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BY
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY SPENCER PRYSE
LONDON:
GEORGE ALLEN & SONS
156, CHARING CROSS ROAD
1909
[All rights reserved]
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
"... Whoso shall offend one of these little ones ...it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea."
This was the end.
When she should be once more in the empty house she might cry, scream,
laugh, go mad. Nothing would make any difference. There was no one to be
awakened. There was no white presence that must be lapped in silence and
horrible flowers. The cook and the maids had brought the flowers. Her gift
to the dead had been the silence.
They were talking about her in the warm, pleasant kitchen, where the
fire glowed redly, and tea and toast scented the air.
"Poor soul," said the cook, "but she's borne up
wonderful, I must say."
"Heartless," was the housemaid's epithet; and she
added, "She might have cried a bit when they carried it out, if only
for the look of the thing."
"You don't understand," said the cook heavily.
"You'll see, she'll break down soon as ever she gets back
from the burying. I shouldn't wonder if she was to go right off of her
head, or something."
"Ain't she got never a friend to turn to, a time like
this?" asked the cook's niece, who had dropped in to tea.
"Not a single one, if you'll believe me. It's my belief
she's done something she hadn't ought, and this is a judgment on
her. Sin always comes home to roost." So the housemaid.
"You be quiet with your texts," the cook admonished;
"if you come to texts, people that live in glass houses
shouldn't quote Scripture. I know more about you than you think, my
lady."
The parlourmaid flushed and scowled.
"No, but," said the niece, "hasn't she really got
e'er a friend?"
"Father dead," said the cook. "Mother in India
'long of her other friends. Husband burnt to death under her very
nose, as you might say, just before the baby came. Only married a year when
he was taken. And now the baby. Cruel hard, I call it."
"She tell you all that?" the housemaid sneered.
"Not she! Catch her telling us anything. She's a good
mistress, she is, and quite the lady. Keeps herself to
herself."
"Then how . . .?"
"She's got a book," said the cook, only very slightly
embarrassed, "a die-airy, where you writes down what happens every
day. I jest happened to glance into it one day I was doing the dining-room
grate--not knowing what it was, d'you see?"
"She'll marry again all right," said the niece.
"With that face?" said the housemaid.
The niece asked how she came to be like that, and the cook told her.
"It was the fire, what her good gentleman lost his life in. She
was near done for herself. Wishes to God she had been--in the book, I
mean. Ah, she's had some trouble, she has." The written record
of another woman's agony was poignant even in remembrance, and the
cook sniffed. "Well, God help us all's what I say. There she is.
I'll make her a nice cup of tea."
But the woman who had lost everything left the tea on the table in the
dining-room, where the clock ticked, "Emp-ty, emp-ty, emp-ty,"
and wandered through the house. And still she kept silence. There was the
room where the child had lived--its cot, its soft woolly toys, its
little gowns. And the room where it had lain dead, among the flowers and
the silence, and the scent of camphor and eau de Cologne.
"Nothing," she said, "nothing, nothing. I
suppose," she said, dry-eyed and detached, "I suppose I ought
to cry. Or pray, perhaps?"
She fell on her knees by the bed; it was an experiment.
But no tears came and no prayers. Only the insistent silence filled her
ears and battered at her brain.
"Oh, my baby, my baby!" she said, and a sob caught in her
throat. But she did not cry.
So then she got up from her knees like one with a purpose new-born, and
went very quickly and quietly down the stairs and out at the front door. It
slammed behind her.
"There! If she 'asn't gone out! To make away with
herself, I shouldn't wonder," said the housemaid, in pleasant
excitement.
"You oughter let the police know," said the niece.
"You leave her be," said the cook. "I don't know
as it wouldn't be the best thing for her, poor thing. What's she
got to live for?"
"I call that heathen, that's what I call it," said the
housemaid; "it's sinful to make away with yourself, whatever
goes
wrong. It's our duty to bear whatever's laid upon us."
"Ah," said the cook, "it's easy enough to see
you've never 'ad nothing to bear. If she comes back
I'll make a excuse to go up and say a kind word. You see if I
don't."
"I do wonder where she's gone, though," said the
housemaid.
"It'll be in all the papers if she does make away with
herself," the parlourmaid pointed out.
"If you ever get in the papers," said the cook,
"it won't be for anything so 'armless and innocent. So now
you know. I'd give a crown to be sure that she ain't come to no
'arm."
She had not come to any harm. Only after a blind treading of bleak
pavements, and streets where an unkind wind blew, she had come to wide
steps and lamps, a heavy swing-door through which a priest had just passed.
She was not a Catholic, not even a Christian. The early days of her life
had been too sweet for her to need peace; the
later days too bitter for her to find it. But the gnawing chill of the December evening drove her, without any conscious will of hers, towards the shaft of light that had shown as the door opened. In there it would be warm and quiet. And it would not be the house where the child had lived and died.
She went up the steps, and as she went a hand touched her and some one
spoke low in her ear.
"Lady, lady, won't you spare me a trifle? I 'aven't
tasted food since yesterday morning--so 'elp me God, I
haven't!"
She turned. A woman stood beside her--very shabby, very pale, with
a horrible flattened hat and dreadful clothes. In her arms, under a shawl
thin as a nun's veil, she held a baby.
"You're luckier than I am," said the woman, whose veil
was on her face, and her eyes were greedy with the rounded outline under
the shawl. "I haven't got my purse--yes, here's a
penny, loose in my pocket."
The voice of the policeman broke through
the other woman's thanks--such thanks for such a gift.
"Now, then, at it again!" he said. "You give me your
name and address," he added sternly.
The woman muttered some formula.
"We can't 'ave you beggin' all over the
place," he went on. "On the church steps and all. You'll
'ear of this again, I shouldn't wonder. 'Ere, you be off
outer this! Hear?"
The woman with the child looked at him and crept away.
"Oh, don't!" said the mother who had no child.
"You wouldn't prosecute her for that?"
"Course not, mum," the man reassured her. "But you
'ave to keep 'em up to the mark or you wouldn't be able to
get into the church for the crowds of them there'd be. It's only
encouraging them to give to beggars."
"I only gave her a penny," said the mother.
"Gin--that's what it'll go in," said the
majesty of the law.
She went into the church. It was almost dark,
except for a brightness that shone between thick pillars far away to the
right.
The altar rose up into shadows. The red light burned before the altar.
Here and there a kneeling figure. She kneeled also. Here, perhaps, one
might be able to cry; tears made things easier, people said. She herself
had thought so once. But no tears came. And her agony was wound like a cord
about and around her heart, so that she could not pray. She kneeled there a
very long time. The great calm splendid silence, the atmosphere of
devotion, the presence of a great love and understanding that filled it,
gave to her tortured mind the rest that a couch in a darkened room might
give to limbs strained with the rack and to eyes scorched by the flames
that lick round the stake. Life was all torture still, but this was a
breathing space. At first she thought of the woman on the steps--the
mother who
had her child--and envy and pity fought in her. She might get the address from the policeman and go and see the woman--help, perhaps. No, no. It was all no use. What was the good of helping one woman in a world where any woman might at any moment have this to bear?
Gradually peace, like an incoming tide, lapped in small waves round her
soul. Or the exhaustion of prolonged agony, calling itself peace. She could
no longer think--could hardly feel. Intense pain was becoming itself
an anesthetic. The shadowy pillars seemed to move as shadows do, and the
dim red light, hung between earth and heaven, swam before her eyes. A
little more, it seemed, and she would forget everything.
But she roused herself. There was something in the world that she must
not forget. Something beyond herself and her anguish. Her own mother. She
must not forget. She was to her mother what that which she had lost had
been to her. She rose and walked down the aisle. The soft yellow glow from
behind the pillars seemed brighter than ever, to eyes that had rested so long on the twilight that surrounds the altar.
"I wonder what that light is!" she said, and was glad for
her own mother's sake that she could still wonder about anything. She
walked towards the light, and presently perceived that the light, coming
from some unseen place, shone full on a picture--no, a group of
figures of wax or wood.
It was a rocky cave, as tradition tells that the stable was where Christ
was born. Ivy wreathed the stones about. There was the straw, and the ox
and the ass among it; also those two travellers for whom there was no room
in the inn. They bent in adoration over the manger where the Hope of the
World lay cradled.
Outside were the kneeling kings with their gifts, and the star-led
shepherds, and beyond, in the deep eastern sky, the star that had led
them.
It was the scene that has inspired Raphael and Correggio, set
forth with ingenuous
realism, as loving peasant children might have set it.
And the centre of it all--that on which was concentrated the light
of the lamps, and the light of love in the eyes of the Holy Mother, of the
angels, the adoring kings, and the shepherds--was the Child, the waxen
image of the Child who was born and laid in a manger, the image which the
Catholic Church sets up at Christmas to remind simple people how the King
of Heaven came down and was a little child. The very simplicity of it made
a more direct appeal than could have been made by all the Raphaels and
Correggios in the world. That wooden image of the Holy Mother bore on its
face the light of love and joy the human mother herself had known--and
the shadow of a greater sorrow even than this of hers, which was greater
than all sorrows in the world.
The mother who had no child found that she was kneeling again, her arms
on the wooden rail worn smooth by the arms of the many who had knelt there
to realise, at
sight of this picture, the meaning of Christmas. There was no one kneeling there now but she. She felt herself alone among the kneeling shepherds and kings; and her eyes, like theirs, were turned on the Child.
