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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14201 ***
+
+THE GOLDEN SCARECROW
+
+
+BY
+
+
+HUGH WALPOLE
+
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"THE DUCHESS OF WREXE," "FORTITUDE," "THE PRELUDE TO
+ADVENTURE," "THE WOODEN HORSE." ETC.
+
+NEW YORK
+
+1915
+
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  CHAPTER                            PAGE
+        PROLOGUE--HUGH SEYMOUR         11
+     I. HENRY FITZGEORGE STRETHER      43
+    II. ERNEST HENRY                   65
+   III. ANGELINA                       94
+    IV. BIM ROCHESTER                 121
+     V. NANCY ROSS                    146
+    VI. 'ENERY                        172
+   VII. BARBARA FLINT                 198
+  VIII. SARAH TREFUSIS                226
+    IX. YOUNG JOHN SCARLET            256
+        EPILOGUE                      274
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+HUGH SEYMOUR
+
+
+I
+
+When Hugh Seymour was nine years of age he was sent from Ceylon, where
+his parents lived, to be educated in England. His relations having, for
+the most part, settled in foreign countries, he spent his holidays as a
+very minute and pale-faced "paying guest" in various houses where other
+children were of more importance than he, or where children as a race
+were of no importance at all. It was in this way that he became during
+certain months of 1889 and 1890 and '91 a resident in the family of the
+Rev. William Lasher, Vicar of Clinton St. Mary, that large rambling
+village on the edge of Roche St. Mary Moor in South Glebeshire.
+
+He spent there the two Christmases of 1890 and 1891 (when he was ten
+and eleven years of age), and it is with the second of these that the
+following incident, and indeed the whole of this book, has to do. Hugh
+Seymour could not, at the period of which I write, be called an
+attractive child; he was not even "interesting" or "unusual." He was
+very minutely made, with bones so brittle that it seemed that, at any
+moment, he might crack and splinter into sharp little pieces; and I am
+afraid that no one would have minded very greatly had this occurred. But
+although, he was so thin his face had a white and overhanging
+appearance, his cheeks being pale and puffy and his under-lip jutted
+forward in front of projecting teeth--he was known as the "White Rabbit"
+by his schoolfellows. He was not, however, so ugly as this appearance
+would apparently convey, for his large, grey eyes, soft and even, at
+times agreeably humorous, were pleasant and cheerful.
+
+During these years when he knew Mr. Lasher he was undoubtedly
+unfortunate. He was shortsighted, but no one had, as yet, discovered
+this, and he was, therefore, blamed for much clumsiness that he could
+not prevent and for a good deal of sensitiveness that came quite simply
+from his eagerness to do what he was told and his inability to see his
+way to do it. He was not, at this time, easy with strangers and seemed
+to them both conceited and awkward. Conceit was far from him--he was, in
+fact, amazed at so feeble a creature as himself!--but awkward he was,
+and very often greedy, selfish, impetuous, untruthful and even cruel: he
+was nearly always dirty, and attributed this to the evil wishes of some
+malign fairy who flung mud upon him, dropped him into puddles and
+covered him with ink simply for the fun of the thing!
+
+He did not, at this time, care very greatly for reading; he told himself
+stories--long stories with enormous families in them, trains of
+elephants, ropes and ropes of pearls, towers of ivory, peacocks, and
+strange meals of saffron buns, roast chicken, and gingerbread. His
+active, everyday concern, however, was to become a sportsman; he wished
+to be the best cricketer, the best footballer, the fastest runner of his
+school, and he had not--even then faintly he knew it--the remotest
+chance of doing any of these things even moderately well. He was bullied
+at school until his appointment as his dormitory's story-teller gave
+him a certain status, but his efforts at cricket and football were
+mocked with jeers and insults. He could not throw a cricket-ball, he
+could not see to catch one after it was thrown to him, did he try to
+kick a football he missed it, and when he had run for five minutes he
+saw purple skies and silver stars and has cramp in his legs. He had,
+however, during these years at Mr. Lasher's, this great over mastering
+ambition.
+
+In his sleep, at any rate, he was a hero; in the wide-awake world he
+was, in the opinion of almost every one, a fool. He was exactly the type
+of boy whom the Rev. William Lasher could least easily understand. Mr.
+Lasher was tall and thin (his knees often cracked with a terrifying
+noise), blue-black about the cheeks hooked as to the nose, bald and
+shining as to the head, genial as to the manner, and practical to the
+shining tips of his fingers. He has not, at Cambridge, obtained a rowing
+blue, but "had it not been for a most unfortunate attack of scarlet
+fever-----" He was President of the Clinton St. Mary Cricket Club, 1890
+(matches played, six; lost, five; drawn, one) knew how to slash the ball
+across the net at a tennis garden party, always read the prayers in
+church as though he were imploring God to keep a straighter bat and
+improve His cut to leg, and had a passion for knocking nails into walls,
+screwing locks into doors, and making chicken runs. He was, he often
+thanked his stars, a practical Realist, and his wife, who was fat,
+stupid, and in a state of perpetual wonder, used to say of him, "If Will
+hadn't been a clergyman he would have made _such_ an engineer. If God
+had blessed us with a boy, I'm sure he would have been something
+scientific. Will's no dreamer." Mr. Lasher was kindly of heart so long
+as you allowed him to maintain that the world was made for one type of
+humanity only. He was as breezy as a west wind, loved to bathe in the
+garden pond on Christmas Day ("had to break the ice that morning"), and
+at penny readings at the village schoolroom would read extracts from
+"Pickwick," and would laugh so heartily himself that he would have to
+stop and wipe his eyes. "If you must read novels," he would say, "read
+Dickens. Nothing to offend the youngest among us--fine breezy stuff with
+an optimism that does you good and people you get to know and be fond
+of. By Jove, I can still cry over Little Nell and am not ashamed of
+it."
+
+He had the heartiest contempt for "wasters" and "failures," and he was
+afraid there were a great many in the world. "Give me a man who is a
+man," he would say, "a man who can hit a ball for six, run ten miles
+before breakfast and take his knocks with the best of them. Wasn't it
+Browning who said,
+
+  "'God's in His heaven,
+  All's right with the world.'
+
+Browning was a great teacher--after Tennyson, one of our greatest. Where
+are such men to-day!"
+
+He was, therefore, in spite of his love for outdoor pursuits, a cultured
+man.
+
+It was natural, perhaps, that he should find Hugh Seymour "a pity."
+Nearly everything that he said about Hugh Seymour began with the words----
+
+"It's a pity that----"
+
+"It's a pity that you can't get some red into your cheeks, my boy."
+
+"It's a pity you don't care about porridge. You must learn to like it."
+
+"It's a pity you can't even make a little progress with your
+mathematics."
+
+"It's a pity you told me a lie because----"
+
+"It's a pity you were rude to Mrs. Lasher. No gentleman----"
+
+"It's a pity you weren't attending when----"
+
+Mr. Lasher was, very earnestly, determined to do his best for the boy,
+and, as he said, "You see, Hugh, if we do our best for you, you must do
+your best for us. Now I can't, I'm afraid, call this your best."
+
+Hugh would have liked to say that it _was_ the best that he could do in
+that particular direction (very probably Euclid), but if only he might
+be allowed to try his hand in quite _another_ direction, he might do
+something very fine indeed. He never, of course, had a chance of saying
+this, nor would such a declaration have greatly benefited him, because,
+for Mr. Lasher, there was only one way for every one and the sooner (if
+you were a small boy) you followed it the better.
+
+"Don't dream, Hugh," said Mr. Lasher, "remember that no man ever did
+good-work by dreaming. The goal is to the strong. Remember that."
+
+Hugh, did remember it and would have liked very much to be as strong as
+possible, but whenever he tried feats of strength he failed and looked
+foolish.
+
+"My dear boy, _that's_ not the way to do it," said Mr. Lasher; "it's a
+pity that you don't listen to what I tell you."
+
+
+II
+
+A very remarkable fact about Mr. Lasher was this--that he paid no
+attention whatever to the county in which he lived. Now there are
+certain counties in England where it is possible to say, "I am in
+England," and to leave it at that; their quality is simply English with
+no more individual personality. But Glebeshire has such an
+individuality, whether for good or evil, that it forces comment from the
+most sluggish and inattentive of human beings. Mr. Lasher was perhaps
+the only soul, living or dead, who succeeded in living in it during
+forty years (he is still there, he is a Canon now in Polchester) and
+never saying anything about it. When on his visits to London people
+inquired his opinion of Glebeshire, he would say: "Ah well!... I'm
+afraid Methodism and intemperance are very strong ... all the same,
+we're fighting 'em, fighting 'em!"
+
+This was the more remarkable in that Mr. Lasher lived upon the very edge
+of Roche St. Mary Moor, a stretch of moor and sand. Roche St. Mary Moor,
+that runs to the sea, contains the ruins of St. Arthe Church (buried
+until lately in the sand, but recently excavated through the kind
+generosity of Sir John Porthcullis, of Borhaze, and shown to visitors,
+6d. a head, Wednesday and Saturday afternoons free), and in one of the
+most romantic, mist-laden, moon-silvered, tempest-driven spots in the
+whole of Great Britain.
+
+The road that ran from Clinton St. Mary to Borhaze across the moor was
+certainly a wild, rambling, beautiful affair, and when the sea-mists
+swept across it and the wind carried the cry of the Bell of Trezent Rock
+in and out above and below, you had a strange and moving experience. Mr.
+Lasher was certainly compelled to ride on his bicycle from Clinton St.
+Mary to Borhaze and back again, and never thought it either strange or
+moving. "Only ten at the Bible meeting to-night. Borhaze wants waking
+up. We'll see what open-air services can do." What the moor thought
+about Mr. Lasher it is impossible to know!
+
+Hugh Seymour thought about the moor continually, but he was afraid to
+mention his ideas of it in public. There was a legend in the village
+that several hundred years ago some pirates, driven by storm into
+Borhaze, found their way on to the moor and, caught by the mist,
+perished there; they are to be seen, says the village, in powdered wigs,
+red coats, gold lace, and swords, haunting the sand-dunes. God help the
+poor soul who may fall into their hands! This was a very pleasant story,
+and Hugh Seymour's thoughts often crept around and about it. He would
+like to find a pirate, to bring him to the vicarage, and present him to
+Mr. Lasher. He knew that Mrs. Lasher would say, "Fancy, a pirate. Well!
+now, fancy! Well, here's a pirate!" And that Mr. Lasher would say, "It's
+a pity, Hugh, that you don't choose your company more carefully. Look at
+the man's nose!"
+
+Hugh, although he was only eleven, knew this. Hugh did on one occasion
+mention the pirates. "Dreaming again, Hugh! Pity they fill your head
+with such nonsense! If they read their Bibles more!"
+
+Nevertheless, Hugh continued his dreaming. He dreamt of the moor, of
+the pirates, of the cobbled street in Borhaze, of the cry of the Trezent
+Bell, of the deep lanes and the smell of the flowers in them, of making
+five hundred not out at cricket, of doing a problem in Euclid to Mr.
+Lasher's satisfaction, of having a collar at the end of the week as
+clean as it had been at the beginning, of discovering the way to make a
+straight parting in the hair, of not wriggling in bed when Mrs. Lasher
+kissed him at night, of many, many other things.
+
+He was at this time a very lonely boy. Until Mr. Pidgen paid his visit
+he was most remarkably lonely. After that visit he was never lonely
+again.
+
+
+III
+
+Mr. Pidgen came on a visit to the vicarage three days before Christmas.
+Hugh Seymour saw him first from the garden. Mr. Pidgen was standing at
+the window of Mr. Lasher's study; he was staring in front of him at the
+sheets of light that flashed and darkened and flashed again across the
+lawn, at the green cluster of holly-berries by the drive-gate, at the
+few flakes of snow that fell, lazily, carelessly, as though they were
+trying to decide whether they would make a grand affair of it or not,
+and perhaps at the small, grubby boy who was looking at him with one eye
+and trying to learn the Collect for the day (it was Sunday) with the
+other. Hugh had never before seen any one in the least like Mr. Pidgen.
+He was short and round, and his head was covered with tight little
+curls. His cheeks were chubby and red and his nose small, his mouth also
+very small. He had no chin. He was wearing a bright blue velvet
+waistcoat with brass buttons, and over his black shoes there shone white
+spats.
+
+Hugh had never seen white spats before. Mr. Pidgen shone with
+cleanliness, and he had supremely the air of having been exactly as he
+was, all in one piece, years ago. He was like one of the china ornaments
+in Mrs. Lasher's drawing-room that the housemaid is told to be so
+careful about, and concerning whose destruction Hugh heard her on at
+least one occasion declaring, in a voice half tears, half defiance,
+"Please, ma'am, it wasn't me. It just slipped of itself!" Mr. Pidgen
+would break very completely were he dropped.
+
+The first thing about him that struck Hugh was his amazing difference
+from Mr. Lasher. It seemed strange that any two people so different
+could be in the same house. Mr. Lasher never gleamed or shone, he would
+not break with however violent an action you dropped him, he would
+certainly never wear white spats.
+
+Hugh liked Mr. Pidgen at once. They spoke for the first time at the
+mid-day meal, when Mr. Lasher said, "More Yorkshire pudding, Pidgen?"
+and Mr. Pidgen said, "I adore it."
+
+Now Yorkshire pudding happened to be one of Hugh's special passions just
+then, particularly when it was very brown and crinkly, so he said quite
+spontaneously and without taking thought, as he was always told to do,
+
+"So do I!"
+
+"My _dear_ Hugh!" said Mrs. Lasher; "how very greedy! Fancy! After all
+you've been told! Well, well! Manners, manners!"
+
+"I don't know," said Mr. Pidgen (his mouth was full). "I said it first,
+and I'm older than he is. I should know better.... I like boys to be
+greedy, it's a good sign--a good sign. Besides. Sunday--after a
+sermon--one naturally feels a bit peckish. Good enough sermon, Lasher,
+but a bit long."
+
+Mr. Lasher of course did not like this, and, indeed, it was evident to
+any one (even to a small boy) that the two gentlemen would have
+different opinions upon every possible subject. However, Hugh loved Mr.
+Pidgen there and then, and decided that he would put him into the story
+then running (appearing in nightly numbers from the moment of his
+departure to bed to the instant of slumber--say ten minutes); he would
+also, in the imaginary cricket matches that he worked out on paper, give
+Mr. Pidgen an innings of two hundred not out and make him captain of
+Kent. He now observed the vision very carefully and discovered several
+strange items in his general behaviour. Mr. Pidgen was fond of whistling
+and humming to himself; he was restless and would walk up and down a
+room with his head in the air and his hands behind his broad back,
+humming (out of tune) "Sally in our Alley," or "Drink to me only." Of
+course this amazed Mr. Lasher.
+
+He would quite suddenly stop, stand like a top spinning, balanced on his
+toes, and cry, "Ah! Now I've got it! No, I haven't! Yes, I have. By God,
+it's gone again!"
+
+To this also Mr. Lasher strongly objected, and Hugh heard him say,
+"Really, Pidgen, think of the boy! Think of the boy!" and Mr. Pidgen
+exclaimed, "By God, so I should!... Beg pardon, Lasher! Won't do it
+again! Lord save me, I'm a careless old drunkard!" He had any number of
+strange phrases that were new and brilliant and exciting to the boy, who
+listened to him. He would say, "by the martyrs of Ephesus!" or "Sunshine
+and thunder!" or "God stir your slumbers!" when he thought any one very
+stupid. He said this last one day to Mrs. Lasher, and of course she was
+very much astonished. She did not from the first like him at all. Mr.
+Pidgen and Mr. Lasher had been friends at Cambridge and had not met one
+another since, and every one knows that that is a dangerous basis for
+the renewal of friendship. They had a little dispute on the very
+afternoon of Mr. Pidgen's arrival, when Mr. Lasher asked his guest
+whether he played golf.
+
+"God preserve my soul! No!" said Mr. Pidgen. Mr. Lasher then explained
+that playing golf made one thin, hungry and self-restrained. Mr. Pidgen
+said that he did not wish to be the first or last of these, and that he
+was always the second, and that golf was turning the fair places of
+England into troughs for the moneyed pigs of the Stock Exchange to swill
+in.
+
+"My dear Pidgen!" cried Mr. Lasher, "I'm afraid no one could call me a
+moneyed pig with any justice--more's the pity--and a game of golf to me
+is----"
+
+"Ah! you're a parson, Lasher," said his guest.
+
+In fact, by the evening of the second day of the visit it was obvious
+that Clinton St. Mary Vicarage might, very possibly, witness a disturbed
+Christmas. It was all very tiresome for poor Mrs. Lasher. On the late
+afternoon of Christmas Eve, Hugh heard the stormy conversation that
+follows--a conversation that altered the colour and texture of his
+after-life as such things may, when one is still a child.
+
+
+IV
+
+Christmas Eve was always, to Hugh, a day with glamour. He did not any
+longer hang up his stocking (although he would greatly have liked to do
+so), but, all day, his heart beat thickly at the thought of the morrow,
+at the thought of something more than the giving and receiving of
+presents, something more than the eating of food, something more than
+singing hymns that were delightfully familiar, something more than
+putting holly over the pictures and hanging mistletoe on to the lamp in
+the hall. Something there was in the day like going home, like meeting
+people again whom one had loved once, and not seen for many years,
+something as warm and romantic and lightly coloured _and_ as comforting
+as the most inspired and impossible story that one could ever, lying in
+bed and waiting for sleep, invent.
+
+To-day there was no snow but a frost, and there was a long bar of
+saffron below the cold sky and a round red ball of a sun. Hugh was
+sitting in a corner of Mr. Lasher's study, looking at Doré's "Don
+Quixote," when the two gentlemen came in. He was sitting in a dark
+corner and they, because they were angry with one another, did not
+recognise any one except themselves. Mr. Lasher pulled furiously at his
+pipe and Mr. Pidgen stood up by the fire with his short fat legs spread
+wide and his mouth smiling, but his eyes vexed and rather indignant.
+
+"My dear Pidgen," said Mr. Lasher, "you misunderstand me, you do indeed!
+It may be (I would be the first to admit that, like most men, I have my
+weakness) that I lay too much stress upon the healthy, physical, normal
+life, upon seeing things as they are and not as one would like to see
+them to be. I don't believe that dreaming ever did any good to any man!"
+
+"It's only produced some of the finest literature the world has ever
+known," said Mr. Pidgen.
+
+"Ah! Genius! If you or I were geniuses, Pidgen, that would be another
+affair. But we're not; we're plain, common-place humdrum human beings
+with souls to be saved and work to do--work to do!"
+
+There was a little pause after that, and Hugh, looking at Mr. Pidgen,
+saw the hurt look in his eyes deepen.
+
+"Come now, Lasher," he said at last. "Let's be honest one with another;
+that's your line, and you say it ought to be mine. Come now, as man to
+man, you think me a damnable failure now--beg pardon--complete
+failure--don't you? Don't be afraid of hurting me. I want to know!"
+
+Mr. Lasher was really a kindly man, and when his eyes beheld
+things--there were of course many things that they never beheld--he
+would do his best to help anybody. He wanted to help Mr. Pidgen now;
+but he was also a truthful man.
+
+"My dear Pidgen! Ha, ha! What a question! I'm sure many, many people
+enjoy your books immensely. I'm sure they do, oh, yes!"
+
+"Come, now, Lasher, the truth. You won't hurt my feelings. If you were
+discussing me with a third person you'd say, wouldn't you? 'Ah, poor
+Pidgen might have done something if he hadn't let his fancy run away
+with him. I was with him at Cambridge. He promised well, but I'm afraid
+one must admit that he's failed--he would never stick to anything.'"
+
+Now this was so exactly what Mr. Lasher had, on several occasions, said
+about his friend that he was really for the moment at a loss. He pulled
+at his pipe, looked very grave, and then said:
+
+"My dear Pidgen, you must remember our lives have followed such
+different courses. I can only give you my point of view. I don't myself
+care greatly for romances--fairy tales and so on. It seems to me that
+for a grown-up man.... However, I don't pretend to be a literary fellow;
+I have other work, other duties, picturesque, but nevertheless
+necessary."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Pidgen, who, considering that he had invited his
+host's honest opinion, should not have become irritated because he had
+obtained it; "that's just it. You people all think only _you_ know what
+is necessary. Why shouldn't a fairy story be as necessary as a sermon? A
+lot more necessary, I dare say. You think you're the only people who can
+know anything about it. You people never use your imaginations."
+
+"Nevertheless," said Mr. Lasher, very bitterly (for he had always said,
+"If one does not bring one's imagination into one's work one's work is
+of no value"), "writers of idle tales are not the only people who use
+their imaginations. And, if you will allow me, without offence, to say
+so, Pidgen, your books, even amongst other things of the same sort, have
+not been the most successful."
+
+This remark seemed to pour water upon all the anger in Mr. Pidgen's
+heart. His eyes expressed scorn, but not now for Mr. Lasher--for
+himself. His whole figure drooped and was bowed like a robin in a
+thunderstorm.
+
+"That's true enough. Bless my soul, Lasher, that's true enough. They
+hardly sell at all. I've written a dozen of them now, 'The Blue Pouncet
+Box,' 'The Three-tailed Griffin,' 'The Tree without any Branches,' but
+you won't want to be bothered with the names of them. 'The Griffin' went
+into two editions, but it was only because the pictures were rather
+sentimental. I've often said to myself, 'If a thing doesn't sell in
+these days it must be good,' but I've not really convinced myself. I'd
+like them to have sold. Always, until now, I've had hopes of the next
+one, and thought that it would turn out better, like a woman with her
+babies. I seem to have given up expecting that now. It isn't, you know,
+being always hard-up that I mind so much, although that, mind you, isn't
+pleasant, no, by Jehoshaphat, it isn't. But we would like now and again
+to find that other people have enjoyed what one hoped they _would_
+enjoy. But I don't know, they always seem too old for children and too
+young for grown-ups--my stories, I mean."
+
+It was one of the hardest traits in Mr. Lasher's character, as Hugh well
+realised, "to rub it in" over a fallen foe. He considered this his duty;
+it was also, I am afraid, a pleasure. "It's a pity," he said, "that
+things should not have gone better; but there are so many writers to-day
+that I wonder any one writes at all. We live in a practical, realistic
+age. The leaders amongst us have decided that every man must gird his
+loins and go out to fight his battles with real weapons in a real cause,
+not sit dreaming at his windows looking down upon the busy
+market-place." (Mr. Lasher loved what he called "images." There were
+many in his sermons.) "But, my dear Pidgen, it is in no way too late.
+Give up your fairy stories now that they have been proved a failure."
+
+Here Mr. Pidgen, in the most astonishing way, was suddenly in a terrible
+temper. "They're not!" he almost screamed. "Not at all. Failures, from
+the worldly point of view, yes; but there are some who understand. I
+would not have done anything else if I could. You, Lasher, with your
+soup-tickets and your choir-treats, think there's no room for me and my
+fairy stories. I tell you, you may find yourself jolly well mistaken one
+of these days. Yes, by Cæsar, you may. How do you know what's best worth
+doing? If you'd listened a little more to the things you were told when
+you were a baby, you'd be a more intelligent man now."
+
+"When I was a baby," said Mr. Lasher, incredulously, as though that were
+a thing that he never possibly could have been, "my _dear_ Pidgen!"
+
+"Ah, you think it absurd," said the other, a little cooler again. "But
+how do you know who watched over your early years and wanted you to be a
+dreamy, fairy tale kind of person instead of the cayenne pepper sort of
+man you are. There's always some one there, I tell you, and you can have
+your choice, whether you'll believe more than you see all your life or
+less than you see. Every baby knows about it; then, as they grow older,
+it fades and, with many people, goes altogether. He's never left _me_,
+St. Christopher, you know, and that's one thing. Of course, the ideal
+thing is somewhere between the two; recognise St. Christopher and see
+the real world as well. I'm afraid neither you nor I is the ideal man,
+Lasher. Why, I tell you, any baby of three knows more than you do!
+You're proud of never seeing beyond your nose. I'm proud of never seeing
+my nose at all: we're both wrong. But I _am_ ready to admit _your_ uses.
+You _never_ will admit mine; and it isn't any use your denying my
+Friend. He stayed with you a bit when you just arrived, but I expect he
+soon left you. You're jolly glad he did."
+
+"My _dear_ Pidgen," said Mr. Lasher, "I haven't understood a word."
+
+Pidgen shook his head. "You're right. That's just what's the matter with
+me. I can't even put what I see plainly." He sighed deeply. "I've
+failed. There's no doubt about it. But, although I know that, I've had a
+happy life. That's the funny part of it. I've enjoyed it more than you
+ever will, Lasher. At least, I'm never lonely. I like my food, too, and
+one's head's always full of jolly ideas, if only they seemed jolly to
+other people."
+
+"Upon my word, Pidgen," said Mr. Lasher. At this moment Mrs. Lasher
+opened the door.
+
+"Well, well. Fancy! Sitting over the fire talking! Oh, you men! Tea!
+tea! Tea, Will! Fancy talking all the afternoon! Well!"
+
+No one had noticed Hugh. He, however, had understood Mr. Pidgen better
+than Mr. Lasher did.
+
+
+V
+
+This conversation aroused in Hugh, for various reasons, the greatest
+possible excitement. He would have liked to have asked Mr. Pidgen many
+questions. Christmas Day came, and a beautiful day enthroned it: a pale
+blue sky, faint and clear, was a background to misty little clouds that
+hovered, then fled and disappeared, and from these flakes of snow fell
+now and then across the shining sunlight. Early in the winter afternoon
+a moon like an orange feather sailed into the sky as the lower stretches
+of blue changed into saffron and gold. Trees and hills and woods were
+crystal-clear, and shone with an intensity of outline as though their
+shapes had been cut by some giant knife against the background. Although
+there was no wind the air was so expectant that the ringing of church
+bells and the echo of voices came as though across still water. The
+colour of the sunlight was caught in the cups and runnels of the stiff
+frozen roads and a horse's hoofs echoed, sharp and ringing, over fields
+and hedges. The ponds were silvered into a sheet of ice, so thin that
+the water showed dark beneath it. All the trees were rimmed with
+hoar-frost.
+
+On Christmas afternoon, when three o'clock had just struck from the
+church tower, Hugh and Mr. Pidgen met, as though by some conspirator's
+agreement, by the garden gate. They had said nothing to one another and
+yet there they were; they both glanced anxiously back at the house and
+then Mr. Pidgen said:
+
+"Suppose we take a walk."
+
+"Thank you very much," said Hugh. "Tea isn't till half-past four."
+
+"Very well, then, suppose you lead the way." They walked a little, and
+then Hugh said: "I was there yesterday, in the study, when you talked
+all that about your books, and everything." The words came from him in
+little breathless gusts because he was excited.
+
+Mr. Pidgen stopped and looked upon him. "Thunder and sunshine! You don't
+say so! What under heaven were you doing?"
+
+"I was reading, and you came in and then I was interested."
+
+"Well?"
+
+Hugh dropped his voice.
+
+"I understood all that you meant. I'd like to read your books if I may.
+We haven't any in the house."
+
+"Bless my soul! Here's some one wants to read my books!" Mr. Pidgen was
+undoubtedly pleased. "I'll send you some. I'll send you them all!"
+
+Hugh gasped with pleasure. "I'll read them all, however many there
+are!" he said excitedly. "Every word."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Pidgen, "that's more than any one else has ever done."
+
+"I'd rather be with you," said the boy very confidently, "than Mr. Lasher.
+I'd rather write stories than preach sermons that no one wants to listen
+to." Then more timidly he continued: "I know what you meant about the man
+who comes when you're a baby. I remember him quite well, but I never can
+say anything because they'd say I was silly. Sometimes I think he's still
+hanging round only he doesn't come to the vicarage much. He doesn't like
+Mr. Lasher much, I expect. But I _do_ remember him. He had a beard and I
+used to think it funny the nurse didn't see him. That was before we went
+to Ceylon, you know, we used to live in Polchester then. When it was
+nearly dark and not quite he'd be there. I forgot about him in Ceylon, but
+since I've been here I've wondered ... it's sometimes like some one
+whispering to you and you know if you turn round he won't be there, but he
+_is_ there all the same. I made twenty-five last summer against
+Porthington Grammar; they're not much good _really_, and it was our
+second eleven, and I was nearly out second ball; anyway I made
+twenty-five, and afterwards as I was ragging about I suddenly thought of
+him. I _know_ he was pleased. If it had been a little darker I believe I'd
+have seen him. And then last night, after I was in bed and was thinking
+about what you'd said I _know_ he was near the window, only I didn't look
+lest he should go away. But of course Mr. Lasher would say that's all rot,
+like the pirates, only I _know_ it isn't." Hugh broke off for lack of
+breath, nothing else would have stopped him. When he was encouraged he was
+a terrible talker. He suddenly added in a sharp little voice like the
+report from a pistol: "So one can't be lonely or anything, can one, if
+there's always some one about?"
+
+Mr. Pidgen was greatly touched. He put his hand upon Hugh's shoulder.
+"My dear boy," he said, "my dear boy--dear me, dear me. I'm afraid
+you're going to have a dreadful time when you grow up. I really mustn't
+encourage you. And yet, who can help himself?"
+
+"But you said yourself that you'd seen him, that you knew him quite
+well?"
+
+"And so I do--and so I do. But you'll find, as you grow older, there are
+many people who won't believe you. And there's this, too. The more you
+live in your head, dreaming and seeing things that aren't there, the
+less you'll see the things that _are_ there. You'll always be tumbling
+over things. You'll never get on. You'll never be a success."
+
+"Never mind," said Hugh, "it doesn't matter much what you say now,
+you're only talking 'for my good' like Mr. Lasher. I don't care, I heard
+what you said yesterday, and it's made all the difference. I'll come and
+stay with you."
+
+"Well, so you shall," said Mr. Pidgen. "I can't help it. You shall come
+as often as you like. Upon my soul, I'm younger to-day than I've felt
+for a long time. We'll go to the pantomime together if you aren't too
+old for it. I'll manage to ruin you all right. What's that shining?" He
+pointed in front of him.
+
+They had come to a rise in the Polwint Road. To their right, running to
+the very foot of their path, was the moor. It stretched away, like a
+cloud, vague and indeterminate to the horizon. To their left a dark
+brown field rose in an ascending wave to a ridge that cut the sky, now
+crocus-coloured. The field was lit with the soft light of the setting
+sun. On the ridge of the field something, suspended, it seemed, in
+midair, was shining like a golden fire.
+
+"What's that?" said Mr. Pidgen again. "It's hanging. What the devil!"
+
+They stopped for a moment, then started across the field. When they had
+gone a little way Mr. Pidgen paused again.
+
+"It's like a man with a golden helmet. He's got legs, he's coming to
+us."
+
+They walked on again. Then Hugh cried, "Why, it's only an old Scarecrow.
+We might have guessed."
+
+The sun, at that instant, sank behind the hills and the world was grey.
+
+The Scarecrow, perched on the high ridge, waved its tattered sleeves in
+the air. It was an old tin can that had caught the light; the can
+hanging over the stake that supported it in drunken fashion seemed to
+wink at them. The shadows came streaming up from the sea and the dark
+woods below in the hollow drew closer to them.
+
+The Scarecrow seemed to lament the departure of the light. "Here, mind,"
+he said to the two of them, "you saw me in my glory just now and don't
+you forget it. I may be a knight in shining armour after all. It only
+depends upon the point of view."
+
+"So it does," said Mr. Pidgen, taking his hat off, "you were very fine,
+I shan't forget."
+
+
+VI
+
+They stood there in silence for a time....
+
+
+VII
+
+At last they turned back and walked slowly home, the intimacy of their
+new friendship growing with their silence. Hugh was happier than he had
+ever been before. Behind the quiet evening light he saw wonderful
+prospects, a new life in which he might dream as he pleased, a new
+friend to whom he might tell these dreams, a new confidence in his own
+power....
+
+But it was not to be.
+
+That very night Mr. Pidgen died, very peacefully, in his sleep, from
+heart failure. He had had, as he had himself said, a happy life.
+
+
+VIII
+
+Years passed and Hugh Seymour grew up. I do not wish here to say much
+more about him. It happened that when he was twenty-four his work
+compelled him to live in that Square in London known as March Square (it
+will be very carefully described in a minute). Here he lived for five
+years, and, during that time, he was happy enough to gain the intimacy
+and confidence of some of the children who played in the Gardens there.
+They trusted him and told him more than they told many people. He had
+never forgotten Mr. Pidgen; that walk, that vision of the Scarecrow,
+stood, as such childish things will, for a landmark in his history. He
+came to believe that those experiences that he knew, in his own life, to
+be true, were true also for some others. That's as it may be. I can only
+say that Barbara and Angelina, Bim and even Sarah Trefusis were his
+friends. I daresay his theory is all wrong.
+
+I can only say that I _know_ that they were his friends; perhaps, after
+all, the Scarecrow _is_ shining somewhere in golden armour. Perhaps,
+after all, one need not be so lonely as one often fancies that one is.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HENRY FITZGEORGE STRETHER
+
+
+I
+
+March Square is not very far from Hyde Park Corner in London Town.
+Behind the whir and rattle of the traffic it stands, spacious and cool
+and very old, muffled by the little streets that guard it, happily
+unconscious, you would suppose, that there were any in all the world so
+unfortunate as to have less than five thousand a year for their support.
+Perhaps a hundred years ago March Square might boast of such superior
+ignorance, but fashions change, to prevent, it may be, our own too
+easily irritated monotonies, and, for some time now, the Square has been
+compelled, here, there, in one corner and another, to admit the invader.
+It is true that the solemn, respectable grey house, No. 3, can boast
+that it is the town residence of His Grace the Duke of Crole and his
+beautiful young Duchess, née Miss Jane Tunster of New York City, but it
+is also true that No. ---- is in the possession of Mr. Munty Ross of
+Potted Shrimp fame, and there are Dr. Cruthen, the Misses Dent, Herbert
+Hoskins and his wife, whose incomes are certainly nearer to £500 than
+£5,000. Yes, rents and blue blood have come down in March Square; it is,
+certainly, not the less interesting for that, but----
+
+Some of the houses can boast the days of good Queen Anne for their
+period. There is one, at the very corner where Somers Street turns off
+towards the Park, that was built only yesterday, and has about it some
+air of shame, a furtive embarrassment that it will lose very speedily.
+There is no house that can claim beauty, and yet the Square, as a whole,
+has a fine charm, something that age and colour, haphazard adventure,
+space and quiet have all helped towards.
+
+There is, perhaps, no square in London that clings so tenaciously to any
+sign or symbol of old London that motor-cars and the increase of speed
+have not utterly destroyed. All the oldest London mendicants find their
+way, at different hours of the week, up and down the Square. There is,
+I believe, no other square in London where musicians are permitted. On
+Monday morning there is the blind man with the black patch over one eye;
+he has an organ (a very old one, with a painted picture of the Battle of
+Trafalgar on the front of it) and he wears an old black skull-cap. He
+wheezes out his old tunes (they are older than other tunes that March
+Square hears, and so, perhaps, March Square loves them). He goes
+despondently, and the tap of his stick sounds all the way round the
+Square. A small and dirty boy--his grandson, maybe--pushes the organ for
+him. On Tuesday there comes the remnants of a German band--remnants
+because now there are only the cornet, the flute and the trumpet. Sadly
+wind-blown, drunken and diseased they are, and the Square can remember
+when there were a number of them, hale and hearty young fellows, but
+drink and competition have been too strong for them. On Wednesdays there
+is sometimes a lady who sings ballads in a voice that can only be
+described as that contradiction in terms "a shrill contralto." Her notes
+are very piercing and can be heard from one end of the Square to the
+other. She sings "Annie Laurie" and "Robin Adair," and wears a battered
+hat of black straw. On Thursday there is a handsome Italian with a
+barrel organ that bears in its belly the very latest and most popular
+tunes. It is on Thursday that the Square learns the music of the moment;
+thus from one end of the year to the other does it keep pace with the
+movement.
+
+On Fridays there is a lean and ragged man wearing large and, to the
+children of the Square, terrifying spectacles. He is a very gloomy
+fellow and sings hymn-tunes, "Rock of Ages," "There is a Happy Land,"
+and "Jerusalem the Golden." On Saturdays there is a stout, happy little
+man with a harp. He has white hair and looks like a retired colonel. He
+cannot play the harp very much, but he is quite the most popular visitor
+of the week, and must be very rich indeed does he receive in other
+squares so handsome a reward for his melody as this one bestows; he is
+known as "Colonel Harry." In and out of these regular visitors there
+are, of course, many others. There is a dark, sinister man with a
+harmonium and a shivering monkey on a chain; there is an Italian woman,
+wearing bright wraps round her head, and she has a cage of birds who
+tell fortunes; there is a horsey, stable-bred, ferret-like man with,
+two performing dogs, and there is quite an old lady in a black bonnet
+and shawl who sings duets with her grand-daughter, a young thing of some
+fifty summers.
+
+There can be nothing in the world more charming than the way the Square
+receives its friends. Let it number amongst its guests a Duchess, that
+is no reason why it should scorn "Colonel Harry" or "Mouldy Jim," the
+singer of hymns. Scorn, indeed, cannot be found within its grey walls,
+soft grey, soft green, soft white and blue--in these colours is the
+Square's body clothed, no anger in its mild eyes, nor contempt anywhere
+at its heart.
+
+The Square is proud, and is proud with reason, of its garden. It is not
+a large garden as London gardens go. It has in its centre a fountain.
+Neptune, with a fine wreath of seaweed about his middle, blowing water
+through, his conch. There are two statues, the one of a general who
+fought in the Indian Mutiny and afterwards lived and died in the Square,
+the other of a mid-Victorian philanthropist whose stout figure and
+urbane self-satisfaction (as portrayed by the sculptor) bear witness to
+an easy conscience and an unimaginative mind. There is, round and about
+the fountain, a lovely green lawn, and there are many overhanging trees
+and shady corners. An air of peace the garden breathes, and that
+although children are for ever racing up and down it, shattering the
+stillness of the air with their cries, rivalling the bells of St.
+Matthew's round the corner with their piercing notes.
+
+But it is the quality of the Square that nothing can take from it its
+peace, nothing temper its tranquillity. In the heat of the days
+motor-cars will rattle through, bells will ring, all the bustle of a
+frantic world invade its security; for a moment it submits, but in the
+evening hour, when the colours are being washed from the sky, and the
+moon, apricot-tinted, is rising slowly through the smoke, March Square
+sinks, with a little sigh, back into her peace again. The modern world
+has not yet touched her, nor ever shall.
+
+
+II
+
+The Duchess of Crole had three months ago a son, Henry Fitzgeorge,
+Marquis of Strether. Very fortunate that the first-born should be a son,
+very fortunate also that the first-born should be one of the healthiest,
+liveliest, merriest babies that it has ever been any one's good fortune
+to encounter. All smiles, chuckles and amiability is Henry Fitzgeorge;
+he is determined that all shall be well.
+
+His birth was for a little time the sensation of the Square. Every one
+knew the beautiful Duchess; they had seen her drive, they had seen her
+walk, they had seen her in the picture-papers, at race-meetings and
+coming away from fashionable weddings. The word went round day by day as
+to his health; he was watched when he came out in his perambulator, and
+there was gossip as to his appearance and behaviour.
+
+"A jolly little fellow."
+
+"Just like his father."
