Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (Illustrated)
by Lewis Carroll · English · Gutenberg #48795 · 460,625 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (Illustrated)
Author: Lewis Carroll
Illustrator: Harry Furniss
Release date: April 26, 2015 [eBook #48795]
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SYLVIE AND BRUNO CONCLUDED (ILLUSTRATED) ***
SYLVIE AND BRUNO
CONCLUDED
BY
LEWIS CARROLL
_WITH FORTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
HARRY FURNISS_
_New York_
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND LONDON
1894
_The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved_
Dreams, that elude the Waker’s frenzied grasp—
Hands, stark and still, on a dead Mother’s breast,
Which nevermore shall render clasp for clasp,
Or deftly soothe a weeping Child to rest—
In suchlike forms me listeth to portray
My Tale, here ended. Thou delicious Fay—
The guardian of a Sprite that lives to tease thee—
Loving in earnest, chiding but in play
The merry mocking Bruno! Who, that sees thee,
Can fail to love thee, Darling, even as I?—
My sweetest Sylvie, we must say ‘Good-bye!’
PREFACE.
I must begin with the same announcement as in the previous Volume (which
I shall henceforward refer to as “Vol. I.,” calling the present Volume
“Vol. II.”), viz. that the Locket, at p. 405, was drawn by ‘Miss Alice
Havers.’ And my reason, for not stating this on the title-page—that it
seems only due, to the artist of these wonderful pictures, that his name
should stand there alone—has, I think, even greater weight in Vol. II.
than it had in Vol. I. Let me call especial attention to the three
“Little Birds” borders, at pp. 365, 371, 377. The way, in which he has
managed to introduce the most minute details of the stanzas to be
illustrated, seems to me a triumph of artistic ingenuity.
Let me here express my sincere gratitude to the many Reviewers who have
noticed, whether favorably or unfavorably, the previous Volume. Their
unfavorable remarks were, most probably, well-deserved; the favorable
ones less probably so. Both kinds have no doubt served to make the book
known, and have helped the reading Public to form their opinions of it.
Let me also here assure them that it is not from any want of respect for
their criticisms, that I have carefully forborne from reading _any_ of
them. I am strongly of opinion that an author had far better _not_ read
any reviews of his books: the unfavorable ones are almost certain to
make him cross, and the favorable ones conceited; and _neither_ of these
results is desirable.
Criticisms have, however, reached me from private sources, to some of
which I propose to offer a reply.
One such critic complains that Arthur’s strictures, on sermons and on
choristers, are too severe. Let me say, in reply, that I do _not_ hold
myself responsible for _any_ of the opinions expressed by the characters
in my book. They are simply opinions which, it seemed to me, might
probably be held by the persons into whose mouths I put them, and which
were worth consideration.
Other critics have objected to certain innovations in spelling, such as
“ca’n’t,” “wo’n’t,” “traveler.” In reply, I can only plead my firm
conviction that the popular usage is _wrong_. As to “ca’n’t,” it will
not be disputed that, in all _other_ words ending in “n’t,” these
letters are an abbreviation of “not”; and it is surely absurd to suppose
that, in this solitary instance, “not” is represented by “’t”! In fact
“can’t” is the _proper_ abbreviation for “can it,” just as “is’t” is for
“is it.” Again, in “wo’n’t,” the first apostrophe is needed, because the
word “would” is here _abridged_ into “wo”: but I hold it proper to spell
“don’t” with only _one_ apostrophe, because the word “do” is here
_complete_. As to such words as “traveler,” I hold the correct principle
to be, to _double_ the consonant when the accent falls on that syllable;
otherwise to leave it _single_. This rule is observed in most cases
(e.g. we double the “r” in “preferred,” but leave it single in
“offered”), so that I am only extending, to other cases, an existing
rule. I admit, however, that I do not spell “parallel,” as the rule
would have it; but here we are constrained, by the etymology, to insert
the double “l”.
In the Preface to Vol. I. were two puzzles, on which my readers might
exercise their ingenuity. One was, to detect the 3 lines of “padding,”
which I had found it necessary to supply in the passage extending from
the top of p. 35 to the middle of p. 38. They are the 14th, 15th, and
16th lines of p. 37. The other puzzle was, to determine which (if any)
of the 8 stanzas of the Gardener’s Song (see pp. 65, 78, 83, 90, 106,
116, 164, 168) were adapted to the context, and which (if any) had the
context adapted to them. The last of them is the only one that was
adapted to the context, the “Garden-Door that opened with a key” having
been substituted for some creature (a Cormorant, I think) “that nestled
in a tree.” At pp. 78, 106, and 164, the context was adapted to the
stanza. At p. 90, neither stanza nor context was altered: the connection
between them was simply a piece of good luck.
In the Preface to Vol. I., at pp. ix., x., I gave an account of the
making-up of the story of “Sylvie and Bruno.” A few more details may
perhaps be acceptable to my Readers.
It was in 1873, as I _now_ believe, that the idea first occurred to me
that a little fairy-tale (written, in 1867, for “Aunt Judy’s Magazine,”
under the title “Bruno’s Revenge”) might serve as the nucleus of a
longer story. This I surmise, from having found the original draft of
the last paragraph of Vol. II., dated 1873. So that this paragraph has
been waiting 20 years for its chance of emerging into print—more than
twice the period so cautiously recommended by Horace for ‘repressing’
one’s literary efforts!
It was in February, 1885, that I entered into negotiations, with Mr.
Harry Furniss, for illustrating the book. Most of the substance of
_both_ Volumes was then in existence in manuscript: and my original
intention was to publish the _whole_ story at once. In September, 1885,
I received from Mr. Furniss the first set of drawings—the four which
illustrate “Peter and Paul” (see I. pp. 144, 147, 150, 154): in
November, 1886, I received the second set—the three which illustrate the
Professor’s song about the “little man” who had “a little gun” (Vol. II.
pp. 265, 266, 267): and in January, 1887, I received the third set—the
four which illustrate the “Pig-Tale.”
So we went on, illustrating first one bit of the story, and then
another, without any idea of sequence. And it was not till March, 1889,
that, having calculated the number of pages the story would occupy, I
decided on dividing it into _two_ portions, and publishing it half at a
time. This necessitated the writing of a _sort_ of conclusion for the
first Volume: and _most_ of my Readers, I fancy, regarded this as the
_actual_ conclusion, when that Volume appeared in December, 1889. At any
rate, among all the letters I received about it, there was only _one_
which expressed _any_ suspicion that it was not a _final_ conclusion.
This letter was from a child. She wrote “we were so glad, when we came
to the end of the book, to find that there was no ending-up, for that
shows us that you are going to write a sequel.”
It may interest some of my Readers to know the _theory_ on which this
story is constructed. It is an attempt to show what might _possibly_
happen, supposing that Fairies really existed; and that they were
sometimes visible to us, and we to them; and that they were sometimes
able to assume human form: and supposing, also, that human beings might
sometimes become conscious of what goes on in the Fairy-world—by actual
transference of their immaterial essence, such as we meet with in
‘Esoteric Buddhism.’
I have supposed a Human being to be capable of various psychical states,
with varying degrees of consciousness, as follows:—
(_a_) the ordinary state, with no consciousness of the presence of
Fairies;
(_b_) the ‘eerie’ state, in which, while conscious of actual
surroundings, he is _also_ conscious of the presence of Fairies;
(_c_) a form of trance, in which, while _un_conscious of actual
surroundings, and apparently asleep, he (i.e. his immaterial essence)
migrates to other scenes, in the actual world, or in Fairyland, and is
conscious of the presence of Fairies.
I have also supposed a Fairy to be capable of migrating from Fairyland
into the actual world, and of assuming, at pleasure, a Human form; and
also to be capable of various psychical states, viz.
(_a_) the ordinary state, with no consciousness of the presence of Human
beings;
(_b_) a sort of ‘eerie’ state, in which he is conscious, if in the
actual world, of the presence of actual Human beings; if in Fairyland,
of the presence of the immaterial essences of Human beings.
I will here tabulate the passages, in both Volumes, where abnormal
states occur.
Historian’s Locality and State. Other characters.
Vol. I.
pp. 1-16 In train _c_ Chancellor (_b_) p. 2.
33-55 do. _c_
65-79 do. _c_
83-99 At lodgings _c_
105-117 On beach _c_
119-183 At lodgings _c_ S. and B. (_b_) pp. 158-163.
Professor (_b_) p. 169.
190-221 In wood _b_ Bruno (_b_) pp. 198-220.
225-233 do. sleep-walking _c_ S. and B. (_b_).
247-253 Among ruins _c_ do. (_b_).
262, 263 do. dreaming _a_
263-269 do. sleep-walking _c_ S. B. and Professor in Human
form.
270 In street _b_
279-294 At station, &c. _b_ S. and B. (_b_).
304-323 In garden _c_ S. B. and Professor (_b_).
329-344 On road, &c. _a_ S. and B. in Human form.
345-356 In street, &c. _a_
361-382 In wood _b_ S. and B. (_b_).
Vol. II.
pp. 4-18 In garden _b_ S. and B (_b_).
47-52 On road _b_ do. (_b_).
53-78 do. _b_ do. in Human form.
79-92 do _b_ do. (_b_).
152-211 In drawing-room _a_ do. in Human form.
212-246 do. _c_ do. (_b_).
262-270 In smoking-room _c_ do. (_b_).
304-309 In wood _b_ do. (_a_); Lady Muriel (_b_).
311-345 At lodgings _c_
351-399 do. _c_
407-end. do. _b_
In the Preface to Vol. I., at p. x., I gave an account of the
_origination_ of some of the ideas embodied in the book. A few more such
details may perhaps interest my Readers:—
I. p. 203. The very peculiar use, here made of a dead mouse, comes from
real life. I once found two very small boys, in a garden, playing a
microscopic game of ‘Single-Wicket.’ The bat was, I think, about the
size of a table-spoon; and the utmost distance attained by the ball, in
its most daring flights, was some 4 or 5 yards. The _exact_ length was
of course a matter of _supreme_ importance; and it was always carefully
measured out (the batsman and the bowler amicably sharing the toil) with
a dead mouse!
I. p. 259. The two quasi-mathematical Axioms, quoted by Arthur at p. 259
of Vol. I., (“Things that are greater than the same are greater than one
another,” and “All angles are equal”) were actually enunciated, in all
seriousness, by undergraduates at a University situated not 100 miles
from Ely.
II. p. 10. Bruno’s remark (“I can, if I like, &c.”) was actually made by
a little boy.
II. p. 12. So also was his remark (“I know what it _doesn’t_ spell.”)
And his remark (“I just twiddled my eyes, &c.”) I heard from the lips of
a little girl, who had just solved a puzzle I had set her.
II. p. 57. Bruno’s soliloquy (“For its father, &c.”) was actually spoken
by a little girl, looking out of the window of a railway-carriage.
II. p. 138. The remark, made by a guest at the dinner-party, when asking
for a dish of fruit (“I’ve been wishing for them, &c.”) I heard made by
the great Poet-Laureate, whose loss the whole reading-world has so
lately had to deplore.
II. p. 163. Bruno’s speech, on the subject of the age of ‘Mein Herr,’
embodies the reply of a little girl to the question “Is your grandmother
an _old_ lady?” “I don’t know if she’s an _old_ lady,” said this
cautious young person; “she’s _eighty-three_.”
II. p. 203. The speech about ‘Obstruction’ is no mere creature of my
imagination! It is copied _verbatim_ from the columns of the Standard,
and was spoken by Sir William Harcourt, who was, at the time, a member
of the ‘Opposition,’ at the ‘National Liberal Club,’ on July the 16th,
1890.
II. p. 329. The Professor’s remark, about a dog’s tail, that “it doesn’t
bite at _that_ end,” was actually made by a child, when warned of the
danger he was incurring by pulling the dog’s tail.
II. p. 374. The dialogue between Sylvie and Bruno, which occupies lines
6 to 15, is a _verbatim_ report (merely substituting “cake” for “penny”)
of a dialogue overheard between two children.
One story in this Volume—‘Bruno’s Picnic’—I can vouch for as suitable
for telling to children, having tested it again and again; and, whether
my audience has been a dozen little girls in a village-school, or some
thirty or forty in a London drawing-room, or a hundred in a High School,
I have always found them earnestly attentive, and keenly appreciative of
such fun as the story supplied.
May I take this opportunity of calling attention to what I flatter
myself was a successful piece of name-coining, at p. 42 of Vol. I. Does
not the name ‘Sibimet’ fairly embody the character of the Sub-Warden?
The gentle Reader has no doubt observed what a singularly useless
article in a house a brazen trumpet is, if you simply leave it lying
about, and never blow it!
Readers of the first Volume, who have amused themselves by trying to
solve the two puzzles propounded at pp. xi., xii. of the Preface, may
perhaps like to exercise their ingenuity in discovering which (if any)
of the following parallelisms were intentional, and which (if any)
accidental.
“Little Birds.” Events, and Persons.
Stanza 1. Banquet.
2. Chancellor.
3. Empress and Spinach (II. 325).
4. Warden’s Return.
5. Professor’s Lecture (II. 339).
6. Other Professor’s song (I. 138).
7. Petting of Uggug.
8. Baron Doppelgeist.
9. Jester and Bear (I. 119). Little Foxes.
10. Bruno’s Dinner-Bell; Little Foxes.
I will publish the answer to this puzzle in the Preface to a little book
of “Original Games and Puzzles,” now in course of preparation.
I have reserved, for the last, one or two rather more serious topics.
I had intended, in this Preface, to discuss more fully, than I had done
in the previous Volume, the ‘Morality of Sport’, with special reference
to letters I have received from lovers of Sport, in which they point out
the many great advantages which men get from it, and try to prove that
the suffering, which it inflicts on animals, is too trivial to be
regarded.
But, when I came to think the subject out, and to arrange the whole of
the arguments ‘pro’ and ‘con’, I found it much too large for treatment
here. Some day, I hope to publish an essay on this subject. At present,
I will content myself with stating the net result I have arrived at.
It is, that God has given to Man an absolute right to take the _lives_
of other animals, for _any_ reasonable cause, such as the supply of
food: but that He has _not_ given to Man the right to inflict _pain_,
unless when _necessary_: that mere pleasure, or advantage, does not
constitute such a necessity: and, consequently, that pain, inflicted for
the purposes of _Sport_, is cruel, and therefore wrong. But I find it a
far more complex question than I had supposed; and that the ‘case’, on
the side of the Sportsman, is a much stronger one than I had supposed.
So, for the present, I say no more about it.
Objections have been raised to the severe language I have put into the
mouth of ‘Arthur’, at p. 277, on the subject of ‘Sermons,’ and at pp.
273, 274, on the subjects of Choral Services and ‘Choristers.’
I have already protested against the assumption that I am ready to
endorse the opinions of characters in my story. But, in these two
instances, I admit that I am much in sympathy with ‘Arthur.’ In my
opinion, far too many sermons are expected from our preachers; and, as a
consequence, a great many are preached, which are not worth listening
to; and, as a consequence of _that_, we are very apt _not_ to listen.
The reader of this paragraph probably heard a sermon last Sunday
morning? Well, let him, if he can, name the text, and state how the
preacher treated it!
Then, as to ‘Choristers,’ and all the other accessories—of music,
vestments, processions, &c.,—which have come, along with them, into
fashion—while freely admitting that the ‘Ritual’ movement was sorely
needed, and that it has effected a vast improvement in our
Church-Services, which had become dead and dry to the last degree, I
hold that, like many other desirable movements, it has gone too far in
the opposite direction, and has introduced many new dangers.
For the Congregation this new movement involves the danger of learning
to think that the Services are done _for_ them; and that their bodily
_presence_ is all they need contribute. And, for Clergy and Congregation
alike, it involves the danger of regarding these elaborate Services as
_ends in themselves_, and of forgetting that they are simply _means_,
and the very hollowest of mockeries, unless they bear fruit in our
_lives_.
For the Choristers it seems to involve the danger of self-conceit, as
described at p. 274, the danger of regarding those parts of the Service,
where their help is not required, as not worth attending to, the danger
of coming to regard the Service as a mere outward form—a series of
postures to be assumed, and of words to be said or sung, while the
_thoughts_ are elsewhere—and the danger of ‘familiarity’ breeding
‘contempt’ for sacred things.
Let me illustrate these last two forms of danger, from my own
experience. Not long ago, I attended a Cathedral-Service, and was placed
immediately behind a row of men, members of the Choir; and I could not
help noticing that they treated the _Lessons_ as a part of the Service
to which they needed not to give _any_ attention, and as affording them
a convenient opportunity for arranging music-books, &c., &c. Also I have
frequently seen a row of little choristers, after marching in procession
to their places, kneel down, as if about to pray, and rise from their
knees after a minute spent in looking about them, it being but too
evident that the attitude was a mere mockery. Surely it is very
dangerous, for these children, to thus accustom them to _pretend_ to
pray? As an instance of irreverent treatment of holy things, I will
mention a custom, which no doubt many of my readers have noticed in
Churches where the Clergy and Choir enter in procession, viz. that, at
the end of the private devotions, which are carried on in the vestry,
and which are of course inaudible to the Congregation, the final “Amen”
is _shouted_, loud enough to be heard all through the Church. This
serves as a signal, to the Congregation, to prepare to rise when the
procession appears: and it admits of no dispute that it is for this
purpose that it is thus shouted. When we remember to Whom that “Amen” is
_really_ addressed, and consider that it is here _used_ for the same
purpose as one of the Church-bells, we must surely admit that it is a
piece of gross irreverence? To _me_ it is much as if I were to see a
Bible used as a footstool.
As an instance of the dangers, for the Clergy themselves, introduced by
this new movement, let me mention the fact that, according to _my_
experience, Clergymen of this school are _specially_ apt to retail comic
anecdotes, in which the most sacred names and words—sometimes actual
texts from the Bible—are used as themes for jesting. Many such things
are repeated as having been originally said by _children_, whose utter
ignorance of evil must no doubt acquit _them_, in the sight of God, of
all blame; but it must be otherwise for those who _consciously_ use such
innocent utterances as material for their unholy mirth.
Let me add, however, _most_ earnestly, that I fully believe that this
profanity is, in many cases, _un_conscious: the ‘environment’ (as I have
tried to explain at p. 123) makes all the difference between man and
man; and I rejoice to think that many of these profane stories—which _I_
find so painful to listen to, and should feel it a sin to repeat—give to
_their_ ears no pain, and to _their_ consciences no shock; and that
_they_ can utter, not less sincerely than myself, the two prayers,
“_Hallowed be Thy Name_” and “_from hardness of heart, and contempt of
Thy Word and Commandment, Good Lord, deliver us!_” To which I would
desire to add, for their sake and for my own, Keble’s beautiful
petition, “_help us, this and every day, To live more nearly as we
pray!_” It is, in fact, for its _consequences_—for the grave dangers,
both to speaker and to hearer, which it involves—rather than for what it
is _in itself_, that I mourn over this clerical habit of profanity in
social talk. To the _believing_ hearer it brings the danger of loss of
reverence for holy things, by the mere act of listening to, and
enjoying, such jests; and also the temptation to retail them for the
amusement of others. To the _unbelieving_ hearer it brings a welcome
confirmation of his theory that religion is a fable, in the spectacle of
its accredited champions thus betraying their trust. And to the speaker
himself it must surely bring the danger of _loss of faith_. For surely
such jests, if uttered with no consciousness of harm, must necessarily
be also uttered with no consciousness, at the moment, of the _reality_
of God, as a _living being_, who hears all we say. And he, who allows
himself the habit of thus uttering holy words, with no thought of their
meaning, is but too likely to find that, for him, God has become a myth,
and heaven a poetic fancy—that, for him, the light of life is gone, and
that he is at heart an atheist, lost in “_a darkness that may be felt_.”
There is, I fear, at the present time, an increasing tendency to
irreverent treatment of the name of God and of subjects connected with
religion. Some of our theatres are helping this downward movement by the
gross caricatures of clergymen which they put upon the stage: some of
our clergy are themselves helping it, by showing that they can lay aside
the spirit of reverence, along with their surplices, and can treat as
jests, when _outside_ their churches, names and things to which they pay
an almost superstitious veneration when _inside_: the “Salvation Army”
has, I fear, with the best intentions, done much to help it, by the
coarse familiarity with which they treat holy things: and surely every
one, who desires to _live_ in the spirit of the prayer “_Hallowed be thy
Name_,” ought to do what he can, however little that may be, to check
it. So I have gladly taken this unique opportunity, however unfit the
topic may seem for the Preface to a book of this kind, to express some
thoughts which have weighed on my mind for a long time. I did not
expect, when I wrote the Preface to Vol. I, that it would be read to any
appreciable extent: but I rejoice to believe, from evidence that has
reached me, that it _has_ been read by many, and to hope that this
Preface will also be so: and I think that, among them, some will be
found ready to sympathise with the views I have put forwards, and ready
to help, with their prayers and their example, the revival, in Society,
of the waning spirit of reverence.
_Christmas_, 1893.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. BRUNO’S LESSONS 1
II. LOVE’S CURFEW 20
III. STREAKS OF DAWN 36
IV. THE DOG-KING 52
V. MATILDA JANE 67
VI. WILLIE’S WIFE 82
VII. FORTUNATUS’ PURSE 96
VIII. IN A SHADY PLACE 110
IX. THE FAREWELL-PARTY 128
X. JABBERING AND JAM 147
XI. THE MAN IN THE MOON 162
XII. FAIRY-MUSIC 175
XIII. WHAT TOTTLES MEANT 194
XIV. BRUNO’S PICNIC 212
XV. THE LITTLE FOXES 233
XVI. BEYOND THESE VOICES 247
XVII. TO THE RESCUE! 262
XVIII. A NEWSPAPER-CUTTING 282
XIX. A FAIRY-DUET 287
XX. GAMMON AND SPINACH 310
XXI. THE PROFESSOR’S LECTURE 329
XXII. THE BANQUET 346
XXIII. THE PIG-TALE 363
XXIV. THE BEGGAR’S RETURN 381
XXV. LIFE OUT OF DEATH 400
General Index 413
List of Works 426
ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. I.
