GROWN UP
Cyril had once pointed out that ordinary life is full of occasions on
which a wish would be most useful. And this thought filled his mind when
he happened to wake early on the morning after the morning after Robert
had wished to be bigger than the baker's boy, and had been it. The day
that lay between these two days had been occupied entirely by getting
the governess-cart home from Benenhurst.
Cyril dressed hastily; he did not take a bath, because tin baths are so
noisy, and he had no wish to rouse Robert, and he slipped off alone, as
Anthea had once done, and ran through the dewy morning to the sand-pit.
He dug up the Psammead very carefully and kindly, and began the
conversation by asking it whether it still felt any ill effects from
the contact with the tears of Robert the day before yesterday. The
Psammead was in good temper. It replied politely.
"And now, what can I do for you?" it said. "I suppose you've come here
so early to ask for something for yourself--something your brothers and
sisters aren't to know about, eh? Now, do be persuaded for your own
good! Ask for a good fat Megatherium and have done with it."
"Thank you--not to-day, I think," said Cyril cautiously. "What I really
wanted to say was--you know how you're always wishing for things when
you're playing at anything?"
"I seldom play," said the Psammead coldly.
"Well, you know what I mean," Cyril went on impatiently. "What I want to
say is: won't you let us have our wish just when we think of it, and
just where we happen to be? So that we don't have to come and disturb
you again," added the crafty Cyril.
"It'll only end in your wishing for something you don't really want, as
you did about the castle," said the Psammead, stretching its brown arms
and yawning. "It's always the same since people left off eating really
wholesome things. However, have it your own way. Good-bye."
"Good-bye," said Cyril politely.
"I'll tell you what," said the Psammead suddenly, shooting out its long
snail's eyes,--"I'm getting tired of you--all of you. You have no more
sense than so many oysters. Go along with you!"
And Cyril went.
"What an awful long time babies _stay_ babies," said Cyril after the
Lamb had taken his watch out of his pocket while he wasn't noticing, and
with coos and clucks of naughty rapture had opened the case and used the
whole thing as a garden spade, and when even immersion in a wash basin
had failed to wash the mould from the works and make the watch go again.
Cyril had said several things in the heat of the moment; but now he was
calmer, and had even consented to carry the Lamb part of the way to
the woods. Cyril had persuaded the others to agree to his plan, and not
to wish for anything more till they really did wish it. Meantime it
seemed good to go to the woods for nuts, and on the mossy grass under a
sweet chestnut tree the five were sitting. The Lamb was pulling up the
moss by fat handfuls, and Cyril was gloomily contemplating the ruins of
his watch.
[Illustration: He opened the case and used the whole thing as a garden
spade]
"He does grow," said Anthea. "Doesn't 'oo, precious?"
"Me grow," said the Lamb cheerfully--"me grow big boy, have guns' an'
mouses--an'--an'"---- Imagination or vocabulary gave out here. But
anyway it was the longest speech the Lamb had ever made, and it charmed
everyone, even Cyril, who tumbled the Lamb over and rolled him in the
moss to the music of delighted squeals.
"I suppose he'll be grown up some day," Anthea was saying, dreamily
looking up at the blue of the sky that showed between the long straight
chestnut-leaves. But at that moment the Lamb, struggling gaily with
Cyril, thrust a stout-shod little foot against his brother's chest;
there was a crack!--the innocent Lamb had broken the glass of father's
second-best Waterbury watch, which Cyril had borrowed without leave.
"Grow up some day!" said Cyril bitterly, plumping the Lamb down on the
grass. "I daresay he will--when nobody wants him to. I wish to goodness
he would"--
"_Oh_, take care!" cried Anthea in an agony of apprehension. But it was
too late--like music to a song her words and Cyril's came out together--
Anthea--"Oh, take care!"
Cyril--"Grow up now!"
The faithful Psammead was true to its promise, and there, before the
horrified eyes of its brothers and sisters, the Lamb suddenly and
violently grew up. It was the most terrible moment. The change was not
so sudden as the wish-changes usually were. The Baby's face changed
first. It grew thinner and larger, lines came in the forehead, the eyes
grew more deep-set and darker in colour, the mouth grew longer and
thinner; most terrible of all, a little dark mustache appeared on the
lip of one who was still--except as to the face--a two-year-old baby in
a linen smock and white open-work socks.