+
+"Rather early to say that, isn't it?"
+
+"Well, I don't know, got the same smile. His mother's rather languid."
+
+"Beautiful woman, though."
+
+"Oh, lovely!"
+
+Upon a certain afternoon in March about four o'clock, there was quite a
+gathering of persons in Henry Fitzgeorge's nursery. There was his
+mother, with those two great friends of hers, Lady Emily Blanchard and
+the Hon. Mrs. Vavasour; there was Her Grace's mother, Mrs. P. Tunster
+(an enormously stout lady); there was Miss Helen Crasper, who was
+staying in the house. These people were gathered at the end of the cot,
+and they looked down upon Henry Fitzgeorge, and he lay upon his back,
+gazed at them thoughtfully, and clenched and unclenched his fat hands.
+
+Opposite his cot were some very wide windows, and three windows were
+filled with galleons of cloud--fat, bolster, swelling vessels, white,
+save where, in their curving sails, they had caught a faint radiance
+from the hidden sun. In fine procession, against the blue, they passed
+along. Very faint and muffled there came up from the Square the
+lingering notes of "Robin Adair." This is a Wednesday afternoon, and it
+is the lady with the black straw hat who is singing. The nursery has
+white walls--it is filled with colour; the fire blazes with a yellow-red
+gleam that rises and falls across the shining floor.
+
+"I brought him a rattle, Jane, dear," said Mrs. Tunster, shaking in the
+air a thing of coral and silver. "He's got several, of course, but I
+guess you'll go a long way before you find anything cuter."
+
+"It's too pretty," said Lady Emily.
+
+"Too lovely," said the Hon. Mrs. Vavasour.
+
+The Duchess looked down upon her son. "Isn't he old?" she said.
+"Thousands of years. You'd think he was laughing at the lot of us."
+
+Mrs. Tunster shook her head. "Now don't you go imagining things, Jane,
+my dear. I used to be just like that, and your father would say, 'Now,
+Alice.'"
+
+Her Grace raised her head. Her eyes were a little tired. She looked from
+her son to the clouds, and then back again to her son. She was
+remembering her own early days, the rich glowing colour of her own
+American country, the freedom, the space, the honesty.
+
+"I guess you're tired, dear," said her mother. "With the party to-night
+and all. Why don't you go and rest a bit?"
+
+"His eyes _are_ old! He _does_ despise us all."
+
+Lady Emily, who believed in personal comfort and as little thinking as
+possible, put her arm through her friend's.
+
+"Come along and give us some tea. He's a dear. Good-bye, you little
+darling. He _is_ a pet. There, did you see him smiling? You _darling_.
+Tea I _must_ have, Jane, dear--_at_ once."
+
+"You go on. I'm coming. Ring for it. Tell Hunter. I'll be with you in
+two minutes, mother."
+
+Mrs. Tunster left her rattle in the nurse's hands. Then, with the two
+others, departed. Outside the nursery door she said in an American
+whisper:--"Jane isn't quite right yet. Went about a bit too soon. She's
+headstrong. She always has been. Doesn't do for her to think too much."
+
+Her Grace was alone now with her son and heir and the nurse. She bent
+over the cot and smiled upon Henry Fitzgeorge; he smiled back at her,
+and even gave an absent-minded crow; but his gaze almost instantly swung
+back again to the window, through which, deeply and with solemn
+absorption, he watched the clouds.
+
+She gave him her hand, and he closed his fingers about one of hers; but
+even that grasp was abstracted, as though he were not thinking of her at
+all, but was simply behaving like a gentleman.
+
+"I don't believe he's realised me a bit, nurse," she said, turning away
+from the cot.
+
+"Well, Your Grace, they always take time. It's early days."
+
+"But what's he thinking of all the time?"
+
+"Oh, just nothing, Your Grace."
+
+"I don't believe it's nothing. He's trying to settle things. This--what
+it's all about--what he's got to do about it."
+
+"It may be so, Your Grace. All babies are like that at first."
+
+"His eyes are so old, so grave."
+
+"He's a jolly little fellow, Your Grace."
+
+"He's very little trouble, isn't he?"
+
+"Less trouble than any baby I've ever had to do with. Got His Grace's
+happy temperament, if I may say so."
+
+"Yes," the mother laughed. She crossed over to the window and looked
+down. "That poor woman singing down there. How awful! He'll be going
+down to Crole very shortly, Roberts. Splendid air for him there. But the
+Square's cheerful. He likes the garden, doesn't he?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Your Grace; all the children and the fountain. But he's a
+happy baby. I should say he'd like anything."
+
+For a moment longer she looked down into the Square. The discordant
+voice was giving "Annie Laurie" to the world.
+
+"Good-bye, darling." She stepped forward, shook the silver and coral
+rattle. "See what grannie's given you!" She left it lying near his
+hand, and, with a little sigh, was gone.
+
+
+III
+
+Now, as the sun was setting, the clouds had broken into little pink
+bubbles, lying idly here and there upon the sky. Higher, near the top of
+the window, they were large pink cushions, three fat ones, lying
+sedately against the blue. During three months now Henry Fitzgeorge
+Strether had been confronted with the new scene, the new urgency on his
+part to respond to it. At first he had refused absolutely to make any
+response; behind him, around him, above him, below him, were still the
+old conditions; but they were the old conditions viewed, for some reason
+unknown to him, at a distance, and at a distance that was ever
+increasing. With every day something here in this new and preposterous
+world struck his attention, and with every fresh lure was he drawn more
+certainly from his old consciousness. At first he had simply rebelled;
+then, very slowly, his curiosity had begun to stir. It had stirred at
+first through food and touch; very pleasant this, very pleasant that.
+
+Milk, sleep, light things that he could hold very tightly with his
+hands. Now, upon this March afternoon, he watched the pink clouds with a
+more intent gaze than he had given to them before. Their colour and
+shape bore some reference to the life that he had left. They were "like"
+a little to those other things. There, too, shadowed against the wall,
+was his Friend, his Friend, now the last link with everything that he
+knew.
+
+At first, during the first week, he had demanded again and again to be
+taken back, and always he had been told to wait, to wait and see what
+was going to happen. So long as his Friend was there, he knew that he
+was not completely abandoned, and that this was only a temporary
+business, with its strange limiting circumstances, the way that one was
+tied and bound, the embarrassment of finding that all one's old means of
+communication were here useless. How desperate, indeed, would it have
+been had his Friend not been there, reassuring pervading him,
+surrounding him, always subduing those sudden inexplicable alarms.
+
+He would demand: "When are we going to leave all this?"
+
+"Wait. I know it seems absurd to you, but it's commanded you."
+
+"Well, but--this is ridiculous. Where are all my old powers I Where are
+all the others?"
+
+"You will understand everything one day. I'm afraid you're very
+uncomfortable. You will be less so as time passes. Indeed, very soon you
+will be very happy."
+
+"Well, I'm doing my best to be cheerful. But you won't leave me?"
+
+"Not so long as you want me."
+
+"You'll stay until we go back again!"
+
+"You'll never go back again."
+
+"Never?"
+
+"No."
+
+Across the light the nurse advanced. She took him in her arms for a
+moment, turned his pillows, then layed him down again. As he settled
+down into comfort he saw his Friend, huge, a great shadow, mingling with
+the coloured lights of the flaming sky. All the world was lit, the white
+room glowed. A pleasant smell was in his nostrils.
+
+"Where are all the others? They would like to share this pleasant
+moment, and I would warn them about the unpleasant ones."
+
+"They are coming, some of them. I am with them as I am with you."
+Swinging across the Square were the evening bells of St. Matthew's.
+
+Henry Fitzgeorge smiled, then chuckled, then dozed into a pleasant
+sleep.
+
+
+IV
+
+Asleep, awake, it had been for the most part the same to him. He swung
+easily, lazily upon the clouds; warmth and light surrounded him; a part
+of him, his toes, perhaps, would be suddenly cold, then he would cry, or
+he would strike his head against the side of his cot and it would hurt,
+and so then he would cry again. But these tears would not be tears of
+grief, but simply declarations of astonishment and wonder.
+
+He did not, of course, realise that as, very slowly, very gradually he
+began to understand the terms and conditions of his new life, so with
+the same gradation, his Friend was expressed in those terms. Slowly that
+great shadow filled the room, took on human shape, until at last it
+would be only thus that he would appear. But Henry would not realise the
+change, soon he would not know that it had ever been otherwise. Dimly,
+out of chaos, the world was being made for him. There a square of
+colour, here something round and hard that was cool to touch, now a
+gleaming rod that ran high into the air, now a shape very soft and warm
+against which it was pleasant to lean. The clouds, the sweep of dim
+colour, the vast horizons of that other world yielded, day by day, to
+little concrete things--a patch of carpet, the leg of a chair, the
+shadow of the fire, clouds beyond the window, buttons on some one's
+clothes, the rails of his cot. Then there were voices, the touch of
+hands, some one's soft hair, some one who sang little songs to him.
+
+He woke early one morning and realised the rattle that his grandmother
+had given to him. He suddenly realised it. He grasped the handle of it
+with his hand and found this cool and pleasant to touch. He then, by
+accident, made it tinkle, and instantly the prettiest noise replied to
+him. He shook it more lustily and the response was louder. He was, it
+seemed, master of this charming thing and could force it to do what he
+wished. He appealed to his Friend. Was not this a charming thing that he
+had found? He waved it and chuckled and crowed, and then his toes,
+sticking out beyond the bed-clothes, were nipped by the cold so that he
+halloed loudly. Perhaps the rattle had nipped his toes. He did not know,
+but he would cry because that eased his feelings.
+
+That morning there came with his grandmother and mother a silly young
+woman who had, it was supposed, a great way with babies. "I adore
+babies," she said. "We understand one another in the most wonderful
+way."
+
+Henry Fitzgeorge looked at her as she leaned over the cot and made faces
+at him. "Goo-goo-gum-goo," she cried.
+
+"What is all this?" he asked his Friend. He laid down the rattle, and
+felt suddenly lonely and unhappy.
+
+"Little pet--ug--la--la--goo--losh!" Henry Fitzgeorge raised his eyes.
+His Friend was a long, long way away; his eyes grew cold with contempt.
+He hated this thing that made the noises and closed out the light. He
+opened his eyes, he was about to burst into one of his most abandoned
+roars when his stare encountered his mother. Her eyes were watching him,
+and they had in them a glow and radiance that gave him a warm feeling of
+companionship. "I know," they seemed to say, "what you are thinking of.
+I agree with all that you are feeling about her. Only don't cry, she
+really isn't worth it." His mouth slowly closed then to thank her for
+her assistance, he raised the rattle and shook it at her. His eyes never
+left her face.
+
+"Little darling," said the lady friend, but nevertheless disappointed.
+"Lift him up, Jane. I'd like to see him in your arms."
+
+But she shook her head. She moved away from the cot. Something so
+precious had been in that smile of her son's that she would not risk any
+rebuff.
+
+Henry Fitzgeorge gave the strange lady one last look of disgust.
+
+"If that comes again I'll bite it," he said to his Friend.
+
+When these visitors had departed, he lay there remembering those eyes
+that had looked into his. All that day he remembered them, and it may be
+that his Friend, as he watched, sighed because the time for launching
+him had now come, that one more soul had passed from his sheltering arms
+out into the highroad of fine adventures. How easily they forget! How
+readily they forget! How eagerly they fling the pack of their old world
+from off their shoulders! He had seen, perhaps, so many go, thus
+lustily, upon their way, and then how many, at the end of it all,
+tired, worn, beaten to their very shadows, had he received at the end!
+
+But it was so. This day was to see Henry Fitzgeorge's assertions of his
+independence. The hour when this life was to close, so definitely, so
+securely, the doors upon that other, had come. The shadow that had been
+so vast that it had filled the room, the Square, the world, was drawn
+now into small and human size.
+
+Henry Fitzgeorge was never again to look so old.
+
+
+V
+
+As the fine, dim afternoon was closing, he was allowed, for half an hour
+before sleep, to sprawl upon the carpet in front of the fire. He had
+with him his rattle and a large bear which he stroked because it was
+comfortable; he had no personal feeling about it.
+
+His mother came in.
+
+"Let me have him for half an hour, nurse. Come back in half an hour's
+time."
+
+The nurse left them.
+
+Henry Fitzgeorge did not look at his mother.
+
+He had the bear in his arms and was feeling it, and in his mind the
+warmth from the flickering, jumping flame and the soft, friendly
+submission of the fur beneath his fingers were part of the same mystery.
+
+His mother had been motoring; her cheeks were flushed, and her dark
+clothes heightened, by their contrast, her colour. She knelt down on the
+carpet and then, with her hands folded on her lap, watched her son. He
+rolled the bear over and over, he poked it, he banged its head upon the
+ground. Then he was tired with it and took up the rattle. Then he was
+tired of that, and he looked across at his mother and chuckled.
+
+His mind, however, was not at all concentrated upon her. He felt, on
+this afternoon, a new, a fresh interest in things. The carpet before him
+was a vast country and he did not propose to explore it, but sucking his
+thumb, stroking the bear's coat, feeling the firelight upon his face, he
+felt that now something would occur. He had realised that there was much
+to explore and that, after all, perhaps there might be more in this
+strange condition of things than he had only a little time ago
+considered possible. It was then that he looked up and saw hanging
+round his mother's neck a gold chain. This was a long chain hanging
+right down to her lap; as it hung there, very slowly it swayed from side
+to side, and as it swayed, the firelight caught it and it gleamed and
+was splashed with light. His eyes, as he watched, grew rounder and
+rounder; he had never seen anything so wonderful. He put down the
+rattle, crawled, with great difficulty because of his long clothes, on
+to his knees and sat staring, his thumb in his mouth. His mother stayed,
+watching him. He pointed his finger, crowing. "Come and fetch it," she
+said.
+
+He tumbled forward on to his nose and then lay there, with his face
+raised a little, watching it. She did not move at all, but knelt with
+her hands straight out upon her knees, and the chain with its large gold
+rings like flaming eyes swung from hand to hand. Then he tried to move
+forward, his whole soul in his gaze. He would raise a hand towards the
+treasure and then because that upset his balance he would fall, but at
+once he would be up again. He moved a little and breathed little gasps
+of pleasure.
+
+She bent forward to him, his hand was outstretched. His eyes went up
+and, meeting hers, instantly the chain was forgotten. That recognition
+that they had given him before was there now.
+
+With a scramble and a lurch, desperate, heedless in its risks, he was in
+his mother's lap. Then he crowed. He crowed for all the world to hear
+because now, at last, he had become its citizen.
+
+Was there not then, from some one, disregarded and forgotten at that
+moment, a sigh, lighter than the air itself, half-ironic, half-wistful
+regret?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ERNEST HENRY
+
+
+I
+
+Young Ernest Henry Wilberforce, who had only yesterday achieved his
+second birthday, watched, with a speculative eye, his nurse. He was
+seated on the floor with his back to the high window that was flaming
+now with the light of the dying sun; his nurse was by the fire, her
+head, shadowed huge and fantastic on the wall, nodded and nodded and
+nodded. Ernest Henry was, in figure, stocky and square, with a head
+round, hard, and covered with yellow curls; rather light and cold blue
+eyes and a chin of no mean degree were further possessions. He was
+wearing a white blouse, a white skirt, white socks and shoes; his legs
+were fat and bulged above his socks; his cold blue eyes never moved from
+his nurse's broad back.
+
+He knew that, in a very short time, disturbance would begin. He knew
+that doors would open and shut, that there would be movement, strange
+noises, then an attack upon himself, ultimately a removal of him to
+another place, a stripping off him of his blouse, his skirt, his socks
+and his shoes, a loathsome and strangely useless application of soap and
+water--it was only, of course, in later years that he learned the names
+of those abominable articles--and, finally, finally darkness. All this
+he felt hovering very close at hand; one nod too many of his nurse's
+head, and up she would start, off she would go, off _he_ would go.... He
+watched her and stroked very softly his warm, fat calf.
+
+It was a fine, spacious room that he inhabited. The ceiling--very, very
+far away--was white and glimmering with shadowy spaces of gold flung by
+the sun across the breast of it. The wallpaper was dark-red, and there
+were many coloured pictures of ships and dogs and snowy Christmases, and
+swans eating from the hands of beautiful little girls, and one garden
+with roses and peacocks and a tumbling fountain. To Ernest Henry these
+were simply splashes of colour, and colour, moreover, scarcely so
+convincing as the bright blue screen by the fire, or the golden brown
+rug by the door; but he was dimly aware that, as the days passed, so
+did he find more and more to consider in the shapes and sizes between
+the deep black frames.... There might, after all, be something in it.
+
+But it was not the pictures that he was now considering.
+
+Before his nurse's descent upon him he was determined that he would
+walk--not crawl, but walk in his socks and shoes--from his place by the
+window to the blue screen by the fire. There had been days, and those
+not so long ago, when so hazardous an Odyssey had seemed the vainest of
+Blue Moon ambitions; it had once been the only rule of existence to
+sprawl and roll and sprawl again; but gradually some further force had
+stirred his limbs. It was a finer thing to be upright; there was a finer
+view, a more lordly sense of possession could be summoned to one's
+command. That, then, once decided, upright one must be and upright, with
+many sudden and alarming collapses, Ernest Henry was.
+
+He had marked out, from the first, the distance from the wall to the blue
+screen as a very decent distance. There was, half-way, a large
+rocking-chair that would be either a danger or a deliverance, as Fate
+should have it. Save for this, it was, right across the brown, rose-strewn
+carpet, naked country. Truly a perilous business. As he sat there and
+looked at it, his heart a little misgave him; in this strange, new world
+into which he had been so roughly hustled, amongst a horde of alarming and
+painful occurrences, he had discovered nothing so disconcerting as that
+sudden giving of the knees, that rising of the floor to meet you, the
+collapse, the pain, and above all the disgrace. Moreover, let him fail
+now, and it meant, in short,--banishment--banishment and then darkness.
+There were risks. It was the most perilous thing that, in this new
+country, he had yet attempted, but attempt it he would.... He was as
+obstinate as his chin could make him.
+
+With his blue eyes still cautiously upon his nurse's shadow he raised
+himself very softly, his fat hand pressed against the wall, his mouth
+tightly closed, and from between his teeth there issued the most distant
+relation of that sound that the traditional ostler makes when he is
+cleaning down a horse. His knees quivered, straightened; he was up. Far
+away in the long, long distance were piled the toys that yesterday's
+birthday had given him. They did not, as yet, mean anything to him at
+all. One day, perhaps when he had torn the dolls limb from limb, twisted
+the railways until they stood end upon end in sheer horror,
+disembowelled the bears and golliwogs so that they screamed again, he
+might have some personal feeling for them. At present there they lay in
+shining impersonal newness, and there for Ernest Henry they might lie
+for ever.
+
+For an instant, his hand against the wall, he was straight and
+motionless; then he took his hand away, and his journey began. At the
+first movement a strange, an amazing glory filled him. From the instant,
+two years ago, of his first arrival he had been disturbed by an
+irritating sense of inadequacy; he had been sent, it seemed, into this
+new and tiresome condition of things without any fitting provisions for
+his real needs. Demands were always made upon him that were, in the
+absurd lack of ways and means, impossible of fulfilment. But now, at
+last, he was using the world as it should be used.... He was fine, he
+was free, he was absolutely master. His legs might shake, his body lurch
+from side to side, his breath come in agitating gasps and whistles; the
+wall was now far behind him, the screen most wonderfully near, the
+rocking-chair almost within his grasp. Great and mighty is Ernest Henry
+Wilberforce, dazzling and again dazzling the lighted avenues opening now
+before him; there is nothing, nothing, from the rendings of the toys to
+the deliberate defiance of his nurse and all those in authority over
+him, that he shall not now perform.... With a cry, with a wild wave of
+the arms, with a sickening foretaste of the bump with which the gay
+brown carpet would mark him, he was down, the Fates were upon him--the
+disturbance, the disrobing, the darkness. Nevertheless, even as he was
+carried, sobbing, into the farther room, there went with him a
+consciousness that life would never again be quite the dull,
+purposeless, monotonous thing that it had hitherto been.
+
+
+II
+
+After a long time he was alone. About him the room, save for the yellow
+night-light above his head, was dark, humped with shadows, with grey
+pools of light near the windows, and a golden bar that some lamp beyond
+the house flung upon the wall. Ernest Henry lay and, now and again,
+cautiously felt the bump on his forehead; there was butter on the bump,
+and an interesting confusion and pain and importance round and about it.
+Ernest Henry's eyes sought the golden bar, and then, lingering there,
+looked back upon the recent adventure. He had walked; yes, he had
+walked. This would, indeed, be something to tell his Friend.
+
+His friend, he knew, would be very shortly with him. It was not every
+night that he came, but always, before his coming, Ernest Henry knew of
+his approach--knew by the happy sense of comfort that stole softly about
+him, knew by the dismissal of all those fears and shapes and terrors
+that, otherwise, so easily beset him. He sucked his thumb now, and felt
+his bump, and stared at the ceiling and knew that he would come. During
+the first months after Ernest Henry's arrival on this planet his friend
+was never absent from him at all, was always there, drawing through his
+fingers the threads of the old happy life and the new alarming one,
+mingling them so that the transition from the one to the other might not
+be too sharp--reassuring, comforting, consoling. Then there had been
+hours when he had withdrawn himself, and that earlier world had grown a
+little vaguer, a little more remote, and certain things, certain foods
+and smells and sounds had taken their place within the circle of
+realised facts. Then it had come to be that the friend only came at
+night, came at that moment when the nurse had gone, when the room was
+dark, and the possible beasts--the first beast, the second beast, and
+the third beast--began to creep amongst those cool, grey shadows in the
+hollow of the room. He always came then, was there with his arm about
+Ernest Henry, his great body, his dark beard, his large, firm hands--all
+so reassuring that the beasts might do the worst, and nothing could come
+of it. He brought with him, indeed, so much more than himself--brought a
+whole world of recollected wonders, of all that other time when Ernest
+Henry had other things to do, other disciplines, other triumphs, other
+defeats, and other glories. Of late his memory of the other time had
+been untrustworthy. Things during the day-time would remind him, but
+would remind him, nevertheless, with a strange mingling of the world at
+present about him, so that he was not sure of his visions. But when his
+friend was with him the memories were real enough, and it was the
+nurse, the fire, the red wallpaper, the smell of toast, the taste of
+warm milk, that were faint and shadowy.
+
+His friend was there, just as always, suddenly sitting there on the bed
+with his arm round Ernest Henry's body, his dark beard just tickling
+Ernest Henry's neck, his hand tight about Ernest Henry's hand. They told
+one another things in the old way without tiresome words and sounds;
+but, for the benefit of those who are unfortunately too aged to remember
+that old and pleasant intercourse, one must make use of the English
+language. Ernest Henry displayed his bump, and explained its origin; and
+then, even as he did so, was aware that the reality of the bump made the
+other world just a little less real. He was proud that he had walked and
+stood up, and had been the master of his circumstance; but just because
+he had done so he was aware that his friend was a little, a very little
+farther away to-night than he had ever been before.
+
+"Well, I'm very glad that you're going to stand on your own, because
+you'll have to. I'm going to leave you now--leave you for longer, far
+longer than I've ever left you before."
+
+"Leave me?"
+
+"Yes. I shan't always be with you; indeed, later on you won't want me.
+Then you'll forget me, and at last you won't even believe that I ever
+existed--until, at the end of it all, I come to take you away. _Then_ it
+will all come back to you."
+
+"Oh, but that's absurd!" Ernest Henry said confidently. Nevertheless, in
+his heart he knew that, during the day-time, other things did more and
+more compel his attention. There were long stretches during the day-time
+now when he forgot his friend.
+
+"After your second birthday I always leave you more to yourselves. I
+shall go now for quite a time, and you'll see that when the old feeling
+comes, and you know that I'm coming back, you'll be quite startled and
+surprised that you'd got on so well without me. Of course, some of you
+want me more than others do, and with some of you I stay quite late in
+life. There are one or two I never leave at all. But you're not like
+that; you'll get on quite well without me."
+
+"Oh, no, I shan't," said Ernest Henry, and he clung very tightly and
+was most affectionate. But he suddenly put his fingers to his bump, felt
+the butter, and his chin shot up with self-satisfaction.
+
+"To-morrow I'll get ever so much farther," he said.
+
+"You'll behave, and not mind the beasts or the creatures?" his friend
+said. "You must remember that it's not the slightest use to call for me.
+You're on your own. Think of me, though. Don't forget me altogether. And
+don't forget all the other world in your new discoveries. Look out of
+the window sometimes. That will remind you more than anything."
+
+He had kissed him, had put his hand for a moment on Ernest Henry's
+curls, and was gone. Ernest Henry, his thumb in his mouth, was fast
+asleep.
+
+
+III
+
+Suddenly, with a wild, agonising clutch at the heart, he was awake. He
+was up in bed, his hands, clammy and hot, pressed together, his eyes
+staring, his mouth dry. The yellow night-light was there, the bars of
+gold upon the walls, the cool, grey shadows, the white square of the
+window; but there, surely, also, were the beasts. He knew that they were
+there--one crouching right away there in the shadow, all black, damp;
+one crawling, blacker and damper, across the floor; one--yes, beyond
+question--one, the blackest and cruellest of them all, there beneath the
+bed. The bed seemed to heave, the room flamed with terror. He thought of
+his friend; on other nights he had invoked him, and instantly there had
+been assurance and comfort. Now that was of no avail; his friend would
+not come. He was utterly alone. Panic drove him; he thought that there,
+on the farther side of the bed, claws and a black arm appeared. He
+screamed and screamed and screamed.
+
+The door was flung open, there were lights, his nurse appeared. He was
+lying down now, his face towards the wall, and only dry, hard little
+sobs came from him. Her large red hand was upon his shoulder, but
+brought no comfort with it. Of what use was she against the three
+beasts? A poor creature.... He was ashamed that he should cry before
+her. He bit his lip.
+
+"Dreaming, I suppose, sir," she said to some one behind her. Another
+figure came forward. Some one sat down on the edge of the bed, put his
+arm round Ernest Henry's body and drew him towards him. For one wild
+moment Ernest Henry fancied that his friend had, after all, returned.
+But no. He knew that these were the conditions of this world, not of
+that other. When he crept close to his friend he was caught up into a
+soft, rosy comfort, was conscious of nothing except ease and rest. Here
+there were knobs and hard little buttons, and at first his head was
+pressed against a cold, slippery surface that hurt. Nevertheless, the
+pressure was pleasant and comforting. A warm hand stroked his hair. He
+liked it, jerked his head up, and hit his new friend's chin.
+
+"Oh, damn!" he heard quite clearly. This was a new sound to Ernest
+Henry; but just now he was interested in sounds, and had learnt lately
+quite a number. This was a soft, pleasant, easy sound. He liked it.
+
+And so, with it echoing in his head, his curly head against his father's
+shoulder, the bump glistening in the candle-light, the beasts defeated
+and derided, he tumbled into sleep.
+
+
+IV
+
+A pleasant sight at breakfast was Ernest Henry, with his yellow curls
+gleaming from his bath, his bib tied firmly under his determined chin,
+his fat fingers clutching a large spoon, his body barricaded into a high
+chair, his heels swinging and kicking and swinging again. Very fine,
+too, was the nursery on a sunny morning--the fire crackling, the roses
+on the brown carpet as lively as though they were real, and the whole
+place glittering, glowing with size and cleanliness and vigour. In the
+air was the crackling smell of toast and bacon, in a glass dish was
+strawberry jam, through the half-open window came all the fun of the
+Square--the sparrows, the carts, the motor-cars, the bells, and
+horses.... Oh, a fine morning was fine indeed!
+
+Ernest Henry, deep in the business of conveying securely his bread and
+milk from the bowl--a beautiful bowl with red robins all round the
+outside of it--to his mouth, laughed at the three beasts. Let them show
+themselves here in the sunlight, and they'd see what they'd get. Let
+them only dare!
+
+He surveyed, with pleased anticipation, the probable progress of his
+day. He glanced at the pile of toys in the farther corner of the room,
+and thought to himself that he might, after all, find some diversion
+there. Yesterday they had seemed disappointing; to-day in the glow of
+the sun they suggested, adventure. Then he looked towards that stretch
+of country--that wall-to-screen marathon--and, with an eye upon his
+nurse, meditated a further attempt. He put down his spoon, and felt his
+bump. It was better; perchance there would be two bumps by the evening.
+And then, suddenly, he remembered.... He felt again the terror, saw the
+lights and his nurse, then that new friend.... He pondered, lifted his
+spoon, waved it in the air; and then smiling with the happy recovery of
+a pleasant, friendly sound, repeated half to himself, half to his nurse:
+"Damn! Damn! Damn!"
+
+That began for him the difficulties of his day. He was hustled, shaken;
+words, words, words were poured down upon him. He understood that, in
+some strange, unexpected, bewildering fashion he had done wrong. There
+was nothing more puzzling in his present surroundings than that
+amazingly sudden transition from serenity to danger. Here one was, warm
+with food, bathed in sunlight, with a fine, ripe day in front of one....
+Then the mere murmur of a sound, and all was tragedy.
+
+He hated his toys, his nurse, his food, his world; he sat in a corner of
+the room and glowered.... How was he to know? If, under direct
+encouragement, he could be induced to say "dada," or "horse," or
+"twain," he received nothing but applause and, often enough, reward.
+Yet, let him make use of that pleasant new sound that he had learnt, and
+he was in disgrace. Upon this day, more than any other in his young
+life, he ached, he longed for some explanation. Then, sitting there in
+his corner, there came to him a discovery, the force of which was never,
+throughout all his later life, to leave him. He had been deserted by his
+friend. His last link with that other life was broken. He was here,
+planted in the strangest of strange places, with nothing whatever to
+help him. He was alone; he must fight for his own hand. He would--from
+that moment, seated there beneath the window, Ernest Henry Wilberforce
+challenged the terrors of this world, and found them sawdust--he would
+say "damn" as often as he pleased. "Damn, damn, damn, damn," he
+whispered, and marked again, with meditative eye, the space from wall to
+screen.
+
+After this, greatly cheered, he bethought him of the Square. Last night
+his friend had said to him that when he wished to think of him, and go
+back for a time to the other world, a peep into the Square would assist
+him. He clambered up on to the window-seat, caught behind him those
+sounds, "Now, Master Ernest," which he now definitely connected with
+condemnation and disapproval, shook his curls in defiance, and pressed
+his nose to the glass. The Square was a dazzling sight. He had not as
+yet names for any of the things that he saw there, nor, when he went out
+on his magnificent daily progress in his perambulator did he associate
+the things that he found immediately around him with the things that he
+saw from his lofty window; but, with every absorbed gaze they stood more
+securely before him, and were fixed ever more firmly in his memory.
+
+This was a Square with fine, white, lofty houses, and in the houses were
+an infinite number of windows, sometimes gay and sometimes glittering.
+In the middle of the Square was a garden, and in the middle of the
+garden, very clearly visible from Ernest Henry's window, was a fountain.
+It was this fountain, always tossing and leaping, that gave Ernest Henry
+the key to his memories. Gazing at it he had no difficulty at all to
+find himself back in the old life. Even now, although only two years had
+passed, it was difficult not to reveal his old experiences by means of
+terms of his new discoveries. He thought, for instance, of the fountain
+as a door that led into the country whose citizen he had once been, and
+that country he saw now in terms of doors and passages and rooms and
+windows, whereas, in reality, it had been quite otherwise.
+
+But now, perched up there on the window-sill, he felt that if he could
+only bring the fountain in with him out of the Square into his nursery,
+he would have the key to both existences. He wanted to understand--to
+understand what was the relation between his friend who had left last
+night, why he might say "dada," but mustn't say "damn," why, finally, he
+was here at all. He did not consciously consider these things; his brain
+was only very slightly, as yet, concerned in his discoveries; but, like
+a flowing river, beneath his movements and actions, the interplay of
+his two existences drove him on through, his adventure.
+
+There were, of course, many other things in the Square besides the
+fountain. There was, at the farther corner, just out of the Square, but
+quite visible from Ernest Henry's window, a fruit-shop with coloured
+fruit piled high on the boards outside the windows. Indeed, that side
+street, of which one could only catch this glimpse, promised to be most
+wonderful always; when evening came a golden haze hovered round and
+about it. In the garden itself there were often many children, and for
+an hour every afternoon Ernest Henry might be found amongst them. There
+were two statues in the Square--one of a gentleman in a beard and a
+frock-coat, the other of a soldier riding very finely upon a restless
+horse; but Ernest Henry was not, as yet, old enough to realise the
+meaning and importance of these heroes.
+
+Outside the Square there were many dogs, and even now as he looked down
+from his window he could see a number of them, black and brown and
+white.
+
+The trees trembled in a little breeze, the fountain flashed in the sun,
+somewhere a barrel-organ was playing.... Ernest Henry gave a little
+sigh, of satisfaction.
+
+He was back! He was back! He was slipping, slipping into distance
+through the window into the street, under the fountain, its glittering
+arms had caught him; he was up, the door was before him, he had the key.
+
+"Time for you to put your things on, Master Ernest. And 'ow you've
+dirtied your knees! There! Look!"
+
+He shook himself, clambered down from the window, gave his nurse what
+she described as "One of his old, old looks. Might be eighty when he's
+like that.... They're all like it when they're young."
+
+With a sigh he translated himself back into this new, tiresome
+existence.
+
+
+V
+
+But after that morning things were never again quite the same. He gave
+himself up deliberately to the new life.
+
+With that serious devotion towards anything likely to be of real
+practical value to him that was, in his later years, never to fail him,
+he attacked this business of "words." He discovered that if he made
+certain sounds when certain things were said to him he provoked instant
+applause. He liked popularity; he liked the rewards that popularity
+brought him. He acquired a formula that amounted practically to "Wash
+dat?" And whenever he saw anything new he produced his question. He
+learnt with amazing rapidity. He was, his nurse repeatedly told his
+father, "a most remarkable child."
+
+It could not truthfully be said that during these weeks he forgot his
+friend altogether. There were still the dark hours at night when he
+longed for him, and once or twice he had cried aloud for him. But slowly
+that slipped away. He did not look often now at the fountain.
+
+There were times when his friend was almost there. One evening, kneeling
+on the floor before the fire, arranging shining soldiers in a row, he
+was aware of something that made him sharply pause and raise his head.
+He was, for the moment, alone in the room that was glowing and quivering
+now in the firelight. The faint stir and crackle of the fire, the rich
+flaming colour that rose and fell against the white ceiling might have
+been enough to make him wonder. But there was also the scent of a clump
+of blue hyacinths standing in shadow by the darkened window, and this
+scent caught him, even as the fountain had caught him, caught him with
+the stillness, the leaping fire, the twisted sense of romantic
+splendours that came, like some magician's smoke and flame, up to his
+very heart and brain. He did not turn his head, but behind him he was
+sure, there on the golden-brown rug, his friend was standing, watching
+him with his smiling eyes, his dark beard; he would be ready, at the
+least movement, to catch him up and hold him. Swiftly, Ernest Henry
+turned. There was no one there.
+
+But those moments were few now; real people were intervening. He had no
+mother, and this was doubtless the reason why his nurse darkly addressed
+him as "Poor Lamb" on many occasions; but he was, of course, at present
+unaware of his misfortune. He _had_ an aunt, and of this lady he was
+aware only too vividly. She was long and thin and black, and he would
+not have disliked her so cordially, perhaps, had he not from the very
+first been aware of the sharpness of her nose when she kissed him. Her
+nose hurt him, and so he hated her. But, as he grew, he discovered that
+this hatred was well-founded. Miss Wilberforce had not a happy way with
+children; she was nervous when she should have been bold, and secret
+when she should have been honesty itself. When Ernest Henry was the
+merest atom in a cradle, he discovered that she was afraid of him; he
+hated the shiny stuff of her dress. She wore a gold chain that--when you
+pulled it--snapped and hit your fingers. There were sharp pins at the
+back of her dress. He hated her; he was not afraid of her, and yet on
+that critical night when his friend told him of his departure, it was
+the fear of being left alone with the black cold shiny thing that
+troubled him most; she bore of all the daylight things the closest
+resemblance to the three beasts.
+
+There was, of course, his nurse, and a great deal of his time was spent
+in her company; but she had strangely little connection with his main
+problem of the relation of this, his present world, to that, his
+preceding one. She was there to answer questions, to issue commands, to
+forbid. She had the key to various cupboards--to the cupboard with
+pretty cups and jam and sugar, to the cupboard with ugly things that
+tasted horrible, things that he resisted by instinct long before they
+arrived under his nose. She also had certain sounds, of which she made
+invariable use on all occasions. One was, "Now, Master Ernest!" Another:
+"Mind-what-you're-about-now!" And, at his "Wash dat!" always
+"Oh-bother-the-boy!" She was large and square to look upon, very often
+pins were in her mouth, and the slippers that she wore within doors
+often clipclapped upon the carpet. But she was not a person; she had
+nothing to do with his progress.
+
+The person who had to do with it was, of course, his father. That night
+when his friend had left him had been, indeed, a crisis, because it was
+on that night that his father had come to him. It was not that he had
+not been aware of his father before, but he had been aware of him only
+as he had been aware of light and heat and food. Now it had become a
+definite wonder as to whether this new friend had been sent to take the
+place of the old one. Certainly the new friend had very little to do
+with all that old life of which the fountain was the door. He belonged,
+most definitely, to the new one, and everything about him--the
+delightfully mysterious tick of his gold watch, the solid, firm grasp of
+his hand, the sure security of his shoulder upon which Ernest Henry now
+gloriously rode--these things were of this world and none other.
+
+It was a different relationship, this, from any other that Ernest Henry
+had ever known, but there was no doubt at all about its pleasant
+flavour. Just as in other days he had watched for his friend's
+appearance, so now he waited for that evening hour that always brought
+his father. The door would open, the square, set figure would appear....
+Very pleasant, indeed. Meanwhile Ernest Henry was instructed that the
+right thing to say on his father's appearance was "Dada."
+
+But he knew better. His father's name was really "Damn."
+
+
+VI
+
+The days and weeks passed. There had been no sign of his friend.... Then
+the crisis came.
+
+That old wall-to-screen marathon had been achieved, and so
+contemptuously banished. There was now the great business of marching
+without aid from one end of the room to the other. This was a long
+business, and always hitherto somewhere about the middle of it Ernest
+Henry had sat down suddenly, pretending, even to himself, that his shoe
+_hurt_, or that he was bored with the game, and would prefer some other.
+
+There came, then, a beautiful spring evening. The long low evening sun
+flooded the room, and somewhere a bell was calling Christian people to
+their prayers, and somewhere else the old man with the harp, who always
+came round the Square once every week, was making beautiful music.
+
+Ernest Henry's father had taken the nurse's place for an hour, and was
+reading a _Globe_ with absorbed attention by the window; Mr.
+Wilberforce, senior, was one of London's most famous barristers, and the
+_Globe_ on this particular afternoon had a great deal to say about this
+able man's cleverness. Ernest Henry watched his father, watched the
+light, heard the bell and the harp, felt that the hour was ripe for his
+attempt.