The image was very lifelike. The Holy Child lay covered in soft, white
draperies that showed only the little round head and one tiny hand. Just
so, so many times, the mother had seen her baby sleep curled up, warm and
safe in the kind firelight, her baby that now lay straight and white and
cold in a very dark place, alone.
"My baby, my baby," she said, and hid her face. And then she
knew that she was crying, and praying, too. The tears were hot and many,
and the prayer was only a cry for help.
"Oh, God," she murmured, "help, help, help!" And
again, and yet again: "Oh, God, help!"
All the dear memories of the past that made up the desolation of the
present, she had put away because she could not bear to look at them; now
she reached out her hands
to them, clasped them, pressed the sharp thorns against her heart, that she might call for help from the lowest depths of her sorrow.
Her face was against the wooden rail, wet with her tears. She crouched
there. Faith could move mountains. Perhaps it was true about miracles. If
she only prayed hard enough, perhaps she might go home to find her baby
asleep in his cot--perhaps all this would be only a dream. No, that
was nonsense, of course; but--
"Oh, my baby, my baby! Oh, God, help!" she moaned, almost
aloud.
And then the miracle happened. She never doubted but that it was a
miracle. A little soft sound crept to her ears--not a sigh, not a cry,
not a sob--the contented, crooning murmur that a little child makes at
the end of sleep, the little lovely sound that had drawn her so often to
the cot-side in the pleasant firelit room when life was there.
She looked round. No one had come in--no happy mother with a baby
in her arms, such as she had thought, from that soft
sound, to find close behind her. She was all alone, with the Holy Family, and the shepherds, and the angels, and the kings.
She dried her eyes and listened. Again the little beautiful sound, and
then... It was no fairy story, but the truth. The mother who had no child
saw, in the crib, where pious folks had laid a waxen image, the movement of
a living child. The little dark head stirred on the pillow, the little pink
hands stretched out, the little arms thrust back the draperies, and amid
the soft whiteness of them the child awoke, and smiled--no cold image
of the Divine infant, but a little, live, naked, human thing.
The human mother glanced round--the quick glance of a hunted animal
that reassures itself. Next moment she had crept under the wooden rail and
caught up the baby.
Its limbs moved in slow softness as her own child's had moved. It
lay contented against her, wrapped in the white woollen folds, and covered
with her furs.
The wind was wild as she reached the
swing-door; it tried to uncover the child, and blew great flakes of snow in the mother's face. She held the baby very closely.
She does not know how she got home. The next thing she remembers is
pushing past the housemaid and carrying up those stairs, down which others
had carried her baby, this new baby that was not hers.
"Brought home a baby? Say she's adopted it? Well, then,
it's the best day's work she could ha' done, an'
I'm going straight up to tell her so." So the cook goes, leaving
the housemaid and the parlourmaid and the niece to sniff in concert.
Upstairs there is firelight and warmth, and two women worshipping a
naked child.
And in the church much talk and wonder and grief for the bambino that
has been stolen--the little image of wood and wax so like life, that
cost so much, and was so useful in reminding the faithful what the gift
from Heaven was that came to a human mother on Christmas Day.
For three days the mother had fed her hungry heart on the miracle-baby;
it was three days before she remembered that other mother and that other
baby on the steps outside the church. Then she bestirred herself, found the
policeman, and got from him the address that he had so severely noted.
"I doubt you'll not find it a deserving case, mum," he
said. "I frightened her off this beat. Ain't been 'ere
since. That shows she wasn't up to no good."
It was a narrow street, where the house doors are never shut, and the
children play in the gutter with such toys as they have--rags and
bones and bits of broken wood. The door-posts are grimed to the level of a
man's shoulder by the incoming and outgoing of tired people in greasy
clothes. The stairs were foul, and a cold wind blew down them.
"Top floor," a dirty painted woman told her--"top
floor, left hand. But I fancy she's made a bolt--that's what
I think. She was stony, I know, and three weeks' owing. I did take
'er up a nice cup of tea yesterday,
but I couldn't make no one hear. She ain't much class, anyhow."
It was the man on the second floor, the man without collar and without
shoes, who broke the door open. He protested that it was agin the law. But
the mother who had found the miracle-baby found for the man a pretty golden
argument.
"Well, if you say so," he said; "but if there's
any rumpus--well, you're a lady, and you'll say it was you.
An' if you don't, I shall--see?"
"Yes, yes--there won't be any fuss. It's all right.
Only do make haste. I'm certain there's something wrong. And just
feel how the wind blows under the door: The window must be open."
It was. And now the door hung crookedly from a broken hinge.
Of course, you have known all the time, as the mother knew, that the
woman would be dead.
She was. Her empty arms outstretched, she lay very cold and stiff on a
bed that was
old iron and sacking. The casement window had blown open, and the snow had drifted half across the room, and lay in a frozen streak like a shaft of dead-white moonshine. You know all that. It shows itself. What you do not know, perhaps--what at any rate the mother did not know who looked fearfully through the broken door--is that it was this woman who had stolen the waxen Christ Child, stripped her own baby, and laid it, with who knows what desperate incoherence of hope and love and faith, in the holy manger, and had gone away hugging the waxen babe that could not feel the bitter night under that shawl, thin as a nun's veil.
She had taken the Christ Child home; she called it home, one supposes.
And, once safely there, some scruple, some forgotten reverence, must have
come to her.
For she had set up an altar in that bare place.
Over the old sugar-box that used to serve her for table she had laid the
greenish shawl that was thin as a nun's veil. She had set the image of
the new-born Saviour in
a blue and white neckerchief that must have had to her the value of a relic, for it was clean, and its creases showed that it had long lain folded.
She had set up two candles in chipped beer bottles and lighted them.
They must have burned bravely, illumining that shrine, till the wind thrust
itself through the window and made everything dark and cold again.
And the last lean alms that Life had given she had spent on those two
candles.
So the image of the Mother of God got back its bambino. And the mother
who had no child got the miracle-baby. And the mother who made the shrine
with her last coin and her last warmth and her last love- relic, got . .
.
"Good thing for her she went off like she did," said the
policeman. "She'd a got a month for nicking of that image, sure
as I'm a sinner. Theft an' sacrullidge. It's
serious, that is. Lucky let-off, I call it."
"It must feel so firm," said John.
He had the fixed idea that islands were supported by stalks underneath,
like mushrooms, and could, like mushrooms, be gathered, supposing some one
had a hand big enough, which, for anything John knew, some one might easily
have. John had read all about giants.
He had read a great deal, for granny was
very tired and feeble, and the old man who took care of the garden was very deaf and very cross, and the old woman who looked after the housework had no time to look after John. Of course, she saw to it that he had meals to eat and clothes to wear, but that was all.
Granny had taught him to read, and as soon as he had understood that
reading was the way to get at stories for himself, instead of waiting till
granny felt well enough to read them to him, he learned quickly. And then
he read all the books on the shelf in the untidy parlour; there were only
five: Somebody's "Missionary Journeys in Peru," "The
Child's Guide to Knowledge," a hymn book, "The
Gardener's Manual," and Mrs. Something-or-Other's Cookery
Book.
He learned a good many of the hymns; his granny liked to hear him say
them when she was not too tired. The gardening book would have been
interesting if old Stemson would have let him try to carry out its hints on
preparing mushroom beds and
blanching cardoons. But he wouldn't. And Mrs. Stemson objected quite as strongly to his trying to cook "Sole àa la Normande" or "Eels en Matelotte" at her kitchen range.
"Then can't Stemson get me some other books when he goes
across to get the eating things?" John asked; "it's no use
for me to go on reading books that tell me how to do things if you
won't let me do them."
"I never seen such a child," said Mrs. Stemson; "never
satisfied! Why don't you play with your wooden horse like a good
little boy?"
"I don't want to play with my wooden horse," said John
firmly. "I want books to read in. I'll go and ask
granny."
"You're not to bother your granny. If you must read, you
must. Go along up to the attic. There's boxes and boxes of books
there. Only don't you disturb nothing else, and come down again soon
as ever you've chose your book."
He did not come down at all till she fetched him, and then it was
tea-time.
He was sitting on the floor, leaning against an old hair-trunk, and all
round him were piles of dusty books. He held "Gulliver's
Travels" open in his hands, and, to be ready when he had finished
that, he had his elbow on "Red Cotton Nightcap Country."
"Tea?" he said, looking up vacantly. "Oh yes! I
wasn't thinking about tea!"
"You come along down to it directly minute," said Mrs.
Stemson severely, "and no reading at meals, mind, with your buttery
thumb into all them books, as was your ma's. I know your careless
ways."
John was careless. Most boys are; but he would have given up reading
altogether rather than willingly hurt one of the books that had been his
dead mother's.
"Red Cotton Nightcap Country" didn't come up to its
title; and when "Gulliver" was finished--he found it dull
in parts--he searched the attic again. And this time he found the
fairy book that taught him all about giants. It and a lot more books that
he loved were in a little black box with a
rounded top, and E.B. on the cover in round-headed brass nails.
It was in the fairy book that he read about Dick Whittington and about
Puss in Boots.
"What's a cat like?" he asked Mrs. Stemson; for there
was no cat on the island.
"Oh," said Mrs. Stemson readily, "a cat's
like--like a cat, you know."