"Oh, I wish it wouldn't! Oh, I wish it wouldn't! You boys might wish as
well!"
They all wished hard, for the sight was enough to dismay the most
heartless. They all wished so hard, indeed, that they felt quite giddy
and almost lost consciousness; but the wishing was quite vain, for, when
the wood ceased to whirl round, their dazed eyes were riveted at once by
the spectacle of a very proper-looking young man in flannels and a straw
hat--a young man who wore the same little black mustache which just
before they had actually seen growing upon the Baby's lip. This, then,
was the Lamb--grown up! Their own Lamb! It was a terrible moment. The
grown-up Lamb moved gracefully across the moss and settled himself
against the trunk of the sweet chestnut. He tilted the straw hat over
his eyes. He was evidently weary. He was going to sleep. The Lamb--the
original little tiresome beloved Lamb often went to sleep at odd times
and in unexpected places. Was this new Lamb in the grey flannel suit and
the pale green necktie like the other Lamb? or had his mind grown up
together with his body?
That was the question which the others, in a hurried council held among
the yellowing brake-fern a few yards from the sleeper, debated eagerly.
"Whichever it is, it'll be just as awful," said Anthea. "If his inside
senses are grown up too, he won't stand our looking after him; and if
he's still a baby inside of him how on earth are we to get him to do
anything? And it'll be getting on for dinner-time in a minute."
"And we haven't got any nuts," said Jane.
"Oh bother nuts!" said Robert, "but dinner's different--I didn't have
half enough dinner yesterday. Couldn't we tie him to the tree and go
home to our dinner and come back afterwards?"
"A fat lot of dinner we should get if we went back without the Lamb!"
said Cyril in scornful misery. "And it'll be just the same if we go back
with him in the state he is now. Yes, I know it's my doing; don't rub it
in! I know I'm a beast, and not fit to live; you can take that for
settled, and say no more about it. The question is, what are we going to
do?"
"Let's wake him up, and take him into Rochester or Maidstone and get
something to eat at a baker's shop," said Robert hopefully.
"Take him?" repeated Cyril. "Yes--do! It's all my fault--I don't deny
that--but you'll find you've got your work cut out for you if you try to
take that young man anywhere. The Lamb always was spoilt, but now he's
grown up he's a demon--simply. I can see it. Look at his mouth."
"Well then," said Robert, "let's wake him up and see what _he'll_ do.
Perhaps _he'll_ take _us_ to Maidstone and stand treat. He ought to have
a lot of money in the pockets of those extra-special pants. We _must_
have dinner, anyway."
They drew lots with little bits of brake fern. It fell to Jane's lot to
waken the grown-up Lamb.
She did it gently by tickling his nose with a twig of honeysuckle. He
said "Bother the flies!" twice, and then opened his eyes.
[Illustration: She did it gently by tickling his nose with a twig of
honeysuckle]
"Hullo, kiddies!" he said in a languid tone, "still here? What's the
giddy hour? You'll be late for your grub!"
"I know we shall," said Robert bitterly.
"Then cut along home," said the grown-up Lamb.
"What about your grub, though?" asked Jane.
"Oh, how far is it to the station, do you think? I've a sort of a notion
that I'll run up to town and have some lunch at the club."
Blank misery fell like a pall on the four others. The
Lamb--alone--unattended--would go to town and have lunch at a club!
Perhaps he would also have tea there. Perhaps sunset would come upon him
amid the dazzling luxury of club-land, and a helpless cross sleepy
baby would find itself alone amid unsympathetic waiters, and would wail
miserably for "Panty" from the depths of a club arm-chair! The picture
moved Anthea almost to tears.
"Oh no, Lamb ducky, you mustn't do that!" she cried incautiously.
The grown-up Lamb frowned. "My dear Anthea," he said, "how often am I to
tell you that my name is Hilary or St. Maur or Devereux?--any of my
baptismal names are free to my little brothers and sisters, but _not_
'Lamb'--a relic of foolishness and far-off childhood."