PAGE
THE MARCH-UP 3
VISITING THE PROFESSOR 11
BOOTS FOR HORIZONTAL WEATHER 15
A PORTABLE PLUNGE-BATH 24
REMOVAL OF UGGUG 41
‘WHAT A GAME!’ 48
‘DRINK THIS!’ 53
‘COME, YOU BE OFF!’ 62
THE GARDENER 66
A BEGGAR’S PALACE 72
THE CRIMSON LOCKET 77
‘HE THOUGHT HE SAW A BUFFALO’ 79
‘IT WAS A HIPPOPOTAMUS’ 91
THE MAP OF FAIRYLAND 96
‘HE THOUGHT HE SAW A KANGAROO’ 106
THE MOUSE-LION 108
‘HAMMER IT IN!’ 115
A BEAR WITHOUT A HEAD 117
‘COME UP, BRUIN!’ 123
THE OTHER PROFESSOR 135
‘HOW CHEERFULLY THE BOND HE SIGNED!’ 144
‘POOR PETER SHUDDERED IN DESPAIR’ 147
‘SUCH BOOTS AS THESE YOU SELDOM SEE’ 150
‘I WILL LEND YOU FIFTY MORE!’ 154
‘HE THOUGHT HE SAW AN ALBATROSS’ 165
THE MASTIFF-SENTINEL 172
THE DOG-KING 176
FAIRY-SYLVIE 193
BRUNO’S REVENGE 213
FAIRIES RESTING 226
A CHANGED CROCODILE 229
A LECTURE ON ART 240
‘THREE BADGERS ON A MOSSY STONE’ 247
‘THE FATHER-BADGER, WRITHING IN A CAVE’ 249
‘THOSE AGED ONES WAXED GAY’ 252
‘HOW PERFECTLY ISOCHRONOUS!’ 268
THE LAME CHILD 280
‘IT WENT IN TWO HALVES’ 285
FIVE O’CLOCK TEA 296
‘WHAT’S THE MATTER, DARLING?’ 307
THE DEAD HARE 321
CROSSING THE LINE 341
‘THE PUG-DOG SAT UP’ 351
THE QUEEN’S BABY 363
THE FROGS’ BIRTHDAY-TREAT 373
‘HE WRENCHED OUT THAT CROCODILE’S TOOF!’ 380
‘LOOK EASTWARD!’ 395
ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. II.
PAGE
SYLVIE’S TRUANT-PUPIL 8
KING FISHER’S WOOING 15
‘SPEND IT ALL FOR MINNIE’ 22
‘ARE NOT THOSE ORCHISES?’ 50
A ROYAL THIEF-TAKER 62
‘SUMMAT WRONG WI’ MY SPECTACLES!’ 64
BESSIE’S SONG 75
THE RESCUE OF WILLIE 83
WILLIE’S WIFE 88
FORTUNATUS’ PURSE 103
‘I AM SITTING AT YOUR FEET’ 119
MEIN HERR’S FAIRY-FRIENDS 163
‘HOW CALL YOU THE OPERA?’ 178
SCHOLAR-HUNTING: THE PURSUED 188
SCHOLAR-HUNTING: THE PURSUERS 189
THE EGG-MERCHANT 197
STARTING FOR BRUNO’S PICNIC 230
‘ENTER THE LION’ 236
‘WHIHUAUCH! WHIHUAUCH!’ 242
‘NEVER!’ YELLED TOTTLES 248
BRUNO’S BED-TIME 265
‘LONG CEREMONIOUS CALLS’ 266
THE VOICES 267
‘HIS SOUL SHALL BE SAD FOR THE SPIDER’ 268
LORDS OF THE CREATION 271
‘WILL YOU NOT SPARE ME?’ 277
IN THE CHURCH-YARD 291
A FAIRY-DUET 304
THE OTHER PROFESSOR FOUND 317
‘HER IMPERIAL HIGHNESS IS SURPRISED!’ 326
‘HE THOUGHT HE SAW AN ELEPHANT’ 335
AN EXPLOSION 345
‘A CANNOT SHAK’ HANDS WI’ THEE!’ 350
THE OTHER PROFESSOR’S FALL 352
‘TEACHING TIGRESSES TO SMILE’ 365
‘HORRID WAS THAT PIG’S DESPAIR!’ 367
THE FATAL JUMP 369
‘BATHING CROCODILES IN CREAM’ 371
‘THAT PIG LAY STILL AS ANY STONE’ 372
‘STILL HE SITS IN MISERIE’ 373
‘BLESSED BY HAPPY STAGS’ 377
THE OLD BEGGAR’S RETURN 382
‘PORCUPINE!’ 388
‘GOOD-NIGHT, PROFESSOR!’ 398
‘HIS WIFE KNELT DOWN AT HIS SIDE’ 404
THE BLUE LOCKET 409
‘IT IS LOVE!’ 411
SYLVIE AND BRUNO
CONCLUDED.
CHAPTER I.
BRUNO’S LESSONS.
During the next month or two my solitary town-life seemed, by contrast,
unusually dull and tedious. I missed the pleasant friends I had left
behind at Elveston—the genial interchange of thought—the sympathy which
gave to one’s ideas a new and vivid reality: but, perhaps more than all,
I missed the companionship of the two Fairies—or Dream-Children, for I
had not yet solved the problem as to who or what they were—whose sweet
playfulness had shed a magic radiance over my life.
In office-hours—which I suppose reduce most men to the mental condition
of a coffee-mill or a mangle—time sped along much as usual: it was in
the pauses of life, the desolate hours when books and newspapers palled
on the sated appetite, and when, thrown back upon one’s own dreary
musings, one strove—all in vain—to people the vacant air with the dear
faces of absent friends, that the real bitterness of solitude made
itself felt.
One evening, feeling my life a little more wearisome than usual, I
strolled down to my Club, not so much with the hope of meeting any
friend there, for London was now ‘out of town,’ as with the feeling that
here, at least, I should hear ‘sweet words of human speech,’ and come
into contact with human thought.
However, almost the first face I saw there _was_ that of a friend. Eric
Lindon was lounging, with rather a ‘bored’ expression of face, over a
newspaper; and we fell into conversation with a mutual satisfaction
which neither of us tried to conceal.
After a while I ventured to introduce what was just then the main
subject of my thoughts. “And so the Doctor” (a name we had adopted by a
tacit agreement, as a convenient compromise between the formality of
‘Doctor Forester’ and the intimacy—to which Eric Lindon hardly seemed
entitled—of ‘Arthur’) “has gone abroad by this time, I suppose? Can you
give me his present address?”
“He is still at Elveston—I believe,” was the reply. “But I have not been
there since I last met you.”
I did not know which part of this intelligence to wonder at most. “And
might I ask—if it isn’t taking too much of a liberty—when your
wedding-bells are to—or perhaps they _have_ rung, already?”
“No,” said Eric, in a steady voice, which betrayed scarcely a trace of
emotion: “_that_ engagement is at an end. I am still ‘Benedick the
_un_married man.’”
After this, the thick-coming fancies—all radiant with new possibilities
of happiness for Arthur—were far too bewildering to admit of any further
conversation, and I was only too glad to avail myself of the first
decent excuse, that offered itself, for retiring into silence.
The next day I wrote to Arthur, with as much of a reprimand for his long
silence as I could bring myself to put into words, begging him to tell
me how the world went with him.
Needs must that three or four days—possibly more—should elapse before I
could receive his reply; and never had I known days drag their slow
length along with a more tedious indolence.
To while away the time, I strolled, one afternoon, into Kensington
Gardens, and, wandering aimlessly along any path that presented itself,
I soon became aware that I had somehow strayed into one that was wholly
new to me. Still, my elfish experiences seemed to have so completely
faded out of my life that nothing was further from my thoughts than the
idea of again meeting my fairy-friends, when I chanced to notice a small
creature, moving among the grass that fringed the path, that did not
seem to be an insect, or a frog, or any other living thing that I could
think of. Cautiously kneeling down, and making an _ex tempore_ cage of
my two hands, I imprisoned the little wanderer, and felt a sudden thrill
of surprise and delight on discovering that my prisoner was no other
than _Bruno_ himself!
Bruno took the matter _very_ coolly, and, when I had replaced him on the
ground, where he would be within easy conversational distance, he began
talking, just as if it were only a few minutes since last we had met.
“Doos oo know what the _Rule_ is,” he enquired, “when oo catches a
Fairy, withouten its having tolded oo where it was?” (Bruno’s notions of
English Grammar had certainly _not_ improved since our last meeting.)
“No,” I said. “I didn’t know there was any Rule about it.”
“I _think_ oo’ve got a right to _eat_ me,” said the little fellow,
looking up into my face with a winning smile. “But I’m not pruffickly
sure. Oo’d better not do it wizout asking.”
It did indeed seem reasonable not to take so irrevocable a step as
_that_, without due enquiry. “I’ll certainly _ask_ about it, first,” I
said. “Besides, I don’t know yet whether you would be _worth_ eating!”
“I guess I’m _deliciously_ good to eat,” Bruno remarked in a satisfied
tone, as if it were something to be rather proud of.
“And what are you doing here, Bruno?”
“_That’s_ not my name!” said my cunning little friend. “Don’t oo know my
name’s ‘Oh Bruno!’? That’s what Sylvie always calls me, when I says mine
lessons.”
“Well then, what are you doing here, oh Bruno?”
“Doing mine lessons, a-course!” With that roguish twinkle in his eye,
that always came when he knew he was talking nonsense.
“Oh, _that’s_ the way you do your lessons, is it? And do you remember
them well?”
“Always can ’member _mine_ lessons,” said Bruno. “It’s _Sylvie’s_
lessons that’s so _dreffully_ hard to ’member!” He frowned, as if in
agonies of thought, and tapped his forehead with his knuckles. “I
_ca’n’t_ think enough to understand them!” he said despairingly. “It
wants _double_ thinking, I believe!”
“But where’s Sylvie gone?”
“That’s just what _I_ want to know!” said Bruno disconsolately. “What
ever’s the good of setting me lessons, when she isn’t here to ’splain
the hard bits?”
“_I’ll_ find her for you!” I volunteered; and, getting up, I wandered
round the tree under whose shade I had been reclining, looking on all
sides for Sylvie. In another minute I _again_ noticed some strange thing
moving among the grass, and, kneeling down, was immediately confronted
with Sylvie’s innocent face, lighted up with a joyful surprise at seeing
me, and was accosted, in the sweet voice I knew so well, with what
seemed to be the _end_ of a sentence whose beginning I had failed to
catch.
“—and I think he ought to have _finished_ them by this time. So I’m
going back to him. Will you come too? It’s only just round at the other
side of this tree.”
It was but a few steps for _me_; but it was a great many for Sylvie; and
I had to be very careful to walk slowly, in order not to leave the
little creature so far behind as to lose sight of her.
To find Bruno’s _lessons_ was easy enough: they appeared to be neatly
written out on large smooth ivy-leaves, which were scattered in some
confusion over a little patch of ground where the grass had been worn
away; but the pale student, who ought by rights to have been bending
over them, was nowhere to be seen: we looked in all directions, for some
time, in vain; but at last Sylvie’s sharp eyes detected him, swinging on
a tendril of ivy, and Sylvie’s stern voice commanded his instant return
to _terra firma_ and to the business of Life.
[Illustration: SYLVIE’S TRUANT-PUPIL]
“Pleasure first and business afterwards” seemed to be the motto of these
tiny folk, so many hugs and kisses had to be interchanged before
anything else could be done.
“Now, Bruno,” Sylvie said reproachfully, “didn’t I tell you you were to
go on with your lessons, unless you heard to the contrary?”
“But I _did_ heard to the contrary!” Bruno insisted, with a mischievous
twinkle in his eye.
“_What_ did you hear, you wicked boy?”
“It were a sort of noise in the air,” said Bruno: “a sort of a
scrambling noise. Didn’t _oo_ hear it, Mister Sir?”
“Well, anyhow, you needn’t go to _sleep_ over them, you lazy-lazy!” For
Bruno had curled himself up, on the largest ‘lesson,’ and was arranging
another as a pillow.
“I _wasn’t_ asleep!” said Bruno, in a deeply-injured tone. “When I shuts
mine eyes, it’s to show that I’m _awake_!”
“Well, how much have you learned, then?”
“I’ve learned a little tiny bit,” said Bruno, modestly, being evidently
afraid of overstating his achievement. “_Ca’n’t_ learn no more!”
“Oh Bruno! You know you _can_, if you like.”
“Course I can, if I _like_,” the pale student replied; “but I ca’n’t if
I _don’t_ like!”
Sylvie had a way—which I could not too highly admire—of evading Bruno’s
logical perplexities by suddenly striking into a new line of thought;
and this masterly stratagem she now adopted.
“Well, I must say _one_ thing——”
“Did oo know, Mister Sir,” Bruno thoughtfully remarked, “that Sylvie
ca’n’t count? Whenever she says ‘I must say _one_ thing,’ I _know_ quite
well she’ll say _two_ things! And she always doos.”
“Two heads are better than one, Bruno,” I said, but with no very
distinct idea as to what I meant by it.
“I shouldn’t mind having two _heads_,” Bruno said softly to himself:
“one head to eat mine dinner, and one head to argue wiz Sylvie—doos oo
think oo’d look prettier if oo’d got _two_ heads, Mister Sir?”
The case did not, I assured him, admit of a doubt.
“The reason why Sylvie’s so cross——” Bruno went on very seriously,
almost sadly.
Sylvie’s eyes grew large and round with surprise at this new line of
enquiry—her rosy face being perfectly radiant with good humour. But she
said nothing.
“Wouldn’t it be better to tell me after the lessons are over?” I
suggested.
“Very well,” Bruno said with a resigned air: “only she wo’n’t be cross
then.”
“There’s only three lessons to do,” said Sylvie. “Spelling, and
Geography, and Singing.”
“Not _Arithmetic_?” I said.
“No, he hasn’t a head for Arithmetic——”
“Course I haven’t!” said Bruno. “Mine head’s for _hair_. I haven’t got a
_lot_ of heads!”
“—and he ca’n’t learn his Multiplication-table——”
“I like _History_ ever so much better,” Bruno remarked. “Oo has to
_repeat_ that Muddlecome table——”
“Well, and you have to repeat——”
“No, oo hasn’t!” Bruno interrupted. “History repeats itself. The
Professor said so!”
Sylvie was arranging some letters on a board——E—V—I—L. “Now, Bruno,” she
said, “what does _that_ spell?”
Bruno looked at it, in solemn silence, for a minute. “I knows what it
_doosn’t_ spell!” he said at last.
“That’s no good,” said Sylvie. “What _does_ it spell?”
Bruno took another look at the mysterious letters. “Why, it’s ‘LIVE,’
backwards!” he exclaimed. (I thought it was, indeed.)
“How _did_ you manage to see that?” said Sylvie.
“I just twiddled my eyes,” said Bruno, “and then I saw it directly. Now
may I sing the King-fisher Song?”
“Geography next,” said Sylvie. “Don’t you know the Rules?”
“I thinks there oughtn’t to be such a lot of Rules, Sylvie! I thinks——”
“Yes, there _ought_ to be such a lot of Rules, you wicked, wicked boy!
And how dare you _think_ at all about it? And shut up that mouth
directly!”
So, as ‘that mouth’ didn’t seem inclined to shut up of itself, Sylvie
shut it for him—with both hands—and sealed it with a kiss, just as you
would fasten up a letter.
“Now that Bruno is fastened up from talking,” she went on, turning to
me, “I’ll show you the Map he does his lessons on.”
And there it was, a large Map of the World, spread out on the ground. It
was so large that Bruno had to crawl about on it, to point out the
places named in the ‘King-fisher Lesson.’
“When a King-fisher sees a Lady-bird flying away, he says ‘_Ceylon_, if
you _Candia_!’ And when he catches it, he says ‘Come to _Media_! And if
you’re _Hungary_ or thirsty, I’ll give you some _Nubia_!’ When he takes
it in his claws, he says ‘_Europe!_’ When he puts it into his beak, he
says ‘_India!_’ When he’s swallowed it, he says ‘_Eton!_’ That’s all.”
“That’s _quite_ perfect,” said Sylvie. “Now you may sing the King-fisher
Song.”
“Will _oo_ sing the chorus?” Bruno said to me.
I was just beginning to say “I’m afraid I don’t know the _words_,” when
Sylvie silently turned the map over, and I found the words were all
written on the back. In one respect it was a _very_ peculiar song: the
chorus to each verse came in the _middle_, instead of at the _end_ of
it. However, the tune was so easy that I soon picked it up, and managed
the chorus as well, perhaps, as it is possible for _one_ person to
manage such a thing. It was in vain that I signed to Sylvie to help me:
she only smiled sweetly and shook her head.
“King Fisher courted Lady Bird—
_Sing Beans, sing Bones, sing Butterflies!_
‘Find me my match,’ he said,
‘With such a noble head—
With such a beard, as white as curd—
With such expressive eyes!’
“‘Yet pins have heads,’ said Lady Bird—
_Sing Prunes, sing Prawns, sing Primrose-Hill!_
‘And, where you stick them in,
They stay, and thus a pin
Is very much to be preferred
To one that’s never still!’
“‘Oysters have beards,’ said Lady Bird—
_Sing Flies, sing Frogs, sing Fiddle-strings!_
‘I love them, for I know
_They_ never chatter so:
They would not say one single word—
Not if you crowned them Kings!’
“‘Needles have eyes,’ said Lady Bird—
_Sing Cats, sing Corks, sing Cowslip-tea!_
‘And they are sharp—just what
Your Majesty is _not:_
So get you gone—’tis too absurd
To come a-courting _me_!’”
[Illustration: KING FISHER’S WOOING]
“So he went away,” Bruno added as a kind of postscript, when the last
note of the song had died away. “Just like he always did.”
“Oh, my _dear_ Bruno!” Sylvie exclaimed, with her hands over her ears.
“You shouldn’t say ‘like’: you should say ‘_what_.’”
To which Bruno replied, doggedly, “I only says ‘what!’ when oo doosn’t
speak loud, so as I can hear oo.”
“Where did he go to?” I asked, hoping to prevent an argument.
“He went more far than he’d never been before,” said Bruno.
“You should never say ‘more far,’” Sylvie corrected him: “you should say
‘_farther_.’”
“Then _oo_ shouldn’t say ‘more broth,’ when we’re at dinner,” Bruno
retorted: “oo should say ‘_brother_’!”
This time Sylvie evaded an argument by turning away, and beginning to
roll up the Map. “Lessons are over!” she proclaimed in her sweetest
tones.
“And has there been no _crying_ over them?” I enquired. “Little boys
_always_ cry over their lessons, don’t they?”
“I never cries after twelve o’clock,” said Bruno: “’cause then it’s
getting so near to dinner-time.”
“Sometimes, in the morning,” Sylvie said in a low voice; “when it’s
Geography-day, and when he’s been disobe——”
“_What_ a fellow you are to talk, Sylvie!” Bruno hastily interposed.
“Doos oo think the world was _made_ for oo to talk in?”
“Why, where would you _have_ me talk, then?” Sylvie said, evidently
quite ready for an argument.
But Bruno answered resolutely. “I’m not going to argue about it, ’cause
it’s getting late, and there wo’n’t be time—but oo’s as ’ong as ever oo
can be!” And he rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, in which
tears were beginning to glitter.
_Sylvie’s_ eyes filled with tears in a moment. “I didn’t mean it, Bruno,
_darling_!” she whispered; and the rest of the argument was lost ‘amid
the tangles of Neæra’s hair,’ while the two disputants hugged and kissed
each other.
But this new form of argument was brought to a sudden end by a flash of
lightning, which was closely followed by a peal of thunder, and by a
torrent of rain-drops, which came hissing and spitting, almost like live
creatures, through the leaves of the tree that sheltered us.
“Why, it’s raining cats and dogs!” I said.
“And all the _dogs_ has come down _first_,” said Bruno: “there’s nothing
but _cats_ coming down now!”
In another minute the pattering ceased, as suddenly as it had begun. I
stepped out from under the tree, and found that the storm was over; but
I looked in vain, on my return, for my tiny companions. They had
vanished with the storm, and there was nothing for it but to make the
best of my way home.
On the table lay, awaiting my return, an envelope of that peculiar
yellow tint which always announces a telegram, and which must be, in the
memories of so many of us, inseparably linked with some great and sudden
sorrow—something that has cast a shadow, never in this world to be
wholly lifted off, on the brightness of Life. No doubt it has _also_
heralded—for many of us—some sudden news of joy; but this, I think, is
less common: human life seems, on the whole, to contain more of sorrow
than of joy. And yet the world goes on. Who knows why?
This time, however, there was no shock of sorrow to be faced: in fact,
the few words it contained (“Could not bring myself to write. Come soon.
Always welcome. A letter follows this. Arthur.”) seemed so like Arthur
himself speaking, that it gave me quite a thrill of pleasure, and I at
once began the preparations needed for the journey.
CHAPTER II.
LOVE’S CURFEW.
“Fayfield Junction! Change for Elveston!”
What subtle memory could there be, linked to these commonplace words,
that caused such a flood of happy thoughts to fill my brain? I
dismounted from the carriage in a state of joyful excitement for which I
could not at first account. True, I had taken this very journey, and at
the same hour of the day, six months ago; but many things had happened
since then, and an old man’s memory has but a slender hold on recent
events: I sought ‘the missing link’ in vain. Suddenly I caught sight of
a bench—the only one provided on the cheerless platform—with a lady
seated on it, and the whole forgotten scene flashed upon me as vividly
as if it were happening over again.
“Yes,” I thought. “This bare platform is, for me, rich with the memory
of a dear friend! She was sitting on that very bench, and invited me to
share it, with some quotation from Shakespeare—I forget what. I’ll try
the Earl’s plan for the Dramatisation of Life, and fancy that figure to
be Lady Muriel; and I won’t undeceive myself too soon!”
So I strolled along the platform, resolutely ‘making-believe’ (as
children say) that the casual passenger, seated on that bench, was the
Lady Muriel I remembered so well. She was facing away from me, which
aided the elaborate cheatery I was practising on myself: but, though I
was careful, in passing the spot, to look the other way, in order to
prolong the pleasant illusion, it was inevitable that, when I turned to
walk back again, I should see who it was. It was Lady Muriel herself!