+
+He started, and, even as he did so, was aware that, after he had
+succeeded in this great adventure, things--that is, life--would never be
+quite the same again. He knew by now every stage of the first half of
+his journey. The first instalment was defined by that picture of the
+garden and the roses and the peacocks; the second by the beginning of
+the square brown nursery table; and here there was always a swift and
+very testing temptation to cling, with a sticky hand, to the hard and
+shining corner. The third division was the end of the nursery table
+where one was again tempted to give the corner a final clutch before
+passing forth into the void. After this there was nothing, no rest, no
+possible harbour until the end.
+
+Off Ernest Henry started. He could see his father, there in the long
+distance, busied with his paper; he could see the nursery table, with
+bright-blue and red reels of cotton that nurse had left there; he could
+see a discarded railway engine that lay gaping there half-way across,
+ready to catch and trip him if he were not careful. His eyes were like
+saucers, the hissing noise came from between his teeth, his forehead
+frowned. He passed the peacock, he flung contemptuously aside the
+proffered corner of the table; he passed, as an Atlantic liner passes
+the Eddystone, the table's other end; he was on the last stretch.
+
+Then suddenly he paused. He lifted his head, caught with his eye a pink,
+round cloud that sailed against the evening blue beyond the window,
+heard the harpist, heard his father turn and exclaim, as he saw him.
+
+He knew, as he stood there, that at last the moment had come. His friend
+had returned.
+
+All the room was buzzing with it. The dolls fell in a neglected heap,
+the train on the carpet, the fire behind the fender, the reels of cotton
+that were on the table--they all knew it.
+
+His friend had returned.
+
+His impulse was, there and then, to sit down.
+
+His friend was whispering: "Come along!... Come along!... Come along!"
+He knew that, on his surrender, his father would make sounds like,
+"Well, old man, tired, eh? Bed, I suggest." He knew that bed would
+follow. Then darkness, then his friend.
+
+For an instant there was fierce battle between the old forces and the
+new. Then, with his eyes upon his father, resuming that hiss that is
+proper only to ostlers, he continued his march.
+
+He reached the wall. He caught his father's leg. He was raised on to his
+father's lap, was kissed, was for a moment triumphant; then suddenly
+burst into tears.
+
+"Why, old man, what's the matter?"
+
+But Ernest Henry could not explain. Had he but known it he had, in that
+rejection of his friend, completed the first stage of his "Pilgrimage
+from this world to the next."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ANGELINA
+
+
+I
+
+Angelina Braid, on the morning of her third birthday, woke very early.
+It would be too much to say that she knew it was her birthday, but she
+awoke, excited. She looked at the glimmering room, heard the sparrows
+beyond her windows, heard the snoring of her nurse in the large bed
+opposite her own, and lay very still, with her heart thumping like
+anything. She made no noise, however, because it was not her way to make
+a noise. Angelina Braid was the quietest little girl in all the Square.
+"You'd never meet one nigher a mouse in a week of Sundays," said her
+nurse, who was a "gay one" and liked life.
+
+It was not, however, entirely Angelina's fault that she took life
+quietly; in 21 March Square, it was exceedingly difficult to do anything
+else. Angelina's parents were in India, and she was not conscious, very
+acutely, of their existence. Every morning and evening she prayed, "God
+bless mother and father in India," but then she was not very acutely
+conscious of God either, and so her mind was apt to wander during her
+prayers.
+
+She lived with her two aunts--Miss Emmy Braid and Miss Violet Braid--in
+the smallest house in the Square. So slim was No. 21, and so ruthlessly
+squeezed between the opulent No. 20 and the stout ruddy-faced No. 22,
+that it made one quite breathless to look at it; it was exactly as
+though an old maid, driven by suffragette wildness, had been arrested by
+two of the finest possible policemen, and carried off into custody. Very
+little of any kind of wildness was there about the Misses Braid. They
+were slim, neat women, whose rather yellow faces had the flat, squashed
+look of lawn grass after a garden roller has passed over it. They
+believed in God according to the Reverend Stephen Hunt, of St.
+Matthew-in-the-Crescent--the church round the corner--but in no other
+kind of God whatever. They were not rich, and they were not poor; they
+went once a week--Fridays--to visit the poor of St. Matthew's, and
+found the poor of St. Matthew's on the whole unappreciative of their
+efforts, but that made their task the nobler. Their house was dark and
+musty, and filled with little articles left them by their grand-parents,
+their parents, and other defunct relations. They had no friendly feeling
+towards one another, but missed one another when they were separated.
+They were, both of them, as strong as horses, but very hypochondriacal,
+and Dr. Armstrong of Mulberry Place made a very pleasant little income
+out of them.
+
+I have mentioned them at length, because they had a great deal to do
+with Angelina's quiet behaviour. No. 21 was not a house that welcomed a
+child's ringing laughter. But, in any case, the Misses Braid were not
+fond of children, but only took Angelina because they had a soft spot in
+their dry hearts for their brother Jim, and in any case it would have
+been difficult to say no.
+
+Their attitude to children was that they could not understand why they
+did not instantly see things as they, their elders, saw them; but then,
+on the other hand, if an especially bright child did take a grown-up
+point of view about anything _that_ was considered "forward" and
+"conceited," so that it was really very difficult for Angelina.
+
+"It's a pity Jim's got such a dull child," Miss Violet would say. "You
+never would have expected it."
+
+"What I like about a child," said Miss Emmy, "is a little cheerfulness
+and natural spirit--not all this moping."
+
+Angelina was not, on the whole, popular.... The aunts had very little
+idea of making a house cheerful for a child. The room allotted to
+Angelina as a nursery was at the top of the house, and had once been a
+servant's bedroom. It possessed two rather grimy windows, a faded brown
+wallpaper, an old green carpet, and some very stiff, hard chairs. On one
+wall was a large map of the world, and on the other an old print of
+Romans sacking Jerusalem, a picture which frightened Angelina every
+night of her life, when the dark came and the lamp illuminated the
+writhing limbs, the falling bodies, the tottering walls. From the
+windows the Square was visible, and at the windows Angelina spent a
+great deal of her time, but her present nurse--nurses succeeded one
+another with startling frequency--objected to what she called
+"window-gazing." "Makes a child dreamy," she said; "lowers her spirits."
+
+Angelina was, naturally, a dreamy child, and no amount of nurses could
+prevent her being one. She was dreamy because her loneliness forced her
+to be so, and if her dreams were the most real part of her day to her
+that was surely the faults of her aunts. But she was not at all a quick
+child; although to-day was her third birthday she could not talk very
+well, could not pronounce her r's, and lisped in what her trail of
+nurses told her was a ridiculous fashion for so big a girl. But, then,
+she was not really a big girl; her figure was short and stumpy, her
+features plain and pale with the pallor of her first Indian year. Her
+eyes were large and black and rather fine.
+
+On this morning she lay in bed, and knew that she was excited because
+her friend had come the night before and told her that to-day would be
+an important day. Angelina clung, with a desperate tenacity, to her
+memories of everything that happened to her before her arrival on this
+unpleasant planet. Those memories now were growing faint, and they came
+to her only in flashes, in sudden twists and turns of the scene, as
+though she were surrounded by curtains and, every now and then, was
+allowed a peep through. Her friend had been with her continually at
+first, and, whilst he had been there, the old life had been real and
+visible enough; but on her second birthday he had told her that it was
+right now that she should manage by herself. Since then, he had come
+when she least expected him; sometimes when she had needed him very
+badly he had not appeared.... She never knew. At any rate, he had said
+that to-day would be important.... She lay in bed, listening to her
+nurse's snores, and waited.
+
+
+II
+
+At breakfast she knew that it was her birthday. There were presents from
+her aunts--a picture-book and a box of pencils--there was also a
+mysterious parcel. Angelina could not remember that she had ever had a
+parcel before, and the excitement of this one must be prolonged. She
+would not open it, but gazed at it, with her spoon in the air and her
+mouth wide open.
+
+"Come, Miss Angelina--what a name to give the poor lamb!--get on with
+your breakfast now, or you'll never have done. Why not open the pretty
+parcel?"
+
+"No. Do you think it is a twain?"
+
+"Say train--not twain."
+
+"Train."
+
+"No, of course not; not a thing that shape."
+
+"Oh! Do you think it's a bear?"
+
+"Maybe--maybe. Come now, get on with your bread and butter."
+
+"Don't want any more."
+
+"Get down from your chair, then. Say your grace now."
+
+"Thank God nice bweakfast, Amen."
+
+"That's right! Now open it, then."
+
+"No, not now."
+
+"Drat the child! Well, wipe your face, then."
+
+Angelina carried her parcel to the window, and then, after gazing at it
+for a long time, at last opened it. Her eyes grew wider and wider, her
+chubby fingers trembled. Nurse undid the wrappings of paper, slowly
+folded up the sheets, then produced, all naked and unashamed, a large
+rag doll.
+
+"There! There's a pretty thing for you, Miss 'Lina."
+
+She had her hand about the doll's head, and held her there, suspended.
+
+"Give her me! Give her me!" Angelina rescued her, and, with eyes
+flaming, the doll laid lengthways in her arms, tottered off to the other
+corner of the room.
+
+"Well, there's gratitude," said the nurse, "and never asking so much as
+who it's from."
+
+But nurse, aunts, all the troubles and disappointments of this world had
+vanished from Angelina's heart and soul. She had seen, at that first
+glimpse that her nurse had so rudely given her, that here at last, after
+long, long waiting, was the blessing that she had so desired. She had
+had other dolls--quite a number of them. Even now Lizzie (without an
+eye) and Rachel (rather fine in bridesmaid's attire) were leaning their
+disconsolate backs against the boarding beneath the window seat. There
+had been, besides Rachel and Lizzie, two Annies, a Mary, a May, a
+Blackamoor, a Jap, a Sailor, and a Baby in a Bath. They were now as
+though they had never been; Angelina knew with absolute certainty of
+soul, with that blending of will and desire, passion, self-sacrifice and
+absence of humour that must inevitably accompany true love that here was
+her Fate.
+
+"It's been sent you by your kind Uncle Teny," said nurse. "You'll have
+to write a nice letter and thank him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Angelina knew better. She--a name had not yet been chosen--had been
+sent to her by her friend.... He had promised her last night that this
+should be a day of days.
+
+Her aunts, appearing to receive thanks where thanks were due, darkened
+the doorway.
+
+"Good-morning, mum. Good-morning, mum. Now, Miss 'Lina, thank your kind
+aunties for their beautiful presents."
+
+She stood up, clutching the doll.
+
+"T'ank you, Auntie Vi'let; t'ank you, Auntie Em'ly--your lovely
+pwesents."
+
+"That's right, Angelina. I hope you'll use them sensibly. What's that
+she's holding, nurse?"
+
+"It's a doll Mr. Edward's sent her, mum."
+
+"What a hideous creature! Edward might have chosen something---- Time for
+her to go out, nurse, I think--now, while the sun's warm."
+
+But she did not hear. She did not know that they had gone. She sat there
+in a dreamy ecstasy rocking the red-cheeked creature in her arms,
+seeing, with her black eyes, visions and the beauty of a thousand
+worlds.
+
+
+III
+
+The name Rose was given to her. Rose had been kept, as a name, until
+some one worthy should arrive.... "Wosie Bwaid," a very good name. Her
+nakedness was clothed first in Rachel's bridesmaid's attire--alas! poor
+Rachel!--but the lace and finery did not suit those flaming red cheeks
+and beady black eyes. Rose was, there could be no question, a daughter
+of the soil; good red blood ran through her stout veins. Tess of the
+countryside, your laughing, chaffing, arms-akimbo dairymaid; no poor
+white product of the over-civilised cities. Angelina felt that the satin
+and lace were wrong; she tore them off, searched in the heaped-up
+cupboard for poor neglected Annie No. 1, found her, tore from her her
+red woollen skirt and white blouse, stretched them about Rose's portly
+body.
+
+"T'ank God for nice Wose, Amen," she said, but she meant, not God, but
+her friend. He, her friend, had never sent her anything before, and now
+that Rose had come straight from him, she must have a great deal to
+tell her about him. Nothing puzzled her more than the distressing fact
+that she wondered sometimes whether her friend was ever really coming
+again, whether any of the wonderful things that were happening on every
+side of her wouldn't suddenly one fine morning vanish altogether, and
+leave her to a dreary world of nurse, bread and milk, and the Romans
+sacking Jerusalem. She didn't, of course, put it like that; all that it
+meant to her was that stupid people and tiresome things were always
+interfering between herself and _real_ fun. Now it was time to go out,
+now to go to bed, now to eat, now to be taken downstairs into that
+horrid room where she couldn't move because things would tumble off the
+tables so ... all this prevented her own life when she would sit and
+try, and try, and remember _what_ it was all like once, and wonder why
+when once things had been so beautiful they were so ugly and
+disappointing now.
+
+Now Rose had come, and she could talk to Rose about it. "What she sees
+in that ugly old doll!" said the nurse to the housemaid. "You can take
+my word, Mary, she'll sit in that window looking down at the gardens,
+nursing that rag and just say nothing. It fair gives you the creeps ...
+left too much to herself, the poor child is. As for those old women
+downstairs, if I 'ad my way--but there! Living's living, and bread and
+butter's bread and butter!"
+
+But, of course, Angelina's heart was bursting with affection, and there
+had been, until Rose's arrival, no one upon whom she might bestow it.
+Rose might seem to the ordinary observer somewhat unresponsive. She sat
+there, whether it were tea-time, dressing-time, bed-time, always staring
+in front of her, her mouth closed, her arms, bow-shaped, standing
+stiffly away from her side, taking, it might seem, but little interest
+in her mistress's confidences. Did one give her tea she only dribbled at
+the lip; did one place upon her head a straw hat with red ribbon torn
+from poor May--once a reigning favourite--she made no effort to keep it
+upon her head. Jewels and gold could rouse no appreciation from her; she
+was sunk in a lethargy that her rose-red cheeks most shamefully belied.
+
+But Angelina had the key to her. Angelina understood that confiding
+silence, appreciated that tactful discretion, adored that complete
+submission to her will. It was true that her friend had only come once
+to her now within the space of many, many weeks, but he had sent her
+Rose. "He's coming soon, Wose--weally soon--to tell us stowies.
+Bu-ootiful ones."
+
+She sat, gazing down into the Square, and her dreams were longer and
+longer and longer.
+
+
+IV
+
+Miss Emily Braid was a softer creature than her sister, and she had,
+somewhere in her heart, some sort of affection for her niece. She made,
+now and then, little buccaneering raids upon the nursery, with the
+intention of arriving at some intimate terms with that strange animal.
+But she had no gift of ease with children; her attempts at friendliness
+were viewed by Angelina with the gravest suspicion and won no return.
+This annoyed Miss Emily, and because she was conscious that she herself
+was in reality to blame, she attacked Angelina all the more fiercely.
+"This brooding must be stopped," she said. "Really, it's most
+unhealthy."
+
+It was quite impossible for her to believe that a child of three could
+really be interested by golden sunsets, the colours of the fountain
+that was in the centre of the gardens, the soft, grey haze that clothed
+the houses on a spring evening; and when, therefore, she saw Angelina
+gazing at these things, she decided that the child was morbid. Any
+interest, however, that Angelina may have taken in her aunts before
+Rose's arrival was now reduced to less than nothing at all.
+
+"That doll that Edward gave the child," said Miss Emily to her sister,
+"is having a very bad effect on her. Makes her more moody than ever."
+
+"Such a hideous thing!" said Miss Violet. "Well, I shall take it away if
+I see much more of this nonsense."
+
+It was lucky for Rose meanwhile that she was of a healthy constitution.
+The meals, the dressing and undressing, the perpetual demands upon her
+undivided attention, the sudden rousings from her sleep, the swift
+rockings back into slumber again, the appeals for response, the abuses
+for indifference, these things would have slain within a week one of her
+more feeble sisters. But Rose was made of stern stuff, and her rosy
+cheeks were as rosy, the brightness of her eyes was undimmed. We may
+believe--and surely many harder demands are made upon our faith--that
+there did arise a very special relationship between these two. The whole
+of Angelina's heart was now devoted to Rose's service, Rose's was not
+devoted to Angelina?... And always Angelina wondered when her friend
+would return, watched for him in the dusk, awoke in the early mornings
+and listened for him, searched the Square with its trees and its
+fountain for his presence.
+
+"Wosie, when did he say he'd come next?" But Rose could not tell. There
+_were_ times when Rose's impenetrability was, to put it at its mildest,
+aggravating.
+
+Meanwhile, the situation with Aunt Emily grew serious. Angelina was
+aware that Aunt Emily disliked Rose, and her mouth now shut very tightly
+and her eyes glared defiance when she thought of this, but her
+difference with her aunt went more deeply than this. She had known for a
+long, long time that both her aunts would stop her "dreaming" if they
+could. Did she tell them about her friend, about the kind of pictures of
+which the fountain reminded her, about the vivid, lively memories that
+the tree with the pink flowers--the almond tree--in the corner of the
+gardens--you could just see it from the nursery window--called to her
+mind; she knew that she would be punished--put in the corner, or even
+sent to bed. She did not think these things out consecutively in her
+mind, but she knew that the dark room downstairs, the dark passages, the
+stillness and silence of it all frightened her, and that it was always
+out of these things that her aunts rose.
+
+At night when she lay in bed with Rosie clasped tightly to her, she
+whispered endlessly about the gardens, the fountain, the barrel organs,
+the dogs, the other children in the Square--she had names of her own for
+all these things--and him, who belonged, of course, to the world
+outside.... Then her whisper would sink, and she would warn Rose about
+the rooms downstairs, the dining-room with the black chairs, the soft
+carpet, and the stuffed birds in glass cases--for these things, too, she
+had names. Here was the hand of death and destruction, the land of
+crooked stairs, sudden dark doors, mysterious bells and drippings of
+water--out of all this her aunts came....
+
+Unfortunately it was just at this moment that Miss Emily Braid decided
+that it was time to take her niece in hand. "The child's three, Violet,
+and very backward for her age. Why, Mrs. Mancaster's little girl, who's
+just Angelina's age, can talk fluently, and is beginning with her
+letters. We don't want Jim to be disappointed in the child when he comes
+home next year." It would be difficult to determine how much of this was
+true; Miss Emily was aggravated and, although she would never have
+confessed to so trivial a matter, the perpetual worship of Rose--"the
+ugliest thing you ever saw"--was irritating her. The days followed,
+then, when Angelina was constantly in her aunt's company, and to neither
+of them was this companionship pleasant.
+
+"You must ask me questions, child. How are you ever going to learn to
+talk properly if you don't ask me questions?"
+
+"Yes, auntie."
+
+"What's that over there?"
+
+"Twee."
+
+"Say tree, not twee."
+
+"Tree."
+
+"Now look at me. Put that wretched doll down.... Now.... That's right.
+Now tell me what you've been doing this morning."
+
+"We had bweakfast--nurse said I--(long pause for breath)--was dood
+girl; Auntie Vi'let came; I dwew with my pencil."
+
+"Say 'drew,' not 'dwew.'"
+
+"Drew."
+
+All this was very exhausting to Aunt Emily. She was no nearer the
+child's heart.... Angelina maintained an impenetrable reserve. Old maids
+have much time amongst the unsatisfied and sterile monotonies of their
+life--this is only true of _some_ old maids; there are very delightful
+ones--to devote to fancies and microscopic imitations. It was
+astonishing now how largely in Miss Emily Braid's life loomed the figure
+of Rose, the rag doll.
+
+"If it weren't for that wretched doll, I believe one could get some
+sense out of the child."
+
+"I think it's a mistake, nurse, to let Miss Angelina play with that doll
+so much."
+
+"Well, mum, it'd be difficult to take it from her now. She's that
+wrapped in it." ... And so she was.... Rose stood to Angelina for so
+much more than Rose.
+
+"Oh, Wosie, _when_ will he come again.... P'r'aps never. And I'm
+forgetting. I can't remember at all about the funny water and the twee
+with the flowers, and all of it. Wosie, _you_ 'member--Whisper." And
+Rose offered in her own mysterious, taciturn way the desired comfort.
+
+And then, of course, the crisis arrived. I am sorry about this part of
+the story. Of all the invasions of Aunt Emily, perhaps none were more
+strongly resented by Angelina than the appropriation of the afternoon
+hour in the gardens. Nurse had been an admirable escort because, as a
+lady of voracious appetite for life with, at the moment, but slender
+opportunities for satisfying it, she was occupied alertly with the
+possible vision of any male person driven by a similar desire. Her eye
+wandered; the hand to which Angelina clung was an abstract, imperceptive
+hand--Angelina and Rose were free to pursue their own train of
+fancy--the garden was at their service. But with Aunt Emily how
+different! Aunt Emily pursued relentlessly her educational tactics. Her
+thin, damp, black glove gripped Angelina's hand; her eyes (they had a
+"peering" effect, as though they were always searching for something
+beyond their actual vision) wandered aimlessly about the garden, looking
+for educational subjects. And so up and down the paths they went,
+Angelina trotting, with Rose clasped to her breast, walking just a
+little faster than she conveniently could.
+
+Miss Emily disliked the gardens, and would have greatly preferred that
+nurse should have been in charge, but this consciousness of trial
+inflamed her sense of merit. There came a lovely spring afternoon; the
+almond tree was in full blossom; a cloud of pink against the green
+hedge, clumps of daffodils rippled with little shudders of delight, even
+the statues of "Sir Benjamin Bundle" and "General Sir Robinson Cleaver"
+seemed to unbend a little from their stiff angularity. There were many
+babies and nurses, and children laughing and crying and shouting, and a
+sky of mild forget-me-not blue smiled protectingly upon them. Angelina's
+eyes were fixed upon the fountain, which flashed and sparkled in the air
+with a happy freedom that seemed to catch all the life of the garden
+within its heart. Angelina felt how immensely she and Rose might have
+enjoyed all this had they been alone. Her eyes gazed longingly at the
+almond tree; she wished that she might go off on a voyage of discovery
+for, on this day of all days, did its shadow seem to hold some pressing,
+intimate invitation. "I shall get back--I shall get back.... He'll come
+and take me; I'll remember all the old things," she thought. She and
+Rose--what a time they might have if only---- She glanced up at her aunt.
+
+"Look at that nice little boy, Angelina," Aunt Emily said. "See how
+good----" But at that very instant that same playful breeze that had been
+ruffling the daffodils, and sending shimmers through the fountain
+decided that now was the moment to catch Miss Emily's black hat at one
+corner, prove to her that the pin that should have fastened it to her
+hair was loose, and swing the whole affair to one side. Up went her
+hands; she gave a little cry of dismay.
+
+Instantly, then, Angelina was determined. She did not suppose that her
+freedom would be for long, nor did she hope to have time to reach the
+almond tree; but her small, stumpy legs started off down the path almost
+before she was aware of it. She started, and Rose bumped against her as
+she ran. She heard behind her cries; she saw in front of her the almond
+tree, and then coming swiftly towards her a small boy with a hoop....
+She stopped, hesitated, and then fell. The golden afternoon, with all
+its scents and sounds, passed on above her head. She was conscious that
+a hand was on her shoulder, she was lifted and shaken. Tears trickling
+down the side of her nose were checked by little points of gravel. She
+was aware that the little boy with the hoop had stopped and said
+something. Above her, very large and grim, was her aunt. Some bird on a
+tree was making a noise like the drawing of a cork. (She had heard her
+nurse once draw one.) In her heart was utter misery. The gravel hurt her
+face, the almond tree was farther away than ever; she was captured more
+completely than she had ever been before.
+
+"Oh, you naughty little girl--you _naughty_ girl," she heard her aunt
+say; and then, after her, the bird like a cork. She stood there, her
+mouth tightly shut, the marks of tears drying to muddy lines on her
+face.
+
+She was dragged off. Aunt Emily was furious at the child's silence; Aunt
+Emily was also aware that she must have looked what she would call "a
+pretty figure of fun" with her hat askew, her hair blown "anyway," and a
+small child of three escaping from her charge as fast as she could go.
+
+Angelina was dragged across the street, in through the squeezed front
+door, over the dark stairs, up into the nursery. Miss Violet's voice
+was heard calling, "Is that you, Emily? Tea's been waiting some time."
+
+It was nurse's afternoon out, and the nursery was grimly empty; but
+through the open, window came the evening sounds of the happy Square.
+Miss Emily placed Angelina in the middle of the room. "Now say you're
+sorry, you wicked child!" she exclaimed breathlessly.
+
+"Sowwy," came slowly from Angelina. Then she looked down at her doll.
+
+"Leave that doll alone. Speak as though you were sorry."
+
+"I'm velly sowwy."
+
+"What made you run away like that?" Angelina said nothing. "Come, now!
+Didn't you know it was very wicked?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, why did you do it, then?"
+
+"Don't know."
+
+"Don't say 'don't know' like that. You must have had some reason. Don't
+look at the doll like that. Put the doll down." But this Angelina would
+not do. She clung to Rose with a ferocious tenacity. I do not think that
+one must blame Miss Emily for her exasperation. That doll had had a
+large place in her mind for many weeks. It were as though she, Miss
+Emily Braid, had been personally, before the world, defied by a rag
+doll. Her temper, whose control had never been her strongest quality, at
+the vision of the dirty, obstinate child before her, at the thought of
+the dancing, mocking gardens behind her, flamed into sudden, trembling
+rage.
+
+She stepped forward, snatched Rose from Angelina's arms, crossed the
+room and had pushed the doll, with a fierce, energetic action, as though
+there was no possible time to be lost, into the fire. She snatched the
+poker, and with trembling hands pressed the doll down. There was a great
+flare of flame; Rose lifted one stolid arm to the gods for vengeance,
+then a stout leg in a last writhing agony. Only then, when it was all
+concluded, did Aunt Emily hear behind her the little half-strangled cry
+which made her turn. The child was standing, motionless, with so old, so
+desperate a gaze of despair that it was something indecent for any human
+being to watch.
+
+
+V
+
+Nurse came in from her afternoon. She had heard nothing of the recent
+catastrophe, and, as she saw Angelina sitting quietly in front of the
+fire she thought that she had had her tea, and was now "dreaming" as she
+so often did. Once, however, as she was busy in another part of the
+room, she caught half the face in the light of the fire. To any one of a
+more perceptive nature that glimpse must have seemed one of the most
+tragic things in the world. But this was a woman of "a sensible, hearty"
+nature; moreover, her "afternoon" had left her with happy reminiscences
+of her own charms and their effect on the opposite sex.
+
+She had, however, her moment.... She had left the room to fetch
+something. Returning she noticed that the dusk had fallen, and was about
+to switch on the light when, in the rise and fall of the firelight,
+something that she saw made her pause. She stood motionless by the door.
+
+Angelina had turned in her chair; her eyes were gazing, with rapt
+attention, toward the purple dusk by the window. She was listening.
+Nurse, as she had often assured her friends, "was not cursed with
+imagination," but now fear held her so that she could not stir nor move
+save that her hand trembled against the wall paper. The chatter of the
+fire, the shouts of some boys in the Square, the ringing of the bell of
+St. Matthew's for evensong, all these things came into the room.
+Angelina, still listening, at last smiled; then, with a little sigh, sat
+back in her chair.
+
+"Heavens! Miss 'Lina! What were you doing there? How you frightened me!"
+Angelina left her chair, and went across to the window. "Auntie Emily,"
+she said, "put Wosie into the fire, she did. But Wosie's saved.... He's
+just come and told me."
+
+"Lord, Miss 'Lina, how you talk!" The room was right again now just as,
+a moment before, it had been wrong. She switched on the electric light,
+and, in the sudden blaze, caught the last flicker in the child's eyes of
+some vision, caught, held, now surrendered.
+
+"'Tis company she's wanting, poor lamb," she thought, "all this being
+alone.... Fair gives one the creeps."
+
+She heard with relief the opening of the door. Miss Emily came in,
+hesitated a moment, then walked over to her niece. In her hands she
+carried a beautiful doll with flaxen hair, long white robes, and the
+assured confidence of one who is spotless and knows it.
+
+"There, Angelina," she said. "I oughtn't to have burnt your doll. I'm
+sorry. Here's a beautiful new one."
+
+Angelina took the spotless one; then with a little thrust of her hand
+she pushed the half-open window wider apart. Very deliberately she
+dropped the doll (at whose beauty she had not glanced) out, away, down
+into the Square.
+
+The doll, white in the dusk, tossed and whirled, and spun finally, a
+white speck far below, and struck the pavement.
+
+Then Angelina turned, and with a little sigh of satisfaction looked at
+her aunt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+BIM ROCHESTER
+
+
+I
+
+This is the story of Bim Rochester's first Odyssey. It is a story that
+has Bim himself for the only proof of its veracity, but he has never, by
+a shadow of a word, faltered in his account of it, and has remained so
+unamazed at some of the strange aspects in it that it seems almost an
+impertinence that we ourselves should show any wonder. Benjamin (Bim)
+Rochester was probably the happiest little boy in March Square, and he
+was happy in spite of quite a number of disadvantages.
+
+A word about the Rochester family is here necessary. They inhabited the
+largest house in March Square--the large grey one at the corner by Lent
+Street--and yet it could not be said to be large enough for them. Mrs.
+Rochester was a black-haired woman with flaming cheeks and a most
+untidy appearance. Her mother had been a Spaniard, and her father an
+English artist, and she was very much the child of both of them. Her
+hair was always coming down, her dress unfastened, her shoes untied, her
+boots unbuttoned. She rushed through life with an amazing shattering
+vigour, bearing children, flinging them into an already overcrowded
+nursery, rushing out to parties, filling the house with crowds of
+friends, acquaintances, strangers, laughing, chattering, singing, never
+out of temper, never serious, never, for a moment, to be depended on.
+Her husband, a grave, ball-faced man, spent most of his days in the City
+and at his club, but was fond of his wife, and admired what he called
+her "energy." "My wife's splendid," he would say to his friends, "knows
+the whole of London, I believe. The _people_ we have in our house!" He
+would watch, sometimes, the strange, noisy parties, and then would
+retire to bridge at his club with a little sigh of pride.
+
+Meanwhile, upstairs in the nursery there were children of all ages, and
+two nurses did their best to grapple with them. The nurses came and
+went, and always, after the first day or two, the new nurse would give
+in to the conditions, and would lead, at first with amusement and a
+rather excited sense of adventure, afterwards with a growing feeling of
+dirt and discomfort, a tangled and helter-skelter existence. Some of the
+children were now at school, but Lucy, a girl ten years of age, was a
+supercilious child who rebelled against the conditions of her life, but
+was too idle and superior to attempt any alteration of them. After her
+there were Roger, Dorothy, and Robert. Then came Bim, four years of age
+a fortnight ago, and, last of all, Timothy, an infant of nine months.
+With the exception of Lucy and Bim they were exceedingly noisy children.
+Lucy should have passed her days in the schoolroom under the care of
+Miss Agg, a melancholy and hope-abandoned spinster, and, during lesson
+hours, there indeed she was. But in the schoolroom she had no one to
+impress with her amazing wisdom and dignity. "Poor mummy," as she always
+thought of her mother, was quite unaware of her habits or movements, and
+Miss Agg was unable to restrain either the one or the other, so Lucy
+spent most of her time in the nursery, where she sat, calm and
+collected, in the midst of confusion that could have "given old Babel
+points and won easy." She was reverenced by all the younger children
+for her sedate security, but by none of them so surely and so
+magnificently as Bim. Bim, because he was quieter than the other
+children, claimed for his opinions and movements the stronger interest.
+
+His nurses called him "deep," "although for a deep child I must say he's
+'appy."
+
+Both his depth and his happiness were at Lucy's complete disposal. The
+people who saw him in the Square called him "a jolly little boy," and,
+indeed, his appearance of gravity was undermined by the curl of his
+upper lip and a dimple in the middle of his left cheek, so that he
+seemed to be always at the crisis of a prolonged chuckle. One very
+rarely heard him laugh out loud, and his sturdy, rather fat body was
+carried rather gravely, and he walked contemplatively as though he were
+thinking something out. He would look at you, too, very earnestly when
+you spoke to him, and would wait a little before he answered you, and
+then would speak slowly as though he were choosing his words with care.
+And yet he was, in spite of these things, really a "jolly little boy."
+His "jolliness" was there in point of view, in the astounding interest
+he found in anything and everything, in his refusal to be upset by any
+sort of thing whatever.
+
+But his really unusual quality was his mixture of stolid English
+matter-of-fact with an absolutely unbridled imagination. He would
+pursue, day by day, week after week, games, invented games of his own,
+that owed nothing, either for their inception or their execution, to any
+one else. They had their origin for the most part in stray sentences
+that he had overheard from his elders, but they also arose from his own
+private and personal experiences--experiences which were as real to him
+as going to the dentist or going to the pantomime were to his brothers
+and sisters. There was, for instance, a gentleman of whom he always
+spoke of as Mr. Jack. This friend no one had ever seen, but Bim quoted
+him frequently. He did not, apparently, see him very often now, but at
+one time when he had been quite a baby Mr. Jack had been always there.
+Bim explained, to any one who cared to listen, that Mr. Jack belonged to
+all the Other Time which he was now in very serious danger of
+forgetting, and when, at that point, he was asked with condescending
+indulgence, "I suppose you mean fairies, dear!" he always shook his head
+scornfully and said he meant nothing of the kind, Mr. Jack was as real
+as mother, and, indeed, a great deal "realer," because Mrs. Rochester
+was, in the course of her energetic career, able to devote only
+"whirlwind" visits to her "dear, darling" children.
+
+When the afternoon was spent in the gardens in the middle of the Square,
+Bim would detach himself from his family and would be found absorbed in
+some business of his own which he generally described as "waiting for
+Mr. Jack."
+
+"Not the sort of child," said Miss Agg, who had strong views about
+children being educated according to practical and common-sense ideas,
+"not the sort of child that one would expect nonsense from." It may be
+quite safely asserted that never, in her very earliest years, had Miss
+Agg been guilty of any nonsense of the sort.
+
+But it was not Miss Agg's contempt for his experiences that worried Bim.
+He always regarded that lady with an amused indifference. "She _bothers_
+so," he said once to Lucy. "Do you think she's happy with us, Lucy?"
+
+"P'r'aps. I'm sure it doesn't matter."
+
+"I suppose she'd go away if she wasn't," he concluded, and thought no
+more about her.
+
+No, the real grief in his heart was that Lucy, the adored, the wonderful
+Lucy, treated his assertions with contempt.
+
+"But, Bim, don't be such a silly baby. You know you can't have seen him.
+Nurse was there and a lot of us, and _we_ didn't."
+
+"I did though."
+
+"But, Bim----"
+
+"Can't help it. He used to come lots and lots."
+
+"You _are_ a silly! You're getting too old now----"
+
+"I'm _not_ a silly!"
+
+"Yes, you are."
+
+"I'm not!"
+
+"Oh, well, of course, if you're going to be a naughty baby."
+
+Bim was nearer tears on these occasions than on any other in all his
+mortal life. His adoration of Lucy was the foundation-stone of his
+existence, and she accepted it with a lofty assumption of indifference;
+but very sharply would she have missed it had it been taken from her,
+and in long after years she was to look back upon that love of his and
+wonder that she could have accepted it so lightly; Bim found in her
+gravity and assurance all that he demanded of his elders. Lucy was never
+at a loss for an answer to any question, and Bim believed all that she
+told him.
+
+"Where's China, Lucy?"
+
+"Oh, don't bother, Bim."
+
+"No, but _where_ is it?"
+
+"What a nuisance you are! It's near Africa."
+
+"Where Uncle Alfred is?"
+
+"Yes, just there."
+
+"But _is_ Uncle Alfred in--China?"
+
+"No, silly, of course not."
+
+"Well, then----"
+
+"I didn't say China was in Africa. I said it was near."
+
+"Oh! I see. Uncle Alfred could just go in the train?"
+
+"Yes, of course."
+
+"Oh! I see. P'r'aps he will."
+
+But, for the most part, Bim, realising that Lucy "didn't want to be
+bothered," pursued his life alone. Through all the turmoil and disorder
+of that tempestuous nursery he gravely went his way, at one moment
+fighting lions and tigers, at another being nurse on her afternoon out
+(this was a truly astonishing adventure composed of scraps flung to him
+from nurse's conversational table and including many incidents that were
+far indeed from any nurse's experience), or again, he would be his
+mother giving a party, and, in the course of this, a great deal of food
+would be eaten, his favourite dishes, treacle pudding and cottage pie,
+being always included.
+
+With the exception of his enthusiasm for Lucy he was no sentimentalist.
+He hated being kissed, he did not care very greatly for Roger and
+Dorothy and Robert, and regarded them as nothing but nuisances when they
+interfered with his games or compelled him to join in theirs.
+
+And now this is the story of his Odyssey.
+
+
+II
+
+It happened on a wet April afternoon. The morning had been fine, a
+golden morning with the scent in the air of the showers that had fallen
+during the night. Then, suddenly, after midday, the rain came down,
+splashing on to the shining pavements as it fell, beating on to the
+windows and then running, in little lines, on to the ledges and falling
+from there in slow, heavy drops. The sky was black, the statues in the
+garden dejected, the almond tree beaten, all the little paths running
+with water, and on the garden seats the rain danced like a live thing.
+
+The children--Lucy, Roger, Dorothy, Robert, Bim, and Timothy--were, of
+course, in the nursery. The nurse was toasting her toes on the fender
+and enjoying immensely that story by Mrs. Henry Wood, entitled "The
+Shadow of Ashlydyat." It is entirely impossible to present any adequate
+idea of the confusion and bizarrerie of that nursery. One must think of
+the most confused aspect of human life that one has ever known--say, a
+Suffrage attack upon the Houses of Parliament, or a Channel steamer on a
+Thursday morning, and then of the next most confused aspect. Then one
+must place them together and confess defeat. Mrs. Rochester was not, as
+I have said, very frequently to be found in her children's nursery, but
+she managed, nevertheless, to pervade the house, from cellar to garret,
+with her spirit. Toys were everywhere--dolls and trains and soldiers,
+bricks and puzzles and animals, cardboard boxes, articles of feminine
+attire, a zinc bath, two cats, a cage with white mice, a pile of books
+resting in a dazzling pyramid on the very edge of the table, two glass
+jars containing minute fish of the new variety, and a bowl with
+goldfish. There were many other things, forgotten by me.
+
+Lucy, her pigtails neatly arranged, sat near the window and pretended to
+be reading that fascinating story, "The Pillars of the House." I say
+pretending, because Lucy did not care about reading at any time, and
+especially disliked the works of Charlotte Mary Yonge, but she thought
+that it looked well that she and nurse should be engaged upon literature
+whilst the rest of the world rioted and gambolled their time away. There
+was no one who at the moment could watch and admire her fine spirit, but
+you never knew who might come in.
+
+The rioting and gambolling consisted in the attempts of Robert, Dorothy,
+and Roger, to give a realistic presentation to an audience of one,
+namely, the infant Timothy, of the life of the Red Indians and their
+Squaws. Underneath the nursery table, with a tablecloth, some chairs and
+a concertina, they were presenting an admirable and entirely engrossing
+performance.
+
+Bim, under the window and quite close to Lucy, was giving a party. He
+had possessed himself of some of Dorothy's dolls' tea things, he had
+begged a sponge cake from nurse, and could be heard breaking from time
+to time into such sentences as, "Do have a little more tweacle pudding,
+Mrs. Smith. It's the best tweacle," and, "It's a nice day, isn't it!"
+but he was sorely interrupted by the noisy festivities of the Indians
+who broke, frequently, into realistic cries of "Oh! Roger, you're
+pulling my hair," or "I won't play if you don't look out!"
