'STRATAGEMS'
I REALLY don't quite know what made me listen to Peterkin's fancies
about his invisible princess, as I got into the habit of calling her. It
was partly, I suppose, because it amused me--we had nothing much to take
us up just then: there was no skating that winter, and the weather was
dull and muggy--and partly that somehow he managed to make me feel as if
there might really be something in it. I suppose when anybody quite
believes in a thing, it's rather catching; and Peterkin's head was so
stuffed and crammed with fairy stories that at that time, I think, they
were almost more real to him than common things.
He went about, dreaming of ogres and magicians, and all the rest, so
much, that I scarcely think anything marvellous would have surprised
him. If I had suddenly shot up to the ceiling, and called out that I
had learnt how to fly, I don't believe he would have been startled; or
if I had shown him a purse with a piece of gold in it, and told him that
it was enchanted, and that he'd always find the money in it however
often he spent it, he'd have taken it quite seriously, and been very
pleased.
So the idea of an enchanted little girl did not strike us as at all out
of the way.
We did not talk about her any more that night after we had been at Mrs.
Wylie's, for we had to hurry up to get neat again to come down to the
drawing-room to mamma. Blanche and Elf were already there when we came
in, and they, and mamma too, were full of questions about how we'd
enjoyed ourselves, and about the parrot, and what we'd had for tea--just
as I knew they would be; I don't mean that mamma asked what we'd had for
tea, but the girls did.
And then Pete and Elf went off to bed, and when I went up he was quite
fast asleep, and if he hadn't been, I could not have spoken to him
because of my promise, you know.
He made up for it the next morning, however.
I suppose he had had an extra good night, for I felt him looking at me
long before I was at all inclined to open my eyes, or to snort for him
to know I was awake. And when at last I did--it's really no good trying
to go to sleep again when you feel there's somebody fidgeting to talk to
you--there he was, his eyes as bright and shiny as could be, sitting
bolt up with his hands round his knees, as if he'd never been asleep in
his life?
I couldn't help feeling rather cross, and yet I had a contradictory sort
of interest and almost eagerness to hear what he had to say. I suppose
it was a kind of love of adventure that made me join him in his fancies
and plans. I knew that his fancies were only fancies really, but still I
felt as if we might get some fun out of them.
He was too excited to mind my being grumpy.
'Oh, Gilley!' he exclaimed at my first snort, 'I am so glad you are
awake at last.'
'I daresay you are,' I said, 'but I'm not. I should have slept another
half-hour if you hadn't sat there staring me awake.'
'Well, you needn't talk,' he went on, in a 'smoothing-you-down' tone;
'just listen and grunt sometimes.'
I did grunt there and then. There was one comfortable thing about
Peterkin even then, and it keeps on with him now that he is getting big
and sensible. He always understands what you say, however you say it, or
half say it. He was not the least surprised at my talking of his staring
me awake, though he had not exactly meant to do so.
'It has come into my mind, Giles,' he began, very importantly, 'how
queer and lucky it is that the old lady is going away for a fortnight. I
should not wonder if it had been managed somehow.'
He waited for my grunt, but it turned into--
'What on earth do you mean?'
'I mean, perhaps it's part of the spell, without her knowing, of course,
that she should have to go to London. For if she was still there, we
couldn't do anything without her finding out.'
'I don't know what you mean about doing anything,' I said. 'And please
don't say "we." I haven't promised to join you. Most likely I'll do my
best to stop whatever it is you've got in that rummy head of yours.'
'Oh no, you won't!' he replied coolly. 'I don't know that you could if
you tried, without telling the others. And you can't do that, of course,
as I've trusted you. It's word of honour, you see, though I didn't
exactly make you say so. And it's nothing naughty or mischievous, else I
wouldn't plan it.'
'What is it, then? Hurry up and tell me, without such a lot of
preparation,' I grumbled.
'I can't tell you very much,' he answered, ''cos, you see, I don't know
myself. It will show as we go on--I'm certain you'll help me, Gilley.
You remember the prince in the "Sleeping Beauty" did not know exactly
what he would do--no more did the one in----'
'Never mind all that,' I interrupted.
'Well, then, what we've got to do is to try to talk to her ourselves
without any one hearing. That's the first thing. We will tell her what
the parrot says, and then it will be easy to find out if she knows
herself about the spell.'
'But what do you think the spell is?' I asked, feeling again the strange
interest and half belief in his fancies that Peterkin managed to put
into me. 'What do you suppose your bad fairies, or whatever they are,
have done to her?'
'There are lots of things, it might be,' he replied gravely. 'They may
have made her not able to walk, or very queer to look at--p'raps turned
her hair white, so that you couldn't be sure if she was a little girl
or an old woman; or made her nose so long that it trails on the floor.
No, I don't think it's that,' he added, after stopping to think a
minute. 'Her voice sounds as if she was pretty, even if it's rather
grumbly. P'raps she turns into a mouse at night, and has to run about,
and that's why she's so tired. It might be that.'
