JOHNSON was the hero of the hour. It was he who had tracked the
burglars, laid his plans, and recovered the lost silver. He had not
thrown the stone--public opinion decided that Mabel and her aunt must
have been mistaken in supposing that there was a stone at all. But he
did not deny the warning letter. It was Gerald who went out after
breakfast to buy the newspaper, and who read aloud to the others the two
columns of fiction which were the _Liddlesby Observer's_ report of the
facts. As he read every mouth opened wider and wider, and when he ceased
with "this gifted fellow-townsman with detective instincts which
outrival those of Messrs. Lecoq and Holmes, and whose promotion is now
assured," there was quite a blank silence.
"Well," said Jimmy, breaking it, "he doesn't stick it on neither, does
he?"
"I feel," said Kathleen, "as if it was our fault--as if it was us had
told all these whoppers; because if it hadn't been for you they couldn't
have, Jerry. How could he say all that?"
"Well," said Gerald, trying to be fair, "you know, after all, the chap
had to say something. I'm glad I----" He stopped abruptly.
"You're glad you what?"
"No matter," said he, with an air of putting away affairs of state.
"Now, what are we going to do to-day? The faithful Mabel approaches; she
will want her ring. And you and Jimmy want it too. Oh, I know.
Mademoiselle hasn't had any attention paid to her for more days than our
hero likes to confess."
"I wish you wouldn't always call yourself 'our hero,'" said Jimmy; "you
aren't mine, anyhow."
"You're both of you _mine_," said Kathleen hastily.
"Good little girl." Gerald smiled annoyingly. "Keep baby brother in a
good temper till Nursie comes back."
"You're not going out without us?" Kathleen asked in haste.
"'I haste away,
'Tis market day,'"
sang Gerald,
"'And in the market there
Buy roses for my fair.'
If you want to come too, get your boots on, and look slippy about it."
"I don't want to come," said Jimmy, and sniffed.
Kathleen turned a despairing look on Gerald.
"Oh, James, James," said Gerald sadly, "how difficult you make it for
me to forget that you're my little brother! If ever I treat you like one
of the other chaps, and rot you like I should Turner or Moberley or any
of my pals--well, this is what comes of it."
"You don't call them your baby brothers," said Jimmy, and truly.
"No; and I'll take precious good care I don't call you it again. Come
on, my hero and heroine. The devoted Mesrour is your salaaming slave."
The three met Mabel opportunely at the corner of the square where every
Friday the stalls and the awnings and the green umbrellas were pitched,
and poultry, pork, pottery, vegetables, drapery, sweets, toys, tools,
mirrors, and all sorts of other interesting merchandise were spread out
on trestle tables, piled on carts whose horses were stabled and whose
shafts were held in place by piled wooden cases, or laid out, as in the
case of crockery and hardware, on the bare flagstones of the
market-place.
The sun was shining with great goodwill, and, as Mabel remarked, "all
Nature looked smiling and gay." There were a few bunches of flowers
among the vegetables, and the children hesitated, balanced in choice.
"Mignonette is sweet," said Mabel.
"Roses are roses," said Kathleen.
"Carnations are tuppence," said Jimmy; and Gerald, sniffing among the
bunches of tightly-tied tea-roses, agreed that this settled it.
So the carnations were bought, a bunch of yellow ones, like sulphur, a
bunch of white ones like clotted cream, and a bunch of red ones like the
cheeks of the doll that Kathleen never played with. They took the
carnations home, and Kathleen's green hair-ribbon came in beautifully
for tying them up, which was hastily done on the doorstep.
Then discreetly Gerald knocked at the door of the drawing-room, where
Mademoiselle seemed to sit all day.
"Entrez!" came her voice; and Gerald entered. She was not reading, as
usual, but bent over a sketch-book; on the table was an open colour-box
of un-English appearance, and a box of that slate-coloured liquid so
familiar alike to the greatest artist in water-colours and to the
humblest child with a six-penny paint-box.
