A BEGGAR'S PALACE.
That I had said _something_, in the act of waking, I felt sure: the
hoarse stifled cry was still ringing in my ears, even if the startled
look of my fellow-traveler had not been evidence enough: but what could
I possibly say by way of apology?
"I hope I didn't frighten you?" I stammered out at last. "I have no idea
what I said. I was dreaming."
"You said '_Uggug indeed!_'" the young lady replied, with quivering lips
that _would_ curve themselves into a smile, in spite of all her efforts
to look grave. "At least--you didn't _say_ it--you _shouted_ it!"
"I'm very sorry," was all I could say, feeling very penitent and
helpless. "She _has_ Sylvie's eyes!" I thought to myself, half-doubting
whether, even now, I were fairly awake. "And that sweet look of innocent
wonder is all Sylvie's, too. But Sylvie _hasn't_ got that calm resolute
mouth--nor that far-away look of dreamy sadness, like one that has had
some deep sorrow, very long ago----" And the thick-coming fancies almost
prevented my hearing the lady's next words.
"If you had had a 'Shilling Dreadful' in your hand," she proceeded,
"something about Ghosts--or Dynamite--or Midnight Murder--one could
understand it: those things aren't worth the shilling, unless they give
one a Nightmare. But really--with only a _medical treatise_, you
know----" and she glanced, with a pretty shrug of contempt, at the book
over which I had fallen asleep.
Her friendliness, and utter unreserve, took me aback for a moment; yet
there was no touch of forwardness, or boldness, about the child--for
child, almost, she seemed to be: I guessed her at scarcely over
twenty--all was the innocent frankness of some angelic visitant, new to
the ways of earth and the conventionalisms--or, if you will, the
barbarisms--of Society. "Even so," I mused, "will _Sylvie_ look and
speak, in another ten years."
"You don't care for Ghosts, then," I ventured to suggest, "unless they
are really terrifying?"
"Quite so," the lady assented. "The regular Railway-Ghosts--I mean the
Ghosts of ordinary Railway-literature--are very poor affairs. I feel
inclined to say, with Alexander Selkirk, 'Their tameness is shocking to
me'! And they never do any Midnight Murders. They couldn't 'welter in
gore,' to save their lives!"
"'Weltering in gore' is a very expressive phrase, certainly. Can it be
done in _any_ fluid, I wonder?"
"I think _not_," the lady readily replied--quite as if she had thought
it out, long ago. "It has to be something _thick_. For instance, you
might welter in bread-sauce. That, being _white_, would be more suitable
for a Ghost, supposing it wished to welter!"
"You have a real good _terrifying_ Ghost in that book?" I hinted.
"How _could_ you guess?" she exclaimed with the most engaging frankness,
and placed the volume in my hands. I opened it eagerly, with a not
unpleasant thrill (like what a good ghost-story gives one) at the
'uncanny' coincidence of my having so unexpectedly divined the subject
of her studies.
It was a book of Domestic Cookery, open at the article 'Bread Sauce.'
I returned the book, looking, I suppose, a little blank, as the lady
laughed merrily at my discomfiture. "It's far more exciting than some of
the modern ghosts, I assure you! Now there was a Ghost last month--I
don't mean a _real_ Ghost in--in Supernature--but in a Magazine. It was
a perfectly _flavourless_ Ghost. It wouldn't have frightened a mouse! It
wasn't a Ghost that one would even offer a chair to!"
"Three score years and ten, baldness, and spectacles, have their
advantages after all!" I said to myself. "Instead of a bashful youth and
maiden, gasping out monosyllables at awful intervals, here we have an
old man and a child, quite at their ease, talking as if they had known
each other for years! Then you think," I continued aloud, "that we ought
_sometimes_ to ask a Ghost to sit down? But have we any authority for
it? In Shakespeare, for instance--there are plenty of ghosts
_there_--does Shakespeare ever give the stage-direction '_hands chair to
Ghost_'?"
The lady looked puzzled and thoughtful for a moment: then she _almost_
clapped her hands. "Yes, yes, he _does_!" she cried. "He makes Hamlet
say '_Rest, rest, perturbed Spirit!_'"
"And that, I suppose, means an easy-chair?"
"An American rocking-chair, I _think_----"
"Fayfield Junction, my Lady, change for Elveston!" the guard announced,
flinging open the door of the carriage: and we soon found ourselves,
with all our portable property around us, on the platform.
The accommodation, provided for passengers waiting at this Junction, was
distinctly inadequate--a single wooden bench, apparently intended for
three sitters only: and even this was already partially occupied by a
very old man, in a smock frock, who sat, with rounded shoulders and
drooping head, and with hands clasped on the top of his stick so as to
make a sort of pillow for that wrinkled face with its look of patient
weariness.
