,’ says Black
Garrowby, and runs in and gets t’other’s cutlass out of his hand.”
Ben shifted his “wad” from the right cheek to the left. He liked to keep
these two waiting, breathless, till he took up his tale again.
“As I said, the moon gave a fairish light to see by. Garrowby swung the
cutlass twice, and then he clove the Preventive right through neck and
all. And the head of the man bumped over-cliff, bumped down from rock to
rock, it did, till all the sea-mews came out clattering to know what had
tumbled in among ’em.”
“Nothing happens like that nowadays,” sighed Nora.
“It’s as well, may be. It does seem outrageous—the head of a man waking
sea-birds from their sleep—and it couldn’t happen now, of course.”
Ben Rossiter glanced out to sea again, and his voice was sharp on the
sudden.
“There’s dirty weather coming, so get home before you’re drenched.
Parson has enough to say to me as it is about filling your heads with
tales best forgotten.”
Dick was still sprawling in the heather, his eyes intent on Ben
Rossiter. So Raleigh, in old Devon days, might have looked at the
weathered sea-dogs of his time.
“Father is over at the Island,” he said, “and told us he couldn’t get
back till late. There’s plenty of time for another tale.”
“Bless the boy, what sort of yarn does he want now?”
“A wrecking tale. They used to put lights on Norland Cliff to bring
ships on the rocks.”
“To be sure they did,” broke in the old man gruffly, “but I like to
forget all that. Smuggling was smuggling, fair and square. But to ’tice
a good ship on the reef, and break her timbers, and drown the sailor-men
aboard of her—it don’t bear thinking of.”
“What sort of light did they use, Ben?”
“Why, just a storm-lantern. When a ship’s in trouble on a black night, a
littlish light on the cliffs shows very plain.”
“And nothing happens like that, either, nowadays,” said Nora, with the
same wistful sigh. “It must have been fine to live then. Fancy the ship
breaking up on the reef, the very minute the Preventive’s head bounded
down—and Black Garrowby laughing on top of the cliff while he danced a
jig.”
“It wasn’t fine to live then,” said Rossiter, “for _I lived then
myself_, and I know. And now pack home, the two of you. There’s no more
yarns to-night.”
They went reluctantly, knowing this mood of his. Rossiter watched them
fade and dwindle into twilight of the heather, and wondered if he’d been
harsh. A storm-lantern on the cliff—a broken ship below—it was all like
an old-time story to Parson’s Twins. He should have been gentler with
them, for they loved a tale.
He turned to look at the sea, churning into grey little ponies that
would be white horses later on. On such a night as this he had seen
terrible things, heard dreadful cries, and could not forget. Then he
seemed to hear Nora’s voice again, saying that nothing happened like
that nowadays. Rossiter knew that it might happen any time. Hard times
had come to Norland village, and men were saying openly that if one way
of earning bread-and-butter failed, another must be found.
“Old tales are well enough,” he grumbled. “I don’t want new ones of the
Wreckers’ kind.”
CHAPTER II
The Parson’s twins were out on the moor by now, and Dick began to laugh.
“I’m not going home yet, Nora. You’re a girl, of course, and can if you
like.”
“Thank you, Dick, for nothing at all.”
“Father can’t be home for a long while yet. Of course, old Rossiter made
a tale about the cutlass and the head bumping down the cliffs. But there
_was_ a Black Garrowby, and they say his ghost walks where he killed the
Preventive man. I’m going to see.”
“So am I,” said Nora, and marched very bravely by his side till they
neared the top of Norland Point. Then she slipped an arm into his, and
explained that she was not afraid, but tired.
“Black Garrowby will cure you of that,” Dick assured her. “You couldn’t
be tired, watching him kill the Preventive, and dance a jig for joy.”
She clung closer to him. The sea-fret sobbed and moaned below. The gulls
were restless, crying in their sleep. Long as they watched for Black
Garrowby’s ghost, it did not come; but something else did.
Just behind them, a little glen ran down to the shore, and a man’s voice
sounded—almost under their feet, it seemed. The breeze, blowing stiff
from the sea, brought the words clearly and drowned Nora’s startled cry.
“What I says is, it was the staple trade of these parts not so long
since. The great folk at the Hall were in it. The Parson was in it. So
was every mother’s son about the parish.”
“Ay,” came a second voice. “The sea’s good harvest, they used to call
it.”
“Well, what was good harvest in those days is good harvest now, I
reckon. You know how times are with the other sort of fishing, Jake?”
“Know?” growled the second voice.
“But you don’t—not by a long way. If you’d a wife and childer, and you
saw their faces when you came home with empty nets and empty
pockets—you’d _begin_ to know.”
Parson’s Twins lay still in the heather, looking down into the shadowed
glen. The two who talked there were no ghosts; but they frightened them,
as Black Garrowby could never have put fear into them. They did not know
what the men’s talk meant, but they half guessed it.
“I haven’t wife or childer,” Jake’s voice came up the breeze. “I haven’t
a quid o’ baccy in my cheek, either. Queer times, I call ’em, when
sailor-men can’t smuggle baccy, and can’t afford to buy it.”
“The storm’s brewing up. There’ll be ships making for the bay before so
very long.”
“Foreign ships, we’ll hope?”
“Oh, ay, they’ll be foreign ships. And we’ll hope, too, the crew will
swim ashore. It’s only the cargo we’re sinking, Jake—to feed our wives
and childer.”
“Dick,” whispered Nora, “I’m afraid.”
[Illustration:
_The two men passed close to the Twins._
]
He reached out a hand to hers, and held it close. “Not you,” he said;
“and anyway we’ve got to listen.”
“It’s a rare devising, this o’ yours,” sounded Jake’s voice, harsh and
rough. “You’ve got the lantern with you?”
“Would I forget a little thing like that? We’ve got the lantern and the
weather, Jake, and it’s time we stepped up-cliff.”
The two men passed so close to Parson’s Twins that they nearly trod on
them.
The twins stood stock-still for a moment. Without warning they were
pitched headlong into the times they had sighed for—times come to life
again. Two men—rough men and real—were going up to Norland Point, where
the cliffs rose, ironbound and sheer, a thousand feet. This was no story
listened to at the door of Rossiter’s cottage. Live men were going to
the point with a lantern, and soon a light would flash out across the
gathering storm.
Nora felt Dick’s hand tighten on hers as he dragged her forward. It was
an awful thing that had met them on the cliff. Every story they had
heard of wrecking days returned in a flash of memory.
“What can we do?” sobbed Nora. “They’re so big.”
“We can follow,” Dick broke in roughly. “That’s all I know.”
The whole top of Norland Point was rough with boulders and thick
heather, and Dick, when they reached it, went on hands and knees,
creeping forward like a weasel.
Nora, close behind him, lost her fright. The smell of the heather was
friendly, and so was the cover it gave them as they crept forward. Dick
was in front of her, too, and it was comforting to know that fear never
made him feel very thin and cold, as it did a girl.
Dick’s heart was in his boots, if she had known it. For they had
wriggled now so close to the edge of Norland Point that they could hear
the two men talking. And it was eerie talk.
“There’s none to see,” laughed Jake.
“None to see, lad,” growled the other. “Just a home-light on the cliff,
and a ship scudding safe for harbour.”
“And _crack_ she comes against what lies under us. Then we douse our
light, and who is the wiser when we come down shore to-morrow for our
share of the wreck?”
“It’s a foreign ship will come, you said?”
“To be sure, a foreign ship.”
“And the sailor-men will swim ashore?”
Dick, used enough to the free speech of the village, was aghast at the
oath that Jake ripped out.
“Afraid o’ the business, are ye?”
“Not afraid, as you might say,” stammered the other; “but it’s only the
cargo we want.”
“Ay, and it’s the cargo we’ll have, at any price. I’ve a wife and six
starving brats down yonder, and they have to be fed. Here, give me the
lantern. Your hands are quavering so they couldn’t shield a match to
light it—not against this Wreckers’ Wind that’s blowing up.”
Dick lay in a little tunnel of heather—lay much as he had done when he
listened to Old Rossiter’s tales not long since—and saw the lantern
shoot its rays out into the grey weather brewing up across the twilight
sea. And for a moment his heart failed him.
