On the wall a clock was ticking; that and the rustling of the fire as the coals sank lower were the only sounds. Like a white satin mantle that had drifted from God’s shoulders, the snow lay across the world. The sun flashed down; the studio was flooded with glory.
About the snow and how it came Jimmie Boy had been inventing stories. It was the angels’ washing day up there and some of their wings had blown off the clothes line. No, wa it wasn’t. This was how the snow really happened. The impatient little children who were waiting to be born had had a pillow-fight, and had burst their pillows.
But his father hadn’t spoken for a long time. The fire was going out. Vashti might arrive at almost any moment And, alas, Teddy was naked. He was posing for the figure of Love, peering in forlornly through the fast-locked gate. He hadn’t wanted to do it; even now he was filled with shame. But Jimmie Boy had offered him money—and he needed money; and Dearie had begged him not to leave Jimmie Boy for a single second. When he had crept up to her room to visit her, she had seized his hands and whispered reproachfully, “Go back to him. Go back.” The best way to be always with his father had been to pose for him.
And there was another reason: by making himself necessary to the picture he had been able to see Vashti. Day after day he had sat in the studio, mouse-quiet, watching her. At night he had made haste to go to sleep that the next day might come more quickly. In the morning, when he had wakened, his first thoughts had been of her; as he dressed, he had told himself, “I shall see her in three hours.” Vashti hadn’t seen her portrait yet; she had been promised that this time she should see it—that this time it should be done. The promise had been made before, but now it was to be kept. So to-day was the last day.
“Please, mayn’t I move?”
“Not yet That’s the sixth time you’ve asked me. I’d have finished if you’d kept quiet.”
“But—but I’m all aches and shivers.”
“Nonsense! You can’t be cold with that great fire.” His father was too absorbed; he hadn’t noticed that the fire had gone out “I know what’s the matter with you, Teddy: you’re afraid she’ll be here before you’re dressed. Pooh! What of it? Now stop just as you are for ten minutes, and then——”
He left his sentence unended and fell to work again with concentrated energy. His mind was aflame with the fury of his imagination. He was far away from reality. It wasn’t Teddy he was painting; it was Love, famished by indifference and tantalized by yearning—Love, bruising his face against the bars which forever shut him out. This wasn’t a London studio, ignobly contrived above a stable; it was a spice-fragrant garden of the East, stared at by the ravishing eye of the sun, where a lady of dreams stooped feeding among tall lilies.
“When am I to see it?” Teddy questioned.
“When she sees it.”
“Not till then?”
“Be still, and don’t ask so many questions.”
“I wanted to see it before her,” explained Teddy, “because I’m hoping I don’t show too much.”
His father wiped a brush on the sleeve of his jacket and wriggled his eyebrows. “Take my word for it, sonny, you look much better as you are now. It’s a shame that we ever have to cover you up.” He laid aside his palette. “There, that’s the last touch. It’s done. By Mohammed, it’s splendid. Jump into your duds, you shrimp. I’m going to tell Dearie before Miss Jodrell comes.”
The wild head vanished through the hole in the floor. Teddy heard his father laughing as he passed through the stable. Creeping to the window, he watched him cut across flower-beds towards the house, kicking up the snow as he ran.
It was done. The great exhilaration was ended. Tomorrow, when he awoke, it would be no good saying, “I shall see her again in three hours.” At night he would gain nothing by going to sleep quickly; the new day when it came would bring him nothing. The studio without her would seem empty and dull. If only he had been fortified by the possession of five pounds, he would have boldly reminded her of her promise. Six-and-sixpence was the sum total of his wealth; it was hidden away in an old cigar box which he had labeled MARRIAGE. If a husband didn’t have at least five pounds, his wife would have to go out charing. He couldn’t imagine Vashti doing that.
Shivering with cold, yet drenched in sunlight he stood hesitating by the window. His body gleamed white and lithe; behind him, tall as manhood, stretched his shadow. Clasping his hands in a silent argument he stepped back and glanced towards the easel. Her face was there, hidden from him behind the canvas. Only his father had seen it yet; but he, too, wanted to see it—he had more right than any one in the world.
He tiptoed a few steps nearer, his bare feet making no sound; halted doubtfully, then stole swiftly forward, lured on by irresistible desire.
He drew back amazed. What had his father done? It was intoxicating. The breath of the lilies drifted out; he could feel their listlessness. An atmosphere of satiety brooded over the garden—a sense of too much sweetness, too much beauty, too much loneliness. The skies, for all their blueness, sagged exhausted. The winds puffed their cheeks in vain, hurrying strength from the north and south. They could not rouse the garden from its contentment. It stifled.
Centermost a woman drooped above the lilies, an enchantress who was herself enchanted. Dreamy with contemplation, she gazed out sideways at the little boy. Her eyes slanted and beckoned, but they failed to read his eyes. Her lips, aloof with indifference, were wistful and scarlet as poppies.
The face was Vashti’s—a striking interpretation; but——
Some latent hint of expression had been over-emphasized. One searched for the difference and found it in the smile that hovered indolently about the edges of her mouth. It wounded and fascinated; it did not satisfy. It seemed to say, “To you I will be everything; to me you shall be nothing.”
Clenching his fists, Teddy stared at her. Tears sprang into his eyes. He was little, but he loved her. She called to him; even while she called, it was as though she shook her head in perpetual denial. Naked in the street outside the garden he saw himself. He was whispering to her, striving to awake her from the trance of the flowers. His face was pressed between the bars and drawn with impatience.
Slowly he bent forward, tiptoeing up, his arms spread back and balanced like wings. His lips touched hers. Hers moved under them. He dashed his fingers across his mouth; they came away blood-colored. He trembled with fear, knowing what he had done.
A rush of footsteps behind him. He was caught in her embrace. It was as though she had leapt out from the picture. She was kneeling beside him, her arms about him, kissing the warm ivory of his body. His sense of shame was overpowered by his sense of wonder.
“The poor little god!” she whispered. “That woman won’t look at him. But when you are Love, Teddy, I open the gate.”
Some one was in the stable; feet were ascending. Shame took the place of wonder at being found naked in her presence.
“Quick. Run behind the curtain and dress,” she muttered.
From his place of hiding he heard his father enter.
“Hulloa! So you got here and saw it without me! Why, what’s this?” And then, “Your lip’s bleeding, Miss Jodrell. Ah, I see now. Vanity! Been kissing yourself; didn’t know the paint was wet. Jove, that’s odd!” He was bending to examine. “The blurring of the lips has altered the expression. There’s something in the face that I never intended.”
“It makes me look kinder, don’t you think?”
James Gurney stood up; he was still intent upon his original conception. “I’ll put that right with half-an-hour’s work.”
“You won’t; it’s my picture. It’s more like me, and I like it better.” She spoke with settled defiance; her voice altered to a tone of taunting slyness. “You’re immensely clever, Mr. Gurney, but you don’t know everything about women.”
She liked it better! Teddy couldn’t confess that his lips had carried the redness from the picture to her mouth. There was a sense of gladness in his guilt. Because of this he believed her irrevocably pledged to him.
It was the early morning of the last day of the year. Staring out into the street, Teddy flattened his nose against the window. He was doing his best to make himself inconspicuous; neither Jane nor his father had yet noticed that he was wearing his Eton suit on a week-day. That his father hadn’t noticed was not surprising. For Jane’s blindness there was a reason.
Jane’s method of clearing the table would have told him that last night had been her night out. She would be like this all day. Dustpans would fall on the landings. Brooms would slide bumpity-bump down the stairs. The front-door bell would ring maddeningly, till an exasperated voice called not too loudly, “Jane, Jane. Are you deaf? Aren’t you ever going?” It was so that Vashti might not be kept waiting that Teddy was pressing his nose against the window.
This was to be his great day, when matters were to be brought to a crisis. In his secret heart he was wondering what marriage would be like. He was convinced he would enjoy it. Who wouldn’t enjoy living forever and forever alone with Vashti? Of course, at first he would miss his mother and father—he would miss them dreadfully; but then he could invite them to stay with him quite often. He was amused to remember that he was the only person in the world who knew that this was to be his wedding day. Even Vashti didn’t know it. He was saving the news to surprise her.
At each new outburst of noise his thoughts kept turning back to speculations as to what might have caused this terrific upsetting of Jane. She herself would tell him presently; she always did, and he would do his best to look politely sympathetic. Perhaps her middle-aged suitor from the country had pounced on her while out walking with her new young man. He might have struck him—might have killed him. Love brought her nothing but tragedy. It seemed silly of her to continue her adventures in loving.
Crash! He spun round. The tray had slipped from Jane’s hands. In a mood of penitence she stood gaping at the wreckage. His father lowered his paper and gazed at her with an air of complete self-mastery. He was always angriest when he appeared most quiet “Go on,” he encouraged. “Stamp on them. Don’t leave anything. You can do better than that.”
“If I don’t give satisfackshun——” Jane lifted her apron and dabbed at her eyes. “If I don’t give satisfackshun——-”
Teddy heard his father strike a match and settle back into his chair. In the quiet that followed, Teddy’s thoughts returned to the channels out of which they had been diverted.
Funny! Love was the happiest thing in the world, and yet—yet it hadn’t made the people whom he knew happy.
Harriet was in love; and Hal with Vashti; and Vashti——
He remembered another sequence of people who hadn’t been made happy by love. Mrs. Sheerug hadn’t, even though she was the daughter of a Lord Mayor of London and had run away with Alonzo to get him. Mr. Hughes hadn’t, for his Henrietta had gone up in a swing-boat and had failed to come down. Most distinctly Jane hadn’t. And his mother and his father—concerning them his memories contradicted one another. Was Dearie afraid of the ladies who came to have their portraits painted? Why should she be, when Jimmie Boy was already her husband?
He shifted his nose to a new place on the window; the old place was getting wet.
And then there was Mr. Yaffon. Mr. Yaffon lived next door and seemed to sum up the entire problem in a nutshell.
His neighbors accounted for his oddities by saying that long ago he had had an unfortunate heart affair.
He had a squeaky voice, was thin as a beanpole and very shabby. His legs caved in at the knees and his shoulders looked crushed, as if a heavy weight was perpetually pressing on his head. He didn’t go to business or paint pictures like other people. In winter he locked himself in a backroom and studied something called philosophy; the summers he spent in his garden, planting things and then digging them up. He was rarely seen in the street; when he did go out his chief object seemed to be to avoid attracting attention. By instinct he chose the side which was in shadow. Hugging the wall, he would creep along the pavement, wearily searching for something. At an interval of a dozen paces a fox terrier of immense age followed. Teddy had discovered the dog’s name by accident He had stopped to stroke it, saying, “He’s nearly blind, poor old fellow.” Mr. Yaffon had corrected him with squeaky severity: “Alice is not a fellow; she’s a lady-dog.” That was the only conversation he and Mr. Yaffon had ever held. Since then, without knowing why, he had taken it for granted that the adored one of the unfortunate heart affair had been named Alice. He accounted for their separation by supposing that Mr. Yaffon’s voice had done it. The reason for this supposition was the green parrot.