'It would be easy to catch her, then, and bring her home in your pocket,
if you waited till the magic time came,' I suggested, half joking again,
of course.
'It might be,' agreed Pete, quite seriously, 'or it might be very, very
difficult, unless we could make her understand at the mouse time that we
were friends. We can't settle anything till we see her, and talk to her
like a little girl, of course.'
'You certainly couldn't talk to her like anything else,' I said; 'but
I'm sure I don't see how you mean to talk to her at all.'
'I do,' said Peterkin. 'I've been planning it since last night. We can
go round that way once or twice to look at the parrot, and just stand
about. Nobody would wonder at us if they saw we were looking at him. And
very likely we'd see _something_, as she lives in the very next-door
house. P'raps she comes to the window sometimes, and she might notice
us if we were looking up at the parrot. It would be easiest if she was
in the downstairs room.'
'I don't suppose she is there all day,' I said. 'The parrot would not
have heard her talking so much if she were. I think she must have been
out on the balcony sometimes when it was warmer.'
'Yes,' Peterkin agreed. 'I thought of that. Very likely she only comes
downstairs for her dinner and tea. It's the dining-room, like Mrs.
Wylie's.'
'And if she only comes down there late she wouldn't see us in the dark,
and, besides, the parrot wouldn't be out by then. And besides that,
except for going to tea to Mrs. Wylie's, we'd never get leave to be out
by ourselves so late. At least _you_ wouldn't. Of course, for me, it's
sometimes nearly dark when I come home from school.'
I really did not see how Pete did mean to manage it. But the
difficulties I spoke of only seemed to make him more determined. I could
not help rather admiring him for it: he quite felt, I fancy, as if he
was one of his favourite fairy-tale princes. And in the queer way I have
spoken of already, he somehow made me feel with him. I did not go over
all the difficulties in order to stop him trying, but because I was
actually interested in seeing how he was going to overcome them.
He was silent for a moment or two after my last speech, staring before
him with his round blue eyes.
Then he said quietly--
'Yes; I'd thought of most of those things. But you will see. We'll
manage it somehow. I daresay she comes downstairs in the middle of the
day, too, for she's sure to have dinner early, and the parrot will be
out then, if we choose a fine day.'
'But we always have to be in for our own dinner by half-past one,' I
said.
'Well, p'raps _she_ has hers at one, or even half-past twelve, like we
used to, till you began going to school,' said he hopefully. 'And a
_very_ little talking would do at the first beginning. Then we could be
very polite, and say we'd come again to see the parrot, and p'raps--'
here Peterkin looked rather shy.
'Perhaps what? Out with it!' I said.
'We might take her a few flowers,' he answered, getting red, 'if--if we
could--could get any. They're very dear to buy, I'm afraid, and we
haven't any of our own. The garden is so small; it isn't like if we
lived in the country,' rather dolefully.
'You wouldn't have known anything about Rock Terrace, or the invisible
princess, or the parrot, if we lived in the country,' I reminded him.
'No,' said Pete, more cheerfully, 'I hadn't thought of that.'
'And--' I went on, 'I daresay I could help you a bit if it really seemed
any good,' for I rather liked the idea of giving the little girl some
flowers. It made it all look less babyish.
Peterkin grinned with delight.
'You _are_ kind, Gilley!' he exclaimed. 'I knew you would be. Oh,
bother! here's nurse coming, and we haven't begun to settle anything
properly.'
'There's no hurry,' I said; 'you've forgotten that we certainly can't go
there again till Mrs. Wylie's out of the way. And she said, "the end of
the week"; that means Saturday, most likely, and this is--oh dear! I was
forgetting--it's Sunday, and we'll be late.'
Nurse echoed my words as she came in--
'You'll be late, Master Giles, and Master Peterkin, too,' she said. 'I
really don't think you should talk so much on Sunday mornings.'
It wasn't that we had to be any earlier on Sundays than any other day,
but that dressing in your best clothes takes so much longer somehow,
and we had to have our hair very neat, and all like that, because we
generally went down to the dining-room, while papa and mamma and Clement
and Blanche were at breakfast, after we had had our own in the nursery.
There would be no good in trying to remember all our morning talks that
week about Peterkin's plans. He did not get the least tired of them, and
I didn't, for a wonder, get tired of listening to him, he was so very
much in earnest.
He chopped and changed a good bit in little parts of them, but still he
stuck to the general idea, and I helped him to polish it up. It was
really more interesting than any of his fairy stories, for he managed to
make both himself and me feel as if we were going to be _in_ one of them
ourselves.
So I will skip over that week, and go on to the next. By that time we
knew that Mrs. Wylie was in London, because mamma said something one day
about having had a letter from her. Nothing to do with the little girl,
as far as we knew; I think it was only about somebody who wanted a
servant, or something stupid like that.