CHAPTER III
“Not so scared as you were?” he heard Jake say. “It used to be everyday
work, I tell you. Parson and Squire and all Norland were in the traffic
once. They’d be in it to-day, if they’d wit to do like us, without risk
o’ being found out.”
The horror of it came afresh to Nora. Before she knew, a sharp cry
escaped her. It seemed that she was compelled to cry aloud in warning to
any sailor-men who might be steering for the light on Norland Point.
Then she heard another oath from Jake, and Dick’s voice in her ear.
“We’ve got to run for it now, little fool.”
They could not run for it yet, but had to wriggle back through heather
drenched already by the wet sea-wind. Then they turned the shoulder of a
rock, and waited breathless in its shelter, listening to the two men as
they hunted for them. They dared not stand upright, dared not creep out
into the grassy open; for there was light enough to show them plainly.
To and fro the searchers went. Once Jake was so near their hiding-place
that they thought he must hear their hurried breathing; but he passed
on, kicking the heather to right and left as if he was intent on bolting
a hare from its forme.
“May be it was a cliff-bird screeching,” he growled. “There’s nobody
here as I can find.”
“And may be it was Black Garrowby’s spirit a-calling us,” quavered the
other. “He calls for death, as all men know.”
“Don’t you talk of what men know, Silas,” said Jake, with bitter fury.
“Get home to your mammy, and leave me to a man’s job. I’ll have no
babbies hindering me.”
Dick guessed, by the sound of their voices, that they were on the far
side of the rocks. He whispered to Nora, and together they crept quickly
through the last of the heather, turned for a backward glance when they
reached the smooth turf beyond, and never ceased to run till they slid
down into the glen where they had heard Jake hatching out his plot not
long ago.
Here they found breath again; but the wind came up the hollow with
sudden fury, and Dick thought of the lantern on the cliff—of ships at
sea.
“It’s half a mile to old Rossiter’s cottage, Nora,” he said. “Get there
as fast as you can.”
She drew closer to him. “You’re coming, too?”
“I can’t. There’s just a chance I can get that light away from the
cliff. It isn’t much of a chance. That’s why you have to go to
Rossiter’s. Tell him what’s doing up at the Point.”
Nora pictured the half-mile to the cottage—every step of it thick with
ghosts and twilight—and clung to him.
“Cry-baby, like the man Jake sneered at?” said Dick, and hated himself
for the needed roughness.
She stood away from him, in the glen’s windy dusk, her pride on fire.
“I’ll go,” she said.
The wind buffeted her as she came to the open cliff-top. It was rising
fast, and made queer noises—sometimes like hounds in full cry, pursuing
her—sometimes like a pack of goblins. A lull came when she reached
Tranter’s Heath, and from its stunted firs she heard the clanking of a
chain.
Panic seized her. She could not take another step through this
ghost-ridden upland, and her heart cried out for Dick. Twin seldom cries
to twin in need without a quick answer. As if he were close at hand, she
heard Dick telling her that sailor-men were in peril on the sea, and
that they needed her.
She plunged into what waited for her under the firs. The clanking of
chains ceased, and she ran into something big, and soft, and
furry—something that brayed gently at her.
Nora put her arms about the donkey’s neck, and cried from sheer relief.
The clanking chain was his protest against the master who tethered him
to a tree each night on Tranter’s Heath to listen to the ghosts. She had
forgotten in her terror that he had his sleeping-quarters here.
“Joseph,” she sobbed, “I’m tired and frightened.”
Joseph rubbed against her cheek, as if to say that he was tired and
frightened, too. She stayed with him a little, gathering comfort and
giving it, till Dick’s voice seemed to run down the wind that rose again
and yelped and snarled. _There were sailor-men going in peril of the
sea._
She kissed Joseph’s nose with tender haste, and he brayed forlornly as
she left him. There was half her journey done when she got beyond the
stunted trees and out into the heather-track that led to the beach and
Rossiter’s cottage; but the way seemed endless. The wind, dead against
her, brought her to a standstill every now and then; and once she had to
lie flat in the heather and let a hurricane of sleet pass overhead,
chilling her to the bone.
[Illustration:
_She ran into something big and soft._
]
Nora, as she struggled on, was not afraid of the storm’s fury, but she
dreaded the lulls in between—the lulls when she heard strange sobs and
wailing cries among the chill, wet heather, and fancied drowning men
about her on all sides. Again she called to Dick, and his hand seemed to
grasp hers and lead her forward.
Another lull in the wind came, just as she reached Pinder’s Gorse. An
awful crying sounded from behind, and she saw a man running through the
gloom. He headed so straight for her that Nora could only spring aside,
and drop to her knees, and creep into the prickly gorse in search of
shelter. She lay there, in an agony of dread. He would hunt for her, as
the men had sought through the heather not long ago. But Dick had been
with her then.
She tried to snuggle closer into the gorse, but the thorns drove her
back. So then she lay there, waiting for the end. The man must find her
soon, and would kill her—and Dick would be sorry. Somehow it was Dick
she thought of. He would miss her.
The man who had helped Jake to set the Wreckers’ Light on Norland Point
did not pause at Pinder’s Gorse. As they watched beside the light, Jake
and he, a loathing of it all had come to him, a listening for the
phantom tread of Black Garrowby’s feet, till he had taken flight across
the moor. He, too, had blundered into the grey donkey tethered on
Tranter’s Heath, had fancied it was Garrowby himself and fled from it.
Nora heard him go past the gorse, crying that all the moor was after
him. The wind drowned his uproar by-and-by; and the girl drew a breath
of sheer relief. She waited awhile, then crept out into the open. Every
step she took was shod with panic, but she came at last to the dip of
the moor that showed her Rossiter’s cottage, dim in the twilight, and
the little land-locked bay in front of it.
It seemed too good to be true, but Rossiter’s door was real enough as
she fumbled for the handle and opened it. Old Ben was real, too, sitting
there beside a blaze of wrackwood, a clay pipe between his teeth as he
watched old days take shape in the dancing flames.
His pipe dropped to the floor as he turned and saw Nora standing in the
fire-glow. She was white and shaken, and there was terror in her eyes.
“Why, it’s Parson’s maid,” he said.
She ran to him, and leaped to his knee, and cried her heart out against
his tarry coat. “I’ve been frightened, Ben,” she pleaded.
“Well, that’s gone. Tuck your head into my elbow-crook, and sleep it all
away. It won’t be the first time.”
She rested there, in the crook of his tarry sleeve, but not for long.
“Dick’s calling me,” she said, slipping from his knee.
“That’s no news. You’re for ever calling, each to t’other.”
He was for comforting her again; but she was hearing the cries of
sailor-men out there.
“Ben,” she said, “they’ve put a lantern on Norland Point. Dick sent me
down to tell you—and he’s in danger.”
Rossiter’s easy-going cheeriness left him. “It’s come to that, has it?
Well, I feared it would.”
She watched him reach down a big lantern from the shelf beside the
hearth, watched him trim and light it.
Nora was white and shaken still, but she tugged at his sleeve
impatiently. “Dick’s calling me,” she repeated.
[Illustration:
_She watched him trim and light the lantern._
]
“You’d best stay here,” he grumbled, “but there’s no use in argufying
when twin calls to twin.”
They went out together into the grey dusk. The little bay was quiet
enough, but as they turned their backs on it and got up into the high
cliff-lands, the gale swept over them in earnest. Whether Nora liked it
or not, she felt herself picked up and sheltered under Ben’s storm-coat.
It was snug and warm there; but she would rather be braving the weather,
as Dick was braving it.
Rossiter halted only once, when they came to the headland high above his
cottage. He set his lantern in a cranny of the rocks, made sure that it
was safe against the gale’s fury, and glanced out to sea.
“There’s two lights now,” he growled, “and even chances for the
sailor-men. If they see this first, it ‘ull guide ’em straight into that
little cove o’ mine.”
He felt a struggling under his big storm-cape, and Nora’s head was
thrust out into the wind that lashed and stung. “Hurry, Ben,” she
pleaded. “Dick’s calling me—and he’s all alone.”