"With all of our loves," said Gerald, laying the flowers down suddenly
before her.
"But it is that you are a dear child. For this it must that I embrace
you--no?" And before Gerald could explain that he was too old, she
kissed him with little quick French pecks on the two cheeks.
"Are you painting?" he asked hurriedly, to hide his annoyance at being
treated like a baby.
"I achieve a sketch of yesterday," she answered; and before he had time
to wonder what yesterday would look like in a picture she showed him a
beautiful and exact sketch of Yalding Towers.
[Illustration: SHE KISSED HIM WITH LITTLE QUICK FRENCH PECKS.]
"Oh, I say--ripping!" was the critic's comment. "I say, mayn't the
others come and see?" The others came, including Mabel, who stood
awkwardly behind the rest, and looked over Jimmy's shoulder.
"I say, you are clever," said Gerald respectfully.
"To what good to have the talent, when one must pass one's life at
teaching the infants?" said Mademoiselle.
"It must be fairly beastly," Gerald owned.
"You, too, see the design?" Mademoiselle asked Mabel, adding: "A friend
from the town, yes?"
"How do you do?" said Mabel politely. "No, I'm not from the town. I live
at Yalding Towers."
The name seemed to impress Mademoiselle very much. Gerald anxiously
hoped in his own mind that she was not a snob.
"Yalding Towers," she repeated, "but this is very extraordinary. Is it
possible that you are then of the family of Lord Yalding?"
"He hasn't any family," said Mabel; "he's not married."
"I would say are you--how you say?--cousin--sister--niece?"
"No," said Mabel, flushing hotly, "I'm nothing grand at all. I'm Lord
Yalding's housekeeper's niece."
"But you know Lord Yalding, is it not?"
"No," said Mabel, "I've never seen him."
"He comes then never to his chateau?"
"Not since I've lived there. But he's coming next week."
"Why lives he not there?" Mademoiselle asked.
"Auntie say he's too poor," said Mabel, and proceeded to tell the tale
as she had heard it in the housekeeper's room: how Lord Yalding's uncle
had left all the money he could leave away from Lord Yalding to Lord
Yalding's second cousin, and poor Lord Yalding had only just enough to
keep the old place in repair, and to live very quietly indeed somewhere
else, but not enough to keep the house open or to live there; and how he
couldn't sell the house because it was "in tale."
"What is it then--in tail?" asked Mademoiselle.
"In a tale that the lawyers write out," said Mabel, proud of her
knowledge and flattered by the deep interest of the French governess;
"and when once they've put your house in one of their tales you can't
sell it or give it away, but you have to leave it to your son, even if
you don't want to."
"But how his uncle could he be so cruel--to leave him the chateau and no
money?" Mademoiselle asked; and Kathleen and Jimmy stood amazed at the
sudden keenness of her interest in what seemed to them the dullest
story.
"Oh, I can tell you that too," said Mabel. "Lord Yalding wanted to marry
a lady his uncle didn't want him to, a barmaid or a ballet lady or
something, and he wouldn't give her up, and his uncle said, 'Well
then,' and left everything to the cousin."
"And you say he is not married."
"No--the lady went into a convent; I expect she's bricked-up alive by
now."
"Bricked----?"
"In a wall, you know," said Mabel, pointing explainingly at the pink and
gilt roses of the wall-paper, "shut up to kill them. That's what they do
to you in convents."
"Not at all," said Mademoiselle; "in convents are very kind good women;
there is but one thing in convents that is detestable--the locks on the
doors. Sometimes people cannot get out, especially when they are very
young and their relations have placed them there for their welfare and
happiness. But brick--how you say it?--enwalling ladies to kill them.
No--it does itself never. And this Lord--he did not then seek his lady?"
"Oh, yes--he sought her right enough," Mabel assured her; "but there are
millions of convents, you know, and he had no idea where to look, and
they sent back his letters from the post-office, and----"
"Ciel!" cried Mademoiselle, "but it seems that one knows all in the
housekeeper's saloon."