+
+It may be that these interruptions disturbed the actuality of Bim's
+festivities, or it may be that the rattling of the rain upon the window
+panes diverted his attention. Once he broke into a chuckle. "Isn't they
+banging on the window, Lucy?" he said, but she was, it appeared, too
+deeply engaged to answer him. He found that, in a moment of abstraction,
+he had eaten the whole of the sponge cake, so that it was obvious that
+the party was over. "Good-bye, Mrs. Smith. It was really nice of you to
+come. Good-bye, dear, Mrs. ---- I think the wain almost isn't coming
+now."
+
+He said farewell to them all and climbed upon the window seat. Here,
+gazing down into the Square, he saw that the rain was stopping, and, on
+the farther side, above the roofs of the houses, a little splash of gold
+had crept into the grey. He watched the gold, heard the rain coming more
+slowly; at first, "spatter-spatter-spatter," then, "spatter--spatter."
+Then one drop very slowly after another drop. Then he saw that the sun
+from somewhere far away had found out the wet paths in the garden, and
+was now stealing, very secretly, along them. Soon it would strike the
+seat, and then the statue of the funny fat man in all his clothes, and
+then, perhaps, the fountain. He was unhappy a little, and he did not
+know why: he was conscious, perhaps, of the untidy, noisy room behind
+him, of his sister Dorothy who, now a Squaw of a quite genuine and
+realistic kind, was crying at the top of her voice: "I don't care. I
+will have it if I want to. You're _not_ to, Roger," and of Timothy, his
+baby brother, who, moved by his sister's cries, howled monotonously,
+persistently, hopelessly.
+
+"Oh, give over, do, Miss Dorothy!" said the nurse, raising her eye for a
+moment from her book. "Why can't you be quiet?"
+
+Outside the world was beginning to shine and glitter, inside it was all
+horrid and noisy. He sighed a little, he wanted to express in some way
+his feelings. He looked at Lucy and drew closer to her. She had beside
+her a painted china mug which one of her uncles had brought her from
+Russia; she had stolen some daffodils from her mother's room downstairs
+and now was arranging them. This painted mug was one of her most valued
+possessions, and Bim himself thought it, with its strange red and brown
+figures running round it, the finest thing in all the world.
+
+"Lucy," he said. "Do you s'pose if you was going to jump all the way
+down to the street and wasn't afraid that p'r'aps your legs wouldn't get
+broken?"
+
+He was not, in reality, greatly interested in the answer to his
+question, but the important thing always with Lucy was first to enchain
+her attention. He had learnt, long ago, that to tell her that he loved
+her, to invite tenderness from her in return, was to ask for certain
+rebuff--he always began his advances then in this roundabout manner.
+
+"_What do_ you think, Lucy?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. How can I tell? Don't bother."
+
+It was then that Bim felt what was, for him, a very rare sensation. He
+was irritated.
+
+"I don't bovver," he said, with a cross look in the direction of his
+brother and sister Rochesters. "No, but, Lucy, s'pose some one--nurse,
+s'pose--_did_ fall down into the street and broke all her legs and arms,
+she wouldn't be dead, would she?"
+
+"You silly little boy, of course not."
+
+He looked at Lucy, saw the frown upon her forehead, and felt suddenly
+that all his devotion to her was wasted, that she didn't want him, that
+nobody wanted him--now when the sun was making the garden glitter like a
+jewel and the fountain to shine like a sword.
+
+He felt in his throat a hard, choking lump. He came closer to his
+sister.
+
+"You might pay 'tention, Lucy," he said plaintively.
+
+Lucy broke a daffodil stalk viciously. "Go and talk to the others," she
+said. "I haven't time for you."
+
+The tears were hot in his eyes and anger was in his heart--anger bred of
+the rain, of the noise, of the confusion.
+
+"You _are_ howwid," he said slowly.
+
+"Well, go away, then, if I'm horrid," she pushed with her hand at his
+knee. "I didn't ask you to come here."
+
+Her touch infuriated him; he kicked and caught a very tender part of her
+calf.
+
+"Oh! You little beast!" She came to him, leant for a moment across him,
+then slapped his cheek.
+
+The pain, the indignity, and, above all, a strange confused love for his
+sister that was near to passionate rage, let loose all the devils that
+owned Bim for their habitation.
+
+He did three things: He screamed aloud, he bent forward and bit Lucy's
+hand hard, he seized Lucy's wonderful Russian mug and dashed it to the
+ground. He then stood staring at the shattered fragments.
+
+
+III
+
+There followed, of course, confusion. Nurse started up. "The Shadow of
+Ashlydyat" descended into the ashes, the children rushed eagerly from
+beneath the table to the centre of hostilities.
+
+But there were no hostilities. Lucy and Bim were, both of them, utterly
+astonished, Lucy, as she looked at the scattered mug, was, indeed,
+sobbing, but absent-mindedly--her thoughts were elsewhere. Her
+thoughts, in fact, were with Bim. She realised suddenly that never
+before had he lost his temper with her; she was aware that his affection
+had been all this time of value to her, of much more value, indeed, than
+the stupid old mug. She bent down--still absent-mindedly sobbing--and
+began to pick up the pieces. She was really astonished--being a dry and
+rather hard little girl--at her affection for Bim.
+
+The nurse seized on the unresisting villain of the piece and shook him.
+"You _naughty_ little boy! To go and break your sister's beautiful mug.
+It's your horrid temper that'll be the ruin of you, mark my words, as
+I'm always telling you." (Bim had never been known to lose his temper
+before.) "Yes, it will. You see, you naughty boy. And all the other
+children as good as gold and quiet as lambs, and you've got to go and do
+this. You shall stand in the corner all tea-time, and not a bite shall
+you have." Here Bim began, in a breathless, frightened way, to sob.
+"Yes, well you may. Never mind, Miss Lucy, I dare say your uncle will
+bring you another." Here she became conscious of an attentive and deeply
+interested audience. "Now, children, time to get ready for tea. Run
+along, Miss Dorothy, now. What a nuisance you all are, to be sure."
+
+They were removed from the scene. Bim was placed in the corner with his
+face to the wall. He was aghast; no words can give, at all, any idea of
+how dumbly aghast he was. What possessed him? What, in an instant of
+time, had leapt down from the clouds, had sprung up from the Square and
+seized him? Between his amazed thoughts came little surprised sobs. But
+he had not abandoned himself to grief--he was too sternly set upon the
+problem of reparation. Something must be done, and that quickly.
+
+The great thought in his mind was that he must replace the mug. He had
+not been very often in the streets beyond the Square, but upon certain
+occasions he had seen their glories, and he knew that there had been
+shops and shops and shops. Quite close to him, upon a shelf, was his
+money-box, a squat, ugly affair of red tin, into whose large mouth he
+had been compelled to force those gifts that kind relations had
+bestowed. There must be now quite a fortune there--enough to buy many
+mugs. He could not himself open it, but he did not doubt that the man
+in the shop would do that for him.
+
+Not for many more moments would he be left alone. His hat was lying on
+the table; he seized that and his money-box, and was out on the landing.
+
+The rest is _his_ story. I cannot, as I have already said, vouch for the
+truth of it. At first, fortune was on his side. There seemed to be no
+one about the house. He went down the wide staircase without making any
+sound; in the hall he stopped for a moment because he heard voices, but
+no one came. Then with both hands, and standing on tiptoe, he turned the
+lock of the door, and was outside.
+
+The Square was bathed in golden sun, a sun, the stronger for his
+concealment, but tempered, too, with the fine gleam that the rain had
+left. Never before had Bim been outside that door alone; he was aware
+that this was a very tremendous adventure. The sky was a washed and
+delicate purple, and behold! on the high railings, a row of sparrows
+were chattering. Voices were cold and clear, echoing, as it seemed,
+against the straight, grey walls of the houses, and all the trees in the
+garden glistened with their wet leaves shining with gold; there seemed
+to be, too, a dim veil of smoke that was homely and comfortable.
+
+It is not usual to see a small boy of four alone in a London square, but
+Bim met, at first, no one except a messenger boy, who stopped and looked
+after him. At the corner of the Square--just out of the Square so that
+it might not shame its grandeur--was a fruit and flower shop, and this
+shop was the entrance to a street that had much life and bustle about
+it. Here Bim paused with his money-box clasped very tightly to him. Then
+he made a step or two and was instantly engulfed, it seemed, in a
+perfect whirl of men and women, of carts and bicycles, of voices and
+cries and screams; there were lights of every colour, and especially one
+far above his head that came and disappeared and came again with
+terrifying wizardry.
+
+He was, quite suddenly, and as it were, by the agency of some outside
+person, desperately frightened. It was a new terror, different from
+anything that he had known before. It was as though a huge giant had
+suddenly lifted him up by the seat of his breeches, or a witch had
+transplanted him on to her broomstick and carried him off. It was as
+unusual as that.
+
+His under lip began to quiver, and he knew that presently he would be
+crying. Then, as he always did, when something unusual occurred to him,
+he thought of "Mr. Jack." At this point, when you ask him what happened,
+he always says: "Oh! He came, you know--came walking along--like he
+always did."
+
+"Was he just like other people, Bim?"
+
+"Yes, just. With a beard, you know--just like he always was."
+
+"Yes, but what sort of things did he wear?" "Oh, just ord'nary things,
+like you." There was no sense of excitement or wonder to be got out of
+him. It was true that Mr. Jack hadn't shown himself for quite a long
+time, but that, Bim felt, was natural enough. "He'll come less and
+seldomer and seldomer as you get big, you know. It was just at first,
+when one was very little and didn't know one's way about--just to help
+babies not to be frightened. Timothy would tell you only he won't. Then
+he comes only a little--just at special times like this was."
+
+Bim told you this with a slightly bored air, as though it were silly of
+you not to know, and really his air of certainty made an incredulous
+challenge a difficult thing. On the present occasion Mr. Jack was just
+there, in the middle of the crowd, smiling and friendly. He took Bim's
+hand, and, "Of course," Bim said, "there didn't have to be any
+'splaining. _He_ knew what I wanted." True or not, I like to think of
+them, in the evening air, serenely safe and comfortable, and in any
+case, it was surely strange that if, as one's common sense compels one
+to suppose, Bim were all alone in that crowd, no one wondered or stopped
+him nor asked him where his home was. At any rate, I have no opinions on
+the subject. Bim says that, at once, they found themselves out of the
+crowd in a quiet, little "dinky" street, as he called it, a street that,
+in his description of it, answered to nothing that I can remember in
+this part of the world. His account of it seems to present a dark,
+rather narrow place, with overhanging roofs and swinging signs, and
+nobody, he says, at all about, but a church with a bell, and outside one
+shop a row of bright-coloured clothes hanging. At any rate, here Bim
+found the place that he wanted. There was a little shop with steps down
+into it and a tinkling bell which made a tremendous noise when you
+pushed the old oak door. Inside there was every sort of thing. Bim lost
+himself here in the ecstasy of his description, lacking also names for
+many of the things that he saw. But there was a whole suit of shining
+armour, and there were jewels, and old brass trays, and carpets, and a
+crocodile, which Bim called a "crodocile." There was also a friendly old
+man with a white beard, and over everything a lovely smell, which Bim
+said was like "roast potatoes" and "the stuff mother has in a bottle in
+her bedwoom."
+
+Bim could, of course, have stayed there for ever, but Mr. Jack reminded
+him of a possibly anxious family. "There, is that what you're after?"
+he said, and, sure enough, there on a shelf, smiling and eager to be
+bought, was a mug exactly like the one that Bim had broken.
+
+There was then the business of paying for it, the money-box was produced
+and opened by the old man with "a shining knife," and Bim was gravely
+informed that the money found in the box was exactly the right amount.
+Bim had been, for a moment, in an agony of agitation lest he should have
+too little, but as he told us, "There was all Uncle Alfred's Christmas
+money, and what mother gave me for the tooth, and that silly lady with
+the green dress who _would_ kiss me." So, you see, there must have been
+an awful amount.
+
+Then they went, Bim clasping his money-box in one hand and the mug in
+the other. The mug was wrapped in beautiful blue paper that smelt, as we
+were all afterwards to testify, of dates and spices. The crocodile
+flapped against the wall, the bell tinkled, and the shop was left behind
+them. "Most at once," Bim said they were by the fruit shop again; he
+knew that Mr. Jack was going, and he had a sudden most urgent longing to
+go with him, to stay with him, to be with him always. He wanted to cry;
+he felt dreadfully unhappy, but all of his thanks, his strange desires,
+that he could bring out was, in a quavering voice, trying hard, you
+understand, not to cry, "Mr. Jack. Oh! Mr.----" and his friend was gone.
+
+
+IV
+
+He trotted home; with every step his pride increased. What would Lucy
+say? And dim, unrealised, but forming, nevertheless, the basis for the
+whole of his triumph, was his consciousness that she who had scoffed,
+derided, at his "Mr. Jack," should now so absolutely benefit by him.
+This was bringing together, at last, the two of them.
+
+His nurse, in a fine frenzy of agitation, met him. Her relief at his
+safety swallowed her anger. She could only gasp at him. "Well, Master
+Bim, and a nice state---- Oh, dear! to think; wherever----"
+
+On the doorstep he forced his nurse to pause, and, turning, looked at
+the gardens now in shadow of spun gold, with the fountain blue as the
+sky. He nodded his head with satisfaction. It had been a splendid time.
+It would be a very long while, he knew, before he was allowed out again
+like that. Yes. He clasped the mug tightly, and the door closed behind
+him.
+
+I don't know that there is anything more to say. There were the empty
+money-box and the mug. There was Bim's unhesitating and unchangeable
+story. There _is_ a shop, just behind the Square, where they have some
+Russian crockery. But Bim alone!
+
+_I_ don't know.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+NANCY ROSS
+
+
+I
+
+Mr. Munty Ross's house was certainly the smartest in March Square; No.
+14, where the Duchess of Crole lived, was shabby in comparison. Very
+often you may see a line of motor-cars and carriages stretching down the
+Square, then round the corner into Lent Street, and you may know
+then--as, indeed, all the Square did know and most carefully
+observed--that Mrs. Munty Boss was giving another of her smart little
+parties. That dark-green door, that neat overhanging balcony, those
+rows--in the summer months--of scarlet geraniums, that roll of carpet
+that ran, many times a week, from the door over the pavement to the very
+foot of the waiting vehicle--these things were Mrs. Munty Ross's.
+
+Munty Ross--a silent, ugly, black little man--had had made his money in
+potted shrimps, or something equally compact and indigestible, and it
+really was very nice to think that anything in time could blossom out
+into beauty as striking as Mrs. Munty's lovely dresses, or melody as
+wonderful as the voice of M. Radiziwill, the famous tenor, whom she
+often "turned on" at her little evening parties. Upon Mr. Munty alone
+the shrimps seemed to have made no effect. He was as black, as
+insignificant, as ugly as ever he had been in the days before he knew of
+a shrimp's possibilities. He was very silent at his wife's parties, and
+sometimes dropped his h's. What Mrs. Munty had been before her marriage
+no one quite knew, but now she was flaxen and slim and beautifully
+clothed, with a voice like an insincere canary; she had "a passion for
+the Opera," a "passion for motoring," "a passion for the latest
+religion," and "a passion for the simple life." All these things did the
+shrimps enable her to gratify, and "the simple life" cost her more than
+all the others put together.
+
+Heaven had blessed them with one child, and that child was called Nancy.
+Nancy, her mother always said with pride, was old for her age, and, as
+her age was only just five, that remark was quite true. Nancy Ross was
+old for any age. Had she herself, one is compelled when considering her
+to wonder, any conception during those first months of the things that
+were going to be made out of her, and had she, perhaps at the very
+commencement of it all, some instinct of protest and rebellion? Poor
+Nancy! The tragedy of her whole case was now none other than that she
+hadn't, here at five years old in March Square, the slightest picture of
+what she had become, nor could she, I suppose, have imagined it possible
+for her to become anything different. Nancy, in her own real and naked
+person, was a small child with a good flow of flaxen hair and light-blue
+eyes. All her features were small and delicate, and she gave you the
+impression that if you only pulled a string or pushed a button somewhere
+in the middle of her back you could evoke any cry, smile or exclamation
+that you cared to arouse. Her eyes were old and weary, her attitude
+always that of one who had learnt the ways of this world, had found them
+sawdust, but had nevertheless consented still to play the game. Just as
+the house was filled with little gilt chairs and china cockatoos, so was
+Nancy arrayed in ribbons and bows and lace. Mrs. Munty had, one must
+suppose, surveyed during certain periods in her life certain real
+emotions rather as the gaping villagers survey the tiger behind his bars
+in the travelling circus.
+
+The time had then come when she put these emotions away from her as
+childish things, and determined never to be faced with any of them
+again. It was not likely, then, that she would introduce Nancy to any of
+them. She introduced Nancy to clothes and deportment, and left it at
+that. She wanted her child to "look nice." She was able, now that Nancy
+was five years old, to say that she "looked very nice indeed."
+
+
+II
+
+From the very beginning nurses were chosen who would take care of Nancy
+Boss's appearance. There was plenty of money to spend, and Nancy was a
+child who, with her flaxen hair and blue eyes, would repay trouble. She
+_did_ repay it, because she had no desires towards grubbiness or
+rebellion, or any wildnesses whatever. She just sat there with her doll
+balanced neatly in her arms, and allowed herself to be pulled and
+twisted and squeezed and stretched. "There's a pretty little lady,"
+said nurse, and a pretty little lady Nancy was sure that she was. The
+order for her day was that in the morning she went out for a walk in the
+gardens in the Square, and in the afternoon she went out for another.
+During these walks she moved slowly, her doll delicately carried, her
+beautiful clothes shining with approval of the way that they were worn,
+her head high, "like a little queen," said her nurse. She was conscious
+of the other children in the gardens, who often stopped in the middle of
+their play and watched her. She thought them hot and dirty and very
+noisy. She was sorry for their mothers.
+
+It happened sometimes that she came downstairs, towards the end of a
+luncheon party, and was introduced to the guests. "You pretty little
+thing," women in very large hats said to her. "Lovely hair," or "She's
+the very image of _you_, Clarice," to her mother. She liked to hear that
+because she greatly admired her mother. She knew that she, Nancy Ross,
+was beautiful; she knew that clothes were of an immense importance; she
+knew that other children were unpleasant. For the rest, she was neither
+extravagantly glad nor extravagantly sorry. She preserved a fine
+indifference.... And yet, although, here my story may seem to
+matter-of-fact persons to take a turn towards the fantastic, this was
+not quite all. Nancy herself, dimly and yet uneasily, was aware that
+there was something else.
+
+She was not a little girl who believed in fairies or witches or the
+"bogey man," or anything indeed that she could not see. She inherited
+from her mother a splendid confidence in the reality, the solid,
+unquestioned reality of all concrete and tangible things. She had been
+presented once with a fine edition of "Grimm's Fairy Tales," an edition
+with coloured pictures and every allure. She had turned its pages with a
+look of incredulous amazement. "What," she seemed to say--she was then
+aged three and a half--"are these absurd things that you are telling me?
+People aren't like that. Mother isn't in the least like that. I don't
+understand this, and it's tedious!"
+
+"I'm afraid the child has no imagination," said her nurse.
+
+"What a lucky thing!" said her mother.
+
+Nor could Mrs. Ross's house be said to be a place that encouraged
+fairies. They would have found the gilt chairs hard to sit upon, and
+there were no mysterious corners. There was nothing mysterious at all.
+And yet Nancy Ross, sitting in her magnificent clothes, was conscious as
+she advanced towards her sixth year that she was not perfectly
+comfortable. To say that she felt lonely would be, perhaps, to emphasise
+too strongly her discomfort. It was perhaps rather that she felt
+inquisitive--only a little, a very little--but she did begin to wish
+that she could ask a few questions.
+
+There came a day--an astonishing day--when she felt irritated with her
+mother. She had during her walk through the garden seen a little boy and
+a little girl, who were grubbing about in a little pile of earth and
+sand there in the corner under the trees, and grubbing very happily.
+They had dirt upon their faces, but their nurse was sitting, apparently
+quite easy in her mind, and the sun had not stopped in its course nor
+had the birds upon the trees ceased to sing. Nancy stayed for a moment
+her progress and looked at them, and something not very far from envy
+struck, in some far-distant hiding-place, her soul. She moved on, but
+when she came indoors and was met by her mamma and a handsome lady, her
+mamma's friend, who said: "Isn't she a pretty dear?" and her mother
+said: "That's right, Nancy darling, been for your walk?" she was, for an
+amazing moment, irritated with her beautiful mother.
+
+
+III
+
+Once she was conscious of this desire to ask questions she had no more
+peace. Although she was only five years of age, she had all the
+determination not "to give herself away" of a woman of forty. She was
+not going to show that she wanted anything in the world, and yet she
+would have liked--A little wistfully she looked at her nurse. But that
+good woman, carefully chosen by Mrs. Ross, was not the one to encourage
+questions. She was as shining as a new brass nail, and a great deal
+harder.
+
+The nursery was as neat as a pin, with a lovely bright rocking-horse
+upon which Nancy had never ridden; a pink doll's-house with every modern
+contrivance, whose doors had never been opened; a number of expensive
+dolls, which had never been disrobed. Nancy approached these
+joys--diffidently and with caution. She rode upon the horse, opened the
+doll's-house, embraced the dolls, but she had no natural imagination to
+bestow upon them, and the horse and the dolls, hurt, perhaps, at their
+long neglect, received her with frigidity. Those grubby little children
+in the Square would, she knew, have been "there" in a moment. She began
+then to be frightened. The nursery, her bedroom, the dark little passage
+outside, were suddenly alarming. Sometimes, when she was sitting quietly
+in her nursery, the house was so silent that she could have screamed.
+
+"I don't think Miss Nancy's quite well, ma'am," said the nurse.
+
+"Oh, dear! What a nuisance," said Mrs. Ross who liked her little girl to
+be always well and beautiful. "I do hope she's not going to catch
+something."
+
+"She doesn't take that pleasure in her clothes she did," said the nurse.
+
+"Perhaps she wants some new ones," said her mother. "Take her to
+Florice, nurse." Nancy went to Florice, and beautiful new garments were
+invented, and once again she was squeezed, and tightened, and stretched,
+and pulled. But Nancy was indifferent. As they tried these clothes, and
+stood back, and stepped forward, and admired and criticised, she was
+thinking, "I wish the nursery clock didn't make such a noise."
+
+Her little bedroom next to nurse's large one was a beautiful affair,
+with red roses up and down the wall-paper and in and out of the crockery
+and round and round the carpet. Her bed was magnificent, with lace and
+more roses, and there was a fine photograph of her beautiful mother in a
+silver frame on the mantelpiece. But all these things were of little
+avail when the dark came. She began to be frightened of the dark.
+
+There came a night when, waking with a suddenness that did of itself
+contribute to her alarm, she was conscious that the room was intensely
+dark, and that every one was very far away. The house, as she listened,
+seemed to be holding its breath, the clock in the nursery was ticking in
+a frightened, startled terror, and hesitating, whimsical noises broke,
+now close, now distant, upon the silence. She lay there, her heart
+beating as it had surely never been allowed to beat before. She was
+simply a very small, very frightened little girl. Then, before she could
+cry out, she was aware that some one was standing beside her bed. She
+was aware of this before she looked, and then, strangely (even now she
+had taken no peep), she was frightened no longer.
+
+The room, the house, were suddenly comfortable and safe places; as water
+slips from a pool and leaves it dry, so had terror glided from her side.
+She looked up then, and, although the place had been so dark that she
+had been unable to distinguish the furniture, she could figure to
+herself quite clearly her visitor's form. She not only figured it, but
+also quite easily and readily recognised it. All these years she had
+forgotten him, but now at the vision of his large comfortable presence
+she was back again amongst experiences and recognitions that evoked for
+her once more all those odd first days when, with how much discomfort
+and puzzled dismay, she had been dropped, so suddenly, into this
+distressing world. He put his arms around her and held her; he bent down
+and kissed her, and her small hand went up to his beard in exactly the
+way that it used to do. She nestled up against him.
+
+"It's a very long time, isn't it," he said, "since I paid you a visit!"
+
+"Yes, a long, long time."
+
+"That's because you didn't want me. You got on so well without me."
+
+"I didn't forget about you," she said. "But I asked mummy about you
+once, and she said you were all nonsense, and I wasn't to think things
+like that."
+
+"Ah! your mother's forgotten altogether. She knew me once, but she
+hasn't wanted me for a very, very long time. She'll see me again,
+though, one day."
+
+"I'm so glad you've come. You won't go away again now, will you?"
+
+"I never go away," he said. "I'm always here. I've seen everything
+you've been doing, and a very dull time you've been making of it."
+
+He talked to her and told her about some of the things the other
+children in the Square were doing. She was interested a little, but not
+very much; she still thought a great deal more about herself than about
+anything or anybody else.
+
+"Do they all love you?" she said.
+
+"Oh, no, not at all. Some of them think I'm horrid. Some of them forget
+me altogether, and then I never come back, until just at the end. Some
+of them only want me when they're in trouble. Some, very soon, think it
+silly to believe in me at all, and the older they grow the less they
+believe, generally. And when I do come they won't see me, they make up
+their minds not to. But I'm always there just the same; it makes no
+difference what they do. They can't help themselves. Only it's better
+for them just to remember me a little, because then it's much safer for
+them. You've been feeling rather lonely lately, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes," she said. "It's stupid now all by myself. There's nobody to ask
+questions of."
+
+"Well, there's somebody else in your house who's lonely."
+
+"Is there?" She couldn't think of any one.
+
+"Yes. Your father."
+
+"Oh! Father----" She was uninterested.
+
+"Yes. You see, if he isn't----" and then, at that, he was gone, she was
+alone and fast asleep.
+
+In the morning when she awoke, she remembered it all quite clearly, but,
+of course, it had all been a dream. "Such a funny dream," she told her
+nurse, but she would give out no details.
+
+"Some food she's been eating," said her nurse.
+
+Nevertheless, when, on that afternoon, coming in from her walk, she met
+her dark, grubby little father in the hall, she did stay for a moment on
+the bottom step of the stairs to consider him.
+
+"I've been for a walk, daddy," she said, and then, rather frightened at
+her boldness, tumbled up on the next step. He went forward to catch her.
+
+"Hold up," he said, held her for a moment, and then hurried, confused
+and rather agitated, into his dark sanctum. These were, very nearly, the
+first words that they had ever, in the course of their lives together,
+interchanged. Munty Ross was uneasy with grown-up persons (unless he was
+discussing business with them), but that discomfort was nothing to the
+uneasiness that he felt with children. Little girls (who certainly
+looked at him as though he were an ogre) frightened him quite horribly;
+moreover, Mrs. Munty had, for a great number of years, pursued a policy
+with regard to her husband that was not calculated to make him bright
+and easy in any society. "Poor old Munty," she would say to her friends,
+"it's not all his fault----" It was, as a fact, very largely hers. He had
+never been an eloquent man, but her playful derision of his uncouthness
+slew any little seeds of polite conversation that might, under happier
+conditions, have grown into brilliant blossom. It had been understood
+from the very beginning that Nancy was not of her father's world. He
+would have been scarcely aware that he had a daughter had he not, at
+certain periods, paid bills for her clothes.
+
+"What's a child want with all this?" he had ventured once to say.
+
+"Hardly your business, my dear," his wife had told him. "The child's
+clothes are marvellously cheap considering. I don't know how Florice
+does it for the money." He resented nothing--it was not his way--but he
+did feel, deep down in his heart, that the child was over-dressed, that
+it must be bad for any little girl to be praised in the way that his
+daughter was praised, that "the kid will grow up with the most
+tremendous ideas."
+
+He resented it, perhaps a little, that his young daughter had so easily
+accustomed herself to the thought that she had no father. "She might
+just want to see me occasionally. But I'd only frighten her, I suppose,
+if she did."
+
+Munty Ross had very little of the sentimentalist about him; he was
+completely cynical about the value of the human heart, and believed in
+the worth and goodness of no one at all. He had, for a brief wild
+moment, been in love with his wife, but she had taken care to kill that,
+"the earlier the better." "My dear," she would say to a chosen friend,
+"what Munty's like when he's romantic!" She never, after the first month
+of their married life together, caught a glimpse of that side of him.
+
+Now, however, he did permit his mind to linger over that vision of his
+little daughter tumbling on the stairs. He wondered what had made her do
+it. He was astonished at the difference that it made to him.
+
+To Nancy also it had made a great difference. She wished that she had
+stayed there on the stairs a little longer to hold a more important
+conversation. She had thought of her father as "all horrid"--now his
+very contrast to her little world pleased and interested her. It may
+also be that, although she was young, she had even now a picture in her
+mind of her father's loneliness. She may have seen into her mother's
+attitude with an acuteness much older than her actual years.
+
+She thought now continually about her father. She made little plans to
+meet him, but these meetings were not, as a rule, successful, because so
+often he was down in the city. She would wait at the end of her
+afternoon walk on the stairs.
+
+"Come along, Miss Nancy, do. What are you hanging about there for?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"You'll be disturbing your mother."
+
+"Just a minute."
+
+She peered anxiously, her little head almost held by the railings of the
+banisters; she gazed down into black, mysterious depths wherein her
+father might be hidden. She was driven to all this partly by some real
+affection that had hitherto found no outlet, partly by a desire for
+adventure, but partly, also, by some force that was behind her and quite
+recognised by her. It was as though she said: "If I'm nice to my father
+and make friends with him, then you must promise that I shan't be
+frightened in the middle of the night, that the clock won't tick too
+loudly, that the blind won't flap, that it won't all be too dark and
+dreadful." She knew that she had made this compact.
+
+Then she had several little encounters with her father. She met him one
+day on the doorstep. He had come up whilst she was standing there.
+
+"Had a good walk?" he said nervously. She looked at him and laughed.
+Then he went hurriedly indoors.
+
+On the second occasion she had come down to be shown off at a luncheon
+party. She had been praised and petted, and then, in the hall, had run
+into her father's arms. He was in his top-hat, going down to his old
+city, looking, the nurse thought, "just like a monkey." But Nancy
+stayed, holding on to the leg of his trousers. Suddenly he bent down and
+whispered:
+
+"Were they nice to you in there?"
+
+"Yes. Why weren't you there?"
+
+"I was. I left. Got to go and work."
+
+"What sort of work?"
+
+"Making money for your clothes."
+
+"Take me too."
+
+"Would you like to come?"
+
+"Yes. Take me."
+
+He bent down and kissed her, but, suddenly hearing the voices of the
+luncheon-party, they separated like conspirators. He crept out of the
+house.
+
+After that there was no question of their alliance. The sort of
+affection that most children feel for old, ugly, and battered dolls,
+Nancy now felt for her father, and the warmth of this affection melted
+her dried, stubborn little soul, caught her up into visions, wonders,
+sympathies that had seemed surely denied to her for ever.
+
+"Now sit still, Miss Nancy, while I do up the back."
+
+"Oh, silly old clothes!" said Nancy.
+
+Then one day she declared,
+
+"I want to be dirty like those children in the garden."
+
+"And a nice state your mother would be in!" cried the amazed nurse.
+
+"Father wouldn't," Nancy thought. "Father wouldn't mind."
+
+There came at last the wonderful day when her father penetrated into the
+nursery. He arrived furtively, very much, it appeared, ashamed of
+himself and exceedingly shy of the nurse. He did not remain very long.
+He said very little; a funny picture he had made with his blue face, his
+black shiny hair, his fat little legs, and his anxious, rather stupid
+eyes. He sat rather awkwardly in a chair, with Nancy on his knee; he
+wrung his hair for things to say.
+
+The nurse left them for a moment alone together, and then Nancy
+whispered:
+
+"Daddy, let's go into the gardens together, you and me; just us--no
+silly old nurse--one mornin'." (She found the little "g" still a
+difficulty.)
+
+"Would you like that?" he whispered back. "I don't know I'd be much good
+in a garden."
+
+"Oh, you'll be all right," she asserted with confidence. "I want to
+dig."
+
+She'd made up her mind then to that. As Hannibal determined to cross the
+Alps, as Napoleon set his feet towards Moscow, so did Nancy Ross resolve
+that she would, in the company of her father, dig in the gardens. She
+stroked her father's hand, rubbed her head upon his sleeve; exactly as
+she would have caressed, had she been another little girl, the damaged
+features of her old rag doll. She was beginning, however, for the first
+time in her life, to love some one other than herself.
+
+He came, then, quite often to the nursery. He would slip in, stay a
+moment or two, and slip out again. He brought her presents and sweets
+which made her ill. And always in the presence of Mrs. Munty they
+appeared as strangers.
+
+The day came when Nancy achieved her desire--they had their great
+adventure.
+
+
+IV
+
+A fine summer morning came, and with it, in a bowler hat, at the nursery
+door, the hour being about eleven, Mr. Munty Boss.
+
+"I'll take Nancy this morning, nurse," he said, with a strange, choking
+little "cluck" in his throat. Now, the nurse, although, as I've said, of
+a shining and superficial appearance, was no fool. She had watched the
+development of the intrigue; her attitude to the master of the house was
+composed of pity, patronage, and a rather motherly interest. She did not
+see how her mistress could avoid her attitude: it was precisely the
+attitude that she would herself have adopted in that position, but,
+nevertheless, she was sorry for the man. "So out of it as he is!" Her
+maternal feelings were uppermost now. "It's nice of the child," she
+thought, "and him so ugly."
+
+"Of course, sir," she said.
+
+"We shall be back in about an hour." He attempted an easy indifference,
+was conscious that he failed, and blushed.
+
+He was aware that his wife was out.
+
+He carried off his prize.
+
+The gardens were very full on this lovely summer morning, but Nancy,
+without any embarrassment or confusion, took charge of the proceedings.
+
+"Where are we going?" he said, gazing rather helplessly about him,
+feeling extremely shy. There were so many bold children--so many bolder
+nurses; even the birds on the trees seemed to deride him, and a stumpy
+fox-terrier puppy stood with its four legs planted wide barking at him.
+
+"Over here," she said without a moment's hesitation, and she dragged him
+along. She halted at last in a corner of the gardens where was a large,
+overhanging chestnut and a wooden seat. Here the shouts and cries of the
+children came more dimly, the splashing of the fountain could be heard
+like a melodious refrain with a fascinating note of hesitation in it,
+and the deep green leaves of the tree made a cool, thick covering. "Very
+nice," he said, and sat down on the seat, tilting his hat back and
+feeling very happy indeed.
+
+Nancy also was very happy. There, in front of her, was the delightful
+pile of earth and sand untouched, it seemed. In an instant, regardless
+of her frock, she was down upon her knees.
+
+"I ought to have a spade," she said.
+
+"You'll make yourself dreadfully dirty, Nancy. Your beautiful frock----"
+But he had nevertheless the feeling that, after all, he had paid for it,
+and if he hadn't the right to see it ruined, who had?
+
+"Oh!" she murmured with the ecstasy of one who has abandoned herself,
+freely and with a glad heart, to all the vices. She dug her hands into
+the mire, she scattered it about her, she scooped and delved and
+excavated. It was her intention to build something in the nature of a
+high, high hill. She patted the surface of the sand, and behold! it was
+instantly a beautiful shape, very smooth and shining.
+
+It was hot, her hat fell back, her knees were thick with the good brown
+earth--that once lovely creation of Florice was stained and black.
+
+She then began softly, partly to herself, partly to her father, and
+partly to that other Friend who had helped her to these splendours, a
+song of joy and happiness. To the ordinary observer, it might have
+seemed merely a discordant noise proceeding from a little girl engaged
+in the making of mud pies. It was, in reality, as the chestnut tree, the
+birds, the fountain, the flowers, the various small children, even the
+very earth she played with, understood, a fine offering--thanksgiving
+and triumphal pæan to the God of Heaven, of the earth, and of the waters
+that were under the earth.
+
+Munty himself caught the refrain. He was recalled to a day when mud pies
+had been to him also things of surpassing joy. There was a day when, a
+naked and very ugly little boy, he had danced beside a mountain burn.
+
+He looked upon his daughter and his daughter looked upon him; they were
+friends for ever and ever. She rose; her fingers were so sticky with mud
+that they stood apart; down her right cheek ran a fine black smear; her
+knees were caked.
+
+"Good heavens!" he exclaimed. She flung herself upon him and kissed him;
+down his cheek also now a fine smear marked its way.
+
+He looked at his watch--one o'clock. "Good heavens!" he said again. "I
+say, old girl, we'll have to be going. Mother's got a party." He tried
+ineffectually to cleanse his daughter's face.
+
+"We'll come back," she cried, looking down triumphantly upon her
+handiwork.
+
+"We'll have to smuggle you up into the nursery somehow." But he added,
+"Yes, we'll come again."
+
+
+V
+
+They hurried home. Very furtively Munty Boss fitted his key into the
+Yale lock of his fine door. They slipped into the hall. There before
+them were Mrs. Ross and two of her most splendid friends. Very fine was
+Munty's wife in a tight-clinging frock of light blue, and wearing upon
+her head a hat like a waste-paper basket with a blue handle at the back
+of it; very fine were her two lady friends, clothed also in the tightest
+of garments, shining and lovely and precious.
+
+"Good God, Munty--and the child!"
+
+It was a terrible moment. Quite unconscious was Munty of the mud that
+stained his cheek, perfectly tranquil his daughter as she gazed with
+glowing happiness about her. A terrible moment for Mrs. Ross, an
+unforgettable one for her friends; nor were they likely to keep the
+humour of it entirely to themselves.
+
+"Down in a minute. Going up to clean." Smiling, he passed his wife. On
+the bottom step Nancy chanted:
+
+"We've had the most lovely mornin', daddy and I. We've been diggin'.
+We're goin' to dig again. Aren't I dirty, mummy?"
+
+Round the corner of the stairs in the shadow Nancy kissed her father
+again.
+
+"I'm never goin' to be clean any more," she announced. And you may
+fancy, if you please, that somewhere in the shadows of the house some
+one heard those words and chuckled with delighted pleasure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+'ENERY
+
+
+I
+
+Mrs. Slater was caretaker at No. 21 March. Square. Old Lady Cathcart
+lived with her middle-aged daughter at No. 21, and, during half the
+year, they were down at their place in Essex; during half the year,
+then, Mrs. Slater lived in the basement of No. 21 with her son Henry,
+aged six.
+
+Mrs. Slater was a widow; upon a certain afternoon, two and a half years
+ago, she had paused in her ironing and listened. "Something," she told
+her friends afterwards, "gave her a start--she couldn't say what nor
+how." Her ironing stayed, for that afternoon at least, where it was,
+because her husband, with his head in a pulp and his legs bent
+underneath him, was brought in on a stretcher, attended by two
+policemen. He had fallen from a piece of scaffolding into Piccadilly
+Circus, and was unable to afford any further assistance to the
+improvements demanded by the Pavilion Music Hall. Mrs. Slater, a stout,
+amiable woman, who had never been one to worry; Henry Slater, Senior,
+had been a bad husband, "what with women and the drink"--she had no
+intention of lamenting him now that he was dead; she had done for ever
+with men, and devoted the whole of her time and energy to providing
+bread and butter for herself and her son.
+
+She had been Lady Cathcart's caretaker for a year and a half, and had
+given every satisfaction. When the old lady came up to London Mrs.