"Come, you be off!" the Station-master roughly accosted the poor old
man. "You be off, and make way for your betters! This way, my Lady!" he
added in a perfectly different tone. "If your Ladyship will take a seat,
the train will be up in a few minutes." The cringing servility of his
manner was due, no doubt, to the address legible on the pile of luggage,
which announced their owner to be "Lady Muriel Orme, passenger to
Elveston, _viâ_ Fayfield Junction."
As I watched the old man slowly rise to his feet, and hobble a few paces
down the platform, the lines came to my lips:--
"From sackcloth couch the Monk arose,
With toil his stiffen'd limbs he rear'd;
A hundred years had flung their snows
On his thin locks and floating beard."
[Illustration: 'COME, YOU BE OFF!']
But the lady scarcely noticed the little incident. After one glance at
the 'banished man,' who stood tremulously leaning on his stick, she
turned to me. "This is _not_ an American rocking-chair, by any means!
Yet may I say," slightly changing her place, so as to make room for me
beside her, "may I say, in Hamlet's words, 'Rest, rest----'" she broke
off with a silvery laugh.
"'--perturbed Spirit!'" I finished the sentence for her. "Yes, that
describes a railway-traveler _exactly_! And here is an instance of it,"
I added, as the tiny local train drew up alongside the platform, and the
porters bustled about, opening carriage-doors--one of them helping the
poor old man to hoist himself into a third-class carriage, while another
of them obsequiously conducted the lady and myself into a first-class.
She paused, before following him, to watch the progress of the other
passenger. "Poor old man!" she said. "How weak and ill he looks! It was
a shame to let him be turned away like that. I'm very sorry----" At this
moment it dawned on me that these words were not addressed to _me_, but
that she was unconsciously thinking aloud. I moved away a few steps, and
waited to follow her into the carriage, where I resumed the
conversation.
"Shakespeare _must_ have traveled by rail, if only in a dream:
'perturbed Spirit' is such a happy phrase."
"'Perturbed' referring, no doubt," she rejoined, "to the sensational
booklets peculiar to the Rail. If Steam has done nothing else, it has at
least added a whole new Species to English Literature!"
"No doubt of it," I echoed. "The true origin of all our medical
books--and all our cookery-books----"
"No, no!" she broke in merrily. "I didn't mean _our_ Literature! _We_
are quite abnormal. But the booklets--the little thrilling romances,
where the Murder comes at page fifteen, and the Wedding at page
forty--surely _they_ are due to Steam?"
"And when we travel by Electricity--if I may venture to develop your
theory--we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the Murder and
the Wedding will come on the same page."
"A development worthy of Darwin!" the lady exclaimed enthusiastically.
"Only _you_ reverse his theory. Instead of developing a mouse into an
elephant, you would develop an elephant into a mouse!" But here we
plunged into a tunnel, and I leaned back and closed my eyes for a
moment, trying to recall a few of the incidents of my recent dream.
"I thought I saw----" I murmured sleepily: and then the phrase insisted
on conjugating itself, and ran into "you thought you saw--he thought he
saw----" and then it suddenly went off into a song:--
"He thought he saw an Elephant,
That practised on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
'At length I realise,' he said,
'The bitterness of Life!'"
And what a wild being it was who sang these wild words! A Gardener he
seemed to be--yet surely a mad one, by the way he brandished his
rake--madder, by the way he broke, ever and anon, into a frantic
jig--maddest of all, by the shriek in which he brought out the last
words of the stanza!
It was so far a description of himself that he had the _feet_ of an
Elephant: but the rest of him was skin and bone: and the wisps of loose
straw, that bristled all about him, suggested that he had been
originally stuffed with it, and that nearly all the stuffing had come
out.
[Illustration: THE GARDENER]
Sylvie and Bruno waited patiently till the end of the first verse. Then
Sylvie advanced alone (Bruno having suddenly turned shy) and timidly
introduced herself with the words "Please, I'm Sylvie!"
"And who's that other thing?" said the Gardener.
"What thing?" said Sylvie, looking round. "Oh, that's Bruno. He's my
brother."
"Was he your brother yesterday?" the Gardener anxiously enquired.
"Course I were!" cried Bruno, who had gradually crept nearer, and didn't
at all like being talked about without having his share in the
conversation.
"Ah, well!" the Gardener said with a kind of groan. "Things change so,
here. Whenever I look again, it's sure to be something different! Yet I
does my duty! I gets up wriggle-early at five----"
"If I was _oo_," said Bruno, "I wouldn't wriggle so early. It's as bad
as being a worm!" he added, in an undertone to Sylvie.