CHAPTER IV
Dick had listened to Nora’s footsteps up the glen with a queer
heartache. There was no danger that he knew of between the glen-top and
Rossiter’s cottage—none certainly of the kind he must take—but she was a
girl, and there were lonely ghosts on the cliff-top, lying in wait for
human company.
He put the thought away, and clambered down the glen till he gained the
beach, and turned right-handed for Norland Cliff. Between his feet and
the seething flood-tide there was still a strip of rock that ran only
inches deep in spume. He crossed it nimbly, slipping here and there on
hidden rocks, and just in time reached the great rock-stairway that
wound up to Norland Point.
It was a hard climb, even in daylight, for men used to it from boyhood.
The sea-worn ledges sloped upward—narrow tracks across the sheer face of
the precipice—and Dick was glad that the gale blew shoreward, pressing
him against the cliff.
Half-way up he thought he could do no more. His hands were raw with
plucking at jagged points of rock to steady himself. His heart was
beating madly, and there was a singing in his ears. He had done his
best, and this was the end of it.
He looked seaward in despair, and far off he saw a ship in sore
distress. The hurricane had driven the sky free of cloudy mist, and a
half-grown moon shone clear on waves that reared in triumph till the
wind broke them into tatters. In the midst of churning seas he watched
this small ship battling with the storm. Sometimes she was riding
mountains high, and then was hidden in a gulf of crested waters. But
always she returned, fighting on the wave-crests for her life.
[Illustration: A black and white illustration depicts a sailing ship
surrounded by icebergs under a dark sky.]
Dick, lashed by the tempest and clinging to the cliff above him, thought
somehow of Ben Rossiter—of the days when he and Nora had sprawled at his
cottage-door, and listened to high tales of Drake and Frobisher and
Howard. But these had been small cattle to Ben when his tongue was
loosed about the hardihood of Sir Richard Grenville, fighting his ship
against the men of Spain. “Never a mast was left her,” Ben had chuckled,
“never a mast. She was down to the bare bones of her, that ship of
Grenville’s, with the seas scuppering over her. The Spaniards swore he’d
done enough, and asked him to give in. ‘But no,’ says he, ‘this is an
English ship.’”
Again Dick glanced seaward. The little craft, driven fast by wind and
sea, was heading straight for the precipice he climbed—straight for the
light on top of it. New strength came to him. There was something in
remembrance of Sir Richard Grenville that gave him cheer. Out there was
another English ship, and it was a race for her life, this climb of his
to the cliff-top.
The race was almost ended a moment later, for he set his foot on a loose
rock fallen from above. He swayed dizzily above the edge, with a sharp
cry of terror. Then the hurricane drove at him and glued him to the
cliff. Whatever lives the storm was taking to-night, it had saved one at
least.
Just over his head the track broadened, and Dick swung up and rested
there to get his wind again. He was roused by an oath that sounded
overhead as the gale, too, paused for breath, and was on his feet in a
moment. Keeping in shadow of the rock, he looked up, and the moonlight
showed him a face so evil and distorted that his heart stood still.
Above him Jake lay flat on the cliff-top, peering down, and again an
oath rapped out. “Who’s that below there?” he roared.
Then fear went from Dick. He could only think of Richard Grenville and
the glee of peril. He made a hollow of his hands and shouted up that
Black Garrowby was waiting for his man, and with that Jake’s head
disappeared, and the gale swooped up again in earnest.
Dick glanced out to sea once more. The little ship was nearer now, still
heading straight for what she thought a harbour-light. There was no time
to lose, and he crept warily up the last of the climb, and pushed his
head between the heather. Jake was striving moodily to and fro, stopping
often to watch the ship in-driving towards the rocks.
[Illustration:
_Above him Jake lay flat on the cliff-top._
]
The man was not two yards away, with his back turned, when Dick saw his
chance, and took it. He kicked the lantern over-cliff; and then, because
his errand was done, the afterfright of it was cold about him. He could
not move.
Neither could Jake for a moment. Dread of the thing he was doing had
pierced even his tough hide, and the cry from below had shaken him—the
cry that Black Garrowby was waiting. The heaven of a wreck, with spoils
to gather, was changed to Garrowby’s welcome down yonder in the deeps
where drowned men lay and knew each other.
In that still moment Jake saw the dead below-seas. They were of two
companies—honest sailor-men, and those who had set false lights about
the cliffs—and a sick fear was at his heart. There were honest men down
there—done to their deaths by such as he—and they would know him when he
came among them.
For a while they stood there, both silent. Then Jake gave a scream of
fury—a madman’s scream—as his glance returned to the boy who had robbed
him of his prey. Dick, roused from his trance of fear, doubled back
sharply. There was only one way of escape—the rock-stair he had climbed.
If the upward journey had been perilous, it was harder far to go down
instead of up the slippery, zigzag path; for now the whole seething
waste of sea showed clear below him, and each step seemed to be his
last.
He kept the track with dogged will to survive; and, after all, there was
worse behind him than the seas in front. Once he paused, listening for
pursuit. There was none; but, as he moved forward warily, a rock came
crashing down the cliff, and another, and another.
That was Jake’s way with him, then; but by this time Dick had reached
the bend where the track widened, half of it running into a narrow cave
cut like a gash on the cliff’s face. He crept into the darkness, and
waited, watching the moonlit half of the path. There was a dizziness in
his head, a failing of strength that he mistook for want of pluck; but
recollection of Ben Rossiter, and Richard Grenville, and scampers
overmoor with Nora—all mixed up together—gave him courage. He had
outwitted Jake so far; and the little ship, out there in the moonlight,
was no longer heading straight for Norland Point. She was tacking, this
way and that, uncertain and baffled now the light was gone.
Dick waited. The hurricane died down as suddenly as it had come; but the
sea below ran high and boisterous, buffeting the ship. He forgot his own
plight in watching her peril, till a voice bellowed from the cliff-top:
“You doused my light, Parson’s brat. Have I doused yours?”
Dick warmed to this ending of suspense. He would fight his own little
ship till it was drowned down there or come to harbour.
“Ay,” he answered, making a trumpet with his hands again. “I’ve gone to
join Black Garrowby.”
There came a silence from the cliff-top, and after that a storm of
oaths, and then the sound of cautious feet along the track. It was hard
to bear, this second waiting-time. The footsteps sounded nearer.
“Where are you, Parson’s brat?” snarled Jake. “You don’t get me twice
with that trick. No ghost of Garrowby’s sort goes dousing a Wreckers’
Light. He was one of us in the old days.”
Dick could smell the man—rum, and sweat, and tar—and he passed so close
that he thought himself lost. But Jake went by, looking down the track
in search of the lad who’d robbed him.
Then a terrible thing happened. Jake stood stock-still in the moonlight,
and a great cry rang out across the heaving seas.
“Black Garrowby,” he shrieked, and spread his hands out as if drawn by
other unseen hands, and plunged into what lay below in the lockers of
old Davy Jones.
Dick crouched there, bewildered by the sudden horror of it all. The sea
roared and moaned below, and through its uproar he seemed to hear Jake’s
death-cry echoing out and out across the tumbled waters. Then a great
longing came to him to get away—up and away to the cliff-top and safety
and sound of friendly voices.
He left the cave’s shelter, and began to climb the moonlit stairway.
Then his strength left him. There was no spur of need to get the light
away from Norland Point, no spur of fear because Jake pursued. He had
done too much, and panic seized him. Strive as he would to force himself
up the track, he was helpless. He could only think of the precipice
above, the sheer fall below. In an agony of terror he lay flat along the
path and tried to dig his finger-nails into the rock. And all about him
he heard a never-ending cry of “Garrowby—Black Garrowby.”
CHAPTER V
Ben Rossiter came battling his way with Nora along the cliff-path, after
setting his lantern on the cliffs above his land-locked harbour. He
could see the other light shining wickedly from Norland Point, and young
strength ran in his old veins as he hurried forward. He had ever been a
lover of ships that sailed the seas, and murder was in the doing
here—murder of the craft struggling gamely out yonder in the tossed
havoc of the gale—the craft heading fast as wind could take her to the
face of Norland Cliff.