"Very well," said John; "I'll ask
granny."
"I'll be bound you would. Go and upset her with your silly
questions, and her bronchitis as bad as can be, as it is. Just like a
boy--think of nobody but yourself."
"Granny likes me to ask her questions," he said.
"Not about cats."
"But why?"
"She can't abide to hear 'em named."
"But why?"
"Oh, go along with you--do," said Mrs. Stemson; but
John, with the quiet persistence that always overcame her in the end,
declined to "go along."
"If you don't tell me," he said, "I shall ask my
granny."
"Oh, if you will have it, it was a cat killed your poor
ma."
"Oh!" said John,
"they're wild beasts, then? Oh, how horrible"
He had turned quite pale, and was holding on to the corner of the
dresser that she was scrubbing.
"Nonsense," she said, briskly soaping the brush. "Cats
ain't wild beasts--though they are a bit like little tigers, come
to think of it, about the figure. Your ma--there was some boys had
thrown a cat in the river, and your ma was a trying to get it out, and she
fell in and was drownded to death. That's all. And your granny, she
somehow took a dislike to cats from that time."
"I don't see why," said John, the colour coming slowly
back to his face; "it wasn't the cat's fault. If I ever
meet a cat I shall be kind to it, because mother was."
John read all the books that seemed as if they would let him read them;
and when
he read stories of children and the way they played together, he longed to be in the book and in the games. But most of all he longed to meet a cat and be kind to it.
Granny's bronchitis got worse and worse, and every day Stemson used
to row the boat over to the mainland, and the doctor used to come back in
the boat. The first time the doctor came he looked at John as if he were
sorry for him. "I wonder why," John said. The next time he came
he looked at John as though he liked him. And, of course, John was
pleased.
He would have liked to talk to the doctor about the books that he was
always reading. He read them in the branches of the trees that grew near
the house, he read them in bed, he read them on the doorstep in the sun, on
the rocks when the tide was high, and on the sand when the tide was
low.
But he and the doctor never talked to each other--first, because
John was too shy to begin, and, secondly, because Mrs. Stemson always came
close behind the doctor as
if she were trying to shoo him out of the house, as Stemson did the hens when they got into the garden.
And the doctor came every day, and John could only see his granny for a
very few minutes at a time. And she looked more tired than ever.
Then one day Mrs. Stemson, by some odd chance, was not in the way, and
the doctor stopped him in the garden and said:
"Little man, can't I bring you something from the mainland?
Isn't there anything you'd like?"
"Big man," said John very seriously, for he was not
accustomed to the way in which big people usually talk to little ones,
"I only want a cat; but I shall never have that, of
course."
"Why not?" said the doctor cheerfully, and next day he
opened his coat and pulled out a little kitten. It was striped, and very
like a tiger.
"Dear, dear, dear little thing," said John, taking it in his
arms. "Oh, how good you
are. May you be rewarded for your generosity!" He had read so many books that he sometimes talked like the people in them.
"You don't mean to say," said Mrs. Stemson, "that
you've brought him a cat--the missus being as she is
about them? Well, water's plentiful. We shan't miss a
pailful."
"You shan't!" said John, clutching the
kitten, and paling with fury.
"Hush, hush!" said the doctor. "You won't say
anything about the kitten to your granny, will you, old boy? Run along
now."
"Of course not," said John indignantly, and ran.
The doctor sank his voice to a whisper as John turned the corner of the
house. "It doesn't matter," he said; "it's only
a question of hours now. The kitten will be a comfort to the little chap
when--when he knows."
And it was. When Mrs. Stemson told him a few days later, and very gently
for her, that his granny had gone to be an angel, and when he had
understood that it meant
that he would not see her ever again until he was an angel too, the kitten's soft tabby fur was wet and streaked with his tears. He told the kitten how sorry he was that he hadn't always done exactly what his granny told him to do, and how he wished he'd been different. And the kitten mewed in sympathy, especially when John squeezed it too hard in the strength of his remorse. He had been a very good little boy, really; but the best of little boys have always something to be sorry for when the people they love have been "taken away to be angels." The kitten mewed, but it did not purr; it was not old enough.
"What's to become of the little chap?" asked the doctor
later.
"His uncle owns the island now the missus is gone," said
Mrs. Stemson. "He'll be down before long. He's wrote me as
he'll provide for the boy; send him to an orphan's home, he says.
A hard man Master George always was, and quarrelled with all the family.
Thank goodness me and Stemson has saved
enough in service to buy a little business and see a little life after all these years on this dull old island."
To John the island was very dull indeed, now that granny was not there
any more, and Mrs. Stemson talked to him less than ever. When she refused
to answer his questions he could not now say, "Very well, then;
I'll ask granny." And she almost always refused. So he talked to
the kitten.
"You know, pussy dear," he used to say, "we
aren't doing anything we ought to be doing, like they do in the books.
We aren't setting out to seek our fortunes, like the fairy-tale boys;
and we aren't going to school, like the boys in the other kind of
books. But we must just be very good till uncle comes. He'll be like
the doctor, very kind and nice. And he'll tell us every single thing
we ask him. He'll be of benevolent aspect, pussy, and the impress of
his noble heart will be imprinted on his face; and he'll press me to
his manly bosom, I shouldn't wonder."
But, when after some weeks the uncle did come, he was a heavy
middle-aged man, with cold hard little blue eyes, a creased waistcoat, and
a tight mouth that never smiled. He just nodded to John, and somehow, John
did not want to ask him anything.
The uncle went all over the house and all over the island, and made
notes in a black pocket-book. In the evening he sent for John, who came,
with the kitten, as usual, on his shoulder.
"You've to go to school," he said, "next Tuesday.
Be a good boy, and mind your books."
"I don't mind books at all," said John; "I love
them. May I have a basket to put pussy in? I might lose her if I took her
to school in my arms."
The uncle laughed, without smiling, which is very horrid to look at.
"A pail of water will do to put pussy in," he said.
"They don't take in cats at that school."
"Have you done with me now?" John asked very quietly, but
there was something in his tone that made the uncle say, "Come now,
none of your sulks, my fine fellow."
John stood looking at his uncle till the silence grew uncomfortable.
"Yes; you may go," said the uncle suddenly, "and
remember, no sulks."
"Very well," said John, and went.
That night as Mr. and Mrs. Stemson nodded over the kitchen fire, and the
uncle nodded over the fire in the dining-room, a small figure in fluttering
white crept down the stairs. It opened the kichen door suddenly.
"Drat the child," said Mrs. Stemson, starting violently;
"get back to your bed; you'll catch your death."
"My pussy's ill," said John. "I know she is. She
is at death's door."
"Fiddlestick-end with your pussy; off you go!" said Mrs.
Stemson, and Mr. Stemson growled so fiercely that John went.
Fear is the only thing that can conquer
fear. John's fear for his pussy's life was greater than his fear of his uncle.
He opened the parlour door. The uncle woke, and saw the small face made
swollen and ugly by long weeping.
"Get back to bed," he said. "What do you mean
disturbing the house like this?"
"My pussy--" began John, brave with the courage of the
great fear.
"I'll wring your pussy's neck in a minute," said
the uncle.
John fled.
Next morning there was no John on the island.
They searched high, and they searched low. They searched the house and
the garden and the rocks and the sand, but there wasn't so much as a
hair of John to be seen, a breath of John to be heard. And the boat was at
its moorings.
"He've drownded himself," said Mrs.
Stemson, "that's what he've done. You was too 'ard on
'im, Stemson; I always told you so."
"'Ard yourself," said Stemson; "'e
can't 'ave. Kids don't do things like that."
"You'd better go over to the mainland and tell the
police," said the uncle. He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
Perhaps he had been too hard. But then, he had never
understood children. He had always rather prided himself on not
understanding children.
Stemson unchained the boat, and went.
The doctor was at his late breakfast. He had been up all night with a
sick child. Something went past the window; something small and hurried.
Then the door opened.
"It's me!" said John. "My pussy's ill.
You're the doctor that cures people. I don't want my pussy to go
and be an angel like my granny."
John's clothes were torn, his forehead had a lumpy blue bruise on
it. His hands were scratched and bleeding, and hands and face were stained
with tears and dirt and tar.
The doctor took the kitten and looked at it carefully.
"She seems all right," he said; "only rather
frightened; and hungry, I expect."
He set down milk in a saucer in front of the fire. The kitten, after a
scared glance to right and left, lapped eagerly.
John, holding by the corner of the table, stood, rather unsteady.
"You poor, dear little chap," said the doctor, and took John
on his knee. It was pleasant to rest one's head on a firm
shoulder.
"Some hot milk first; that's right. Now, tell me how you got
here. See, pussy's all right."
"She wasn't, in the night," said John; "and every
one was cruel, and said put her in pails; so I got up, and we hid in the
boat's locker. Oh, it was so cold, even with my blanket, and pussy
hated it; and she scratched me, and I bumped my head; but we stayed there,
and then in the morning Stemson went over. He always goes to get
the bread and things; and when he'd tied up the boat we got out, and ran to where the houses begin, and asked for you, and a woman told us, and so we came. And I don't at all mind pussy being an angel-cat, if I may go, too, and be an angel-little-boy. But I don't want her to go without me. And she is ill; just like granny was."
The doctor cuddled John more comfortably against his shoulder. He had no
children of his own, but he had never prided himself on not understanding
them.