+Slater went down to Essex and defended the country place from
+suffragettes and burglars. "I shouldn't care for it," said a lady
+friend, "all alone in the country with no cheerful noises nor human
+beings."
+
+"Doesn't frighten me, I give you my word, Mrs. East," said Mrs. Slater;
+"not that I don't prefer the town, mind you."
+
+It was, on the whole, a pleasant life, that carried with it a certain
+dignity. Nobody who had seen old Lady Cathcart drive in her open
+carriage, with her black bonnet, her coachman, and her fine, straight
+back, could deny that she was one of Our Oldest and Best--none of your
+mushroom families come from Lord knows where--it was a position of
+trust, and as such Mrs. Slater considered it. For the rest she loved her
+son Henry with more than a mother's love; he was as unlike his poor
+father, bless him, as any child could be. Henry, although you would
+never think it to look at him, was not quite like other children; he had
+been, from his birth, a "little queer, bless his heart," and Mrs. Slater
+attributed this to the fact that three weeks before the boy's birth,
+Horny Slater, Senior, had, in a fine frenzy of inebriation, hit her over
+the head with a chair. "Dead drunk, 'e was, and never a thought to the
+child coming, ''Enery,' I said to him, 'it's the child you're hitting as
+well as me'; but 'e was too far gone, poor soul, to take a thought."
+
+Henry was a fine, robust child, with rosy cheeks and a sturdy, thick-set
+body. He had large blue eyes and a happy, pleasant smile, but, although
+he was six years of age, he could hardly talk at all, and liked to spend
+the days twirling pieces of string round and round or looking into the
+fire. His eyes were unlike the eyes of other children, and in their blue
+depths there lurked strange apprehensions, strange anticipations,
+strange remembrances. He had never, from the day of his birth, been
+known to cry. When he was frightened or distressed the colour would pass
+slowly from his cheeks, and strange little gasping breaths would come
+from him; his body would stiffen and his hands clench. If he was angry
+the colour in his face would darken and his eyes half close, and it was
+then that he did, indeed, seem in the possession of some disastrous
+thraldom--but he was angry very seldom, and only with certain people;
+for the most part he was a happy child, "as quiet as a mouse." He was
+unusual, too, in that he was a very cleanly child, and loved to be
+washed, and took the greatest care of his clothes. He was very
+affectionate, fond of almost every one, and passionately devoted to his
+mother.
+
+Mrs. Slater was a woman with very little imagination. She never
+speculated on "how different things would be if they were different,"
+nor did she sigh after riches, nor possessions, nor any of the goods
+Fate bestows upon her favourites. She would, most certainly, have been
+less fond of Henry had he been more like other children, and his
+dependence upon her gave her something of the feeling that very rich
+ladies have for very small dogs. She was too, in a way, proud. "Never
+been able to talk, nor never will, they tell me, the lamb," she would
+assure her friends, "but as gentle and as quiet!"
+
+She would sit, sometimes, in the evening before the fire and think of
+the old noisy, tiresome days when Henry, Senior, would beat her black
+and blue, and would feel that her life had indeed fallen into pleasant
+places.
+
+There was nothing whatever in the house, all silent about her and filled
+with shrouded furniture, that could alarm her. "Ghosts!" she would cry.
+"You show me one, that's all. I'll give you ghosts!"
+
+Her digestion was excellent, her sleep undisturbed by conscience or
+creditors. She was a happy woman.
+
+Henry loved March Square. There was a window in an upstairs passage from
+behind whose glass he could gaze at the passing world. The Passing
+World!... the shrouded house behind him. One was as alive, as bustling,
+as demonstrative to him as the other, but between the two there was, for
+him, no communication. His attitude to the Square and the people in it
+was that he knew more about them than anyone else did; his attitude to
+the House, that he knew nothing at all compared with what "They" knew.
+In the Square he could see through the lot of them, so superficial were
+they all; in the House he could only wait, with fingers on lip, for the
+next revelation that they might vouchsafe to him.
+
+Doors were, for the most part, locked, yet there were many days when
+fires were lit because the house was an old one, and damp Lady Cathcart
+had a horror of.
+
+Always for young Henry the house wore its buried and abandoned air. He
+was never to see it when the human beings in it would count more than
+its furniture, and the human life in it more than the house itself. He
+had come, a year and a half ago, into the very place that his dreams
+had, from the beginning, built for him. Those large, high rooms with the
+shining floors, the hooded furniture, the windows gaping without their
+curtains, the shadows and broad squares of light, the little whispers
+and rattles that doors and cupboards gave, the swirl of the wind as it
+sprang released from corners and crevices, the lisp of some whisper,
+"I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming!" that, nevertheless, again and
+again defeated expectation. How could he but enjoy the fine field of
+affection that these provided for him?
+
+His mother watched him with maternal pride. "He's _that_ contented!" she
+would say. "Any other child would plague your life away, but 'Enery----"
+
+It was part of Henry's unusual mind that he wondered at nothing. He
+remained in constant expectation, but whatever was to come to him it
+would not bring surprise with it. He was in a world where anything might
+happen. In all the house his favourite room was the high, thin
+drawing-room with an old gold mirror at one end of it and a piano
+muffled in brown holland. The mirror caught the piano with its peaked
+inquiring shape, that, in its inflection, looked so much more tremendous
+and ominous than it did in plain reality. Through the mirror the piano
+looked as though it might do anything, and to Henry, who knew nothing
+about pianos, it was responsible for almost everything that occurred in
+the house.
+
+The windows of the room gave a fine display of the gardens, the
+children, the carriages, and the distant houses, but it was when the
+Square was empty that Henry liked best to gaze down into it, because
+then the empty house and the empty square prepared themselves together
+for some tremendous occurrence. Whenever such an interval of silence
+struck across the noise and traffic of the day, it seemed that all the
+world screwed itself up for the next event. "One--two--three." But the
+crisis never came. The noise returned again, people laughed and shouted,
+bells rang and motors screamed. Nevertheless, one day something would
+surely happen.
+
+The house was full of company, and the boy would, sometimes, have
+yielded to the Fear that was never far away, had it not been for some
+one whom he had known from the very beginning of everything, some one
+who was as real as his mother, some one who was more powerful than
+anything or any one in the house, and kinder, far, far kinder.
+
+Often when Mrs. Slater would wonder of what her son was thinking as he
+sat twisting string round and round in front of the fire, he would be
+aware of his Friend in the shadow of the light, watching gravely, in the
+cheerful room, having beneath his hands all the powers, good and evil,
+of the house. Just as Henry pictured quite clearly to himself other
+occupants of the house--some one with taloned claws behind the piano,
+another with black-hooded eyes and a peaked cap in the shadows of an
+upstairs passage, another brown, shrivelled and naked, who dwelt in a
+cupboard in one of the empty bedrooms so, too, he could see his Friend,
+vast and shadowy, with a flowing beard and eyes that were kind and
+shining.
+
+Often he had felt the pressure of his hand, had heard his reassuring
+whisper in his ears, had known the touch of his lips upon his forehead.
+No harm could come to him whilst his Friend was in the house--and his
+Friend was always there.
+
+He went always with his mother into the streets when she did her
+shopping or simply took the air. It was natural that on these occasions,
+he should be more frightened than during his hours in the house. In the
+first place his Friend did not accompany him on these out-of-door
+excursions, and his mother was not nearly so strong a protector as his
+Friend.
+
+Then he was disturbed by the people who pressed and pushed about
+him--he had a sense that they were all like birds with flapping wings
+and strange cries, rushing down upon him--the colours and confusion of
+the shops bewildered him. There was too much here for him properly to
+understand; he had enough to do with the piano, the mirror, the shadowed
+passages, the staring windows.
+
+But in the Square he was happy again. Mrs. Slater never ventured into
+the gardens; they were for her superiors, and she complacently accepted
+a world in which things were so ordered as the only world possible. But
+there was plenty of life outside the gardens.
+
+There were, on the different days of the week, the various musicians,
+and Henry was friendly with them all. He delighted in music; as he stood
+there, listening to the barrel-organ, the ideas, pictures, dreams, flew
+like flocks of beautiful birds through his brain, fleet, and always just
+beyond his reach, so that he could catch nothing, but would nod his head
+and would hope that the tune would be repeated, because next time he
+might, perhaps, be more fortunate.
+
+The Major, who played the harp on Saturdays, was a friend of Mrs.
+Slater. "Nice little feller, that of yours, mum," he would say. "'Ad
+one meself once."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Yes, sure enough.... Nice day.... Would you believe it, this is the
+only London square left for us to play in?... 'Tis, indeed. Cruel shame,
+I call it; life's 'ard.... You're right, mum, it is. Well, good-day."
+
+Mrs. Slater looked after him affectionately. "Pore feller; and yet I
+dare say he makes a pretty hit of it if all was known."
+
+Henry sighed. The birds were flown again. He was left with the
+blue-flecked sky and the grey houses that stood around the gardens like
+beasts about a water-pool. The sun (a red disc) peered over their
+shoulders. He went, with his mother within doors. Instantly on his
+entrance the house began to rustle and whisper.
+
+
+II
+
+Mrs. Slater, although an amiable and kind-hearted human being who
+believed with confident superstition in a God of other people's making,
+did not, on the whole, welcome her lady friends with much cordiality. It
+was not, as she often explained, as though she had her own house into
+which to ask them. Her motto was, "Friendly with All, Familiar with
+None," and to this she very faithfully held. But in her heart there was
+reason enough for this caution; there had been days--yes, and nights
+too--when, during her lamented husband's lifetime, she had "taken a
+drop," taken it, obviously enough, as a comfort, and a solace when
+things were going very hard with her, and "'Enery preferrin' 'er to be
+jolly 'erself to keep 'im company." She had protested, but Fate and
+Henry had been too strong for her. "She had fallen into the habit!"
+Then, when No. 21 had come under her care, she had put it all sternly
+behind her, but one did not know how weak one might be, and a kindly
+friend might with her persuasion----
+
+Therefore did Mrs. Slater avoid her kindly friends. There was, however,
+one friend who was not so readily to be avoided; that was Mrs. Carter.
+Mrs. Carter also was a widow, or rather, to speak the direct truth, had
+discovered one morning, twenty years ago, that Mr. Carter "was gone"; he
+had never returned. Those who knew Mrs. Carter intimately said that, on
+the whole, "things bein' as they was," his departure was not entirely to
+be wondered at. Mrs. Carter had a temper of her own, and nothing
+inflamed it so much as a drop of whisky, and there was nothing in the
+world she liked so much as "a drop."
+
+To meet her casually, you would judge her nothing less than the most
+amiable of womankind--a large, stout, jolly woman, with a face like a
+rose, and a quantity of black hair. At her best, in her fine Sunday
+clothes, she was a superb figure, and wore round her neck a rope of sham
+pearls that would have done credit to a sham countess. During the week,
+however, she slipped, on occasion, into "déshabille," and then she
+appeared not quite so attractive. No one knew the exact nature of her
+profession. She did a bit of "char"; she had at one time a little
+sweetshop, where she sold sweets, the _Police Budget_, and--although
+this was revealed only to her best friends--indecent photographs. It may
+be that the police discovered some of the sources of her income; at any
+rate the sweetshop was suddenly, one morning, abandoned. Her movements
+in everything were sudden; it was quite suddenly that she took a fancy
+to Mrs. Slater. She met her at a friend's, and at once, so she told Mrs.
+Slater, "I liked yer, just as though I'd met yer before. But I'm like
+that. Sudden or not at all is _my_ way, and not a bad way either!"
+
+Mrs. Slater could not be said to be everything that was affectionate in
+return. She distrusted Mrs. Carter, disliked her brilliant colouring and
+her fluent experiences, felt shy before her rollicking suggestiveness,
+and timid at her innuendoes. For a considerable time she held her
+defences against the insidious attack. Then there came a day when Mrs.
+Carter burst into reluctant but passionate tears, asserting that Life
+and Mr. Carter had been, from the beginning, against her; that she had
+committed, indeed, acts of folly in the past, but only when driven
+desperately against a wall; that she bore no grudge against any one
+alive, but loved all humanity; that she was going to do her best to be a
+better woman, but couldn't really hope to arrive at any satisfactory
+improvement without Mrs. Slater's assistance; that Mrs. Slater, indeed,
+had shown her a New Way, a New Light, a New Path.
+
+Mrs. Slater, humble woman, had no illusions as to her own importance in
+the scheme of things; nothing touched her so surely as an appeal to her
+strength of character. She received Mrs. Carter with open arms,
+suggested that they should read the Bible together on Sunday mornings,
+and go, side by side, to St. Matthew's on Sunday evenings. There was
+nothing like a study of the "Holy Word" for "defeating the bottle," and
+there was nothing like "defeating the bottle" for getting back one's
+strength and firmness of character.
+
+It was along these lines that Mrs. Slater proposed to conduct Mrs.
+Carter.
+
+Now unfortunately Henry took an instant and truly savage dislike to his
+mother's new friend. He had been always, of course, "odd" in his
+feelings about people, but never was he "odder" than he was with Mrs.
+Carter. "Little lamb," she said, when she saw him for the first time. "I
+envy you that child, Mrs. Slater, I do indeed. Backwards 'e may be, but
+'is being dependent, as you may say, touches the 'eart. Little lamb!"
+
+She tried to embrace him; she offered him sweets. He shuddered at her
+approach, and his face was instantly grey, like a pool the moment after
+the sun's setting. Had he been himself able to put into words his
+sensations, he would have said that the sight of Mrs. Carter assured
+him, quite definitely, that something horrible would soon occur.
+
+The house upon whose atmosphere he so depended instantly darkened; his
+Friend was gone, not because he was no longer able to see him (his
+consciousness of him did not depend at all upon any visual assurance),
+but because there was now, Henry was perfectly assured, no chance
+whatever of his suddenly appearing. And, on the other hand, those
+Others--the one with the taloned claws behind the piano, the one with
+the black-hooded eyes--were stronger, more threatening, more dominating.
+But, beyond her influence on the house, Mrs. Carter, in her own physical
+and actual presence, tortured Henry. When she was in the room, Henry
+suffered agony. He would creep away were he allowed, and, if that were
+not possible, then he would retreat into the most distant corner and
+watch. If he were in the room his eyes never left Mrs. Carter for a
+moment, and it was this brooding gaze more than his disapproval that
+irritated her. "You never can tell with poor little dears when they're
+'queer' what fancies they'll take. Why, he quite seems to dislike me,
+Mrs. Slater!"
+
+Mrs. Slater could venture no denial; indeed, Henry's attitude aroused
+once again in her mind her earlier suspicions. She had all the
+reverence of her class for her son's "oddness." He knew more than
+ordinary mortal folk, and could see farther; he saw beyond Mrs. Carter's
+red cheeks and shining black hair, and the fact that he was, as a rule,
+tractable to cheerful kindness, made his rejection the more remarkable.
+But it might, nevertheless, be that the black things in Mrs. Carter's
+past were the marks impressed upon Henry's sensitive intelligence; and
+that he had not, as yet, perceived the new Mrs. Carter growing in grace
+now day by day.
+
+"'E'll get over 'is fancy, bless 'is 'eart." Mrs. Slater pursued then
+her work of redemption.
+
+
+III
+
+On a certain evening in November, Mrs. Carter, coming in to see her
+friend, invited sympathy for a very bad cold.
+
+"Drippin' and runnin' at the nose I've been all day, my dear. Awake all
+night I was with it, and 'tain't often that I've one, but when I do it's
+somethin' cruel." It seemed to be better this evening, Mrs. Slater
+thought, but when she congratulated her friend on this, Mrs. Carter,
+shaking her head, remarked that it had left the nose and travelled into
+the throat and ears. "Once it's earache, and I'm done," she said.
+Horrible pictures she drew of this earache, and it presently became
+clear that Mrs. Carter was in perfect terror of a night made sleepless
+with pain. Once, it seemed, had Mrs. Carter tried to commit suicide by
+hanging herself to a nail in a door, so maddening had the torture been.
+Luckily (Mrs. Carter thanked Heaven) the nail had been dragged from the
+door by her weight--"not that I was anything very 'eavy, you
+understand." Finally, it appeared that only one thing in the world could
+be relied upon to stay the fiend.
+
+Mrs. Carter produced from her pocket a bottle of whisky.
+
+Upon that it followed that, since her reformation, Mrs. Carter had come
+to loathe the very smell of whisky, and as for the taste of it! But
+rather than be driven by flaming agony down the long stony passages of a
+sleepless night--anything.
+
+It was here, of course, that Mrs. Slater should have protested, but, in
+her heart, she was afraid of her friend, and afraid of herself. Mrs.
+Carter's company had, of late, been pleasant to her. She had been
+strengthened in her own resolves towards a fine life by the sight of
+Mrs. Carter's struggle in that direction, and that good woman's genial
+amiability (when it was so obvious from her appearance that she could be
+far otherwise) flattered Mrs. Slater's sense of power. No, she could not
+now bear to let Mrs. Carter go.
+
+She said, therefore, nothing to her friend about the whisky, and on that
+evening Mrs. Carter did take the "veriest sip." But the cold
+continued--it continued in a marvellous and terrible manner. It seemed
+"to 'ave taken right 'old of 'er system."
+
+After a few evenings it was part of the ceremonies that the bottle
+should be produced; the kettle was boiling happily on the fire, there
+was lemon, there was a lump of sugar.... On a certain wet and depressing
+evening Mrs. Slater herself had a glass "just to see that she didn't get
+a cold like Mrs. Carter's."
+
+
+IV
+
+Henry's bed-time was somewhere between the hours of eight and nine, but
+his mother did not care to leave Mrs. Carter (dear friend, though she
+was) quite alone downstairs with the bottom half of the house unguarded
+(although, of course, the doors were locked), therefore, Mrs. Carter
+came upstairs with her friend to see the little fellow put to bed; "and
+a hangel he looks, if ever I see one," declared the lady
+enthusiastically.
+
+When the two were gone and the house was still, Henry would sit up in
+bed and listen; then, moving quietly, he would creep out and listen
+again.
+
+There, in the passage, it seemed to him that he could hear the whole
+house talking--first one sound and then another would come, the wheeze
+of some straining floor, the creak of some whispering board, the shudder
+of a door. "Look out! Look out! Look out!" and then, above that murmur,
+some louder voice: "Watch! there's danger in the place!" Then, shivering
+with cold and his sense of evil, he would creep down into a lower
+passage and stand listening again; now the voices of the house were
+deafening, rising on every side of him, like the running of little
+streams suddenly heard on the turning of the corner of a hill. The dim
+light shrouded with fantasy the walls; along the wide passage and
+cabinets, high china jars, the hollow scoop of the window at the
+far-distant end, were all alive and moving. And, in strange
+contradiction to the moving voices within the house, came the blurred
+echo of the London life, whirring, buzzing, like a cloud of gnats at the
+window-pane. "Look out! Look out! Look out!" the house cried, and Henry,
+with chattering teeth, was on guard.
+
+There came an evening when standing thus, shivering in his little shirt,
+he was aware that the terror, so long anticipated, was upon him. It
+seemed to him, on this evening, that the house was suddenly still; it
+was as though all the sounds, as of running water, that passed up and
+down the rooms and passages, were, in a flashing second, frozen. The
+house was holding its breath.
+
+He had to wait for a breathless, agonising interval before he heard the
+next sound, very faint and stifled breathing coming up to him out of the
+darkness in little uncertain gusts. He heard the breathings pause, then
+recommence again in quicker and louder succession. Henry, stirred
+simply, perhaps, by the terror of his anticipation, moved back into the
+darker shadows in the nook of the cabinet, and stayed there with his
+shirt pressed against his little trembling knees.
+
+Then followed, after a long time, a half yellow circle of light that
+touched the top steps of the stairs and a square of the wall; behind the
+light was the stealthy figure of Mrs. Carter. She stood there for a
+moment, one hand with a candle raised, the other pressed against her
+breast; from one finger of this hand a bunch of heavy keys dangled. She
+stood there, with her wide, staring eyes, like glass in the
+candle-light, staring about her, her red cheeks rising and falling with
+her agitation, her body seeming enormous, her shadow on the wall huge in
+the flickering light. At the sight of his enemy Henry's terror was so
+frantic that his hands beat with little spasmodic movements against the
+wall.
+
+He did not _see_ Mrs. Carter at all, but he saw rather the movement
+through the air and darkness of the house of something that would bring
+down upon him the full naked force of the Terror that he had all his
+life anticipated. He had always known that the awful hour would arrive
+when the Terror would grip him; again and again he had seen its eyes,
+felt its breath, heard its movements, and these movements had been
+forewarnings of some future day. That day had arrived.
+
+There was only one thing that he could do; his Friend alone in all the
+world could help him. With his soul dizzy and faint from fear, he prayed
+for his Friend; had he been less frightened he would have screamed aloud
+for him to come and help him.
+
+The boy's breath came hot into his throat and stuck there, and his heart
+beat like a high, unresting hammer.
+
+Mrs. Carter, with the candle raised to throw light in front of her,
+moved forward very cautiously and softly. She passed down the passage,
+and then paused very near to the boy. She looked at the keys, and stole
+like some heavy, stealthy animal to the door of the long drawing-room.
+He watched her as she tried one key after another, making little
+dissatisfied noises as they refused to fit; then at last one turned the
+lock and she pushed back the door.
+
+It was certainly impossible for him, in the dim world of his mind, to
+realise what it was that she intended to do, but he knew, through some
+strange channel of knowledge, that his mother was concerned in this, and
+that something more than the immediate peril of himself was involved.
+He had also, lost in the dim mazes of his mind, a consciousness that
+there _were_ treasures in the house, and that his mother was placed
+there to guard them, and even that he himself shared her duty.
+
+It did not come to him that Mrs. Carter was in pursuit of these
+treasures, but he _did_ realise that her presence there amongst them
+brought peril to his mother. Moved then by some desperate urgency which
+had at its heart his sense that to be left alone in the black passage
+was worse than the actual lighted vision of his Terror, he crept with
+trembling knees across the passage and through the door.
+
+Inside the room he saw that she had laid the candle upon the piano, and
+was bending over a drawer, trying again to fit a key. He stood in the
+doorway, a tiny figure, very, very cold, all his soul in his silent
+appeal for some help. His Friend _must_ come. He was somewhere there in
+the house. "Come! Help me!" The candle suddenly flared into a finger of
+light that flung the room into vision. Mrs. Carter, startled, raised
+herself, and at that same moment Henry gave a cry, a weak little
+trembling sound.
+
+She turned and saw the boy; as their eyes met he felt the Terror
+rushing upon him. He flung a last desperate appeal for help, staring at
+her as though his eyes would never let her go, and she, finding him so
+unexpectedly, could only gape. In their silent gaze at one another, in
+the glassy stare of Mrs. Carter and the trembling, flickering one of
+Henry there was more than any ordinary challenge could have conveyed.
+Mrs. Carter must have felt at the first immediate confrontation of the
+strange little figure that her feet were on the very edge of some most
+desperate precipice. The long room and the passages beyond must have
+quivered. At that very first moment, with some stir, some hinted
+approach, Henry called, with the desperate summoning of all his ghostly
+world, upon his gods. They came....
+
+In her eyes he saw suddenly something else than vague terror. He saw
+recognition. He felt himself a rushing, heartening comfort; he knew that
+his Friend had somehow come, that he was no longer alone.
+
+But Mrs. Carter's eyes were staring beyond him, over him, into the black
+passage. Her eyes seemed to grow as though the terror in them was
+pushing them out beyond their lids; her breath, came in sharp, tearing
+gasps. The keys with a clang dropped from her hand.
+
+"Oh, God! Oh, God!" she whispered. He did not turn his head to grasp
+what it was that she saw in the passage. The terror had been transferred
+from himself to her.
+
+The colour in her cheeks went out, leaving her as though her face were
+suddenly shadowed by some overhanging shape.
+
+Her eyes never moved nor faltered from the dark into whose heart she
+gazed. Then, there was a strangled, gasping cry, and she sank down,
+first onto her knees, then in a white faint, her eyes still staring, lay
+huddled on the floor.
+
+Henry felt his Friend's hand on his shoulder.
+
+Meanwhile, down in the kitchen, the fire had sunk into grey ashes, and
+Mrs. Slater was lying back in her chair, her head back, snoring thickly;
+an empty glass had tumbled across the table, and a few drops from it had
+dribbled over on to the tablecloth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+BARBARA FLINT
+
+
+I
+
+Barbara Flint was a little girl, aged seven, who lived with her parents
+at No. 36 March Square. Her brother and sister, Master Anthony and Miss
+Misabel Flint, were years and years older, so you must understand that
+she led rather a solitary life. She was a child with very pale flaxen
+hair, very pale blue eyes, very pale cheeks--she looked like a china
+doll who had been left by a careless mistress out in the rain. She was a
+very sensitive child, cried at the least provocation, very affectionate,
+too, and ready to imagine that people didn't like her.
+
+Mr. Flint was a stout, elderly gentleman, whose favourite pursuit was to
+read the newspapers in his club, and to inveigh against the Liberals. He
+was pale and pasty, and suffered from indigestion. Mrs. Flint was tall,
+thin and severe, and a great helper at St. Matthew's, the church round
+the corner. She gave up all her time to church work and the care of the
+poor, and it wasn't her fault that the poor hated her. Between the
+Scylla of politics and the Charybdis of religion there was very little
+left for poor Barbara; she faded away under the care of an elderly
+governess who suffered from a perfect cascade of ill-fated love affairs;
+it seemed that gentlemen were always "playing with her feelings." But in
+all probability a too vivid imagination led her astray in this matter;
+at any rate, she cried so often during Barbara's lessons that the title
+of the lesson-book, "Reading without Tears," was sadly belied. It might
+be expected that, under these unfavourable circumstances, Barbara was
+growing into a depressed and melancholy childhood.
+
+Barbara, happily, was saved by her imagination. Surely nothing quite
+like Barbara's imagination had ever been seen before, because it came to
+her, outside inheritance, outside environment, outside observation. She
+had it altogether, in spite of Flints past and present. But, perhaps,
+not altogether in spite of March Square. It would be difficult to say
+how deeply the fountain, the almond tree, the green, flat shining grass
+had stung her intuition; but stung it only, not created it--the thing
+was there from the beginning of all time. She talked, at first to
+nurses, servants, her mother, about the things that she knew; about her
+Friend who often came to see her, who was there so many times--there in
+the room with her when they couldn't catch a glimpse of him; about the
+days and nights when she was away anywhere, up in the sky, out on the
+air, deep in the sea, about all the other experiences that she
+remembered but was now rapidly losing consciousness of. She talked, at
+first easily, naturally, and inviting, as it were, return confidences.
+Then, quite suddenly, she realised that she simply wasn't believed, that
+she was considered a wicked little girl "for making things up so," that
+there was no hope at all for her unless she abandoned her "lying ways."
+
+The shock of this discovery flung her straight back upon herself; if
+they refused to believe these things, then there was nothing to be done.
+But for herself their incredulity should not stop her. She became a very
+quiet little girl--what her nurse called "brooding." This incredulity
+of theirs drove them all instantly into a hostile camp, and the
+affection that she had been longing to lavish upon them must now be
+reserved for other, and, she could not help feeling, wiser persons. This
+division of herself from the immediate world hurt her very much. From a
+very early age, indeed, we need reassurance as to the necessity for our
+existence. Barbara simply did not seem to be wanted.
+
+But still worse: now that her belief in certain things had been
+challenged, she herself began to question them. Was it true, possibly,
+when a flaming sunset struck a sword across the Square and caught the
+fountain, slashing it into a million glittering fragments, that that was
+all that occurred? Such a thing had been for Barbara simply a door into
+her earlier world. See the fountain--well, you have been tested; you are
+still simple enough to go back into the real world. But was Barbara
+simple enough? She was seven; it is just about then that we begin, under
+the guard of nurses carefully chosen for us by our parents, to drop our
+simplicity. It must, of course, be so, or the world would be all
+dreamers, and then there would be no commerce.
+
+Barbara knew nothing of commerce, but she did know that she was
+unhappy, that her dolls gave her no happiness, and that her Friend did
+not come now so often to see her. She was, I am afraid, in character a
+"Hopper." She must be affectionate, she must demand affection of others,
+and will they not give it her, then must they simulate it. The tragedy
+of it all was perhaps, that Barbara had not herself that coloured
+vitality in her that would prepare other people to be fond of her. The
+world is divided between those who place affection about, now here, now
+there, and those whose souls lie, like drawers, unawares, but ready for
+the affection to be laid there.
+
+Barbara could not "place" it about; she had neither optimism nor a sense
+of humour sufficient. But she wanted it--wanted it terribly. If she were
+not to be allowed to indulge her imagination, then must she, all the
+more, love some one with fervour: the two things were interdependent.
+She surveyed her world with an eye to this possible loving. There was
+her governess, who had been with her for a year now, tearful, bony,
+using Barbara as a means and never as an end. Barbara did not love
+her--how could she? Moreover, there were other physical things: the
+lean, shining marble of Miss Letts's long fingers, the dry thinness of
+her hair, the way that the tip of her nose would be suddenly red, and
+then, like a blown-out candle, dull white again. Fingers and noses are
+not the only agents in the human affections, but they have most
+certainly something to do with them. Moreover, Miss Letts was too busily
+engaged with the survey of her relations, with now this gentleman, now
+that, to pay much attention to Barbara. She dismissed her as "a queer
+little thing." There were in Miss Letts's world "queer things" and
+"things not queer." The division was patent to anybody.
+
+Barbara's father and mother were also surveyed. Here Barbara was baffled
+by the determination on the part of both of them that she should talk,
+should think, should dream about all the things concerning which she
+could not talk, think nor dream. "How to grow up into a nice little
+girl," "How to pray to God," "How never to tell lies," "How to keep
+one's clothes clean,"--these things did not interest Barbara in the
+least; but had she been given love with them she might have paid some
+attention. But a too rigidly defined politics, a too rigidly defined
+religion find love a poor, loose, sentimental thing--very rightly so,
+perhaps. Mrs. Flint was afraid that Barbara was a "silly little girl."
+
+"I hope, Miss Letts, that she no longer talks about her silly fancies."
+
+"She has said nothing to me in that respect for a considerable period,
+Mrs. Flint."
+
+"All very young children have fancies, but such things are dangerous
+when they grow older."
+
+"I agree with you."
+
+Nevertheless the fountain continued to flash in the sun, and births,
+deaths, weddings, love and hate continued to play their part in March
+Square.
+
+
+II
+
+Barbara, groping about in the desolation of having no one to grope with
+her, discovered that her Friend came now less frequently to see her. She
+was even beginning to wonder whether he had ever really come at all. She
+had perhaps imagined him just as on occasion she would imagine her doll,
+Jane, the Queen of England, or her afternoon tea the most wonderful
+meal, with sausages, blackberry jam and chocolates. Young though, she
+was, she was able to realise that this imagination of hers was _capable
+de tout_, and that every one older than herself said that it was wicked;
+therefore was her Friend, perhaps, wicked also.
+
+And yet, if the dark curtains that veiled the nursery windows at night,
+if the glimmering shape of the picture-frames, if the square black sides
+of the dolls' house were real, real also was the figure of her Friend,
+real his arousal in her of all the memories of the old days before she
+was Barbara Flint at all--real, too, his love, his care, his protection;
+as real, yes, as Miss Letts's bony figure. It was all very puzzling. But
+he did not come now as in the old days.
+
+Barbara played very often in the gardens in the middle of the Square,
+but because she was a timid little girl she did not make many friends.
+She knew many of the other children who played there, and sometimes she
+shared in their games; but her sensitive feelings were so easily hurt,
+she frequently retired in tears. Every day on going into the garden she
+looked about her, hoping that she would find before she left it again
+some one whom it would be possible to worship. She tried on several
+occasions to erect altars, but our English temperament is against
+public display, and she was misunderstood.
+
+Then, quite suddenly, as though she had sprung out of the fountain, Mary
+Adams was there. Mary Adams was aged nine, and her difference from
+Barbara Flint was that, whereas Barbara craved for affection, she craved
+for attention: the two demands can be easily confused. Mary Adams was
+the only child of an aged philosopher, Mr. Adams, who, contrary to all
+that philosophy teaches, had married a young wife. The young wife,
+pleased that Mary was so unlike her father, made much of her, and Mary
+was delighted to be made much of. She was a little girl with flaxen
+hair, blue eyes, and a fine pink-and-white colouring. In a few years'
+time she will be so sure of the attention that her appearance is winning
+for her that she will make no effort to secure adherents, but just now
+she is not sufficiently confident--she must take trouble. She took
+trouble with Barbara.
+
+Sitting neatly upon a seat, Mary watched rude little boys throw sidelong
+glances in her direction. Her long black legs were quivering with the
+perception of their interest, even though her eyes were haughtily
+indifferent. It was then that Barbara, with Miss Letts, an absent-minded
+companion, came and sat by her side. Barbara and Mary had met at a
+party--not quite on equal terms, because nine to seven is as sixty to
+thirty--but they had played hide-and-seek together, and had, by chance,
+hidden in the same cupboard.
+
+The little boys had moved away, and Mary Adams's legs dropped, suddenly,
+their tension.
+
+"I'm going to a party to-night," Mary said, with a studied indifference.
+
+Miss Letts knew of Mary's parents, and that, socially, they were "all
+right"--a little more "all right," were we to be honest, than Mr. and
+Mrs. Flint. She said, therefore:
+
+"Are you, dear? That will be nice for you."
+
+Instantly Barbara was trembling with excitement. She knew that the
+remark had been made to her and not at all to Miss Letts. Barbara
+entered once again, and instantly, upon the field of the passions. Here
+she was fated by her temperament to be in all cases a miserable victim,
+because panic, whether she were accepted or rejected by the object of
+her devotion, reduced her to incoherent foolishness; she could only be
+foolish now, and, although her heart beat like a leaping animal inside
+her, allowed Miss Letts to carry on the conversation.
+
+But Miss Letts's wandering eye hurt Mary's pride. She was not really
+interested in her, and once Mary had come to that conclusion about any
+one, complete, utter oblivion enveloped them. She perceived, however,
+Barbara's agitation, and at that, flattered and appeased, she was
+amiable again. There followed between the two a strangled and
+disconnected conversation.
+
+Mary began:
+
+"I've got four dolls at home."
+
+"Have you?" breathlessly from Barbara. By such slow accuracies as these
+are we conveyed, all our poor mortal days, from realism to romance, and
+with a shocking precipitance are we afterwards flung back, out of
+romance into realism, our natural home, again.
+
+"Yes--four dolls I have. My mother will give me another if I ask her.
+Would your mother?"
+
+"Yes," said Barbara, untruthfully.
+
+"That's my governess, Miss Marsh, there, with the green hat, that is.
+I've had her two months."
+
+"Yes," said Barbara, gazing with adoring eyes.
+
+"She's going away next week. There's another coming. I can do sums, can
+you?"
+
+"Yes," again from Barbara.
+
+"I can do up to twice-sixty-three. I'm nine. Miss Marsh says I'm
+clever."
+
+"I'm seven," said Barbara.
+
+"I could read when I was seven--long, long words. Can you read?"
+
+At this moment there arrived the green-hatted Miss Marsh, a plump,
+optimistic person, to whom Miss Letts was gloomily patronising. Miss
+Letts always distrusted stoutness in another; it looked like deliberate
+insult. Mary Adams was conveyed away; Barbara was bereft of her glory.
+
+But, rather, on that instant that Mary Adams vanished did she become
+glorified. Barbara had been too absurdly agitated to transform on to the
+mirror of her brain Mary's appearance. In all the dim-coloured splendour
+of flame and mist was Mary now enwrapped, with every step that Barbara
+took towards her home did the splendour grow.
+
+
+III
+
+Then followed an invitation to tea from Mary's mother. Barbara,
+preparing for the event, suffered her hair to be brushed, choked with
+strange half-sweet, half-terrible suffocation that comes from
+anticipated glories: half-sweet because things will, at their worst, be
+wonderful; half-terrible because we know that they will not be so good
+as we hope.
+
+Barbara, washed paler than ever, in a white frock with pink bows, was
+conducted by Miss Letts. She choked with terror in the strange hall,
+where she was received with great splendour by Mary. The schoolroom was
+large and fine and bright, finer far than Barbara's room, swamped by the
+waters of religion and politics. Barbara could only gulp and gulp, and
+feel still at her throat that half-sweet, half-terrible suffocation.
+Within her little body her heart, so huge and violent, was pounding.
+
+"A very nice room indeed," said Miss Letts, more friendly now to the
+optimist because she was leaving in a day or two, and could not,
+therefore, at the moment be considered a success. Her failure balanced
+her plumpness.
+
+Here, at any rate, was the beginning of a great friendship between
+Barbara Flint and Mary Adams. The character of Mary Adams was admittedly
+a difficult one to explore; her mother, a cloud of nurses and a company
+of governesses had been baffled completely by its dark caverns and
+recesses. One clue, beyond question, was selfishness; but this quality,
+by the very obviousness of it, may tempt us to believe that that is all.
+It may account, when we are displeased, for so much. It accounted for a
+great deal with Mary--but not all. She had, I believe, a quite genuine
+affection for Barbara, nothing very disturbing, that could rival the
+question as to whether she would receive a second helping of pudding or
+no, or whether she looked better in blue or pink. Nevertheless, the
+affection was there. During several months she considered Barbara more
+than she had ever considered any one in her life before. At that first
+tea party she was aware, perhaps, that Barbara's proffered devotion was
+for complete and absolute self-sacrifice, something that her vanity
+would not often find to feed it. There was, too, no question of
+comparison between them.
+
+Even when Barbara grew to be nine she would be a poor thing beside the
+lusty self-confidence of Mary Adams--and this was quite as it should be.
+All that Barbara wanted was some one upon whom she might pour her
+devotion, and one of the things that Mary wanted was some one who would
+spend it upon her. But there stirred, nevertheless, some breath of
+emotion across that stagnant little pool, Mary's heart. She was moved,
+perhaps, by pity for Barbara's amazing simplicities, moved also by
+curiosity as to how far Barbara's devotion to her would go, moved even
+by some sense of distrust of her own self-satisfaction. She did, indeed,
+admire any one who could realise, as completely as did Barbara, the
+greatness of Mary Adams.
+
+It may seem strange to us, and almost terrible, that a small child of
+seven can feel anything as devastating as this passion of Barbara. But
+Barbara was made to be swept by storms stronger than she could control,
+and Mary Adams was the first storm of her life. They spent now a great
+deal of their time together. Mrs. Adams, who was beginning to find Mary
+more than she could control, hailed the gentle Barbara with joy; she
+welcomed also perhaps a certain note of rather haughty protection which
+Mary seemed to be developing.
+
+During the hours when Barbara was alone she thought of the many things
+that she would say to her friend when they met, and then at the meeting
+could say nothing. Mary talked or she did not talk according to her
+mood, but she soon made it very plain that there was only one way of
+looking at everything inside and outside the earth, and that was Mary's
+way. Barbara had no affection, but a certain blind terror for God. It
+was precisely as though some one were standing with a hammer behind a
+tree, and were waiting to hit you on the back of your head at the first
+opportunity. But God was not, on the whole, of much importance; her
+Friend was the great problem, and before many days were passed Mary was
+told all about him.
+
+"He used to come often and often. He'd be there just where you wanted
+him--when the light was out or anything. And he _was_ nice." Barbara
+sighed.
+
+Mary stared at her, seeming in the first full sweep of confidence, to be
+almost alarmed.