The green parrot was a reprobate-looking bird with broken tail-feathers and white eyelids which, when closed, gave him a sanctimonious expression. When open, they revealed Satanic black eyes which darted evilly in every direction. During the winter he disappeared entirely; but with the first day of spring he was brought out into the garden and lived there for the best part of the summer. From the bedroom windows Teddy could watch him rattling his chain and jigging up and down on his perch. He would make noises like a cork coming out of a bottle and follow them up with a fizzing sound; then he would lower his white lids in a pious manner and say, deep down in his throat, “Let us pray.” He seemed to be trying to create the impression that, whatever his master was now, there had been a time when he had been something of a hypocrite and a good deal of a devil.
But the parrot’s great moment came when his master pottered inoffensively up the path towards him. The bird would wait until he got opposite; then he would scream in a squeaky voice, an exact imitation of Mr. Yaffon’s, “But I love you. I love you.” The old gentleman would grow red and shuffle into the house, leaving the bird turning somersaults on his perch and flapping his wings in paroxysms of laughter.
That was why, whatever calamity had occurred, Teddy supposed that Mr. Yaffon’s voice had done it Try as he would, whichever way he turned, he could find no proof that love made people happy. That didn’t persuade him that love couldn’t. It only meant that grown people were stupid. In his experience they often were.
The bell of the front door rang. It rang a second time.
“Who is it?” asked his father.
Teddy turned; his face was glowing with excitement. “It’s Vashti.”
It’s to be our day, Teddy.”
The gate swung to behind them with a clang. He looked back and saw his father, framed in the window; then the palings of the next-door garden shut him out He was alone with her. It was as though with the clanging of the gate he had said “good-by” to childish things forever.
The world shone forth to meet them, romantic with frost and lacquered with ice. It was as though the sky had rained molten glass which, spreading out across trees, houses and pavements, had covered them with a skin of burning glory. Eden Row sparkled quaint and old-fashioned as a Christmas card. The river, which followed its length, gleamed like a bared saber. Windows, in the cliff-line of crooked houses, were jewels which glittered smoothly in the sunlight In the park, beyond the river, black boughs of trees were hieroglyphics carved on glaciers of cloud. Chimneys were top-hatted sentinels, crouching above smoldering camp-fires. Overhead the golden gong of the sun hung silent At any moment it seemed that a cloud must strike it and the brittle boom of the impact would mutter through the heavens. It was a world transformed—no longer a prison swung out into the void in which men and women struggled, and misunderstood, and loved and, in their loving, died.
Vashti felt for his hand. He wanted to take it and yet—— If he did, people who didn’t understand would think him nothing but a little boy. What he really wanted was to take her arm; he couldn’t reach up to that “Don’t you want to hold it?”
He laughed shyly and slipped his fingers softly into hers.
As they passed Orchid Lodge, standing flush with the pavement, she glanced up at the second story, where the line of windows commenced.
“The people who live there hate me. They’ll hate me more presently. I can’t blame them.”
She hurried her steps. Drawing a breath of relief, she whispered, “Look back and tell me whether anybody saw us.”
He looked back. Two figures were emerging from the doorway—one excessively fat, the other so lean that he looked like a straight line.
“Only the murd—— I mean Mr. Sheerug and Mr. Hughes. I don’t think they saw us.”
“That’s all right.”
She laughed merrily—not on one note as most people laugh, but all up and down the scale. The sparkle of morning was in her voice. Like a flash out of a happy dream she moved through the ice-cold world. People turned to gaze after her. A policeman, stamping his feet on the look-out for some attractive housemaid, touched his helmet She nodded.
“D’you know him?”
“Never clapped eyes on him in my life. A pretty woman belongs to the whole world, Teddy.”
Butcher boys, hopping down from carts, stood thunderstruck. After she had passed they whistled, giving vent to their approbation. Teddy had the satisfaction of knowing that he was envied; he snuggled his hand more closely into hers. Even Mr. Yaffon, the man who was as faded as a memory, raised dim eyes and shrunk against the wall, stung into painful life. His little dog waddled ahead, doing her best to coax him to come on, trying to say, “None of that, Master. You’ve done it once; please not a second time.”
Was it only Teddy’s fancy—the fancy of every lover since the world was created—that everything, animate and inanimate, was jealous of him? Streets seemed to blaze at her coming. Sparrows flew down and chirped noisily in the gutters, as though they felt that where she was there should be singing. Famished trees shivered and broke their silence, mumbling hoarse apologies: “It isn’t our fault Winter’s given us colds in the head. If we had our way, we’d be leafy for you.”
Years later Teddy looked back and questioned, was it love that the little boy felt that winter’s morning? He had experienced what the grown world calls real love by then, and yet he couldn’t see the difference, except that real love is more afraid, thinks more of itself and is more exacting. If love be a divine uplifting, a desirable madness, a mirage of fine deception which exists only in the lover’s brain, then he felt it that morning. And he felt it in all its goodness, without the manifold doubts as to ulterior motives, without the unstable tenderness which so swiftly changes to utterest cruelty, and without the need to crush in order to make certain. In his love of Vashti he came nearer to the white standards of chivalry than was ever again to be his lot In later years he asked himself, was she really so incredibly beautiful? Did her step have the lightness, her face the bewitching power, her voice the gentleness he had imagined? By that time he had learnt the cynical wisdom which wonders, “What is this hand that I hold so fast, more than any other hand? What are these lips? Flesh—-there are others as warm and beautiful Is this meeting love or is it chance?”
He was far from that blighting caution yet Merely to be allowed to serve her, if it could help her to be allowed to die for her, to be allowed to give his all—he asked no more. He carried his all in an ill-wrapped parcel beneath his arm. She observed it.
“Holloa! Brought your luggage?”
“Not my luggage.”
“Then what?”
He flushed. “Can’t tell you yet.”
“Oh, but tell me!”
“I—I couldn’t here—not where every one’s passing.”
“Something for me?” she guessed.
He nodded.
Higher up the street, outside a public house, a hansom cab was standing.
“I must know,” she laughed. “Can’t wait another second. We’ll be alone in that.”
“Where to?” asked the cabby, peering through the trap.
“Anywhere. Piccadilly Circus.”
The doors closed as if folded by invisible hands. The window lowered. They were in a little house which fled across main thoroughfares, up side streets, round corners. He was more alone with her than ever. He could feel the warmth of her furs. He could hear her draw her breath.
“Well?” she asked.
As he placed it in her lap the parcel jingled. “I saved it,” he explained, “for us—for you and me, because of what somebody told me.”
She tore the paper off. In her hands was a wooden box with MARRIAGE inked across it.
“Marriage!” She raised it to her ear and shook it “Money!”
Teddy gazed straight before him. The pounding of the horse’s hoofs seemed no louder than the pounding of his heart. ’Harriet said that five pounds were the least that a lady would expect. “And so—and so—— There’s five pounds.”
He wasn’t looking at her. He didn’t dare to look at her. And so he couldn’t be sure whether she had sighed or laughed. A horrible fear struck him: she might be wondering how so young a person could come honestly by so large a fortune. He spoke quickly. “It’s mine, all of it I asked for money for Christmas. Jimmie Boy paid me for going into his picture; and Hal and Mrs. Sheerug—they gave me——”
“And it’s for me?”
“Why, of course.”
“And it’s all you’ve got—everything you have in the world?” Her arm slipped about him. “You’re the little god Love, Teddy; that’s what you are.”
Traffic was growing thick about them. They came to a crossing where a policeman held up his hand. Through the panes misted over by their breath, they watched the crawling caravan of carts and buses. In the sudden cessation from motion it seemed to Teddy that the eyes of the world were gazing in on them. “A little boy and a grown lady!” they were saying. “He wants to be her husband!” And then they laughed. Not till they were traveling again did he pick up his courage.
“Can we—can we——”
“Can we what?”
“Be married to-day? You said ‘some day’ when you promised.”
For her it was a strange situation, as absurd as it was pathetic. For a moment she tried not to take him seriously, then she glanced down at the eager face, the Eton suit, the clasped hands. In his childish world the make-believe was real. For him the faery tale, enacted for her own diversion, had been a promise. She felt angry with herself—as angry as a sportsman who, intending to miss, has brought down a songbird. Playing at love was her recreation. She couldn’t help it—it was in her blood: her approach to everything masculine was by way of fascination. She felt herself a goddess; it was life to her to be worshiped. All men’s friendships had to be love affairs or else they were insipid; on her side she pledged herself to no more than friendship. Not to be adored piqued her.
But to have flirted with a child! To have filled him with dreams and to have broken down his shyness! As she sat there with his box, labeled MARRIAGE, in her lap, she wondered what was best to be done. If she told him it was a jest, she would rub the dust off the moth-wings of his faith forever. There was only one thing: to continue the extravagant pretense.
“It’s splendid of you, Teddy, to have saved so much.”
“Is it much? Really much?”
“Well, isn’t it?”
His high spirits came back. He laughed and leant his head against her shoulder. “I don’t know. I’m not very old yet.”
“It’s because of that——” She knitted her brows, puzzling how she could break the news to him most gently. In the back of her mind she smiled to remember how much this consideration would have meant to some of her lovers. “It’s because you’re not so very old yet, that I think we ought to wait a year.”
“A year!” He sat up and stared. “But a year’s a whole twelve months!”
She patted his hand. “You wouldn’t like to have people laugh at me, would you? A year would give you time to grow up. And besides, before I marry, there are so many things to be done. I haven’t told you, but I’m going to America almost directly—going to sing there. Five pounds is a terrific lot of money in England, but in America it would soon get spent. Even though you were my husband, you wouldn’t be able to come. You’d have to stay here alone in our new house, and that wouldn’t be very jolly.”
He saw his dream crumbling and tried to be a man; but his lip trembled. “I don’t think—— Perhaps you never meant your promise.”
The trap-door in the roof opened. The hoarse voice of the cabby intruded. “’Ere we are. Piccadilly Circus.”
Vashti felt for her purse in her muff. It wasn’t there. She thought for a minute, then gave the man an address and told him to drive on.
“But I did mean my promise,” she assured Teddy. “Why, a year’s not long. Cheer up. Think of all the fun we’ll have writing letters. Harriet can’t have told you properly about marriage. One has to be very careful. One has to get a house and buy things for it. There are heaps of things to be bought when one gets married.”
“And wouldn’t five pounds be enough?”
She shook her head sorrowfully. “Not quite enough. But don’t let’s think about it. This is our day, Teddy, and we’re going to be happy. Guess where I’m taking you; it proves that I meant my promise.”
When he couldn’t guess, she bent over him and whispered. He clapped his hands. “To see a house!”
“To see our house,” she corrected, smiling mysteriously. “I always knew that some day I’d meet the little god Love; and so I got a house ready for him. It’s a faery house, Teddy; only you and I can see it. If you were ever to tell any one, especially Mrs. Sheerug, it would vanish.”
“I’ll never, never tell. I won’t even tell Dearie. And does nobody, nobody but you and me, know about it?”
