about a brazen trumpet’s weight, no more;--and Peter clapped his hands
for joy, for he was a boy and he loved to think that he would be a part
of that gorgeous procession. And they took him away to the great tent
on the city green where everyone was dressing for the carnival.
Peter never had seen anything so strange and wonderful as what was
within that tent. In it everything and everybody had just been or was
just going to be something or somebody else. Not only had the gay
garments piled on the floor just been sheep’s and silkworm’s coats,
not only had the colours laid upon them just been roots and stems and
herb-leaves, not only had the staves been tree’s boughs and elephant’s
tusks, but the very coal burning in the braziers and the oil in the
torches had once been sunshine, and the very flames had been air, and
before that water, and so on. But, most of all, the people showed what
they had been, for in any merry-making the kinds of animals in folk
can_not_ be covered up; and it was a regular menagerie.
They took little Peter and dressed him like a trumpet. They thrust both
his legs into one long cloth-of-gold stocking, and he held his arms
tightly at his sides while they wound his little body in ruffles of
gold-coloured silk, growing broader and broader into a full-gathered
ruff from which his laughing face peeped out. And he was so slender and
graceful that you could hardly have told him from a real, true, golden
trumpet.
Then the procession was ready to start, all lined up in the great
tent. And the heralds and the music all burst out at once as the green
curtain of the tent was drawn aside, and the long, glittering line
began to move. Little heralds, darting about for all the world like
squirrels and chipmunks; a great elephant of a master of ceremonies,
bellowing out the order of the day as if he had been presiding over
the jungle; a group of men high in the town’s confidence, whose spots
proclaimed them once to have been leopards, and other things; long,
lithe harlequins descended from serpents; little, fat clowns still
showing the magpie; prominent citizens, unable as yet to conceal the
fox and the wolf in their faces; the mayor of the town, revealing the
chameleon in his blood; little donkey men; and a fine old gentleman or
two made like eagles--all of them getting done into men as quickly as
possible. In the midst rode the king of the carnival, who had evidently
not long since been a lion, and that no doubt was why they picked him
out. He rode on a golden car from which sprays of green sprang out to
reach from side to side of the broad street. And at his lips, held like
a trumpet, he carried little Peter, one hand on Peter’s feet set to the
kingly lips, and the other stretched out to Peter’s breast.
Then Peter lifted up his shrill little voice and shouted loud his
message:--
“_The world is beginning! The world is beginning! The world is
beginning! You must go and help the king. You must go-o-o and help the
king!_”
But just as he cried that, the carnival band struck into a merry march,
and all the heralds were calling, and the people were shouting, and
Peter’s little voice did not reach very far.
“Shout again!” bade the king of the carnival, who did not care in the
least what Peter said, so long only as he acted like a trumpet.
So Peter shouted again--shouted his very best. He shouted as loudly
as he did at play, as loudly as when he swam and raced in the water,
as loudly as any boy could shout. But it seemed to him that his voice
carried hardly farther than the little chipmunk-and-squirrel heralds
before him, and that nobody heard him.
Still, it was all such fun! The glitter of the procession, the
eagerness of the people, the lilt and rhythm of the music. And fun
over all was it to be carried by the carnival king himself, high above
everyone and dressed like a golden trumpet. Surely, surely no boy
ever had more fun than that! Surely, surely it was no great marvel
that after a little time, so loud was the clamour and so fast the
excitement, that Peter stopped crying his message, and merely watched
and laughed and delighted with the rest.
Up and down through the thronged streets they went, that great,
glittering procession, winding its mile or more of spangles and gilding
and gay dress and animals richly caparisoned. Everywhere the crowded
walks and windows and balconies sent cheers into the air, everywhere
flowers were thrown and messages tossed and melody flooded. And
wherever that long line passed, everyone noted the king’s trumpet and
pointed it out and clapped hands and tried to throw upon it garlands.
And there was so much to see, and so much excitement there was in the
hour, that at last little Peter did not even think of his message, and
only jested and made merry. For it was the most wonderful game that
ever he had played.
“How now, my little trumpeter?” the king of the carnival would say
sometimes, when he rested his arms and held Peter at his side.