+
+"You don't mean----?" She stopped, then cried, "Why, you silly, you
+believe in ghosts!"
+
+"No, I don't," said Barbara, not far from tears.
+
+"Yes, you do."
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"Of course you do, you silly."
+
+"No, I don't. He--he's real."
+
+"Well," Mary said, with a final toss of the head, "if you go seeing
+ghosts like that you can't have me for your friend, Barbara Flint--you
+can choose, that's all."
+
+Barbara was aghast. Such a catastrophe had never been contemplated. Lose
+Mary? Sooner life itself. She resolved, sorrowfully, to say no more
+about her Friend. But here occurred a strange thing. It was as though
+Mary felt that over this one matter Barbara had eluded her; she returned
+to it again and again, always with contemptuous but inquisitive
+allusion.
+
+"Did he come last night, Barbara?"
+
+"No."
+
+"P'r'aps he did, only you were asleep."
+
+"No, he didn't."
+
+"You don't believe he'll come ever any more, do you? Now that I've said
+he isn't there really?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Very well, then, I won't see you to-morrow--not at all--not all day--I
+won't."
+
+These crises tore Barbara's spirit. Seven is not an age that can reason
+with life's difficulties, and Barbara had, in this business, no
+reasoning powers at all. She would die for Mary; she could not deny her
+Friend. What was she to do? And yet--just at this moment when, of all
+others, it was important that he should come to her and confirm his
+reality--he made no sign. Not only did he make no sign, but he seemed to
+withdraw, silently and surely, all his supports. Barbara discovered that
+the company of Mary Adams did in very truth make everything that was not
+sure and certain absurd and impossible. There was visible no longer, as
+there had been before, that country wherein anything was possible, where
+wonderful things had occurred and where wonderful things would surely
+occur again.
+
+"You're pretending," said Mary Adams sharply when Barbara ventured some
+possibly extravagant version of some ordinary occurrence, or suggested
+that events, rich and wonderful, had occurred during the night.
+"Nonsense," said Mary sharply.
+
+She said "nonsense" as though it were the very foundation of her creed
+of life--as, indeed, to the end of her days, it was. What, then, was
+Barbara to do? Her friend would not come, although passionately she
+begged and begged and begged that he would. Mary Adams was there every
+day, sharp, and shining, and resolved, demanding the whole of Barbara
+Flint, body and soul--nothing was to be kept from her, nothing. What was
+Barbara Flint to do?
+
+She denied her Friend, denied that earlier world, denied her dreams and
+her hopes. She cried a good deal, was very lonely in the dark. Mary
+Adams, as was her way, having won her victory, passed on to win another.
+
+
+IV
+
+Mary began, now, to find Barbara rather tiresome. Having forced her to
+renounce her gods, she now despised her for so easy a renunciation.
+Every day did she force Barbara through her act of denial, and the
+Inquisition of Spain held, in all its records, nothing more cruel.
+
+"Did he come last night?"
+
+"No."
+
+"He'll never come again, will he?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Wasn't it silly of you to make up stories like that?"
+
+"Oh, Mary--yes."
+
+"There aren't ghosts, nor fairies, nor giants, nor wizards, nor Santa
+Claus?"
+
+"No; but, Mary, p'r'aps----"
+
+"No; there aren't. Say there aren't."
+
+"There isn't."
+
+Poor Barbara, even as she concluded this ceremony, clutching her doll
+close to her to give her comfort, could not refrain from a hurried
+glance over her shoulder. He _might_ be---- But upon Mary this all began
+soon enough to pall. She liked some opposition. She liked to defeat
+people and trample on them and then be gracious. Barbara was a poor
+little thing. Moreover, Barbara's standard of morality and righteousness
+annoyed her. Barbara seemed to have no idea that there was anything in
+this confused world of ours except wrong and right. No dialectician,
+argue he ever so stoutly, could have persuaded Barbara that there was
+such a colour in the world's paint-box as grey. "It's bad to tell lies.
+It's bad to steal. It's bad to put your tongue out. It's good to be kind
+to poor people. It's good to say 'No' when you want more pudding but
+mustn't have it." Barbara was no prig. She did not care the least little
+thing about these things, nor did she ever mention them, but let a
+question of conduct arise, then was Barbara's way plain and clear. She
+did not always take it, but there it was. With Mary, how very different!
+She had, I am afraid, no sense of right and wrong at all, but only a
+coolly ironical perception of the things that her elders disliked and
+permitted. Very foolish and absurd, these elders. We have always before
+our eyes some generation that provokes our irony, the one before us, the
+one behind us, our own perhaps; for Mary Adams it would always be any
+generation that was not her own. Her business in life was to avoid
+unpleasantness, to extract the honey from every flower, but above all to
+be admired, praised, preferred.
+
+At first with her pleasure at Barbara's adoration she had found, within
+herself, a truly alarming desire to be "good." It might, after all, be
+rather amusing to be, in strict reality, all the fine things that
+Barbara considered her. She endeavoured for a week or two to adjust
+herself to this point of view, to consider, however slightly, whether
+it were right or wrong to do something that she particularly wished to
+do.
+
+But she found it very tiresome. The effort spoilt her temper, and no one
+seemed to notice any change. She might as well be bad as good were there
+no one present to perceive the difference. She gave it up, and, from
+that moment found that she suffered Barbara less gladly than before.
+Meanwhile, in Barbara also strange forces had been at work. She found
+that her imagination (making up stories) simply, in spite of all the
+Mary Adamses in the world, refused to stop. Still would the almond tree
+and the fountain, the gold dust on the roofs of the houses when the sun
+was setting, the racing hurry of rain drops down the window-pane, the
+funny old woman with the red shawl who brought plants round in a
+wheelbarrow, start her story telling.
+
+Still could she not hold herself from fancying, at times, that her doll
+Jane was a queen, and that Miss Letts could make "spells" by the mere
+crook of her bony fingers. Worst of all, still she must think of her
+Friend, tell herself with an ache that he would never come back again,
+feel, sometimes, that she would give up Mary and all the rest of the
+world if he would only be beside her bed, as he used to be, talking to
+her, holding her hand. During these days, had there been any one to
+observe her, she was a pathetic little figure, with her thin legs like
+black sticks, her saucer eyes that so readily filled with tears, her
+eager, half-apprehensive expression, the passionate clutch of the doll
+to her heart, and it is, after all, a painful business, this
+adoration--no human soul can live up to the heights of it, and, what is
+more, no human soul ought to.
+
+As Mary grew tired of Barbara she allowed to slip from her many of the
+virtuous graces that had hitherto, for Barbara's benefit, adorned her.
+She lost her temper, was cruel simply for the pleasure that Barbara's
+ill-restrained agitation yielded her, but, even beyond this, squandered
+recklessly her reputation for virtue. Twice, before Barbara's very eyes,
+she told lies, and told them, too, with a real mastery of the
+craft--long practice and a natural disposition had brought her very near
+perfection. Barbara, her heart beating wildly, refused to understand;
+Mary could not be so. She held Jane to her breast more tightly than
+before. And the denials continued; twice a day now they were extorted
+from her--with every denial the ghost of her Friend stole more deeply
+into the mist. He was gone; he was gone; and what was left?
+
+Very soon, and with unexpected suddenness, the crisis came.
+
+
+V
+
+Upon a day Barbara accompanied her mother to tea with Mrs. Adams. The
+ladies remained downstairs in the dull splendour of the drawing-room;
+Mary and Barbara were delivered to Miss Fortescue, the most recent
+guardian of Mary's life and prospects.
+
+"She's simply awful. You needn't mind a word she says," Mary instructed
+her friend, and prepared then to behave accordingly. They had tea, and
+Mary did as she pleased. Miss Fortescue protested, scolded, was weak
+when she should have been strong, and said often, "Now, Mary, there's a
+dear."
+
+Barbara, the faint colour coming and going in her cheeks, watched. She
+watched Mary now with quite a fresh intention. She had begun her voyage
+of discovery: what was in Mary's head, _what_ would she do next? What
+Mary did next was to propose, after tea, that they should travel through
+other parts of the house.
+
+"We'll be back in a moment," Mary flung over her head to Miss Fortescue.
+They proceeded then through passages, peering into dark rooms, looking
+behind curtains, Barbara following behind her friend, who seemed to be
+moved by a rather aimless intention of finding something to do that she
+shouldn't. They finally arrived at Mrs. Adams's private and particular
+sitting-room, a place that may be said, in the main, to stand as a
+protest against the rule of the ancient philosopher, being all pink and
+flimsy and fragile with precious vases and two post-impressionist
+pictures (a green apple tree one, the other a brown woman), and lace
+cushions and blue bowls with rose leaves in them. Barbara had never been
+into this room before, nor had she ever in all her seven years seen
+anything so lovely.
+
+"Mother says I'm never to come in here," announced Mary. "But I
+do--lots. Isn't it pretty?"
+
+"P'r'aps we oughtn't----" began Barbara.
+
+"Oh, yes, we ought," answered Mary scornfully. "Always you and your
+'oughtn't.'"
+
+She turned, and her shoulders brushed a low bracket that was close to
+the door. A large Nankin vase was at her feet, scattered into a thousand
+pieces. Even Mary's proud indifference was stirred by this catastrophe,
+and she was down on her knees in an instant, trying to pick up the
+pieces. Barbara stared, her eyes wide with horror.
+
+"Oh, Mary," she gasped.
+
+"You might help instead of just standing there!"
+
+Then the door opened and, like the avenging gods from Olympus, in came
+the two ladies, eagerly, with smiles.
+
+"Now I must just show you," began Mrs. Adams. Then the catastrophe was
+discovered--a moment's silence, then a cry from the poor lady: "Oh, my
+vase! It was priceless!" (It was not, but no matter.)
+
+About Barbara the air clung so thick with catastrophe that it was from a
+very long way indeed that she heard Mary's voice:
+
+"Barbara didn't mean-----"
+
+"Did you do this, Barbara?" her mother turned round upon her.
+
+"You know, Mary, I've told you a thousand times that you're not to come
+in here!" this from Mrs. Adams, who was obviously very angry indeed.
+
+Mary was on her feet now and, as she looked across at Barbara, there was
+in her glance a strange look, ironical, amused, inquisitive, even
+affectionate. "Well, mother, I knew we mustn't. But Barbara wanted to
+_look_ so I said we'd just _peep_, but that we weren't to touch
+anything, and then Barbara couldn't help it, really; her shoulder just
+brushed the shelf----" and still as she looked there was in her eyes
+that strange irony: "Well, now you see me as I am--I'm bored by all this
+pretending. It's gone on long enough. Are you going to give me away?"
+
+But Barbara could do nothing. Her whole world was there, like the Nankin
+vase, smashed about her feet, as it never, never would be again.
+
+"So you did this, Barbara?" Mrs. Flint said.
+
+"Yes," said Barbara. Then she began to cry.
+
+
+VI
+
+At home she was sent to bed. Her mother read her a chapter of the Gospel
+according to St. Matthew, and then left her; she lay there, sick with
+crying, her eyes stiff and red, wondering how she would ever get through
+the weeks and weeks of life that remained to her. She thought: "I'll
+never love any one again. Mary took my Friend away--and then she wasn't
+there herself. There isn't anybody."
+
+Then it suddenly occurred to her that she need never be put through the
+agony of her denials again, that she could believe what she liked, make
+up stories.
+
+Her Friend would, of course, never come to see her any more, but at
+least now she would be able to think about him. She would be allowed to
+remember. Her brain was drowsy, her eyes half closed. Through the
+humming air something was coming; the dark curtains were parted, the
+light of the late afternoon sun was faint yellow upon the opposite
+wall--there was a little breeze. Drowsily, drowsily, her drooping eyes
+felt the light, the stir of the air, the sense that some one was in the
+room.
+
+She looked up; she gave a cry! He had come back! He had come back after
+all!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+SARAH TREFUSIS
+
+
+I
+
+Sarah Trefusis lived, with her mother, in the smallest house in March
+Square, a really tiny house, like a box, squeezed breathlessly between
+two fat buildings, but looking, with its white paint and green doors,
+smarter than either of them. Lady Charlotte Trefusis, Sarah's mother,
+was elegant, penniless and a widow; Captain B. Trefusis, her husband,
+had led the merriest of lives until a game of polo carried him
+reluctantly from a delightful world and forced Lady Charlotte to
+consider the problem of having a good time alone on nothing at all. But
+it may be said that, on the whole, she succeeded. She was the
+best-dressed widow in London, and went everywhere, but the little house
+in March Square was the scene of a most strenuous campaign, every day
+presenting its defeat or victory, and every minute of the day
+threatening overwhelming disaster if something were not done
+immediately. Lady Charlotte had the smallest feet and hands outside
+China, a pile of golden hair above the face of a pink-and-white doll.
+Staring from this face, however, were two of the loveliest, most
+unscrupulous of eyes, and those eyes did more for Lady Charlotte's
+precarious income than any other of her resources. She wore her
+expensive clothes quite beautifully, and gave lovely little lunches and
+dinners; no really merry house-party was complete without her.
+
+Sarah was her only child, and, although at the time of which I am
+writing she was not yet nine years of age, there was no one in London
+better suited to the adventurous and perilous existence that Fate had
+selected for her. Sarah was black as ink--that is, she had coal black
+hair, coal black eyes, and wonderful black eyelashes. Her eyelashes were
+her only beautiful feature, but she was, nevertheless, a most remarkable
+looking child. "If ever a child's possessed of the devil, my dear
+Charlotte," said Captain James Trent to her mother, "it's your precious
+daughter--she _is_ the devil, I believe."
+
+"Well, she needs to be," said her mother, "considering the life that's
+in store for her. We're very good friends, she and I, thank you."
+
+They were. They understood one another to perfection. Lady Charlotte was
+as hard as nails, and Sarah was harder. Sarah had never been known to
+cry. She had bitten the fingers of one of her nurses through to the
+bone, and had stuck a needle into the cheek of another whilst she slept,
+and had watched, with a curious abstracted gaze, the punishment dealt
+out to her, as though it had nothing to do with her at all. She never
+lost her temper, and one of the most terrible things about her was her
+absolute calm. She was utterly fearless, went to the dentist without a
+tremor, and, at the age of six, fell downstairs, broke her leg, and so
+lay until help arrived without a cry. She bullied and hurt anything or
+anybody that came her way, but carried out her plans always with the
+same deliberate abstraction as though she were obeying somebody's
+orders. She never nourished revenge or resentment, and it seemed to be
+her sense of humour (rather than any fierce or hostile feeling) that was
+tickled when she hurt any one.
+
+She was a child, apparently without imagination, but displayed, at a
+very early period, a strangely sharpened perception of what her nurse
+called "the uncanny." She frightened even her mother by the expression
+that her face often wore of attention to something or somebody outside
+her companion's perception.
+
+"A broomstick is what she'll be flying away on one of these nights, you
+mark my word," a nurse declared. "Little devil, she is, neither more nor
+less. It isn't decent the way she sits on the floor looking right
+through the wall into the next room, as you might say. Yes, and knows
+who's coming up the stairs long before she's seen 'em. No place for a
+decent Christian woman, and so I told her mother this very morning." It
+was, of course, quite impossible to find a nurse to stay with Sarah,
+and, when she arrived at the age of seven, nurses were dismissed, and
+she either looked after herself or was tended by an abandoned French
+maid of her mother's, who stayed with Lady Charlotte, like a wicked,
+familiar spirit, for a great number of years on a strange basis of
+confidante, fellow-plunderer, and sympathetic adventurer. This French
+maid, whose name was, appropriately enough, Hortense, had a real
+affection for Sarah "because she was the weeckedest child of 'er age
+she ever see." There was nothing of which Sarah, from the very earliest
+age, did not seem aware. Her mother's gentlemen friends she valued
+according to their status in the house, and, as they "fell off" or "came
+on," so was her manner indifferent or pleasant. For Hortense, she had a
+real respect, but even that improper and brazen spirit quailed at times
+before her cynical and elfish regard. To say of a child that there is
+something "unearthly" about it is, as a rule, to pay a compliment to
+ethereal blue and gold. There was nothing ethereal about Sarah, and yet
+she was unearthly enough. Squatting on the floor, her legs tucked under
+her, her head thrust forward, her large black eyes staring at the wall,
+her black hair almost alive in the shining intensity of its colours, she
+had in her attitude the lithe poise of some animal ready to spring,
+waiting for its exact opportunity.
+
+When her mother, in a temper, struck her, she would push her hair back
+from her face with a sharp movement of her hand and then would watch
+broodingly and cynically for the next move. "You hit me again," she
+seemed to say, "and you _will_ make a fool of yourself."
+
+She was aware, of course, of a thousand influences in the house of
+which her mother and Hortense had never the slightest conception. From
+the cosy security of her cradle she had watched the friendly spirit who
+had accompanied (with hostile irritation) her entrance into this world.
+His shadow had, for a long period, darkened her nursery, but she
+repelled, with absolute assurance, His kindly advances.
+
+"I'm not frightened. I don't, in the least, want things made comfortable
+for me. I can get along very nicely, indeed, without you. You're full of
+sentiment and gush--things that I detest--and it won't be the least use
+in the world for you to ask me to be good, and tender, and all the rest
+of it. I'm not like your other babies."
+
+He must have known, of course, that she was not, but, nevertheless, He
+stayed. "I understand perfectly," He assured her. "But, nevertheless, I
+don't give you up. You may be, for all you know, more interesting to me
+than all the others put together. And remember this--every time you do
+anything at all kind or thoughtful, every time you think of any one or
+care for them, every time you use your influence for good in any way, my
+power over you is a little stronger, I shall be a little closer to you,
+your escape will be a little harder."
+
+"Oh, you needn't flatter yourself," she answered Him. "There's precious
+little danger of _my_ self-sacrifice or love for others. That's not
+going to be my attitude to life at all. You'd better not waste your time
+over me."
+
+She had not, she might triumphantly reflect, during these eight years,
+given Him many chances, and yet He was still there. She hated the
+thought of His patience, and somewhere deep within herself she dreaded
+the faint, dim beat of some response that, like a warning bell across a
+misty sea, cautioned her. "You may think you're safe from Him, but He'll
+catch you yet."
+
+"He shan't," she replied. "I'm stronger than He is."
+
+
+II
+
+This must sound, in so prosaic a summary of it, fantastic, but nothing
+could be said to be fantastic about Sarah. She was, for one thing, quite
+the least troublesome of children. She could be relied upon, at any
+time, to find amusement for herself. She was full of resources, but
+what these resources exactly were it would be difficult to say. She
+would sit for hours alone, staring in front of her. She never played
+with toys--she did not draw or read--but she was never dull, and always
+had the most perfect of appetites. She had never, from the day of her
+birth, known an hour's illness.
+
+It was, however, in the company of other children that she was most
+characteristic. The nurses in the Square quite frankly hated her, but
+most of the mothers had a very real regard for Lady Charlotte's smart
+little lunches; moreover, it was impossible to detect Sarah's guilt in
+any positive fashion. It was not enough for the nurses to assure their
+mistresses that from the instant that the child entered the gardens all
+the other children were out of temper, rebellious, and finally
+unmanageable.
+
+"Nonsense, Janet, you imagine things. She seems a very nice little
+girl."
+
+"Well, ma'am, all I can say is, I won't care to be answerable for Master
+Ronald's behaviour when she _does_ come along, that's all. It's beyond
+belief the effect she 'as upon 'im."
+
+The strangest thing of all was that Sarah herself liked the company of
+other children. She went every morning into the gardens (with Hortense)
+and watched them at their play. She would sit, with her hands folded
+quietly on her lap, her large black eyes watching, watching, watching.
+It was odd, indeed, how, instantly, all the children in the garden were
+aware of her entrance. She, on her part, would appear to regard none of
+them, and yet would see them all. Perched on her seat she surveyed the
+gardens always with the same gaze of abstracted interest, watching the
+clear, decent paths across whose grey background at the period of this
+episode, the October leaves, golden, flaming, dun, gorgeous and
+shrivelled, fell through the still air, whirled, and with a little sigh
+of regret, one might fancy, sank and lay dead. The October colours, a
+faint haze of smoky mist, the pale blue of the distant sky, the brown
+moist earth, were gentle, mild, washed with the fading year's regretful
+tears; the cries of the children, the rhythmic splash of the fountain
+throbbed behind the colours like some hidden orchestra behind the
+curtain at the play; the statues in the garden, like fragments of the
+white bolster clouds that swung so lazily from tree to tree; had no
+meaning in that misty air beyond the background that they helped to
+fill. The year, thus idly, with so pleasant a melancholy, was slipping
+into decay.
+
+Sarah would watch. Then, without a word, she would slip from her seat,
+and, walking solemnly, rather haughtily, would join some group of
+children. Day after day the same children came to the gardens, and they
+all of them knew Sarah by now. Hortense, in her turn also, sitting,
+stiff and superior, would watch. She would see Sarah's pleasant
+approach, her smile, her amiability. Very soon, however, there would be
+trouble--some child would cry out; there would be blows; nurses would
+run forward, scoldings, protests, captives led away weeping ... and then
+Sarah would return slowly to her seat, her gaze aloof, cynical, remote.
+She would carefully explain to Hortense the reason of the uproar. She
+had done nothing--her conscience was clear. These silly little idiots.
+She would break into French, culled elaborately from Hortense, would end
+disdainfully--"mais, voilà,"--very old for her age.
+
+Hortense was vicious, selfish, crude in her pursuit of pleasure,
+entirely unscrupulous, but, as the days passed, she was, in spite of
+herself, conscious of some half-acknowledged, half-decided terror of
+Sarah's possibilities.
+
+The child was eight years old. She was capable of anything; in her
+remote avoidance of any passion, any regret, any anticipated pleasure,
+any spontaneity, she was inhuman. Hortense thought that she detected in
+the chit's mother something of her own fear.
+
+
+III
+
+There used to come to the gardens a little fat red-faced girl called
+Mary Kitson, the child of simple and ingenuous parents (her father was a
+writer of stories of adventure for boys' papers); she was herself
+simple-minded, lethargic, unadventurous, and happily stupid. Walking one
+day slowly with Hortense down one of the garden paths, Sarah saw Mary
+Kitson engaged in talking to two dolls, seated on a bench with them,
+patting their clothes, very happy, her nurse busy over a novelette.
+
+Sarah stopped.
+
+"I'll sit here," she said, walked across to the bench and sat down. Mary
+looked up from her dolls, and then, nervously and self-consciously, went
+back to her play. Sarah stared straight before her.
+
+Hortense amiably endeavoured to draw the nurse into conversation.
+
+"You 'ave 'ere ze fine gardens," she said. "It calls to mind my own
+Paris. Ah, the gardens in Paris!"
+
+But the nurse had been taught to distrust all foreigners, and her views
+of Paris were coloured by her reading. She admired Hortense's clothes,
+but distrusted her advances.
+
+She buried herself even more deeply in the paper. Poor Mary Kitson,
+alas! found that, in some undefinable manner, the glory had departed
+from her dolls. Adrian and Emily were, of a sudden, glassy and lumpy
+abstractions of sawdust and china. Very timidly she raised her large,
+stupid eyes and regarded Sarah. Sarah returned the glance and smiled.
+Then she came close to Mary.
+
+"It's better under there," she said, pointing to the shade of a friendly
+tree.
+
+"May I?" Mary said to her nurse with a frightened gasp.
+
+"Well, now, don't you go far," said the nurse, with a fierce look at
+Hortense.
+
+"You like where you are?" asked Hortense, smiling more than ever. "You
+'ave a good place?" Slowly the nurse yielded. The novelette was laid
+aside.
+
+Impossible to say what occurred under the tree. Now and again a rustle
+of wind would send the colours from the trees to short branches loaded
+with leaves of red gold, shivering through the air; a chequered, blazing
+canopy covered the ground.
+
+Mary Kitson had, it appeared, very little to say. She sat some way from
+Sarah, clutching Adrian and Emily tightly to her breast, and always her
+large, startled eyes were on Sarah's face. She did not move to drive the
+leaves from her dress; her heart beat very fast, her cheeks were very
+red.
+
+Sarah talked a little, but not very much. She asked questions about
+Mary's home and her parents, and Mary answered these interrogations in
+monosyllabic gasps. It appeared that Mary had a kitten, and that this
+kitten was a central fact of Mary's existence. The kitten was called
+Alice.
+
+"Alice is a silly name for a kitten. I shouldn't call a kitten Alice,"
+said Sarah, and Mary started as though in some strange, sinister fashion
+she were instantly aware that Alice's life and safety were threatened.
+
+From that morning began a strange acquaintance that certainly could not
+be called a friendship. There could be no question at all that Mary was
+terrified of Sarah; there could also be no question that Mary was
+Sarah's obedient slave. The cynical Hortense, prepared as she was for
+anything strange and unexpected in Sarah's actions, was, nevertheless,
+puzzled now.
+
+One afternoon, wet and dismal, the two of them sitting in a little box
+of a room in the little box of a house, Sarah huddled in a chair, her
+eyes staring in front of her, Hortense sewing, her white, bony fingers
+moving sharply like knives, the maid asked a question:
+
+"What do you see--Sar-ah--in that infant?"
+
+"What infant?" asked Sarah, without moving her eyes.
+
+"That Mary with whom now you always are."
+
+"We play games together," said Sarah.
+
+"You do not. You may be playing a game--she does nothing. She is
+terrified--out of her life."
+
+"She is very silly. It's funny how silly she is. I like her to be
+frightened."
+
+Mary's nurse told Mary's mother that, in her opinion, Sarah was not a
+nice child. But Sarah had been invited to tea at the confused, simple
+abode of the Kitson family, and had behaved perfectly.
+
+"I think you must be wrong, nurse," said Mrs. Kitson. "She seems a very
+nice little girl. Mary needs companions. It's good for her to be taken
+out of herself."
+
+Had Mrs. Kitson been of a less confused mind, however, had she had more
+time for the proper observation of her daughter, she would have noticed
+her daughter's pale cheeks, her daughter's fits of crying, her
+daughter's silences. Even as the bird is fascinated by the snake, so was
+Mary Kitson fascinated by Sarah Trefusis.
+
+"You are torturing that infant," said Hortense, and Sarah smiled.
+
+
+IV
+
+Mary was by no means the first of Sarah's victim's. There had been many
+others. Utterly aloof, herself, from all emotions of panic or terror, it
+had, from the very earliest age, interested her to see those passions at
+work in others. Cruelty for cruelty's sake had no interest for her at
+all; to pull the wings from flies, to tie kettles to the tails of
+agitated puppies, to throw stones at cats, did not, in the least, amuse
+her. She had once put a cat in the fire, but only because she had seen
+it play with a terrified mouse. That had affronted her sense of justice.
+But she was gravely and quite dispassionately interested in the terror
+of Mary Kitson. In later life a bull fight was to appear to her a
+tiresome affair, but the domination of one human being over another,
+absorbing. She had, too, at the very earliest age, that conviction that
+it was pleasant to combat all sentiment, all appeals to be "good," all
+soft emotions of pity, anything that could suggest that Right was of
+more power than Might.
+
+It was as though she said, "You may think that even now you will get me.
+I tell you I'm a rebel from the beginning; you'll never catch me showing
+affection or sympathy. If you do you may do your worst."
+
+Beyond all things, her anxiety was that, suddenly, in spite of herself,
+she would do something "soft," some weak kindness. Her power over Mary
+Kitson reassured her.
+
+The fascination of this power very soon became to her an overwhelming
+interest. Playing with Mary Kitson's mind was as absorbing to Sarah, as
+chess to an older enthusiast; her discoveries promised her a life full
+of entertainment, if, with her fellow-mortals, she was able, so easily,
+"to do things," what a time she would always have. She discovered, very
+soon, that Mary Kitson was, by nature, truthful and obedient, that she
+had a great fear of God, and that she loved her parents. Here was fine
+material to work upon. She began by insisting on little lies.
+
+"Say our clocks were all wrong, and you couldn't know what the time
+was."
+
+"Oh, but----"
+
+"Yes, say it."
+
+"Please, Sarah."
+
+"Say it. Otherwise I'll be punished too. Mind, if you don't say it, I
+shall know."
+
+There was the horrible threat that effected so much. Mary began soon to
+believe that Sarah was never absent from her, that she attended her,
+invisibly, her little dark face peering over Mary's shoulder, and when
+Mary was in bed at night, the lights out, and only shadows on the walls,
+Sarah was certainly there, her mocking eyes on Mary's face, her voice
+whispering things in Mary's ears.
+
+Sarah, Mary very soon discovered, believed in nothing, and knew
+everything. This horrible combination, naturally, affected Mary, who
+believed in everything and knew nothing.
+
+"Why should we obey our mothers?" said Sarah. "We're as good as they
+are."
+
+"Oh, _no_," said Mary, in a voice shocked to a strangled whisper.
+Nevertheless, she began, a little, to despise her confused parents.
+There came a day when Mary told a very large lie indeed; she said that
+she had brushed her teeth when she had not, and she told this lie quite
+unprompted by Sarah. She was more and more miserable as the days passed.
+
+No one knew exactly the things that the two little girls did when they
+were alone on an afternoon in Sarah's room. Sarah sent Hortense about
+her business, and then set herself to the subdual of Mary's mind and
+character. There would be moments like this, Sarah would turn off the
+electric light, and the room would be lit only by the dim shining of the
+evening sky.
+
+"Now, Mary, you go over to that corner--that dark one--and wait there
+till I tell you to come out. I'll go outside the room, and then you'll
+see what will happen."
+
+"Oh, no, Sarah, I don't want to."
+
+"Why not, you silly baby?"
+
+"I--I don't want to."
+
+"Well, it will be much worse for you if you don't."
+
+"I want to go home."
+
+"You can after you have done that."
+
+"I want to go home now."
+
+"Go into the corner first."
+
+Sarah would leave the room and Mary would stand with her face to the
+wall, a trembling prey to a thousand terrors. The light would quiver and
+shake, steps would tread the floor and cease, there would be a breath in
+her ears, a wind above her head. She would try to pray, but could
+remember no words. Sarah would lead her forth, shaking from head to
+foot.
+
+"You little silly. I was only playing."
+
+Once, and this hurried the climax of the episode, Mary attempted
+rebellion.
+
+"I want to go home, Sarah."
+
+"Well, you can't. You've got to hear the end of the story first."
+
+"I don't like the story. It's a horrid story. I'm going home."
+
+"You'd better not."
+
+"Yes, I will, and I won't come again, and I won't see you again. I hate
+you. I won't. I won't."
+
+Mary, as she very often did, began to cry. Sarah's lips curled with
+scorn.
+
+"All right, you can. You'll never see Alice again if you do."
+
+"Alice?"
+
+"Yes, she'll be drowned, and you'll have the toothache, and I'll come in
+the middle of the night and wake you."
+
+"I--I don't care. I'm go-going home. I'll t-t-ell m-other."
+
+"Tell her. But look out afterwards, that's all."
+
+Mary remained, but Sarah regarded the rebellion as ominous. She thought
+that the time had come to put Mary's submission really to the test.
+
+
+V
+
+The climax of the affair was in this manner. Upon an afternoon when the
+rain was beating furiously upon the window-panes and the wind struggling
+up and down the chimney, Sarah and Mary played together in Sarah's room;
+the play consisted of Mary shutting her eyes and pretending she was in
+a dark wood, whilst Sarah was the tiger who might at any moment spring
+upon her and devour her, who would, in any case, pinch her legs with a
+sudden thrust which would drive all the blood out of Mary's face and
+make her "as white as the moon."
+
+This game ended, Sarah's black eyes moved about for a fresh diversion;
+her gaze rested upon Mary, and Mary whispered that she would like to go
+home.
+
+"Yes. You can," said Sarah, staring at her, "if you will do something
+when you get there."
+
+"What?" said Mary, her heart beating like a heavy and jumping hammer.
+
+"There's something I want. You've got to bring it me."
+
+Mary said nothing, only her wide eyes filled with tears.
+
+"There's something in your mother's drawing-room. You know in that
+little table with the glass top where there are the little gold boxes
+with the silver crosses and things. There's a ring there--a gold one
+with a red stone--very pretty. I want it."
+
+Mary drew a long, deep breath. Her fat legs in the tight, black
+stockings were shaking.
+
+"You can go in when no one sees. The table isn't locked, I know,
+because I opened it once. You can get and bring it to me to-morrow in
+the garden."
+
+"Oh," Mary whispered, "that would be stealing."
+
+"Of course it wouldn't. Nobody wants the old ring. No one ever looks at
+it. It's just for fun."
+
+"No," said Mary, "I mustn't."
+
+"Oh, yes, you must. You'll be very sorry if you don't. Dreadful things
+will happen. Alice----"
+
+Mary cried softly, choking and spluttering and rubbing her eyes with the
+back of her hand.
+
+"Well, you'd better go now. I'll be in the garden with Hortense
+to-morrow. You know, the same place. You'd better have it, that's all.
+And don't go on crying, or your mother will think I made you. What's
+there to cry about? No one will eat you."
+
+"It's stealing."
+
+"I dare say it belongs to you, and, anyway, it will when your mother
+dies, so what _does_ it matter? You _are_ a baby!"
+
+After Mary's departure Sarah sat for a long while alone in her nursery.
+She thought to herself: "Mary will be going home now and she'll be
+snuffling to herself all the way back, and she won't tell the nurse
+anything, I know that. Now she's in the hall. She's upstairs now, having
+her things taken off. She's stopped crying, but her eyes and nose are
+red. She looks very ugly. She's gone to find Alice. She thinks something
+has happened to her. She begins to cry again when she sees her, and she
+begins to talk to her about it. Fancy talking to a cat...."
+
+The room was swallowed in darkness, and when Hortense came in and found
+Sarah sitting alone there, she thought to herself that, in spite of the
+profits that she secured from her mistress she would find another
+situation. She did not speak to Sarah, and Sarah did not speak to her.
+
+Once, during the night, Sarah woke up; she sat up in bed and stared into
+the darkness. Then she smiled to herself. As she lay down again she
+thought:
+
+"Now I know that she will bring it."
+
+The next day was very fine, and in the glittering garden by the
+fountain, Sarah sat with Hortense, and waited. Soon Mary and her nurse
+appeared. Sarah took Mary by the hand and they went away down the
+leaf-strewn path.
+
+"Well!" said Sarah.
+
+Mary quite silently felt in her pocket at the back of her short, green
+frock, produced the ring, gave it to Sarah, and, still without a word,
+turned back down the path and walked to her nurse. She stood there,
+clutching a doll in her hand, stared in front of her, and said nothing.
+Sarah looked at the ring, smiled, and put it into her pocket.
+
+At that instant the climax of the whole affair struck, like a blow from
+some one unseen, upon Sarah's consciousness. She should have been
+triumphant. She was not. Her one thought as she looked at the ring was
+that she wished Mary had not taken it. She had a strange feeling as
+though Mary, soft and heavy and fat, were hanging round her neck. She
+had "got" Mary for ever. She was suddenly conscious that she despised
+Mary, and had lost all interest in her. She didn't want the ring, nor
+did she ever wish to see Mary again.
+
+She gazed about the garden, shrugged her thin, little, bony shoulders as
+though she were fifty at least, and felt tired and dull, as on the day
+after a party. She stood and looked at Mary and her nurse; when she saw
+them walk away she did not move, but stayed there, staring after them.
+She was greatly disappointed; she did not feel any pleasure at having
+forced Mary to obey her, but would have liked to have smacked and bitten
+her, could these violent actions have driven her into speech. In some
+undetermined way Mary's silence had beaten Sarah. Mary was a stupid,
+silly little girl, and Sarah despised and scorned her, but, somehow,
+that was not enough; from all of this, it simply remained that Sarah
+would like now to forget her, and could not. What did the silly little
+thing mean by looking like that? "She'll go and hug her Alice and cry
+over it." If only she had cried in front of Sarah that would have been
+something.
+
+Two days later Lady Charlotte was explaining to Sarah that so acute a
+financial crisis had arrived "as likely as not we shan't have a roof
+over our heads in a day or two."
+
+"We'll take an organ and a monkey," said Sarah.
+
+"At any rate," Lady Charlotte said, "when you grow up you'll be used to
+anything."
+
+Mrs. Kitson, untidy, in dishevelled clothing, and great distress, was
+shown in.
+
+"Dear Lady Charlotte, I must apologise--this absurd hour--but
+I--we--very unhappy about poor Mary. We can't think what's the matter
+with her. She's not slept for two nights--in a high fever, and cries and
+cries. The Doctor--Dr. Williamson--_really_ clever--says she's unhappy
+about something. We thought--scarlet fever--no spots--can't
+think--perhaps your little girl."
+
+"Poor Mrs. Kitson. How tiresome for you. Do sit down. Perhaps Sarah----"
+
+Sarah shook her head.
+
+"She didn't say she'd a headache in the garden the other day."
+
+Mrs. Kitson gazed appealingly at the little black figure in front of
+her.
+
+"Do try and remember, dear. Perhaps she told you something."
+
+"Nothing" said Sarah.
+
+"She cries and cries," said Mrs. Kitson, about whose person little white
+strings and tapes seemed to be continually appearing and disappearing.
+
+"Perhaps she's eaten something?" suggested Lady Charlotte.
+
+When Mrs. Kitson had departed, Lady Charlotte turned to Sarah.
+
+"What have you done to the poor child?" she said.
+
+"Nothing," said Sarah. "I never want to see her again."
+
+"Then you _have_ done something?" said Lady Charlotte.
+
+"She's always crying," said Sarah, "and she calls her kitten Alice," as
+though that were explanation sufficient.
+
+The strange truth remains, however, that the night that followed this
+conversation was the first unpleasant one that Sarah had ever spent; she
+remained awake during a great part of it. It was as though the hours
+that she had spent on that other afternoon, compelling, from her own
+dark room, Mary's will, had attached Mary to her. Mary was there with
+her now, in her bedroom. Mary, red-nosed, sniffing, her eyes wide and
+staring.
+
+"I want to go home."
+
+"Silly little thing," thought Sarah. "I wish I'd never played with her."
+
+In the morning Sarah was tired and white-faced. She would speak to no
+one. After luncheon she found her hat and coat for herself, let herself
+out of the house, and walked to Mrs. Kitson's, and was shown into the
+wide, untidy drawing-room, where books and flowers and papers had a
+lost and strayed air as though a violent wind had blown through the
+place and disturbed everything.
+
+Mrs. Kitson came in.
+
+"_You_, dear?" she said.
+
+Sarah looked at the room and then at Mrs. Kitson. Her eyes said: "_What_
+a place! _What_ a woman! _What_ a fool!"
+
+"Yes, I've come to explain about Mary."
+
+"About Mary?"
+
+"Yes. It's my fault that she's ill. I took a ring out of that little
+table there--the gold ring with the red stone--and I made her promise
+not to tell. It's because she thinks she ought to tell that she's ill."
+
+"_You_ took it? _You_ stole it?" Before Mrs. Kitson's simple mind an
+awful picture was now revealed. Here, in this little girl, whom she had
+preferred as a companion for her beloved Mary, was a thief, a liar, and
+one, as she could instantly perceive, without shame.
+
+"You _stole_ it!"
+
+"Yes; here it is." Sarah laid the ring on the table.
+
+Mrs. Kitson gazed at her with horror, dismay, and even fear.
+
+"Why? Why? Don't you know how wrong it is to take things that don't
+belong to you?"