She hesitated; then, “Nobody,” she answered.
To have a secret with her which no one else shared, almost made up for the disappointment of not being married. Holding her hand, he watched eagerly the flying rows of houses, trying to guess which was the one.
“It’s in nearly the next street, Teddy.”
“This one?”
“Not this one. Ours has a little white gate and a garden; it’s ever so much cosier.”
They had left the traffic where the snow was churned into mud. Once more it was a world of spun glass, of whiteness and quiet, that they traversed. To Teddy it seemed that the cab was magic; it knew its way out of ugliness to the places where dreams grow up.
The cab halted; the window flew back and the doors opened of themselves. They stepped out on to the pavement. The little white gate was there, just as Vashti had said. A path led up, through snow as soft as cotton-wool, to a red-brick nest of a house. A look of warmth lay behind its windows. Plants, leaning forward to catch the light, pressed against the panes. A canary fluttered in a gilded cage like a captured ray of sun.
A maid in cap and apron answered the bell. She was not at all like Jane, who never looked tidy till after lunch.
“Lost my purse, Pauline,” Vashti pouted. “I couldn’t pay my fare, so had to drive home. The cabman’s waiting.” Pauline had been watching the strange little boy with unfriendly eyes. “If you please, mam, he’s here.” She sank her voice. Teddy caught the last words, “In the drawing-room, playing with Miss Desire.”
Vashti frowned. She looked at Teddy as Pauline had done. He felt at once that a mistake had been made, that there was something that he must not see and that, because of the person in the drawing-room, he was not wanted.
“What shall I do? Stupid of me!” Turning to the maid, Vashti spoke in a lowered voice, “Go up to my room quietly and bring me down my money. We’ll be sitting in the cab and you can bring it out—— No. That won’t do. He might think that I hadn’t wanted to see him. There’d be a fuss. What am I to do, Pauline? For heaven’s sake suggest something.”
“Couldn’t the little boy go and sit in the cab, while you——”
Vashti had her hand on the latch to let Teddy out when shrill laughter rang through the house. A door in the hall burst open and a small girl ran out, pursued by a man on his hands and knees. He had a rug flung over his head and shoulders, and was roaring loudly like a lion. The little girl was too excited to notice where she was going or who were present.
She ran on, glancing backward, till she charged full tilt into Teddy. “Save me,” she cried, clinging to him and trying to hide herself behind him. He put his arms about her and faced the lion.
Balked of his prey, the lion halted. No one spoke. In the unaccounted-for silence the lion lost his fierceness. Throwing back the rug, he looked up. Teddy found himself gazing into a face he recognized.
“Of all the——”
Hal rose to his feet and dusted his knees. He glanced meaningly from Teddy to Vashti. “Is this wise?”
“Shish!” Her lips did scarcely more than frame the warning. “Hal, I never told you,” she said gayly, “Teddy’s in love with me and one day we’re going to be married. That’s why I brought him to see the house. He’s promised never to breathe a word of what he sees, because it’s a faery house and, if he does, it’ll vanish.”
Hal tried to look very serious. “Oh, yes, most certainly it’s a faery house. I’m only allowed here because I’m your champion.”
The boy’s quick instinct told him that an attempt was being made to deceive him. He wondered why. Who was the little girl who had nestled against him? Finding that he was a stranger she had become shy. He looked at her. She was younger than himself. Long curls, the color of Vashti’s, fell upon her tiny shoulders. She was exquisitely slight Her frock was a pale blue to match her eyes, and very short above her knees. She looked like a spring flower, made to nod and nod in the sunshine and to last only for a little while. More spirit than body had gone to her making; a puff of wind would send her dancing out of sight.
“Desire, come here, darling. Say thank you to the boy for saving you from the lion.”
Kneeling, Vashti took the little girl’s reluctant hand and held it out to Teddy. Desire snatched it away and began to cry. A knocking at the door caused a diversion; it was the cabman demanding his fare and asking how much longer they expected him to wait Hal paid; Teddy noticed that Vashti let him pay as if it were his right.
He was mystified; the house and what happened in it were so different from anything he had expected. Vashti had been so emphatic that no one but herself and himself were to know about it, and here were Hal and Pauline and the little girl who knew about it already. Hal’s expression, when he had thrown the rug from his shoulders, had been that of a man who was found out. But his eyes, when they had met Vashti’s, had become daring with gladness. Teddy was aware that he had been brought unintentionally to the edge of a big secret which he could not understand.
The cabman had been gone for a long time. Teddy had been left to amuse himself in the room where the canary hopped in its cage and the plants leant forward to catch the sunlight. It was a long room, running from the front of the house to the back and was divided by an archway. In the back part a fire burned and a couch was drawn up before the fire. He hadn’t the heart to go to it, but stood gazing out between the plants into the street in the exact spot where Vashti had left him. Every now and then the canary twittered, as if trying to draw him into conversation; sometimes it dropped seeds on his head. He didn’t know quite what it was he feared or why. On an easel in the archway he espied The Garden Enclosed, which his father had painted. The little god was still peering in through the gate. Teddy had hoped that by now he might have entered the garden. Like the little god he waited, with ears attentive to catch any sound in the quiet He seemed to have been waiting for ages.
A door in the back half of the room opened. Hal and Vashti came in, walking near together. Vashti looked round Hal’s shoulder and called to Teddy, “Not much longer now. I’ll be with you in a moment.” Then they both seemed to forget him.
Seated on the couch before the fire, their heads nearly touching, they spoke earnestly. Perhaps they didn’t know how far their voices carried. Perhaps they were too self-absorbed to notice. Perhaps they didn’t care. Hal held her hand, opening and closing the fingers, and stooping sometimes to kiss the tips of them.
“I’d come to the breaking point,” he whispered; “I either had to have you altogether or to do without you. It was the shilly-shallying, the neither one thing nor the other, that broke me down.” He laughed and caught his breath. “I tried to do without you, Vashti; there were times when I almost hated you. You seemed not to trouble that I was going out of your life. But now—— Well, if you must keep your freedom, we’ll at least have all the happiness we can. I’ll do what you like. I’m not going to urge you any more, but I still hope for Desire’s sake that some day we’ll——”
“Poor boy, you still want to own me. But tell me, was it hearing that I was going to America that brought you back?”
“Brought me back!” He pressed her open palm against his mouth. “To you, dearest, wherever you were, I should always be coming back. How could I help it? Hulloa! That’s fine.” His eyes had caught the picture. “Where did you——”
“All the while you were angry with me I was having it painted for you. But I shan’t be giving it to you now.” She glanced sideways at him with mocking tenderness. “You won’t need it. It was to be a farewell present to some one who had changed his mind.”
He drew her face down. “My darling, my mind will never change.”
Suddenly she broke from his embrace and glanced back into the room, raising her voice. “You know it’s Teddy that I’m going to marry, if ever I do marry. Why, we almost thought we’d get married this morning. Come here, my littlest lover. Don’t look so downhearted. Champions are allowed to kiss their ladies’ hands. Didn’t Hal tell you? Well, they are, and you may if you like.”
Teddy didn’t kiss her hand. He cuddled down on the hearthrug with his head against her knees, feeling himself like Love in the picture, forever shut out. The soul had vanished from his glorious day. He was hoping that Hal would go; she didn’t seem to belong to him while he stayed. Lunch went by, tea came, and still he stayed. A blind forlornness filled his mind that he couldn’t be a man. In spite of her caresses he felt in his heart that all her promises had been pretense.
Not until night had fallen and she got into the cab to take him home did he have her to himself. The lamps stared out on the snow like two great eyes. Once again it was a faery world of mysterious hints and shadows.
She drew him to her. She realized the dull hopelessness of the child and wondered what would be his estimate of her, if he remembered, when he became a man. Would he think that he had been tampered with and made the plaything of a foolish woman’s idleness? She wanted to provide against that. She wanted him always to think well of her. She felt almost humble in the presence of his accusing silence. She had a strange longing to apologize.
“It hasn’t—hasn’t been quite our day, Teddy—not quite the day we’d planned. I’m dreadfully sorry; I wouldn’t have had it happen this way for the world.”
He didn’t stir—didn’t say a word. She made her voice sound as if she were crying; he wasn’t certain that she wasn’t crying.
“You’re not angry with me, are you? It’s so difficult being grown up. Sooner or later every one gets angry, even Hal. But I thought that my littlest lover would be different—that, though he didn’t understand, he’d still like me and believe that I’d tried——”
His arms shot up and clasped her neck. In the flashlight of the passing street lamps she saw his face, quivering and tear wet. She couldn’t account for it, why she, a woman, should be so deeply moved. She had conjured dreams of a man who would one day gaze into her eyes like that, believing only the best that was in her and, because of that belief, making the best permanent. She had experimented with the world and knew that she would never meet the man; love lit passion in men’s eyes. But for a moment she had found that faith in the face of a little child. The fickleness and wildness died down in her blood; the moment held a purifying silence. Taking his face between her hands, she kissed his lips.
“I’m going away,” she whispered. “Whatever you hear, even when you’ve become a man, believe always that I wanted to be good. Believe that, whatever happens. Promise me, Teddy. It—it’ll help.”
For a week he had no news of her. Then his father said to him one morning, “Oh, by the way, The Garden Enclosed is going to be exhibited. I asked Miss Jodrell to lend it to me.”
“Will—will she bring it herself?” he asked, trying to disguise his anxiety.
“Herself! No. She’s rather an important person. She’s gone to America.”
Then the news leaked out that Hal had gone too.
Some nights later he was driving back down Eden Row with his father. They had been to the gallery where the picture was hanging. Without warning the cab pulled up with a jerk; he found himself clinging to the dashboard. His eyes were staring into the gas-lit gloom of Eden Row.
Almost touching the horse’s nose, two men, a fat and a lean one, had darted out from the shadow of the pavement They were shouting at something that sat balanced, humped like a sack, on the spiked palings which divided the river from the road. They had all but reached it; it screamed, shot erect, and jumped. There was a sullen splash, then silence and the gurgling of the river as the ripples closed slowly over it.
The silhouette of the fat man bent double; the silhouette of the lean man, using it as a stepping stone, climbed the palings and dived into the blackness. It would have been a dumb charade, if the fat man hadn’t said, “Um! Um!” when he felt the lean man’s foot digging into his back.
Teddy was hauled out into the road by his father. Grampus puffings were coming from the river, splashings and groanings. The cabman was standing up in his seat, profanely expressing his emotions. A police-whistle called near at hand. A hundred yards away another answered. Through the emptiness of night the pounding of feet sounded.
In an instant, as though it had sprung out of the ground, a crowd had gathered. People started to strike matches, which they held out through the palings in a futile endeavor to see what was happening.
A policeman came up, elbowing and shoving. He caught the horse’s head and whisked the cab round so that its lamps shone down on the river. They revealed Mr. Hughes, his bowler hat smashed over his forehead, swimming desperately with one hand and towing a bundle towards the bank.