Nora would be carried no longer under shelter of Ben’s storm-coat. “As
if I was a baby,” she said, struggling for freedom. “And Dick would
laugh at me.”
“It’s fierce and gusty. Best stay where you are.”
She was so sure of some danger near to Dick—he called so clearly to
her—that she fought in earnest to get free.
“Well, have it so, little wild-cat,” grumbled Rossiter—“but, Lord love
us, you’ve got to keep a hand fast in mine. This sort o’ gale would make
no more of you than a fluff o’ thistledown.”
They went toward the light on Norland Point—the burly man and the
little, elf-like maid—and constantly glanced out to sea, where the ship
raced for the cliffs.
“Oh, hurry,” panted Nora, as she had done at the start of their wild
journey.
“I’m hurrying with old bones, and you with young ’uns. Doing my best, I
am, like you.”
They were running now—running to quench the lantern that glowed on
Norland Point—and as they neared it, the moonlight showed them Jake,
striding up and down beside his Wreckers’ Light. Then they saw Dick
start from the heather, and kick the lantern over, and disappear again
below the cliff.
“Faster,” muttered the old man, watching Jake begin to throw rocks down
the precipice.
Before they could reach the Point, Jake himself had disappeared, and
under their feet they heard that awful cry ring out, of
_Garrowby_—_Black Garrowby_.
Rossiter felt Nora’s hand slip from his grasp. She had come to his
cottage not long since, half-fainting from terror of a half-mile
journey. Yet now, with the cry ringing in her ears, she seemed to have
no fear. Twin called to twin. If one was down and spent, the other must
keep heart alive.
Before he guessed her purpose, the girl had slipped away from him and
was already down the first steps of the rock-stair. Rossiter had fancied
his head too old for precipice work; but he followed Nora without a
thought of danger. She was too frail to be left alone with the rough
mercies of the rocks.
Stepping gingerly, he turned a corner of the track; and there was Dick,
lying face down, and Nora whispering to him. In all his knowledge of
these two, he had never understood till now the queer bond that linked
them. Dick got to his feet, and swayed unsteadily for a moment. Then, as
he saw the girl waver, too, and glance at the heaving seas below, he
gripped her hand and led her up the track.
[Illustration:
_Dick got to his feet._
]
Rossiter reached down an arm that held them both; and when they stood
safe among the heather on the cliff-top, he snapped out a question:
“Where’s Jake? I heard him screeching Black Garrowby’s name.”
“Jake?” said the boy, his voice quiet and awed. “He followed his lantern
into the sea. That’s all I know about it.”
They looked out to sea, all three of them, to know how it went with the
little ship, and Rossiter shouted with glee.
“She’s not lost any longer—not tacking about as if she’d no soul of her
own to be saved. She’s heading straight for the light on top of my own
cove—and she’ll be there before us.”
Dick fell silent as they crossed the moor, and Nora pinched his arm.
“Morose?” she laughed, glad to be free of terror and to know the little
ship went safe down there where the seas boomed at the cliffs.
“Yes,” said Dick. “You found me face down on the rocks—a chit of a
girl—and helped me up.”
Ben Rossiter laughed again, from his heart upwards. “Oh, bless you, lad,
you’re young to fear—the sort that goes after storm. Why, there’ve been
times in my seafaring days when I’ve been nigh sick with fear.”
“_You_, Ben?”
“Ay, me—but always before and after a fight—not while it was on, you
understand. We’re alike that way, Master Dick.”
Rossiter saw how it was with the lad, and his whole good-natured soul
was set on guiding these two through the aftertime that follows
adventure such as they had shared to-night. As they went along the
cliff-track, Ben hitched his trousers and settled the quid of baccy more
firmly in his cheek. He was readying himself for a brave tale of what
had, or had not happened in the time when he sailed foreign seas.
[Illustration:
_Old Ben’s Story of the Pirate King_
]
“It was this way,” he began, with Parson’s Twins on either side of him,
holding his hands tight. “There was a terrible plague of pirates out in
the Pacific. They swarmed thick as bees round a honey-pot, and the
English Admiral says to me, ‘Ben,’ says he, ‘you’ve a neat little
clipper of your own, and none but you can save us.’ ‘How’s that?’ says
I. ‘Well,’ says the Admiral—and a marvel he was to see, in his
gold-buttoned coat—‘if we get the King of the Pirates, we get the whole
gang o’ them. What you’ve to do is to nose him out, wherever his ship
happens to be, run up the Black Flag, same as if you were a pirate
yourself, and trust to your wits.’ That’s what Admiral said to me, plain
as I’m talking to you now.”
“Oh, Ben, go on,” whispered Nora, as he paused in the middle of his
tale.
“I never could bide to be hurried, as you know. Besides, my memory’s not
what it was. But, so far as I recall, the mate of my ship—name o’
Drinkwater, because he drank so little—said he knew where the Pirate
King was skulking. So we went and found him just where Drinkwater had
said, in a bay full of crocodiles below and cocoa-nut trees above. You
could hear the nuts busting as they fell on top of the crocodiles’ thick
backs.”
“Go on,” said Dick, with cheery derision. “Nora believes it all.”
“Seeing’s believing, as you’ll know if you ever come to sail into the
Pacific. As I was saying, we found the Pirate King there. His ship was
flying the Black Flag, with the skull and cross-bones on it. So was
mine.”
The tale got no further; for a big, broad-shouldered man came over the
moor to meet them. He was drenched from head to foot, and the twins left
Rossiter to jump into his arms. Tough as Rossiter was, he felt a sense
of awe, somehow, as he understood that Parson himself had sailed in the
little ship that was nearly wrecked on Norland Point not long ago.
The Parson was not in the best of tempers. “Why did the men set _two_
lights on the cliffs?” he snapped, chilled and tired by the exposure.
“We got into the thick of it, coming home from the Island, and made for
a cliff-light. Then another light showed to eastward of it.”
“Ay,” broke in Rossiter. “I’ll tell you the tale of it to-morrow. It all
came of the twins listening to a sailor-man’s tales that you never
relished. You’d best get them up to Parsonage, and tuck ’em up in bed.
They’ve done more for you——”
“What have they done?” broke in the Parson.
“That’s to-morrow’s tale, as I told you.”
Rossiter watched them go along the cliffs, and presently Nora came
running back to him.
“Ben,” she asked, “what happened to you and the Pirate King!”
“That’s to-morrow’s tale, too,” said Rossiter. “It’s bedtime, Parson’s
maid.”
[Illustration: A black and white illustration of a glowing lantern.]
POEMS _By EDITH SITWELL_
MARCH FOR A TOY SOLDIER
I
Am
The great Alexander
Who killed the sly
Goosie Gander—
A bill of gold
And his feet all cold
And the moon for a silvery spoon—all told!
Now each flower-bed
Seems a foreign land
Where I must tread
And as conqueror stand;
And the flower-bells seem
Crowned kings and peoples
And gay bells rung in the
Conquered steeples!
[Illustration:
_The Great Alexander._
]
DIRGE FOR A GOLLYWOG
Sambo is dead.
Though he was black
He had, I said,
Of love no lack.
The green leaves sound
Like the wind in tears:
Lay him in ground
Beside his peers!
We’ll bury him under
The cherry-tree,
And the cherries darker
Than ever will be!
EDITH SITWELL.
[Illustration:
_We’ll bury him under
The cherry-tree._
]
THE LITTLE MUSICAL BOX
When the Queen of China
Took her tea in spring,
From my little music-box
The birds began to sing:
The parrot’s was a flowery note
As dark as her locks be—
The nightingale’s the moon’s tears
That bud in fields of tea.
And the young Queen of China,
So beautiful to see,
Walked like the moon
To a silver tune
Beneath her nutmeg-tree;
And she flew like the singing birds
To pluck me from the air
The moon, a silver nutmeg,
The sun, a golden pear!
EDITH SITWELL.
[Illustration:
_When the Queen of China Took her tea in spring...._
]
PUCK’S MARKET _By MADELEINE NIGHTINGALE_
Up amongst the heather,
When the moon is high,
Lamplight in the valley,
Starlight in the sky,
Swinging on the bracken
That’s bowing to the breeze,
In and out the twinkling stems,
Go the Pharisees.[1]
Ding dong! Ding dong! All across the Down,
Twelve o’clock is striking in Littlehampton Town.