[Illustration: ‘SPEND IT ALL FOR MINNIE’]
The whole scene now returned vividly to my memory; and, to make this
repetition of it stranger still, there was the same old man, whom I
remembered seeing so roughly ordered off, by the Station-Master, to make
room for his titled passenger. The same, but ‘with a difference’: no
longer tottering feebly along the platform, but actually seated at Lady
Muriel’s side, and in conversation with her! “Yes, put it in your
purse,” she was saying, “and remember you’re to spend it all for
_Minnie_. And mind you bring her something nice, that’ll do her real
good! And give her my love!” So intent was she on saying these words,
that, although the sound of my footstep had made her lift her head and
look at me, she did not at first recognise me.
I raised my hat as I approached, and then there flashed across her face
a genuine look of joy, which so exactly recalled the sweet face of
Sylvie, when last we met in Kensington Gardens, that I felt quite
bewildered.
Rather than disturb the poor old man at her side, she rose from her
seat, and joined me in my walk up and down the platform, and for a
minute or two our conversation was as utterly trivial and commonplace as
if we were merely two casual guests in a London drawing-room. Each of us
seemed to shrink, just at first, from touching on the deeper interests
which linked our lives together.
The Elveston train had drawn up at the platform, while we talked; and,
in obedience to the Station-Master’s obsequious hint of “This way, my
Lady! Time’s up!”, we were making the best of our way towards the end
which contained the sole first-class carriage, and were just passing the
now-empty bench, when Lady Muriel noticed, lying on it, the purse in
which her gift had just been so carefully bestowed, the owner of which,
all unconscious of his loss, was being helped into a carriage at the
other end of the train. She pounced on it instantly. “Poor old man!” she
cried. “He mustn’t go off, and think he’s lost it!”
“Let _me_ run with it! I can go quicker than you!” I said. But she was
already half-way down the platform, flying (‘running’ is much too
mundane a word for such fairy-like motion) at a pace that left all
possible efforts of _mine_ hopelessly in the rear.
She was back again before I had well completed my audacious boast of
speed in running, and was saying, quite demurely, as we entered our
carriage, “and you really think _you_ could have done it quicker?”
“No indeed!” I replied. “I plead ‘Guilty’ of gross exaggeration, and
throw myself on the mercy of the Court!”
“The Court will overlook it—for this once!” Then her manner suddenly
changed from playfulness to an anxious gravity.
“You are not looking your best!” she said with an anxious glance. “In
fact, I think you look _more_ of an invalid than when you left us. I
very much doubt if London agrees with you?”
“It _may_ be the London air,” I said, “or it may be the hard work—or my
rather lonely life: anyhow, I’ve _not_ been feeling very well, lately.
But Elveston will soon set me up again. Arthur’s prescription—he’s my
doctor, you know, and I heard from him this morning—is ‘plenty of ozone,
and new milk, and _pleasant society_’!”
“Pleasant society?” said Lady Muriel, with a pretty make-believe of
considering the question. “Well, really I don’t know where we can find
_that_ for you! We have so few neighbours. But new milk we _can_ manage.
Do get it of my old friend Mrs. Hunter, up there, on the hill-side. You
may rely upon the _quality_. And her little Bessie comes to school every
day, and passes your lodgings. So it would be very easy to send it.”
“I’ll follow your advice, with pleasure,” I said; “and I’ll go and
arrange about it tomorrow. I know Arthur will want a walk.”
“You’ll find it quite an easy walk—under three miles, I think.”
“Well, now that we’ve settled that point, let me retort your own remark
upon yourself. I don’t think _you’re_ looking quite your best!”
“I daresay not,” she replied in a low voice; and a sudden shadow seemed
to overspread her face. “I’ve had some troubles lately. It’s a matter
about which I’ve been long wishing to consult you, but I couldn’t easily
write about it. I’m _so_ glad to have this opportunity!”
“Do you think,” she began again, after a minute’s silence, and with a
visible embarrassment of manner most unusual in her, “that a promise,
deliberately and solemnly given, is _always_ binding—except, of course,
where its fulfilment would involve some actual _sin_?”
“I ca’n’t think of any other exception at this moment,” I said. “That
branch of casuistry is usually, I believe, treated as a question of
truth and untruth——”
“Surely that _is_ the principle?” she eagerly interrupted. “I always
thought the Bible-teaching about it consisted of such texts as ‘_lie not
one to another_’?”
“I have thought about that point,” I replied; “and it seems to me that
the essence of _lying_ is the intention of _deceiving_. If you give a
promise, fully _intending_ to fulfil it, you are certainly acting
truthfully _then_; and, if you afterwards break it, that does not
involve any _deception_. I cannot call it _untruthful_.”
Another pause of silence ensued. Lady Muriel’s face was hard to read:
she looked pleased, I thought, but also puzzled; and I felt curious to
know whether her question had, as I began to suspect, some bearing on
the breaking off of her engagement with Captain (now Major) Lindon.
“You have relieved me from a great fear,” she said; “but the thing is of
course _wrong_, somehow. What texts would _you_ quote, to prove it
wrong?”
“Any that enforce the payment of _debts_. If _A_ promises something to
_B_, _B_ has a claim upon _A_. And _A_’s sin, if he breaks his promise,
seems to me more analogous to _stealing_ than to _lying_.”
“It’s a new way of looking at it—to me,” she said; “but it seems a
_true_ way, also. However, I won’t deal in generalities, with an old
friend like you! For we _are_ old friends, somehow. Do you know, I think
we _began_ as old friends?” she said with a playfulness of tone that ill
accorded with the tears that glistened in her eyes.
“Thank you very much for saying so,” I replied. “I like to think of you
as an _old_ friend,” (“—though you don’t look it!” would have been the
almost necessary sequence, with any other lady; but she and I seemed to
have long passed out of the time when compliments, or any such
trivialities, were possible.)
Here the train paused at a station, where two or three passengers
entered the carriage; so no more was said till we had reached our
journey’s end.
On our arrival at Elveston, she readily adopted my suggestion that we
should walk up together; so, as soon as our luggage had been duly taken
charge of—hers by the servant who met her at the station, and mine by
one of the porters—we set out together along the familiar lanes, now
linked in my memory with so many delightful associations. Lady Muriel at
once recommenced the conversation at the point where it had been
interrupted.
“You knew of my engagement to my cousin Eric. Did you also hear——”
“Yes,” I interrupted, anxious to spare her the pain of giving any
details. “I heard it had all come to an end.”
“I would like to tell you how it happened,” she said; “as that is the
very point I want your advice about. I had long realised that we were
not in sympathy in religious belief. His ideas of Christianity are very
shadowy; and even as to the existence of a God he lives in a sort of
dreamland. But it has not affected his life! I feel sure, now, that the
most absolute Atheist _may_ be leading, though walking blindfold, a pure
and noble life. And if you knew half the good deeds——” she broke off
suddenly, and turned away her head.
“I entirely agree with you,” I said. “And have we not our Saviour’s own
promise that such a life shall surely lead to the light?”
“Yes, I know it,” she said in a broken voice, still keeping her head
turned away. “And so I told him. He said he would believe, for _my_
sake, if he could. And he wished, for _my_ sake, he could see things as
I did. But that is all wrong!” she went on passionately. “God _cannot_
approve such low motives as that! Still it was not _I_ that broke it
off. I knew he loved me; and I had _promised_; and——”
“Then it was _he_ that broke it off?”
“He released me unconditionally.” She faced me again now, having quite
recovered her usual calmness of manner.
“Then what difficulty remains?”
“It is _this_, that I don’t believe he did it of his own free will. Now,
supposing he did it _against_ his will, merely to satisfy my scruples,
would not his claim on me remain just as strong as ever? And would not
my promise be as binding as ever? My father says ‘no’; but I ca’n’t help
fearing he is biased by his love for me. And I’ve asked no one else. I
have many friends—friends for the bright sunny weather; not friends for
the clouds and storms of life; not _old_ friends like you!”
“Let me think a little,” I said: and for some minutes we walked on in
silence, while, pained to the heart at seeing the bitter trial that had
come upon this pure and gentle soul, I strove in vain to see my way
through the tangled skein of conflicting motives.
“If she loves him truly,” (I seemed at last to grasp the clue to the
problem) “is not _that_, for her, the voice of God? May she not hope
that she is sent to him, even as Ananias was sent to Saul in his
blindness, that he may receive his sight?” Once more I seemed to hear
Arthur whispering “_What knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save
thy husband?_” and I broke the silence with the words “If you still love
him truly——”
“I do _not_!” she hastily interrupted. “At least—not in _that_ way. I
_believe_ I loved him when I promised; but I was very young: it is hard
to know. But, whatever the feeling was, it is dead _now_. The motive on
_his_ side is Love: on _mine_ it is—Duty!”
Again there was a long silence. The whole skein of thought was tangled
worse than ever. This time _she_ broke the silence. “Don’t misunderstand
me!” she said. “When I said my heart was not _his_, I did not mean it
was any one else’s! At present I feel bound to _him_; and, till I know I
am absolutely free, in the sight of God, to love any other than him,
I’ll never even _think_ of any one else—in _that_ way, I mean. I would
die sooner!” I had never imagined my gentle friend capable of such
passionate utterances.
I ventured on no further remark until we had nearly arrived at the
Hall-gate; but, the longer I reflected, the clearer it became to me that
no call of Duty demanded the sacrifice—possibly of the happiness of a
life—which she seemed ready to make. I tried to make this clear to _her_
also, adding some warnings on the dangers that surely awaited a union in
which mutual love was wanting. “The only argument for it, worth
considering,” I said in conclusion, “seems to be his supposed
_reluctance_ in releasing you from your promise. I have tried to give to
that argument its _full_ weight, and my conclusion is that it does _not_
affect the rights of the case, or invalidate the release he has given
you. My belief is that you are _entirely_ free to act as _now_ seems
right.”
“I am _very_ grateful to you,” she said earnestly. “Believe it, please!
I ca’n’t put it into proper words!” and the subject was dropped by
mutual consent: and I only learned, long afterwards, that our discussion
had really served to dispel the doubts that had harassed her so long.
We parted at the Hall-gate, and I found Arthur eagerly awaiting my
arrival; and, before we parted for the night, I had heard the whole
story—how he had put off his journey from day to day, feeling that he
_could_ not go away from the place till his fate had been irrevocably
settled by the wedding taking place: how the preparations for the
wedding, and the excitement in the neighbourhood, had suddenly come to
an end, and he had learned (from Major Lindon, who called to wish him
good-bye) that the engagement had been broken off by mutual consent: how
he had instantly abandoned all his plans for going abroad, and had
decided to stay on at Elveston, for a year or two at any rate, till his
newly-awakened hopes should prove true or false; and how, since that
memorable day, he had avoided all meetings with Lady Muriel, fearing to
betray his feelings before he had had any sufficient evidence as to how
she regarded him. “But it is nearly six weeks since all that happened,”
he said in conclusion, “and we can meet in the ordinary way, now, with
no need for any painful allusions. I would have written to tell you all
this: only I kept hoping from day to day, that—that there would be
_more_ to tell!”
“And how should there be _more_, you foolish fellow,” I fondly urged,
“if you never even go near her? Do you expect the offer to come from
_her_?”
Arthur was betrayed into a smile. “No,” he said, “I hardly expect
_that_. But I’m a desperate coward. There’s no doubt about it!”
“And what _reasons_ have you heard of for breaking off the engagement?”
“A good many,” Arthur replied, and proceeded to count them on his
fingers. “First, it was found that she was dying of—something; so _he_
broke it off. Then it was found that _he_ was dying of—some other thing;
so _she_ broke it off. Then the Major turned out to be a confirmed
gamester; so the _Earl_ broke it off. Then the Earl insulted him; so the
_Major_ broke it off. It got a good deal broken off, all things
considered!”
“You have all this on the very best authority, of course?”
“Oh, certainly! And communicated in the strictest confidence! Whatever
defects Elveston society suffers from, _want of information_ isn’t one
of them!”
“Nor _reticence_, either, it seems. But, seriously, do you know the real
reason?”
“No, I’m quite in the dark.”
I did not feel that I had any right to enlighten him; so I changed the
subject, to the less engrossing one of “new milk,” and we agreed that I
should walk over, next day, to Hunter’s farm, Arthur undertaking to set
me part of the way, after which he had to return to keep a
business-engagement.
CHAPTER III.
STREAKS OF DAWN.
Next day proved warm and sunny, and we started early, to enjoy the
luxury of a good long chat before he would be obliged to leave me.
“This neighbourhood has more than its due proportion of the _very_
poor,” I remarked, as we passed a group of hovels, too dilapidated to
deserve the name of “cottages.”
“But the few rich,” Arthur replied, “give more than their due proportion
of help in charity. So the balance is kept.”
“I suppose the _Earl_ does a good deal?”
“He _gives_ liberally; but he has not the health or strength to do more.
Lady Muriel does more in the way of school-teaching and cottage-visiting
than she would like me to reveal.”
“Then _she_, at least, is not one of the ‘idle mouths’ one so often
meets with among the upper classes. I have sometimes thought they would
have a hard time of it, if suddenly called on to give their _raison
d’être_, and to show cause why they should be allowed to live any
longer!”
“The whole subject,” said Arthur, “of what we may call ‘idle mouths’ (I
mean persons who absorb some of the material _wealth_ of a community—in
the form of food, clothes, and so on—without contributing its equivalent
in the form of productive _labour_) is a complicated one, no doubt. I’ve
tried to think it out. And it seemed to me that the simplest form of the
problem, to start with, is a community without _money_, who buy and sell
by _barter_ only; and it makes it yet simpler to suppose the food and
other things to be capable of _keeping_ for many years without
spoiling.”
“Yours is an excellent plan,” I said. “What is your solution of the
problem?”
“The commonest type of ‘idle mouths,’” said Arthur, “is no doubt due to
money being left by parents to their own children. So I imagined a
man—either exceptionally clever, or exceptionally strong and
industrious—who had contributed so much valuable labour to the needs of
the community that its equivalent, in clothes, &c., was (say) five times
as much as he needed for himself. We cannot deny his _absolute_ right to
give the superfluous wealth as he chooses. So, if he leaves _four_
children behind him (say two sons and two daughters), with enough of all
the necessaries of life to last them a life-time, I cannot see that the
_community_ is in any way wronged if they choose to do nothing in life
but to ‘eat, drink, and be merry.’ Most certainly, the community could
not fairly say, in reference to _them_, ‘_if a man will not work,
neither let him eat_.’ Their reply would be crushing. ‘The labour has
already been _done_, which is a fair equivalent for the food we are
eating; and you have had the benefit of it. On what principle of justice
can you demand _two_ quotas of work for _one_ quota of food?’”
“Yet surely,” I said, “there is something wrong _somewhere_, if these
four people are well able to do useful work, and if that work is
actually _needed_ by the community, and they elect to sit idle?”
“I think there _is_,” said Arthur: “but it seems to me to arise from a
Law of God—that every one shall do as much as he can to help others—and
not from any _rights_, on the part of the community, to exact labour as
an equivalent for food that has already been fairly earned.”
“I suppose the _second_ form of the problem is where the ‘idle mouths’
possess _money_ instead of _material_ wealth?”
“Yes,” replied Arthur: “and I think the simplest case is that of
_paper_-money. _Gold_ is itself a form of material wealth; but a
bank-note is merely a _promise_ to hand over so much _material_ wealth
when called upon to do so. The father of these four ‘idle mouths,’ had
done (let us say) five thousand pounds’ worth of useful work for the
community. In return for this, the community had given him what amounted
to a written promise to hand over, whenever called upon to do so, five
thousand pounds’ worth of food, &c. Then, if he only uses _one_ thousand
pounds’ worth himself, and leaves the rest of the notes to his children,
surely they have a full right to _present_ these written promises, and
to say ‘hand over the food, for which the equivalent labour has been
already done.’ Now I think _this_ case well worth stating, publicly and
clearly. I should like to drive it into the heads of those Socialists
who are priming our ignorant paupers with such sentiments as ‘Look at
them bloated haristocrats! Doing not a stroke o’ work for theirselves,
and living on the sweat of _our_ brows!’ I should like to _force_ them
to see that the _money_, which those ‘haristocrats’ are spending,
represents so much labour _already done_ for the community, and whose
equivalent, in _material_ wealth, is _due from the community_.”
“Might not the Socialists reply ‘Much of this money does not represent
_honest_ labour _at all_. If you could trace it back, from owner to
owner, though you might begin with several legitimate steps, such as
gift, or bequeathing by will, or ‘value received,’ you would soon reach
an owner who had no moral right to it, but had got it by fraud or other
crimes; and of course his successors in the line would have no better
right to it than _he_ had.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” Arthur replied. “But surely that involves the
logical fallacy of _proving too much_? It is _quite_ as applicable to
_material_ wealth, as it is to _money_. If we once begin to go back
beyond the fact that the _present_ owner of certain property came by it
honestly, and to ask whether any previous owner, in past ages, got it by
fraud, would _any_ property be secure?”
After a minute’s thought, I felt obliged to admit the truth of this.
“My general conclusion,” Arthur continued, “from the mere standpoint of
human _rights_, man against man, was this—that if some wealthy ‘idle
mouth,’ who has come by his money in a lawful way, even though not one
atom of the labour it represents has been his own doing, chooses to
spend it on his own needs, without contributing any labour to the
community from whom he buys his food and clothes, that community has no
_right_ to interfere with him. But it’s quite another thing, when we
come to consider the _divine_ law. Measured by _that_ standard, such a
man is undoubtedly doing wrong, if he fails to use, for the good of
those in need, the strength or the skill, that God has given him. That
strength and skill do _not_ belong to the community, to be paid to
_them_ as a _debt_: they do _not_ belong to the man _himself_, to be
used for his _own_ enjoyment: they _do_ belong to God, to be used
according to _His_ will; and we are not left in doubt as to what that
will is. ‘_Do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again._’”
“Anyhow,” I said, “an ‘idle mouth’ very often gives away a great deal in
charity.”
“In _so-called_ ‘charity,’” he corrected me. “Excuse me if I seem to
speak _un_charitably. I would not dream of _applying_ the term to any
_individual_. But I would say, _generally_, that a man who gratifies
every fancy that occurs to him—denying himself in _nothing_—and merely
gives to the poor some part, or even _all_, of his _superfluous_ wealth,
is only deceiving himself if he calls it _charity_.”
“But, even in giving away _superfluous_ wealth, he _may_ be denying
himself the miser’s pleasure in hoarding?”
“I grant you that, gladly,” said Arthur. “Given that he _has_ that
morbid craving, he is doing a good deed in restraining it.”
“But, even in spending on _himself_,” I persisted, “our typical rich man
often does good, by employing people who would otherwise be out of work:
and that is often better than pauperising them by _giving_ the money.”
“I’m glad you’ve said that!” said Arthur. “I would not like to quit the
subject without exposing the _two_ fallacies of that statement—which
have gone so long uncontradicted that Society now accepts it as an
axiom!”
“What are they?” I said. “I don’t even see _one_, myself.”
“One is merely the fallacy of _ambiguity_—the assumption that ‘_doing
good_’ (that is, benefiting somebody) is necessarily _a good thing to
do_ (that is, a _right_ thing). The other is the assumption that, if one
of two specified acts is _better_ than another, it is necessarily a
_good_ act in itself. I should like to call this the fallacy of
_comparison_—meaning that it assumes that what is _comparatively_ good
is therefore _positively_ good.”
“Then what is _your_ test of a good act?”
“That it shall be _our best_,” Arthur confidently replied. “And even
_then_ ‘_we are unprofitable servants_.’ But let me illustrate the two
fallacies. Nothing illustrates a fallacy so well as an extreme case,
which fairly comes under it. Suppose I find two children drowning in a
pond. I rush in, and save one of the children, and then walk away,
leaving the other to drown. Clearly I have ‘_done good_,’ in saving a
child’s life? But——. Again, supposing I meet an inoffensive stranger,
and knock him down, and walk on. Clearly that is ‘_better_’ than if I
had proceeded to jump upon him and break his ribs? But——”
“Those ‘buts’ are quite unanswerable,” I said. “But I should like an
instance from _real_ life.”
“Well, let us take one of those abominations of modern Society, a
Charity-Bazaar. It’s an interesting question to think out—how much of
the money, that reaches the object in view, is _genuine_ charity; and
whether even _that_ is spent in the _best_ way. But the subject needs
regular classification, and analysis, to understand it properly.”
“I should be glad to _have_ it analysed,” I said: “it has often puzzled
me.”
“Well, if I am really not boring you. Let us suppose our Charity-Bazaar
to have been organised to aid the funds of some Hospital: and that A, B,
C _give_ their services in making articles to sell, and in acting as
salesmen, while X, Y, Z buy the articles, and the money so paid goes to
the Hospital.
“There are two distinct species of such Bazaars: one, where the payment
exacted is merely the _market-value_ of the goods supplied, that is,
exactly what you would have to pay at a shop: the other, where
_fancy-prices_ are asked. We must take these separately.
“First, the ‘market-value’ case. Here A, B, C are exactly in the same
position as ordinary shopkeepers; the only difference being that they
give the proceeds to the Hospital. Practically, they are _giving their
skilled labour_ for the benefit of the Hospital. This seems to me to be
genuine charity. And I don’t see how they could use it better. But X, Y,
Z, are exactly in the same position as any ordinary purchasers of goods.
To talk of ‘charity’ in connection with _their_ share of the business,
is sheer nonsense. Yet they are very likely to do so.
“Secondly, the case of ‘fancy-prices.’ Here I think the simplest plan is
to divide the payment into two parts, the ‘market-value’ and the excess
over that. The ‘market-value’ part is on the same footing as in the
first case: the _excess_ is all we have to consider. Well, A, B, C do
not _earn_ it; so we may put _them_ out of the question: it is a _gift_,
from X, Y, Z, to the Hospital. And my opinion is that it is not given in
the best way: far better buy what they choose to _buy_, and give what
they choose to _give_, as two _separate_ transactions: then there is
_some_ chance that their motive in giving may be real charity, instead
of a mixed motive—half charity, half self-pleasing. ‘The trail of the
serpent is over it all.’ And _therefore_ it is that I hold all such
spurious ‘Charities’ in _utter_ abomination!” He ended with unusual
energy, and savagely beheaded, with his stick, a tall thistle at the
road-side, behind which I was startled to see Sylvie and Bruno standing.