Men swarmed over the palings and dragged him safe to land. Clearing his throat, he commenced explaining to the policeman, “As I was walkin’ with my friend, I sees ’er climbin’ over. I says to ’im, That’s queer. That ain’t allowed.’ And at that moment——”
Teddy lost the rest. Letting go his father’s hand, he was wriggling his way to the front through the legs of the crowd. He reached the palings and peered through.
Stretched limply on the bank, her hair broken loose, the policeman’s bull’s-eye glaring down on her, was Harriet.
Vashti’s name was never mentioned in connection with the attempted suicide, but he quickly knew that in some mysterious way she was held responsible. When he asked his mother, “Was it because Hal went to America?” she answered him evasively, “Harriet’s a curious girl—not quite normal. That may have had something to do with it.”
For many months, as far as Orchid Lodge was concerned, Vashti’s memory was a hand clapped over the mouth of laughter. Harriet broke dishes now only by accident and never in temper. She went about her work without singing. Mrs. Sheerug put away her gay green mantle; after Hal left, she dressed in black. She spoke less about men being shiftless creatures. If she caught herself doing it from habit, she stopped sharply, fearing lest she should be suspected of accusing some one man. Her great theme nowadays was the blighting influence of selfishness. She was always on the look-out for signs of selfishness in Teddy. Once, at parting with him, she refrained from the usual gift of money, saying, “My dear, beware of selfishness. I’m afraid you come here not because you love me, but for what you can get” She spent much of her time in covering page after page of foreign notepaper in the spare-room where the gilded harp stood against the window. She did it in the spare-room because, if it so happened that she wanted to cry, no one could see her there. Questioned by careless persons about Hal, she would answer, “He’s gone to America. He’s doing splendidly. He’ll be back some time. No, I can’t say when.”
Her other two children, Ruddy and Madge, didn’t interest her particularly. Ruddy was redheaded and always pulling things to pieces to see how they worked. Madge was twenty, a cross girl who loved animals and pretended to hate men.
When at the end of two months the portrait came back from the gallery, a dispute arose which brought home to Teddy the way in which Vashti was regarded. She had written none of the promised letters, so Jimmie Boy didn’t know her address. He might have asked Mrs. Sheerug, but the matter was too delicate. He made up his mind to hang the picture in his house and had set about doing so, when Dearie put her foot down.
“I won’t have it.”
“But it’s my best work. What’s got into your head, Dearie, to make you so prudish? You might as well object to all Romney’s Lady Hamiltons because she——”
“Lady Hamilton’s dead. Romney wasn’t my husband, and Nelson’s mother wasn’t my friend.”
Dearie was obstinate and so, as though it were something shameful, Vashti’s portrait was carried down to the stable. There, among the dust and cobwebs, with its face to the wall like a naughty child, The Garden Enclosed was forbidden the sunlight. Only Teddy gave it a respite from its penance when, having made certain that he was unobserved, he lifted it out to gaze at it. But because she never wrote to him, he went to gaze at it less and less. Little by little she became a beautiful and doubtful memory. He learnt to smile at his wistful faery story, as only a child can smile at his former childishness.
New interests sprang up to claim his attention; the chief of these was a gift from Mr. Sheerug of a pair of pigeons. In giving them to him he explained to Teddy, “My friend, Mr. Ooze—he’s a rum customer—drops his aitches and was born in a hansom cab, but he knows more about pigeons than any man in London. Trains mine for me—goes out into the country and throws ’em up. That’s where he’s gone now. When he lost his precious Henrietta he nearly went off his head. His hobby saved him. A hobby’s a kind of life-preserver—it keeps you afloat when your ship’s gone down.”
His pigeons, more than anything else, helped him to forget Vashti. His soul went with them on their flights through wide clean spaces. The sense gradually grew up within him that she had betrayed him; this was partly due to the hostile way in which she was regarded by others. At the time when she had tampered with his power of dreaming he had been without consciousness of sex; but as sex began to stir, he felt a tardy resentment. This was brought to a climax by Mr. Yaffon.
Looking from his bedroom window one morning across the neighbors’ walled-in strips of greenness, where crocuses bubbled and young leaves shuddered, he noticed that in Mr. Yaffon’s garden the parrot had been brought out. It was a sure sign that at last the spring had come. As he watched, Mr. Yaffon pottered into the sunlight to make an inspection of his bulbs. Several times he passed near the perch; each time the parrot jigged up and down more violently, screaming, “But I love you. I love you.”
As if unaware that he was being taunted, the old gentleman took no notice. But the parrot had been accustomed to measure success by the fear he inspired. When his master tried neither to appease nor escape him he redoubled his efforts, making still more public his shameful imitation of a falsetto voice declaring love.
Mr. Yaffon rose from examining a bed of tulips; blinking his dim eyes, he stood listening, with his head against his shoulder. Deliberately, without any show of anger, he sauntered up to the parrot, caught him by the neck and wrung it. It was so coolly done that it seemed to have been long premeditated. It looked like murder. The gurgling of that thin voice, so like Mr. Yaffon’s, protesting as it sank into the silence, “But I love you. I love you,” gave Teddy the shudders.
Mr. Yaffon got a spade, dug a hole, and buried the parrot. When he had patted down the mold, he went into the house and returned in a few minutes with a basketful of letters. With the same unhurried purpose, he walked down the path towards his tool-shed, made a pile of dead branches, and set a bonfire going. A breeze which was blowing in gusts rescued one of the papers and led Mr. Yaffon a chase across lawns and flower beds. Just as he was on the point of capturing it, the wind lifted it spitefully over the wall into Mr. Gurney’s garden.
Teddy, who had watched these doings with all his curiosity aroused, lost no time in hurrying down from the bedroom. In a lilac bush he found the lost paper. It was a letter, yellowed by age, charred with fire and written in a fine Italian hand—a woman’s. It read:
My dear Penny-Whistles,
You don’t like me calling you Penny-Whistles, do you? You mustn’t be angry with me for laughing at your voice: I can laugh and still like you. But can I laugh and still marry you? That’s the question. I’m afraid my sense of humor——
Teddy stopped. He realized that he was spying. He knew at last what Mr. Yaffon had been doing: burning up his dead regrets. The letter had already slipped from his hand, when the ivy behind him commenced to rustle. The top of a ladder appeared above the wall, followed by Mr. Yaffon’s head. It sounded as though the parrot had come to life.
“Little boy,” he said, in his squeaky voice, “a very important letter has—— Ah, there it is. To be sure! Right at your feet, boy. Make yourself tall and I’ll lean down for it. There, we’ve managed it. Thank you.”
When the head and the ladder had vanished, Teddy stood in the sunshine pondering. The spring was stirring. Everything was beginning afresh. Then he, too, lit a fire. When it was crackling merrily, he ran indoors to a cupboard. Standing on a chair, he dragged from a corner a box across whose lid was scrawled the one word MARRIAGE. Tucking it under his jacket, he escaped into the garden and rammed the box well down into the embers. As he watched it perish, he whispered to himself: “Silly kid—that’s what I was.”
No doubt Mr. Yaffon was telling himself the same thing, only in different language.
Then the child, on his side of the wall, strolled away to dream of pigeons; and the older child, on the other side, stooped above his flowers.
The memories of a man are of the past. A child has no past; his memories are of the imagined future. His soul, in its haste for new experience, rushes on, outdistancing life.
After his false awakening by Vashti, the world which Teddy annexed for himself was composed of sky and pigeons. Often as he watched his birds rise into the air, he would make his mind the companion of their flight. It seemed to him that his body was left behind and that the earth lay far below him, an unfolding carpet of dwarfed trees and houses as small as pebbles. By day his thoughts were of wings. By night, gazing from his bedroom window when the coast-line of the clouds had grown blurred, he would watch the Invincible Armada of the stars, plunging onward and ever onward through the heavens. The little he had learnt of life had pained him; so he took Mr. Sheerug’s advice and remade the world with a hobby. When the stars winked, he believed they were telling him that they knew that one day he would be great.
His pigeons and the wide clean thoughts they gave him, kept his mind from morbid physical inquiries. The school he attended in Eden Row was conducted by an old Quaker, a man whose gentle religion shamed the boys of shameful conversations.
The inklings of life which he had gained through Vashti, made him re-act against further knowledge. Love in her case had begun with beauty, but it had ended with the wretched face of a woman and a policeman’s bull’s-eye staring down on it. Perhaps love always ended that way, causing pain to others and ugliness. He shrank from it. Like a tortoise when its head has been touched, he withdrew into his shell and stayed there. He was content to be young and to remain incurious as to the meaning of his growing manhood. The days slipped by while he lived his realities in books and pigeons, and in his father’s paintings. Not until he was fifteen did he again awaken, when the door unexpectedly opened, leading into a new experience.
It was an afternoon in July, the last day of the summer term. The school had broken up. The playground was growing empty. With the last of the boys he came out of the gate and stood saying “Good-by.” They had told him where they were going—all their plans for the green and leafy future. They were going to farmhouses in the country and to cottages by the sea. Some of them were not returning to school; they were going to the city to become men and to earn money. He watched them saunter away down Eden Row, joking and aiming blows at one another with their satchels.
From across the river, softened by distance, came laughter and the pitter-pat of tennis. In the golden spaces between trees of the park, girls advanced and retreated, volleying with their racquets. Their hair rose and fell upon their shoulders as they twisted and darted. They were as unintelligible to Teddy as if they had spoken a different language.
What was it that he wanted? It was something for which he never found a name—something which continually eluded his grasp. He was haunted by desire for an intenser beauty. All kinds of things, totally unrelated, would stab him into yearning: sometimes a passage in a book; sometimes the freedom of a bird in flight; and now the music of girlish laughter. He was burdened with the sense that life would not wait for him—would not last; that it was escaping like water through his fingers. He wanted to live it fully. He wanted to be wise, and happy, and splendid. And yet he was afraid—afraid of disillusion. He feared that if he saw anything too closely, it would lose its fascination. Those girls, if he were to be with them, he could not laugh as they laughed; he would have nothing to say. And yet, he knew of boys——
Hitching the strap of his satchel higher, he smiled. These thoughts were foolish; they had come to him because he had been saying good-by. They always came when he felt the hand of Change upon his shoulder.
Before his home a cab was standing. On entering the hall he heard the murmurous sound of voices. A door opened. His mother slipped out to him with the air of mystery that betokened visitors.
“How late you are, darling! Run and get tidy. Some one’s been waiting for you for hours.”
As he made a hasty schoolboy toilet he wondered who it could be. His mother had seemed flustered and excited. No one ever came to see him; to him nothing ever happened. Other boys went away for summer holidays; he knew of one who had been to France. But to stir out of Eden Row was expensive; all his journeys had to be of the imagination. When one had a genius for a father, even though he was unacknowledged, one ought to be proud of poverty. To be allowed to sacrifice for such a father was a privilege. That was what Dearie was always telling him.
The room in which the visitor was waiting was at the back of the house. It had folding windows, which were open, and steps leading down into the garden. Evening fragrances drifted in from flowers. In the waning sunlight the garden became twice peopled—by its old inhabitants and by their shadows. On the lawn a sprinkler was revolving, throwing up a mist which sank upon the turf with the rustle of falling rain.