It got on to the Monday of the next week _again_, and by that time Pete
had got a sort of start of his plans. He had got leave to come to meet
me at the corner of Lindsay Square, once or twice in the last few days.
I used to get there about a quarter or twenty minutes to one. We were
supposed to leave school not later than a quarter past twelve, but you
know how fellows get fooling about coming out of a day-school, so,
though it was really quite near, I was often later.
Mamma was pleased for Peterkin to want to come to meet me. She was not
at all coddling or stupid like that about us boys, though her being in
such a fuss that evening Pete was lost may have seemed so. And she was
always awfully glad for us to be fond of each other. She used to say she
hoped we'd grow up 'friends' as well as brothers, which always reminded
me of the verse about it in the Bible about 'sticking closer than a
brother.' And I like to think that dear little mummy's hopes will come
true for her sons.
It wasn't exactly a fit of affection for me, of course, that made Pete
want to get into the way of coming to meet me. Still, we _were_ very
good friends; especially good friends just then, as you know.
So that Monday, which luckily happened to be a very nice bright day, he
had no difficulty in getting leave for it again. I had promised him to
hurry over getting off from school, so we counted on having a good bit
of time to spend in looking at the parrot and talking to him, and in
'spying the land' generally, including the invisible princess, if we got
a chance, without risking coming in too late for our dinner. We had
taken care never to be late, up till now, for fear of Peterkin's coming
to meet me being put a stop to; but we hadn't pretended that we would
come straight home, and once or twice we had done a little shopping
together, and more than once we had spent several minutes in staring in
at the flower-shop windows, settling what kind of flowers would be best,
and in asking the prices of hers from a flower-woman who often sat near
the corner of the square. She was very good-natured about it. We
shouldn't have liked to go into a regular shop only to ask prices, so it
was a good thing to know a little about them beforehand.
I remember all about that Monday morning particularly well. I did hurry
off from school as fast as I could, though of course--I think it nearly
always happens so--ever so many stupid little things turned up to keep
me later than I often was.
I skurried along pretty fast, you may be sure, once I did get out, and
it wasn't long before I caught sight of poor old Pete eagerly watching
for me at the corner of Lindsay Square. He did not dare to come farther,
because, you see, he had promised mamma he never would, and that if I
were ever very late he'd go home again.
I didn't give him time to be doleful about it.
'I've been as quick as I possibly could,' I said, 'and it's not so bad
after all, Pete. We shall have a quarter of an hour for Rock Terrace at
least, if we hurry now. Don't speak--it only wastes your breath,' for in
those days, with being so plump and sturdy and his legs rather short, it
didn't take much to make him puff or pant. He's in better training now
by a long way.
He was always very sensible, so he took my advice and we got over the
ground pretty fast, only pulling up when we got to the end, or
beginning, of the little row of houses.
'Now,' said I, 'let's first walk right along rather slowly, and if we
hear the Polly we can stop short, as if we were noticing him for the
first time, the way people often do, you know.'
Peterkin nodded.
'I believe I see the corner of his cage out on the balcony,' he said,
half whispering, 'already.'
He was right. The cage was out.
We walked past very slowly, though we took care not to look up as if we
were expecting to see anything. The parrot was in the front of the cage,
staring down, and I'm almost certain he saw us, and even remembered us,
though, out of contradiction, he pretended he didn't.
'Don't speak or turn,' I whispered to Pete. It was so very quiet along
Rock Terrace, except when some tradesman's cart rattled past--and just
now there was nothing of the kind in view--that even common talking
could have been heard. 'Don't speak or seem to see him. They are awfully
conceited birds, and the way to make them notice you and begin talking
and screeching is to pretend you don't see them.'
So we walked on silently to the farther end of the terrace, in a very
matter-of-fact way, turning to come back again just as we had gone. And
I could be positive that the creature saw us all the time, for the row
of houses was very short, and he was well to the front of the balcony.
Our 'stratagem'--I have always liked the word, ever since I read _Tales
of a Grandfather_, which I thought a great take-in, as it's just a
history book, neither more nor less, and the only exciting part is when
you come upon stratagems--succeeded. As we got close up to the parrot's
house, next door to Mother Wylie's, you understand, _and_, of course,
next door to the invisible princess's, we heard a sound. It was a sort
of rather angry squeak or croak, but loud enough to be an excuse for our
stopping short and looking up.
And then, as we still did not speak, Master Poll, his round eyes glaring
at us, I felt certain, was forced to open the conversation.
'Pretty Poll,' he began, of course. 'Pretty Poll.'
'All right,' I called back. 'Good morning, Pretty Poll. A fine day.'
'Wants his dinner,' he went on. 'I say, wants his dinner.'
'Really, does he?' I said, in a mocking tone, which he understood, and
beginning to get angry--just what I wanted.
'Naughty boy! naughty boy!' he screeched, very loudly. Pete and I
grinned with satisfaction!