I caught at his arm, but too late to stop him. Whether the stick reached
them, or not, I could not feel sure: at any rate they took not the
smallest notice of it, but smiled gaily, and nodded to me; and I saw at
once that they were only visible to _me_: the ‘eerie’ influence had not
reached to _Arthur_.
“Why did you try to save it?” he said. “_That’s_ not the wheedling
Secretary of a Charity-Bazaar! I only wish it were!” he added grimly.
“Doos oo know, that stick went right froo my head!” said Bruno. (They
had run round to me by this time, and each had secured a hand.) “Just
under my chin! I _are_ glad I aren’t a thistle!”
“Well, we’ve threshed _that_ subject out, anyhow!” Arthur resumed. “I’m
afraid I’ve been talking too much, for _your_ patience and for my
strength. I must be turning soon. This is about the end of my tether.”
“Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee;
Take, I give it willingly;
For, invisible to thee,
Spirits twain have crossed with me!”
I quoted, involuntarily.
“For utterly inappropriate and irrelevant quotations,” laughed Arthur,
“you are ‘ekalled by few, and excelled by none’!” And we strolled on.
As we passed the head of the lane that led down to the beach, I noticed
a single figure, moving slowly along it, seawards. She was a good way
off, and had her back to us: but it was Lady Muriel, unmistakably.
Knowing that Arthur had not seen her, as he had been looking, in the
other direction, at a gathering rain-cloud, I made no remark, but tried
to think of some plausible pretext for sending him back by the sea.
The opportunity instantly presented itself. “I’m getting tired,” he
said. “I don’t think it would be prudent to go further. I had better
turn here.”
I turned with him, for a few steps, and as we again approached the head
of the lane, I said, as carelessly as I could, “Don’t go back by the
road. It’s too hot and dusty. Down this lane, and along the beach, is
nearly as short; and you’ll get a breeze off the sea.”
“Yes, I think I will,” Arthur began; but at that moment we came into
sight of Lady Muriel, and he checked himself. “No, it’s too far round.
Yet it certainly _would_ be cooler——” He stood, hesitating, looking
first one way and then the other—a melancholy picture of utter infirmity
of purpose!
How long this humiliating scene would have continued, if _I_ had been
the only external influence, it is impossible to say; for at this moment
Sylvie, with a swift decision worthy of Napoleon himself, took the
matter into her own hands. “You go and drive _her_, up this way,” she
said to Bruno. “I’ll get _him_ along!” And she took hold of the stick
that Arthur was carrying, and gently pulled him down the lane.
He was totally unconscious that any will but his own was acting on the
stick, and appeared to think it had taken a horizontal position simply
because he was pointing with it. “Are not those _orchises_ under the
hedge there?” he said. “I think that decides me. I’ll gather some as I
go along.”
[Illustration: ‘ARE NOT THOSE ORCHISES?’]
Meanwhile Bruno had run on beyond Lady Muriel, and, with much jumping
about and shouting (shouts audible to no one but Sylvie and myself),
much as if he were driving sheep, he managed to turn her round and make
her walk, with eyes demurely cast upon the ground, in our direction.
The victory was ours! And, since it was evident that the lovers, thus
urged together, _must_ meet in another minute, I turned and walked on,
hoping that Sylvie and Bruno would follow my example, as I felt sure
that the fewer the spectators the better it would be for Arthur and his
good angel.
“And what sort of meeting was it?” I wondered, as I paced dreamily on.
CHAPTER IV.
THE DOG-KING.
“They shooked hands,” said Bruno, who was trotting at my side, in answer
to the unspoken question.
“And they looked _ever_ so pleased!” Sylvie added from the other side.
“Well, we must get on, now, as quick as we can,” I said. “If only I knew
the best way to Hunter’s farm!”
“They’ll be sure to know in this cottage,” said Sylvie.
“Yes, I suppose they will. Bruno, would you run in and ask?”
Sylvie stopped him, laughingly, as he ran off. “Wait a minute,” she
said. “I must make you _visible_ first, you know.”
“And _audible_ too, I suppose?” I said, as she took the jewel, that hung
round her neck, and waved it over his head, and touched his eyes and
lips with it.
“Yes,” said Sylvie: “and _once_, do you know, I made him _audible_, and
forgot to make him _visible_! And he went to buy some sweeties in a
shop. And the man _was_ so frightened! A voice seemed to come out of the
air, ‘Please, I want two ounces of barley-sugar drops!’ And a shilling
came _bang_ down upon the counter! And the man said ‘I ca’n’t _see_
you!’ And Bruno said ‘It doosn’t sinnify seeing _me_, so long as oo can
see the _shilling_!’ But the man said he never sold barley-sugar drops
to people he couldn’t _see_. So we had to—_Now_, Bruno, you’re ready!”
And away he trotted.
Sylvie spent the time, while we were waiting for him, in making
_herself_ visible also. “It’s rather awkward, you know,” she explained
to me, “when we meet people, and they can see _one_ of us, and ca’n’t
see the _other_!”
In a minute or two Bruno returned, looking rather disconsolate. “He’d
got friends with him, and he were _cross_!” he said. “He asked me who I
were. And I said ‘I’m Bruno: who is _these_ peoples?’ And he said ‘One’s
my half-brother, and t’other’s my half-sister: and I don’t want no more
company! Go along with yer!’ And I said ‘I ca’n’t go along _wizout_ mine
self!’ And I said ‘Oo shouldn’t have _bits_ of peoples lying about like
that! It’s welly untidy!’ And he said ‘Oh, don’t talk to _me_!’ And he
pushted me outside! And he shutted the door!”
“And you never asked where Hunter’s farm was?” queried Sylvie.
“Hadn’t room for any questions,” said Bruno. “The room were so crowded.”
“Three people _couldn’t_ crowd a room,” said Sylvie.
“They _did_, though,” Bruno persisted. “_He_ crowded it most. He’s such
a welly _thick_ man—so as oo couldn’t knock him down.”
I failed to see the drift of Bruno’s argument. “Surely _anybody_ could
be knocked down,” I said: “thick or thin wouldn’t matter.”
“Oo couldn’t knock _him_ down,” said Bruno. “He’s more wider than he’s
high: so, when he’s lying down, he’s more higher than when he’s
standing: so a-course oo couldn’t knock him _down_!”
“Here’s another cottage,” I said: “_I’ll_ ask the way, _this_ time.”
There was no need to go in, this time, as the woman was standing in the
doorway, with a baby in her arms, talking to a respectably dressed man—a
farmer, as I guessed—who seemed to be on his way to the town.
“—and when there’s _drink_ to be had,” he was saying, “he’s just the
worst o’ the lot, is your Willie. So they tell me. He gets fairly mad
wi’ it!”
“I’d have given ’em the lie to their faces, a twelvemonth back!” the
woman said in a broken voice. “But a’ canna noo! A’ canna noo!” She
checked herself, on catching sight of us, and hastily retreated into the
house, shutting the door after her.
“Perhaps you can tell me where Hunter’s farm is?” I said to the man, as
he turned away from the house.
“I can _that_, Sir!” he replied with a smile. “I’m John Hunter hissel,
at your sarvice. It’s nobbut half a mile further—the only house in
sight, when you get round bend o’ the road yonder. You’ll find my good
woman within, if so be you’ve business wi’ _her_. Or mebbe I’ll do as
well?”
“Thanks,” I said. “I want to order some milk. Perhaps I had better
arrange it with your wife?”
“Aye,” said the man. “_She_ minds all _that_. Good day t’ye, Master—and
to your bonnie childer, as well!” And he trudged on.
“He should have said ‘_child_,’ not ‘_childer_’,” said Bruno. “Sylvie’s
not a _childer_!”
“He meant _both_ of us,” said Sylvie.
“No, he didn’t!” Bruno persisted. “’cause he said ‘bonnie’, oo know!”
“Well, at any rate he _looked_ at us both,” Sylvie maintained.
“Well, then he _must_ have seen we’re not _both_ bonnie!” Bruno
retorted. “A-_course_ I’m much uglier than _oo_! Didn’t he mean
_Sylvie_, Mister Sir?” he shouted over his shoulder, as he ran off.
But there was no use in replying, as he had already vanished round the
bend of the road. When we overtook him he was climbing a gate, and was
gazing earnestly into the field, where a horse, a cow, and a kid were
browsing amicably together. “For its father, a _Horse_,” he murmured to
himself. “For its mother, a _Cow_. For their dear little child, a
_little_ Goat, is the most curiousest thing I ever seen in my world!”
“Bruno’s World!” I pondered. “Yes, I suppose every child has a world of
his own—and every man, too, for the matter of that. I wonder if _that’s_
the cause for all the misunderstanding there is in Life?”
“That _must_ be Hunter’s farm!” said Sylvie, pointing to a house on the
brow of the hill, led up to by a cart-road. “There’s no other farm in
sight, _this_ way; and you _said_ we must be nearly there by this time.”
I had _thought_ it, while Bruno was climbing the gate, but I couldn’t
remember having _said_ it. However, Sylvie was evidently in the right.
“Get down, Bruno,” I said, “and open the gate for us.”
“It’s a good thing we’s with oo, _isn’t_ it, Mister Sir?” said Bruno, as
we entered the field. “That big dog might have bited oo, if oo’d been
alone! Oo needn’t be _flightened_ of it!” he whispered, clinging tight
to my hand to encourage me. “It aren’t fierce!”
“Fierce!” Sylvie scornfully echoed, as the dog—a magnificent
Newfoundland—that had come galloping down the field to meet us, began
curveting round us, in gambols full of graceful beauty, and welcoming us
with short joyful barks. “Fierce! Why, it’s as gentle as a lamb!
It’s—why, Bruno, don’t you know it? It’s——”
“So it _are_!” cried Bruno, rushing forwards and throwing his arms round
its neck. “Oh, you _dear_ dog!” And it seemed as if the two children
would never have done hugging and stroking it.
“And how _ever_ did he get _here_?” said Bruno. “Ask him, Sylvie. I
doosn’t know how.”
And then began an eager talk in Doggee, which of course was lost upon
_me_; and I could only _guess_, when the beautiful creature, with a sly
glance at me, whispered something in Sylvie’s ear, that _I_ was now the
subject of conversation. Sylvie looked round laughingly.
“He asked me who you are,” she explained. “And I said ‘He’s our
_friend_.’ And he said ‘What’s his name?’ And I said ‘It’s _Mister
Sir_.’ And he said ‘Bosh!’”
“What is ‘Bosh!’ in Doggee?” I enquired.
“It’s the same as in English,” said Sylvie. “Only, when a _dog_ says it,
it’s a sort of a whisper, that’s half a _cough_ and half a _bark_. Nero,
say ‘_Bosh!_’”
And Nero, who had now begun gamboling round us again, said “_Bosh!_”
several times; and I found that Sylvie’s description of the sound was
perfectly accurate.
“I wonder what’s behind this long wall?” I said, as we walked on.
“It’s the _Orchard_,” Sylvie replied, after a consultation with Nero.
“See, there’s a boy getting down off the wall, at that far corner. And
now he’s running away across the field. I do believe he’s been stealing
the apples!”
Bruno set off after him, but returned to us in a few moments, as he had
evidently no chance of overtaking the young rascal.
“I couldn’t catch him!” he said. “I wiss I’d started a little sooner.
His pockets _was_ full of apples!”
The Dog-King looked up at Sylvie, and said something in Doggee.
“Why, of _course_ you can!” Sylvie exclaimed. “How stupid not to think
of it! _Nero_’ll hold him for us, Bruno! But I’d better make him
invisible, first.” And she hastily got out the Magic Jewel, and began
waving it over Nero’s head, and down along his back.
“That’ll do!” cried Bruno, impatiently. “After him, good Doggie!”
“Oh, Bruno!” Sylvie exclaimed reproachfully. “You shouldn’t have sent
him off so quick! I hadn’t done the tail!”
Meanwhile Nero was coursing like a greyhound down the field: so at least
I concluded from all _I_ could see of him—the long feathery tail, which
floated like a meteor through the air—and in a very few seconds he had
come up with the little thief.
“He’s got him safe, by one foot!” cried Sylvie, who was eagerly watching
the chase. “Now there’s no hurry, Bruno!”
So we walked, quite leisurely, down the field, to where the frightened
lad stood. A more curious sight I had seldom seen, in all my ‘eerie’
experiences. Every bit of him was in violent action, except the left
foot, which was apparently glued to the ground—there being nothing
visibly holding it: while, at some little distance, the long feathery
tail was waving gracefully from side to side, showing that Nero, at
least, regarded the whole affair as nothing but a magnificent game of
play.
“What’s the matter with you?” I said, as gravely as I could.
“Got the crahmp in me ahnkle!” the thief groaned in reply. “An’ me fut’s
gone to sleep!” And he began to blubber aloud.
“Now, look here!” Bruno said in a commanding tone, getting in front of
him. “Oo’ve got to give up those apples!”
The lad glanced at me, but didn’t seem to reckon _my_ interference as
worth anything. Then he glanced at Sylvie: _she_ clearly didn’t count
for very much, either. Then he took courage. “It’ll take a better man
than any of _yer_ to get ’em!” he retorted defiantly.
[Illustration: A ROYAL THIEF-TAKER]
Sylvie stooped and patted the invisible Nero. “A _little_ tighter!” she
whispered. And a sharp yell from the ragged boy showed how promptly the
Dog-King had taken the hint.
“What’s the matter _now_?” I said. “Is your ankle worse?”
“And it’ll get worse, and worse, and worse,” Bruno solemnly assured him,
“till oo gives up those apples!”
Apparently the thief was convinced of this at last, and he sulkily began
emptying his pockets of the apples. The children watched from a little
distance, Bruno dancing with delight at every fresh yell extracted from
Nero’s terrified prisoner.
“That’s all,” the boy said at last.
“It _isn’t_ all!” cried Bruno. “There’s three more in that pocket!”
Another hint from Sylvie to the Dog-King—another sharp yell from the
thief, now convicted of lying also—and the remaining three apples were
surrendered.
“Let him go, please,” Sylvie said in Doggee, and the lad limped away at
a great pace, stooping now and then to rub the ailing ankle, in fear,
seemingly, that the ‘crahmp’ might attack it again.
[Illustration: ‘SUMMAT WRONG WI’ MY SPECTACLES!’]
Bruno ran back, with his booty, to the orchard wall, and pitched the
apples over it one by one. “I’s welly afraid _some_ of them’s gone under
the wrong trees!” he panted, on overtaking us again.
“The _wrong_ trees!” laughed Sylvie. “Trees _ca’n’t_ do wrong! There’s
no such things as _wrong_ trees!”
“Then there’s no such things as _right_ trees, neither!” cried Bruno.
And Sylvie gave up the point.
“Wait a minute, please!” she said to me. “I must make Nero _visible_,
you know!”
“No, _please_ don’t!” cried Bruno, who had by this time mounted on the
Royal back, and was twisting the Royal hair into a bridle. “It’ll be
_such_ fun to have him like this!”
“Well, it _does_ look funny,” Sylvie admitted, and led the way to the
farm-house, where the farmer’s wife stood, evidently much perplexed at
the weird procession now approaching her. “It’s summat gone wrong wi’ my
spectacles, I doubt!” she murmured, as she took them off, and began
diligently rubbing them with a corner of her apron.
Meanwhile Sylvie had hastily pulled Bruno down from his steed, and had
just time to make His Majesty wholly visible before the spectacles were
resumed.
All was natural, now; but the good woman still looked a little uneasy
about it. “My eyesight’s getting bad,” she said, “but I see you _now_,
my darlings! You’ll give me a kiss, wo’n’t you?”
Bruno got behind me, in a moment: however Sylvie put up _her_ face, to
be kissed, as representative of _both_, and we all went in together.
CHAPTER V.
MATILDA JANE.
“Come to me, my little gentleman,” said our hostess, lifting Bruno into
her lap, “and tell me everything.”
“I ca’n’t,” said Bruno. “There wouldn’t be time. Besides, I don’t _know_
everything.”
The good woman looked a little puzzled, and turned to Sylvie for help.
“Does he like _riding_?” she asked.
“Yes, I _think_ so,” Sylvie gently replied. “He’s just had a ride on
_Nero_.”
“Ah, Nero’s a grand dog, isn’t he? Were you ever outside a _horse_, my
little man?”
“_Always!_” Bruno said with great decision. “Never was _inside_ one. Was
_oo_?”
Here I thought it well to interpose, and to mention the business on
which we had come, and so relieved her, for a few minutes, from Bruno’s
perplexing questions.
“And those dear children will like a bit of cake, _I’ll_ warrant!” said
the farmer’s hospitable wife, when the business was concluded, as she
opened her cupboard, and brought out a cake. “And don’t you waste the
crust, little gentleman!” she added, as she handed a good slice of it to
Bruno. “You know what the poetry-book says about wilful waste?”
“No, I don’t,” said Bruno. “What doos he say about it?”
“Tell him, Bessie!” And the mother looked down, proudly and lovingly, on
a rosy little maiden, who had just crept shyly into the room, and was
leaning against her knee. “What’s that your poetry-book says about
wilful waste?”
“_For wilful waste makes woeful want_,” Bessie recited, in an almost
inaudible whisper: “_and you may live to say ‘How much I wish I had the
crust that then I threw away!’_”
“Now try if _you_ can say it, my dear! _For wilful_——”
“_For wifful_—sumfinoruvver—” Bruno began, readily enough; and then
there came a dead pause. “Ca’n’t remember no more!”
“Well, what do you _learn_ from it, then? You can tell us _that_, at any
rate?”
Bruno ate a little more cake, and considered: but the moral did not seem
to him to be a very obvious one.
“Always to——” Sylvie prompted him in a whisper.
“Always to——” Bruno softly repeated: and then, with sudden inspiration,
“always to look where it goes to!”
“Where _what_ goes to, darling?”
“Why the _crust_, a course!” said Bruno. “Then, if I lived to say ‘_How
much I wiss I had the crust_—’ (and all that), I’d know where I frew it
to!”
This new interpretation quite puzzled the good woman. She returned to
the subject of ‘Bessie.’ “Wouldn’t you like to see Bessie’s doll, my
dears! Bessie, take the little lady and gentleman to see Matilda Jane!”
Bessie’s shyness thawed away in a moment. “Matilda Jane has just woke
up,” she stated, confidentially, to Sylvie. “Wo’n’t you help me on with
her frock? Them strings _is_ such a bother to tie!”
“I can tie _strings_,” we heard, in Sylvie’s gentle voice, as the two
little girls left the room together. Bruno ignored the whole proceeding,
and strolled to the window, quite with the air of a fashionable
gentleman. Little girls, and dolls, were not at all in his line.
And forthwith the fond mother proceeded to tell me (as what mother is
not ready to do?) of all Bessie’s virtues (and vices too, for the matter
of that) and of the many fearful maladies which, notwithstanding those
ruddy cheeks and that plump little figure, had nearly, time and again,
swept her from the face of the earth.
When the full stream of loving memories had nearly run itself out, I
began to question her about the working men of that neighbourhood, and
specially the ‘Willie,’ whom we had heard of at his cottage. “He was a
good fellow once,” said my kind hostess: “but it’s the drink has ruined
him! Not that I’d rob them of the drink—it’s good for the most of
them—but there’s some as is too weak to stand agin’ temptations: it’s a
thousand pities, for _them_, as they ever built the Golden Lion at the
corner there!”
“The Golden Lion?” I repeated.
“It’s the new Public,” my hostess explained. “And it stands right in the
way, and handy for the workmen, as they come back from the brickfields,
as it might be to-day, with their week’s wages. A deal of money gets
wasted that way. And some of ’em gets drunk.”
“If only they could have it in their own houses—” I mused, hardly
knowing I had said the words out loud.
“That’s it!” she eagerly exclaimed. It was evidently a solution, of the
problem, that she had already thought out. “If only you could manage,
so’s each man to have his own little barrel in his own house—there’d
hardly be a drunken man in the length and breadth of the land!”
And then I told her the old story—about a certain cottager who bought
himself a little barrel of beer, and installed his wife as bar-keeper:
and how, every time he wanted his mug of beer, he regularly paid her
over the counter for it: and how she never would let him go on ‘tick,’
and was a perfectly inflexible bar-keeper in never letting him have more
than his proper allowance: and how, every time the barrel needed
refilling, she had plenty to do it with, and something over for her
money-box: and how, at the end of the year, he not only found himself in
first-rate health and spirits, with that undefinable but quite
unmistakeable air which always distinguishes the sober man from the one
who takes ‘a drop too much,’ but had quite a box full of money, all
saved out of his own pence!
“If only they’d all do like that!” said the good woman, wiping her eyes,
which were overflowing with kindly sympathy. “Drink hadn’t need to be
the curse it is to some——”
“Only a _curse_,” I said, “when it is used wrongly. Any of God’s gifts
may be turned into a curse, unless we use it wisely. But we must be
getting home. Would you call the little girls? Matilda Jane has seen
enough of company, for _one_ day, I’m sure!”
“I’ll find ’em in a minute,” said my hostess, as she rose to leave the
room. “Maybe that young gentleman saw which way they went?”
“Where are they, Bruno?” I said.
“They ain’t in the field,” was Bruno’s rather evasive reply, “’cause
there’s nothing but _pigs_ there, and Sylvie isn’t a pig. Now don’t
imperrupt me any more, ’cause I’m telling a story to this fly; and it
won’t attend!”
“They’re among the apples, I’ll warrant ’em!” said the Farmer’s wife. So
we left Bruno to finish his story, and went out into the orchard, where
we soon came upon the children, walking sedately side by side, Sylvie
carrying the doll, while little Bess carefully shaded its face, with a
large cabbage-leaf for a parasol.
As soon as they caught sight of us, little Bess dropped her cabbage-leaf
and came running to meet us, Sylvie following more slowly, as her
precious charge evidently needed great care and attention.
“I’m its Mamma, and Sylvie’s the Head-Nurse,” Bessie explained: “and
Sylvie’s taught me ever such a pretty song, for me to sing to Matilda
Jane!”
“Let’s hear it once more, Sylvie,” I said, delighted at getting the
chance I had long wished for, of hearing her sing. But Sylvie turned shy
and frightened in a moment. “No, _please_ not!” she said, in an earnest
‘aside’ to me. “Bessie knows it quite perfect now. Bessie can sing it!”
“Aye, aye! Let Bessie sing it!” said the proud mother. “Bessie has a
bonny voice of her own,” (this again was an ‘aside’ to me) “though I say
it as shouldn’t!”