"Pretty well all," said Mabel simply.
"And you think he will find her? No?"
"Oh, he'll find her all right," said Mabel, "when he's old and broken
down, you know--and dying; and then a gentle sister of charity will
soothe his pillow, and just when he's dying she'll reveal herself and
say: 'My own lost love!' and his face will light up with a wonderful joy
and he'll expire with her beloved name on his parched lips."
Mademoiselle's was the silence of sheer astonishment. "You do the
prophesy, it appears?" she said at last.
"Oh no," said Mabel, "I got that out of a book. I can tell you lots more
fatal love stories any time you like."
The French governess gave a little jump, as though she had suddenly
remembered something.
"It is nearly dinner-time," she said. "Your friend--Mabelle, yes--will
be your convivial, and in her honour we will make a little feast. My
beautiful flowers--put them to the water, Kathleen. I run to buy the
cakes. Wash the hands, all, and be ready when I return."
Smiling and nodding to the children, she left them, and ran up the
stairs.
"Just as if she was young," said Kathleen.
"She _is_ young," said Mabel. "Heaps of ladies have offers of marriage
when they're no younger than her. I've seen lots of weddings too, with
much older brides. And why didn't you tell me she was so beautiful?"
"_Is_ she?" asked Kathleen.
"Of course she is; and what a darling to think of cakes for me, and
calling me a convivial!"
"Look here," said Gerald, "I call this jolly decent of her. You know,
governesses never have more than the meanest pittance, just enough to
sustain life, and here she is spending her little all on us. Supposing
we just don't go out to-day, but play with her instead. I expect she's
most awfully bored really."
"Would she really like it?" Kathleen wondered. "Aunt Emily says
grown-ups never really like playing. They do it to please us."
"They little know," Gerald answered, "how often we do it to please
them."
"We've got to do that dressing-up with the Princess clothes anyhow--we
said we would," said Kathleen. "Let's treat her to that."
"Rather near tea-time," urged Jimmy, "so that there'll be a fortunate
interruption and the play won't go on for ever."
"I suppose all the things are safe?" Mabel asked.
"Quite. I told you where I put them. Come on, Jimmy; let's help lay the
table. We'll get Eliza to put out the best china."
They went.
"It was lucky," said Gerald, struck by a sudden thought, "that the
burglars didn't go for the diamonds in the treasure-chamber."
"They couldn't," said Mabel almost in a whisper; "they didn't know about
them. I don't believe anybody knows about them, except me--and you, and
you're sworn to secrecy." This, you will remember, had been done almost
at the beginning. "I know aunt doesn't know. I just found out the
spring by accident. Lord Yalding's kept the secret well."
"I wish I'd got a secret like that to keep," said Gerald.
"If the burglars _do_ know," said Mabel, "it'll all come out at the
trial. Lawyers make you tell everything you know at trials, and a lot of
lies besides."
"There won't be any trial," said Gerald, kicking the leg of the piano
thoughtfully.
"No trial?"
"It said in the paper." Gerald went on slowly, "'The miscreants must
have received warning from a confederate, for the admirable preparations
to arrest them as they returned for their ill-gotten plunder were
unavailing. But the police have a clue.'"
"What a pity!" said Mabel.
"You needn't worry--they haven't got any old clue," said Gerald, still
attentive to the piano leg.
"I didn't mean the clue; I meant the confederate."
"It's a pity you think he's a pity, because he was _me_," said Gerald,
standing up and leaving the piano leg alone. He looked straight before
him, as the boy on the burning deck may have looked.
"I couldn't help it," he said. "I know you'll think I'm a criminal, but
I couldn't do it. I don't know how detectives can. I went over a prison
once, with father; and after I'd given the tip to Johnson I remembered
that, and I just couldn't. I know I'm a beast, and not worthy to be a
British citizen."
"I think it was rather nice of you," said Mabel kindly. "How did you
warn them?"