Robin’s gone a-marketing with all his merry mob;
“Wares to sell! Wares to sell, on Twelve O’clock Knob!”[2]
Ho Ho! Hey Ho!
Singing all together;
Fool a mortal were to miss
Fairy time and weather.
“Come, you lazy stay-at-homes,
While the moon is bright!
Luck is for the buying
On Midsummer Night!”
Ding dong! Ding dong! All across the Down,
Twelve o’clock is striking in Littlehampton Town.
Heather buds a-bursting! Ling bells all a-bob!
Robin—Robin’s calling on Twelve O’clock Knob.
Fern seed! Fern seed!
Shed in Verdley Wood:
An acorn cup to gather it,
And see the measure’s good!
Treasured in a kerchief
Lover’s lips have kiss’d;
Purse-strings tight as tether-ropes
And not a penny miss’d.
Ding dong! Ding dong! All across the Down,
Twelve o’clock is striking in Littlehampton Town.
There’s cow-tails still to tangle and hen-roosts still to rob,
But Puck is out of mischief on Twelve O’clock Knob!
Chimney shadows streaking
Down the sandy street;
Creeping, creeping over them
Stealthy mortal feet;
An acorn full of fairy lore
To trade with fairy men,
But, oh, the wealth you’re taking
Before you’re home again.
Ding dong! Ding dong! All across the Down,
Twelve o’clock is striking in Littlehampton Town.
And the candles all are guttering at the nightcaps on the hob,
When Robin traffics magic on Twelve O’clock Knob.
Footnote 1:
Sussex for “fairies.”
Footnote 2:
Twelve O’clock Knob is a small round clearing amongst the heather on
the summit of one of the Sussex hills.
[Illustration: A black and white illustration depicting a boy
interacting with a goat.]
PUCK’S MAGIC _By MADELEINE NIGHTINGALE_
The common spread in every direction and the road had suddenly
disappeared. Moreover, look where he would, things were different. For
instance, never before was the common bounded four-square by a high
red-brick wall, and if it had been Tony was quite sure there should be
doors in it; otherwise you could go neither in nor out. And here on the
site of the old lime-kiln a fountain spirted. That too was new, and
unusual on any common. Even more unusual was it, that the jet of water
shot straight up out of sight, and never came down again, curling, as it
went, like a corkscrew, or a watershoot upside down. Beyond the fountain
was the white goat. She, at least, was an old friend. Possibly she could
explain things. He would go and see.
As he approached she stared at him with a certain importance in her
amber-coloured eyes; then butted unexpectedly, and with great
shrewdness, so that he bowled over as easily as a ninepin and lay quite
flat on the ground. Even then she was not satisfied, but rolled him over
on his face, and planting her two forefeet on his back began to beat out
a tune with them. In spite of his great discomfort under the operation,
he solemnly gasped out the words—
[Illustration: This dark illustration features a silhouette standing
atop a stone structure against a full moon, surrounded by many small,
dancing figures in the night.]
[Illustration: A black and white illustration depicts a goat standing
over a boy who is lying on the grass.]
“Ding dong! Ding dong! All across the Down,
Twelve o’clock is striking in Littlehampton Town.
Robin’s gone a-marketing with all his merry mob;
Wares to sell! Wares to sell, on Twelve O’clock Knob!”[3]
Footnote 3:
_See page 102._
Then a sudden crash startled him into wakefulness, and he realised that
someone just outside his door had dropped something. It rolled along the
boards and bumped the wainscot, so he decided it was probably a
candlestick, and as steps passed along the corridor he knew that his
father was just going to bed. It would be about ten o’clock then. His
back was quite sore between the shoulder-blades where Nanny had stamped
on him. No, though! That was a dream, of course. He turned over on his
side and then remembered the hair-brush he had lain upon to keep himself
awake. Perhaps it was that. He hunted about in the dim light, and it
fell upon the floor with so loud a bump, that his heart was in his mouth
lest someone should come and demand the cause of the clatter. Everything
was quite still, however, as he pulled his little luminous watch from
beneath his pillow and studied it. Quarter to eleven. Oh, dear! Why, of
all nights, should his father be late upon this one? Well, he must risk
it. At least their window faced the other way. There was that in his
favour. They would not be able to _see_ him.
[Illustration: A black and white illustration of a boy climbing out of
or into a window.]
He slid out of bed, disclosing to the moon and a branch of the big
pear-tree which looked in at his window that from the waist downwards he
was still fully clothed. Hastily he exchanged his pyjama jacket for his
small tweed coat, rebuttoned the neck of his cricketing shirt, and
peered out into the garden. It looked very quiet and lonely. A rabbit
was sitting up in the very centre of the lawn washing its face with its
forepaws, and as Tony cautiously put his legs over the window-sill it
whisked off like a streak and vanished into the far hedge of the kitchen
garden. Tony smiled to himself. Old Hiram, the gardener, was so fierce
on the question of rabbits and rabbit-wire. All the young wall-flower
plants had been nibbled to short bare stumps, so _this_ bunny would
begin on the lettuces. He let himself down very neatly and quietly to
the top of the porch, and glided with considerable skill down its
sloping roof till he fetched up with his heels in the gutter of its
eaves. Then, a few inches at a time, he worked himself sideways until,
clasping the pedestalled corner firmly, he could lower his legs into
space. Here they dangled precariously, whilst they felt for and found a
post. Down this he slid rapidly and safely to the ground, and, pausing
only to wriggle his puckered, twisted garments into place, set off at
full speed across the grass. At the gate of the orchard he turned at
right angles, running along the thick box hedge out of sight of the
house as far as the lane. Following it due west, he reached the main
Midhurst road, and struck off across the fields towards Vinings Wood. He
was out of breath by now, however, and the rising ground forced him to
slacken pace. He steadied down to a walk at last, and as he trudged
upwards proceeded for the twentieth time to review the situation.
It all began with the old Mushroom Man.
Now the Mushroom Man, besides being a great personal friend of Tony’s,
was reputed to be the wise man of the village; though, from his
appearance, one would hardly have suspected it. He had a round, red,
simple face fringed by a complete circle of short white hair, so that he
looked extraordinarily like some rare-hued sunflower when, as often
happened, he looked down at you over the wall of his raised garden. His
light rather shabby trousers were tied round with string just below the
knee and always seemed out of character with his brown velveteen coat;
for this was very smart and lent him a kind of superiority over the
ordinary villagers. He wore also a billycock hat on week-days, as did no
one else in the district, not even Tony’s father. He spoke slowly and
carefully, wasting no words—a habit, perhaps, which had earned him his
reputation; for this, of course, is wisdom, as no one can deny.
[Illustration: A black and white illustration depicts a boy sitting on a
wooden fence, conversing with an older man standing nearby holding a
walking stick.]
Tony was sitting on the stile of the path that leads to Bexley, and
accosted the old fellow as he passed.
“Ding dong! Ding dong! All across the Down,
Twelve o’clock is sounding in Littlehampton Town,”
he shouted. “Oh, Mr. Hockley, what does Twelve O’clock Knob mean,
really?”
The Mushroom Man came across the grass from the road, and leaned up
against the stile-post.
“It’s the liddle Pharisees’ market-place, surelye, Mas’ Tony.”
“Tell me,” Tony said persuasively, but the old man shook his head.
“I’m noways avised of it, Mas’ Tony. You’ll best see for yourself.”
“How?” the boy questioned.
Mr. Hockley looked furtively round. There was a big tuft of dock-leaves
spreading by the gate-post, and he stirred it with his foot as though
looking for something that might be concealed beneath. Then he leaned
down and whispered in Tony’s ear.
“Fern seed,” he said.
Tony slid off the stile in his excitement.
“Fern seed? Why, that’s what the poem said.”
The Mushroom Man nodded his head, not once but many times like a
mandarin.
“Fern seed,” he repeated. “That’s how.”
“Fern seed! Fern seed!
Out of Verdley Wood:
An acorn cup to gather it,
And see the measure’s good!”
Tony chanted. “Oh, Mr. Hockley, _do_ tell me! Is _that_ it?”