A man rose from the couch as he entered—a fair, thin man with blue impatient eyes and a worn, wistful expression. He looked as though he had been always trying to clasp something and was going through life with his arms forever empty. He placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders, gazing at him intently.
“Taller, but not much older. In all the time I’ve been away you’ve scarcely altered. Do you know me?”
“Why, of course. It’s Mr. Hal.”
“No, just Hal. You didn’t used to call me ‘Mister.’ You can’t guess why I’ve come. I’ve told your mother, and she’s consented, if you are willing. I want your help.” Teddy glanced at his mother. Her eyes were shining; she had been almost crying. What could Hal have said to make her unhappy? How could he, a boy, help a man? In the silence he heard the sprinkler in the garden mimicking the sound of rain.
Hal’s voice grew low and embarrassed. “I want your help about a little girl. She’s lonely. I call her little, but in many ways she’s older than you are. She’s living in a house in the country, and she wants some one to play with. I’ve been so long out of England that I’d forgotten how tall you’d been getting. But, perhaps, you won’t mind, even though she’s a girl. It’s a pretty place, this house in the country, with cows and wild flowers and a river. You’d enjoy it, and—and you’d be helping me and her.”
“Sounds jolly,” said Teddy; “I’d like to go most awfully, only—only what makes you and mother so sad?”
Hal tried to appear more cheerful. “I’m not sad. I was worried. Thought you wouldn’t come when you heard it was to play with a girl.”
“He’s not sad,” said Dearie; “it’s only that, if you go, we mustn’t tell anybody—not even Mrs. Sheerug; at least, not yet.”
Teddy chuckled. At last something was going to happen. “That’ll be fun. But how glad Mrs. Sheerug must be to have you back.”
Hal rose to his feet. “She isn’t That’s another of the things she doesn’t know yet. I must be going. Your mother says she can have you ready to-morrow, so I’ll call for you.”
Teddy noticed how he dashed across the pavement to his cab. He felt certain that his reason was not lack of time, but fear lest he might be observed. He questioned his mother. She screwed her lips together: “Dear old boy, I’m not allowed to tell.”
During the train journey Hal kept his face well hidden behind a newspaper. It wasn’t that he was interested in its contents, for he had turned only one page in half an hour. Teddy glanced at him occasionally. Funny! Why was it? Grown people seemed to enjoy themselves by being sad.
The train halted in a quiet station. An old farmer with screwed-up, merry eyes, white whiskers like a horse-collar about his neck, and creaking leather gaiters, approached them.
“Mornin’, mister. I was on the lookout for ’ee. I’ve brought the wagonette; it’s waitin’ outside. Jump in, while I get the luggage.” When he came back carrying the bags, his eyes winked meaningly both together at Teddy: “The little missie, she war that excited, I could scarce persuade her from comin’.”
He lumbered to his seat and tugged at the reins. The horse whisked its tail and set off at a jog-trot through the sleepy town. Houses grew fewer; the country swam up, spreading out between trees like a green swollen river.
As they passed by gates and over bridges, it was as though doors flew open on stealthy stretches of distance where shadows crouched like fantastic cattle.
Hal was speaking. He turned to him. “I was saying that we rather tricked you, Vashti and I. What did you think of us? We often wondered.”
Teddy laughed. “I was little then. I was angry. You see, I believed everything; and she said so positively that we were going to be married. I must have been a queer kid to have believed a thing like that.”
The old horse jogged on, whisking his tail. The farmer sat hunched, with the reins sagging. Hal felt for his case and drew out a cigarette. As he stooped to light it, he asked casually, “Do you ever think about her—ever wonder what’s become of her?”
The boy flushed. It was Vashti, always Vashti, when Hal spoke to him.
“I think of her only as a faery story. It’s silly of me. I don’t think about her more often than I can help.”
“Than you can help!” Hal leant forward with a strained expression. “You can’t help. You always remember. That’s the curse of it. The doors of the past won’t keep shut; they slam and they slam. They wake you up in the night; you can’t rest. You’re always creeping down the stairs and finding yourself in the rooms of old memories. Would you know her again if you saw her?”
Teddy looked up at the question. “I’d know her voice anywhere.” Then, with an excitement which he could not fathom, “Am I going to——?”
Hal shook his head. “I asked you because, if you do see her, you must send me word.”
They turned in at a gate off the highroad. It was scarcely more than a field-track that they followed. Ahead a wood grew up, which they entered. On the other side of it, remote from everything, lay a red farmhouse. A big yard was in front of it, with stacks standing yellow in the sun and horses wandering aimlessly about. Cocks were crowing and on the thatch, like flakes of snow, white fan-tails fluttered. At the sound of wheels, an old lady, in a large sunbonnet, came out and shaded her eyes, peering through her spectacles.
“Hulloa, Sarie!” cried the farmer. “Where’s the missie? We’ve brought ’er a young man.”
Sarie folded her hands beneath her apron. “She’s in the garden, as she always is, Joseph.”
Teddy entered the cool farmhouse, with its low rafters and spotlessness. Everything was old-fashioned, even the vague perfume of roses which hung about it.
Hal touched him on the arm. “Let’s go to her. She’ll be shy with you at first Even though we called, she wouldn’t come.”
He led the way through a passage into a garden at the back. It lay like a deep green well, wall-surrounded and content in the shade of fruit-trees. The trees were so twisted that they had to be held up like cripples on crutches. Paths, red-tiled and moss-grown, ran off in various directions. The borders of box had grown so high that they gave to the whole a mazelike aspect.
“She’s here somewhere,” Hal whispered, with suppressed excitement. “Step gently and don’t pretend you’re looking.”
They sauntered to and fro, halting now and then to listen. They came to a little brook that dived beneath the wall and ran through the garden chattering. Hal was beginning to look worried. “I wish she wouldn’t be like this. Perhaps she’s crept round us and got into the house without our knowing.”
At that moment, quite near them, they heard a sound of laughter. It was soft and elfin, and was followed by the clear voice of a child.
“You’re a darling. You’re more beautiful than any one in the world.”
A turn in the path brought them within sight of a ruined fountain. In the center, on a pedestal, stood the statue of a boy, emptying an urn from which nothing fell. In the gray stone basin that went about the pedestal was a pool of water, lying glassy and untroubled. Through a hole in the trees sunlight slanted. Kneeling beside the edge of the basin was a little girl, stooping to kiss her own reflection.
“Desire.”
She started to her feet with the swiftness of a wild thing. She would have escaped if Hal had not caught her. Across his shoulder she gazed indignantly at Teddy.
“He saw me do that,” she said slowly.
Teddy gazed back at her and smiled. He wanted to laugh, but he was stayed by her immense seriousness.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You’re not one bit,” she retorted.
She struggled down from Hal’s arms. “You may shake hands with me if you like.”
Very formally he shook hands with the little girl.
In the old garden Hal lost his sadness. It was late in the afternoon, when he was leaving, that she asked the question that brought it back, “When is mother coming?”
“Presently. Presently,” he said quickly.
As he climbed into the wagonette, he signed to Teddy.
Bending down he whispered: “If you should see her——You know whom I mean? I’ll be stopping at Orchid Lodge; you can reach me there.”
Next morning he was up so early that the farmhouse was still asleep when he tiptoed down the creaking stairs. As he opened the door into the orchard, a puppy squirmed from under the currant bushes and approached him with timid tail-waggings. He had the easily damped enthusiasm of most puppies; he was by no means certain that he might not be in disgrace for something. Nature had originally intended him for a bull-terrier; before finishing her work, she had changed her mind and decided that he should be a greyhound. The result was an ungainly object, white in color, too high on the legs, with red-rimmed eyes which blinked continually. Teddy knelt down and cuddled him, after which they were friends.
How still the world was! Now that no one was about, the garden seemed no longer a dumb thing, but a moving fluttering personality. Dew sparkled on the red-tiled paths. It glistened in spider-webs. It put tears into the eyes of flowers. A slow wind, cool with the memory of night, rustled the tree-tops; it sounded like an unseen woman turning languidly in bed. Through leaves the sunlight filtered and fell in patches. A sense of possession came upon the boy—it was all his, this early morning world.
The puppy kept lagging behind, collapsing on his awkward haunches, and turning his head to gaze back at the house. Teddy became curious to see what he wanted and let him choose the direction. Under a window in the thatch to which the roses climbed, he laid himself down.
“So you’re thinking of her, too?” he whispered.
They watched together. The sun climbed higher. Inside the farmhouse sounds began to stir.
When she appeared at breakfast, she chose to be haughty. After she had stalked away with Fanner Joseph, Mrs. Sarie explained to Teddy his breach of etiquette: he had failed to address her as “Princess.”
“She’s full o’ fancies,” said Mrs. Sarie, clearing away the dishes; “full o’ fancies. I’ve ’ad ten children in my time, but not one of ’em like ’er. She won’t let none of us be what we are; she makes us play every day that we’re something different. She’s a captive Princess to-day, and Joseph’s a giant and I’m a giantess.”
Peering through the curtain which hung before the window, he saw Desire, seated astride an ancient horse, which plodded round and round in the farmyard drawing water from a well.
He smiled. He knew little about feminine perversity. Picking up a book, he went into the orchard and threw himself down where the brook ran singing to itself.
Footsteps! She came walking sedately, pretending that she did not know that he was there. He buried his nose in his book. She went by, waited, came back. He heard a swishing sound behind him and glanced across his shoulder. She was standing with a twig in her hand, her face flushed with anger, striking at some scarlet poppies. “Hulloa! What are you doing?”
“They’re people who don’t love me. They’re beasts, and I’m cutting off their heads.”
“I wouldn’t do that. They’re so pretty, and they don’t have long to live, anyhow. Besides, you’re making the puppy frightened.”
The puppy was escaping, his tail quivering like an eel between his legs. Directly her attention was called to his terror, she threw the stick aside.
“Poor old Bones, she didn’t mean to frighten him. She wouldn’t do anything to hurt him for the world.”
She gathered him into her arms, and sat herself down beside the brook about a yard away from Teddy.
“Bones does love me; but some people don’t. We call him Bones ’cause he’s got hardly any flesh.”
She glanced shyly at Teddy to see whether he was taking her remarks impersonally or as addressed to himself.
He was smiling, so she edged a little nearer and smiled back.
“People aren’t kind to Bones,” she said; “they throw things at him. He’s such a coward; people only respect dogs when they bite. You shouldn’t be so nice; you really shouldn’t, Bones.” And then, significantly: “If you’re too nice to strangers at first, you aren’t valued.”
Teddy laughed softly. “So that was why you bit me this morning, Princess, after I’d got up so early and waited for you?”
She tossed her curls and lowered her eyes. “Did I bite? For the fun of it, I’m always being cross like that. I’m even cross to my mother—my beautiful mother. She’s the darlingest mother in the world.”
Teddy closed his book and leant out, bridging the distance. “Is she? Where is she now?”
