green-robed City lying in her glorious night jewels, knew what was
happening too. And when the Lady lifted Littlegirl, to carry her
away, it was as if something had happened which had touched the life
of the City herself. She listened, as the Earth was listening, and the
soft crooning which men thought was the roar of her traffic was really
her song about what she heard. For the story of Littlegirl spread and
echoed, and other children’s stories like hers were in the song, and it
was one of the times when the heart of the City was stirred to a great,
new measure. At last the City understood the homelessness of children,
and their labour, and their suffering, and the waste of them; and she
brooded above them like a mother.... And suddenly she knew herself,
that she _was_ the mother of all little children, and that she must
care for them like a mother _if she was to keep herself alive_. And if
they were to grow up to be her Family, and not just her pretend family,
with nobody looking out for anybody else--as no true family would do.
“Is it well?” asked the Shadow, softly, of the Earth.
“It is well,” said the Earth, in deep content. “Don’t you hear the
human voices beginning to sing with her? Don’t you see the other
Cities watching? Oh, it is well indeed.”
“I’ll go and mention it to the Uttermost Spaces,” said the Shadow.
And, in time, so he did.
XX
THREE TO MAKE READY
Red mosquito-netting, preferably from peach baskets, was best for
bottles of pink water. You soaked the netting for a time depending in
length on the shade of pink you desired--light, deep, or plain. A very
little red ink produced a beautiful red water, likewise of a superior
tint. Violet ink, diluted, remained true to type. Cold coffee gave the
browns and yellows. Green tissue paper dissolved into somewhat dull
emerald. Pure blue and orange, however, had been almost impossible to
obtain save by recourse to our paint boxes, too choice to be used in
this fashion, or to a chance artificial flower on an accessible hat--of
which we were not at all too choice, but whose utilization might be
followed, not to say attended, by consequences.
That August afternoon we were at work on a grand scale. At the Rodmans,
who lived on the top of the hill overlooking the town and the peaceful
westward-lying valley of the river, we had chosen to set up a great
Soda Fountain, the like of which had never been.
“It’s the kind of a fountain,” Margaret Amelia Rodman explained, “that
knights used to drink at. That kind.”
We classified it instantly.
“Now,” she went on, “us damsels are getting this thing up for the
knights that are tourmeying. If the king knew it, he wouldn’t leave
us do it, because he’d think it’s beneath our dignity. But he don’t
know it. He’s off. He’s to the chase. But all the king’s household is
inside the palace, and us damsels have to be secret, getting up our
preparations. Now we must divide up the--er--responsibility.”
I listened, spellbound.
“I thought you and Betty didn’t like to play Pretend,” I was surprised
into saying.
“Why, we’ll pretend if there’s anything to pretend _about_ that’s
real,” said Margaret Amelia, haughtily.
They told us where in the palace the various ingredients were likely to
be found. Red mosquito-netting, perhaps, in the cellar--at this time
of day fairly safe. Red and violet ink in the library--very dangerous
indeed at this hour. Cold coffee--almost unobtainable. Green tissue
paper, to be taken from the flower-pots in the dining-room--exceedingly
dangerous. Blue and orange, if discoverable at all, then in the
Christmas tree box in the trunk room--attended by few perils as to
meetings en route, but in respect to appropriating what was desired, by
the greatest perils of all.
This last adventure the Rodmans themselves heroically undertook. It was
also conceded that, on their return from their quest--provided they
ever did return alive--it would be theirs to procure the necessary
cold coffee. The other adventures were distributed, and Mary Elizabeth
and I were told off together to penetrate the cellar in search of red
mosquito-netting. The bottles had already been collected, and these
little Harold Rodman was left to guard and luxuriously to fill with
water and luxuriously to empty.
There was an outside cellar door, and it was closed. This invited
Mary Elizabeth and me to an expedition or two before we even entered.
We slid from the top to the bottom, sitting, standing, and backward.
Then, since Harold was beginning to observe us with some attention, we
lifted the ring--_the ring_--in the door and descended.
“Aladdin immediately beheld bags of inexhaustible riches,” said Mary
Elizabeth, almost reverently.