"I just shoved a paper under the man's door--the one that I knew where
he lived--to tell him to lie low."
"Oh! do tell me--what did you put on it exactly?" Mabel warmed to this
new interest.
"It said: 'The police know all except your names. Be virtuous and you
are safe. But if there's any more burgling I shall split and you may
rely on that from a friend.' I know it was wrong, but I couldn't help
it. Don't tell the others. They wouldn't understand why I did it. I
don't understand it myself."
"I do," said Mabel: "it's because you've got a kind and noble heart."
"Kind fiddlestick, my good child!" said Gerald, suddenly losing the
burning boy expression and becoming in a flash entirely himself. "Cut
along and wash your hands; you're as black as ink."
"So are you," said Mabel, "and I'm not. It's dye with me. Auntie was
dyeing a blouse this morning. It told you how in _Home Drivel_--and
she's as black as ink too, and the blouse is all streaky. Pity the ring
won't make just parts of you invisible--the dirt, for instance."
"Perhaps," Gerald said unexpectedly, "it won't make even all of you
invisible again."
"Why not? You haven't been doing anything to it--have you?" Mabel
sharply asked.
"No; but didn't you notice you were invisible twenty-one hours; I was
fourteen hours invisible, and Eliza only seven--that's seven less each
time. And now we've come to----"
"How frightfully good you are at sums!" said Mabel, awestruck.
"You see, it's got seven hours less each time, and seven from seven is
nought; it's got to be something different this time. And then
afterwards--it can't be minus seven, because I don't see how--unless it
made you more visible--thicker, you know."
"_Don't!_" said Mabel; "you make my head go round."
"And there's another odd thing," Gerald went on; "when you're invisible
your relations don't love you. Look at your aunt, and Cathy never
turning a hair at me going burgling. We haven't got to the bottom of
that ring yet. Crikey! here's Mademoiselle with the cakes. Run, bold
bandits--wash for your lives!"
They ran.
It was not cakes only; it was plums and grapes and jam tarts and
soda-water and raspberry vinegar, and chocolates in pretty boxes and
"pure, thick, rich" cream in brown jugs, also a big bunch of roses.
Mademoiselle was strangely merry, for a governess. She served out the
cakes and tarts with a liberal hand, made wreaths of the flowers for all
their heads--she was not eating much herself--drank the health of Mabel,
as the guest of the day, in the beautiful pink drink that comes from
mixing raspberry vinegar and soda-water, and actually persuaded Jimmy
to wear his wreath, on the ground that the Greek gods as well as the
goddesses always wore wreaths at a feast.
There never was such a feast provided by any French governess since
French governesses began. There were jokes and stories and laughter.
Jimmy showed all those tricks with forks and corks and matches and
apples which are so deservedly popular. Mademoiselle told them stories
of her own school-days when she was "a quite little girl with two tight
tresses--so," and when they could not understand the tresses, called for
paper and pencil and drew the loveliest little picture of herself when
she was a child with two short fat pig-tails sticking out from her head
like knitting-needles from a ball of dark worsted. Then she drew
pictures of everything they asked for, till Mabel pulled Gerald's jacket
and whispered: "The acting!"
"Draw us the front of a theatre," said Gerald tactfully, "a French
theatre."
"They are the same thing as the English theatres," Mademoiselle told
him.
"Do you like acting--the theatre, I mean?"
"But yes--I love it."
"All right," said Gerald briefly. "We'll act a play for you--now--this
afternoon if you like."
"Eliza will be washing up," Cathy whispered, "and she was promised to
see it."
"Or this evening," said Gerald; "and please, Mademoiselle, may Eliza
come in and look on?"
"But certainly," said Mademoiselle; "amuse yourselves well, my
children."
"But it's _you_," said Mabel suddenly, "that we want to amuse. Because
we love you very much--don't we, all of you?"
"Yes," the chorus came unhesitatingly. Though the others would never
have thought of saying such a thing on their own account. Yet, as Mabel
said it, they found to their surprise that it was true.