“I don’t know, only—only I know I want her. Don’t get afraid; I never cry. P’raps she’s in America. He says that she’ll come to me here, but I don’t believe him.” Suddenly with a gesture that was all tenderness, she slipped out her hand. “I was so lonely till you came. Together we may find her. I’m going to have a little girl myself one day, and I know I should cry and cry if I lost her.”
“You’d have to get married first. When I was very little, I once——”
She interrupted. “Oh, no! Ladies don’t have to. When they want babies, they speak to God about it. I know because—— Is your mother married?”
“Yes, my mother’s married. My father paints pictures.”
“Is it nice to have a father?”
“Very nice. Just as nice as to have a mother, only in another way.”
“Do—do all boys have fathers?”
“Why, yes. And all girls.”
“They don’t. I’ve asked my beautiful mother about it so often, because I——”
She fell silent, gazing straight before her with the cloud of thought in her eyes. Bones, sprawling across her lap, licked her hand to attract her attention; she drew her hand away, but took no other notice. The brook bubbled past her feet; its murmurous monologue emphasized her silence. Through lichened trees the farmhouse glowed red. In and out the shadows the sunshine danced like a gold-haired child.
“If fathers are really nice,” she sighed wistfully, “p’raps I ought to have a father for my little girl. When we’re both growed up, I might ask you. Would you be her father, per—perhaps?”
Stretched at her side, he glanced up to see the mischief creep about the edges of her mouth. But her face was no longer elfin; it was earnest and troubled with things beyond her knowledge. When she looked like that she seemed older than twelve—almost the same age as himself; there were so many things that he, too, could not understand. He reflected that they both were very like Bones with their easily damped enthusiasm. A wave of pity swept through him; she was so slight, so dainty, so unprotected. He forgot his pigeons; he forgot everything that had happened before meeting her. He felt that of all things in the world, were he given the choice, he would ask that she might be his sister. Stooping his head, he kissed the white petal of a hand where it lay unfolded in the grass.
She looked down at him quietly. “My darling mother would say, ’You mustn’t let boys do that.’ But I expect she would let you do it. Do you—do you think I’m an odd child? Every one says I am.”
He laughed with a thrill of excitement; she made him feel so much younger than his yesterday self. “I couldn’t tell you, Princess. I’ve never known any girls. But you’re beautiful, and you’re dear, and you’re——”
“Let’s be tremenjous friends,” she whispered.
Through the long summer days that followed they lived in a world of self-created magic—a world which, because they had made it, belonged wholly to themselves. Its chief delight was that they alone could see it. No one else knew that the brook was a girl and that the mountain-ash that grew beside it was her lover. The boy turned back from his dreams of manhood to meet the childhood of the little girl; it was one last glorious flash of innocence before the curtain fell But in the presence of Farmer Joseph and Sarie, and of Hal when he came to visit them, he was shy of his friendship with Desire.
“You’re ashamed of me because I’m a girl and little,” she said. “But I know more than you do about—oh, lots of things!”
She did. She knew that gentlemen when they were in love with ladies, gave their ladies flowers. She knew much about lovers’ secret ways. When asked how she knew, she shook her curls and looked exceedingly wise. She could be impishly coquettish when she liked. There were times when she refused to let Teddy touch her because she would become ordinary to him, if it were always allowed. And there were times when she would creep into his breast like a little tired bird, and let him tell her stories by the hour. She tried to tantalize him into jealousy; Bones was usually the rival for her affections. When she did that, she only amused him, making him remember that he was older than herself. But when he made her feel that he was older, she would stamp her feet with rage. “You’ll be sorry when I wear long frocks,” she would threaten. “I shall pretend to despise you. I shall walk past you with my head held high.”
When she showed him how she would do it, creating the picture by puckering her nose and mincing her steps, she would only increase his merriment Then suddenly her wounded vanity would break and she would fly at him with all her puny strength. “You shan’t laugh at me. You shan’t I can’t bear it Oh, please say you forgive me and like me.”
In the lumber-room, which was across the passage from where she slept, they spent most of their rainy days. It was dirty and it was dusty, but it had something which compensated for dust and dirt—a box full of old-fashioned clothes and largely flowered muslins. Nothing pleased her better than to dress herself up and perform, while he played audience. She would go through passionate scenes, making up a tune and singing words. At the end of them she would explain, “My mamma does that.” And then: “Oh, I wish she would come. When I ask him, he always says, ’Presently. Presently.’ Can’t you take me to her, Teddy?”
It was in the lumber-room that she confided to Teddy how she came to leave America. “It was one day when mother was out. He came. He hadn’t come for a long while before that. He was very fond of me and brought me things; so I was very glad. We drove about all day and when it was time for me to go home to bed, he took me to a big ship—oh, a most ’normous ship. Next day, when I woke up, it was all water everywhere and he said I’d see my mamma when we got to land. But we got to land, and I didn’t. And then he said I’d see her here; but I didn’t. And now he says, ‘Presently. Presently.’ Oh, Teddy, you won’t leave me? I may never see her again.” And then, after he had quieted her: “If we stay here till we’re quite growed up, you’ll escape with me, won’t you, and help me to find her?”
She invariably spoke of Hal as he; she never gave him a name. Teddy felt that it would not be honorable to question her, but he kept his eyes wide for any clew that would solve the mystery. In Hal’s absence he would become bitter towards him, because he had dared to hurt Desire. But when he came to the farm with his arms full of presents, so hungry to win her love, he felt that somewhere there had been a big mistake and that whoever had been cruel, Hal was not the person.
It was Hal who, having heard them speak of knights and sorcerers, brought them The Idylls of the King. Many a golden day they spent reading aloud, while the sunlight dripped from leaves overhead, dappling the pages.
“I like Sir Launcelot best.”
-“But you mustn’t,” said Teddy; “King Arthur was the good one. If Sir Launcelot hadn’t done wrong, everything would have been happy always.”
“Yes, but if everything had been happy always, there wouldn’t have been any story,” she objected. She made bars of her fingers before her mischievous eyes; it was a warning that she was going to be impish. “I expect, when I grow up, I shall be like that story; very interesting and very bad.”
Teddy’s shocked appearance surpassed her expectations. Gapping her hands, she rose into a kneeling position and mocked him. “Teddy doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like my loving Sir Launcelot best. And I know why. It’s because he’s a King Arthur himself.”
All that day she irritated him by calling him King Arthur. They had quarreled hopelessly by supper-time. She went to bed without saying “Good-night,” and he wandered out into the dusky silence. He felt angry with her. Why had he ever liked her? So girls could be spite-full The worst of it was that it was true what she had said. He was a proper person. He would always be a proper person; and proper persons weren’t exciting. He felt like doing something desperate just to prove that he could be bad. Then his superiority in years came to his consolation. Why should he worry himself about a little girl who was younger than himself? When next Hal came to the farm, he would tell him that he was leaving.
It was in his bedroom, where the moonlight fell softly, that memories of her sweetness tiptoed back. He remembered the provocative tenderness of her laughter, the velvet softness of her tiny hands, and the way she had wreathed him with flowers, pretending that he was her knight. Life would never be the same without her. Romance walked into his day only when she had passed down the stairs. Not having had a sister, he supposed that these were the emotions of all brothers. She had conquered him at last: though he was in the right, he would ask her forgiveness to-morrow. She had been trying to make him do that from the first morning when he had failed to call her “Princess”—trying to make him bow to her prerogative of forgiving for having done wrong herself. He fell asleep smiling, but he was not happy.
He awoke with a start The house was still as death. The moon hung snared in a tree; his window was in shadow. Between the long intervals of silence he heard the sound of stifled sobbing.
“Who are you? What is it?” he whispered.
In the doorway he made out a blur of whiteness. Slipping from his bed, he stole towards it. Stooping, he touched it.
“You!”
Her arms flew up and tugged at him passionately. Her tears were on his cheeks. For the first time she kissed him.
“You’re cold, darling little girl.”
And then for the first time he kissed her mouth.
“Oh, I don’t want you to think that I’m bad. I’m not bad, Teddy. And I like you to be King Arthur or Sir Launcelot, or—or anybody.”
He fetched his counterpane and wrapt it round her, coaxing, her just inside the doorway so that they might not be heard. Together, crouched against the wall, with their arms about each other’s necks, they huddled in the darkness.
“I didn’t mind—not really.” Since she had kissed him, he was fully persuaded of the untruth himself. “I shouldn’t really mind whatever you called me. Little Desire, I thought you never cried. You do believe me, don’t you?”
“Oh, I do want my mother so,” she whispered, drawing deep sobs between her words. “If you was to help me to escape to your mother, I’m sure we could find her. And then, you could come and stay with us, and I could come and stay with you. And we should be always and always together.”
In defiance of Hal, he promised to help her at the first opportunity. To-morrow? Perhaps. He saw her safely back to her room, kissing her in the darkness on the threshold.
But to-morrow held its own surprise.
Farmer Joseph’s place was empty at breakfast next morning. It was market-day, and he had made an early start for town. Teddy pressed Desire’s foot beneath the table; when Mrs. Sarie wasn’t looking, he nodded towards the window and his lips formed the word, “To-day.”
The opportunity had come sooner than he had expected. It was quite necessary that, when he helped her to escape, Fanner Joseph’s back should be turned. The old man with’ the merry screwed-up eyes and the white horse-collar of whiskers round his neck, was always watching. He seemed to know by instinct every time that they wandered out of sight of the farmhouse. Sooner or later, as they sat in a field reading or telling stories, his face would peer above the hedge.
In the passage he caught Desire’s hand. “Run upstairs. Get your hat and jacket.—No, wait Mrs. Sarie might see them. drop them out of the window to me in the garden.” He felt immensely excited. If he could get her to the station undetected, they would travel up to London. When it was evening he would smuggle her past Orchid Lodge, and then—— He supposed she would spend the night at his father’s, and all the other days and nights till her mother was found. But why had Hal stolen her? “Here, catch.”
The hat and jacket tumbled down. He caught a glimpse of the laughing face in the thatch. It was going to be a tremendous lark—almost as good as a King Arthur legend. The next moment she rejoined him.
“Sir Teddy, what are we going to do now?” She clung to his arm, jumping with excitement.
“Hulloa!” he exclaimed, “the babies have come into your eyes.” He told her that the babies came into her eyes when they became especially gray and round.
They tiptoed out of the garden into the passage of the house. All the downstair rooms were quiet; Mrs. Sarie’s footsteps overhead and the smacks she gave the pillow were the only sounds. They crossed the farmyard, walking unhurriedly as though nothing were the matter. From the gateway they glanced back. The white fan-tails fluttered and cooed on the thatch. The curtains blew in and out the open windows. Gaining the path which led across the meadows, they ran—ran till they were breathless.
Across the fields, with his nose to the ground, came another fugitive. As he caught sight of them, he expressed his joy in a series of sharp yaps.
“I say, this’ll never do. He’ll give us away before we know it Go back, bad dog. Go back.”
Bones came a little nearer, crawling on his stomach, making abject apologies, but positively refusing to go back.
They walked on together, the white cur following at their heels till lapse of time should have made him certain that his permission to follow was irrevocable.