The Mushroom man nodded again. Then he swung open the gate beside the
stile.
“You come along o’ me and I’ll tell you,” he said.
Tony followed him.
Side by side they crossed the meadow towards Snapelands Copse, and as
they walked Mr. Hockley talked. He always spoke with the soft, sweet
intonation of old Sussex, and many of his words and phrases were words
and phrases lost or forgotten by any save Sussex folk. Tony understood,
because all his life he had lived amongst them, but since perhaps you
children who read would not always understand very easily, and sometimes
not at all, I am going to tell you in my own words the story that he
told. Where he got it from I cannot say, for I have never been able to
find it, but it was very real and true to him, and to Tony it has always
been very real and true too.
Once upon a time, then, on the cliffs a few miles west of Littlehampton,
there stood a fisherman’s cottage. It was a poor little place, old,
tumbledown and not very weatherproof, so that the wind from the sea used
often to find its way through the cracks and crevices. It must have been
a rather kind wind, though, for when a baby was born to the humble
fisherfolk whose home this cottage was and the wind, having slipped in,
was wandering about the room, it often stayed to play round the small
head in the old oak rocking-cradle, and the baby would stretch its arms
and crow with delight, which it certainly would not have done had the
wind been harsh and unpleasant. Indeed, so fond did the little fellow
grow of this unseen companion of his that he would lie quiet for hours
in his cradle or a chair on the brick path of the garden, provided the
wind were there to pat his cheeks and ruffle his downy hair; whereas on
a still day he was lonely and lost, and whimpered sorrowfully to his
mother as she hung the clothes out, or roared remonstrance if she left
him entirely whilst she did her work indoors. As he grew older their
intimacy deepened, but because people laughed at him and called him
fanciful, he never spoke of it, nor, indeed, allowed people to know he
even thought of the wind at all. Nevertheless, when he had finished work
with his father, the boat all clean and neat being drawn high and dry up
the beach, and the fish packed ready for their journey to the town,
often, instead of playing games with the other fisher-boys, he would
wander off by himself miles away, where no one could disturb him. Here,
on cliff or shore or inland on the downs, he would be utterly happy and
content in HER company alone. That he never thought of her as a man, but
always as a woman or a girl was, perhaps, a sign that in some dim
measure he understood her. He had, indeed, in his mind a picture of her
face, very beautiful and young and simple like a child’s.
[Illustration: A black and white illustration depicts a mermaid with
long, flowing hair resting in the sea.]
Then one day a wonderful thing happened. He was lying on his chest on
the sands, six miles west of his home, his chin on his hands, his heels
swinging in the air behind him, his eyes fixed steadily on the sea.
There was a stiff wind blowing from the south (south of south-west he
would have said), and it scurried the long billows into line after line
of white clouds of foam. Suddenly, amongst them all he caught sight of
something floating landwards—a spar, as he thought, from some forgotten
wreck. He watched it, not curiously, but listlessly, for his mind was on
other things, until, as it drew nearer, he realised it was not a piece
of wood, but a human figure, and that it was not swimming, but seemed to
be borne smoothly on the crest of one great unbroken wave. Then, indeed,
he _was_ curious. He sprang to his feet and ran down to the edge of the
incoming tide, staring with all his might in wonder who this might be.
And the wave rolled on, still without breaking, until it laid the figure
at his feet, very gently. As it did so, it burst at last into shallow
foam that surged round his ankles and then ebbed back, leaving both him
and her high on the wet rippled sand. He knelt down beside her and
looked into her face.
“Are you my wind?” he asked.
She laughed, but answered quite seriously:
“Not quite, although the wind brings me.”
“Who are you?” Then there came to him the memory of a tale he had read
in a book the old priest had lent him, and he added, “Dione?”
She laughed again.
“So the Greeks called me. And other names they had for me, too. But
names are nothing, little fisher-boy. To know me is enough.”
“Do _I_ know you?” he asked, and she nodded.
Then she told him how, as the years passed over him, he might forget
her, and that lest he should do so she had come to warn and safeguard
him. There was a remedy, it seemed, against so dreadful a happening.
“Puck’s magic is the talisman,” she said, “for those who care to buy.”
And so it came about that first a mortal heard of the market on Twelve
O’clock Knob.
Tony had listened in breathless interest, padding along at Mr. Hockley’s
side.
“And did he go and buy?” he asked, but here the Mushroom Man had become
a little vague.
“They do say he did,” he returned, adding, “’Twas fern seed was his
money, surelye.” But what exactly he bought or how the buying was
effected he either could not or would not tell. “Midsummer Eve be Puck’s
market-day,” he asserted, “and ’tis from Verdley Wood the fern seed he
be brought. And twelve o’clock be the hour or thereabouts. Leastways,
I’ve heard my father say.”
Tony had brooded over this lore for days, and then, with infinite
ingenuity, engineered an excursion to Verdley Wood botanising with his
father. There were strange mosses there, he suggested, as, indeed, was
true. Accordingly they had ridden as far as possible by road, stabled
Brownie and his father’s mare at a wayside farm, and then struck across
country. It was whilst his father lazed and smoked after their midday
meal of sandwiches and fruit that Tony effected the real object of his
visit. He had the greatest difficulty in finding ferns and was almost in
despair, when at last he tumbled upon a little nest of them at the end
of a kind of fosse. Nor was it the easiest thing in the world to gather
the seed, but he shook it down upon a piece of paper, slid it into an
envelope and licking it up put it thankfully into his pocket. Then he
raced back to his father, whom, fast asleep by this time, he found lying
flat on his back beneath a chestnut sapling, with an enormous
caterpillar reared on its tail in the very centre of his shirt front. In
the excitement of being rescued from a crawler (whose whole genus he
loathed), Mr. Tremayne forgot to ask the reason of so long an absence,
and since a specimen of quite rare moss had been found, both returned
home completely content and happy.
[Illustration: A black and white illustration depicts a boy running
toward a man who is resting under the shade of a tree.]
So here was Tony at 11.15 p.m. on Midsummer Eve, trudging along alone
through the shadows and stillness of Vinings Wood, with his precious
envelope of fern seed in one knicker-pocket, an acorn cup in the other,
and not a little excitement in his soul.
Now, I don’t suppose for a moment any of you children who read have been
in a great wood at that hour on Midsummer Eve or indeed any other eve,
so that without a little help you will never be able to imagine what it
is like. To begin with, all the trees seem more alive and more friendly
than they do in the sunshine, and they stretch their big arms out and
down to you, almost as if they wished to stop you as you pass and hold
you there, and talk and play with you. And when, just now, I spoke of
the “stillness” I did not mean at all that there were no sounds to hear.
On the contrary, not only the wood, but, as it seemed, the whole world
was so still that Tony heard more sounds than he had ever heard
before—very quiet, mysterious sounds, such as you don’t expect to hear.
For instance, a squirrel scampered along the ground in front of him, and
the scuffling scratch of his little claws as he ran up the trunk of a
big oak-tree was exactly like the patter of Curly, the cockerspaniel’s
feet on the red-tiled hall at home. Whereas, in the daytime, as
everybody knows, a squirrel climbs a tree quite noiselessly. A tiny
twig, disturbed by a half-awakened wood-pigeon, fell on the sandy path
just in front of Tony’s nose with so loud a plop that he nearly cried
out. In the daytime, numbers of quite big twigs are broken and fall,
without your hearing them at all. Later, a stoat emerged suddenly from
the shadows on the left, and, unconscious of Tony (who at that
particular moment was standing quite still), walked across the moonlit
path into the shadows again; but Tony heard him rustling over the leaves
into the distance, and it was quite a long time before the sound of his
progress died away. In the daytime, stoats or rabbits, or any small
animals, shoot into sight and out of it without your hearing anything at
all. All the time, too, there was so much stir amid the leaves and
branches overhead, that Tony decided the Dryads must be a very restless
race; or, perhaps, they belonged most to the nighttime, he reflected,
remembering that he had never heard them moving about so energetically
by day. He could even hear the murmur of their conversation, but though
he stopped many times straining his ears, he could never distinguish the
actual words. He caught a glimpse of one of them, however, in the fork
of the great oak-tree, that overshadows the gate at the far end of
Vinings Wood. He was a little uncertain whether _all_ Dryads were
ladies, but certainly this one was. He saw her shoulders gleaming white
in the moonlight against the grey lichened trunk, and her beautiful hair
hung down ever so far and wafted to and fro in the soft breeze. He
fancied he heard her singing too, and that reminded him of Dryope, so
that he fell to wondering whether by night she was allowed to resume her
mortal shape, and he looked round, half expecting to see a tiny child
playing in the tree’s shadow; for Tony had been brought up familiar with
many of the old classical myths. He had known, therefore, all about the
fisher-boy’s Dione, and he was specially fond of the tale of Princess
Dryope. (I wonder if you children remember it too. How she plucked the
lotus blossom for her little son, and how blood trickled from its broken
stem. And whilst she stood staring at it in wonder, a voice cried out
that she had slain Lotus, the wood nymph, who, fleeing from Priapus, god
of the shade, had changed herself into a flower to escape him.