Bessie was only too happy to accept the ‘encore.’ So the plump little
Mamma sat down at our feet, with her hideous daughter reclining stiffly
across her lap (it was one of a kind that wo’n’t sit down, under _any_
amount of persuasion), and, with a face simply beaming with delight,
began the lullaby, in a shout that _ought_ to have frightened the poor
baby into fits. The Head-Nurse crouched down behind her, keeping herself
respectfully in the back-ground, with her hands on the shoulders of her
little mistress, so as to be ready to act as Prompter, if required, and
to supply ‘_each gap in faithless memory void_.’
[Illustration: BESSIE’S SONG]
The shout, with which she began, proved to be only a momentary effort.
After a very few notes, Bessie toned down, and sang on in a small but
very sweet voice. At first her great black eyes were fixed on her
mother, but soon her gaze wandered upwards, among the apples, and she
seemed to have quite forgotten that she had any other audience than her
Baby, and her Head-Nurse, who once or twice supplied, almost inaudibly,
the right note, when the singer was getting a little ‘flat.’
“Matilda Jane, you never look
At any toy or picture-book:
I show you pretty things in vain—
You must be blind, Matilda Jane!
“I ask you riddles, tell you tales,
But _all_ our conversation fails:
You _never_ answer me again—
I fear you’re dumb, Matilda Jane!
“Matilda, darling, when I call,
You never seem to hear at all:
I shout with all my might and main—
But you’re _so_ deaf, Matilda Jane!
“Matilda Jane, you needn’t mind;
For, though you’re deaf, and dumb, and blind,
There’s _some one_ loves you, it is plain—
And that is _me,_ Matilda Jane!”
She sang three of the verses in a rather perfunctory style, but the last
stanza evidently excited the little maiden. Her voice rose, ever clearer
and louder: she had a rapt look on her face, as if suddenly inspired,
and, as she sang the last few words, she clasped to her heart the
inattentive Matilda Jane.
“Kiss it now!” prompted the Head-Nurse. And in a moment the simpering
meaningless face of the Baby was covered with a shower of passionate
kisses.
“What a bonny song!” cried the Farmer’s wife. “Who made the words,
dearie?”
“I—I think I’ll look for Bruno,” Sylvie said demurely, and left us
hastily. The curious child seemed always afraid of being praised, or
even noticed.
“Sylvie planned the words,” Bessie informed us, proud of her superior
information: “and Bruno planned the music—and _I_ sang it!” (this last
circumstance, by the way, we did not need to be told).
So we followed Sylvie, and all entered the parlour together. Bruno was
still standing at the window, with his elbows on the sill. He had,
apparently, finished the story that he was telling to the fly, and had
found a new occupation. “Don’t imperrupt!” he said as we came in. “I’m
counting the Pigs in the field!”
“How many are there?” I enquired.
“About a thousand and four,” said Bruno.
“You mean ‘about a thousand,’” Sylvie corrected him. “There’s no good
saying ‘_and four_’: you _ca’n’t_ be sure about the four!”
“And you’re as wrong as ever!” Bruno exclaimed triumphantly. “It’s just
the _four_ I _can_ be sure about; ’cause they’re here, grubbling under
the window! It’s the _thousand_ I isn’t pruffickly sure about!”
“But some of them have gone into the sty,” Sylvie said, leaning over him
to look out of the window.
“Yes,” said Bruno; “but they went so slowly and so fewly, I didn’t care
to count _them_.”
“We must be going, children,” I said. “Wish Bessie good-bye.” Sylvie
flung her arms round the little maiden’s neck, and kissed her: but Bruno
stood aloof, looking unusually shy. (“I never kiss _nobody_ but Sylvie!”
he explained to me afterwards.) The farmer’s wife showed us out: and we
were soon on our way back to Elveston.
“And that’s the new public-house that we were talking about, I suppose?”
I said, as we came in sight of a long low building, with the words ‘The
Golden Lion’ over the door.
“Yes, that’s it,” said Sylvie. “I wonder if _her_ Willie’s inside? Run
in, Bruno, and see if he’s there.”
I interposed, feeling that Bruno was, in a sort of way, in _my_ care.
“That’s not a place to send a child into.” For already the revelers were
getting noisy: and a wild discord of singing, shouting, and meaningless
laughter came to us through the open windows.
“They wo’n’t _see_ him, you know,” Sylvie explained. “Wait a minute,
Bruno!” She clasped the jewel, that always hung round her neck, between
the palms of her hands, and muttered a few words to herself. What they
were I could not at all make out, but some mysterious change seemed
instantly to pass over us. My feet seemed to me no longer to press the
ground, and the dream-like feeling came upon me, that I was suddenly
endowed with the power of floating in the air. I could still just _see_
the children: but their forms were shadowy and unsubstantial, and their
voices sounded as if they came from some distant place and time, they
were so unreal. However, I offered no further opposition to Bruno’s
going into the house. He was back again in a few moments. “No, he isn’t
come yet,” he said. “They’re talking about him inside, and saying how
drunk he was last week.”
While he was speaking, one of the men lounged out through the door, a
pipe in one hand and a mug of beer in the other, and crossed to where we
were standing, so as to get a better view along the road. Two or three
others leaned out through the open window, each holding his mug of beer,
with red faces and sleepy eyes. “Canst see him, lad?” one of them asked.
“I dunnot know,” the man said, taking a step forwards, which brought us
nearly face to face. Sylvie hastily pulled me out of his way. “Thanks,
child,” I said. “I had forgotten he couldn’t see us. What would have
happened if I had staid in his way?”
“I don’t know,” Sylvie said gravely. “It wouldn’t matter to _us_; but
_you_ may be different.” She said this in her usual voice, but the man
took no sort of notice, though she was standing close in front of him,
and looking up into his face as she spoke.
“He’s coming now!” cried Bruno, pointing down the road.
“He be a-coomin noo!” echoed the man, stretching out his arm exactly
over Bruno’s head, and pointing with his pipe.
“Then _chorus_ agin!” was shouted out by one of the red-faced men in the
window: and forthwith a dozen voices yelled, to a harsh discordant
melody, the refrain:—
“There’s him, an’ yo’ an’ me,
Roarin’ laddies!
We loves a bit o spree,
Roarin’ laddies we,
Roarin’ laddies
Roarin’ laddies!”
The man lounged back again to the house, joining lustily in the chorus
as he went: so that only the children and I were in the road when
‘Willie’ came up.
CHAPTER VI.
WILLIE’S WIFE.
He made for the door of the public-house, but the children intercepted
him. Sylvie clung to one arm; while Bruno, on the opposite side, was
pushing him with all his strength, with many inarticulate cries of
“Gee-up! Gee-back! Woah then!” which he had picked up from the
waggoners.
‘Willie’ took not the least notice of them: he was simply conscious that
_something_ had checked him: and, for want of any other way of
accounting for it, he seemed to regard it as his own act.
[Illustration: THE RESCUE OF WILLIE]
“I wunnut coom in,” he said: “not to-day.”
“A mug o’ beer wunnut hurt ’ee!” his friends shouted in chorus. “_Two_
mugs wunnut hurt ’ee! Nor a dozen mugs!”
“Nay,” said Willie. “I’m agoan whoam.”
“What, withouten thy drink, Willie man?” shouted the others. But ‘Willie
man’ would have no more discussion, and turned doggedly away, the
children keeping one on each side of him, to guard him against any
change in his sudden resolution.
For a while he walked on stoutly enough, keeping his hands in his
pockets, and softly whistling a tune, in time to his heavy tread: his
success, in appearing entirely at his ease, was _almost_ complete; but a
careful observer would have noted that he had forgotten the second part
of the air, and that, when it broke down, he instantly began it again,
being too nervous to think of another, and too restless to endure
silence.
It was not the old fear that possessed him now—the old fear, that had
been his dreary companion every Saturday night he could remember, as he
had reeled along, steadying himself against gates and garden-palings,
and when the shrill reproaches of his wife had seemed to his dazed brain
only the echo of a yet more piercing voice within, the intolerable wail
of a hopeless remorse: it was a wholly new fear that had come to him
now: life had taken on itself a new set of colours, and was lighted up
with a new and dazzling radiance, and he did not see, as yet, how his
home-life, and his wife and child, would fit into the new order of
things: the very novelty of it all was, to his simple mind, a perplexity
and an overwhelming terror.
And now the tune died into sudden silence on the trembling lips, as he
turned a sharp corner, and came in sight of his own cottage, where his
wife stood, leaning with folded arms on the wicket-gate, and looking up
the road with a pale face, that had in it no glimmer of the light of
hope—only the heavy shadow of a deep stony despair.
“Fine an’ early, lad! Fine an’ early!” The words might have been words
of welcoming, but oh, the bitterness of the tone in which she said it!
“What brings thee from thy merry mates, and all the fiddling and the
jigging? Pockets empty, I doubt? Or thou’st come, mebbe, for to see thy
little one die? The bairnie’s clemmed, and I’ve nor bite nor sup to gie
her. But what does _thou_ care?” She flung the gate open, and met him
with blazing eyes of fury.
The man said no word. Slowly, and with downcast eyes, he passed into the
house, while she, half terrified at his strange silence, followed him in
without another word; and it was not till he had sunk into a chair, with
his arms crossed on the table and with drooping head, that she found her
voice again.
It seemed entirely natural for us to go in with them: at another time
one would have asked leave for this, but I felt, I knew not why, that we
were in some mysterious way invisible, and as free to come and to go as
disembodied spirits.
The child in the cradle woke up, and raised a piteous cry, which in a
moment brought the children to its side: Bruno rocked the cradle, while
Sylvie tenderly replaced the little head on the pillow from which it had
slipped. But the mother took no heed of the cry, nor yet of the
satisfied ‘coo’ that it set up when Sylvie had made it happy again: she
only stood gazing at her husband, and vainly trying, with white
quivering lips (I believe she thought he was mad), to speak in the old
tones of shrill upbraiding that he knew so well.
“And thou’st spent all thy wages—I’ll swear thou hast—on the devil’s own
drink—and thou’st been and made thysen a beast again—as thou allus
dost——”
“Hasna!” the man muttered, his voice hardly rising above a whisper, as
he slowly emptied his pockets on the table. “There’s th’ wage, Missus,
every penny on’t.”
The woman gasped, and put one hand to her heart, as if under some great
shock of surprise. “Then _how_’s thee gotten th’ drink?”
“_Hasna_ gotten it,” he answered her, in a tone more sad than sullen. “I
hanna touched a drop this blessed day. No!” he cried aloud, bringing his
clenched fist heavily down upon the table, and looking up at her with
gleaming eyes, “nor I’ll never touch another drop o’ the cursed
drink—till I die—so help me God my Maker!” His voice, which had suddenly
risen to a hoarse shout, dropped again as suddenly: and once more he
bowed his head, and buried his face in his folded arms.
[Illustration: WILLIE’S WIFE]
The woman had dropped upon her knees by the cradle, while he was
speaking. She neither looked at him nor seemed to hear him. With hands
clasped above her head, she rocked herself wildly to and fro. “Oh my
God! Oh my God!” was all she said, over and over again.
Sylvie and Bruno gently unclasped her hands and drew them down—till she
had an arm round each of them, though she took no notice of them, but
knelt on with eyes gazing upwards, and lips that moved as if in silent
thanksgiving. The man kept his face hidden, and uttered no sound: but
one could _see_ the sobs that shook him from head to foot.
After a while he raised his head—his face all wet with tears. “Polly!”
he said softly; and then, louder, “Old Poll!”
Then she rose from her knees and came to him, with a dazed look, as if
she were walking in her sleep. “Who was it called me old Poll?” she
asked: her voice took on it a tender playfulness: her eyes sparkled; and
the rosy light of Youth flushed her pale cheeks, till she looked more
like a happy girl of seventeen than a worn woman of forty. “Was that my
own lad, my Willie, a-waiting for me at the stile?”
His face too was transformed, in the same magic light, to the likeness
of a bashful boy: and boy and girl they seemed, as he wound an arm about
her, and drew her to his side, while with the other hand he thrust from
him the heap of money, as though it were something hateful to the touch.
“Tak it, lass,” he said, “tak it all! An’ fetch us summat to eat: but
get a sup o’ milk, first, for t’ bairn.”
“My _little_ bairn!” she murmured as she gathered up the coins. “My own
little lassie!” Then she moved to the door, and was passing out, but a
sudden thought seemed to arrest her: she hastily returned—first to kneel
down and kiss the sleeping child, and then to throw herself into her
husband’s arms and be strained to his heart. The next moment she was on
her way, taking with her a jug that hung on a peg near the door: we
followed close behind.
We had not gone far before we came in sight of a swinging sign-board
bearing the word ‘DAIRY’ on it, and here she went in, welcomed by a
little curly white dog, who, not being under the ‘eerie’ influence, saw
the children, and received them with the most effusive affection. When I
got inside, the dairyman was in the act of taking the money. “Is’t for
thysen, Missus, or for t’ bairn?” he asked, when he had filled the jug,
pausing with it in his hand.
“For t’ _bairn_!” she said, almost reproachfully. “Think’st tha I’d
touch a drop _mysen_, while as _she_ hadna got her fill?”
“All right, Missus,” the man replied, turning away with the jug in his
hand. “Let’s just mak sure it’s good measure.” He went back among his
shelves of milk-bowls, carefully keeping his back towards her while he
emptied a little measure of cream into the jug, muttering to himself
“mebbe it’ll hearten her up a bit, the little lassie!”
The woman never noticed the kind deed, but took back the jug with a
simple “Good evening, Master,” and went her way: but the children had
been more observant, and, as we followed her out, Bruno remarked “That
were _welly_ kind: and I loves that man: and if I was welly rich I’d
give him a hundred pounds—and a bun. That little grummeling dog doosn’t
know its business!” He referred to the dairyman’s little dog, who had
apparently quite forgotten the affectionate welcome he had given us on
our arrival, and was now following at a respectful distance, doing his
best to ‘_speed the parting guest_’ with a shower of little shrill
barks, that seemed to tread on one another’s heels.
“What _is_ a dog’s business?” laughed Sylvie. “Dogs ca’n’t keep shops
and give change!”
“Sisters’ businesses _isn’t_ to laugh at their brothers,” Bruno replied
with perfect gravity. “And dogs’ businesses is to _bark_—not like that:
it should finish one bark before it begins another: and it should—Oh
Sylvie, there’s some dindledums!”
And in another moment the happy children were flying across the common,
racing for the patch of dandelions.
While I stood watching them, a strange dreamy feeling came upon me: a
railway-platform seemed to take the place of the green sward, and,
instead of the light figure of Sylvie bounding along, I seemed to see
the flying form of Lady Muriel; but whether Bruno had also undergone a
transformation, and had become the old man whom she was running to
overtake, I was unable to judge, so instantaneously did the feeling come
and go.
When I re-entered the little sitting-room which I shared with Arthur, he
was standing with his back to me, looking out of the open window, and
evidently had not heard me enter. A cup of tea, apparently just tasted
and pushed aside, stood on the table, on the opposite side of which was
a letter, just begun, with the pen lying across it: an open book lay on
the sofa: the London paper occupied the easy chair; and on the little
table, which stood by it, I noticed an unlighted cigar and an open box
of cigar-lights: all things betokened that the Doctor, usually so
methodical and so self-contained, had been trying every form of
occupation, and could settle to none!
“This is very unlike _you_, Doctor!” I was beginning, but checked
myself, as he turned at the sound of my voice, in sheer amazement at the
wonderful change that had taken place in his appearance. Never had I
seen a face so radiant with happiness, or eyes that sparkled with such
unearthly light! “Even thus,” I thought, “must the herald-angel have
looked, who brought to the shepherds, watching over their flocks by
night, that sweet message of ‘_peace on earth, good-will to men_’!”
“Yes, dear friend!” he said, as if in answer to the question that I
suppose he read in my face. “It is true! It is true!”
No need to ask _what_ was true. “God bless you both!” I said, as I felt
the happy tears brimming to my eyes. “You were made for each other!”
“Yes,” he said, simply, “I believe we were. And _what_ a change it makes
in one’s Life! This isn’t the same world! That isn’t the sky I saw
yesterday! Those clouds—I never saw such clouds in all my life before!
They look like troops of hovering angels!”
To _me_ they looked very ordinary clouds indeed: but then _I_ had not
fed ‘_on honey-dew, And drunk the milk of Paradise_’!
“She wants to see you—at once,” he continued, descending suddenly to the
things of earth. “She says _that_ is the _one_ drop yet wanting in her
cup of happiness!”
“I’ll go at once,” I said, as I turned to leave the room. “Wo’n’t you
come with me?”
“No, Sir!” said the Doctor, with a sudden effort—which proved an utter
failure—to resume his professional manner. “Do I _look_ like coming with
you? Have you never heard that two is company, and——”
“Yes,” I said, “I _have_ heard it: and I’m painfully aware that_ I_ am
_Number Three_! But, _when_ shall we three meet again?”
“_When the hurly-burly’s done!_” he answered with a happy laugh, such as
I had not heard from him for many a year.
CHAPTER VII.
MEIN HERR.
So I went on my lonely way, and, on reaching the Hall, I found Lady
Muriel standing at the garden-gate waiting for me.
“No need to _give_ you joy, or to _wish_ you joy?” I began.
“None _whatever_!” she replied, with the joyous laugh of a child. “We
_give_ people what they haven’t got: we _wish_ for something that is yet
to come. For _me_, it’s all _here_! It’s all _mine_! Dear friend,” she
suddenly broke off, “do you think Heaven ever begins on _Earth_, for any
of us?”
“For _some_,” I said. “For some, perhaps, who are simple and childlike.
You know He said ‘of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.’”
Lady Muriel clasped her hands, and gazed up into the cloudless sky, with
a look I had often seen in Sylvie’s eyes. “I feel as if it had begun for
_me_,” she almost whispered. “I feel as if _I_ were one of the happy
children, whom He bid them bring near to Him, though the people would
have kept them back. Yes, He has seen me in the throng. He has read the
wistful longing in my eyes. He has beckoned me to Him. They have _had_
to make way for me. He has taken me up in His arms. He has put His hands
upon me and blessed me!” She paused, breathless in her perfect
happiness.
“Yes,” I said. “I think He has!”
“You must come and speak to my father,” she went on, as we stood side by
side at the gate, looking down the shady lane. But, even as she said the
words, the ‘eerie’ sensation came over me like a flood: I saw the dear
old Professor approaching us, and also saw, what was stranger still,
that he was visible to _Lady Muriel_!
What was to be done? Had the fairy-life been merged in the real life? Or
was Lady Muriel ‘eerie’ also, and thus able to enter into the
fairy-world along with me? The words were on my lips (“I see an old
friend of mine in the lane: if you don’t know him, may I introduce him
to you?”) when the strangest thing of all happened: Lady Muriel spoke.
“I see an old friend of mine in the lane,” she said: “if you don’t know
him, may I introduce him to you?”
I seemed to wake out of a dream: for the ‘eerie’ feeling was still
strong upon me, and the figure outside seemed to be changing at every
moment, like one of the shapes in a kaleidoscope: now he was the
_Professor_, and now he was somebody else! By the time he had reached
the gate, he certainly was somebody else: and I felt that the proper
course was for _Lady Muriel_, not for _me_, to introduce him. She
greeted him kindly, and, opening the gate, admitted the venerable old
man—a German, obviously—who looked about him with dazed eyes, as if
_he_, too, had but just awaked from a dream!
No, it was certainly _not_ the Professor! My old friend _could_ not have
grown that magnificent beard since last we met: moreover, he would have
recognised _me_, for I was certain that _I_ had not changed much in the
time.
As it was, he simply looked at me vaguely, and took off his hat in
response to Lady Muriel’s words “Let me introduce Mein Herr to you”;
while in the words, spoken in a strong German accent, “proud to make
your acquaintance, Sir!” I could detect no trace of an idea that we had
ever met before.
Lady Muriel led us to the well-known shady nook, where preparations for
afternoon tea had already been made, and, while she went in to look for
the Earl, we seated ourselves in two easy-chairs, and ‘Mein Herr’ took
up Lady Muriel’s work, and examined it through his large spectacles (one
of the adjuncts that made him so provokingly like the Professor).
“Hemming pocket-handkerchiefs?” he said, musingly. “So _that_ is what
the English miladies occupy themselves with, is it?”
“It is the one accomplishment,” I said, “in which Man has never yet
rivaled Woman!”
Here Lady Muriel returned with her father; and, after he had exchanged
some friendly words with ‘Mein Herr,’ and we had all been supplied with
the needful ‘creature-comforts,’ the newcomer returned to the suggestive
subject of Pocket-handkerchiefs.
“You have heard of Fortunatus’s Purse, Miladi? Ah, so! Would you be
surprised to hear that, with three of these leetle handkerchiefs, you
shall make the Purse of Fortunatus, quite soon, quite easily?”
“Shall I indeed?” Lady Muriel eagerly replied, as she took a heap of
them into her lap, and threaded her needle. “_Please_ tell me how, Mein
Herr! I’ll make one before I touch another drop of tea!”
“You shall first,” said Mein Herr, possessing himself of two of the
handkerchiefs, spreading one upon the other, and holding them up by two
corners, “you shall first join together these upper corners, the right
to the right, the left to the left; and the opening between them shall
be the _mouth_ of the Purse.”
A very few stitches sufficed to carry out _this_ direction. “Now, if I
sew the other three edges together,” she suggested, “the bag is
complete?”
“Not so, Miladi: the _lower_ edges shall _first_ be joined—ah, not so!”
(as she was beginning to sew them together). “Turn one of them over, and
join the _right_ lower corner of the one to the _left_ lower corner of
the other, and sew the lower edges together in what you would call _the
wrong way_.”
“_I_ see!” said Lady Muriel, as she deftly executed the order. “And a
very twisted, uncomfortable, uncanny-looking bag it makes! But the
_moral_ is a lovely one. Unlimited wealth can only be attained by doing
things _in the wrong way_! And how are we to join up these
mysterious—no, I mean _this_ mysterious opening?” (twisting the thing
round and round with a puzzled air.) “Yes, it _is_ one opening. I
thought it was _two_, at first.”
“You have seen the puzzle of the Paper Ring?” Mein Herr said, addressing
the Earl. “Where you take a slip of paper, and join its ends together,
first twisting one, so as to join the _upper_ corner of _one_ end to the
_lower_ corner of the _other_?”