"What made you think she was ill?" he asked gently.
"It was the dreadful noise she made," said John, beginning
to sob; "a rattling in her chest; just like dear granny's
bronchitis. And pussy did it in bed, and she did it in the locker, after a
bit--and oh--oh--oh--you must make her
well! she's doing it now!"
The cat, having fed and washed, had stretched herself in front of the
fire. She was purring!
John sat up in bed when the doctor came in. It was the doctor's
bed.
"It's quite true what you told me," he said; "she
does sing because she's pleased. She does it when I stroke her. But
why didn't she do it before?"
"She was too young," said the doctor. "John, how would
you like to stay here and be my little boy? I've seen your uncle and
he says you may."
"For always?" asked John; "and live with you on the
solid land?"
"Yes."
"And you to fold me to your manly bosom like you did this
morning?"
"Yes, my little chap, yes----"
"And pussy to stay too?"
"Of course," said the doctor.
"Oh," said John, "my heart is full to overflowing. I
know not how to thank you! I'd ever so much rather do that than go and
be angels. Only when I do go you'll have to come too, and I'll be
the best angel-little-boy that ever was; and you'll be an
angel-doctor. I think you are now, really, almost; and pussy will be an angel-cat, because she'll be quite grown up by then. And we'll go and see granny and mother, and your mother too, if she's there. Won't they be pleased!"
"Yes," said the doctor; and he smiled and sighed at the same
time. "Yes, my little son; we must try to get there."
"Oh," said John again, "am I going to be your little
son? Now I know what 'transports of delight' means!" He
hugged the doctor, and in the happy silence that followed the kitten purred
heavily.
And Bert had none of these things. Instead he had what his mother called
the Hashpits. His mother was very poor, but she did not live in a
"crowded city slum, where only a strip of smoke-clouded sky shows
pale between the high dirty houses."
Life would have been gayer if she had, for such slums are not out of reach of the lighted streets, the barrel-organs, the changing picture-gallery of shop-windows, the come and go of excitement and event. She lived in a battered suburb, a place, not so long ago, good and green, where hawthorn was white in the hedges, and in the fields buttercups and dog-daisies and red field-sorrel stood up with the flowered grass for hay.
But now, rows and rows of ugly little houses, bricked and slated, have
crept out from the town, and, like crawling yellow caterpillars, have eaten
up the fresh green country. The houses are all alike, and all horrible, and
the people in them have no time to be sorry that the green country has been
eaten up. They have only time for two things, work and fear--the fear
that some day they will no longer be able to get work. Before that fear,
hope and joy lie paralysed, as warm little live things are that meet the
cold eyes of a serpent. Work and fear; for the men and women there is
nothing else.
But the child had something else. He had play. And he had a place to
play in.
Here and there, among the yellow brick caterpillars, lie, shrinking
ashamed, deflowered bits of the country that are, as yet, not much more
than half-ruined. They are called "Eligible Building Sites." On
them grow scant patches of grass, nettles tall and fierce, a stunted
May-tree or two with the yellow ground trampled hard round its
half-uncovered roots. There the kindly coltsfoot comes in spring; the brave
little pink convolvulus spreads its mantle over the bare dust, and there
are elder-bushes that flower in June, and tall docks and dandelions, and
stinking May-weed that has feathery leaves, and pretends to the other weeds
that it is a daisy.
Loose bricks lie about, and old cans that held Heaven knows what of
food, unsavoury and unnourishing. There are holes, like little ponds, full
of dirty water, with torn paper and broken bottles at the edge, where real
ponds wear their sweet trimming
of water-mint and rushes. All these things are good to play with. But, best of all, is the ashpit, a great hollow where the dustcarts come and tip out their loud-sounding, sour-smelling hoards--cinders and ashes and bones and bits of withered vegetables, potato peelings, filthy papers, matted hair and grease, dead cats, their poor fur flattened and damp, rotting scraps of oil-cloth, broken crockery--all the loathsome excretions of congested civilisation.
This was the child's El-dorado, his land of treasure and joy. Here
he spent every moment that could be filched from school or saved from
home.
The child in the green garden, where the cedars are, and the old lawn
and the clear stream, gets no treasures from any of these dearer to him
than the ashpits yielded to Bert's eyes and hands. They were live
hands--quick, clever, sensitive through their dirt. And the eyes could
see.
The full half of a china plate, with a blue bird on it, part of a
rose-wreath, washed
clean in one of the filthy puddles, and polished on the inside of his jacket--who shall say what savour of Eden-fruit it gave to the margarine-smeared slabs that were Bert's daily bread? Or the cake-tin, but little the worse for that hole in the side, polished with mud and loving care; how bright a vase in which to plant a straggling woody-nightshade, uprooted near the biggest of the elders! There was a brass brooch, too, with a single "diamond" left out of its original seven, that fastened mother's jacket, and the one diamond shone all the more bravely for its loneliness. When the sky was blue and the sun shone on the ashpits a world of possible discoveries winked at the child from every shard of crockery, every curve of broken bottle.
"I am a gold digger," he said, "and it's all gold
what I'm a-standing on; every bloomin' bit of it--only I
don't take the gold away. It's cheap 'ere; cheap as dirt. I
only takes the extry fine fings--see?"
It was to himself that he said it; there was no one else who would have
understood.
He found many things in the ashpits. The most wonderful of them all he
found on a Saturday. Father had come home drunk, quite early too, from the
tinned-milk factory where he worked. Mother had said things. Father had hit
her, and she had hit back--with the lamp. Fortunately, it was not
lighted, but, all the same, father had had to go to the doctor's to
have his head tied up. Bert was cuffed by both--not from malice, or
because he had done anything wrong, but just because he happened to be
there. The woody-nightshade had been knocked down and trampled upon. Mother
had cried, and one of the neighbours had run for a little something in a
bottle to help her get the better of it. Bert knew he was best out of the
way, and the longer he stayed away the better. He went out sniffing, and
wiping nose and eyes alike on the ragged cuff of his jacket. It left his
face dirtier than before for the most part, yet clean in queer pinky
streaks where the tears had been. He crept down
the road, through the broken fence to the ashpits.
The place sparkled and allured in a thousand points of light, where the
sun made beauty out of such material as man had left to it--old
sardine tins, shattered beer bottles, all things worthless and ugly.
"I wish," said Bert, sitting down on the ashes, and digging
his broken heels into the moist softness of them, "I wish everyfink
was different." Sometimes on Saturdays, when father was not drunk,
there were halfpennies for little boys. The thought of these coloured the
week. There had been none to-day. The chimneys of the factories rose up
tall and straight. Whichever way you looked there were factories, and sheds
all black and brown and grey. The ashes were grey, too, except where they
were wet, and then they were rusty red. And the smell of decay and filth
was keen and sickening. It did not sicken Bert. Nothing in his life smelt
otherwise.
"What's the good," said the child, "me
finding fings and all that?" he sniffed again. "I do wish--" he said, and stopped short. For a kindly-looking old gentleman was standing close to him, looking down on him through beaming spectacles.
"What do you wish, my little man?" he asked.
"Nuffink," said Bert resolutely.
"Then what are you crying for?"
"Farver's out o' work," said the child, with
perfect smoothness and a complete change of tone, "and muvver's
been ill ever since the last baby come. And vere ain't nuffing to eat
in the 'ouse, and no money for the doctor."
"Dear, dear," said the old gentleman sympathetically,
"that's very sad. How did your father lose his job?"
"Along of a mate of his," said the child, all the tide of
romance swelling the stream of words; "'e 'ad a down on
farver, 'cause farver 'e reported him wunst to the foreman for
langwidge. He said farver shirked 'is share when it come to shifting
sleepers. Farver's on the railway."
"Sure it wasn't drink?" asked the old gentleman.
"Oh no, sir! Quite sure, sir. 'E's a Band of 'Ope,
'e is--never tykes a drop week in week out; and muvver,
she's the same,"
"And are your parents kind to you?"
"Kind as kind vey are. Never lifts a 'and to me whatever I
does, and learns me my prayers and all."
"That's well," said the old gentleman. The creative
impulse in the child passionately went out to meet its opportunity--to
make something--a story--"like as if things
was different."
"We 'ad a little cottage wiv flowers all in ve garden. An
potatoes. An beans on strings, with red flowers. An Sunday cloves, and meat
from the bake-us every Sunday. An I 'ad a blue tie for to wear at
Sunday school. An muvver she 'ad a red dress wiv a lace collar and
flowers in 'er 'at. An everyfink. An a dog we kep. Carlo 'is
name was. All black and curly. I useter ride on 'is back. An
fowls."
"And then your father lost his work--dear, dear!"
"Yes, sir. An so..." The tide swept on. Under the creative
joy of the artist lay the speculation and desire of the child. Would the
old josser be good for a halfpenny?
Quite a long talk they had. A full biography, jewelled with detail,
rewarded the stranger's interest.
And the halfpenny. Would he? wouldn't he?
At long last the old gentleman's hand went to a side-pocket. He
would! He would! It might even be a penny.
"Here," said the prim voice kindly enough, and the hand
brought out a printed paper. "Give this to your father. It's
called 'Room at the Top: a few words on Self-help.'"
"Ain't you got ne'er a copper," asked the child in
a voice of honey, "to get a bit of bread wiv, sir?"
"Certainly not. I never give coppers.