First, there was a long, narrow passage lined with ash barrels, a
derelict coal scuttle, starch boxes, mummies of brooms, and the like.
But at this point if we had chanced on the red mosquito-netting, we
should have felt distinctly cheated of some right. A little farther on,
however, the passage branched, and we stood in delighted uncertainty.
If the giant lived one way and the gorgon the other, which was our way?
The way that we did choose led into a small round cellar, lighted
by a narrow, dusty window, now closed. Formless things stood
everywhere--crates, tubs, shelves whose ghostly contents were shrouded
by newspapers. It occurred to me that I had never yet told Mary
Elizabeth about our cellar. I decided to do so then and there. She
backed up against the wall to listen, manifestly so that there should
be nothing over her shoulder.
Our cellar was a round, bricked-in place under the dining-room.
Sometimes I had been down there while they had been selecting preserves
by candle-light. And I had long ago settled that the curved walls
were set with little sealed doors behind each of which _He_ sat.
These _He’s_ were not in the least unfriendly--they merely sat there
close to the wall, square shouldered and very still, looking neither
to right nor left, waiting. Probably, I thought, it might happen
some day--whatever they waited for; and then they would all go away.
Meanwhile, there they were; and they evidently knew that I knew they
were there, but they evidently did not expect me to mention it; for
once, when I did so, they all stopped doing nothing and looked at me,
all together, as if something used their eyes for them at a signal.
It was to Mary Gilbraith that I had spoken, while she was at our
house-cleaning, and the moment I had chosen was when she was down in
the cellar without a candle and I was lying flat on the floor above
her, peering down the trap doorway.
“Mary,” I said, “they’s a big row of _He’s_ sitting close together
inside the wall. They’ve got big foreheads. Bang on the wall and see
if they’ll answer--” for I had always longed to bang and had never
quite dared.
“Oh, my great Scotland!” said Mary Gilbraith, and was up the ladder
in a second. That was when they looked at me, and then I knew that I
should not have spoken to her about them, and I began to see that there
are some things that must not be said. And I felt a kind of shame, too,
when Mary turned on me. “You little Miss,” she said wrathfully, “with
your big eyes. An’ myself bitin’ on my own nerves for fear of picking
up a lizard for a potato. Go play.”
“I _was_ playing,” I tried to explain.
“Play playthings, then, and not ha’nts,” said Mary.
So I never said anything more to her, save about plates and fritters
and such things.
To this recital Mary Elizabeth listened sympathetically.
“There’s just one great big one lives down in our cellar,” she confided
in turn. “Not in the wall--but out loose. When the apples and stuff go
down there, I always think how glad he is.”
“Are you afraid of him?” I asked.
“Afraid!” Mary Elizabeth repeated. “Why, no. Once, when I was down
there, I tried to pretend there wasn’t anything lived there--and _then_
it was frightening and I was scared.”
I understood. It would indeed be a great, lonely, terrifying world if
these little friendly folk did not live in cellars, walls, attics,
stair-closets and the like. Of course they were friendly. Why should
they be otherwise?
“R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-t,” something went, close by Mary Elizabeth’s head.
We looked up. The dimness of the ceiling was miles deep. We could not
see a ceiling.
“St-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t,” it went again. And this time it did not stop, and
it began to be accompanied by a rumbling sound as from the very cave
inside the world.
Mary Elizabeth and I took hold of hands and ran. We scrambled up the
steps and escaped to the sultry welcome of bright day. Out there
everything was as before. Little Harold was crossing the lawn carrying
a flower-pot of water which was running steadily from the hole in the
bottom. With the maternal importance of little girls, we got the jar
from him and undertook to bring him more water. And when he led us to
the source of supply, this was a faucet in the side of the house just
beyond a narrow, dusty, cellar window. When he turned the faucet, we
were, so to speak, face to face with that R-s-t-t-t-t-t.
Mary Elizabeth and I looked at each other and looked away. Then we
looked back and braved it through.
“Anyway,” she said, “we were afraid of a truly thing, and not of a
pretend thing.”
There seemed to us, I recall, a certain loyalty in this as to a creed.