“Oh, _well_, your majesty!” Peter would cry, laughing up at him.
“This is all a fine game and nothing more,” the king of the carnival
would tell him. “Is this not so?”
Then he would toss the boy on high again, away above the golden car,
and Peter would cry out with the delight of it. And though there were
no wings and no great brightness in the air, yet the hour was golden
and joy was abroad like a person.
Presently, a band of mountebanks, dressed like ploughmen and
harvesters, came tumbling and racing by the procession, and calling to
everyone to come to a corn husking on the city green.
“Husks! Husks! A corn husking on the city green. Husks--husks--husks!”
they cried.
But there was such a tumult that no one could well hear what they said,
and presently they appealed to the carnival king to tell the people.
“Nay, O king, they hear us not for the noise of thy passing,” said
they. “Prithee tell the people what we would say.”
“Tell the people, my little trumpeter!” cried the king, and lifted
Peter to his lips.
And Peter shouted out with all his might.
“Husks! Husks! A corn husking on the city green. Husks--husks--husks!”
“Bravely done!” called the mountebanks, in delight, and ran alongside
the car, leaping and tumbling and grotesquely showing their delight.
“Bravely done! Tell the people--bid the people come!”
So Peter called again, and yet again, at the full strength of his
little voice. And it seemed to him that the people surely listened,
and it was a delight and a flattery to be the one voice in the great
procession, save only the music’s voice.
At last, for one moment it chanced that the bands ceased altogether
their playing, so that there was an instant of almost silence.
“_Husks, husks, husks!_” he cried, with all his might.
And as he did that, thin and clear through the silence, vexed somewhat
by the voices of the people,--now barks, now whines, now bellows, now
words,--Peter caught a little wandering melody, as though a bird’s
singing were turning into words:--
“_Open, world, your trembling petals slowly,
Here one, there one, natal to its hour_....”
and in the midst of that motley throng, Peter, looking down, saw the
poet whom he had left on the hill-top, now wandering alone and singing
his message to his lute.
“Oh, the king! Oh, _my_ king!” cried little Peter, as if he had had a
great wound.
“What now, my little trumpeter?” asked the carnival king.
“Not you--_not_ you!” cried Peter. “Oh, set me down,--set me down. Oh,
what have I done?”
“How _now_, little Trumpet?” cried the carnival king. But Peter,
instead of stretching out his little body, slim and trumpet-graceful,
turned and fell at the king’s feet in the car and slipped from his
grasp and scrambled through the branching green and reached the street.
There, in the wonder and then the mockery of the people, he began
struggling to free himself from the ruffles of cloth-of-gold about his
body. Some laughed, some ran from him as if he were mad, and some,
wishing for themselves the golden ruffles, helped him to pull them off
and to strip down the clinging golden stocking that bound his limbs.
And then, being close to the city gates, little Peter ran, all naked as
he was, without the gates and on to the empty road. And he ran sobbing
out his heart:--
“Oh, my king! I would have told them that the world is beginning--but,
instead I have told them only to get them husks!”
Now the poet, who had seen it all--and who understood--ceased his song
and made his way as quickly as might be for the press of the people,
and ran after Peter, and fared along the road beside him, trying to
comfort him. But the little lad might not be comforted, and he only
cried out again:--
“The king--the king! I would have given them his message--and I bade
them only to get them husks!”
So the poet--who understood--said no word at all, but he shielded Peter
with his mantle; and then he took his lute and walked beside the little
lad, singing.
They had gone but a short distance when they reached the top of a hill,
where the sun shone with exceeding brightness, and the poet noted
that the light fell almost like little wings. Peter saw none of this,
for his hands were still covering his face. But he heard the poet’s
singing interrupted by a voice. The voice was uneven--like a bark or
a whine that is turning into words--but yet its words were clear and
unmistakable. And they were:--
“_Sirs, the world is beginning. You must go and help the king._”
Peter looked up and he saw the man who had spoken, a man twisted and
ragged, but who smiled down into the little boy’s face so gently that,
for a moment, Peter did not know him; and then he recognized that
beggar to whom, on that night long ago, he had given food and the
message.
“Ay, friend!” the poet was answering him ringingly, “and we go!”