"But you shouldn't be lazy in the morning, Bruno," said Sylvie.
"Remember, it's the _early_ bird that picks up the worm!"
"It may, if it likes!" Bruno said with a slight yawn. "I don't like
eating worms, one bit. I always stop in bed till the early bird has
picked them up!"
"I wonder you've the face to tell me such fibs!" cried the Gardener.
To which Bruno wisely replied "Oo don't want a _face_ to tell fibs
wiz--only a _mouf_."
Sylvie discreetly changed the subject. "And did you plant all these
flowers?" she said. "What a lovely garden you've made! Do you know, I'd
like to live here _always_!"
"In the winter-nights----" the Gardener was beginning.
"But I'd nearly forgotten what we came about!" Sylvie interrupted.
"Would you please let us through into the road? There's a poor old
beggar just gone out--and he's very hungry--and Bruno wants to give him
his cake, you know!"
"It's as much as my place is worth!" the Gardener muttered, taking a key
from his pocket, and beginning to unlock a door in the garden-wall.
"How much _are_ it wurf?" Bruno innocently enquired.
But the Gardener only grinned. "That's a secret!" he said. "Mind you
come back quick!" he called after the children, as they passed out into
the road. I had just time to follow them, before he shut the door again.
We hurried down the road, and very soon caught sight of the old Beggar,
about a quarter of a mile ahead of us, and the children at once set off
running to overtake him. Lightly and swiftly they skimmed over the
ground, and I could not in the least understand how it was I kept up
with them so easily. But the unsolved problem did not worry me so much
as at another time it might have done, there were so many other things
to attend to.
The old Beggar must have been very deaf, as he paid no attention
whatever to Bruno's eager shouting, but trudged wearily on, never
pausing until the child got in front of him and held up the slice of
cake. The poor little fellow was quite out of breath, and could only
utter the one word "Cake!"--not with the gloomy decision with which Her
Excellency had so lately pronounced it, but with a sweet childish
timidity, looking up into the old man's face with eyes that loved 'all
things both great and small.'
The old man snatched it from him, and devoured it greedily, as some
hungry wild beast might have done, but never a word of thanks did he
give his little benefactor--only growled "More, more!" and glared at the
half-frightened children.
"There _is_ no more!" Sylvie said with tears in her eyes. "I'd eaten
mine. It was a shame to let you be turned away like that. I'm very
sorry----"
I lost the rest of the sentence, for my mind had recurred, with a great
shock of surprise, to Lady Muriel Orme, who had so lately uttered these
very words of Sylvie's--yes, and in Sylvie's own voice, and with
Sylvie's gentle pleading eyes!
"Follow me!" were the next words I heard, as the old man waved his hand,
with a dignified grace that ill suited his ragged dress, over a bush,
that stood by the road side, which began instantly to sink into the
earth. At another time I might have doubted the evidence of my eyes, or
at least have felt some astonishment: but, in _this_ strange scene, my
whole being seemed absorbed in strong curiosity as to what would happen
next.
When the bush had sunk quite out of our sight, marble steps were seen,
leading downwards into darkness. The old man led the way, and we eagerly
followed.
The staircase was so dark, at first, that I could only just see the
forms of the children, as, hand-in-hand, they groped their way down
after their guide: but it got lighter every moment, with a strange
silvery brightness, that seemed to exist in the air, as there were no
lamps visible; and, when at last we reached a level floor, the room, in
which we found ourselves, was almost as light as day.
It was eight-sided, having in each angle a slender pillar, round which
silken draperies were twined. The wall between the pillars was entirely
covered, to the height of six or seven feet, with creepers, from which
hung quantities of ripe fruit and of brilliant flowers, that almost hid
the leaves. In another place, perchance, I might have wondered to see
fruit and flowers growing together: here, my chief wonder was that
neither fruit nor flowers were such as I had ever seen before. Higher
up, each wall contained a circular window of coloured glass; and over
all was an arched roof, that seemed to be spangled all over with jewels.
With hardly less wonder, I turned this way and that, trying to make out
how in the world we had come in: for there was no door: and all the
walls were thickly covered with the lovely creepers.
"We are safe here, my darlings!" said the old man, laying a hand on
Sylvie's shoulder, and bending down to kiss her. Sylvie drew back
hastily, with an offended air: but in another moment, with a glad cry of
"Why, it's _Father_!", she had run into his arms.
[Illustration: A BEGGAR'S PALACE]
"Father! Father!" Bruno repeated: and, while the happy children were
being hugged and kissed, I could but rub my eyes and say "Where, then,
are the rags gone to?"; for the old man was now dressed in royal robes
that glittered with jewels and gold embroidery, and wore a circlet of
gold around his head.