"Tiens!" said Mademoiselle, "you love the old French governess?
Impossible," and she spoke rather indistinctly.
"You're not old," said Mabel; "at least not so very," she added
brightly, "and you're as lovely as a Princess."
"Go then, flatteress!" said Mademoiselle, laughing; and Mabel went. The
others were already half-way up the stairs.
[Illustration: DOWN CAME THE LOVELIEST BLUE-BLACK HAIR.]
Mademoiselle sat in the drawing-room as usual, and it was a good thing
that she was not engaged in serious study, for it seemed that the door
opened and shut almost ceaselessly all throughout the afternoon. Might
they have the embroidered antimacassars and the sofa cushions? Might
they have the clothes-line out of the washhouse? Eliza said they
mightn't, but might they? Might they have the sheepskin hearth-rugs?
Might they have tea in the garden, because they had almost got the stage
ready in the dining-room, and Eliza wanted to set tea? Could
Mademoiselle lend them any coloured clothes--scarves or dressing-gowns,
or anything bright? Yes, Mademoiselle could, and did--silk things,
surprisingly lovely for a governess to have. Had Mademoiselle any rouge?
They had always heard that French ladies---- No. Mademoiselle
hadn't--and to judge by the colour of her face, Mademoiselle didn't need
it. Did Mademoiselle think the chemist sold rouge--or had she any false
hair to spare? At this challenge Mademoiselle's pale fingers pulled out
a dozen hairpins, and down came the loveliest blue-black hair, hanging
to her knees in straight, heavy lines.
"No, you terrible infants," she cried. "I have not the false hair, nor
the rouge. And my teeth--you want them also, without doubt?"
She showed them in a laugh.
"I _said_ you were a Princess," said Mabel, "and now I know. You're
Rupunzel. Do always wear your hair like that! May we have the peacock
fans, please, off the mantelpiece, and the things that loop back the
curtains, and all the handkerchiefs you've got?"
Mademoiselle denied them nothing. They had the fans and the
handkerchiefs and some large sheets of expensive drawing-paper out of
the school cupboard, and Mademoiselle's best sable paint-brush and her
paint-box.
"Who would have thought," murmured Gerald, pensively sucking the brush
and gazing at the paper mask he had just painted, "that she was such a
brick in disguise? I wonder why crimson lake always tastes just like
Liebig's Extract."
Everything was pleasant that day somehow. There are some days like that,
you know, when everything goes well from the very beginning; all the
things you want are in their places, nobody misunderstands you, and all
that you do turns out admirably. How different from those other days
which we all know too well, when your shoe-lace breaks, your comb is
mislaid, your brush spins on its back on the floor and lands under the
bed where you can't get at it--you drop the soap, your buttons come off,
an eyelash gets into your eye, you have used your last clean
handkerchief, your collar is frayed at the edge and cuts your neck, and
at the very last moment your suspender breaks, and there is no string.
On such a day as this you are naturally late for breakfast, and every
one thinks you did it on purpose. And the day goes on and on, getting
worse and worse--you mislay your exercise-book, you drop your arithmetic
in the mud, your pencil breaks, and when you open your knife to sharpen
the pencil you split your nail. On such a day you jam your thumb in
doors, and muddle the messages you are sent on by grown-ups. You upset
your tea, and your bread-and-butter won't hold together for a moment.
And when at last you get to bed--usually in disgrace--it is no comfort
at all to you to know that not a single bit of it is your own fault.
This day was not one of those days, as you will have noticed. Even the
tea in the garden--there was a bricked bit by a rockery that made a
steady floor for the tea-table--was most delightful, though the thoughts
of four out of the five were busy with the coming play, and the fifth
had thoughts of her own that had had nothing to do with tea or acting.
Then there was an interval of slamming doors, interesting silences, feet
that flew up and down stairs.
It was still good daylight when the dinner-bell rang--the signal had
been agreed upon at tea-time, and carefully explained to Eliza.