+
+"Oh, all that!" said Sarah, waving her hand scornfully. '"I don't want
+the silly thing, and I don't suppose I'd have kept it, anyhow. I don't
+know why I've told you," she added. "But I just don't want to be
+bothered with Mary any more."
+
+"Indeed, you won't be, you wicked girl," said Mrs. Kitson. "To think
+that I--my grand-father's--I'd never missed it. And you haven't even
+said you're sorry."
+
+"I'm not," said Sarah quietly. "If Mary wasn't so tiresome and silly
+those sort of things wouldn't happen. She _makes_ me----"
+
+Mrs. Kitson's horror deprived her of all speech, so Sarah, after one
+more glance of amused cynicism about the room, retired.
+
+As she crossed the Square she knew, with happy relief, that she was free
+of Mary, that she need never bother about her again. Would _all_ the
+people whom she compelled to obey her hang round her with all their
+stupidities afterwards? If so, life was not going to be so entertaining
+as she had hoped. In her dark little brain already was the perception of
+the trouble that good and stupid souls can cause to bold and reckless
+ones. She would never bother with any one so feeble as Mary again, but,
+unless she did, how was she ever to have any fun again?
+
+Then as she climbed the stairs to her room, she was aware of something
+else.
+
+"I've caught you, after all. You _have_ been soft. You've yielded to
+your better nature. Try as you may you can't get right away from it. Now
+you'll have to reckon with me more than ever. You see you're not
+stronger than I am."
+
+Before she opened the door of her room she knew that she would find Him
+there, triumphant.
+
+With a gesture of impatient irritation she pushed the door open.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+YOUNG JOHN SCARLETT
+
+
+I
+
+That fatal September--the September that was to see young John take his
+adventurous way to his first private school--surely, steadily
+approached.
+
+Mrs. Scarlett, an emotional and sentimental little woman, vibrating and
+taut like a telegraph wire, told herself repeatedly that she would make
+no sign. The preparations proceeded, the date--September 23rd--was
+constantly evoked, a dreadful ghost, by the careless, light-hearted
+family. Mr. Scarlett made no sign.
+
+From the hour of John's birth--nearly ten years ago--Mrs. Scarlett had
+never known a day when she had not been compelled to control her
+sentimental affections. From the first John had been an adorable baby,
+from the first he had followed his father in the rejection of all
+sentiment as un-English, and even if larger questions are involved,
+unpatriotic, but also from the first he had hinted, in surprising,
+furtive, agitating moments, at poetry, imagination, hidden, romantic
+secrets. Tom, May, Clare, the older children, had never been known to
+hint at anything--hints were not at all in their line, and of
+imagination they had not, between them, enough to fill a silver
+thimble--they were good, sturdy, honest children, with healthy stomachs
+and an excellent determination to do exactly the things that their class
+and generation were bent upon doing. Mrs. Scarlett was fond of them, of
+course, and because she was a sentimental woman she was sometimes quite
+needlessly emotional about them, but John--no. John was of another
+world.
+
+The other children felt, beyond question, this difference. They deferred
+to John about everything and regarded him as leader of the family, and
+in their deference there was more than simply a recognition of his
+sturdy independence. Even John's father, Mr. Reginald Scarlett, a K.C.,
+and a man of a most decisive and emphatic bearing, felt John's
+difference.
+
+John's appearance was unengaging rather than handsome--a snub nose,
+grey eyes, rather large ears, a square, stocky body and short, stout
+legs. He was certainly the most independent small boy in England, and
+very obstinate; when any proposal that seemed on the face of it absurd
+was made to him, he shut up like a box. His mouth would close, his eyes
+disappear, all light and colour would die from his face, and it was as
+though he said: "Well, if you are stupid enough to persist in this thing
+you can compel me, of course--you are physically stronger than I--but
+you will only get me like this quite dead and useless, and a lot of good
+may it do you!"
+
+There were times, of course, when he could be most engagingly pleasant.
+He was courteous, on occasion, with all the beautiful manners that, we
+are told, are yielding so sadly before the spread of education and the
+speed of motor-cars--you never could foretell the guest that he would
+prefer, and it was nothing to him that here was an aunt, an uncle, or a
+grandfather who must be placated, and there an uninvited, undesired
+caller who mattered nothing at all. Mr. Scarlett's father he offended
+mortally by expressing, in front of him, dislike for hair that grew in
+bushy profusion out of that old gentleman's ears.
+
+"But you could cut it off," he argued, in a voice thick with surprised
+disgust. His grandfather, who was a baronet, and very wealthy, predicted
+a dismal career for his grandchild.
+
+All the family realised quite definitely that nothing could be done with
+John. It was fortunate, indeed, that he was, on the whole, of a happy
+and friendly disposition. He liked the world and things that he found in
+it. He liked games, and food, and adventure--he liked quite tolerably
+his family--he liked immensely the prospect of going to school.
+
+There were other things--strange, uncertain things--that lay like the
+dim, uncertain pattern of some tapestry in the back of his mind. He gave
+_them_, as the months passed, less and less heed. Only sometimes when he
+was asleep....
+
+Meanwhile, his mother, with the heroism worthy of Boadicea, that great
+and savage warrior, kept his impulses of devotion, of sacrifice, of
+adoration, in her heart. John had no need of them; very long ago,
+Reginald Scarlett, then no K.C., with all the K.C. manner, had told her
+that _he_ did not need them either. She gave her dinner parties, her
+receptions, her political gatherings--tremulous and smiling she faced a
+world that thought her a wise, capable little woman, who would see her
+husband a judge and peer one of these days.
+
+"Mrs. Scarlett--a woman of great social ambition," was their definition
+of her.
+
+"Mrs. Scarlett--the mother of John," was her own.
+
+
+II
+
+On a certain night, early in the month of September, young John dreamt
+again--but for the first time for many months--the dream that had, in
+the old days, come to him so often. In those days, perhaps, he had not
+called it a dream. He had not given it a name, and in the quiet early
+days he had simply greeted, first a protector, then a friend. But that
+was all very long ago, when one was a baby and allowed oneself to
+imagine anything. He had, of course, grown ashamed of such confiding
+fancies, and as he had become more confident had shoved away, with
+stout, determined fingers, those dim memories, poignancies, regrets. How
+childish one had been at four, and five, and six! How independent and
+strong now, on the very edge of the world of school! It perturbed him,
+therefore, that at this moment of crisis this old dream should recur,
+and it perturbed him the more, as he lay in bed next morning and thought
+it over, that it should have seemed to him at the time no dream at all,
+but simply a natural and actual occurrence.
+
+He had been asleep, and then he had been awake. He had seen, sitting on
+his bed and looking at him with mild, kind eyes his old Friend. His
+Friend was always the same, conveying so absolutely kindness and
+protection, and his beard, his hands, the appealing humour of his gaze,
+recalled to John the early years, with a swift, imperative urgency.
+John, so independent and assured, felt, nevertheless, again that old
+alarm of a strange, unreal world, and the necessity of an appeal for
+protection from the only one of them all who understood.
+
+"Hallo!" said John.
+
+"Well?" said his Friend. "It's many months since I've been to see you,
+isn't it?"
+
+"That's not my fault," said John.
+
+"In a way, it is. You haven't wanted me, have you? Haven't given me a
+thought."
+
+"There's been so much to do. I'm going to school, you know."
+
+"Of course. That's why I have come now."
+
+Beside the window a dark curtain blew forward a little, bulged as though
+some one were behind it, thinned again in the pale dim shadows of a moon
+that, beyond the window, fought with driving clouds. That curtain
+would--how many ages ago!--have tightened young John's heart with
+terror, and the contrast made by his present slim indifference drew him,
+in some warm, confiding fashion, closer to his visitor.
+
+"Anyway, I'm jolly glad you've come now. I haven't really forgotten you,
+ever. Only in the day-time----"
+
+"Oh, yes, you have," his Friend said, smiling. "It's natural enough and
+right that you should. But if only you will believe always that I once
+was here, if only you'll not be persuaded into thinking me impossible,
+silly, absurd, sentimental--with ever so many other things--that's all
+I've come now to ask you."
+
+"Why, how should I ever?" John demanded indignantly.
+
+"After all, I _was_ a help--for a long time when things were difficult
+and you had so much to learn--all that time you wanted me, and I was
+here."
+
+"Of course," said John politely, but feeling within him that warning of
+approaching sentiment that he had learnt by now so fundamentally to
+dread.
+
+Very well his friend understood his apprehension.
+
+"That's all. I've only come to you now to ask you to make me a
+promise--a very easy one."
+
+"Yes?" said John.
+
+"It's only that when you go off to school--before you leave this
+house--you will just, for a moment, remember me just then, and say
+good-bye to me. We've been a lot here in these rooms, in these passages,
+up and down together, and if only, as you go, you'll think of me, I'll
+be there.... Every year you've thought of me less--that doesn't
+matter--but it matters more than you know that you should remember me
+just for an instant, just to say good-bye. Will you promise me?"
+
+"Why, of course," said John.
+
+"Don't forget! Don't forget! Don't forget!" And the kindly shadow had
+faded, the voice lingering about the room, mingling with the faint
+silver moonlight, passing out into the wider spaciousness of the rolling
+clouds.
+
+
+III
+
+With the clear light of morning came the confident certainty that it had
+all been the merest dream, and yet that certainty did not sweep the
+affair, as it should have done, from young John's brain and heart. He
+was puzzled, perplexed, disturbed, unhappy. The "twenty-third" was
+approaching with terrible rapidity, and it was essential now that he
+should summon to aid all the forces of manly self-control and
+common-sense. And yet, just at this time, of all others, came that
+disturbing dream, and, in its train, absurd memories and fancies,
+burdened, too, with an urgent prompting of gratitude to some one or
+something. He shook it off, he obstinately rebelled, but he dreaded the
+night, and, with a sigh of relief, hailed the morning that followed a
+dreamless sleep.
+
+Worst of all, he caught himself yielding to thoughts like these: "But he
+was kind to me--awfully decent" (a phrase caught from his elder
+brother). "I remember how He ..." And then he would shake himself. "It
+was only a silly old dream. He wasn't real a bit. I'm not a rotten kid
+now that thinks fairies and all that true."
+
+He was bothered, too, by the affectionate sentiment (still disguised,
+but ever, as the days proceeded, more thinly) of his mother and sisters.
+The girls, May and Clare, adored young John. His elder brother was away
+with a school friend. John, therefore, was left to feminine attention,
+and very tiresome he found it. May and Clare, girls of no imagination,
+saw only the drama that they might extract for themselves out of the
+affair. They knew what school was like, especially at first--John was
+going to be utterly wretched, miserably homesick, bullied, kept in over
+horrible sums and impossible Latin exercises, ill-fed, and trodden upon
+at games. They did not really believe these things--they knew that their
+brother, Tom, had always had a most pleasant time, and John was
+precisely the type of boy who would prosper at school, but they
+indulged, just for this fortnight, their romantic sentiment, never
+alluded in speech to school and its terrors, but by their pitying
+avoidance of the subject filled the atmosphere with their agitation.
+They were working things for John--May, handkerchiefs, and Clare, a
+comforter; their voices were soft and charged with omens, their eyes
+were bright with the drama of the event, as though they had been
+supporting some young Christian relation before his encounter with the
+lions. John hated more and more and more.
+
+But more terrible to him than his sisters was his mother. He was too
+young to understand what his departure meant to her, but he knew that
+there was something real here that needed comforting. He wanted to
+comfort her, and yet hated the atmosphere of emotion that he felt in
+himself as well as in her. They ought to know, he argued, that the least
+little thing would make him break down like an ass and behave as no man
+should, and yet they were doing everything.... Oh, if only Tom were
+here! Then, at any rate, would be brutal common-sense. There were
+special meals for him during this fortnight, and an eager inviting of
+his opinion as to how the days should be spent. On the last night of all
+they were to go to the theatre--a real play this time, none of your
+pantomime!
+
+There was, moreover, all the business of clothes--fine, rich, stiff new
+garments--a new Eton jacket, a round black coat, a shining bowler-hat,
+new boots. He watched this stir with a brave assumption that he had
+been surveying it all his life, but a horrible tight pain in the bottom
+of his throat told him that he was a bravado, almost a liar.
+
+He found himself, now that the "twenty-third" was gaping right there in
+front of him, with its fiery throat wide and flaming, doing the
+strangest thing. He was frightened of the dusk, he would run through the
+passage and up the stairs at breathless speed, he would look for a
+moment at the lamp-lit square with the lights of the opposite houses
+tigers' eyes, and the trees filmy like smoke, then would hastily draw
+the curtains and greet the warm inhabited room with a little gasp of
+reassurance. Strangest of all, he found himself often in the old nursery
+at the top of the house. Very seldom did any one come there now, and it
+had the pathos of a room grown cold and comfortless. Most of the toys
+were put away or given to hospitals, but the rocking-horse with his
+Christmas-tree tail was there, and the doll's-house, and a railway with
+trains and stations.
+
+He was here. He was saying to himself: "Yes, it was just over there, by
+the window, that He came that time. He talked to me there. That other
+time it was when I was down by the doll's-house. He showed me the smoke
+coming up from the chimneys when the sun stuck through, and the moon was
+all red one night, and the stars."
+
+He found himself gazing out over the square, over the twisted chimneys,
+that seemed to be laughing at him, over the shining wires and glittering
+roofs, out to the mist that wrapped the city beyond his vision--so vast,
+so huge, so many people--March Square was nothing. He was nothing--John
+Scarlett nothing at all.
+
+Then, with a sigh, he turned back. His Friend, the other night, had been
+real enough. Fairies, ghosts, goblins and dragons--everything was real.
+Everything. It was all terrible, terrible to think of, but, above and
+beyond all else, he must not forget, on the day of his departure, that
+farewell; something disastrous would come upon him were he so
+ungrateful.
+
+And then he would go downstairs again, down to newspapers and fires,
+toast and tea, the large print of Frith's "Railway Station," and the
+coloured supplement of Greiffenhagen's "Idyll," and the tattered numbers
+of the _Windsor_ and the _Strand_ magazines, and, behold, all these
+things were real and all the things in the nursery unreal. Could it be
+that both worlds were real? Even now, at his tender years, that old
+business of connecting the Dream and the Business was at his throat.
+
+"Teal Tea! Tea!" Frantic screams from May. "There's some new jam, and,
+John, mother says she wants you to try on some underclothes afterwards.
+Those others didn't do, she said...."
+
+There came then the disastrous hour--an hour that John was never, in all
+his after-life, to forget. On a wild stormy evening he found himself in
+the nursery. A week remained now--to-day fortnight he would be in
+another world, an alarming, fierce, tremendous world. He looked at the
+rocking-horse with its absurd tail and the patch on its back, that had
+been worn away by its faithful riders, and suddenly he was crying. This
+was a thing that he never did, that he had strenuously, persistently
+refrained from doing all these weeks, but now, in the strangest way, it
+was the conviction that the world into which he was going wouldn't care
+in the least for the doll's-house, and would mock brutally, derisively
+at the rocking-horse, that defeated him. It was even the knowledge
+that, in a very short time, he himself would be mocking.
+
+He sat down on the floor and cried. The door opened; before he could
+resist or make any movement, his mother's arms were about him, his
+mother's cheek against his, and she was whispering: "Oh, my darling, my
+darling!"
+
+The horrible thing then occurred. He was savage, with a wild, fierce,
+protesting rage. His cheeks flamed. His tears were instantly dried. That
+he should have been caught thus! That, when he had been presenting so
+brave and callous a front to the world, at the one weak and shameful
+moment he should have been discovered! He scarcely realised that this
+was his mother, he did not care who it was. It was as though he had been
+delivered into the most horrible and shameful of traps. He pushed her
+from him; he struggled fiercely on his feet. He regarded her with fiery
+eyes.
+
+"It isn't--I wasn't--you oughtn't to have come in. You needn't
+imagine----"
+
+He burst from the room. A shameful, horrible experience.
+
+But it cannot be denied that he was ashamed afterwards. He loved his
+mother, whereas he merely liked the rest of the family. He would not
+hurt her for worlds, and yet, why _must_ she----
+
+And strangely, mysteriously, her attitude was confused in his mind with
+his dreams, and his Friend, and the red moon, and the comic chimneys.
+
+He knew, however, that, during this last week he must be especially nice
+to his mother, and, with an elaborate courtesy and strained attention,
+he did his best.
+
+The last night arrived, and, very smart and excited, they went to the
+theatre. The boxes had been packed, and stood in a shining and
+self-conscious trio in John's bedroom. The new play-box was there, with
+its stolid freshness and the black bands at the corners; inside, there
+was a multitude of riches, and it was, of course, a symbol of absolute
+independence and maturity. John was wearing the new Eton jacket, also a
+new white waistcoat; the parting in his hair was straighter than it had
+ever been before, his ears were pink. The world seemed a confused
+mixture of soap and starch and lights. Piccadilly Circus was a cauldron
+of bubbling colour.
+
+His breath came in little gasps, but his face, with its snub nose and
+large mouth, was grave and composed; up and down his back little shivers
+were running. When the car stopped outside the theatre he gave a little
+gulp. His father, who was, for once, moved by the occasion, said an
+idiotic thing;
+
+"Excited, my son?"
+
+With his head high he walked ahead of them, trod on a lady's dress,
+blushed, heard his father say: "Look where you're going, my boy," heard
+May giggle, frowned indignantly, and was conscious of the horrid
+pressure of his collar-stud against his throat; arrived, hot, confused,
+and very proud, in the dark splendour of the box.
+
+The first play of his life, and how magnificent a play it was! It might
+have been a rotten affair with endless conversations--luckily there were
+no discussions at all. All the characters either loved or hated one
+another too deeply to waste time in talk. They were Roundheads and
+Cavaliers, and a splendid hero, who had once been a bad fellow, but was
+now sorry, fought nine Roundheads at once, and was tortured "off" with
+red lights and his lady waiting for results before a sympathetic
+audience.
+
+During the torture scene John's heart stopped entirely, his brow was
+damp, his hand sought his mother's, found it, and held it very hard.
+She, as she felt his hot fingers pressing against hers, began to see the
+stage through a mist of tears. She had behaved very well during the past
+weeks, but the soul that she adored was, to-morrow morning, to be hurled
+out, wildly, helter-skelter, to receive such tarnishing as it might
+please Fate to think good.
+
+"I _can't_ let him go! I _can't_ let him go!"
+
+The curtain came down.
+
+John turned, his eyes wide, his cheeks pale with a pink spot on the
+middle of each.
+
+"I say, pass those chocolates along!" he whispered hoarsely. Then,
+recovering himself a little: "I wonder what they did to him? They _must_
+have done something to his legs, because they were all crooked when he
+came out."
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+HUGH SEYMOUR
+
+
+I
+
+It happened that Hugh Seymour, in the month of December, 1911, found
+himself in the dreamy orchard-bound cathedral city of Polchester.
+Polchester, as all its inhabitants well know, is famous for its
+cathedral, its buns, and its river, the cathedral being one of the
+oldest, the buns being among the sweetest, and the Pol being amongst the
+most beautiful of the cathedrals, buns and rivers of Great Britain.
+
+Seymour had known Polchester since he was five years old, when he first
+lived there with his father and mother, but he had only once during the
+last ten years been able to visit Glebeshire, and then he had been to
+Rafiel, a fishing village on the south coast. He had, therefore, not
+seen Polchester since his childhood, and now it seemed to him to have
+shrivelled from a world of infinite space and mystery into a toy town
+that would be soon packed away in a box and hidden in a cupboard. As he
+walked up and down the cobbled streets he was moved by a great affection
+and sentiment for it. As he climbed the hill to the cathedral, as he
+stood inside the Close with its lawns, its elm trees, its crooked
+cobbled walks, its gardens, its houses with old bow windows and deep
+overhanging doors, he was again a very small boy with soap in his eyes,
+a shining white collar tight about his neck, and his Eton jacket stiff
+and unfriendly. He was walking up the aisle with his mother, his boots
+creaked, the bell's note was dropping, dropping, the fat verger with his
+staff was undoing the cord of their seat, the boys of the choir-school
+were looking at him and he was blushing, he was on his knees and the
+edge of the kneeler was cutting into his trousers, the precentor's
+voice, as remote from things human as the cathedral bell itself, was
+crying, "Dearly beloved brethren." He would stop there and wonder
+whether there could be any connection between that time and this,
+whether those things had really happened to him, whether he might now
+be dreaming and would wake up presently to find that it would be soon
+time to start for the cathedral, that if he and his sisters were good
+they would have a chapter of the "Pillars of the House" read to them
+after tea, with one chocolate each at the end of every two pages. No, he
+was real, March Square was real, Polchester was real, Glebeshire and
+London were real together--nothing died, nothing passed away.
+
+On the second afternoon of his stay he was standing in the Close, bathed
+now in yellow sunlight, when he saw coming towards him a familiar
+figure. One glance was enough to assure him that this was the Rev.
+William Lasher, once Vicar of Clinton St. Mary, now Canon of Polchester
+Cathedral. Mr. Lasher it was, and Mr. Lasher the same as he had ever
+been. He was walking with his old energetic stride, his head up, his
+black overcoat flapping behind him, his eyes sharply investigating in
+and out and all round him. He saw Seymour, but did not recognise him,
+and would have passed on.
+
+"You don't know me?" said Seymour, holding out his hand.
+
+"I beg your pardon, I----" said Canon Lasher.
+
+"Seymour--Hugh Seymour--whom you were once kind enough to look after at
+Clinton St. Mary."
+
+"Why! Fancy! Indeed. My dear boy. My dear boy!" Mr. Lasher was immensely
+cordial in exactly his old, healthy, direct manner. He insisted that
+Seymour should come with him and drink a cup of tea. Mrs. Lasher would
+be delighted. They had often wondered.... Only the other day Mrs. Lasher
+was saying.... "And you're one of our novelists, I hear," said Canon
+Lasher in exactly the tone that he would have used had Seymour taken to
+tight-rope walking at the Halls.
+
+"Oh, no!" said Seymour, laughing, "that's another man of my name. I'm at
+the Bar."
+
+"Ah," said the Canon, greatly relieved, "that's good! That's good! Very
+good indeed!"
+
+Mrs. Lasher was, of course, immensely surprised. "Why! Fancy! And it was
+only yesterday! Whoever would have expected! I never was more
+astonished! And tea just ready! How fortunate! Just fancy you meeting
+the Canon!"
+
+The Canon seemed, to Seymour, greatly mellowed by comfort and
+prosperity; there was even the possibility of corpulence in the not
+distant future. He was, indeed, a proper Canon.
+
+"And who," said Seymour, "has Clinton St. Mary now?"
+
+"One of the Trenchards," said Mr. Lasher. "As you know, a very famous
+old Glebeshire family. There are some younger cousins of the Garth
+Trenchards, I believe. You know of the Trenchards of Garth? No? Ah, very
+delightful people. You should know them. Yes, Jim Trenchard, the man at
+Clinton, is a few years senior to myself. He was priest when I was
+deacon in--let me see--dear me, how the years fly--in--'pon my word, how
+time goes!"
+
+All of which gave Seymour to understand that the Rev. James Trenchard
+was a failure in life, although a good enough fellow. Then it was that
+suddenly, in the heart of that warm and cosy drawing-room, Hugh Seymour
+was, sharply, as though by a douche of cold water, awakened to the fact
+that he must see Clinton St. Mary again. It appeared to him, now, with
+its lanes, its hedges, the village green, the moor, the Borhaze Road,
+the pirates, yes, and the Scarecrow. It came there, across the Canon's
+sumptuous Turkey carpet, and demanded his presence.
+
+"I must go," Seymour said, getting up and speaking in a strange,
+bewildered voice as though he were just awakening from a dream. He left
+them, at last, promising to come and see them again.
+
+He heard the Canon's voice in his ears: "Always a knife and fork, my
+boy ... any time if you let us know." He stepped down into the little
+lighted streets, into the town with its cosy security and some scent,
+even then in the heart of winter, perhaps, from the fruit of its many
+orchards. The moon, once again an orange feather in the sky, reminded
+him of those early days that seemed now to be streaming in upon him from
+every side.
+
+Early next morning he caught the ten o'clock train to Clinton.
+
+
+II
+
+"Why," in the train he continued to say to himself, "have I let all
+these years pass without returning? Why have I never returned?... Why
+have I never returned?"
+
+The slow, sleepy train (the London express never stops at Clinton)
+jerked through the deep valleys, heavy with woods, golden brown at their
+heart, the low hills carrying, on their horizons, white drifting clouds
+that flung long grey shadows. Seymour felt suddenly as though he could
+never return to London again exactly as he had returned to it before.
+"That period of my life is over, quite over.... Some one is taking me
+down here now--I know that I am being compelled to go. But I want to go.
+I am happier than I have ever been in my life before."
+
+Often, in Glebeshire, December days are warm and mellow like the early
+days of September. It so was now; the country was wrapped in with happy
+content, birds rose and hung, like telegraph wires, beyond the windows.
+On a slanting brown field gulls from the sea, white and shining, were
+hovering, wheeling, sinking into the soil. And yet, as he went, he was
+not leaving March Square behind, but rather taking it with him. He was
+taking the children too--Bim, Angelina, John, even Sarah (against her
+will), and it was not her who was in charge of the party. He felt as
+though, the railway carriages were full and he ought to say continually,
+"Now, Bim, be quiet. Sit still and look at the picture-book I gave you.
+Sarah, I shall leave you at the next station if you aren't careful," and
+that she replied, giving him one of her dark sarcastic looks, "I don't
+care if you do. I know how to get home all right without your help."
+
+He wished that he hadn't brought her, and yet he couldn't help himself.
+They all had to come. Then, as he looked about the empty carriage, he
+laughed at himself. Only a fat farmer reading _The Glebeshire Times_.
+
+"Marnin', sir," said the farmer. "Warm Christmas we'll be havin', I
+reckon. Yes, indeed. I see the Bishop's dying--poor old soul too."
+
+When they arrived at Clinton he caught himself turning round as though
+to collect his charges; he thought that the farmer looked at him
+curiously.
+
+"Coming back again has turned my wits.... Now, Angelina, hurry up, can't
+wait all day." He stopped then abruptly, to pull himself together. "Look
+here, you're alone, and if you think you're not, you're mad. Remember
+that you're at the Bar and not even a novelist, so that you have no
+excuse."
+
+The little platform--usually swept by all the winds of the sea, but now
+as warm as a toasted bun--flooded him with memory. It was a platform
+especially connected with school, with departure and return--departures
+when money in one's pocket and cake in one's play-box did not compensate
+for the hot pain in one's throat and the cold marble feeling of one's
+legs; but when every feeling of every sort was swallowed by the great
+overwhelming desire that the train would go so that one need not any
+longer be agonised by the efforts of replying to Mr. Lasher's continued
+last words: "Well, good-bye, my boy. A good time, both at work and
+play"--the train was off.
+
+"Ticket, please, sir!" said the long-legged young man at the little
+wooden gate. Seymour plunged down into the deep, high-hedged lane that
+even now, in winter, seemed to cover him with a fragrant odour of green
+leaves, of flowers, of wet soil, of sea spray. He was now so conscious
+of his company that the knowledge of it could not be avoided. It seemed
+to him that he heard them chattering together, knew that behind his
+back Sarah was trying to whisper horrid things in Bim's ear, and that he
+was laughing at her, which made her furious.
+
+"I must have eaten something," he thought. "It's the strangest feeling
+I've ever had. I just won't take any notice of them. I'll go on as
+though they weren't there." But the strangest thing of all was that he
+felt as though he himself were being taken. He had the most comfortable
+feeling that there was no need for him to give any thought or any kind
+of trouble. "You just leave it all to me," some one said to him. "I've
+made all the arrangements."
+
+The lane was hot, and the midday winter sun covered the paths with pools
+and splashes of colour. He came out on to the common and saw the
+village, the long straggling street with the white-washed cottages and
+the hideous grey-slate roofs; the church tower, rising out of the elms,
+and the pond, running to the common's edge, its water chequered with the
+reflection of the white clouds above it.
+
+The main street of Clinton is not a lovely street; the inland villages
+and towns of Glebeshire are, unless you love them, amongst the ugliest
+things in England, but every step caught at Seymour's heart.
+
+There was Mr. Roscoe's shop which was also the post-office, and in its
+window was the same collection of liquorice sticks, saffron buns, reels
+of cotton, a coloured picture of the royal family, views of Trezent
+Head, Borhaze Beach, St. Arthe Church, cotton blouses made apparently
+for dolls, so minute were they, three books, "Ben Hur," "The Wide, Wide
+World," and "St. Elmo," two bottles of sweets, some eau-de-Cologne, and
+a large white card with bone buttons on it. So moving was this
+collection to Seymour that he stared at the window as though he were in
+a trance.
+
+The arrangement of the articles was exactly the same as it had been in
+the earlier days--the royal family in the middle, supported by the jars
+of sweets; the three books, very dusty and faded, in the very front; and
+the bootlaces and liquorice sticks all mixed together as though Mr.
+Roscoe had forgotten which was which.
+
+"Look here, Bim," he said aloud, "I've left you up--I really am going
+off my head!" he thought. He hurried away. "If I _am_ mad I'm awfully
+happy," he said.
+
+
+III
+
+The white vicarage gate closed behind him with precisely the
+old-remembered sound--the whiz, the sudden startled pause, the satisfied
+click. Seymour stood on the sun-bathed lawn, glittering now like green
+glass, and stared at the house. Its square front of faded red brick
+preserved a tranquil silence; the only sound in the place was the
+movement of some birds, his old friend the robin perhaps in the laurel
+bushes behind him.
+
+Although the sun was so warm there was in the air a foreshadowing of a
+frosty night; and some Christmas roses, smiling at him from the flower
+beds to right and left of the hall door, seemed to him that they
+remembered him; but, indeed, the whole house seemed to tell him that.
+There it waited for him, so silent, laid ready for his acceptance under
+the blue sky and with no breath of wind stirring. So beautiful was the
+silence, that he made a movement with his hand as though to tell his
+companion to be quiet. He felt that they were crowded in an interested,
+amused group behind him waiting to see what he would do. Then a little
+bell rang somewhere in the house, a voice cried "Martha!"
+
+He moved forward and pulled the wire of the bell; there was a wheezy
+jangle, a pause, and then a sharp irritated sound far away in the heart
+of the house, as though he had hit it in the wind and it protested. An
+old woman, very neat (she was certainly a Glebeshire woman), told him
+that Mr. Trenchard was at home. She took him through the dark passages
+into the study that he knew so well, and said that Mr. Trenchard would
+be with him in a moment.
+
+It was the same study, and yet how different! Many of the old pieces of
+furniture were there--the deep, worn leather arm-chair in which Mr.
+Lasher had been sitting when he had his famous discussion with Mr.
+Pidgen, the same bookshelves, the same tiles in the fireplace with Bible
+pictures painted on them, the same huge black coal-scuttle, the same
+long, dark writing-table. But instead of the old order and discipline
+there was now a confusion that gave the room the air of a waste-paper
+basket. Books were piled, up and down, in the shelves, they dribbled on
+to the floor and lay in little trickling streams across the carpet; old
+bundles of papers, yellow with age, tied with string and faded blue
+tape, were in heaps upon the window-sill, and in tumbling cascades in
+the very middle of the floor; the writing-table itself was so hopelessly
+littered with books, sermon papers, old letters and new letters, bottles
+of ink, bottles of glue, three huge volumes of a Bible Concordance,
+photographs, and sticks of sealing-wax, that the man who could be happy
+amid such confusion must surely be a kindly and benevolent creature. How
+orderly had been Mr. Lasher's table, with all the pens in rows, and
+little sharp drawers that clicked, marked A, B, and C, to put papers
+into.
+
+Mr. Trenchard entered.
+
+He was what the room had prophesied--fat, red-faced, bald, extremely
+untidy, with stains on his coat and tobacco on his coat, that was
+turning a little green, and chalk on his trousers. His eyes shone with
+pleased friendliness, but there was a little pucker in his forehead, as
+though his life had not always been pleasant. He rubbed his nose, as he
+talked, with the back of his hand, and made sudden little darts at the
+chalk on his trousers, as though he would brush it off. He had the face
+of an innocent baby, and when he spoke he looked at his companion with
+exactly the gaze of trusting confidence that a child bestows upon its
+elders.
+
+"I hope you will forgive me," said Seymour, smiling; "I've come, too, at
+such an awkward time, but the truth is I simply couldn't help myself. I
+ought, besides, to catch the four o'clock train back to Polchester."
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Trenchard, smiling, rubbing his hands together,
+and altogether in the dark as to what his visitor might be wanting.
+
+"Ah, but I haven't explained; how stupid of me! My name is Seymour. I
+was here during several years, as a small boy, with Canon Lasher--in my
+holidays, you know. It's years ago, and I've never been back. I was at
+Polchester this morning and suddenly felt that I must come over. I
+wondered whether you'd be so good as to let me look a little at the
+house and garden."
+
+There was nothing that Mr. Trenchard would like better. How was Canon
+Lasher? Well? Good. They met sometimes at meetings at Polchester. Canon
+Lasher, Mr. Trenchard believed, liked it better at Polchester than at
+Clinton. Honestly, it would break Mr. Trenchard's heart if _he_ had to
+leave the place. But there was no danger of that now. Would Mr.
+Seymour--his wife would be delighted--would he stay to luncheon?
+
+"Why, that is too kind of you," said Seymour, hesitating, "but there are
+so many of us, such a lot--I mean," he said hurriedly, at Mr.
+Trenchard's innocent stare of surprise, "that it's too hard on Mrs.
+Trenchard, with so little notice."
+
+He broke off confusedly.
+
+"We shall only be too delighted," said Mr. Trenchard. "And if you have
+friends ..."
+
+"No, no," said Seymour, "I'm quite alone."
+
+When, afterwards, he was introduced to Mrs. Trenchard in the
+drawing-room, he liked her at once. She was a little woman, very neat,
+with grey hair brushed back from her forehead. She was like some fresh,
+mild-coloured fruit, and an old-fashioned dress of rather faded green
+silk, and a large locket that she wore gave her a settled, tranquil air
+as though she had always been the same, and would continue so for many
+years. She had a high, fresh colour, a beautiful complexion and her
+hands had the delicacy of fragile egg-shell china. She was cheerful and
+friendly, but was, nevertheless, a sad woman; her eyes were dark and her
+voice was a little forced as though she had accustomed herself to be in
+good spirits. The love between herself and her husband was very pleasant
+to see.
+
+Like all simple people, they immediately trusted Seymour with their
+confidence. During luncheon they told him many things, of Rasselas,
+where Mr. Trenchard had been a curate, at their joy at getting the
+Clinton living, and of their happiness at being there, of the kindness
+of the people, of the beauty of the country, of their neighbours, of
+their relations, the George Trenchards, at Garth of Glebeshire
+generally, and what it meant to be a Trenchard.
+
+"There've been Trenchards in Glebeshire," said the Vicar, greatly
+excited, "since the beginning of time. If Adam and Eve were here, and
+Glebeshire was the Garden of Eden, as I daresay it was, why, then Adam
+was a Trenchard."
+
+Afterwards when they were smoking in the confused study, Seymour learnt
+why Mrs. Trenchard was a sad woman.
+
+"We've had one trial, under God's grace," said Mr. Trenchard. "There
+was a boy and a girl--Francis and Jessamy. They died, both, in a bad
+epidemic of typhoid here, five years ago. Francis was five, Jessamy
+four. 'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.' It was hard losing
+both of them. They got ill together and died on the same day."
+
+He puffed furiously at his pipe. "Mrs. Trenchard keeps the nursery just
+the same as it used to be. She'll show it to you, I daresay."
+
+Later, when Mrs. Trenchard took him over the house, his sight of the
+nursery was more moving to him than any of his old memories. She
+unlocked the door with a sharp turn of the wrist and showed him the wide
+sun-lit room, still with fresh curtains, with a wall-paper of robins and
+cherries, with the toys--dolls, soldiers, a big dolls'-house, a
+rocking-horse, boxes of bricks.
+
+"Our two children, who died five years ago," she said in her quiet, calm
+voice, "this was their room. These were their things. I haven't been
+able to change it as yet. Mr. Lasher," she said, smiling up at him, "had
+no children, and you were too old for a nursery, I suppose."
+
+It was then, as he stood in the doorway, bathed in a shaft of sunlight,
+that he was again, with absolute physical consciousness, aware of the
+children's presence. He could tell that they were pressing behind him,
+staring past him into the room, he could almost hear their whispered
+exclamations of delight.
+
+He turned to Mrs. Trenchard as though she must have perceived that he
+was not alone. But she had noticed nothing; with another sharp turn of
+the wrist she had locked the door.
+
+
+IV
+
+To-morrow was Christmas Eve: he had promised to spend Christmas with
+friends in Somerset. Now he went to the little village post-office and
+telegraphed that he was detained; he felt at that moment as though he
+would never like to leave Clinton again.
+
+The inn, the "Hearty Cow," was kept by people who were new to
+him--"foreigners, from up-country." The fat landlord complained to
+Seymour of the slowness of the Clinton people, that they never could be
+induced to see things to their own proper advantage. "A dead-alive
+place _I_ call it," he said; "but still, mind you," he added, "it's got
+a sort of a 'old on one."
+
+From the diamond-paned windows of his bedroom next morning he surveyed a
+glorious day, the very sky seemed to glitter with frost, and when his
+window was opened he could hear quite plainly the bell on Trezent Rock,
+so crystal was the air. He walked that morning for miles; he covered all
+his old ground, picking up memories as though he were building a
+pleasure-house. Here was his dream, there was disappointment, here that
+flaming discovery, there this sudden terror--nothing had changed for
+him, the Moor, St. Arthe Church, St. Dreot Woods, the high white gates
+and mysterious hidden park of Portcullis House--all were as though it
+had been yesterday that he had last seen them. Polchester had dwindled
+before his giant growth. Here the moor, the woods, the roads had grown,
+and it was he that had shrunken.
+
+At last he stood on the sand-dunes that bounded the moor and looked down
+upon the marbled sand, blue and gold after the retreating tide. The
+faint lisp and curdle of the sea sang to him. A row of sea-gulls, one
+and then another quivering in the light, stood at the water's edge; the
+stiff grass that pushed its way fiercely from the sand of the dunes was
+white with hoar-frost, and the moon, silver now, and sharply curved,
+came climbing behind the hill.
+
+He turned back and went home. He had promised to have tea at the
+Vicarage, and he found Mrs. Trenchard putting holly over the pictures in
+the little dark square hall. She looked as though she had always been
+there, and as though, in some curious way, the holly, with its bright
+red berries, especially belonged to her.
+
+She asked him to help her, and Seymour thought that he must have known
+her all his life. She had a tranquil, restful air, but, now and then,
+hummed a little tune. She was very tidy as she moved about, picking up
+little scraps of holly. A row of pins shone in her green dress. After a
+while they went upstairs and hung holly in the passages.
+
+Seymour had turned his back to her and was balanced on a little ladder,
+when he heard her utter a sharp little cry.
+
+"The nursery door's open," she said. He turned, and saw very clearly,
+against the half-light, her startled eyes. Her hands were pressed
+against her dress and holly had fallen at her feet. He saw, too, that
+the nursery door was ajar.
+
+"I locked it myself, yesterday; you saw me."
+
+She gasped as though she had been running, and he saw that her face was
+white.