The beggar hurried on, and the poet touched Peter’s hand.
“Nay, now, little Peter,” he said, “grieve not your heart too much.
For you it was who told the beggar the message--from the top of the
hill I heard--and I saw you give him food. Can you tell any man without
some good coming true of the tidings? Then it may well be that there
are those in the town to whom you told the king’s message who will
remember, too. Go we forth together to try again!”
Peter looked down the long highway, stretching between the mysterious
green, where shrubs changed to animals in so little a space; and
then he looked away to the king’s kingdom and saw how it was not
finished--because the world had just stopped being nothing and was
beginning to be something--and he looked back towards the city where,
as at the court, men had not yet done being animals. Everything
was changing, as if nothing were meant to be merely what it is.
And everything was in savage angles and wild lines. The world was
beginning. The people _must_ be told to go and help the king.
“Go we forth together to try again,” the poet repeated.
He touched his lute, and its melody slipped into the sunshine.
“_Toward the time when, holden in a vessel holy,
You shall be a flower._”
Then Peter stretched out his arms, and his whole slender little body
became like one trumpet voice, and that voice strong and clear to reach
round the world itself.
“I try once again!” he answered. “The world is beginning. _I must go
and help the king._”
VI
MY LADY OF THE APPLE TREE
Our lawn was nine apple trees large. There were none in front, where
only Evergreens grew, and two silver Lombardy poplars, heaven-tall. The
apple trees began with the Cooking-apple tree by the side porch. This
was, of course, no true tree except in apple-blossom time, and at other
times hardly counted. The length of twenty jumping ropes--they call
them skipping ropes now, but we never called them so--laid one after
another along the path would have brought one to the second tree, the
Eating-apple tree, whose fruit was red without and pink-white within.
To this day I do not know what kind of apples those were, whether
Duchess, Gilliflower, Russet, Sweet, or Snow. But after all, these only
name the body of the apple, as Jasper or Edith names the body of you.
The soul of you, like the real sense of Apple, lives nameless all its
days. Sometime we must play the game of giving us a secret name--the
Pathfinder, the Lamplighter, the Starseeker, and so on. But colours and
flavours are harder to name and must wait longer than we.
... Under this Nameless tree, then, the swing hung, and to sit in the
swing and have one’s head touch apple-blossoms, and mind, not touch
them with one’s foot, was precisely like having one’s swing knotted to
the sky, so that one might rise in rhythm, head and toe, up among the
living stars. I can think of no difference worth the mentioning, so
high it seemed. And if one does not know what rhythm is, one has only
to say it over: Spring, Summer, apple-blossom, apple; new moon, old
moon, running river, echo--and then one will know.
“I would pick some,” said Mother, looking up at the apple-blossoms, “if
I only knew which ones will never be apples.”
So some of the blossoms would never be apples! Which ones? _And why?_
“Why will some be apples and some others never be apples?” I inquired.
But Mother was singing and swinging me, and she did not tell.
“Why will you be apples and you not be apples, and me not know which,
and you not know which?” I said to the apple-blossoms when next my head
touched them. Of course, you never really speak to things with your
throat voice, but you think it at them with your head voice. Perhaps
that is the way they answer, and that is why one does not always hear
what they say....
The apple-blossoms did not say anything that I could hear. The
stillness of things never ceased to surprise me. It would have been far
less wonderful to me if the apple-blossoms and the Lombardy poplars and
my new shoes had answered me sometimes than that they always kept their
unfriendly silence. One’s new shoes _look_ so friendly, with their
winking button eyes and their placid noses! And yet they act as cross
about answering as do some little boys who move into the neighbourhood.
... Indeed, if one comes to think of it, one’s shoes are rather like
the sturdy little boys among one’s clothes. One’s slippers are more
like little girls, all straps and bows and tiptoes. Then one’s aprons
must be the babies, long and white and dainty. And one’s frocks and
suits--that is to say, one’s _new_ frocks and suits--are the ladies
and gentlemen, important and elegant; and one’s everyday things are
the men and women, neither important nor elegant, but best of all; and
one’s oldest garments are the witches, shapeless and sad and haunted.
This leaves ribbons and sashes and beads to be fairies--both good and
bad.