Mademoiselle laid down her book and passed out of the sunset-yellowed
hall into the faint yellow gaslight of the dining-room. The giggling
Eliza held the door open before her, and followed her in. The shutters
had been closed--streaks of daylight showed above and below them. The
green-and-black tablecloths of the school dining-tables were supported
on the clothes-line from the backyard. The line sagged in a graceful
curve, but it answered its purpose of supporting the curtains which
concealed that part of the room which was the stage.
[Illustration: SHE SAW THAT FULLY HALF A DOZEN OF THESE CHAIRS WERE
OCCUPIED, AND BY THE QUEEREST PEOPLE.]
Rows of chairs had been placed across the other end of the room--all the
chairs in the house, as it seemed--and Mademoiselle started violently
when she saw that fully half a dozen of these chairs were occupied. And
by the queerest people, too--an old woman with a poke bonnet tied under
her chin with a red handkerchief, a lady in a large straw hat wreathed
in flowers and the oddest hands that stuck out over the chair in front
of her, several men with strange, clumsy figures, and all with hats
on.
"But," whispered Mademoiselle, through the chinks of the tablecloths,
"you have then invited other friends? You should have asked me, my
children."
Laughter and something like a "hurrah" answered her from behind the
folds of the curtaining tablecloths.
"All right, Mademoiselle Rapunzel," cried Mabel; "turn the gas up. It's
only part of the entertainment."
Eliza, still giggling, pushed through the lines of chairs, knocking off
the hat of one of the visitors as she did so, and turned up the three
incandescent burners.
Mademoiselle looked at the figure seated nearest to her, stooped to look
more closely, half laughed, quite screamed, and sat down suddenly.
"Oh!" she cried, "they are not alive!"
Eliza, with a much louder scream, had found out the same thing and
announced it differently. "They ain't got no insides," said she. The
seven members of the audience seated among the wilderness of chairs had,
indeed, no insides to speak of. Their bodies were bolsters and rolled-up
blankets, their spines were broom-handles, and their arm and leg bones
were hockey sticks and umbrellas. Their shoulders were the wooden
cross-pieces that Mademoiselle used for keeping her jackets in shape;
their hands were gloves stuffed out with handkerchiefs; and their faces
were the paper masks painted in the afternoon by the untutored brush of
Gerald, tied on to the round heads made of the ends of stuffed
bolster-cases. The faces were really rather dreadful. Gerald had done
his best, but even after his best had been done you would hardly have
known they were faces, some of them, if they hadn't been in the
positions which faces visually occupy, between the collar and the hat.
Their eyebrows were furious with lamp-black frowns--their eyes the size,
and almost the shape, of five-shilling pieces, and on their lips and
cheeks had been spent much crimson lake and nearly the whole of a
half-pan of vermilion.
"You have made yourself an auditors, yes? Bravo!" cried Mademoiselle,
recovering herself and beginning to clap. And to the sound of that
clapping the curtain went up--or, rather, apart. A voice said, in a
breathless, choked way, "Beauty and the Beast," and the stage was
revealed.
It was a real stage too--the dining-tables pushed close together and
covered with pink-and-white counterpanes. It was a little unsteady and
creaky to walk on, but very imposing to look at. The scene was simple,
but convincing. A big sheet of cardboard, bent square, with slits cut in
it and a candle behind, represented, quite transparently, the domestic
hearth; a round hat-tin of Eliza's, supported on a stool with a
night-light under it, could not have been mistaken, save by wilful
malice, for anything but a copper. A waste-paper basket with two or
three school dusters and an overcoat in it, and a pair of blue pyjamas
over the back of a chair, put the finishing touch to the scene. It did
not need the announcement from the wings, "The laundry at Beauty's
home." It was so plainly a laundry and nothing else.
In the wings: "They look just like a real audience, don't they?"
whispered Mabel. "Go on, Jimmy,--don't forget the Merchant has to be
pompous and use long words."