Already Delia had returned from the library. The authorities refused
the ink. One might come in there and write with it, but one must
not take it from the table. Calista arrived from the dining-room. A
waiting-woman to the queen, she reported, was engaged in dusting the
sideboard and she herself had advanced no farther than the pantry door.
It remained only for Margaret Amelia and Betty to come from their
farther quest bearing a green handbill which they thought might take
the place of Calista’s quarry if she returned empty-handed; but we were
no nearer than before to blue and orange materials, or to any other.
We took counsel and came to a certain ancient conclusion that in union
there is strength. We must, we thought we saw, act the aggressor. We
moved on the stronghold together. Armed with a spoon and two bottles,
we found a keeper of properties within who spooned us out the necessary
ink; tea was promised to take the place of coffee if we would keep out
of the house and not bother anybody any more, indefinitely; shoe-polish
was conceded in a limited quantity, briefly, and under inspection; and
we all descended into Aladdin’s cave and easily found baskets to which
red mosquito-netting was clinging in sufficient measure. Then we sat in
the shade of the side lawn and proceeded to colour many waters.
It was a delicate task to cloud the clear liquid to this tint and that,
to watch it change expression under our hands, pale, deepen, vary to
our touch; in its heart to set jewels and to light fires. We worked
with deep deliberation, testing by old standards of taste set up by
at least two or three previous experiences, consulting one another’s
soberest judgment, occasionally inventing a new liquid. I remember that
it was on that day that we first thought of bluing. Common washing
bluing, the one substance really intended for colouring water, had so
far escaped our notice.
“Somebody,” observed Margaret Amelia, as we worked, “ought to keep
keeping a look-out to see if they’re coming back.”
Delia, who was our man of action, ran to the clothes-reel, which stood
on the highest land of the castle grounds, and looked away over the
valley.
“There’s a cloud of dust on the horizon,” she reported, “but I think
it’s Mr. Wells getting home from Caledonia.”
“Wouldn’t they blare their horns before they got here?” Mary Elizabeth
wanted to know.
“What was a knight _for_, anyway?” Delia demanded.
“_For?_” Margaret Amelia repeated, in a kind of personal indignation.
“Why, to--to--to right wrongs, of course.”
Delia surveyed the surrounding scene through the diluted red ink in a
glass-stoppered bottle.
“I guess I know that,” she said. “But I mean, what was his job?”
We had never thought of that. Did one, then, have to have a job other
than righting wrongs?
Margaret Amelia undertook to explain.
“Why,” she said, “it was this way: Knights liberated damsels and razed
down strongholds and took robber chieftains and got into adventures.
And they lived off the king and off hermits.”
“But what was the end of ’em?” Delia wanted to know. “They never
married and lived happily ever after. They married and just kept right
on going.”
“That was on account of the Holy Grail,” said Mary Elizabeth. It
was wonderful, as I look back, to remember how her face would light
sometimes; as just then, and as when somebody came to school with the
first violets.
“The what?” said Delia.
“They woke up in the night sometimes,” Mary Elizabeth recited softly,
“and they saw it, in light, right there inside their dark cell. And
they looked and looked, and it was all shiny and near-to. And when
they saw it, they knew about all the principal things. And those that
never woke up and saw it, always kept trying to, because they knew they
weren’t _really_ ones till they saw. Most everybody wasn’t really,
because only a few saw it. Most of them died and never saw it at all.”
“What did it look like?” demanded Delia.
“Hush!” said Calista, with a shocked glance, having somewhere picked up
the impression that very sacred things, like very wicked things, must
never be mentioned. But Mary Elizabeth did not heed her.
“It was all shining and near to,” she repeated. “It was in a great,
dark sky, with great, bright worlds falling all around it, but it was
in the centre and it didn’t fall. It was all still, and brighter than
anything; and when you saw it, you never forgot.”
There was a moment’s pause, which Delia broke.
“How do you know?” she demanded.
Mary Elizabeth was clouding red mosquito-netting water by shaking soap
in it, an effect much to be desired. She went on shaking the corked
bottle, and looking away toward the sun slanting to late afternoon.
“I don’t know how I know,” she said in manifest surprise. “But I know.”