They had been walking along the main-road, on the alert to scramble into the hedge at the first sign of any one approaching. It was just such a day as the one on which he had arrived, only dog-roses were fuller blown and blackberries were growing ripe. The wheat was yellowing to a deeper gold and the misty fragrance of meadow-sweet was in the air.
“Ha! Here’s one at last.”
It was a post with three fingers pointing.
“Yes, we’re all right. This one, sticking out the way we’re going, says To Ware; but it says that it’s nine miles. D’you think, with those little legs, you can manage it, Princess?”
She lowered her head, looking up through her lashes.
“They’re very strong little legs, and if you talk to me and talk to me, so that I forget—— If I get very tired, I’ll let you carry me.”
They struck into fields again, clambering through hedges and over gates, judging their direction by the road. Teddy was afraid to keep to the road lest they should meet Farmer Joseph coming back from market, or lest Mrs. Sarie, when she missed them, should send some one driving after them to bring them back.
It was pleasant in the fields. Rambling along, they almost lost their sense of danger and forgot they were escaping. Everything living seemed so friendly. Crickets in the grass chirped cheerily. Birds jumped out of their houses, leaving their doors wide open, Teddy said, to see them pass. He invented stories about the things they saw to prevent the little legs from thinking of their tiredness. Only the cows suspected them of escaping; they whisked their tails and blinked their eyes disapprovingly, like grandmothers who had had too many calves to be deceived by a pair of children.
Lunch time came and they grew hungry, but to buy food at a farmhouse was too risky.. They quenched their thirst at a stream and pictured to themselves the enormous meal they would eat when they got to London.
“Tired?”
“No. I’m not tired.”
“Let’s pretend I’m your war-horse,” he suggested.
The finger went up to her mouth. “That’ll be just playing; it won’t be the same as saying that I’m tired.”
He assured her that it wouldn’t; so she consented to straddle his neck, clasping his forehead with her sticky little hands while he held her legs to help her keep her balance.
Bones ran ahead with his ridiculous red tongue flapping, barking at whatever interested him and paying no attention when he was told to stop. Towards evening, as the sun’s rays were shortening and trees were lengthening their shadows, he made the great discovery of his puppyhood. It was in a field of long grass, the other side of a gate, well ahead of the children. With quick excited yelps and pawings, springing back in fear and jumping forward with clumsy boldness, he commenced to advertise his adventure.
Desire, riding shoulder-high, could see further than Teddy. “Oh, hurry. Be quick. He’s killing something. Let me down.”
When they had climbed the gate, they found themselves in a narrow pasture, hedge-surrounded, at the far end of which the road ran. Bones was rolling a cage over and over, in which a bird fluttered. It was a decoy placed there by bird-catchers, for in a net near by wild birds struggled. They dragged the puppy off and cuffed him. He slunk into the background and squatted, blinking reproachfully with his red-rimmed eyes. His noblest intentions perpetually ended in misunderstandings.
“Oh, the poor darlings! How cruel! Teddy, you do it; they peck my fingers.”
Teddy looked across the field growing vague with shadows. No one was in sight. Going down on his knees, with Desire bending eagerly across his shoulder, he set to work to free the prisoners.
They were so engrossed that they did not notice a rough-looking man who crept towards them. The first thing they knew was the howl of Bones as he shot up, lifted by a heavy boot; the next, when Desire was grabbed from behind and her mouth was silenced against a dirty coat.
Teddy sprang to his feet, clenching his fists. “You put her down.” His voice was low and unsteady.
“And wot abart my burds?” retorted the man, in jeering anger. “Yer’ll ’ave ter pay me for every damned one of ’em before I lets ’er go. I don’t know as I’ll let her go then—taken a kind o’ fancy to ’er, I ’ave. I’ll put ’er in a cage and keep ’er, that’s wot I’ll do. Now then, all yer money. ’And over that watch. Fork h’out.”
“Put her down.”
He looked round wildly. Hal’s warnings of danger then, they hadn’t been all inventions! Far off, at the end of the field, he-saw the real culprit, Bones, slipping through the hedge into the road. Along the road something was passing; he made out the top of a cart above the brambles. He thought of shouting; if he did, the man might kill Desire. At that moment she freed her mouth: “Teddy! Oh, Teddy!”
He threw himself upon the ruffian, kicking and punching. The man let her go and turned upon the boy.
“Yer’ve brought this on yerself, my son, and now yer go in’ ter ’ave it.”
He stepped up furiously, his hand stretched out to seize him by the throat. The fingers were on the point of touching; there was a thud. The thick arm hesitated and fell limply. On the man’s forehead a red wound spread.
“My-Gawd!”
His body crumpled. It sank into the grass and lay without a motion. “Is he dead?” Desire whispered.
“No fear. It ’ud take more than a stone to kill him. Come on, you kids, let’s run for it.”
They turned. Standing behind them in the evening quiet was a Puck-like figure. He was broad, and short, and grinning, and cocky. He wore a midshipman’s suit with brass buttons, which looked dusty and spotty. He had red hair, and was a miniature edition of Mrs. Sheerug.
“Why, Ruddy,” gasped Teddy, “where did you spring from?”
“Where didn’t I spring from? Ha! Get away from him and I’ll tell you. He’s stirring.”
The bird-catcher was struggling into a sitting position. He glared evilly at the children. “You just wait till I get yer,” he muttered. “Skin yer, that’s wot I’ll do. Boil yer. Tear every——”
They didn’t wait to hear more of what he would do. Each taking a hand of the little girl, they started to run—ran on and on across twilit meadows, till the staggering figure of the man who followed and the sound of his threats had utterly died out.
You’re a kind of Bible boy, aren’t you?
They were resting on the edge of a wood, half hidden in bracken, recovering their breath. Oak-trees, overhanging them, made an archway. Behind, down green fern-carpeted aisles, mysterious paths led into the unknown. In front a vague sea of meadows stretched, with wild flowers for foam and wheat-fields for sands. In the misty distance the window of a cottage caught the sunset and glowed like the red lamp of a ship which rode at anchor.
“A Bible boy! Not if I know it.” Ruddy grinned, and frowned, and scratched his leg. He was embarrassed in the presence of feminine beauty. If anything but feminine beauty had called him “a Bible boy,” he would certainly have punched its head. “Not if I know it,” he said. “I’m no little Samuel-Here-Am-I, praying all over the shop in a white night-shirt.”
Again he scratched his leg; he wished that feminine beauty didn’t make him itch so.
The little girl rested her white petal of a hand on his grubby paw. “I didn’t mean anything horrid, only—just that it was so like David and Goliath, the way you made the stone sink into his forehead.”
“Yah!” He swelled with a sense of valor, now that his prowess was acknowledged. “I did catch ’em a whopper, didn’t I? If I hadn’t, you kids would be dead.”
Desire drew herself up with childish dignity. “It was nice of you, Boy; Teddy and I both thank you. But—but you mustn’t call me ’kid.’ Teddy always calls me ’Princess.’”
Ruddy’s good-humored, freckled face grew puzzled. “Princess? But, look here, are you?”
Teddy was wondering whether he ought to confide in Ruddy, when Desire took the matter out of his hands. “I expect I am. I’m a little girl who was stolen from America. We were ’scaping when you found us.—What’s in that box you’re carrying?”
Her eyes had been on it from the first. It was full of holes; inside something live kept moving.
“Teddy knows. It’s one of Pa’s pigeons. Didn’t think I’d get home to-night when I came to look for you, so I brought it to let ’em know not to expect me.”
“When you came to look for us!” Teddy leant forward. “Did you come to look for us? Who sent you?”
Ruddy winked knowingly. He was enjoying the mystery, and prolonged the ecstasy of suspense. Pulling a packet of Wild Woodbines from his pocket, he lit one and offered one to Teddy; but Teddy shook his head.
“Ma doesn’t know I do it,” he explained. “I chew parsley and peppermints so she shan’t smell my breath. Bible kids don’t do that. I’m a real bad boy—a detective.”
“But tell us—tell us. Did you know we were here? Did you come by accident?”
Ruddy pushed his midshipman’s cap back from his forehead. “It wasn’t by accident,” he said solemnly. “Since Hal’s come home, he’s been funny. It’s been worryin’ Ma; I’ve heard her talk about it. He’s brought dolls and silly things like that; and then he’s gone away with the dolls, without saying where he was going, and come back without ’em. He’s been acting kind o’ stealthy; we wouldn’t even have known they were dolls except for Harriet She looked among his socks and found ’em. I read ha’penny-bloods about detectives; one day I’m goin’ to be the greatest detective in the world. So I said to myself, ’I’ll clear up this mystingry and put Ma’s mind at rest’ I looked in Hal’s pockets and found a letter from a Farmer Joseph, posted at Ware. There you are! All the rest was easy.”
“But what were you doing on the road?”
Ruddy blew a cloud of smoke through his nose to let Desire see that he could do it. “Pooh! It was Farmer Joseph’s cart that I was following when the dog came running through the hedge.” He threw away his cigarette. “Going to toss up the pigeon while there’s some light left.”
To Desire this was the crowning marvel—that a boy could tie a message to a bird and tell it where to go. She watched Ruddy scrawl on the thin slip of paper and tiptoed to see the slate-blue wings beat high and higher towards the clouds. When it was no more than a speck, the Pucklike figure started laughing.
“What’s the matter?” asked Teddy.
“I was picturing Ma’s face when Pa comes in and shows her.”
“What did you write?”
“That I wouldn’t be home and that I’d found Hal’s princess.”
“But you didn’t tell her where we are, or anything like that?”
“I gave her Farmer Joseph’s address; it was written on the cart.”
“You ass! Hal may catch us because of that.”
Ruddy looked crestfallen; then he brightened. “No fear. Ma won’t tell Hal till she’s come to see for herself.”
Desire had sunk back upon the bed of bracken. “Oh, dear, I’m so hungry. My shoes is full of stockings and I can’t go any further. Poor Teddy’s tired, too; and I wouldn’t let a strange boy carry me. It wouldn’t be modest.”
Her escort drew away to consult in whispers as to what was to be done for her.
“Good egg!” Ruddy tossed his cap into the air. “I’ve got it. I’ve always wanted to do it. It’s a warm night and it won’t hint her. Let’s camp out. I’ll go and buy some grub—be back inside of an hour.”
Desire clapped her hands. “Just like knights and fair ladies in a forest! Oh, Teddy, it’ll be grand!”
There was nothing else to do. Farmer Joseph would soon be out searching. Ware seemed an interminable distance. The boys counted their money, and the red-headed rescuer tramped off sturdily to purchase food. Long after he had disappeared, they could hear his jaunty whistling.
“Teddy, let me cuddle closer. You weren’t jealous, were you?”
“Jealous!”
“Of the boy who threw the stone.”
“Of course I wasn’t.”
She laughed secretly, and pressed her face against his shoulder. “Oh, you! You were, just the same as you were jealous of Bones.”
“Bones was a dog. How silly you are, Princess.”