Jimmy, enlarged by pillows under Gerald's best overcoat, which had been
intentionally bought with a view to his probable growth during the two
years which it was intended to last him, a Turkish towel turban on his
head and an open umbrella over it, opened the first act in a simple and
swift soliloquy:
"I am the most unlucky merchant that ever was. I was once the richest
merchant in Bagdad, but I lost all my ships, and now I live in a poor
house that is all to bits; you can see how the rain comes through the
roof, and my daughters take in washing. And----"
The pause might have seemed long, but Gerald rustled in, elegant in
Mademoiselle's pink dressing-gown and the character of the eldest
daughter.
"A nice drying day," he minced. "Pa dear, put the umbrella the other way
up. It'll save us going out in the rain to fetch water. Come on,
sisters, dear father's got us a new wash-tub. Here's luxury!"
Round the umbrella, now held the wrong way up, the three sisters knelt
and washed imaginary linen. Kathleen wore a violet skirt of Eliza's, a
blue blouse of her own, and a cap of knotted handkerchiefs. A white
nightdress girt with a white apron and two red carnations in Mabel's
black hair left no doubt as to which of the three was Beauty.
The scene went very well. The final dance with waving towels was all
that there is of charming, Mademoiselle said; and Eliza was so much
amused that, as she said, she got quite a nasty stitch along of laughing
so hearty.
You know pretty well what Beauty and the Beast would be like acted by
four children who had spent the afternoon in arranging their costumes
and so had left no time for rehearsing what they had to say. Yet it
delighted them, and it charmed their audience. And what more can any
play do, even Shakespeare's? Mabel, in her Princess clothes, was a
resplendent Beauty; and Gerald a Beast who wore the drawing-room
hearthrugs with an air of indescribable distinction. If Jimmy was not a
talkative merchant, he made it up with a stoutness practically
unlimited, and Kathleen surprised and delighted even herself by the
quickness with which she changed from one to the other of the minor
characters--fairies, servants, and messengers. It was at the end of the
second act that Mabel, whose costume, having reached the height of
elegance, could not be bettered and therefore did not need to be
changed, said to Gerald, sweltering under the weighty magnificence of
his beast-skin:--
"I say, you might let us have the ring back."
"I'm going to," said Gerald, who had quite forgotten it. "I'll give it
you in the next scene. Only don't lose it, or go putting it on. You
might go out all together and never be seen again, or you might get
seven times as visible as any one else, so that all the rest of us would
look like shadows beside you, you'd be so thick, or----"
"Ready!" said Kathleen, bustling in, once more a wicked sister.
Gerald managed to get his hand into his pocket under his hearthrug, and
when he rolled his eyes in agonies of sentiment, and said, "Farewell,
dear Beauty! Return quickly, for if you remain long absent from your
faithful beast he will assuredly perish," he pressed a ring into her
hand and added: "This is a magic ring that will give you anything you
wish. When you desire to return to your own disinterested beast, put on
the ring and utter your wish. Instantly you will be by my side."
Beauty-Mabel took the ring, and it was _the_ ring.
The curtains closed to warm applause from two pairs of hands.
The next scene went splendidly. The sisters were almost _too_ natural in
their disagreeableness, and Beauty's annoyance when they splashed her
Princess's dress with real soap and water was considered a miracle of
good acting. Even the merchant rose to something more than mere pillows,
and the curtain fell on his pathetic assurance that in the absence of
his dear Beauty he was wasting away to a shadow. And again two pairs of
hands applauded.
"Here, Mabel, catch hold," Gerald appealed from under the weight of a
towel-horse, the tea-urn, the tea-tray, and the green baize apron of the
boot boy, which together with four red geraniums from the landing, the
pampas-grass from the drawing-room fireplace, and the indiarubber plants
from the drawing-room window were to represent the fountains and garden
of the last act. The applause had died away.
"I wish," said Mabel, taking on herself the weight of the tea-urn, "I
wish those creatures we made were alive. We should get something like
applause then."