On principle. Your father can apply to the Charity Organisation Society."
The little sharp face changed as a dream changes, and the face was the
face of Bert's father.
"Garn--call yourself a gentleman," cried the child,
snatching the tract out of the fat pale hand and tearing it across.
"A gentleman? I'll tell yer what yer are." He did, with
graphic directness, suited to the occasion and not to be printed.
"You're a very wicked little boy," said the
Philanthropist angrily, and picked his way across the ashpit, resuming that
quest for a short cut which had led him thus astray.
The child, still vociferously unprintable, dug his heels more deeply
into the ashes, and the flood of his foul eloquence slackened, ebbed,
ceased. Salt tears trickled down to his lips and washed them clean.
"I do wish," he sobbed, "I do wish everyfink was
different."
He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.
"Now you stop it, d'year?" he said presently. God had
given him courage as well as imagination, enterprise, eyes clear enough to
see beauty, and a heart big enough to hold love. "You go along
an' find somefink. That's what you do. See? Somefink as
Muvver'll like, or p'raps Farver, when they gets sober
again."
He resolutely got on his legs, and looked afar over the wide stretch of
his treasure ground.
A gleam of blue brightness beckoned him as sapphires might a queen. He
followed. A bottle, pleasantly ribbed, with a pretty red label; a cork,
too, unusual in his kingdom. He pulled the cork out with his teeth;
sniffed.
"Smells like cough-drops," he said.
He liked cough-drops. And he had not had the halfpenny that sometimes
happened on Saturdays.
He put out a little pink tongue to touch the lip of the bottle.
"Oh, crikey, ain't it 'ot!" he said. Then
he smacked his lips. "But it's good, though. Don't it warm you all down yer chest, neiver?" He took another lick, put the bottle in his pocket, and resumed his search for treasure. Fate was kind to him that day. He found a bent brass buckle--that would do for mother's hat--a mud-coloured handkerchief with a hole in it. "I could wash that out proper," he said. Also an illustrated paper with a lot of clean pages in it, and a quite wonderfully pink cup with only the handle and a very little bit of the lip missing. Now and then he heartened himself for the search with a sip from the sweet but comforting bottle that was nearly half full. How could any one have thrown away such a treasure?
But something for father--it was no good going home--one could
sleep quite well out here, and go home when "they" were
themselves again; but something for father--that, definitely, however
sleepy one might be. And, even to this extreme, indulgent, Fate granted him
"something for father"--a
briar pipe--burnt down somewhat, but still, the child knew, smokable.
It was under the biggest elder that he lay down, so that the last thing
he saw before he shut his eyes was the green mat of leaves, starry with
milk-white blossoms that oddshaped patches of sky showed through.
"I wish," said Bert, cramming his treasures under the ragged
covert of his jacket lest they should be taken from him while he slept,
"I wish everyfink was different."
Then his eyes closed. And presently everything was
different.
It was quite late when his father, now only half-drunk, and driven by
the mother's half-sober anxiety, came across the ashpits, his head
horrible with bandages, to look for his little son.
"That you, young Bert?" he said; "you get up and come
home long er me. Get up, I tell yer, or av I got ter kick ye up, ye
blooming lazy little beggar?"
Bert did not move. The father kicked him. Not enough to disable.
"Get up, I tell you," he said; and then his dulled brain
began to attend to what his foot had told him.
"Eh?" he said, "what's up? I ain't 'urt
ye, yer silly little devil! What's to pay? Speak up, can't
yer?"
But it was the silence that spoke.
The chill dew had fallen on the green and white of the elder, and on the
child's face, and on the buckle and the pipe and the pink tea-cup that
only lacked a handle.
Luckily, father was not too drunk to carry home the little shape. Young
Bert was very light for his age.
"Considering his
surroundings," said the coroner, heartening up a juryman who seemed
somehow a little upset, "it was probably the best thing that could
have happened to the child."
And all the time there are the green gardens, the lawns and the cedars,
the streams and the hayfields. There are also the ashpits.
It was the best thing that could have happened to the child.
low wall that divides my garden from the white road where the pink convolvuluses make flat round patches among the wayside grass, and we watched the sheep go slowly by, for this is market-day in the town, and this is the story she told me.
The princess is not living in her kingdom at present, as you will have
guessed from her coming to sit on my humble wall; she is in lodgings at the
seaside. That was why her hair was hanging all dark and long over her royal
shoulders, instead of being tidily tucked up under her crown, as it always
is, when she is at home in her palace. It was also the reason why she
carried a basket with strawberries in it, and a pat of butter and two penny
buns, which would presently be somebody's lunch. And the story she
told me was the story of the little boy who went home.
Jake Jenkins was his name, and he lived in a very nasty street in
London--Little
Goodge Street that is, which is a turning out of Goodge Street, which turns out of the Tottenham Court Road, which turns out of Oxford Street, which is too proud to turn out of anything. Sutton Row the street was called where Jake lived, and it was one of those streets where the side-walk is always bordered with cabbage stalks and orange peel and crushed banana skins, instead of the clean green grass, with daisies in it, that all side-walks ought to be bordered with. And when the wind blew, instead of the brown bright fallen leaves or the bits of clean hay that blow about in country roads, pieces of crumpled, dirty torn paper were caught up and fluttered down the ugly grimy street, and in at people's dirty front doors. For in Sutton Row all the doors are always open, and the children sit on the doorsteps playing with bits of rag and rusty iron, and dirty brick and dead mice, and none of them ever have any pocket handkerchiefs.
Jake lived with his aunt, because he had
no father and mother, and the aunt was not unkind to him; but she had not time to be very kind, because she had to work about fourteen hours a day, sewing strips of dyed rabbit-fur together, and the fluff used to get into her throat, so that she was always coughing. She got only about a shilling a day for this work, so that it was not easy for her to keep herself, let alone Jake. There was a big, dingy, untidy bed in the room, and a table, and a chair, whose cane seat had a hole in it, so that the broken canes stuck out underneath like the quills of a very untidy and careless porcupine. The black and brown fur used to lie all about on bed and table and chairs and floor, and the fluff got into Jake's throat, too, and made him cough, so that he liked to spend as much time as he could in the streets. In fine weather he used to look at the shops, and whiten the tip of his nose by pressing it against the windows of shops that sold things to eat.
One day, when the tip of his nose was
feeling quite cold from so long being pressed against the glass, some one touched him on his little thin shoulder. He jumped, because he thought it was the policeman. In London, and especially if you are poor, there are quite a lot of things you mustn't do--things that you would never think were wrong unless you had been told, and it is the policeman who tells you what these things are. But it wasn't the policeman this time; it was a lady with the most beautiful green eyes in the world. In fact, it was my princess.
"Are you hungry, dear?" she said.
"Yes," said Jake; because he was--always.
Then the lady went into the shop and bought a penny bun, and a bath bun,
and a cream bun, and gave them all to Jake in a paper bag; and she squeezed
his little dirty hand, and said, "I wish you could have them every
day, you poor dear little chap," and left him there so full of
happiness that at first he felt he was too full to have room even for
buns.
He recovered, however, and ate the penny bun first because it looked,
and indeed was, the plainest. Then he ate nearly all the bath bun. And then
he took one bite of the cream bun.
"Oh," said Jake, and his blue eyes were as round as saucers,
"I didn't think there could be anything so
good."
And then he finished the buns to the very last crumbs in the paper bag,
and went to look in at the garden in Bloomsbury Square, and he looked
through at the green grass and gravelled walks, and wished that he could
find a garden where all the children could play, not just only the ones
whose mothers had the keys of the cold iron gates.
"If I was always in a garden, and the lady to give me things to
eat--Oh, jimmimy!" said Jake.
After a long time he turned to go home, but his eyes were so full of
green trees and green grass, and his mind was so full of cream buns and my
princess that he did
not look where he was going, and he did not care.
That was how it happened: that at the corner of Goodge Street a cab
horse knocked him down with its big soft nose, and before he could pick
himself up the cab wheel went over him, and they carried him to the
Middlesex Hospital at the end of Goodge Street, and when he woke up he was
in the loveliest bed you can imagine, and a very kind lady was leaning over
him, and calling him "dear," just as my princess had done. In
Sutton Row, you know, they do not call the children "dear," but
quite different names, even when they mean to be kind.
Being in hospital is rather like being in heaven when you are a child
who has always lived in Sutton Row. No one cuffs you, or pushes you roughly
out of the way. There is no scolding. There are large clean beds that jump
softly when you move, and you have a bed to yourself--which Jake had
never had before--and things to eat nicer
than you ever dreamed of--chicken and rice pudding, and fish and mutton, and all the things some people get into the habit of turning their noses up at at nursery dinner. And there are toys to play with; real toys; soldiers and puzzles and bricks--not just bits of rag and rusty iron and brick and dead mice.
Even if your legs do hurt rather badly, it is worth while to go to
hospital when you have spent all your life in Sutton Row.
"I likes the eating and the drinking and the lying and the ladies
and the everything," said Jake. "I wish I 'adn't
never got to go 'ome no more."
But, unfortunately, nobody is allowed to stay on for ever in a hospital
except, of course, the doctors and nurses.
"Me got to go 'ome again?" Jake asked.
"Couldn't you let me stop on a bit? I wouldn't give no
trouble. I could 'elp clean the floors and wash up and
that."
The nurse laughed.