“I saw one made, only yesterday,” the Earl replied. “Muriel, my child,
were you not making one, to amuse those children you had to tea?”
“Yes, I know that Puzzle,” said Lady Muriel. “The Ring has only _one_
surface, and only _one_ edge. It’s very mysterious!”
“The _bag_ is just like that, isn’t it?” I suggested. “Is not the
_outer_ surface of one side of it continuous with the _inner_ surface of
the other side?”
“So it is!” she exclaimed. “Only it _isn’t_ a bag, just yet. How shall
we fill up this opening, Mein Herr?”
“Thus!” said the old man impressively, taking the bag from her, and
rising to his feet in the excitement of the explanation. “The edge of
the opening consists of _four_ handkerchief-edges, and you can trace it
continuously, round and round the opening: down the right edge of _one_
handkerchief, up the left edge of the _other_, and then down the left
edge of the _one_, and up the right edge of the _other_!”
“So you can!” Lady Muriel murmured thoughtfully, leaning her head on her
hand, and earnestly watching the old man. “And that _proves_ it to be
only _one_ opening!”
[Illustration: FORTUNATUS’ PURSE]
She looked so strangely like a child, puzzling over a difficult lesson,
and Mein Herr had become, for the moment, so strangely like the old
Professor, that I felt utterly bewildered: the ‘eerie’ feeling was on me
in its full force, and I felt almost _impelled_ to say “Do you
understand it, Sylvie?” However I checked myself by a great effort, and
let the dream (if indeed it _was_ a dream) go on to its end.
“Now, this _third_ handkerchief,” Mein Herr proceeded, “has _also_ four
edges, which you can trace continuously round and round: all you need do
is to join its four edges to the four edges of the opening. The Purse is
then complete, and its outer surface——”
“_I_ see!” Lady Muriel eagerly interrupted. “Its _outer_ surface will be
continuous with its _inner_ surface! But it will take time. I’ll sew it
up after tea.” She laid aside the bag and resumed her cup of tea. “But
why do you call it Fortunatus’s Purse, Mein Herr?”
The dear old man beamed upon her, with a jolly smile, looking more
exactly like the Professor than ever. “Don’t you see, my child—I should
say Miladi? Whatever is _inside_ that Purse, is _outside_ it; and
whatever is _outside_ it, is _inside_ it. So you have all the wealth of
the world in that leetle Purse!”
His pupil clapped her hands, in unrestrained delight. “I’ll certainly
sew the third handkerchief in—_some_ time,” she said: “but I wo’n’t take
up your time by trying it now. Tell us some more wonderful things,
please!” And her face and her voice so _exactly_ recalled Sylvie, that I
could not help glancing round, half-expecting to see _Bruno_ also!
Mein Herr began thoughtfully balancing his spoon on the edge of his
teacup, while he pondered over this request. “Something wonderful—like
Fortunatus’s Purse? _That_ will give you—when it is made—wealth beyond
your wildest dreams: but it will not give you _Time_!”
A pause of silence ensued—utilised by Lady Muriel for the very practical
purpose of refilling the teacups.
“In _your_ country,” Mein Herr began with a startling abruptness, “what
becomes of all the wasted Time?”
Lady Muriel looked grave. “Who can tell?” she half-whispered to herself.
“All one knows is that it is gone—past recall!”
“Well, in _my_—I mean in a country _I_ have visited,” said the old man,
“they store it up: and it comes in _very_ useful, years afterwards! For
example, suppose you have a long tedious evening before you: nobody to
talk to: nothing you care to do: and yet hours too soon to go to bed.
How do _you_ behave then?”
“I get _very_ cross,” she frankly admitted: “and I want to throw things
about the room!”
“When that happens to—to the people I have visited, they never act _so_.
By a short and simple process—which I cannot explain to you—they store
up the useless hours: and, on some _other_ occasion, when they happen to
_need_ extra time, they get them out again!”
The Earl was listening with a slightly incredulous smile. “Why cannot
you _explain_ the process?” he enquired.
Mein Herr was ready with a quite unanswerable reason. “Because you have
no _words_, in _your_ language, to convey the ideas which are needed. I
could explain it in—in—but you would not understand it!”
“No indeed!” said Lady Muriel, graciously dispensing with the _name_ of
the unknown language. “I never learnt it—at least, not to speak it
_fluently_, you know. _Please_ tell us some more wonderful things!”
“They run their railway-trains without any engines—nothing is needed but
machinery to _stop_ them with. Is _that_ wonderful enough, Miladi?”
“But where does the _force_ come from?” I ventured to ask.
Mein Herr turned quickly round, to look at the new speaker. Then he took
off his spectacles, and polished them, and looked at me again, in
evident bewilderment. I could see he was thinking—as indeed _I_ was
also—that we _must_ have met before.
“They use the force of _gravity_,” he said. “It is a force known also in
_your_ country, I believe?”
“But that would need a railway going _down-hill_,” the Earl remarked.
“You ca’n’t have _all_ your railways going down-hill?”
“They _all_ do,” said Mein Herr.
“Not from _both_ ends?”
“From _both_ ends.”
“Then I give it up!” said the Earl.
“Can you explain the process?” said Lady Muriel. “Without using that
language, that I ca’n’t speak fluently?”
“Easily,” said Mein Herr. “Each railway is in a long tunnel, perfectly
straight: so of course the _middle_ of it is nearer the centre of the
globe than the two ends: so every train runs half-way _down_-hill, and
that gives it force enough to run the _other_ half _up_-hill.”
“Thank you. I understand that perfectly,” said Lady Muriel. “But the
velocity, in the _middle_ of the tunnel, must be something _fearful_!”
‘Mein Herr’ was evidently much gratified at the intelligent interest
Lady Muriel took in his remarks. At every moment the old man seemed to
grow more chatty and more fluent. “You would like to know our methods of
_driving_?” he smilingly enquired. “To us, a run-away horse is of no
import at all!”
Lady Muriel slightly shuddered. “To _us_ it is a very real danger,” she
said.
“That is because your carriage is wholly _behind_ your horse. Your horse
runs. Your carriage follows. Perhaps your horse has the bit in his
teeth. Who shall stop him? You fly, ever faster and faster! Finally
comes the inevitable upset!”
“But suppose _your_ horse manages to get the bit in his teeth?”
“No matter! We would not concern ourselves. Our horse is harnessed in
the very centre of our carriage. Two wheels are in front of him, and two
behind. To the roof is attached one end of a broad belt. This goes under
the horse’s body, and the other end is attached to a leetle—what you
call a ‘windlass,’ I think. The horse takes the bit in his teeth. He
runs away. We are flying at ten miles an hour! We turn our little
windlass, five turns, six turns, seven turns, and—poof! Our horse is off
the ground! _Now_ let him gallop in the air, as much as he pleases: our
_carriage_ stands still. We sit round him, and watch him till he is
tired. Then we let him down. Our horse is glad, very much glad, when his
feet once more touch the ground!”
“Capital!” said the Earl, who had been listening attentively. “Are there
any other peculiarities in your carriages?”
“In the _wheels_, sometimes, my Lord. For your health, _you_ go to sea:
to be pitched, to be rolled, occasionally to be drowned. _We_ do all
that on land: we are pitched, as you; we are rolled, as you; but
_drowned_, no! There is no water!”
“What are the wheels like, then?”
“They are _oval_, my Lord. Therefore the carriages rise and fall.”
“Yes, and pitch the carriage backwards and forwards: but how do they
make it _roll_?”
“They do not match, my Lord. The _end_ of one wheel answers to the
_side_ of the opposite wheel. So first one side of the carriage rises,
then the other. And it pitches all the while. Ah, you must be a good
sailor, to drive in our boat-carriages!”
“I can easily believe it,” said the Earl.
Mein Herr rose to his feet. “I must leave you now, Miladi,” he said,
consulting his watch. “I have another engagement.”
“I only wish we had stored up some extra time!” Lady Muriel said, as she
shook hands with him. “Then we could have kept you a little longer!”
“In _that_ case I would gladly stay,” replied Mein Herr. “As it is—I
fear I must say good-bye!”
“Where did you first meet him?” I asked Lady Muriel, when Mein Herr had
left us. “And where does he live? And what is his real name?”
“We first—met—him——” she musingly replied, “really, I ca’n’t remember
_where_! And I’ve no idea where he lives! And I never heard any other
name! It’s very curious. It never occurred to me before to consider what
a mystery he is!”
“I hope we shall meet again,” I said: “he interests me very much.”
“He will be at our farewell-party, this day fortnight,” said the Earl.
“Of course you will come? Muriel is anxious to gather all our friends
around us once more, before we leave the place.”
And then he explained to me—as Lady Muriel had left us together—that he
was so anxious to get his daughter away from a place full of so many
painful memories connected with the now-canceled engagement with Major
Lindon, that they had arranged to have the wedding in a months time,
after which Arthur and his wife were to go on a foreign tour.
“Don’t forget Tuesday week!” he said as we shook hands at parting. “I
only wish you could bring with you those charming children, that you
introduced to us in the summer. Talk of the mystery of Mein Herr! That’s
_nothing_ to the mystery that seems to attend _them_! I shall never
forget those marvellous flowers!”
“I will bring them if I possibly can,” I said. But how to _fulfil_ such
a promise, I mused to myself on my way back to our lodgings, was a
problem entirely beyond my skill!
CHAPTER VIII.
IN A SHADY PLACE.
The ten days glided swiftly away: and, the day before the great party
was to take place, Arthur proposed that we should stroll down to the
Hall, in time for afternoon-tea.
“Hadn’t you better go _alone_?” I suggested. “Surely _I_ shall be very
much _de trop_?”
“Well, it’ll be a kind of _experiment_,” he said. “_Fiat experimentum in
corpore vili!_” he added, with a graceful bow of mock politeness towards
the unfortunate victim. “You see I shall have to bear the sight,
to-morrow night, of my lady-love making herself agreable to everybody
_except_ the right person, and I shall bear the agony all the better if
we have a dress-rehearsal beforehand!”
“_My_ part in the play being, apparently, that of the sample _wrong_
person?”
“Well, no,” Arthur said musingly, as we set forth: “there’s no such part
in a regular company. ‘Heavy Father’? _That_ won’t do: that’s filled
already. ‘Singing Chambermaid’? Well, the ‘First Lady’ doubles _that_
part. ‘Comic Old Man’? You’re not comic enough. After all, I’m afraid
there’s no part for you but the ‘Well-dressed Villain’: only,” with a
critical side-glance, “I’m a _leetle_ uncertain about the dress!”
We found Lady Muriel alone, the Earl having gone out to make a call, and
at once resumed old terms of intimacy, in the shady arbour where the
tea-things seemed to be always waiting. The only novelty in the
arrangements (one which Lady Muriel seemed to regard as _entirely_ a
matter of course), was that two of the chairs were placed _quite_ close
together, side by side. Strange to say, _I_ was not invited to occupy
_either_ of them!
“We have been arranging, as we came along, about letter-writing,” Arthur
began. “He will want to know how we’re enjoying our Swiss tour: and of
course we must pretend we _are_?”
“Of course,” she meekly assented.
“And the skeleton-in-the-cupboard——” I suggested.
“—is always a difficulty,” she quickly put in, “when you’re traveling
about, and when there are no cupboards in the hotels. However, _ours_ is
a _very_ portable one; and will be neatly packed, in a nice leather
case——”
“But please don’t think about _writing_,” I said, “when you’ve anything
more attractive on hand. I delight in _reading_ letters, but I know well
how tiring it is to _write_ them.”
“It _is_, sometimes,” Arthur assented. “For instance, when you’re very
shy of the person you have to write to.”
“Does that show itself in the _letter_?” Lady Muriel enquired. “Of
course, when I hear any one _talking_—_you_, for instance—I can see how
_desperately_ shy he is! But can you see that in a _letter_?”
“Well, of course, when you hear any one talk _fluently_—_you_, for
instance—you can see how desperately _un_-shy she is—not to say saucy!
But the shyest and most intermittent talker must _seem_ fluent in
letter-writing. He may have taken half-an-hour to _compose_ his second
sentence; but there it is, close after the first!”
“Then letters don’t express all that they _might_ express?”
“That’s merely because our system of letter-writing is incomplete. A shy
writer _ought_ to be able to show that he is so. Why shouldn’t he make
_pauses_ in writing, just as he would do in speaking? He might leave
blank spaces—say half a page at a time. And a _very_ shy girl—if there
_is_ such a thing—might write a sentence on the _first_ sheet of her
letter—then put in a couple of _blank_ sheets—then a sentence on the
_fourth_ sheet: and so on.”
“I quite foresee that _we_—I mean this clever little boy and myself—”
Lady Muriel said to me, evidently with the kind wish to bring me into
the conversation, “—are going to become famous—of course all our
inventions are common property now—for a new Code of Rules for
Letter-writing! Please invent some more, little boy!”
“Well, another thing _greatly_ needed, little girl, is some way of
expressing that we _don’t_ mean anything.”
“Explain yourself, little boy! Surely _you_ can find no difficulty in
expressing a _total_ absence of meaning?”
“I mean that you should be able, when you _don’t_ mean a thing to be
taken seriously, to express that wish. For human nature is so
constituted that whatever you write seriously is taken as a joke, and
whatever you mean as a joke is taken seriously! At any rate, it is so in
writing to a _lady_!”
“Ah! you’re not used to writing to ladies!” Lady Muriel remarked,
leaning back in her chair, and gazing thoughtfully into the sky. “You
should try.”
“Very good,” said Arthur. “How many ladies may I begin writing to? As
many as I can count on the fingers of both hands?”
“As many as you can count on the _thumbs_ of _one_ hand!” his lady-love
replied with much severity. “What a _very_ naughty little boy he is!
_Isn’t_ he?” (with an appealing glance at me).
“He’s a little fractious,” I said. “Perhaps he’s cutting a tooth.” While
to myself I said “How _exactly_ like Sylvie talking to Bruno!”
“He wants his tea.” (The naughty little boy volunteered the
information.) “He’s getting very tired, at the mere _prospect_ of the
great party to-morrow!”
“Then he shall have a good rest beforehand!” she soothingly replied.
“The tea isn’t made yet. Come, little boy, lean well back in your chair,
and think about nothing—or about _me_, whichever you prefer!”
“All the same, all the same!” Arthur sleepily murmured, watching her
with loving eyes, as she moved her chair away to the tea table, and
began to make the tea. “Then he’ll wait for his tea, like a good,
patient little boy!”
“Shall I bring you the London Papers?” said Lady Muriel. “I saw them
lying on the table as I came out, but my father said there was nothing
in them, except that horrid murder-trial.” (Society was just then
enjoying its daily thrill of excitement in studying the details of a
specially sensational murder in a thieves’ den in the East of London.)
“I have no appetite for horrors,” Arthur replied. “But I hope we have
learned the lesson they should teach us—though we are very apt to read
it backwards!”
[Illustration: ‘I AM SITTING AT YOUR FEET’]
“You speak in riddles,” said Lady Muriel. “Please explain yourself. See
now,” suiting the action to the word, “I am sitting at your feet, just
as if you were a second Gamaliel! Thanks, no.” (This was to me, who had
risen to bring her chair back to its former place.) “Pray don’t disturb
yourself. This tree and the grass make a very nice easy-chair. _What_ is
the lesson that one always reads wrong?”
Arthur was silent for a minute. “I would like to be clear what it _is_ I
mean,” he said, slowly and thoughtfully, “before I say anything to
_you_—because you _think_ about it.”
Anything approaching to a compliment was so unusual an utterance for
Arthur, that it brought a flush of pleasure to her cheek, as she replied
“It is _you_, that give me the ideas to think about.”
“One’s first thought,” Arthur proceeded, “in reading of anything
specially vile or barbarous, as done by a fellow-creature, is apt to be
that we see a new depth of Sin revealed _beneath_ us: and we seem to
gaze down into that abyss from some higher ground, far apart from it.”
“I think I understand you now. You mean that one ought to think—not
‘God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are’—but ‘God, be merciful
to me also, who might be, but for Thy grace, a sinner as vile as he!’”
“No,” said Arthur. “I meant a great deal more than that.”
She looked up quickly, but checked herself, and waited in silence.
“One must begin further back, I think. Think of some other man, the same
age as this poor wretch. Look back to the time when they both began
life—before they had sense enough to know Right from Wrong. _Then_, at
any rate, they were equal in God’s sight?”
She nodded assent.
“We have, then, two distinct epochs at which we may contemplate the two
men whose lives we are comparing. At the first epoch they are, so far as
moral responsibility is concerned, on precisely the same footing: they
are alike incapable of doing right or wrong. At the second epoch the one
man—I am taking an extreme case, for contrast—has won the esteem and
love of all around him: his character is stainless, and his name will be
held in honour hereafter: the other man’s history is one unvaried record
of crime, and his life is at last forfeited to the outraged laws of his
country. Now what have been the causes, in each case, of each man’s
condition being what it is at the second epoch? They are of two
kinds—one acting from within, the other from without. These two kinds
need to be discussed separately—that is, if I have not already tired you
with my prosing?”
“On the contrary,” said Lady Muriel, “it is a special delight to me to
have a question discussed in this way—analysed and arranged, so that one
can understand it. Some books, that profess to argue out a question, are
to me intolerably wearisome, simply because the ideas are all arranged
hap-hazard—a sort of ‘first come, first served.’”
“You are very encouraging,” Arthur replied, with a pleased look. “The
causes, acting from _within_, which make a man’s character what it is at
any given moment, are his successive acts of volition—that is, his acts
of choosing whether he will do this or that.”
“We are to assume the existence of Free-Will?” I said, in order to have
that point made quite clear.
“If not,” was the quiet reply, “_cadit quaestio_: and I have no more to
say.”
“We _will_ assume it!” the rest of the audience—the majority, I may say,
looking at it from Arthur’s point of view—imperiously proclaimed. The
orator proceeded.
“The causes, acting from _without_, are his surroundings—what Mr.
Herbert Spencer calls his ‘environment.’ Now the point I want to make
clear is this, that a man is responsible for his acts of choosing, but
_not_ responsible for his environment. Hence, if these two men make, on
some given occasion, when they are exposed to equal temptation, equal
efforts to resist and to choose the right, their condition, in the sight
of God, must be the same. If He is pleased in the one case, so will He
be in the other; if displeased in the one case, so also in the other.”
“That is so, no doubt: I see it quite clearly,” Lady Muriel put in.
“And yet, owing to their different environments, the one may win a great
victory over the temptation, while the other falls into some black abyss
of crime.”
“But surely you would not say those men were equally guilty in the sight
of God?”
“Either that,” said Arthur, “or else I must give up my belief in God’s
perfect justice. But let me put one more case, which will show my
meaning even more forcibly. Let the one man be in a high social
position—the other, say, a common thief. Let the one be tempted to some
trivial act of unfair dealing—something which he can do with the
absolute certainty that it will never be discovered—something which he
can with perfect ease forbear from doing—and which he distinctly knows
to be a sin. Let the other be tempted to some terrible crime—as men
would consider it—but under an almost overwhelming pressure of
motives—of course not _quite_ overwhelming, as that would destroy all
responsibility. Now, in this case, let the second man make a _greater_
effort at resistance than the first. Also suppose _both_ to fall under
the temptation—I say that the second man is, in God’s sight, _less_
guilty than the other.”
Lady Muriel drew a long breath. “It upsets all one’s ideas of Right and
Wrong—just at first! Why, in that dreadful murder-trial, you would say,
I suppose, that it was possible that the least guilty man in the Court
was the murderer, and that possibly the judge who tried him, by yielding
to the temptation of making one unfair remark, had committed a crime
outweighing the criminal’s whole career!”
“Certainly I should,” Arthur firmly replied. “It sounds like a paradox,
I admit. But just think what a grievous sin it must be, in God’s sight,
to yield to some very slight temptation, which we could have resisted
with perfect ease, and to do it deliberately, and in the full light of
God’s Law. What penance can atone for a sin like _that_?”
“I ca’n’t reject your theory,” I said. “But how it seems to widen the
possible area of Sin in the world!”
“Is that so?” Lady Muriel anxiously enquired.
“Oh, not so, not so!” was the eager reply. “To me it seems to clear away
much of the cloud that hangs over the world’s history. When this view
first made itself clear to me, I remember walking out into the fields,
repeating to myself that line of Tennyson ‘_There seemed no room for
sense of wrong!_’ The thought, that perhaps the real guilt of the human
race was infinitely less than I fancied it—that the millions, whom I had
thought of as sunk in hopeless depths of sin, were perhaps, in God’s
sight, scarcely sinning at all—was more sweet than words can tell! Life
seemed more bright and beautiful, when once that thought had come! ‘_A
livelier emerald twinkles in the grass, A purer sapphire melts into the
sea!_’” His voice trembled as he concluded, and the tears stood in his
eyes.
Lady Muriel shaded her face with her hand, and was silent for a minute.
“It is a beautiful thought,” she said, looking up at last. “Thank
you—Arthur, for putting it into my head!”
The Earl returned in time to join us at tea, and to give us the very
unwelcome tidings that a fever had broken out in the little harbour-town
that lay below us—a fever of so malignant a type that, though it had
only appeared a day or two ago, there were already more than a dozen
down in it, two or three of whom were reported to be in imminent danger.
In answer to the eager questions of Arthur—who of course took a deep
scientific interest in the matter—he could give very few _technical_
details, though he had met the local doctor. It appeared, however, that
it was an almost _new_ disease—at least in _this_ century, though it
_might_ prove to be identical with the ‘Plague’ recorded in
History—_very_ infectious, and frightfully rapid in its action. “It will
not, however, prevent our party to-morrow,” he said in conclusion. “None
of the guests belong to the infected district, which is, as you know,
exclusively peopled by fishermen: so you may come without any fear.”
Arthur was very silent, all the way back, and, on reaching our lodgings,
immediately plunged into medical studies, connected with the alarming
malady of whose arrival we had just heard.
CHAPTER IX.
THE FAREWELL-PARTY.
On the following day, Arthur and I reached the Hall in good time, as
only a few of the guests—it was to be a party of eighteen—had as yet
arrived; and these were talking with the Earl, leaving us the
opportunity of a few words apart with our hostess.