"I'm jolly glad they aren't," said Gerald, arranging the baize and the
towel-horse. "Brutes! It makes me feel quite silly when I catch their
paper eyes."
The curtains were drawn back. There lay the hearth-rug-coated beast, in
flat abandonment among the tropic beauties of the garden, the
pampas-grass shrubbery, the indiarubber plant bushes, the geranium-trees
and the urn fountain. Beauty was ready to make her great entry in all
the thrilling splendour of despair. And then suddenly it all happened.
Mademoiselle began it: she applauded the garden scene--with hurried
little clappings of her quick French hands. Eliza's fat red palms
followed heavily, and then--some one else was clapping, six or seven
people, and their clapping made a dull padded sound. Nine faces instead
of two were turned towards the stage, and seven out of the nine were
painted, pointed paper faces. And every hand and every face was alive.
The applause grew louder as Mabel glided forward, and as she paused and
looked at the audience her unstudied pose of horror and amazement drew
forth applause louder still; but it was not loud enough to drown the
shrieks of Mademoiselle and Eliza as they rushed from the room, knocking
chairs over and crushing each other in the doorway. Two distant doors
banged, Mademoiselle's door and Eliza's door.
"Curtain! curtain! quick!" cried Beauty-Mabel, in a voice that wasn't
Mabel's or the Beauty's. "Jerry--those things _have_ come alive. Oh,
whatever _shall_ we do?"
Gerald in his hearthrugs leaped to his feet. Again that flat padded
applause marked the swish of cloths on clothes-line as Jimmy and
Kathleen drew the curtains.
"What's up?" they asked as they drew.
"You've done it this time!" said Gerald to the pink, perspiring Mabel.
"Oh, bother these strings!"
"Can't you burst them? _I've_ done it?" retorted Mabel. "I like that!"
"More than I do," said Gerald.
"Oh, it's all right," said Mabel, "Come on. We must go and pull the
things to pieces--then they _can't_ go on being alive."
"It's your fault, anyhow," said Gerald with every possible absence of
gallantry. "Don't you see? It's turned into a wishing ring. I _knew_
something different was going to happen. Get my knife out of my
pocket--this string's in a knot. Jimmy, Cathy, those Ugly-Wuglies have
come alive--because Mabel wished it. Cut out and pull them to pieces."
Jimmy and Cathy peeped through the curtain and recoiled with white faces
and staring eyes. "Not me!" was the brief rejoinder of Jimmy. Cathy
said, "Not much!" And she meant it, any one could see that.
And now, as Gerald, almost free of the hearth-rugs, broke his thumb-nail
on the stiffest blade of his knife, a thick rustling and a sharp, heavy
stumping sounded beyond the curtain.
"They're going out!" screamed Kathleen--"_walking_ out--on their
umbrella and broomstick legs. You can't stop them, Jerry, they're too
awful!"
"Everybody in the town'll be insane by to-morrow night if we _don't_
stop them," cried Gerald. "Here, give me the ring--I'll unwish them."
[Illustration: A LIMP HAND WAS LAID ON HIS ARM.]
He caught the ring from the unresisting Mabel, cried, "I wish the Uglies
_weren't_ alive," and tore through the door. He saw, in fancy, Mabel's
wish undone, and the empty hall strewed with limp bolsters, hats,
umbrellas, coats and gloves, prone abject properties from which the
brief life had gone out for ever. But the hall was crowded with live
things, strange things--all horribly short as broomsticks and umbrellas
are short. A limp hand gesticulated. A pointed white face with red
cheeks looked up at him, and wide red lips said something, he could not
tell what. The voice reminded him of the old beggar down by the bridge
who had no roof to his mouth. These creatures had no roofs to their
mouths, of course--they had no----
"Aa oo re o me me oo a oo ho el?" said the voice again. And it had said
it four times before Gerald could collect himself sufficiently to
understand that this horror--alive, and most likely quite
uncontrollable--was saying, with a dreadful calm, polite persistence:--
"Can you recommend me to a good hotel?"