"All right, Tommy," she said--all boys
are called Tommy in the hospital when they're not called "dear";--"you aren't going home yet awhile. You're to go down to the sea, and get strong and well first."
"What sea?" asked Jake.
"The sea," said the nurse, who was rather in a
hurry. "It's all blue water, you know, and there's sand to
dig in, and all sorts of lovely things."
"Things to eat?" asked Jake, who had never had enough to eat
in his life till he got run over.
"I should think so!" said the nurse gaily. "Meat every
day, and cake and jam and milk; and strawberries, I shouldn't
wonder."
Jake pondered these beautiful words, and that was why he did not cry
quite so much as was expected when he was put into the cab that was to take
him to the railway station. He cried quite as much as was good for him,
however, went to sleep in the train, and hardly woke up to know that he was
being fed with sweet bread-and-milk, and
put to sleep in a bed like the ones in the hospital. And, next day, there was the sand, wide and yellow and wonderfully clean, with yellow sea-poppies and sea-thistles growing on one side of it, and on the other the sea--blue and smooth, and going on and on and on and on, for as far as you could see.
"And farther," said Jake to himself; "oh! very, very
much farther."
He lay on the hot gold sand and looked at the hot gold sun, and the hot
blue sky. He was very comfortable. He had a soft clean shirt to wear, and a
soft clean sailor suit.
No one knows how comfortable clean soft clothes are, unless they have
had to wear hard dirty ones all their lives, as Jake had done.
He was only six; but six years are very long in Sutton Row.
"I wish Sutton Row was like this 'ere," he said; and
then the wonderful thing happened. My princess came to him
quietly--from nowhere, as it seemed--and sat down
on the sand and held out her dear arms to him.
"Why!" she said, "it's you!"
Jake owned that it was "me right enough."
"You're the little boy that----"
"Yes," said Jake, and wriggled on to her lap, and put his
head on the kindest shoulder in the world.
"But how did you get here?"
"Hospital," said Jake enthusiastically. "Both my legs
broke along of a keb going over 'em. They've mended 'em up a
bit, and they're going to get mended for good in this 'ere
sandy-sea-place. I say, ain't these 'ere jist a bit of all
right?" His thin sandy yellow claws played with her jingling
bangles.
"So you're going to get well here?" said my
princess.
Jake told her "Yes," with many other things.
The nurses in the hospital had been kind, kind, kind; but they had not
nursed him on soft laps of smooth blue stuff; their caps
were stiff, and their aprons, and they had not much time, anyhow, to nurse little boys.
"How soft and sweet you are," said Jake. "You smells
like the flower-stalls in Goodge Street. Don't go away. I want to stay
along er you."
"I'll come back," said the lady who is my princess.
"I'm going into the sea now. I'm going to swim and see the
seaweed floating like islands, and the fishes swimming, and all the little
shells and stones on the bottom of the sea. And even a mermaid, perhaps, if
I'm lucky."
"England's a island what we lives on. Sutton Court's
part of it. I don't think much of islands," said Jake.
"What's mermaids?"
The lady told him a little about mermaids.
"Are they kind and soft to sit on like you?" he asked.
"They're always kind, at least I feel sure they are,"
she said; "but they're cold and slippery. It's nicer to be
nursed by land people. But they live in pearly houses
under the sea, and no one is ever cross, or angry, or hungry, or unhappy there."
"I should like to go there," said Jake.
"Perhaps we'll go together some day," said my princess,
and went to bathe.
After that every day she talked to him and told him stories, and built
sand-castles with him, and gathered shells for him; and life became a
perfectly beautiful thing to Jake, because the sea and the sky and the sand
are so good and beautiful, and my princess is so beautiful and good.
So every day he grew stronger and stronger, and his face grew brown that
had been so pale and lemon-coloured, and his blue eyes looked bluer than
ever between their tanned lids. And he knew now the names of shells, and of
the little sea-beasts that lie on the sand at low tide. And the sun shone
every day and all day long.
Then quite suddenly the end came. He was cured, as far as he ever could
be cured, and he must go back to Sutton Street, to make room for some other
sick child to lie
in his lovely, soft, white, clean bed, and eat the good things that he so liked to eat, and to be nursed on the warm beach by the lady who is the dearest in the world.
They told him quite kindly, and he only said:
"Must I really go home?"
And they said yes, he must, really.
"When?" said Jake.
And they said to-morrow.
That day, when the lady set him down on the warm sandy beach beside the
castle she had built for him, and went off for her bathe, he did not sit
still as usual, but went after her slowly, because of the broken legs that
would never be quite the same as legs that no cab-wheels had ever gone
over. He saw her go down the low, wooden pier in her white bathing-cloak,
and at the end of the pier, where the deep water was, she cast down her
white cloak, and stood up in her blue swimming-dress, and dived deep, deep
into the water.
Jake crept along over the rough timber of
the pier, that was warm to creeping hands and knees, and came to the place where the tar was wet with the splash of the green water that had covered his lady. She was swimming out to sea now; he could see the darkness of her hair in a long streak behind her as she swam.
Then he leaned over and looked down into the deeps of the water, but he
could not see the shells at the bottom, nor the mermaids, and he wanted to
see them.
"I think I will go and look," said Jake to himself,
"if my lady's there; or perhaps they'll let me stay down
there, along of her, and never go home no more. There must be lots of room
at the bottom of the sea."
The water was cold as it closed over his head, and there was a humming
in his ears like the snarling, moaning noise of London streets. Had he
fallen asleep? Had they taken him home without waking.
"No, no," Jake tried to say; "I don't want to go
home. I won't go home."
And he sank to the bottom of the sea, and through it, and the floor of
the sea closed again behind him, and he was in another world. Have you
never thought that the floor of this world may be the sky of another world,
just as the floor of heaven is the same as our sky?
He fell right through the sea-floor, and out of the sky of that lower
world on to its green meadows. And he did not hurt himself at all, because
the big white birds that live there came and carried him down on wings as
soft as the lap of any princess. They laid him down in a grassy green field
where there were daisies. White May-bushes grew all about, and at the end
of the field was a garden, with a red wall round it. There were trees
leaning over the garden wall, and on the trees strawberries and cherries
and bananas and lettuces and oranges were growing in rich profusion.
"Oh, my," said Jake, "if I only 'ad the key of
the gate!" But when he got to the gate, which was exactly like the
gates of the
Square Gardens, he found that it was open, and he walked straight through. He went up the path, between plants covered with strange and beautiful things. Some of the shrubs had toys growing on them--soldiers and boxes of bricks and puzzles, so that they looked like Christmas trees. He paused, entranced before the beautiful, half-opened buds of a tin-soldier bush, and it was hard to pass the tall tree among whose glossy leaves red and green indiarubber balls were glistening in dewy freshness. And a top-tree, whose fruit was falling to the ground with ripeness, held him for a moment. But he went on. He did not dare to pick any of the toys.
And presently he came to the house, which was queer but delightful.
Gay-coloured curtains fluttered at the upper windows, which were all open.
And all the lower windows were filled with nice things to eat, like the
shops in Goodge Street. The door was wide open, and quickly some one in
blue skirts came flying through it, and down the marble steps to meet
him.
"Why! it's you!" said Jake, as arms went
round him, arms that he knew.
"Yes, dear. Aren't you glad you've come home?"
said my princess's voice.
"This ain't 'ome," said Jake.
"Oh yes, it is," said she; "and you're going to
live here for ever my own little boy. Come along, let's go and pick
strawberries."
The strawberries grew on tall trees, just like the ones in Bloomsbury
Square; and my princess bent down the branches, so that Jake could gather
them for himself. And she picked him a ball from the ball tree, and several
buds from the tin-soldier tree, and they sat and enjoyed everything on the
smooth lawn in the sunshine. There is a very nice sun in the under-sea
world.
"Lor'," said Jake, "ain't it prime? But what
about the coppers? Won't they run us in for setting about on the grass
so free? Or p'r'aps you've got the key of the
gate."
"There aren't any keys here," said my
princess, at least, if it wasn't my princess, I don't know who it could have been; "nobody wants to lock up the grass or the strawberries, or the cakes. There's plenty for every one."
"Don't no one ever eat too much?" asked Jake, who, a
week before, had had his lesson on this subject, illustrated by jam
pudding.
"Oh no," the lady told him; "it's only when
people aren't quite sure that there's plenty for every one that
they take too much."
"And what do they do here; not work, do they?" Jake was
thinking of the fluffy rabbit fur and his aunt's cough.
"Oh yes; every one works, and so every one gets work
done early, and there is plenty of time to play. Look, there are the
children coming out of school."
The children came up a grassy avenue, skipping and running and laughing
and singing as they came. They all wore white smocks and leather belts, and
their feet were bare and brown on the green grass.
With them were grown-up people in clothes that looked comfortable as well as pretty, and none of the ladies had the kind of hat that looks crooked and as though it might blow off at any moment.
"Why!" cried Jake, very much surprised, "nobody looks
cross!"
"Of course not," said the lady; "why should they?
work-time's over, and now it's play-time, and presently
it'll be sleepy-time. And then work-time again to-morrow. Look!
they're coming to ask you to play with them!" Jake waited,
thrilled with joy and pride.