Terrified, Dryope turned to fly, but alas! she could not move. Swiftly
tree-bark grew around her, upward and upward. Her arms changed into
twisted branches. Her hands were filled with leaves. But before the bark
closed over her face, she besought that her child might play often
beneath her branches. Do you remember? And how when the winds rustled
the leaves of the trees, the ancients used to say that Dryope was
lulling her child?) Tony thought of all this, but there seemed to be no
one beneath the tree’s shade except himself and a quite unfrightened
rabbit, who sat like a little hunchy mole-hill staring at him not ten
yards from his feet. Then a great owl flew out from the very fork where
the Dryad had been perched, and Tony was so startled by the hooting and
the sudden whir of wings, that he climbed the gate without another
glance and ran on as quickly as his legs would carry him.
[Illustration: A black and white illustration depicts a boy standing in
a field looking at a figure sitting in the branches of a large tree.]
Now when you pass this particular gate of Vinings Wood you are on the
cart-track of Boggarty Farm, and have climbed already to very high
ground. On your right the hill, quite thickly clothed with trees and
brushwood, falls rapidly to a steep valley that runs backwards towards
Bexley. In front, however, this valley is cut short, and round the head
of it along the crest the road runs to Grevatt’s and to the Heath
itself. Boggarty Farm is on the left, just where the road curves; but I
am not going to say much about that because Boggarty Farm has a story
all to itself. It stands there, though, very lonely and grey and quiet,
with its yard in front of it, and its shed-wall fronting the road—for
all the world as though to warn off any inquirers into the old house’s
privacy.
Tony skirted it and then branched off to the right, past an old forsaken
barn, where a shaggy, grey donkey leaned like a stone statue, asleep
apparently, against a crumbled scratching-post. To his left now there
was a turf wall all along the side of Lane End Field, and at the lane’s
end itself a five-barred gate. He swung it open, jumping a little at the
squeal of its hinge, and passed through, latching it behind him. Then
for a moment he stood quite still and, following the suggestion of old
Hockley, said aloud and rather slowly the first stanza of “Puck’s
Market”:
“Up amongst the heather,
When the moon is high,
Lamplight in the valley,
Starlight in the sky,
Swinging on the bracken
That’s bowing to the breeze,
In and out the twinkling stems
Go the Pharisees.”
Now, I don’t for a moment promise that any of you children living in
Tony’s part of Sussex and taking upon yourselves to try his experiment
will achieve the same result. It may be you will, it may be not. I have
known Tony so long and heard so many of his strange “happenings” that I
have grown to be surprised at none of them. But whether they happen as
easily to others or largely because Tony is Tony is another question.
At any rate, there he stood beyond Lane End Gate, and he said his charm
slowly and solemnly and faithfully, and immediately things began to
happen.
First of all, there was no doubt about the bracken-stems. They were
twinkling sure enough, though not at all in the way Tony expected, for
they were hung with thousands of glowworm lanterns which, lightening and
darkening with every movement, swung to and fro in the breeze.
Then the gate behind him was opened again and slammed back noisily over
its latch.
Someone touched him on the shoulder.
“Here we be, Mas’ Tony.” It was the Mushroom Man. “And don’t the fairy
sparks a-shimper, surelye? I caught a glimpse of you while you come
aside the farm there. I was een a’most the top o’ the wood by then, but
too far from ye to shout.”
“But why did _you_ come, Mr. Hockley?”
The Mushroom Man pulled something from his pocket and held it out in the
palm of his hand. It was an acorn cup.
“It’ll no be the first time I’ve bought Puck’s Magic,” he said.
“But what do you use it for?” Tony questioned.
Mr. Hockley nodded knowingly.
“Mayhap you’ve heard ’em speak of me as a wise ’un over at the village,”
he said, and it was Tony’s turn to nod.
“It’s noan but seeing it be the sun makes the shadows, leastways when it
ain’t the moon. One or t’other it be, surelye, a-shining behind what
casts ’em. ’Twas the liddle Pharisees taught me that. Seeing’s
believing, I do reckon, Mas’ Tony. There’s some folks don’t hold there
be fairies whatsoever. But them that gathers fern seed, they know
better’n that.”
Tony pondered this for some minutes in silence.
“I’d always known they were true,” he said, at last. “It wasn’t just to
make sure that _I_ came.”
“What for, then?”
Tony leaned back against the gate-post and stared thoughtfully beyond
Mr. Hockley and the bracken and the heather and even the fairy lights.
[Illustration: A black and white illustration depicts a man standing
while holding his hat, accompanied by two figures who appear to be
bowing or leaning forward toward him.]
“Well, you see,” he said, “Dione wasn’t just Dione. She meant quite a
lot more than that. She meant everything that was beautiful then, and I
expect, even now, to have her always would make you never forget things
are nice when they don’t _seem_ nice ... nice underneath I mean, same as
you say the sun’s behind the things that throw the shadows. The fairies
don’t ever forget. I expect that is why they are always laughing and
happy and kind. I expect it was a sort of fairy sight Dione meant the
fisher-boy to buy, so’s he could always go on seeing her and loving her.
And I want to buy that too.”
The Mushroom Man took out his big red handkerchief and blew his nose
slowly and loudly. It was a custom of his when doubtful what to say.
[Illustration: A black and white illustration depicts a smaller figure
with a feathered cap walking ahead of a boy, followed by a man walking
through dense vegetation.]
“There’s a liddle Pharisee behind yon mole-hump, a-waiting to take us,”
he remarked, when he had thrust it back into his pocket; and as Tony
looked in the direction of his pointing finger the “liddle” Pharisee
came towards them.
He was a tiny fellow, not much more than twelve inches high, very like
the pixies Tony had seen two years before. Like them he was clothed in a
kind of jerkin and hose, but instead of their sober brown, his was green
as the grass of the watermead, and his cap was bright red with a white
feather set jauntily at one side.
He doffed it as he came to a halt in front of them, and made a low bow.
Tony, too, bowed gravely, and Mr. Hockley solemnly removed his
billycock, and pulled at the topmost point of his circle of white hair.
Nobody spoke, however, and the fairy, wheeling round, set off swiftly
through the twinkling bracken-stems. It was not until next day it
occurred to Tony that, as they threaded their way after him, either the
bracken had grown very tall or else he and Mr. Hockley, like Alice after
the magic cake, had dwindled to one-quarter of their ordinary size. It
seemed at the time perfectly natural to be walking beneath a roof of
fern-fronds and bumping occasionally into bracken-stems as thick as
bamboo canes. As for the glowworm lanterns, if they hung above their
heads, well, after all, that is just where you expect a lantern to be,
isn’t it?
Still in silence, they made their way across the broad sweep of heath,
and it was only when another fairy stepped from the thick side-growth
and stood in their path that their first guide turned and spoke.
“It’s Pease Blossom,” he said, “for the Mushroom Man.”
He laid his hand on Tony’s shoulder, adding, “Wait!”
Tony watched Mr. Hockley go on his way until both he and Pease Blossom
were out of sight. Then, a little uneasy and perhaps a little lonely, he
wriggled from beneath the restraining touch.
“I’m going too!” he cried, but the fairy held him fast.
“You must go alone if you’d buy at Puck’s Market,” he said sternly.