The silence of the Nameless tree was to lift a little that very day.
When Mother had gone in the house,--something seemed always to be
pulling at Mother to be back in the house as, in the house, something
always pulled at me to be back out-of-doors,--I remember that I was
twisting the rope and then lying back over the board, head down,
for the untwisting. And while my head was whirling and my feet were
guiding, I looked up at the tree and saw it as I had never seen it
before: soft falling skirts of white with lacy edges and flowery
patterns, drooping and billowing all about a pedestal, which was the
tree trunk, and up-tapering at the top like a waist--why, the tree was
a lady! Leaning in the air there above the branches, surely I could
see her beautiful shoulders and her white arms, her calm face and her
bright hair against the blue. She had risen out of the trunk at the
tree’s blossoming and was waiting for someone to greet her.
I struggled out of the swing and scrambled, breathless, back from the
tree and looked where she should be. Already I knew her. Nearly, I knew
the things that she would say to me--sometimes now I know the things
that she would have said if we had not been interrupted.
The interruption came from four girls who lived, as I thought, outside
my world,--for those were the little days when I did not yet know
that this cannot be. They were the Eversley sisters, in full-skirted,
figured calico, and they all had large, chapped hands and wide teeth
and stout shoes. For a year they had been wont to pass our house on the
way to the public school, but they had spoken to me no more than if
I had been invisible--until the day when I had first entered school.
After that, it was as if I had been born into their air, or thrown in
the same cage, or had somehow become one of them. And I was in terror
of them.
“Come ’ere once!” they commanded, their voices falling like sharp
pebbles about the Apple-blossom lady and me.
Obediently I ran to the front fence, though my throat felt sick when
I saw them coming. “Have an apple core? Give us some of them flowers.
Shut your eyes so’s you’ll look just like you was dead.” These were
the things that they always said. Something kept telling me that I
ought not to tell them about my lady, but I was always wanting to win
their approval and to let them know that I was really more one of them
than they thought. So I disobeyed, and I told them. Mysteriously,
breathlessly I led them back to the tree; and feeling all the time that
I was not keeping faith, I pointed her out to them. I showed them just
where to look, beginning with the skirts, which surely anybody could
see.... I used often to dream that a crowd of apish, impish little folk
was making fun of me, and that afternoon I lived it, standing out alone
against those four who fell to instant jeering. If they had stooped and
put their hands on their knees and hopped about making faces, it would
have been no more horrible to me than their laughter. It held for me
all the sense of bad dreams, and then of waking alone, in the middle of
the night. The worst was that I could find no words to make them know.
I could only keep saying, “She is there, she is there, she is there.”
By some means I managed not to cry, not even when they each broke a
great branch of blossoms from the Eating-apple tree and ran away,
flat-footed, down the path; not indeed until the gate had slammed and I
turned back to the tree and saw that my lady had gone.
There was no doubt about it. Here were no longer soft skirts, but only
flowery branches where the sunlight thickened and the bees drowsed.
My lady was gone. Try as I might, I could not bring her back. So she
had been mocking me too! Otherwise, why had she let me see her so that
I should be laughed at, and then herself vanished? Yet, even then, I
remember that I did not doubt her, or for a moment cease to believe
that she was really there; only I felt a kind of shame that I could
see her, and that the others could not see her. I had felt the same
kind of shame before, never when I was alone, but always when I was
with people. We played together well enough,--Pom, pom, pullaway,
Minny-minny motion, Crack-the-whip, London Bridge, and the rest, save
that I could not run as fast as nearly everybody. But the minute we
stopped playing and _talked_, then I was always saying something so
that the same kind of shame came over me.
I saw Delia crossing the street. In one hand she held two cookies which
she was biting down sandwich-wise, and in the other hand two cookies,
as yet unbitten. The latter she shook at me.
“I knew I’d see you,” she called resentfully. “I says I’d give ’em to
you if I saw you, and if I didn’t see you--”
She left it unfinished at a point which gave no doubt as to whose
cookies they might have been had I not been offensively about. But
the cookies were fresh, and I felt no false delicacy. However, after
deliberation, I ate my own, one at a time, rejecting the sandwich
method.
“It lasts them longest,” I explained.