We sat silent for a minute.
“Well, I’m going back to see if they’re coming home from the hunt
_now_,” said Delia, scrambling up.
“From the _chase_,” Margaret Amelia corrected her loftily, “and from
the tourmey. I b’lieve,” she corrected herself conscientiously, “that
had ought to be tourmament.”
This time Delia thought that she saw them coming, the king and his
knights, with pennons and plumes, just entering Conant Street down by
the Brices. As we must be ready by the time the party dismounted, there
was need for the greatest haste. But we found that the clothes-reel,
which was to be the fountain, must have a rug and should have flowing
curtains if it were to grace a castle courtyard; so, matters having
been further delayed by the discovery of Harold about to drink the
vanilla water, we concluded that we had been mistaken about the
approach of the knights; and that they were by now only on the bridge.
A journey to the attic for the rug and curtains resulted in delays,
the sight of some cast-off garments imperatively suggesting the
fitness of our dressing for the rôle we were to assume. This took some
time and was accompanied by the selection of new names all around.
At last, however, we were back in the yard with the rugs and the
muslin curtains in place, and the array of coloured bottles set up
in rows at the top of the carpeted steps. Then we arranged ourselves
behind these delicacies, in our bravery of old veils and scarves and
tattered sequins. Harold was below, as a page, in a red sash. “A little
foot-page,” Margaret Amelia had wanted him called, but this he himself
vetoed.
“Mine feet _big_ feet,” he defended himself.
Then we waited.
We waited, chatted amiably, as court ladies will. Occasionally we rose
and scanned the street, and reported that they were almost here. Then
we resumed our seats and waited. This business had distinctly palled on
us all when Delia faced it.
“Let’s have them get here if they’re going to,” she said.
So we sat and told each other that they were entering the yard, that
they were approaching the dais, that they were kneeling at our feet.
But it was unconvincing. None of us really wanted them to kneel or
knew what to do with them when they did kneel. The whole pretence was
lacking in action, and very pale.
“It was lots more fun getting ready than this is,” said Calista,
somewhat brutally.
We stared in one another’s faces, feeling guilty of a kind of
disloyalty, yet compelled to acknowledge this great truth. In our
hearts we remembered to have noticed this thing before: That getting
ready for a thing was more fun than doing that thing.
“Why couldn’t we get a quest?” inquired Margaret Amelia. “Then it
wouldn’t have to stop. It’d last every day.”
That was the obvious solution: We would get a quest.
“Girls can’t quest, can they?” Betty suggested doubtfully.
We looked in one another’s faces. Could it be true? Did the damsels sit
at home? Was it only the knights who quested?
Delia was a free soul. Forthwith she made a precedent.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t know whether they did quest. But they can
quest. So let’s do it.”
The reason in this appealed to us all. Immediately we confronted the
problem: What should we quest for?
We stared off over the valley through which the little river ran
shining and slipped beyond our horizon.
“I wonder,” said Mary Elizabeth, “if it would be wrong to quest for the
Holy Grail _now_.”
We stood there against the west, where bright doors seemed opening in
the pouring gold of the sun, thick with shining dust. The glory seemed
very near. Why not do something beautiful? Why not--why not....
The following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books by the
same author, and new fiction
_By the Same Author_
Christmas
BY ZONA GALE
Author of “Mothers to Men,” “The Loves of Pelleas and Etarre.”
Illustrated in colors by LEON SOLON.
_Decorated cloth, 12mo, $1.30 net; postpaid, $1.42_
A town in the Middle West, pinched with poverty, decides that it will
have no Christmas, as no one can afford to buy gifts. They perhaps
foolishly reckon that the heart-burnings and the disappointments of
the children will be obviated by passing the holiday season over with
no observance. How this was found to be simply and wholly impossible,
how the Christmas joys and Christmas spirit crept into the little town
and into the hearts of its most positive objectors, and how Christmas
cannot be arbitrated about, make up the basis of a more than ordinarily
appealing novel. Incidentally it is a little boy who really makes
possible a delightful outcome. A thread of romance runs through it all
with something of the meaning of Christmas for the individual human
being and for the race.