This was awful. He was their elder brother now, was he? Well of course
he was, if he was grown-up--since they weren't. Thus, in whispers,
Anthea and Robert.
But the almost daily adventures resulting from the Psammead's wishes
were making the children wise beyond their years.
"Dear Hilary," said Anthea, and the others choked at the name, "you know
father didn't wish you to go to London. He wouldn't like us to be left
alone without you to take care of us. Oh, deceitful thing that I am!"
she added to herself.
"Look here," said Cyril, "if you're our elder brother, why not behave as
sich and take us over to Maidstone and give us a jolly good blow-out,
and we'll go on the river afterwards?"
"I'm infinitely obliged to you," said the Lamb courteously, "but I
should prefer solitude. Go home to your lunch--I mean your dinner.
Perhaps I may look in about tea-time--or I may not be home till after
you are in your beds."
Their beds! Speaking glances flashed between the wretched four. Much bed
there would be for them if they went home without the Lamb.
"We promised mother not to lose sight of you if we took you out," Jane
said before the others could stop her.
"Look here, Jane," said the grown-up Lamb, putting his hands in his
pockets and looking down at her, "little girls should be seen and not
heard. You kids must learn not to make yourselves a nuisance. Run along
home now--and perhaps, if you're good, I'll give you each a penny
to-morrow."
"Look here," said Cyril, in the best "man to man" tone at his command,
"where are you going, old man? You might let Bobs and me come with
you--even if you don't want the girls."
This was really rather noble of Cyril, for he never did care much about
being seen in public with the Lamb, who of course after sunset would be
a baby again.
The "man to man" tone succeeded.
"I shall run over to Maidstone on my bike," said the new Lamb airily,
fingering the little black mustache. "I can lunch at The Crown--and
perhaps I'll have a pull on the river; but I can't take you all on the
machine--now, can I? Run along home, like good children."
The position was desperate. Robert exchanged a despairing look with
Cyril. Anthea detached a pin from her waistband, a pin whose withdrawal
left a gaping chasm between skirt and bodice, and handed it furtively to
Robert--with a grimace of the darkest and deepest meaning. Robert
slipped away to the road. There, sure enough, stood a bicycle--a
beautiful new one. Of course Robert understood at once that if the Lamb
was grown up he _must_ have a bicycle.
[Illustration: There, sure enough, stood a bicycle]
This had always been one of Robert's own reasons for wishing to be
grown-up. He hastily began to use the pin--eleven punctures in the back
tyre, seven in the front. He would have made the total twenty-two but
for the rustling of the yellow hazel-leaves, which warned him of the
approach of the others. He hastily leaned a hand on each wheel, and was
rewarded by the "whish" of the what was left of air escaping from
eighteen neat pin-holes.
"Your bike's run down," said Robert, wondering how he could so soon have
learned to deceive.
"So it is," said Cyril.
"It's a puncture," said Anthea, stooping down, and standing up again
with a thorn which she had got ready for the purpose.
"Look here."
The grown-up Lamb (or Hilary, as I suppose one must now call him) fixed
his pump and blew up the tyre. The punctured state of it was soon
evident.
[Illustration: The punctured state of it was soon evident]
"I suppose there's a cottage somewhere near--where one could get a pail
of water?" said the Lamb.
There was; and when the number of punctures had been made manifest, it
was felt to be a special blessing that the cottage provided "teas for
cyclists." It provided an odd sort of tea-and-hammy meal for the Lamb
and his brothers. This was paid for out of the fifteen shillings which
had been earned by Robert when he was a giant--for the Lamb, it
appeared, had unfortunately no money about him. This was a great
disappointment for the others; but it is a thing that will happen, even
to the most grown-up of us. However, Robert had enough to eat, and that
was something. Quietly but persistently the miserable four took it in
turns to try and persuade the Lamb (or St. Maur) to spend the rest of
the day in the woods. There was not very much of the day left by the
time he had mended the eighteenth puncture. He looked up from the
completed work with a sigh of relief, and suddenly put his tie straight.