“The other way they bite thicker,” Delia contended.
“Your teeth don’t taste,” I objected scientifically.
Delia opened her eyes. “Why, they do too!” she cried.
I considered. I had always had great respect for the strange chorus
of my teeth, and I was perfectly ready to regard them as having
independent powers.
“Oh, not when you eat tipsy-toes like that,” said Delia, scornfully.
“Lemme show you....” She leaned for my cooky, her own being gone. I ran
shamelessly down the path toward the swing, and by the time the swing
was reached I had frankly abandoned serial bites.
I sat on the grass, giving Delia the swing as a peace-offering. She
took it, as a matter of course, and did not scruple to press her
advantage.
“Don’t you want to swing me?” she said.
I particularly disliked being asked in that way to do things. Grown-ups
were always doing it, and what could be more absurd: “Don’t you want
to pick up your things now?” “Don’t you want to let auntie have that
chair?” “Don’t you want to take this over to Mrs. Rodman?” The form of
the query always struck me as quite shameless. I truthfully shook my
head.
“I’m company,” Delia intimated.
“When you’re over to my house, I have to let you swing because you’re
company,” I said speculatively, “and when I’m over to your house, I
have to let you swing because it’s your swing.”
“I don’t care about being company,” said Delia, loftily, and started
home.
“I’ll swing you. I was only fooling!” I said, scrambling up.
It worked--as Delia knew it would and always did work. All the same,
as I pushed Delia, with my eyes on the blue-check gingham strap
buttoned across the back of her apron, I reflected on the truth and
its parallels: How, when Delia came to see me, I had to “pick up” the
playthings and set in order store or ship or den or cave or county fair
or whatnot because Delia had to go home early; and when I was over to
Delia’s, I had to help put things away because they were hers and she
had got them out.
Low-swing, high-swing, now-I’m-going-to-run-under-swing--I gave them
all to Delia and sank on the grass to watch the old cat die. As it
died, Delia suddenly twisted the rope and then dropped back and lay
across the board and loosed her hands. I never dared “let go,” as we
said, but Delia did and lay whirling, her hair falling out like a sun’s
rays, and her eyes shut.
I watched her, fascinated. If she opened her eyes, I knew how the
picket fence would swim for her, no longer a line but a circle. Then
I remembered what I had seen in the tree when I was twisting, and I
looked back....
There she was! Quite as I had fleetingly seen her, with lacy skirts
and vague, sweeping sleeves and bending line of shoulder, my Lady of
the Tree was there again. I looked at her breathlessly, unsurprised at
the gracious movement of her, so skilfully concealed by the disguises
of the wind. Oh, was she there all the time, or only in apple-blossom
time? Would she be there not only in white Spring but in green Summer
and yellow Fall--why, perhaps all those times came only because she
changed her gown. Perhaps night came only because she put on something
dusky, made of veils. Maybe the stars that I had thought looked to be
caught in the branches were the jewels in her hair. And the wind might
be her voice! I listened with all my might. What if she should tell me
her name ... and know my name!...
“Seventeen un-twists,” announced Delia. “Did you ever get that many out
of such a little stingy swing as you gave me?”
I did not question the desirability of telling Delia. The four Eversley
girls had been barbarians (so I thought). Delia I had known always. To
be sure, she had sometimes failed me, but these times were not real. My
eyes were on the tree, and Delia came curiously toward me.
“Bird?” she whispered.
I shook my head and beckoned her. Still looking at my lady, I drew
Delia down beside me, brought her head close to mine.
“Look,” I said, “her skirt is all branches--and her face is turned the
other way. See her?”
Delia looked faithfully. She scanned the tree long and impartially.
“See her? See her?” I insisted, under the impression that I was
defining her. “It’s a lady,” I breathed it finally.
“Oh,” said Delia, “you mean that side of the tree is the shape of one.
Yes, it is--kind of. I’m going home. We got chocolate layer cake for
supper. Good-bye. Last tag.”
I turned to Delia for a second. When she went, I looked back for my
lady--but she had gone. Only--now I did not try to bring her back.
Neither did I doubt her, even then. But there came back a certain
loneliness that I had felt before, only never so much as now. Why was
it that the others could not see?