A brown-eyed child came, smiling shyly and kindly, and took Jake by the
hand, and led him away; and my princess sat on the marble steps of that
beautiful house and watched the games till Jake, tired out with pleasure,
came to fill her hands with the flowers he had gathered; and, sleepily
happy, to lay his head in her lap.
"Work-time, play-time, sleepy-time," she said; "I
shall just have time to tuck
you up in bed, my own little boy, and then I must go."
"Go?" Jake was miserably awake in an instant. "You
ain't going--not without me?"
"I must," she said; "my work's not here, and
I've got to go and do it. I shall come back to you some day. But every
one here is kind. You'll be very happy here, dear."
"You ain't agoin' to go away--not without
me," said Jake, sniffing.
"You'll be very, very happy here; you know you will,
don't you, dear?" she said, holding him close.
But Jake would say nothing but, "You ain't agoin'
away--not without me?" and he said it over and over again.
"But there's everything here that any one could want. Think
of the strawberry trees!"
"I'd rather have you, a long sight," he said.
"And you ain't agoin' away without me, are you?"
"Would you rather have me, even," said
the lady, who was either my princess or nobody, "even if we had to live in the old world where so many people are unkind and stupid and dirty?"
"Couldn't you learn them to be clean like me?" said
Jake, fingering his soft shirt proudly, "and kind like you?" he
added, his arms round her neck.
"We might try. But if you can't do without me, Jake, we must
go back, now. Are you sure you wouldn't like to stay here
without me? Going back will hurt you rather badly, dear."
"Bad as my legs?"
"I don't know; worse perhaps."
"I don't care," said Jake stoutly, "only you said
I was to be your own little boy."
"My own own little boy," said the lady, "for ever and
ever. Now, shut your eyes, and I'll carry you, and try not to let the
going back hurt you more than it must."
It did hurt though, horribly. And when the hurting was over Jake was in
bed in a room with a window that looks over the
sea--such a pretty room Jake tells me--and the dearest lady in the world had got her dear arms round him, and was looking at him, "with her eyes just like as if she'd been crying," Jake said.
"Your own own little boy," gasped Jake, and it was quite
hard for him to speak at all.
"My very own," said my princess. And so he is.
I think I said that the most dear princess in the world told me this
story, but, of course, she didn't. She only told me quite a little bit
of it, and by the time she came to the end of that little bit her dear eyes
looked just as Jake had said.
"You see," she said, "he'd never have tumbled
into the sea if I hadn't told him that nonsense about mermaids.
Because he went to look for them. So it was really all my fault. So, of
course, he belongs to me now. Don't you see?" I said I did see,
and we talked about other things. It was Jake who told me most of the
story,
of course, and I never asked him to explain the parts I didn't understand.
So Jake is now "very own little boy" to my princess, and he
will grow up to be a prince, a very good and clever one, I think. Because,
of course, he was a prince by birth, and now he has come home to his
kingdom of love and happiness. It is an odd thing, considering that all
little babies are born princes and princesses, that so few of them come to
their kingdoms in this world. There must be a screw loose somewhere,
don't you think?
have been six--teacher had said "a number of boys"--standing up to them "determined," so the story had run, "to put an end to their cruel sport." He saw the number of boys "cowed by his brave demeanour." He saw the pond on the heath,--he had instantly visualised that as the scene of the heroic act--the pond by the Hare and Billet; saw himself wading into the water ankle-deep, knee-deep, then swimming--he must learn to swim. He felt in a sudden thrill the rapture of the moment when he caught the dog; he pictured it acquiescing gratefully in the rescue, and swam back to shore with it in his arms. He heard the approving shouts of the crowd on the bank, even the lot of bad boys "applauding the noble bravery of their late enemy." The words stuck in his head. Perhaps because he had no words of his own. For Alf was a timid, silent mouse of a child. The contemplation of this imagined heroism stirred him to the core. And the dog, "loving him ever after"--that opened a new heaven.
He felt the warm, shaggy body between shirt and jacket; he would carry the dog about with him as Abe Toovey's father carried the bull-pup. He felt the cold, damp nose snuggled against his neck, the warm tongue licking his ears. The dog would love him ever after. And here he lost himself in a higher heaven still. How he would love the dog. How he would teach it tricks, patiently, kindly. No beatings. He would save half his dinner for it, the half of breakfast and supper, too, if such were the needs of the beloved. The dream lasted till the end of the gas-works, there to break suddenly, like a soap-bubble.
His aunt would never let him keep a dog, never. But suppose he saw the
dog drowning; what could he do? Save it, and desert it? Never! The problem
routed the dream.
He got home late for tea, and his aunt "warmed his ears for
him," a customary ritual, involving but slight and fleeting emotion
on either side.
"Where you been, eh? Don't come no
falsehoods over me, my man. Out with it; playing along of them dirty board school boys, I'll be bound. Which way did you come home?"
"Gas-works," said the child.
"What was you doing?"
"Nothink!"
"There you go," said the aunt, pushing his bread-and-butter
across the clean brown and mauve of the oilcloth-covered table.
"Nothing! That's you all over, that is. If you can't do
nothing else, I should think you'd think about your blessings. Many a
norphan hasn't got a kind aunt to come home to, nor yet a tea.
How'd you like to be a workus' boy?"
Alf knew that his aunt kept a clean house and a clean name in a world
where both were rare. He was grateful because he was not, as he well might
have been, but for her, a workus' boy.
Yet all he found to say was "I dunno."
"There's gratitude," said the aunt, and sniffed.
Alf, silent, munched; drank gurglingly from a blue and white mug, put
his arm across his chest in the place where, in the dream, the dog had
lain. Speech was always strangely difficult to him.
He spoke when he was spoken to, not otherwise; and not then, if speaking
could be avoided. But now, spurred by the dream, he spoke.
"I say, aunt," he said heavily.
"Well, what d'you say?" The aunt's amazement was
softened by a feeling that perhaps Alf was "coming out."
"I wish I'd got a dawg."
"Bless and save us!" She looked round the kitchen, the
cleanest, one supposes, in that street, probably in that district. "A
dog? Any one offered to give you a dog?"
"No," said Alf.
"That's all right. Where'd you get the seven-and-six for
the license?"
"I dunno," said Alf; and indeed he did not. The idea was new
and unpleasant. How had he managed about that in the dream?
He spoke again, and still with effort.
"But s'pose I'd got the seven-and-six."
"Then it 'ud go to buy your new boots."
"I should like to 'ave a dawg."
"I dessay. And what about me, an' my clean floors, and
jumping up on the furniture? Like it to sleep with you,
p'r'aps?"
Alf made no answer to this bitter sarcasm. In point of fact, the idea
had visited him as a beautiful possibility.
"If I 'ad a dawg," the child went on, trembling with
the agitation of a conversation begun by himself, and with this new
insistence of desire, "I'd never want no more
pennies--never no more, if I'd got a dawg."
"Go along with your dogs," said the aunt briskly. "You
get your lesson against to-morrow, that's what you better do. And then
go up to the heath and run about a bit. You're as white as paper and
as thin as a rat in an ironmonger's. You don't never answer to
your food, like some boys."
Something in the child's narrow face and
large eyes caught at her as she took up the tea-tray, and she paused a moment.
"If we was in the country," she admitted, "I'd as
lief as not you kep a dog. It could live in a bar'l in the yard. But
in this bit of a place it ud turrify us; no bounds to it."
Alf knew that "in the country" where dogs were possible to
turrify means to annoy. He had always had dreams ever since he could
remember--dreams of the farm in Kent that his aunt talked of, where
the cherry orchards were, and the pears on the side of the house, "so
you could pick 'em outer window." He had dreamed of being King
of England, with ermine robes, so jolly for the winter; and a gold
crown--less convenient, perhaps. But now the dog-dream drove all other
dreams away. The country--well, the central figure there was
comfortable, not heroic. Kings often did wrong, more often than not, the
history books seemed to think. But the boy who rescued a dog in distress,
this was the real hero--the boy who did the Really Right Thing,
did it bravely, and was rewarded by love given and returned.
He had not found it possible to love his aunt, and there was no one else
in his world. In books boys loved their teachers. Alf was not in a
book.
He took the dream to bed with him. Oh, if he could only have taken the
dog-alive, warm, responsive, loving, and beloved!
The dream was there when he awoke--he took it with him to school;
and out of school played with it near all the water he could find. By the
Ravensbourne and the Quaggy, by the ponds on the heath. Dogs he saw, a
plenty, and boys. But the boys were just boys who played, and the dogs were
happy, barking and splashing, bounding into the water of their own free,
gay will, climbing out again with agile, blunt-clawed feet, to bedew the
bank and the onlookers with the scattered spray of their shakings.
"If only I could have a chance," he said. Then the boys at
school should see.
"Cowardy custard," they called him, because he was appalled by the giant-stride, and "Miss Mum," because he had no words, and the swings made him sick. "I'd like them to be there when I pulled the dog out," he said, and pictured their faces. He had not learned to swim; the water did not seem deep enough to make that worth while. The chance to save the dog was what he longed for. And the chance came. Not exactly as he had pictured it. But then our chances seldom do.
It came one day by the little river, running full now, and swollen with
two weeks of heavy summer rain. The child, haunting the waterside as usual,
saw a boy, a well-dressed disagreeable-looking boy, dragging a rough brown
dog by a string. The dog's long hair fell over eyes that looked wild
terror and appeal.
"Go along in, then," cried the boy, and threw a stone;
"hi! fetch it!"