“Who is that _very_ learned-looking man with the large spectacles?”
Arthur enquired. “I haven’t met him here before, have I?”
“No, he’s a new friend of ours,” said Lady Muriel: “a German, I believe.
He _is_ such a dear old thing! And quite the most learned man I ever
met—with _one_ exception, of course!” she added humbly, as Arthur drew
himself up with an air of offended dignity.
“And the young lady in blue, just beyond him, talking to that
foreign-looking man. Is _she_ learned, too?”
“I don’t know,” said Lady Muriel. “But I’m told she’s a wonderful
piano-forte-player. I hope you’ll hear her to-night. I asked that
foreigner to take her in, because _he’s_ very musical, too. He’s a
French Count, I believe; and he sings _splendidly_!”
“Science—music—singing—you have indeed got a complete party!” said
Arthur. “I feel quite a privileged person, meeting all these stars. I
_do_ love music!”
“But the party isn’t _quite_ complete!” said Lady Muriel. “You haven’t
brought us those two beautiful children,” she went on, turning to me.
“He brought them here to tea, you know, one day last summer,” again
addressing Arthur; “and they _are_ such darlings!”
“They are, _indeed_,” I assented.
“But why haven’t you brought them with you? You promised my father you
_would_.”
“I’m very sorry,” I said; “but really it was impossible to bring them
with me.” Here I most certainly _meant_ to conclude the sentence: and it
was with a feeling of utter amazement, which I cannot adequately
describe, that I heard myself _going on speaking_. “—but they are to
join me here in the course of the evening” were the words, uttered in
_my_ voice, and seeming to come from _my_ lips.
“I’m _so_ glad!” Lady Muriel joyfully replied. “I _shall_ enjoy
introducing them to some of my friends here! When do you expect them?”
I took refuge in silence. The only _honest_ reply would have been “That
was not _my_ remark. _I_ didn’t say it, and _it isn’t true_!” But I had
not the moral courage to make such a confession. The character of a
‘lunatic’ is not, I believe, very difficult to _acquire_: but it is
amazingly difficult to _get rid of_: and it seemed quite certain that
any such speech as _that_ would _quite_ justify the issue of a writ ‘_de
lunatico inquirendo_.’
Lady Muriel evidently thought I had failed to hear her question, and
turned to Arthur with a remark on some other subject; and I had time to
recover from my shock of surprise—or to awake out of my momentary
‘eerie’ condition, whichever it was.
When things around me seemed once more to be real, Arthur was saying
“I’m afraid there’s no help for it: they _must_ be finite in number.”
“I should be sorry to have to believe it,” said Lady Muriel. “Yet, when
one comes to think of it, there _are_ no new melodies, now-a-days. What
people talk of as ‘the last new song’ always recalls to _me_ some tune
I’ve known as a child!”
“The day must come—if the world lasts long enough——” said Arthur, “when
every possible tune will have been composed—every possible pun
perpetrated——” (Lady Muriel wrung her hands, like a tragedy-queen) “and,
worse than that, every possible _book_ written! For the number of
_words_ is finite.”
“It’ll make very little difference to the _authors_,” I suggested.
“Instead of saying ‘_what_ book shall I write?’ an author will ask
himself ‘_which_ book shall I write?’ A mere verbal distinction!”
Lady Muriel gave me an approving smile. “But _lunatics_ would always
write new books, surely?” she went on. “They _couldn’t_ write the sane
books over again!”
“True,” said Arthur. “But _their_ books would come to an end, also. The
number of lunatic _books_ is as finite as the number of lunatics.”
“And _that_ number is becoming greater every year,” said a pompous man,
whom I recognised as the self-appointed showman on the day of the
picnic.
“So they say,” replied Arthur. “And, when ninety per cent. of us are
lunatics,” (he seemed to be in a wildly nonsensical mood) “the asylums
will be put to their proper use.”
“And that is——?” the pompous man gravely enquired.
“_To shelter the sane!_” said Arthur. “_We_ shall bar ourselves in. The
lunatics will have it all their own way, _outside_. They’ll do it a
little queerly, no doubt. Railway-collisions will be always happening:
steamers always blowing up: most of the towns will be burnt down: most
of the ships sunk——”
“And most of the men _killed_!” murmured the pompous man, who was
evidently hopelessly bewildered.
“Certainly,” Arthur assented. “Till at last there will be _fewer_
lunatics than sane men. Then _we_ come out: _they_ go in: and things
return to their normal condition!”
The pompous man frowned darkly, and bit his lip, and folded his arms,
vainly trying to think it out. “He is _jesting_!” he muttered to himself
at last, in a tone of withering contempt, as he stalked away.
By this time the other guests had arrived; and dinner was announced.
Arthur of course took down Lady Muriel: and _I_ was pleased to find
myself seated at her other side, with a severe-looking old lady (whom I
had not met before, and whose name I had, as is usual in introductions,
entirely failed to catch, merely gathering that it sounded like a
compound-name) as my partner for the banquet.
She appeared, however, to be acquainted with Arthur, and confided to me
in a low voice her opinion that he was “a very argumentative young man.”
Arthur, for his part, seemed well inclined to show himself worthy of the
character she had given him, and, hearing her say “I never take wine
with my soup!” (this was _not_ a confidence to me, but was launched upon
Society, as a matter of general interest), he at once challenged a
combat by asking her “_when_ would you say that property _commence_ in a
plate of soup?”
“This is _my_ soup,” she sternly replied: “and what is before you is
_yours_.”
“No doubt,” said Arthur: “but _when_ did I begin to own it? Up to the
moment of its being put into the plate, it was the property of our host:
while being offered round the table, it was, let us say, held in trust
by the waiter: did it become mine when I accepted it? Or when it was
placed before me? Or when I took the first spoonful?”
“He is a _very_ argumentative young man!” was all the old lady would
say: but she said it audibly, this time, feeling that Society had a
right to know it.
Arthur smiled mischievously. “I shouldn’t mind betting you a shilling,”
he said, “that the Eminent Barrister next you” (It certainly _is_
possible to say words so as to make them begin with capitals!) “ca’n’t
answer me!”
“I _never_ bet,” she sternly replied.
“Not even sixpenny points at _whist_?”
“_Never!_” she repeated. “_Whist_ is innocent enough: but whist played
for _money_!” She shuddered.
Arthur became serious again. “I’m afraid I ca’n’t take that view,” he
said. “I consider that the introduction of small stakes for card-playing
was one of the most _moral_ acts Society ever did, _as_ Society.”
“How was it so?” said Lady Muriel.
“Because it took Cards, once for all, out of the category of games at
which _cheating_ is possible. Look at the way Croquet is demoralising
Society. Ladies are beginning to cheat at it, terribly: and, if they’re
found out, they only laugh, and call it fun. But when there’s _money_ at
stake, that is out of the question. The swindler is _not_ accepted as a
wit. When a man sits down to cards, and cheats his friends out of their
money, he doesn’t get much _fun_ out of it—unless he thinks it fun to be
kicked down stairs!”
“If all gentlemen thought as badly of ladies as _you_ do,” my neighbour
remarked with some bitterness, “there would be very few—very few——.” She
seemed doubtful how to end her sentence, but at last took “honeymoons”
as a safe word.
“On the contrary,” said Arthur, the mischievous smile returning to his
face, “if only people would adopt _my_ theory, the number of
honeymoons—quite of a new kind—would be greatly increased!”
“May we hear about this new kind of honeymoon?” said Lady Muriel.
“Let _X_ be the gentleman,” Arthur began, in a slightly raised voice, as
he now found himself with an audience of _six_, including ‘Mein Herr,’
who was seated at the other side of my polynomial partner. “Let _X_ be
the gentleman, and _Y_ the lady to whom he thinks of proposing. He
applies for an Experimental Honeymoon. It is granted. Forthwith the
young couple—accompanied by the great-aunt of _Y_, to act as
chaperone—start for a month’s tour, during which they have many a
moonlight-walk, and many a _tête-à-tête_ conversation, and each can form
a more correct estimate of the other’s character, in four _weeks_, than
would have been possible in as many _years_, when meeting under the
ordinary restrictions of Society. And it is only after their _return_
that _X_ finally decides whether he will, or will not, put the momentous
question to _Y_!”
“In nine cases out of ten,” the pompous man proclaimed, “he would decide
to break it off!”
“Then, in nine cases out of ten,” Arthur rejoined, “an unsuitable match
would be prevented, and _both_ parties saved from misery!”
“The only really _unsuitable_ matches,” the old lady remarked, “are
those made without sufficient _Money_. Love may come _afterwards_. Money
is needed _to begin with_!”
This remark was cast loose upon Society, as a sort of general challenge;
and, as such, it was at once accepted by several of those within
hearing: _Money_ became the key-note of the conversation for some time;
and a fitful echo of it was again heard, when the dessert had been
placed upon the table, the servants had left the room, and the Earl had
started the wine in its welcome progress round the table.
“I’m very glad to see you keep up the old customs,” I said to Lady
Muriel as I filled her glass. “It’s really delightful to experience,
once more, the peaceful feeling that comes over one when the waiters
have left the room—when one can converse without the feeling of being
overheard, and without having dishes constantly thrust over one’s
shoulder. How much more sociable it is to be able to pour out the wine
for the ladies, and to hand the dishes to those who wish for them!”
“In that case, kindly send those peaches down here,” said a fat
red-faced man, who was seated beyond our pompous friend. “I’ve been
wishing for them—diagonally—for some time!”
“Yes, it _is_ a ghastly innovation,” Lady Muriel replied, “letting the
waiters carry round the wine at dessert. For one thing, they _always_
take it the wrong way round—which of course brings bad luck to
_everybody_ present!”
“Better go the _wrong_ way than not go _at all_!” said our host. “Would
you kindly help yourself?” (This was to the fat red-faced man.) “You are
not a teetotaler, I think?”
“Indeed but I _am_!” he replied, as he pushed on the bottles. “Nearly
twice as much money is spent in England on _Drink_, as on any other
article of food. Read this card.” (What faddist ever goes about without
a pocketful of the appropriate literature?) “The stripes of different
colours represent the amounts spent on various articles of food. Look at
the highest three. Money spent on butter and on cheese, thirty-five
millions: on bread, seventy millions: on _intoxicating liquors_, one
hundred and thirty-six millions! If I had my way, I would close every
public-house in the land! Look at that card, and read the motto. _That’s
where all the money goes to!_”
“Have you seen the _Anti-Teetotal Card_?” Arthur innocently enquired.
“No, Sir, I have not!” the orator savagely replied. “What is it like?”
“Almost exactly like this one. The coloured stripes are the same. Only,
instead of the words ‘Money spent on,’ it has ‘Incomes derived from sale
of’; and, instead of ‘That’s where all the money goes to,’ its motto is
‘_That’s where all the money comes from!_’”
The red-faced man scowled, but evidently considered Arthur beneath his
notice. So Lady Muriel took up the cudgels. “Do you hold the theory,”
she enquired, “that people can preach teetotalism more effectually by
being teetotalers themselves?”
“Certainly I do!” replied the red-faced man. “Now, here is a case in
point,” unfolding a newspaper-cutting: “let me read you this letter from
a teetotaler. _To the Editor. Sir, I was once a moderate drinker, and
knew a man who drank to excess. I went to him. ‘Give up this drink,’ I
said. ‘It will ruin your health!’ ‘You drink,’ he said: ‘why shouldn’t
I?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but I know when to leave off.’ He turned away from
me. ‘You drink in your way,’ he said: ‘let me drink in mine. Be off!’
Then I saw that, to do any good with him, I must forswear drink. From
that hour I haven’t touched a drop!_”
“There! What do you say to _that_?” He looked round triumphantly, while
the cutting was handed round for inspection.
“How very curious!” exclaimed Arthur, when it had reached him. “Did you
happen to see a letter, last week, about early rising? It was strangely
like this one.”
The red-faced man’s curiosity was roused. “Where did it appear?” he
asked.
“Let me read it to you,” said Arthur. He took some papers from his
pocket, opened one of them, and read as follows. “_To the Editor. Sir, I
was once a moderate sleeper, and knew a man who slept to excess. I
pleaded with him. ‘Give up this lying in bed,’ I said, ‘It will ruin
your health!’ ‘You go to bed,’ he said: ‘why shouldn’t I?’ ‘Yes,’ I
said, ‘but I know when to get up in the morning.’ He turned away from
me. ‘You sleep in your way,’ he said: ‘let me sleep in mine. Be off!’
Then I saw that to do any good with him, I must forswear sleep. From
that hour I haven’t been to bed!_”
Arthur folded and pocketed his paper, and passed on the
newspaper-cutting. None of us dared to laugh, the red-faced man was
evidently so angry. “Your parallel doesn’t run on all fours!” he
snarled.
“_Moderate_ drinkers never do so!” Arthur quietly replied. Even the
stern old lady laughed at this.
“But it needs many other things to make a _perfect_ dinner!” said Lady
Muriel, evidently anxious to change the subject. “Mein Herr! What is
_your_ idea of a perfect dinner-party?”
The old man looked round smilingly, and his gigantic spectacles seemed
more gigantic than ever. “A _perfect_ dinner-party?” he repeated.
“First, it must be presided over by our present hostess!”
“That, of _course_!” she gaily interposed. “But what _else_, Mein Herr?”
“I can but tell you what I have seen,” said Mein Herr, “in mine own—in
the country I have traveled in.”
He paused for a full minute, and gazed steadily at the ceiling—with so
dreamy an expression on his face, that I feared he was going off into a
reverie, which seemed to be his normal state. However, after a minute,
he suddenly began again.
“That which chiefly causes the failure of a dinner-party, is the
running-short—not of meat, nor yet of drink, but of _conversation_.”
“In an _English_ dinner-party,” I remarked, “I have never known
_small-talk_ run short!”
“Pardon me,” Mein Herr respectfully replied, “I did not say
‘small-talk.’ I said ‘conversation.’ All such topics as the weather, or
politics, or local gossip, are unknown among us. They are either vapid
or controversial. What we need for _conversation_ is a topic of
_interest_ and of _novelty_. To secure these things we have tried
various plans—Moving-Pictures, Wild-Creatures, Moving-Guests, and a
Revolving-Humorist. But this last is only adapted to _small_ parties.”
“Let us have it in four separate Chapters, please!” said Lady Muriel,
who was evidently deeply interested—as, indeed, most of the party were,
by this time: and, all down the table, talk had ceased, and heads were
leaning forwards, eager to catch fragments of Mein Herr’s oration.
“Chapter One! Moving-Pictures!” was proclaimed in the silvery voice of
our hostess.
“The dining-table is shaped like a circular ring,” Mein Herr began, in
low dreamy tones, which, however, were perfectly audible in the silence.
“The guests are seated at the inner side as well as the outer, having
ascended to their places by a winding-staircase, from the room below.
Along the middle of the table runs a little railway; and there is an
endless train of trucks, worked round by machinery; and on each truck
there are two pictures, leaning back to back. The train makes two
circuits during dinner; and, when it has been _once_ round, the waiters
turn the pictures round in each truck, making them face the other way.
Thus _every_ guest sees _every_ picture!”
He paused, and the silence seemed deader than ever. Lady Muriel looked
aghast. “Really, if this goes on,” she exclaimed, “I shall have to drop
a pin! Oh, it’s _my_ fault, is it?” (In answer to an appealing look from
Mein Herr.) “I was forgetting my duty. Chapter Two! Wild-Creatures!”
“We found the Moving-Pictures a _little_ monotonous,” said Mein Herr.
“People didn’t care to talk Art through a whole dinner; so we tried
Wild-Creatures. Among the flowers, which we laid (just as _you_ do)
about the table, were to be seen, here a mouse, there a beetle; here a
spider,” (Lady Muriel shuddered) “there a wasp; here a toad, there a
snake;” (“Father!” said Lady Muriel, plaintively. “Did you hear
_that_?”) “so we had plenty to talk about!”
“And when you got stung——” the old lady began.
“They were all chained-up, dear Madam!”
And the old lady gave a satisfied nod.
There was no silence to follow, _this_ time. “Third Chapter!” Lady
Muriel proclaimed at once, “Moving-Guests!”
“Even the Wild-Creatures proved monotonous,” the orator proceeded. “So
we left the guests to choose their own subjects; and, to avoid monotony,
we changed _them_. We made the table of _two_ rings; and the inner ring
moved slowly round, all the time, along with the floor in the middle and
the inner row of guests. Thus _every_ inner guest was brought
face-to-face with _every_ outer guest. It was a little confusing,
sometimes, to have to _begin_ a story to one friend and _finish_ it to
another; but _every_ plan has its faults, you know.”
“Fourth Chapter!” Lady Muriel hastened to announce. “The
Revolving-Humorist!”
“For a _small_ party we found it an excellent plan to have a round
table, with a hole cut in the middle large enough to hold _one_ guest.
Here we placed our _best_ talker. He revolved slowly, facing every other
guest in turn: and he told lively anecdotes the whole time!”
“I shouldn’t like it!” murmured the pompous man. “It would make me
giddy, revolving like that! I should decline to——” here it appeared to
dawn upon him that perhaps the assumption he was making was not
warranted by the circumstances: he took a hasty gulp of wine, and choked
himself.
But Mein Herr had relapsed into reverie, and made no further remark.
Lady Muriel gave the signal, and the ladies left the room.
CHAPTER X.
JABBERING AND JAM.
When the last lady had disappeared, and the Earl, taking his place at
the head of the table, had issued the military order “Gentlemen! Close
up the ranks, if you please!”, and when, in obedience to his command, we
had gathered ourselves compactly round him, the pompous man gave a deep
sigh of relief, filled his glass to the brim, pushed on the wine, and
began one of his favorite orations. “They are charming, no doubt!
Charming, but very frivolous. They drag us down, so to speak, to a lower
level. They——”
“Do not all pronouns require antecedent _nouns_?” the Earl gently
enquired.
“Pardon me,” said the pompous man, with lofty condescension. “I had
overlooked the noun. The ladies. We regret their absence. Yet we console
ourselves. _Thought is free._ With them, we are limited to _trivial_
topics—Art, Literature, Politics, and so forth. One can bear to discuss
_such_ paltry matters with a lady. But no man, in his senses—” (he
looked sternly round the table, as if defying contradiction) “—ever yet
discussed _WINE_ with a lady!” He sipped his glass of port, leaned back
in his chair, and slowly raised it up to his eye, so as to look through
it at the lamp. “The vintage, my Lord?” he enquired, glancing at his
host.
The Earl named the date.
“So I had supposed. But one likes to be certain. The _tint_ is, perhaps,
slightly pale. But the _body_ is unquestionable. And as for the
_bouquet_——”
Ah, that magic Bouquet! How vividly that single word recalled the scene!
The little beggar-boy turning his somersault in the road—the sweet
little crippled maiden in my arms—the mysterious evanescent
nurse-maid—all rushed tumultuously into my mind, like the creatures of a
dream: and through this mental haze there still boomed on, like the
tolling of a bell, the solemn voice of the great connoisseur of _WINE_!
Even _his_ utterances had taken on themselves a strange and dream-like
form. “No,” he resumed—and _why_ is it, I pause to ask, that, in taking
up the broken thread of a dialogue, one _always_ begins with this
cheerless monosyllable? After much anxious thought, I have come to the
conclusion that the object in view is the same as that of the schoolboy,
when the sum he is working has got into a hopeless muddle, and when in
despair he takes the sponge, washes it all out, and begins again. Just
in the same way the bewildered orator, by the simple process of denying
_everything_ that has been hitherto asserted, makes a clean sweep of the
whole discussion, and can ‘start fair’ with a fresh theory. “No,” he
resumed: “there’s nothing like cherry-jam, after all. That’s what _I_
say!”
“Not for _all_ qualities!” an eager little man shrilly interposed. “For
_richness_ of general tone I don’t say that it _has_ a rival. But for
_delicacy_ of modulation—for what one may call the ‘_harmonics_’ of
flavour—give _me_ good old _raspberry_-jam!”
“Allow me one word!” The fat red-faced man, quite hoarse with
excitement, broke into the dialogue. “It’s too important a question to
be settled by Amateurs! I can give you the views of a
_Professional_—perhaps the most experienced jam-taster now living. Why,
I’ve known him fix the age of strawberry-jam, to a _day_—and we all know
what a difficult jam it is to give a date to—on a single tasting! Well,
I put to him the _very_ question you are discussing. His words were
‘_cherry_-jam is best, for mere _chiaroscuro_ of flavour:
_raspberry_-jam lends itself best to those resolved discords that linger
so lovingly on the tongue: but, for rapturous _utterness_ of saccharine
perfection, it’s _apricot-jam first and the rest nowhere_!’ That was
well put, _wasn’t_ it?”
“Consummately put!” shrieked the eager little man.
“I know your friend well,” said the pompous man. “As a jam-taster, he
has no rival! Yet I scarcely think——”
But here the discussion became general: and his words were lost in a
confused medley of names, every guest sounding the praises of his own
favorite jam. At length, through the din, our host’s voice made itself
heard. “Let us join the ladies!” These words seemed to recall me to
waking life; and I felt sure that, for the last few minutes, I had
relapsed into the ‘eerie’ state.
“A strange dream!” I said to myself as we trooped upstairs. “Grown men
discussing, as seriously as if they were matters of life and death, the
hopelessly trivial details of mere _delicacies_, that appeal to no
higher human function than the nerves of the tongue and palate! What a
humiliating spectacle such a discussion would be in waking life!”
When, on our way to the drawing-room, I received from the housekeeper my
little friends, clad in the daintiest of evening costumes, and looking,
in the flush of expectant delight, more radiantly beautiful than I had
ever seen them before, I felt no shock of surprise, but accepted the
fact with the same unreasoning apathy with which one meets the events of
a dream, and was merely conscious of a vague anxiety as to how they
would acquit themselves in so novel a scene—forgetting that Court-life
in Outland was as good training as they could need for Society in the
more substantial world.
It would be best, I thought, to introduce them as soon as possible to
some good-natured lady-guest, and I selected the young lady whose
piano-forte-playing had been so much talked of. “I am sure you like
children,” I said. “May I introduce two little friends of mine? This is
Sylvie—and this is Bruno.”
The young lady kissed Sylvie very graciously. She would have done the
same for _Bruno_, but he hastily drew back out of reach. “Their faces
are new to me,” she said. “Where do you come from, my dear?”