Tony ceased struggling.
“All right!” he said, shaking himself a little petulantly.
“Don’t hold me, please, Mr.——”
“Mustard Seed,” the fairy finished for him and let go as he spoke. “Sit
down and rest a bit.”
Tony, tired by his long climb, obeyed rather thankfully, and Mustard
Seed swarmed up one of the bracken-stems, and began to swing himself to
and fro. Hardly, however, had he swung a dozen times before he was down
again. He stood in front of Tony with his head bent and one finger
raised. “Listen! Listen!” he whispered.
[Illustration: A black and white illustration depicts a small,
figure-like character hanging from a tree branch while a boy sits on the
ground nearby.]
From somewhere, not very far distant, came the sound of music—a melody,
very dainty, very happy, very enticing.
“They are beginning to dance,” Mustard Seed said. “Come along.”
They set off again along the path, which threaded in and out, in and
out, amongst the bracken growth; and always, as they went, the music
grew louder and louder.
At last they broke out into the open, and Tony saw at once exactly where
they were, and where the music came from. They stood almost at the edge
of the heath. Just in front was the little circular clearing known as
Twelve O’clock Knob, and, immediately beyond, the hill fell very steeply
to the few cottages gathered at its foot. On a great stone, reared in
the very centre of the Knob, stood Robin Goodfellow. As the moon was
exactly behind him, however, Tony saw him only as a sharply cut black
silhouette against the big yellow circle of it; but even so, and
although Tony had never consciously imagined him, there was no
possibility of mistake. The quaint elvish figure could have been no one
else. He was quite motionless, except for his right arm, which with a
little baton beat time for the music, and his head was thrown back as
though he were looking at the stars. From somewhere high above, too, the
music came, so perhaps it was from the stars he summoned it. There was a
phrase running in Tony’s head that seemed to explain somewhat. It was
about the “morning stars singing together,” but he could not remember it
quite. And then there was something else he had once heard that spoke of
them “singing as they shine.” Long ago, too, his old Irish nurse had
told him that fairy music always came from the sky. Why, this was the
reason, then. The stars made it, and Puck’s magic charmed it down to
earth in order that fairies (and mortals, too, if they had ears for it)
might enjoy it. All around Puck’s stone were little shadowy, dancing
figures, but Tony barely noticed them. He was watching, rather, Puck’s
arm swinging gently backwards and forwards; and, as he watched, the
music stole down to him and all round until the gladness of it almost
hurt.
Then with an effort he roused himself.
“Puck!” he cried, with a funny little unexpected break in his voice.
“Puck! Oh, Puck! See, I’ve come.”
As he strode forward on to the Knob itself, everything changed. The
music ceased. Flitting figures brushed against him and passed. Puck and
his stone vanished like a falling star, and heather and grass were gone
from beneath his feet as was the twinkling night-sky overhead. Instead,
with sunshine everywhere, his feet clattered a little upon cobblestones,
and he fronted an awning-covered market stall, breast-high with
mint-rock rolls, and slabs of stick-jaw, and long, black liquorice
laces. Behind it, a little old man peered over at him through huge horn
spectacles, whose glasses rays from the setting sun caught now and then
and lit up like windows on a distant hill.
[Illustration: A black and white illustration shows a boy standing at a
market stall, looking at a bearded man who is sitting at the counter
writing in a large book.]
“Wares to sell! Wares to sell!” he called in a quavering old sing-song.
“Now then, little gentleman, what can I do for you? Mint rock, is it? Or
candy?”
Tony blinked his eyes very rapidly. He had seen things of this kind
happen before, and sometimes, if you blinked hard enough, they
un-happened and you were reassured. Then he shut them entirely for quite
half a minute. But when he looked again, there were the stall and the
lollipops and the old man just the same, so that they had obviously come
to stay and must be dealt with accordingly.
“No sweets, thank you,” he said politely. “It’s magic I’ve come to buy.”
The old man leaned right over and peered at him more intently.
“Name?” he demanded.
“Tony o’ Dreams,” returned Tony, very brisk and prompt.
“Age?”
“Ten.”
“Occupation?”
Tony hesitated.
“I’ve got so many,” he said, “I don’t know which I do most. But I know
I’m _growing all_ the time. Would that do?”
“Currency?”
Tony stared.
“What are you offering to pay in?” the salesman explained.
“Oh,” said the boy, “fern seed”—he thrust his hands in his pockets—“an
acorn cup full, good measure.” He held out both seed-envelope and acorn
as he spoke. “You can measure for yourself, if you like.”
But the old man was entering all the details in a ledger, and he closed
the fat book with a bang before he stretched out his hand for the
proffered payment.
Then very carefully he measured out the little brown specks, tipping
them into a tiny glass goblet which he held up to the light.
“And so you really want my magic?” he said.
“Puck’s Magic,” Tony corrected, and sitting down upon a high stool in
front of the counter he proceeded to explain.
He told all the tale of Dione and the fisher-boy, and his own ideas upon
its meaning.
“So I think it’s fairy sight I want to buy,” he finished.
But the old man shook his head.
“Not even Puck can sell you quite that,” he said.
Tony’s face fell.
“Nor,” added the other, “is that exactly what you need.”
“What then?”
“Ah!” The old man came round the stall and laid a knobbly, wrinkled hand
on the boy’s head.
“It used to be said that ’twas fern seed might make a mortal man
invisible, but ’tis more like there’s things invisible fern seed can
make a man to see.”
“Why?” demanded Tony.
“Well ...” said the old man, “I don’t know that I can exactly tell, nor
yet, for that matter, that you’d be the wiser even if I could. Fern seed
to many folks is fern seed and no more; but magic—why, it’s magic, when
you believe in it. And so the fairies are where you look for them; and
that’s not far for those that care to gather fern seed for the market on
Twelve O’clock Knob.”
Tony found this a little bewildering, and the stallman nodded kindly.
“It’s all right, Tony,” said he, “and of small account to understand.
You go on always looking for them, always expecting. That’s what Dione
meant, or thereabouts.”
He came behind the boy and clasped his head with his big hands, laying
his fingers over his eyes and smoothing on the lids something soft and
cool and fragrant.
Tony sniffed luxuriously.
“What is it? Oh, what is it?”
“Child”—the old voice was very tender—“oh, child, it’s the gift of the
Good Folk ye’re buying. Far away north there’s many that will tell you
of it. The Fairies’ Ointment they call it there, but here Puck’s Magic
is the name of it, and a fair name too. For ’tis a blessing you have
bought, and little it matters what you or any call it. ’Twill be enough
for you to have it.”
Tony rose to his feet. Then he turned and looked long and thoughtfully
into the old man’s face.
“Yes,” he said, at last. “Of course, I know you now. It _is_ Puck, isn’t
it? You see, I knew you at once when I saw you beating time against the
moon. Then ... behind your stall, I _didn’t_ know. I thought you were
just an ordinary market-man like Mr. Hobbs at Petworth. But I see now.
It’s only your clothes and the outside of you I was looking at before.
Underneath you’re just as fairy as any fairy well could be. I see that.”
He wagged his head sagely and contentedly, and once more Robin
Goodfellow laid hands on his shoulder—two hands this time. “You’ll see
fairy under most things now, my Tony, and, what is wiser still, the
truth beneath your dreams.”
“Shall I?” Tony answered, and added, though he scarcely understood, “I’m
so glad.”
Then with a sudden pressure of his fingers Robin swung the boy round,
and Tony found himself once more in the moonlight on Twelve O’clock
Knob. But now he faced homewards and the long dim sweep of the downs.
Somewhere very faint and far away the fairy music sounded, but dancing
fairies, Puck, and even Puck’s stone itself, had disappeared. Nor was
there sight or sound of Mustard Seed, and Tony felt himself suddenly
very much alone. After a while, however, as his eyes grew accustomed
again to the darkness and the shadows, away in front of him and a little
to the right where its view southward was quite uninterrupted he caught
sight of a figure standing, and by its billycock recognised Mr. Hockley.
[Illustration: A black and white illustration depicts an older, bearded
man with glasses placing a hand on a boy]
“Mr. Hockley! Hi! Ahoy!” he shouted.