The little dog cowered and pulled the string taut.
"Go in. Fetch it, then!" the boy repeated. And still the dog
cowered, resistant.
"You little beast!" said the dog's master between set
teeth, drew in the string, caught up the dog, and flung it far into the
water.
Alf thrilled; made a step; stopped. The dog was swimming. Had the dog in
the story been able to swim? It dragged itself ashore.
"Come here, sir!" shouted its master.
The little shrinking slave cowered and retreated.
"Come here, sir!" the master got his foot on the end of the
string.
"I'll teach you to come when you're called," said
the young slave-driver. He shortened the string, caught the dog by the
neck, and Alf's heart thrilled to the anguished cries of the helpless
little slave. It was a swagger-stick, such as soldiers carry--a
horrible stick, with cruel knobs on it.
"Stop it!" said a voice Alf did not know.
"Mind--your--own--business," said the other,
with, between the words, full stops that the blows made.
"Stop it, I say!" said Alf in that new voice.
Only the sound of the stick against soft flesh and bones answered. And
at each blow the dog cried out anew.
Then Alf snatched at the dog, got it, held it tight. The other boy was
coming at him; he would take the dog away; would beat it again. Alf pushed;
there was a cry, a splash, and Alf ran. He paused under the railway arch;
there was no pursuit.
What was he to do?
He dared not take the dog home to his aunt. Perhaps Abe Toovey's
father would keep it till he could think of a way to make his aunt see how
much he wanted it. He buttoned the dog inside his coat--the
dream-detail he had loved best. The dog resisted till it felt the warmth of
his breast, then it ceased to struggle, and presently, as he walked, the
cold nose was snuggled against his neck; the tip of a warm tongue caressed
his ear.
The moment was the dearest the child had
ever known--the first glimmers of the love, given and returned, that was to light the lamp of joy. A dream-jewel to be paid for by the whole dream-treasures of a life.
Before the magistrate next day, Alf, confused and dizzy with horror,
heard how he had stolen a valuable Aberdeen terrier, had made a murderous
assault on a harmless little boy, the son of an eminent solicitor, had
tried to drown him, had induced a schoolfellow to hide the stolen
property--this a very damning clause--with other offences.
He tried to say that the harmless little boy was cruel--was beating
the dog. All sorts of people sprang up to say how gentle, how noble, how
truthful, how good to dumb animals the harmless little boy was.
"The dog is very much attached to my son," said the eminent
solicitor, "if it could be produced in
court----?"
The dog, at least, would bear witness for him. Alf's wide
horror-filled eyes fixed on the door by which the copper had gone out
to fetch it. The dog would show before all the world that love which had thrilled through them both when the wet body had lain against the child's breast, the loving tongue had licked his ear.
Some one said, "Let the dog loose."
Alf leaned forward, breathless. The solicitor's little boy
whistled, and the dog sprang to fawn, in this safe, dry place where was no
river and no swagger-stick, on the hand that had hurt so hardly.
"You see," said the solicitor, waving a large pink hand.
Then, indeed, the child saw that he was alone. Even the dog... Face to
face with this mighty unexplained machinery of policemen and angry grown-up
people, he was dumb as any driven beast at the gate of the slaughter-house.
He fought for words. There must be something he could say to make them
understand. He was struggling in despair's deep waters, where words
float out of reach before one can grasp them. He clutched at a spar.
"I wanted a dawg," he said, scowling to keep back the
tears.
"Callous little ruffian," said the
solicitor's wife.
"I wanted a dawg," he said again. "I told aunt I
wanted a dawg."
Evidence of premeditation.
People told each other that this sort of child was a menace to
society.
The court was a sea of white and pink faces; waves of blackness surged
across it. "Reformatory" was the word that struck like a heavy
club on a dark night.
The aunt says that the disgrace has broken her heart.
Something else was broken, too. Alf dreamed no more dreams.
Nobody's fault, of course, least of all the fault of the majesty of
the law. Yet... that little, pitiful, dumb child; that irresistible
tremendous imperturbable majesty. And under majesty's triumphant
chariot wheels, the poor dreams, faded, crushed for ever in the filthy
dust!
Every one was very busy; no one had leisure for play. You were very
little, too
little to carry out any generous Christmas schemes of your own, and the others had no time to help you. You wandered about the house, bored and forlorn, and you wished there could be Christmas without all those locked doors, and things suddenly hidden when you came in--this preoccupation of every one in preparations for what seemed a very long way off. They did not want you in the schoolroom nor in the parlour, and in the kitchen there was all the loud bustle of making ready for the great, greedy feast that marks the beginning of our religion.
So you went out, and looked at those windows whose blinds were drawn
down, and--you were always an adventurer--you climbed up, and
opened the window very cleverly with a knife that you took from the
knife-box on the dresser when no one was looking. Then you pushed back the
stiff holland of the blinds, and got in among the secrets. When your eyes
became used to the yellow dusk that the blinds made, you saw the Christmas
tree with its many colours
and faint glitterings in the dusk, and the little table with your name on it, and many beautiful things there that were to be yours when Christmas came. There were the tables of the others. There, also, on a chair, were the little bags of sweets that you yourself had helped to tie up with red wool for the poor little children with no nice homes and no kind mothers. There were a great many bags, and you looked at them and wished you were a poor little child, so that you might have one for your own. There were sweets on your own table, but you knew that it would be greedy to touch these before The Day. One of the red wool threads had caught in another and become untied, you presently saw; the sweets were naked between the muslin edges of the bag. A pink almond sweet lay almost outside. I wish you had not taken that pink almond sweet. It was very good, and you took another. Outside the locked door you heard feet and whisperings. You stood still, and your heart beat in your throat with as real
a suspense as comes to any leader of a forlorn hope--any mountain climber on the summit of danger. The steps passed. Still you stayed there, and presently the bag was empty. The sweets tasted very good, but you wished you had not eaten them. Quite heart-brokenly you wished it, as one does wish such vain things, but not as I wish it now.
Of course, mother found out your crime quite soon; and when, with a
strange, changed face, she questioned you, you lied. There was a pulsating,
confused horror, then, of people who said they had seen you open the
window; there was the red of the sweets on your hands, the stickiness on
your little lips that lied and trembled. They said things to you about
stealing and prison and thieves--many words many times repeated. They
told you how much worse it was to rob the little children, who had no nice
homes and kind mothers, than it would have been to take something from your
sisters' tables or your own. And they told you how wicked it was to
tell lies. And you had
no answer to give. You were very little, you had indeed done this thing, and you were sorry. They beat your little hands that had stolen, and they told you that it hurt them more than it hurt you. Then they put you in the schoolroom, and locked you in, and went away.
You heard the key turn, and you were left alone with your
crime--oh, my baby! your crime and your vain repentance--quite
alone. You held your burning, tingling hands to your guilty mouth,
breathing on them to dull the pain. The tears ran down your dirty face, and
there was no one to dry them. Your head ached with the torture of the
ordeal by question--it throbbed with the suddenness of all these
happenings. So little a time ago you were at peace with every one; every
one loved you; it was all so jolly. Now, your head ached; there was no kind
shoulder to lean it on; you went on crying all alone. By-and-by, you heard
people laugh on the stairs; you would have liked to kill them.
Presently you stopped crying, and went to the window to press your nose
against the pane and look out over the desolated winter-garden.
All the remorse of the criminal was yours.
"If I had not done that, just that one thing, I should be like the
others," you thought. And it had been so easy to do it. And the doing
of it, that one little thing had cut away from your feet the firm ground of
love on which so far you had confidently walked--cut it away perhaps
for ever. How should you know?
How did that day pass for you? It seemed as though it would never pass.
They brought your dinner on a tray. You spoke, and they did not answer. You
understood. No one would care to speak to such a wicked boy. You did not
want the dinner; but presently you ate it. It was something to do. The mug
was your own silver mug, that was always set at mother's side, where
your place used to be before you did this thing, and cut yourself off from
all love and human companionship. You wondered whether you would be kept here to-morrow and to-morrow again--always, and always alone. They had not set any term to your imprisonment.
Yet even in your prison your energy, your lively interest in life, did
not wholly leave you. After awhile you looked round for "something to
do." There were no pretty secrets in the schoolroom now--all
these had been carried away to leave a clear space for your punishment. But
scattered scraps of bright silk and velvet from your sister's
love-work lay all about, and there were crumpled paper-wrappings, and,
mercifully forgotten, scissors. You must have "cut out" for a
long time, there were so many snippings; and your paper men and women and
boats covered half the table. And on the floor you made a pattern of
diamonds and crosses with snippets of coloured silks and lumps of coal.
Your mother saw them late that night and brushed them into the hearth to
save the servants work in the morning. She did not
know, alas! across how many black nights that baby pattern would trace itself for her.
When you heard a hand on the door you stopped your industry; any one
opening found you idle. You understood that your punishment was not meant
to have any alleviations of invention, interest, occupation.
Now and again, through that endless day, the maid came in to mend the
fire. She would, perhaps, in her ignorance, have spoken kindly to you, and
you would have loved her for it, as a saint loves God; but your father and
mother had seen to it that your punishment was not rendered ineffective by
any folly of sympathy. This was to be a lesson to you.
"Lying and stealing," your parents told each other in the
warm, lighted room where they sat together, "we must
break him of them. Yes, dearest," they said, co