"There's a lady coming," he said briskly,--"for goodness' sake, get out
of the way. Go home--hide--vanish somehow! I can't be seen with a pack
of dirty kids." His brothers and sisters were indeed rather dirty,
because, earlier in the day, the Lamb, in his infant state, had
sprinkled a good deal of garden soil over them. The grown-up Lamb's
voice was so tyrant-like, as Jane said afterwards, that they actually
retreated to the back garden, and left him with his little mustache and
his flannel suit to meet alone the young lady, who now came up the front
garden wheeling a bicycle.
The woman of the house came out, and the young lady spoke to her,--the
Lamb raised his hat as she passed him,--and the children could not hear
what she said, though they were craning round the corner and listening
with all their ears. They felt it to be "perfectly fair," as Robert
said, "with that wretched Lamb in that condition."
When the Lamb spoke, in a languid voice heavy with politeness, they
heard well enough.
"A puncture?" he was saying. "Can I not be of any assistance? If you
could allow me----?"
There was a stifled explosion of laughter and the grown-up Lamb
(otherwise Devereux) turned the tail of an angry eye in its direction.
"You're very kind," said the lady, looking at the Lamb. She looked
rather shy, but, as the boys put it, there didn't seem to be any
nonsense about her.
"But oh," whispered Cyril, "I should have thought he'd had enough
bicycle-mending for one day--and if she only knew that really and truly
he's only a whiny-piny, silly little baby!"
"He's _not_," Anthea murmured angrily. "He's a dear--if people only let
him alone. It's our own precious Lamb still, whatever silly idiots may
turn him into--isn't he, Pussy?"
Jane doubtfully supposed so.
Now, the Lamb--whom I must try to remember to call St. Maur--was
examining the lady's bicycle and talking to her with a very grown-up
manner indeed. No one could possibly have supposed, to see and hear him,
that only that very morning he had been a chubby child of two years
breaking other people's Waterbury watches. Devereux (as he ought to be
called for the future) took out a gold watch when he had mended the
lady's bicycle, and all the hidden onlookers said "Oh!"--because it
seemed so unfair that the Baby, who had only that morning destroyed two
cheap but honest watches, should now, in the grown-upness to which
Cyril's folly had raised him, have a real gold watch--with a chain and
seals!
Hilary (as I will now term him) withered his brothers and sisters with a
glance, and then said to the lady--with whom he seemed to be quite
friendly--
"If you will allow me, I will ride with you as far as the Cross Roads;
it is getting late, and there are tramps about."
No one will ever know what answer the young lady intended to give to
this gallant offer, for, directly Anthea heard it made, she rushed out,
knocking against a swill pail, which overflowed in a turbid stream, and
caught the Lamb (I suppose I ought to say Hilary) by the arm. The others
followed, and in an instant the four dirty children were visible beyond
disguise.
"Don't let him," said Anthea to the lady, and she spoke with intense
earnestness; "he's not fit to go with anyone!"
"Go away, little girl!" said St. Maur (as we will now call him) in a
terrible voice.
"Go home at once!"
"You'd much better not have anything to do with him," the now reckless
Anthea went on. "He doesn't know who he is. He's something very
different from what you think he is."
"What do you mean?" asked the lady, not unnaturally, while Devereux (as
I must term the grown-up Lamb) tried vainly to push Anthea away. The
others backed her up, and she stood solid as a rock.
"You just let him go with you," said Anthea, "you'll soon see what I
mean! How would you like to suddenly see a poor little helpless baby
spinning along downhill beside you with its feet up on a bicycle it had
lost control of?"
The lady had turned rather pale.
"Who are these very dirty children?" she asked the grown-up Lamb
(sometimes called St. Maur in these pages).
"I don't know," he lied miserably.
"Oh, Lamb! how _can_ you?" cried Jane,--"when you know perfectly well
you're our own little baby brother that we're so fond of. We're his big
brothers and sisters," she explained, turning to the lady, who with
trembling hands was now turning her bicycle towards the gate, "and we've
got to take care of him. And we must get him home before sunset, or I
don't know whatever will become of us. You see, he's sort of under a
spell--enchanted--you know what I mean!"