“A fine story of Yuletide impulses in Miss Gale’s best
style.”--_N. Y. World._
“No living writer more thoroughly understands the true spirit
of Christmas than does Zona Gale.”--_Chicago Record-Herald._
“‘Christmas’ is that rare thing, a Yuletide tale, with a touch
of originality about it.”--_N. Y. Press._
“The book is just the thing for a gift.”--_Chicago Tribune._
_The Other Books of Miss Gale_
Mothers to Men
_Decorated cloth, 12mo, $1.50 net; by mail, $1.62 net_
The author is singularly successful in detaching herself from all
the wear and tear of modern life and has produced a book filled with
sweetness, beautiful in ideas, charming in characterizations, highly
contemplative, and evidencing a philosophy of life all her own.
“One of the most widely read of our writers of short
fiction.”--_The Bookman._
Friendship Village
_Cloth, 12mo, $1.50 net_
“As charming as an April day, all showers and sunshine, and sometimes
both together, so that the delighted reader hardly knows whether
laughter or tears are fittest.”--_The New York Times._
The Loves of Pelleas and Etarre
_Cloth, 12mo, $1.50 net_
_Macmillan Fiction Library_
_12mo, $.50 net_
“It contains the sort of message that seems to set the world right
for even the most depressed, and can be depended upon to sweeten
every moment spent over it.”--_San Francisco Chronicle._
Friendship Village Love Stories
_Decorated cloth, gilt top, 12mo, $1.50 net_
Miss Gale’s pleasant and highly individual outlook upon life has
never been revealed to better advantage than in these charming
stories of the heart affairs of the young people of Friendship
Village.
_New Macmillan Fiction_
MRS. WATTS’S NEW NOVEL
Van Cleve
BY MARY S. WATTS
Author of “Nathan Burke,” “The Legacy,” etc.
_Cloth, 12mo._
Never has the author of “Nathan Burke” and “The Legacy” written
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still in his early twenties, is obliged to support a family of
foolish, good-hearted, ill-balanced women, and one shiftless,
pompous old man, his grandmother, aunt, cousin, and uncle. Van
Cleve proves himself equal to the obligation--and equal, too, to
many other severe tests that are put upon him by his friends.
Besides him there is one character which it is doubtful whether
the reader will ever forget--Bob. His life not only shapes Van
Cleve’s to a large extent, but that of several other people,
notably his sister, the girl whom Van Cleve loves in his patient
way.
The Valley of the Moon
BY JACK LONDON
With Frontispiece in Colors by GEORGE HARPER
_Decorated cloth, 12mo, $1.35 net_
A love story in Mr. London’s most powerful style, strikingly
contrasted against a background of present-day economic
problems--that is what “The Valley of the Moon” is. The hero,
teamster, prize-fighter, adventurer, man of affairs, is one of
Mr. London’s unforgettable big men. The romance which develops
out of his meeting with a charming girl and which does not end
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is most rapid, one event following another in a fashion which
does not allow the reader to lose interest even temporarily. “The
Valley of the Moon” is, in other words, an old-fashioned London
novel, with all of the entertainment that such a description
implies.
Robin Hood’s Barn
BY ALICE BROWN
Author of “Vanishing Points,” “The Secret of the Clan,” “The
Country Road,” etc.
With Illustrations in Colors and in Black and White by
H. M. CARPENTER
_Decorated cloth, 12mo, $0.00 net_
Miss Brown’s previous books have given her a distinguished
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the frontispiece being in colors, the others in black and white,
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Deering at Princeton
BY LATTA GRISWOLD
Author of “Deering of Deal”
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This is a college story that reads as a college story should.
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régime of Princeton, initiated by Deering and carried through
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_Cloth, 12mo; preparing_
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which one is sure to be satisfied when the last page is turned.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
Transcriber’s Note:
In the advertisements at the end of the book, the price of $0.00 is as
published.
Variations in spelling, hyphenation and punctuation have been retained
as they appear in the original publication except as follows:
Page 145
“_We are all alike, all of us who live!_ _changed to_
_We are all alike, all of us who live!_
Page 229
resentfully “And now she’s in her _changed to_
resentfully. “And now she’s in her