“Not silly.” Her voice sounded far away and elfin. “You want me to like only you. You wish he hadn’t come; now don’t you?”
It was Teddy’s turn to laugh. Was it true? He didn’t know. “It is nicer, isn’t it, to be just by our two selves?”
“Heaps nicer,” she whispered. “But, oh, I am hungry. Let’s talk to make me forget.”
“You talk,” he said. “Tell me about your mother. She must be very good to have a little girl like you.”
“My beautiful mother!” She clasped her hands against her throat.
From across misty fields came a low whistle. A stumpy dwarf-like figure crawled through the hedge and darted forward, crouching beneath the twilight and glancing back for an enemy in the most approved penny-dreadful manner. Rabbits, nibbling at the cool wet turf, sat up and stared before they scattered, mistaking him at first for an enlarged edition of themselves.
“My eye,” he panted, “but they’re looking for you.”
“Really or just pretence?” asked Teddy.
Ruddy scratched his red head. “More than pretence. I met Fanner Joseph on the road, and he stopped his horse and questioned me. Come on. Catch hold of some of the grub. Let’s be runaway slaves with bloodhounds after us.”
They waded through bracken dew-wet, clinging and shoulder-high. Above them trees grew gnarled and dense, shutting out the sky. At each step the world grew more hushed and quiet. The sleepy calling of birds faded on the night Dank fragrances of earth and moss and bark made the air heavy. Little hands touched them; the hands of foxgloves and ferns and trailing vines. They seemed to pat them more in welcome than affright.
In a narrow space where a tree had fallen, they lit a fire and nestled. As the flames leapt up, they revealed the whole wood moving, tiptoeing nearer, so that trees and foxgloves and ferns sprang back every time the flames jumped higher.
A green moon-drenched, imaginative night! As they sat round the sparkling embers and munched, they spoke in whispers. What were they not? They were never themselves for one moment. They were sailors, marooned on a. desert island. They were Robin Hoods. Ruddy’s fancies proved too violent for Desire—they savored too much of blood; so at last it was agreed that they should be knights from Camelot and that Desire should be the great lady they had rescued.
“I’m so cosy,” she whispered. “So happy. You won’t let anything bad get me, will you, Teddy?”
He put his arms about her. “Nothing.”
He thought she had drowsed off, when she drew his head down to her. “I forgot. I haven’t said my prayers.”
The sleepier she grew, the more she seemed a dear little weary bird. Her caprice went from her, her fine airs and her love of being admired. Even when her eyes were fast locked and her breath was coming softly, her fingers twitched and tightened about her boy-protector’s hand.
Some one was kicking his foot He awoke to find Ruddy, hands in pockets, grinning down on him.
“Been op for hoars,” he whispered; “been exploring. Found a ripping pool Want to swim in it?”
Teddy eased his arm from under the little girl and nodded. “Let’s light a fire first. She’ll know then that we’re not far away, and won’t be nervous.”
The blur of foliage quivered with mysteries of a myriad coinings and goings. Everywhere unseen paths were being traveled to unseen houses. Within sight, yet sounding distant, a woodpecker, like a postman going his rounds, was tap-tap-tapping.
Ruddy knelt and struck a match; tongues of scarlet spurted. The camp-fire became a beating heart in this citadel of gray-green loneliness.
Desire lay curled among withered leaves, her face flushed with sleep, her lips parted. At sound of the fire snapping and cracking, she stirred and opened her eyes slowly.
“Oh, don’t leave me. Where are you going?”
“To have a swim,” they told her.
“But mayn’t I come? I promise to sit with my back turned. I promise not to look, honestly.”
Behind a holly, within sight of the pond, they left her. “Oh, dear, I wish I were a boy,” she pouted. “Boys have fathers and they can bathe and—and they can do almost everything.”
While they undressed, she kept on talking.
“It’s the same as if you weren’t there, when I can’t see you. Splash loud when you get into the water.”
As she heard them enter, “Splash louder,” she commanded. “Girls don’t have to be truthful. If you don’t make a noise I’ll look round.”
“Pooh! Look round. Who cares!” cried Ruddy.
“No, don’t—not yet,” shouted Teddy.
Then the sound of their laughter came to her, of the long cool stretch of arms plunging deep and panting growing always more distant.
She couldn’t resist. The babies came into her eyes and her finger went up to her mouth. She turned and saw two sleek heads, bobbing and diving among anchored lilies. Beneath the water’s surface, as though buried beneath a sheet of glass, the ghost of the wood lay shrouded. Trees crowded down to the mossy edge to gaze timidly at the wonder of their own reflection. Across the pond flies zigzagged, leaving a narrow wake behind them. A fish leapt joyously and curved in a streak of silver. With his chin resting in the highest branches, the sun stared roundly and smiled a challenge.
“I will be a boy,” she whispered rebelliously.
Her arms flew up and circled about her neck. Lest her daring should go from her, she commenced unbuttoning in a tremendous hurry.
“Hi, Princess, what are you doing?”
She was busy drawing off her stockings.
“I say, but you can’t do that.”
“No, you can’t do that.”
The scandalized duet of protests continued. Her knight-errants watched her aghast.
Sullen gray eyes glared defiance at them; yet they weren’t altogether sullen, for a glint of mischief hid in their depths.
“I am doing it. You daren’t come out to stop me.”
“We’ll come out if you’ll promise to turn round. We’ll do anything, Princess. You can have the pond all to yourself.”
“Don’t want the pond all to myself, stupids.”
She began to slip off her petticoat. Two shocked backs were turned on her. As the boys retreated further into the lilies, their pleadings reached her in spasms. Their agony at the thought of violated conventions made her relentless.
She was tired of being a girl; tired of being without a father. “I’ll be a boy,” she whispered, “and wear knickerbockers and have a father, like Teddy.” She really thought that, in some occult way, her outrageous conduct would accomplish that. It was all a matter of dress. She chuckled at imagining her mother’s amazement. The still sheet of water was a Pool of Siloam that would heal a little girl of her sex.
“When she’s once got in,” whispered Ruddy, “it won’t be so bad. We can——”
Teddy grabbed his shoulder fiercely. “You shan’t see her. We’ll stay just as far away as——”
A scream startled the air. They swung about. Knee-deep in the pool, at bay and pale as a wood-nymph, was Desire.
“I won’t come out,” she was shouting, “and I’m not a naughty girl.”
Leaning out from the bank, trying to hook her with an umbrella, was a balloon-shaped old lady.
Behind her, peering above the bushes, was the face of Farmer Joseph, his merry eyes screwed up with amusement.
“But you’ll catch cold, darling,” Mrs. Sheerug coaxed. “Oh, dear, oh, dear! What shall I do? Please do come out.”
“I shan’t catch cold either. And if I do come out you’ll only be cross with me.”
“I won’t be cross with you, darling. I’m too glad to find you for that.”
“Did my beautiful mother send you?”
With what guile Mrs. Sheerug answered the boys could only guess by the effect.
“Well, then,” came the piping little voice, “tell Farmer Joseph to stop looking, and you stop poking at me. I don’t like your umbrella.”
They saw her wade out, drops of water falling from her elfin whiteness like jewels; then saw her folded in the bat-like wings of the faery-godmother’s ample mantle. The glade emptied. The wood grew silent They dared to swim to land.
Ruddy was the first to say anything. “Ma—Ma’s a wonder. I oughtn’t to have sent that pigeon till this s’moming.” Then, in a burst of penitence for his zeal, “I’m afraid I’ve spoiled—— I say, I’m beastly sorry.”
He had spoiled everything; there was no denying it There would be no more camp-fires, no more slaying of bird-catchers, no more pretending you were a war-horse with a rescued Princess from Goblinland riding on your back. Teddy was too unhappy to blame or forgive Ruddy. He pulled on his shirt and indulged in reflections.
“Wonder how they found us?” muttered Ruddy. “Must have seen the smoke of our fire. That wasn’t my fault anyhow; you did agree to lighting that.”
“Oh, be quiet,” growled Teddy. “What does anything matter? Who cares now how they found out?”
Ruddy stole away to see what was happening, thinking that he might prove more acceptable elsewhere.
Teddy stared at the pool. Birds flew across its quiet breast; fish leaped; the sun smiled grandly. Everything was as it had been, yet he was altered. They would take her away from him; of that he was certain. Perhaps they would put her on another ship and send her traveling again across the world. There would be other boys who had never had a sister. He hated them. Because he was young, he would have to stay just where he had been always—in Eden Row, where nothing ever happened. The tyranny of it!
He was roused by hearing his name called softly. She was tiptoeing down the glade, dragging Mrs. Sheerug by the hand. Mrs. Sheerug’s other hand still clasped her umbrella.
As he turned, the child ran forward and flung her arms about his neck. “Oh, Teddy, this person says perhaps she’ll help us to find her.” Then, in a whisper, bringing her face so dose that the thistledown of her hair brushed his forehead and his whole world sank into two gray eyes, “The Princess wasn’t very nice this morning—not modest, so this person says. But you don’t mind—say you don’t I did so want to be like you and to do everything that boys do,” and then, long drawn out, when he thought her apology was ended, “Teddy.”
Mrs. Sheerug trundled up, her hands folded beneath her mantle, and looked down at them benevolently.
“Boys aren’t to be trusted; they shouldn’t be left alone with girls, shouldn’t.” Having uttered the moral she felt necessary, she allowed herself to smile through her shiny spectacles. “She’s fond of you, Teddy—a dear little maid. Ah, well! We must be getting back with Farmer Joseph to breakfast.”
In the wagonette, as they drove through the golden morning, few words were said. Mrs. Sheerug sat with Desire cuddled to her, kissing her again and again with a tender worship. Teddy-couldn’t divine why she should do it, since she had never seen her until that morning. He was conscious of a jealousy in Mrs. Sheerug’s attitude—a protective jealousy which made her want to keep touching Desire, the way Hal did, to realize her presence. It was as though they both shared his own dread that at any moment they might lose her.
It was in the late afternoon when Mrs. Sheerug left. Before going she led him aside. “I want to talk to you.” Her cheeks quivered with earnestness. “You did very wrong, my dear, very wrong. Just how wrong you didn’t know. Something terrible might have happened. That little girl’s in great danger. You must keep her in the garden where no one can see her. Promise me you will. I’d take her back to London to-night, only Hal doesn’t know I’ve found out I want to give him the news gently.” She broke off, wringing her hands and speaking to herself, “Why, oh why, was he so foolish? Why did he keep it from me?” Then, recovering, “Either Hal or I will come and fetch her to-morrow. Don’t look so down-hearted, my dear. If the good Lord remembers us, everything may turn out well. If it does, I’ll let you come and see her. Perhaps,” her dim eyes flickered with excitement, “I shall be able to keep her always and make sure that she grows into a good woman. Perhaps.”
She caught the boy to her breast. She was trembling all over and on the verge of tears. When she had climbed into the wagonette, with Ruddy seated beside her, and had lumbered slowly out of the farmyard, she left Teddy wondering: Why had she said “a good woman”? As though there was any doubt that little Desire would grow up good!