Again and again the Lamb (Devereux, I mean) had tried to stop Jane's
eloquence, but Robert and Cyril held him, one by each leg, and no proper
explanation was possible. The lady rode hastily away, and electrified
her relatives at dinner by telling them of her escape from a family of
dangerous lunatics. "The little girl's eyes were simply those of a
maniac. I can't think how she came to be at large," she said.
When her bicycle had whizzed away down the road, Cyril spoke gravely.
"Hilary, old chap," he said, "you must have had a sunstroke or
something. And the things you've been saying to that lady! Why, if we
were to tell you the things you've said when you are yourself again,
say to-morrow morning, you wouldn't ever understand them--let alone
believe them! You trust to me, old chap, and come home now, and if
you're not yourself in the morning we'll ask the milkman to ask the
doctor to come."
The poor grown-up Lamb (St. Maur was really one of his Christian names)
seemed now too bewildered to resist.
"Since you seem all to be as mad as the whole worshipful company of
hatters," he said bitterly, "I suppose I _had_ better take you home. But
you're not to suppose I shall pass this over. I shall have something to
say to you all to-morrow morning."
"Yes, you will, my Lamb," said Anthea under her breath, "but it won't be
at all the sort of thing you think it's going to be."
In her heart she could hear the pretty, soft little loving voice of the
baby Lamb--so different from the affected tones of the dreadful grown-up
Lamb (one of whose names was Devereux)--saying, "Me love Panty--wants to
come to own Panty."
"Oh, let's go home, for goodness' sake," she said. "You shall say
whatever you like in the morning--if you can," she added in a whisper.
It was a gloomy party that went home through the soft evening. During
Anthea's remarks Robert had again made play with the pin and the bicycle
tyre, and the Lamb (whom they had to call St. Maur or Devereux or
Hilary) seemed really at last to have had his fill of bicycle-mending.
So the machine was wheeled.
The sun was just on the point of setting when they arrived at the White
House. The four elder children would have liked to linger in the lane
till the complete sunsetting turned the grown-up Lamb (whose Christian
names I will not further weary you by repeating) into their own dear
tiresome baby brother. But he, in his grown-upness, insisted on going
on, and thus he was met in the front garden by Martha.
Now you remember that, as a special favour, the Psammead had arranged
that the servants in the house should never notice any change brought
about by the wishes of the children. Therefore Martha merely saw the
usual party, with the baby Lamb, about whom she had been desperately
anxious all the afternoon, trotting beside Anthea, on fat baby legs,
while the children, of course, still saw the grown-up Lamb (never mind
what names he was christened by), and Martha rushed at him and caught
him in her arms, exclaiming--
"Come to his own Martha, then--a precious poppet!"
The grown-up Lamb (whose names shall now be buried in oblivion)
struggled furiously. An expression of intense horror and annoyance was
seen on his face. But Martha was stronger than he. She lifted him up and
carried him into the house. None of the children will ever forget that
picture. The neat grey-flannel-suited grown-up young man with the green
necktie and the little black mustache--fortunately, he was slightly
built, and not tall--struggling in the sturdy arms of Martha, who
bore him away helpless, imploring him, as she went, to be a good boy
now, and come and have his nice bremmink! Fortunately, the sun set as
they reached the doorstep, the bicycle disappeared, and Martha was seen
to carry into the house the real live darling sleepy two-year-old Lamb.
The grown-up Lamb (nameless henceforth) was gone for ever.
[Illustration: The grown-up Lamb struggled]
"For ever," said Cyril, "because, as soon as ever the Lamb's old enough
to be bullied, we must jolly well begin to bully him, for his own
sake--so that he mayn't grow up like _that_."
"You shan't bully him," said Anthea stoutly,--"not if I can stop it."
"We must tame him by kindness," said Jane.
"You see," said Robert, "if he grows up in the usual way, there'll be
plenty of time to correct him as he goes along. The awful thing to-day
was his growing up so suddenly. There was no time to improve him at
all."
"He doesn't want any improving," said Anthea as the voice of the Lamb
came cooing through the open door, just as she had heard it in her heart
that afternoon--
"Me loves Panty--wants to come to own Panty!"