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