I had not anticipated so inconvenient a question; and, fearing that it
might embarrass Sylvie, I answered for her. “They come from some
distance. They are only here just for this one evening.”
“How far have you come, dear?” the young lady persisted.
Sylvie looked puzzled. “A mile or two, I _think_,” she said doubtfully.
“A mile or _three_,” said Bruno.
“You shouldn’t say ‘a mile or _three_,’” Sylvie corrected him.
The young lady nodded approval. “Sylvie’s quite right. It isn’t usual to
say ‘a mile or _three_.’”
“It would be usual—if we said it often enough,” said Bruno.
It was the young lady’s turn to look puzzled now. “He’s very quick, for
his age!” she murmured. “You’re not more than seven, are you, dear?” she
added aloud.
“I’m not so many as _that_,” said Bruno. “I’m _one_. Sylvie’s _one_.
Sylvie and me is _two_. _Sylvie_ taught me to count.”
“Oh, I wasn’t _counting_ you, you know!” the young lady laughingly
replied.
“Hasn’t oo _learnt_ to count?” said Bruno.
The young lady bit her lip. “Dear! What embarrassing questions he _does_
ask!” she said in a half-audible ‘aside.’
“Bruno, you shouldn’t!” Sylvie said reprovingly.
“Shouldn’t _what_?” said Bruno.
“You shouldn’t ask—that sort of questions.”
“_What_ sort of questions?” Bruno mischievously persisted.
“What _she_ told you not,” Sylvie replied, with a shy glance at the
young lady, and losing all sense of grammar in her confusion.
“Oo ca’n’t pronounce it!” Bruno triumphantly cried. And he turned to the
young lady, for sympathy in his victory. “I _knewed_ she couldn’t
pronounce ‘umbrella-sting’!”
The young lady thought it best to return to the arithmetical problem.
“When I asked if you were _seven_, you know, I didn’t mean ‘how many
_children_?’ I meant ‘how many _years_——’”
“Only got _two_ ears,” said Bruno. “Nobody’s got _seven_ ears.”
“And you belong to this little girl?” the young lady continued,
skilfully evading the anatomical problem.
“No, I doosn’t belong to _her_!” said Bruno. “Sylvie belongs to _me_!”
And he clasped his arms round her as he added “She are my very mine!”
“And, do you know,” said the young lady, “I’ve a little sister at home,
exactly like _your_ sister? I’m sure they’d love each other.”
“They’d be very extremely useful to each other,” Bruno said,
thoughtfully. “And they wouldn’t want no looking-glasses to brush their
hair wiz.”
“Why not, my child?”
“Why, each one would do for the other one’s looking-glass, a-course!”
cried Bruno.
But here Lady Muriel, who had been standing by, listening to this
bewildering dialogue, interrupted it to ask if the young lady would
favour us with some music; and the children followed their new friend to
the piano.
Arthur came and sat down by me. “If rumour speaks truly,” he whispered,
“we are to have a real treat!” And then, amid a breathless silence, the
performance began.
She was one of those players whom Society talks of as ‘brilliant,’ and
she dashed into the loveliest of Haydn’s Symphonies in a style that was
clearly the outcome of years of patient study under the best masters. At
first it seemed to be the perfection of piano-forte-playing; but in a
few minutes I began to ask myself, wearily, “_What_ is it that is
wanting? _Why_ does one get no pleasure from it?”
Then I set myself to listen intently to every note; and the mystery
explained itself. There _was_ an almost-perfect mechanical
_correctness_—and there was nothing else! False notes, of course, did
not occur: she knew the piece too well for _that_; but there was just
enough irregularity of _time_ to betray that the player had no real
‘ear’ for music—just enough inarticulateness in the more elaborate
passages to show that she did not think her audience worth taking real
pains for—just enough mechanical monotony of accent to take all _soul_
out of the heavenly modulations she was profaning—in short, it was
simply irritating; and, when she had rattled off the finale and had
struck the final chord as if, the instrument being now done with, it
didn’t matter how many wires she broke, I could not even _affect_ to
join in the stereotyped “Oh, _thank_ you!” which was chorused around me.
Lady Muriel joined us for a moment. “Isn’t it _beautiful_?” she
whispered, to Arthur, with a mischievous smile.
“No, it isn’t!” said Arthur. But the gentle sweetness of his face quite
neutralised the apparent rudeness of the reply.
“Such execution, you know!” she persisted.
“That’s what she _deserves_,” Arthur doggedly replied: “but people are
so prejudiced against capital——”
“Now you’re beginning to talk nonsense!” Lady Muriel cried. “But you
_do_ like Music, don’t you? You said so just now.”
“Do I like _Music_?” the Doctor repeated softly to himself. “My dear
Lady Muriel, there is Music and Music. Your question is painfully vague.
You might as well ask ‘Do you like _People_?’”
Lady Muriel bit her lip, frowned, and stamped with one tiny foot. As a
dramatic representation of ill-temper, it was distinctly _not_ a
success. However, it took in _one_ of her audience, and Bruno hastened
to interpose, as peacemaker in a rising quarrel, with the remark “_I_
likes Peoples!”
Arthur laid a loving hand on the little curly head. “What? _All_
Peoples?” he enquired.
“Not _all_ Peoples,” Bruno explained. “Only but Sylvie—and Lady
Muriel—and him—” (pointing to the Earl) “and oo—and oo!”
“You shouldn’t point at people,” said Sylvie. “It’s very rude.”
“In Bruno’s World,” I said, “there are only _four_ People—worth
mentioning!”
“In Bruno’s World!” Lady Muriel repeated thoughtfully. “A bright and
flowery world. Where the grass is always green, where the breezes always
blow softly, and the rain-clouds never gather; where there are no wild
beasts, and no deserts——”
“There _must_ be deserts,” Arthur decisively remarked. “At least if it
was _my_ ideal world.”
“But what possible use is there in a _desert_?” said Lady Muriel.
“_Surely_ you would have no wilderness in your ideal world?”
Arthur smiled. “But indeed I _would_!” he said. “A wilderness would be
more necessary than a railway; and _far_ more conducive to general
happiness than church-bells!”
“But what would you use it for?”
“_To practise music in_,” he replied. “All the young ladies, that have
no ear for music, but insist on learning it, should be conveyed, every
morning, two or three miles into the wilderness. There each would find a
comfortable room provided for her, and also a cheap second-hand
piano-forte, on which she might play for hours, without adding one
needless pang to the sum of human misery!”
Lady Muriel glanced round in alarm, lest these barbarous sentiments
should be overheard. But the fair musician was at a safe distance. “At
any rate you must allow that she’s a sweet girl?” she resumed.
“Oh, certainly. As sweet as _eau sucrée_, if you choose—and nearly as
interesting!”
“You are incorrigible!” said Lady Muriel, and turned to me. “I hope you
found Mrs. Mills an interesting companion?”
“Oh, _that’s_ her name, is it?” I said. “I fancied there was _more_ of
it.”
“So there is: and it will be ‘at your proper peril’ (whatever that may
mean) if you ever presume to address her as ‘Mrs. Mills.’ She is ‘Mrs.
Ernest—Atkinson—Mills’!”
“She is one of those would-be grandees,” said Arthur, “who think that,
by tacking on to their surname all their spare Christian-names, with
hyphens between, they can give it an aristocratic flavour. As if it
wasn’t trouble enough to remember _one_ surname!”
By this time the room was getting crowded, as the guests, invited for
the evening-party, were beginning to arrive, and Lady Muriel had to
devote herself to the task of welcoming them, which she did with the
sweetest grace imaginable. Sylvie and Bruno stood by her, deeply
interested in the process.
“I hope you like my friends?” she said to them. “Specially my dear old
friend, Mein Herr (What’s become of him, I wonder? Oh, there he is!),
that old gentleman in spectacles, with a long beard?”
“He’s a grand old gentleman!” Sylvie said, gazing admiringly at ‘Mein
Herr,’ who had settled down in a corner, from which his mild eyes beamed
on us through a gigantic pair of spectacles. “And what a lovely beard!”
“What does he call his-self?” Bruno whispered.
“He calls himself ‘Mein Herr,’” Sylvie whispered in reply.
Bruno shook his head impatiently. “That’s what he calls his _hair_, not
his _self_, oo silly!” He appealed to me. “What doos he call his _self_,
Mister Sir?”
“That’s the only name _I_ know of,” I said. “But he looks very lonely.
Don’t you pity his grey hairs?”
“I pities his _self_,” said Bruno, still harping on the misnomer; “but I
doosn’t pity his _hair_, one bit. His _hair_ ca’n’t feel!”
“We met him this afternoon,” said Sylvie. “We’d been to see Nero, and
we’d had _such_ fun with him, making him invisible again! And we saw
that nice old gentleman as we came back.”
“Well, let’s go and talk to him, and cheer him up a little,” I said:
“and perhaps we shall find out what he calls himself.”
CHAPTER XI.
THE MAN IN THE MOON.
The children came willingly. With one of them on each side of me, I
approached the corner occupied by ‘Mein Herr.’ “You don’t object to
_children_, I hope?” I began.
“_Crabbed age and youth cannot live together!_” the old man cheerfully
replied, with a most genial smile. “Now take a good look at me, my
children! You would guess me to be an _old_ man, wouldn’t you?”
At first sight, though his face had reminded me so mysteriously of “the
Professor,” he had seemed to be decidedly a _younger_ man: but, when I
came to look into the wonderful depth of those large dreamy eyes, I
felt, with a strange sense of awe, that he was incalculably _older_: he
seemed to gaze at us out of some by-gone age, centuries away.
[Illustration: MEIN HERR’S FAIRY-FRIENDS]
“I don’t know if oo’re an _old_ man,” Bruno answered, as the children,
won over by the gentle voice, crept a little closer to him. “I thinks
oo’re _eighty-three_.”
“He is very exact!” said Mein Herr.
“Is he anything like right?” I said.
“There are reasons,” Mein Herr gently replied, “reasons which I am not
at liberty to explain, for not mentioning _definitely_ any Persons,
Places, or Dates. One remark only I will permit myself to make—that the
period of life, between the ages of a hundred-and-sixty-five and a
hundred-and-seventy-five, is a specially _safe_ one.”
“How do you make that out?” I said.
“Thus. You would consider swimming to be a very safe amusement, if you
scarcely ever heard of any one dying of it. Am I not right in thinking
that you never heard of any one dying between those two ages?”
“I see what you mean,” I said: “but I’m afraid you ca’n’t prove
_swimming_ to be safe, on the same principle. It is no uncommon thing to
hear of some one being _drowned_.”
“In _my_ country,” said Mein Herr, “no one is _ever_ drowned.”
“Is there no water deep enough?”
“Plenty! But we ca’n’t _sink_. We are all _lighter than water_. Let me
explain,” he added, seeing my look of surprise. “Suppose you desire a
race of _pigeons_ of a particular shape or colour, do you not select,
from year to year, those that are nearest to the shape or colour you
want, and keep those, and part with the others?”
“We do,” I replied. “We call it ‘Artificial Selection.’”
“Exactly so,” said Mein Herr. “Well, _we_ have practised that for some
centuries—constantly selecting the _lightest_ people: so that, now,
_everybody_ is lighter than water.”
“Then you never can be drowned at _sea_?”
“Never! It is only on the _land_—for instance, when attending a play in
a theatre—that we are in such a danger.”
“How can that happen at a _theatre_?”
“Our theatres are all _underground_. Large tanks of water are placed
above. If a fire breaks out, the taps are turned, and in one minute the
theatre is flooded, up to the very roof! Thus the fire is extinguished.”
“_And_ the audience, I presume?”
“That is a minor matter,” Mein Herr carelessly replied. “But they have
the comfort of knowing that, whether drowned or not, they are all
_lighter than water_. We have not yet reached the standard of making
people lighter than _air_: but we are _aiming_ at it; and, in another
thousand years or so——”
“What doos oo do wiz the peoples that’s too heavy?” Bruno solemnly
enquired.
“We have applied the same process,” Mein Herr continued, not noticing
Bruno’s question, “to many other purposes. We have gone on selecting
_walking-sticks_—always keeping those that walked _best_—till we have
obtained some, that can walk by themselves! We have gone on selecting
_cotton-wool_, till we have got some lighter than air! You’ve no idea
what a useful material it is! We call it ‘Imponderal.’”
“What do you use it for?”
“Well, chiefly for _packing_ articles, to go by Parcel-Post. It makes
them weigh _less than nothing_, you know.”
“And how do the Post-Office people know what you have to pay?”
“That’s the beauty of the new system!” Mein Herr cried exultingly. “They
pay _us_: we don’t pay _them_! I’ve often got as much as five shillings
for sending a parcel.”
“But doesn’t your Government object?”
“Well, they _do_ object, a little. They say it comes so expensive, in
the long run. But the thing’s as clear as daylight, by their own rules.
If I send a parcel, that weighs a pound _more_ than nothing, I _pay_
three-pence: so, of course, if it weighs a pound _less_ than nothing, I
ought to _receive_ three-pence.”
“It is _indeed_ a useful article!” I said.
“Yet even ‘Imponderal’ has its disadvantages,” he resumed. “I bought
some, a few days ago, and put it into my _hat_, to carry it home, and
the hat simply floated away!”
“Had oo some of that funny stuff in oor hat _today_?” Bruno enquired.
“Sylvie and me saw oo in the road, and oor hat were ever so high up!
Weren’t it, Sylvie?”
“No, that was quite another thing.” said Mein Herr. “There was a drop or
two of rain falling: so I put my hat on the top of my stick—as an
umbrella, you know. As I came along the road,” he continued, turning to
me, “I was overtaken by——”
“——a shower of rain?” said Bruno.
“Well, it _looked_ more like the tail of a dog,” Mein Herr replied. “It
was the most curious thing! Something rubbed affectionately against my
knee. And I looked down. And I could see _nothing_! Only, about a yard
off, there was a dog’s tail, wagging, all by itself!”
“Oh, _Sylvie_!” Bruno murmured reproachfully. “Oo didn’t finish making
him visible!”
“I’m _so_ sorry!” Sylvie said, looking very penitent. “I meant to rub it
along his back, but we were in such a hurry. We’ll go and finish him
tomorrow. Poor thing! Perhaps he’ll get no supper tonight!”
“_Course_ he won’t!” said Bruno. “Nobody never gives bones to a dog’s
tail!”
Mein Herr looked from one to the other in blank astonishment. “I do not
understand you,” he said. “I had lost my way, and I was consulting a
pocket-map, and somehow I had dropped one of my gloves, and this
invisible _Something_, that had rubbed against my knee, actually brought
it back to me!”
“Course he did!” said Bruno. “He’s _welly_ fond of fetching things.”
Mein Herr looked so thoroughly bewildered that I thought it best to
change the subject. “What a useful thing a pocket-map is!” I remarked.
“That’s another thing we’ve learned from _your_ Nation,” said Mein Herr,
“map-making. But we’ve carried it much further than _you_. What do you
consider the _largest_ map that would be really useful?”
“About six inches to the mile.”
“Only _six inches_!” exclaimed Mein Herr. “We very soon got to six
_yards_ to the mile. Then we tried a _hundred_ yards to the mile. And
then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the
country, on the scale of _a mile to the mile_!”
“Have you used it much?” I enquired.
“It has never been spread out, yet,” said Mein Herr: “the farmers
objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the
sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure
you it does nearly as well. Now let me ask you _another_ question. What
is the smallest _world_ you would care to inhabit?”
“_I_ know!” cried Bruno, who was listening intently. “I’d like a little
teeny-tiny world, just big enough for Sylvie and me!”
“Then you would have to stand on opposite sides of it,” said Mein Herr.
“And so you would never see your sister _at all_!”
“And I’d have no _lessons_,” said Bruno.
“You don’t mean to say you’ve been trying experiments in _that_
direction!” I said.
“Well, not _experiments_ exactly. We do not profess to _construct_
planets. But a scientific friend of mine, who has made several
balloon-voyages, assures me he has visited a planet so small that he
could walk right round it in twenty minutes! There had been a great
battle, just before his visit, which had ended rather oddly: the
vanquished army ran away at full speed, and in a very few minutes found
themselves face-to-face with the victorious army, who were marching home
again, and who were so frightened at finding themselves between _two_
armies, that they surrendered at once! Of course that lost them the
battle, though, as a matter of fact, they had killed _all_ the soldiers
on the other side.”
“Killed soldiers _ca’n’t_ run away,” Bruno thoughtfully remarked.
“‘Killed’ is a technical word,” replied Mein Herr. “In the little planet
I speak of, the bullets were made of soft black stuff, which marked
everything it touched. So, after a battle, all you had to do was to
count how many soldiers on each side were ‘killed’—that means ‘marked on
the _back_,’ for marks in _front_ didn’t count.”
“Then you couldn’t ‘kill’ any, unless they ran away?” I said.
“My scientific friend found out a better plan than _that_. He pointed
out that, if only the bullets were sent _the other way round the world_,
they would hit the enemy in the _back_. After that, the _worst_ marksmen
were considered the _best_ soldiers; and _the very worst of all_ always
got First Prize.”
“And how did you decide which was _the very worst of all_?”
“Easily. The _best_ possible shooting is, you know, to hit what is
exactly in _front_ of you: so of course the _worst_ possible is to hit
what is exactly _behind_ you.”
“They were strange people in that little planet!” I said.
“They were indeed! Perhaps their method of _government_ was the
strangest of all. In _this_ planet, I am told, a Nation consists of a
number of Subjects, and one King: but, in the little planet I speak of,
it consisted of a number of _Kings_, and one _Subject_!”
“You say you are ‘told’ what happens in _this_ planet,” I said. “May I
venture to guess that you yourself are a visitor from some _other_
planet?”
Bruno clapped his hands in his excitement. “Is oo the Man-in-the-Moon?”
he cried.
Mein Herr looked uneasy. “I am _not_ in the Moon, my child,” he said
evasively. “To return to what I was saying. I think _that_ method of
government ought to answer _well_. You see, the Kings would be sure to
make Laws contradicting each other: so the Subject could never be
punished, because, _whatever_ he did, he’d be obeying _some_ Law.”
“And, whatever he did, he’d be _dis_obeying _some_ Law!” cried Bruno.
“So he’d _always_ be punished!”
Lady Muriel was passing at the moment, and caught the last word.
“Nobody’s going to be punished _here_!” she said, taking Bruno in her
arms. “This is Liberty-Hall! Would you lend me the children for a
minute?”
“The children desert us, you see,” I said to Mein Herr, as she carried
them off: “so we old folk must keep each other company!”
The old man sighed. “Ah, well! We’re old folk _now_; and yet I was a
child myself, once—at least I fancy so.”
It _did_ seem a rather unlikely fancy, I could not help owning to
myself—looking at the shaggy white hair, and the long beard—that he
could _ever_ have been a child. “You are fond of young people?” I said.
“Young _men_,” he replied. “Not of _children_ exactly. I used to teach
young men—many a year ago—in my dear old University!”
“I didn’t quite catch its _name_?” I hinted.
“I did not name it,” the old man replied mildly. “Nor would you know the
name if I did. Strange tales I could tell you of all the changes I have
witnessed there! But it would weary you, I fear.”
“No, _indeed_!” I said. “Pray go on. What kind of changes?”
But the old man seemed to be more in a humour for questions than for
answers. “Tell me,” he said, laying his hand impressively on my arm,
“tell me something. For I am a stranger in your land, and I know little
of _your_ modes of education: yet something tells me _we_ are further on
than _you_ in the eternal cycle of change—and that many a theory _we_
have tried and found to fail, _you_ also will try, with a wilder
enthusiasm: you also will find to fail, with a bitterer despair!”
It was strange to see how, as he talked, and his words flowed more and
more freely, with a certain rhythmic eloquence, his features seemed to
glow with an inner light, and the whole man seemed to be transformed, as
if he had grown fifty years younger in a moment of time.
CHAPTER XII.
FAIRY-MUSIC.
The silence that ensued was broken by the voice of the musical young
lady, who had seated herself near us, and was conversing with one of the
newly-arrived guests. “Well!” she said in a tone of scornful surprise.
“We _are_ to have something new in the way of music, it appears!”
I looked round for an explanation, and was nearly as much astonished as
the speaker herself: it was _Sylvie_ whom Lady Muriel was leading to the
piano!
“Do try it, my darling!” she was saying. “I’m sure you can play very
nicely!”
Sylvie looked round at me, with tears in her eyes. I tried to give her
an encouraging smile, but it was evidently a great strain on the nerves
of a child so wholly unused to be made an exhibition of, and she was
frightened and unhappy. Yet here came out the perfect sweetness of her
disposition: I could see that she was resolved to forget herself, and do
her best to give pleasure to Lady Muriel and her friends. She seated
herself at the instrument, and began instantly. Time and expression, so
far as one could judge, were perfect: but her touch was one of such
extraordinary lightness that it was at first scarcely possible, through
the hum of conversation which still continued, to catch a note of what
she was playing.
But in a minute the hum had died away into absolute silence, and we all
sat, entranced and breathless, to listen to such heavenly music as none
then present could ever forget.
Hardly touching the notes at first, she played a sort of introduction in
a minor key—like an embodied twilight; one felt as though the lights
were growing dim, and a mist were creeping through the room. Then there
flashed through the gathering gloom the first few notes of a melody so
lovely, so delicate, that one held one’s breath, fearful to lose a
single note of it. Ever and again the music dropped into the pathetic
minor key with which it had begun, and, each time that the melody forced
its way, so to speak, through the enshrouding gloom into the light of
day, it was more entrancing, more magically sweet. Under the airy touch
of the child, the instrument actually seemed to _warble_, like a bird.
“_Rise up, my love, my fair one_,” it seemed to sing, “_and come away!
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers
appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come!_” One
could fancy one heard the tinkle of the last few drops, shaken from the
trees by a passing gust—that one saw the first glittering rays of the
sun, breaking through the clouds.
The Count hurried across the room in great excitement. “I _cannot_
remember myself,” he exclaimed, “of the name of this so charming an air!
It is of an opera, most surely. Yet not even will the _opera_ remind his
name to me! What you call him, dear child?”
[Illustration: ‘HOW CALL YOU THE OPERA?’]
Sylvie looked round at him with a rapt expression of face. She had
ceased playing, but her fingers still wandered fitfully over the keys.
All fear and shyness ha
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