+
+He moved forward quickly and pushed open the door. The room itself was
+lightened by the gleam from the passage and also by the moonlight that
+came dimly through the window. The shadow of some great tree was flung
+upon the floor. He saw, at once, that the room was changed. The
+rocking-horse that had been yesterday against the wall had now been
+dragged far across the floor. The white front of the dolls'-house had
+swung open and the furniture was disturbed as though some child had been
+interrupted in his play. Four large dolls sat solemnly round a dolls'
+tea-table, and a dolls' tea service was arranged in front of them. In
+the very centre of the room a fine castle of bricks had been rising, a
+perfect Tower of Babel in its frustrated ambition.
+
+The shadow of the great tree shook and quivered above these things.
+
+Seymour saw Mrs. Trenchard's face, he heard her whisper:
+
+"Who is it? What is it?"
+
+Then she fell upon her knees near the tower of bricks. She gazed at
+them, stared round the rest of the room, then looked up at him, saying
+very quietly:
+
+"I knew that they would come back one day. I always waited. It must have
+been they. Only Francis ever built the bricks like that, with the red
+ones in the middle. He always said they _must_ be...."
+
+She broke off and then, with her hands pressed to her face, cried, so
+softly and so gently that she made scarcely any sound.
+
+Seymour left her.
+
+
+V
+
+He passed through the house without any one seeing him, crossed the
+common, and went up to his bedroom at the inn. He sat down before his
+window with his back to the room. He flung the rattling panes wide.
+
+The room looked out across on to the moor, and he could see, in the
+moonlight, the faint thread of the beginning of the Borhaze Road. To
+the left of this there was some sharp point of light, some cottage
+perhaps. It flashed at him as though it were trying to attract his
+attention. The night was so magical, the world so wonderful, so without
+bound or limit, that he was prepared now to wait, passively, for his
+experience. That point of light was where the Scarecrow used to be, just
+where the brown fields rise up against the horizon. In all his walks
+to-day he had deliberately avoided that direction. The Scarecrow would
+not be there now; he had always in his heart fancied it there, and he
+would not change that picture that he had of it. But now the light
+flashed at him. As he stared at it he knew that to-day he had completed
+that adventure that had begun for him many years ago, on that Christmas
+Eve when he had met Mr. Pidgen.
+
+They were whispering in his ear, "We've had a lovely day. It was the
+most beautiful nursery.... Two other children came too. They wore
+_their_ things...."
+
+"What, after all," said his Friend's voice, "does it mean but that if
+you love enough we are with you everywhere--for ever?"
+
+And then the children's voices again:
+
+"She thought they'd come back, but they'd never gone away--really, you
+know."
+
+He gazed once more at the point of light, and then turned round and
+faced the dark room....
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Scarecrow, by Hugh Walpole
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14201 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14201 ***</div>
+
+<h1><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a>THE GOLDEN SCARECROW</h1>
+
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+
+<h2>HUGH WALPOLE</h2>
+
+
+<h4>AUTHOR OF</h4>
+
+<h4>&quot;THE DUCHESS OF WREXE,&quot; &quot;FORTITUDE,&quot; &quot;THE PRELUDE TO
+ADVENTURE,&quot; &quot;THE WOODEN HORSE.&quot; ETC.</h4>
+
+<h3>NEW YORK</h3>
+
+<h4>1915</h4>
+
+<h5>GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a></h5>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Content">
+<tr><th align='right'>Chapter</th><th align='left'>&nbsp;</th><th align='right'>Page</th></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><a href="#PROLOGUE">Prologue--Hugh Seymour</a></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td><td align='left'>Henry Fitzgeorge Strether</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td><td align='left'>Ernest Henry</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td><td align='left'>Angelina</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td><td align='left'>Bim Rochester</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td><td align='left'>Nancy Ross</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td><td align='left'>'Enery</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td><td align='left'>Barbara Flint</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_198">198</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td><td align='left'>Sarah Trefusis</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_226">226</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td><td align='left'>Young John Scarlet</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_256">256</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><a href="#EPILOGUE">Epilogue</a></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_274">274</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a></p>
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="PROLOGUE" id="PROLOGUE"></a>PROLOGUE</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Hugh Seymour</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>When Hugh Seymour was nine years of age he was sent from Ceylon, where
+his parents lived, to be educated in England. His relations having, for
+the most part, settled in foreign countries, he spent his holidays as a
+very minute and pale-faced &quot;paying guest&quot; in various houses where other
+children were of more importance than he, or where children as a race
+were of no importance at all. It was in this way that he became during
+certain months of 1889 and 1890 and '91 a resident in the family of the
+Rev. William Lasher, Vicar of Clinton St. Mary, that large rambling
+village on the edge of Roche St. Mary Moor in South Glebeshire.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>He spent there the two Christmases of 1890 and 1891 (when he was ten
+and eleven years of age), and it is with the second of these that the
+following incident, and indeed the whole of this book, has to do. Hugh
+Seymour could not, at the period of which I write, be called an
+attractive child; he was not even &quot;interesting&quot; or &quot;unusual.&quot; He was
+very minutely made, with bones so brittle that it seemed that, at any
+moment, he might crack and splinter into sharp little pieces; and I am
+afraid that no one would have minded very greatly had this occurred. But
+although, he was so thin his face had a white and overhanging
+appearance, his cheeks being pale and puffy and his under-lip jutted
+forward in front of projecting teeth&mdash;he was known as the &quot;White Rabbit&quot;
+by his schoolfellows. He was not, however, so ugly as this appearance
+would apparently convey, for his large, grey eyes, soft and even, at
+times agreeably humorous, were pleasant and cheerful.</p>
+
+<p>During these years when he knew Mr. Lasher he was undoubtedly
+unfortunate. He was shortsighted, but no one had, as yet, discovered
+this, and he was, therefore, blamed for much clumsiness that he could
+not prevent and for a good <a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>deal of sensitiveness that came quite simply
+from his eagerness to do what he was told and his inability to see his
+way to do it. He was not, at this time, easy with strangers and seemed
+to them both conceited and awkward. Conceit was far from him&mdash;he was, in
+fact, amazed at so feeble a creature as himself!&mdash;but awkward he was,
+and very often greedy, selfish, impetuous, untruthful and even cruel: he
+was nearly always dirty, and attributed this to the evil wishes of some
+malign fairy who flung mud upon him, dropped him into puddles and
+covered him with ink simply for the fun of the thing!</p>
+
+<p>He did not, at this time, care very greatly for reading; he told himself
+stories&mdash;long stories with enormous families in them, trains of
+elephants, ropes and ropes of pearls, towers of ivory, peacocks, and
+strange meals of saffron buns, roast chicken, and gingerbread. His
+active, everyday concern, however, was to become a sportsman; he wished
+to be the best cricketer, the best footballer, the fastest runner of his
+school, and he had not&mdash;even then faintly he knew it&mdash;the remotest
+chance of doing any of these things even moderately well. He was bullied
+at school until his ap<a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>pointment as his dormitory's story-teller gave
+him a certain status, but his efforts at cricket and football were
+mocked with jeers and insults. He could not throw a cricket-ball, he
+could not see to catch one after it was thrown to him, did he try to
+kick a football he missed it, and when he had run for five minutes he
+saw purple skies and silver stars and has cramp in his legs. He had,
+however, during these years at Mr. Lasher's, this great over mastering
+ambition.</p>
+
+<p>In his sleep, at any rate, he was a hero; in the wide-awake world he
+was, in the opinion of almost every one, a fool. He was exactly the type
+of boy whom the Rev. William Lasher could least easily understand. Mr.
+Lasher was tall and thin (his knees often cracked with a terrifying
+noise), blue-black about the cheeks hooked as to the nose, bald and
+shining as to the head, genial as to the manner, and practical to the
+shining tips of his fingers. He has not, at Cambridge, obtained a rowing
+blue, but &quot;had it not been for a most unfortunate attack of scarlet
+fever&mdash;&mdash;-&quot; He was President of the Clinton St. Mary Cricket Club, 1890
+(matches played, six; lost, five; drawn, one) knew how to slash the ball
+across the net at a <a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a>tennis garden party, always read the prayers in
+church as though he were imploring God to keep a straighter bat and
+improve His cut to leg, and had a passion for knocking nails into walls,
+screwing locks into doors, and making chicken runs. He was, he often
+thanked his stars, a practical Realist, and his wife, who was fat,
+stupid, and in a state of perpetual wonder, used to say of him, &quot;If Will
+hadn't been a clergyman he would have made <i>such</i> an engineer. If God
+had blessed us with a boy, I'm sure he would have been something
+scientific. Will's no dreamer.&quot; Mr. Lasher was kindly of heart so long
+as you allowed him to maintain that the world was made for one type of
+humanity only. He was as breezy as a west wind, loved to bathe in the
+garden pond on Christmas Day (&quot;had to break the ice that morning&quot;), and
+at penny readings at the village schoolroom would read extracts from
+&quot;Pickwick,&quot; and would laugh so heartily himself that he would have to
+stop and wipe his eyes. &quot;If you must read novels,&quot; he would say, &quot;read
+Dickens. Nothing to offend the youngest among us&mdash;fine breezy stuff with
+an optimism that does you good and people you get to know and be fond
+of. By Jove, I can <a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>still cry over Little Nell and am not ashamed of
+it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He had the heartiest contempt for &quot;wasters&quot; and &quot;failures,&quot; and he was
+afraid there were a great many in the world. &quot;Give me a man who is a
+man,&quot; he would say, &quot;a man who can hit a ball for six, run ten miles
+before breakfast and take his knocks with the best of them. Wasn't it
+Browning who said,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;'God's in His heaven,<br /></span>
+<span>All's right with the world.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Browning was a great teacher&mdash;after Tennyson, one of our greatest. Where
+are such men to-day!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was, therefore, in spite of his love for outdoor pursuits, a cultured
+man.</p>
+
+<p>It was natural, perhaps, that he should find Hugh Seymour &quot;a pity.&quot;
+Nearly everything that he said about Hugh Seymour began with the words&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a pity that&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a pity that you can't get some red into your cheeks, my boy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a pity you don't care about porridge. You must learn to like it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a>It's a pity you can't even make a little progress with your
+mathematics.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a pity you told me a lie because&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a pity you were rude to Mrs. Lasher. No gentleman&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a pity you weren't attending when&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lasher was, very earnestly, determined to do his best for the boy,
+and, as he said, &quot;You see, Hugh, if we do our best for you, you must do
+your best for us. Now I can't, I'm afraid, call this your best.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hugh would have liked to say that it <i>was</i> the best that he could do in
+that particular direction (very probably Euclid), but if only he might
+be allowed to try his hand in quite <i>another</i> direction, he might do
+something very fine indeed. He never, of course, had a chance of saying
+this, nor would such a declaration have greatly benefited him, because,
+for Mr. Lasher, there was only one way for every one and the sooner (if
+you were a small boy) you followed it the better.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't dream, Hugh,&quot; said Mr. Lasher, &quot;remember that no man ever did
+good-work by dreaming. The goal is to the strong. Remember that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a>Hugh, did remember it and would have liked very much to be as strong as
+possible, but whenever he tried feats of strength he failed and looked
+foolish.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear boy, <i>that's</i> not the way to do it,&quot; said Mr. Lasher; &quot;it's a
+pity that you don't listen to what I tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>A very remarkable fact about Mr. Lasher was this&mdash;that he paid no
+attention whatever to the county in which he lived. Now there are
+certain counties in England where it is possible to say, &quot;I am in
+England,&quot; and to leave it at that; their quality is simply English with
+no more individual personality. But Glebeshire has such an
+individuality, whether for good or evil, that it forces comment from the
+most sluggish and inattentive of human beings. Mr. Lasher was perhaps
+the only soul, living or dead, who succeeded in living in it during
+forty years (he is still there, he is a Canon now in Polchester) and
+never saying anything about it. When on his visits to London people
+inquired his opinion of Glebeshire, he would say: &quot;Ah well!... I'm
+afraid Methodism and in<a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a>temperance are very strong ... all the same,
+we're fighting 'em, fighting 'em!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This was the more remarkable in that Mr. Lasher lived upon the very edge
+of Roche St. Mary Moor, a stretch of moor and sand. Roche St. Mary Moor,
+that runs to the sea, contains the ruins of St. Arthe Church (buried
+until lately in the sand, but recently excavated through the kind
+generosity of Sir John Porthcullis, of Borhaze, and shown to visitors,
+6d. a head, Wednesday and Saturday afternoons free), and in one of the
+most romantic, mist-laden, moon-silvered, tempest-driven spots in the
+whole of Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>The road that ran from Clinton St. Mary to Borhaze across the moor was
+certainly a wild, rambling, beautiful affair, and when the sea-mists
+swept across it and the wind carried the cry of the Bell of Trezent Rock
+in and out above and below, you had a strange and moving experience. Mr.
+Lasher was certainly compelled to ride on his bicycle from Clinton St.
+Mary to Borhaze and back again, and never thought it either strange or
+moving. &quot;Only ten at the Bible meeting to-night. Borhaze wants waking
+up. We'll see what open-air services can do.&quot; What the moor <a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a>thought
+about Mr. Lasher it is impossible to know!</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Seymour thought about the moor continually, but he was afraid to
+mention his ideas of it in public. There was a legend in the village
+that several hundred years ago some pirates, driven by storm into
+Borhaze, found their way on to the moor and, caught by the mist,
+perished there; they are to be seen, says the village, in powdered wigs,
+red coats, gold lace, and swords, haunting the sand-dunes. God help the
+poor soul who may fall into their hands! This was a very pleasant story,
+and Hugh Seymour's thoughts often crept around and about it. He would
+like to find a pirate, to bring him to the vicarage, and present him to
+Mr. Lasher. He knew that Mrs. Lasher would say, &quot;Fancy, a pirate. Well!
+now, fancy! Well, here's a pirate!&quot; And that Mr. Lasher would say, &quot;It's
+a pity, Hugh, that you don't choose your company more carefully. Look at
+the man's nose!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hugh, although he was only eleven, knew this. Hugh did on one occasion
+mention the pirates. &quot;Dreaming again, Hugh! Pity they fill your head
+with such nonsense! If they read their Bibles more!&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a>Nevertheless, Hugh continued his dreaming. He dreamt of the moor, of
+the pirates, of the cobbled street in Borhaze, of the cry of the Trezent
+Bell, of the deep lanes and the smell of the flowers in them, of making
+five hundred not out at cricket, of doing a problem in Euclid to Mr.
+Lasher's satisfaction, of having a collar at the end of the week as
+clean as it had been at the beginning, of discovering the way to make a
+straight parting in the hair, of not wriggling in bed when Mrs. Lasher
+kissed him at night, of many, many other things.</p>
+
+<p>He was at this time a very lonely boy. Until Mr. Pidgen paid his visit
+he was most remarkably lonely. After that visit he was never lonely
+again.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Mr. Pidgen came on a visit to the vicarage three days before Christmas.
+Hugh Seymour saw him first from the garden. Mr. Pidgen was standing at
+the window of Mr. Lasher's study; he was staring in front of him at the
+sheets of light that flashed and darkened and flashed again across the
+lawn, at the green cluster of holly-berries by the drive-gate, at <a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a>the
+few flakes of snow that fell, lazily, carelessly, as though they were
+trying to decide whether they would make a grand affair of it or not,
+and perhaps at the small, grubby boy who was looking at him with one eye
+and trying to learn the Collect for the day (it was Sunday) with the
+other. Hugh had never before seen any one in the least like Mr. Pidgen.
+He was short and round, and his head was covered with tight little
+curls. His cheeks were chubby and red and his nose small, his mouth also
+very small. He had no chin. He was wearing a bright blue velvet
+waistcoat with brass buttons, and over his black shoes there shone white
+spats.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh had never seen white spats before. Mr. Pidgen shone with
+cleanliness, and he had supremely the air of having been exactly as he
+was, all in one piece, years ago. He was like one of the china ornaments
+in Mrs. Lasher's drawing-room that the housemaid is told to be so
+careful about, and concerning whose destruction Hugh heard her on at
+least one occasion declaring, in a voice half tears, half defiance,
+&quot;Please, ma'am, it wasn't me. It just slipped of itself!&quot; Mr. Pidgen
+would break very completely were he dropped.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a>The first thing about him that struck Hugh was his amazing difference
+from Mr. Lasher. It seemed strange that any two people so different
+could be in the same house. Mr. Lasher never gleamed or shone, he would
+not break with however violent an action you dropped him, he would
+certainly never wear white spats.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh liked Mr. Pidgen at once. They spoke for the first time at the
+mid-day meal, when Mr. Lasher said, &quot;More Yorkshire pudding, Pidgen?&quot;
+and Mr. Pidgen said, &quot;I adore it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now Yorkshire pudding happened to be one of Hugh's special passions just
+then, particularly when it was very brown and crinkly, so he said quite
+spontaneously and without taking thought, as he was always told to do,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So do I!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My <i>dear</i> Hugh!&quot; said Mrs. Lasher; &quot;how very greedy! Fancy! After all
+you've been told! Well, well! Manners, manners!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know,&quot; said Mr. Pidgen (his mouth was full). &quot;I said it first,
+and I'm older than he is. I should know better.... I like boys to be
+greedy, it's a good sign&mdash;a good sign. Besides. Sunday&mdash;after a
+sermon&mdash;one <a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a>naturally feels a bit peckish. Good enough sermon, Lasher,
+but a bit long.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lasher of course did not like this, and, indeed, it was evident to
+any one (even to a small boy) that the two gentlemen would have
+different opinions upon every possible subject. However, Hugh loved Mr.
+Pidgen there and then, and decided that he would put him into the story
+then running (appearing in nightly numbers from the moment of his
+departure to bed to the instant of slumber&mdash;say ten minutes); he would
+also, in the imaginary cricket matches that he worked out on paper, give
+Mr. Pidgen an innings of two hundred not out and make him captain of
+Kent. He now observed the vision very carefully and discovered several
+strange items in his general behaviour. Mr. Pidgen was fond of whistling
+and humming to himself; he was restless and would walk up and down a
+room with his head in the air and his hands behind his broad back,
+humming (out of tune) &quot;Sally in our Alley,&quot; or &quot;Drink to me only.&quot; Of
+course this amazed Mr. Lasher.</p>
+
+<p>He would quite suddenly stop, stand like a top spinning, balanced on his
+toes, and cry, &quot;Ah! Now I've got it! No, I haven't! Yes, I have. By God,
+it's gone again!&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a>To this also Mr. Lasher strongly objected, and Hugh heard him say,
+&quot;Really, Pidgen, think of the boy! Think of the boy!&quot; and Mr. Pidgen
+exclaimed, &quot;By God, so I should!... Beg pardon, Lasher! Won't do it
+again! Lord save me, I'm a careless old drunkard!&quot; He had any number of
+strange phrases that were new and brilliant and exciting to the boy, who
+listened to him. He would say, &quot;by the martyrs of Ephesus!&quot; or &quot;Sunshine
+and thunder!&quot; or &quot;God stir your slumbers!&quot; when he thought any one very
+stupid. He said this last one day to Mrs. Lasher, and of course she was
+very much astonished. She did not from the first like him at all. Mr.
+Pidgen and Mr. Lasher had been friends at Cambridge and had not met one
+another since, and every one knows that that is a dangerous basis for
+the renewal of friendship. They had a little dispute on the very
+afternoon of Mr. Pidgen's arrival, when Mr. Lasher asked his guest
+whether he played golf.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God preserve my soul! No!&quot; said Mr. Pidgen. Mr. Lasher then explained
+that playing golf made one thin, hungry and self-restrained. Mr. Pidgen
+said that he did not wish to be the first or last of these, and that he
+was always <a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a>the second, and that golf was turning the fair places of
+England into troughs for the moneyed pigs of the Stock Exchange to swill
+in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear Pidgen!&quot; cried Mr. Lasher, &quot;I'm afraid no one could call me a
+moneyed pig with any justice&mdash;more's the pity&mdash;and a game of golf to me
+is&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! you're a parson, Lasher,&quot; said his guest.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, by the evening of the second day of the visit it was obvious
+that Clinton St. Mary Vicarage might, very possibly, witness a disturbed
+Christmas. It was all very tiresome for poor Mrs. Lasher. On the late
+afternoon of Christmas Eve, Hugh heard the stormy conversation that
+follows&mdash;a conversation that altered the colour and texture of his
+after-life as such things may, when one is still a child.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Christmas Eve was always, to Hugh, a day with glamour. He did not any
+longer hang up his stocking (although he would greatly have liked to do
+so), but, all day, his heart beat thickly at the thought of the morrow,
+at the thought of something more than the giving and <a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a>receiving of
+presents, something more than the eating of food, something more than
+singing hymns that were delightfully familiar, something more than
+putting holly over the pictures and hanging mistletoe on to the lamp in
+the hall. Something there was in the day like going home, like meeting
+people again whom one had loved once, and not seen for many years,
+something as warm and romantic and lightly coloured <i>and</i> as comforting
+as the most inspired and impossible story that one could ever, lying in
+bed and waiting for sleep, invent.</p>
+
+<p>To-day there was no snow but a frost, and there was a long bar of
+saffron below the cold sky and a round red ball of a sun. Hugh was
+sitting in a corner of Mr. Lasher's study, looking at Dor&eacute;'s &quot;Don
+Quixote,&quot; when the two gentlemen came in. He was sitting in a dark
+corner and they, because they were angry with one another, did not
+recognise any one except themselves. Mr. Lasher pulled furiously at his
+pipe and Mr. Pidgen stood up by the fire with his short fat legs spread
+wide and his mouth smiling, but his eyes vexed and rather indignant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear Pidgen,&quot; said Mr. Lasher, &quot;you misunderstand me, you do indeed!
+It may be<a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a> (I would be the first to admit that, like most men, I have my
+weakness) that I lay too much stress upon the healthy, physical, normal
+life, upon seeing things as they are and not as one would like to see
+them to be. I don't believe that dreaming ever did any good to any man!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's only produced some of the finest literature the world has ever
+known,&quot; said Mr. Pidgen.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! Genius! If you or I were geniuses, Pidgen, that would be another
+affair. But we're not; we're plain, common-place humdrum human beings
+with souls to be saved and work to do&mdash;work to do!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a little pause after that, and Hugh, looking at Mr. Pidgen,
+saw the hurt look in his eyes deepen.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come now, Lasher,&quot; he said at last. &quot;Let's be honest one with another;
+that's your line, and you say it ought to be mine. Come now, as man to
+man, you think me a damnable failure now&mdash;beg pardon&mdash;complete
+failure&mdash;don't you? Don't be afraid of hurting me. I want to know!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lasher was really a kindly man, and when his eyes beheld
+things&mdash;there were of course many things that they never beheld&mdash;he
+<a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a>would do his best to help anybody. He wanted to help Mr. Pidgen now;
+but he was also a truthful man.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear Pidgen! Ha, ha! What a question! I'm sure many, many people
+enjoy your books immensely. I'm sure they do, oh, yes!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come, now, Lasher, the truth. You won't hurt my feelings. If you were
+discussing me with a third person you'd say, wouldn't you? 'Ah, poor
+Pidgen might have done something if he hadn't let his fancy run away
+with him. I was with him at Cambridge. He promised well, but I'm afraid
+one must admit that he's failed&mdash;he would never stick to anything.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now this was so exactly what Mr. Lasher had, on several occasions, said
+about his friend that he was really for the moment at a loss. He pulled
+at his pipe, looked very grave, and then said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear Pidgen, you must remember our lives have followed such
+different courses. I can only give you my point of view. I don't myself
+care greatly for romances&mdash;fairy tales and so on. It seems to me that
+for a grown-up man.... However, I don't pretend to be a literary fellow;
+I have other work, other duties, picturesque, but nevertheless
+necessary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a>Ah!&quot; exclaimed Mr. Pidgen, who, considering that he had invited his
+host's honest opinion, should not have become irritated because he had
+obtained it; &quot;that's just it. You people all think only <i>you</i> know what
+is necessary. Why shouldn't a fairy story be as necessary as a sermon? A
+lot more necessary, I dare say. You think you're the only people who can
+know anything about it. You people never use your imaginations.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nevertheless,&quot; said Mr. Lasher, very bitterly (for he had always said,
+&quot;If one does not bring one's imagination into one's work one's work is
+of no value&quot;), &quot;writers of idle tales are not the only people who use
+their imaginations. And, if you will allow me, without offence, to say
+so, Pidgen, your books, even amongst other things of the same sort, have
+not been the most successful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This remark seemed to pour water upon all the anger in Mr. Pidgen's
+heart. His eyes expressed scorn, but not now for Mr. Lasher&mdash;for
+himself. His whole figure drooped and was bowed like a robin in a
+thunderstorm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's true enough. Bless my soul, Lasher, that's true enough. They
+hardly sell at all. I've written a dozen of them now, 'The Blue<a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a> Pouncet
+Box,' 'The Three-tailed Griffin,' 'The Tree without any Branches,' but
+you won't want to be bothered with the names of them. 'The Griffin' went
+into two editions, but it was only because the pictures were rather
+sentimental. I've often said to myself, 'If a thing doesn't sell in
+these days it must be good,' but I've not really convinced myself. I'd
+like them to have sold. Always, until now, I've had hopes of the next
+one, and thought that it would turn out better, like a woman with her
+babies. I seem to have given up expecting that now. It isn't, you know,
+being always hard-up that I mind so much, although that, mind you, isn't
+pleasant, no, by Jehoshaphat, it isn't. But we would like now and again
+to find that other people have enjoyed what one hoped they <i>would</i>
+enjoy. But I don't know, they always seem too old for children and too
+young for grown-ups&mdash;my stories, I mean.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was one of the hardest traits in Mr. Lasher's character, as Hugh well
+realised, &quot;to rub it in&quot; over a fallen foe. He considered this his duty;
+it was also, I am afraid, a pleasure. &quot;It's a pity,&quot; he said, &quot;that
+things should not have gone better; but there are so many writers to-day
+that I wonder any one writes at all. We <a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a>live in a practical, realistic
+age. The leaders amongst us have decided that every man must gird his
+loins and go out to fight his battles with real weapons in a real cause,
+not sit dreaming at his windows looking down upon the busy
+market-place.&quot; (Mr. Lasher loved what he called &quot;images.&quot; There were
+many in his sermons.) &quot;But, my dear Pidgen, it is in no way too late.
+Give up your fairy stories now that they have been proved a failure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here Mr. Pidgen, in the most astonishing way, was suddenly in a terrible
+temper. &quot;They're not!&quot; he almost screamed. &quot;Not at all. Failures, from
+the worldly point of view, yes; but there are some who understand. I
+would not have done anything else if I could. You, Lasher, with your
+soup-tickets and your choir-treats, think there's no room for me and my
+fairy stories. I tell you, you may find yourself jolly well mistaken one
+of these days. Yes, by C&aelig;sar, you may. How do you know what's best worth
+doing? If you'd listened a little more to the things you were told when
+you were a baby, you'd be a more intelligent man now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I was a baby,&quot; said Mr. Lasher, incredulously, as though that were
+a thing that h<a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a>e never possibly could have been, &quot;my <i>dear</i> Pidgen!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, you think it absurd,&quot; said the other, a little cooler again. &quot;But
+how do you know who watched over your early years and wanted you to be a
+dreamy, fairy tale kind of person instead of the cayenne pepper sort of
+man you are. There's always some one there, I tell you, and you can have
+your choice, whether you'll believe more than you see all your life or
+less than you see. Every baby knows about it; then, as they grow older,
+it fades and, with many people, goes altogether. He's never left <i>me</i>,
+St. Christopher, you know, and that's one thing. Of course, the ideal
+thing is somewhere between the two; recognise St. Christopher and see
+the real world as well. I'm afraid neither you nor I is the ideal man,
+Lasher. Why, I tell you, any baby of three knows more than you do!
+You're proud of never seeing beyond your nose. I'm proud of never seeing
+my nose at all: we're both wrong. But I <i>am</i> ready to admit <i>your</i> uses.
+You <i>never</i> will admit mine; and it isn't any use your denying my
+Friend. He stayed with you a bit when you just arrived, but I expect he
+soon left you. You're jolly glad he did.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a>My <i>dear</i> Pidgen,&quot; said Mr. Lasher, &quot;I haven't understood a word.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Pidgen shook his head. &quot;You're right. That's just what's the matter with
+me. I can't even put what I see plainly.&quot; He sighed deeply. &quot;I've
+failed. There's no doubt about it. But, although I know that, I've had a
+happy life. That's the funny part of it. I've enjoyed it more than you
+ever will, Lasher. At least, I'm never lonely. I like my food, too, and
+one's head's always full of jolly ideas, if only they seemed jolly to
+other people.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Upon my word, Pidgen,&quot; said Mr. Lasher. At this moment Mrs. Lasher
+opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, well. Fancy! Sitting over the fire talking! Oh, you men! Tea!
+tea! Tea, Will! Fancy talking all the afternoon! Well!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>No one had noticed Hugh. He, however, had understood Mr. Pidgen better
+than Mr. Lasher did.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>This conversation aroused in Hugh, for various reasons, the greatest
+possible excitement. He would have liked to have asked Mr. Pidgen <a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a>many
+questions. Christmas Day came, and a beautiful day enthroned it: a pale
+blue sky, faint and clear, was a background to misty little clouds that
+hovered, then fled and disappeared, and from these flakes of snow fell
+now and then across the shining sunlight. Early in the winter afternoon
+a moon like an orange feather sailed into the sky as the lower stretches
+of blue changed into saffron and gold. Trees and hills and woods were
+crystal-clear, and shone with an intensity of outline as though their
+shapes had been cut by some giant knife against the background. Although
+there was no wind the air was so expectant that the ringing of church
+bells and the echo of voices came as though across still water. The
+colour of the sunlight was caught in the cups and runnels of the stiff
+frozen roads and a horse's hoofs echoed, sharp and ringing, over fields
+and hedges. The ponds were silvered into a sheet of ice, so thin that
+the water showed dark beneath it. All the trees were rimmed with
+hoar-frost.</p>
+
+<p>On Christmas afternoon, when three o'clock had just struck from the
+church tower, Hugh and Mr. Pidgen met, as though by some conspirator's
+agreement, by the garden gate.<a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a> They had said nothing to one another and
+yet there they were; they both glanced anxiously back at the house and
+then Mr. Pidgen said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Suppose we take a walk.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you very much,&quot; said Hugh. &quot;Tea isn't till half-past four.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well, then, suppose you lead the way.&quot; They walked a little, and
+then Hugh said: &quot;I was there yesterday, in the study, when you talked
+all that about your books, and everything.&quot; The words came from him in
+little breathless gusts because he was excited.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pidgen stopped and looked upon him. &quot;Thunder and sunshine! You don't
+say so! What under heaven were you doing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was reading, and you came in and then I was interested.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hugh dropped his voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I understood all that you meant. I'd like to read your books if I may.
+We haven't any in the house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bless my soul! Here's some one wants to read my books!&quot; Mr. Pidgen was
+undoubtedly pleased. &quot;I'll send you some. I'll send you them all!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hugh gasped with pleasure. &quot;I'll read them <a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a>all, however many there
+are!&quot; he said excitedly. &quot;Every word.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; said Mr. Pidgen, &quot;that's more than any one else has ever done.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'd rather be with you,&quot; said the boy very confidently, &quot;than Mr. Lasher.
+I'd rather write stories than preach sermons that no one wants to listen
+to.&quot; Then more timidly he continued: &quot;I know what you meant about the man
+who comes when you're a baby. I remember him quite well, but I never can
+say anything because they'd say I was silly. Sometimes I think he's still
+hanging round only he doesn't come to the vicarage much. He doesn't like
+Mr. Lasher much, I expect. But I <i>do</i> remember him. He had a beard and I
+used to think it funny the nurse didn't see him. That was before we went
+to Ceylon, you know, we used to live in Polchester then. When it was
+nearly dark and not quite he'd be there. I forgot about him in Ceylon, but
+since I've been here I've wondered ... it's sometimes like some one
+whispering to you and you know if you turn round he won't be there, but he
+<i>is</i> there all the same. I made twenty-five last summer against
+Porthington Grammar; they're not much good <i>really</i>, and it was our
+<a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>second eleven, and I was nearly out second ball; anyway I made
+twenty-five, and afterwards as I was ragging about I suddenly thought of
+him. I <i>know</i> he was pleased. If it had been a little darker I believe I'd
+have seen him. And then last night, after I was in bed and was thinking
+about what you'd said I <i>know</i> he was near the window, only I didn't look
+lest he should go away. But of course Mr. Lasher would say that's all rot,
+like the pirates, only I <i>know</i> it isn't.&quot; Hugh broke off for lack of
+breath, nothing else would have stopped him. When he was encouraged he was
+a terrible talker. He suddenly added in a sharp little voice like the
+report from a pistol: &quot;So one can't be lonely or anything, can one, if
+there's always some one about?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pidgen was greatly touched. He put his hand upon Hugh's shoulder.
+&quot;My dear boy,&quot; he said, &quot;my dear boy&mdash;dear me, dear me. I'm afraid
+you're going to have a dreadful time when you grow up. I really mustn't
+encourage you. And yet, who can help himself?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you said yourself that you'd seen him, that you knew him quite
+well?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And so I do&mdash;and so I do. But you'll find, as you grow older, there are
+many people who <a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a>won't believe you. And there's this, too. The more you
+live in your head, dreaming and seeing things that aren't there, the
+less you'll see the things that <i>are</i> there. You'll always be tumbling
+over things. You'll never get on. You'll never be a success.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never mind,&quot; said Hugh, &quot;it doesn't matter much what you say now,
+you're only talking 'for my good' like Mr. Lasher. I don't care, I heard
+what you said yesterday, and it's made all the difference. I'll come and
+stay with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, so you shall,&quot; said Mr. Pidgen. &quot;I can't help it. You shall come
+as often as you like. Upon my soul, I'm younger to-day than I've felt
+for a long time. We'll go to the pantomime together if you aren't too
+old for it. I'll manage to ruin you all right. What's that shining?&quot; He
+pointed in front of him.</p>
+
+<p>They had come to a rise in the Polwint Road. To their right, running to
+the very foot of their path, was the moor. It stretched away, like a
+cloud, vague and indeterminate to the horizon. To their left a dark
+brown field rose in an ascending wave to a ridge that cut the sky, now
+crocus-coloured. The field was lit with the soft <a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a>light of the setting
+sun. On the ridge of the field something, suspended, it seemed, in
+midair, was shining like a golden fire.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's that?&quot; said Mr. Pidgen again. &quot;It's hanging. What the devil!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They stopped for a moment, then started across the field. When they had
+gone a little way Mr. Pidgen paused again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's like a man with a golden helmet. He's got legs, he's coming to
+us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They walked on again. Then Hugh cried, &quot;Why, it's only an old Scarecrow.
+We might have guessed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sun, at that instant, sank behind the hills and the world was grey.</p>
+
+<p>The Scarecrow, perched on the high ridge, waved its tattered sleeves in
+the air. It was an old tin can that had caught the light; the can
+hanging over the stake that supported it in drunken fashion seemed to
+wink at them. The shadows came streaming up from the sea and the dark
+woods below in the hollow drew closer to them.</p>
+
+<p>The Scarecrow seemed to lament the departure of the light. &quot;Here, mind,&quot;
+he said to the two of them, &quot;you saw me in my glory just now and don't
+you forget it. I may be a <a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a>knight in shining armour after all. It only
+depends upon the point of view.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So it does,&quot; said Mr. Pidgen, taking his hat off, &quot;you were very fine,
+I shan't forget.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>They stood there in silence for a time....</p>
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+<p>At last they turned back and walked slowly home, the intimacy of their
+new friendship growing with their silence. Hugh was happier than he had
+ever been before. Behind the quiet evening light he saw wonderful
+prospects, a new life in which he might dream as he pleased, a new
+friend to whom he might tell these dreams, a new confidence in his own
+power....</p>
+
+<p>But it was not to be.</p>
+
+<p>That very night Mr. Pidgen died, very peacefully, in his sleep, from
+heart failure. He had had, as he had himself said, a happy life.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+<p>Years passed and Hugh Seymour grew up. I do not wish here to say much
+more about him.<a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a> It happened that when he was twenty-four his work
+compelled him to live in that Square in London known as March Square (it
+will be very carefully described in a minute). Here he lived for five
+years, and, during that time, he was happy enough to gain the intimacy
+and confidence of some of the children who played in the Gardens there.
+They trusted him and told him more than they told many people. He had
+never forgotten Mr. Pidgen; that walk, that vision of the Scarecrow,
+stood, as such childish things will, for a landmark in his history. He
+came to believe that those experiences that he knew, in his own life, to
+be true, were true also for some others. That's as it may be. I can only
+say that Barbara and Angelina, Bim and even Sarah Trefusis were his
+friends. I daresay his theory is all wrong.</p>
+
+<p>I can only say that I <i>know</i> that they were his friends; perhaps, after
+all, the Scarecrow <i>is</i> shining somewhere in golden armour. Perhaps,
+after all, one need not be so lonely as one often fancies that one is.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Henry Fitzgeorge Strether</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>March Square is not very far from Hyde Park Corner in London Town.
+Behind the whir and rattle of the traffic it stands, spacious and cool
+and very old, muffled by the little streets that guard it, happily
+unconscious, you would suppose, that there were any in all the world so
+unfortunate as to have less than five thousand a year for their support.
+Perhaps a hundred years ago March Square might boast of such superior
+ignorance, but fashions change, to prevent, it may be, our own too
+easily irritated monotonies, and, for some time now, the Square has been
+compelled, here, there, in one corner and another, to admit the invader.
+It is true that the solemn, respectable grey house, No. 3, can boast
+that it is the town residence of His Grace the<a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a> Duke of Crole and his
+beautiful young Duchess, n&eacute;e Miss Jane Tunster of New York City, but it
+is also true that No. &mdash;&mdash; is in the possession of Mr. Munty Ross of
+Potted Shrimp fame, and there are Dr. Cruthen, the Misses Dent, Herbert
+Hoskins and his wife, whose incomes are certainly nearer to &pound;500 than
+&pound;5,000. Yes, rents and blue blood have come down in March Square; it is,
+certainly, not the less interesting for that, but&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Some of the houses can boast the days of good Queen Anne for their
+period. There is one, at the very corner where Somers Street turns off
+towards the Park, that was built only yesterday, and has about it some
+air of shame, a furtive embarrassment that it will lose very speedily.
+There is no house that can claim beauty, and yet the Square, as a whole,
+has a fine charm, something that age and colour, haphazard adventure,
+space and quiet have all helped towards.</p>
+
+<p>There is, perhaps, no square in London that clings so tenaciously to any
+sign or symbol of old London that motor-cars and the increase of speed
+have not utterly destroyed. All the oldest London mendicants find their
+way, at different hours of the week, up and down the<a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a> Square. There is,
+I believe, no other square in London where musicians are permitted. On
+Monday morning there is the blind man with the black patch over one eye;
+he has an organ (a very old one, with a painted picture of the Battle of
+Trafalgar on the front of it) and he wears an old black skull-cap. He
+wheezes out his old tunes (they are older than other tunes that March
+Square hears, and so, perhaps, March Square loves them). He goes
+despondently, and the tap of his stick sounds all the way round the
+Square. A small and dirty boy&mdash;his grandson, maybe&mdash;pushes the organ for
+him. On Tuesday there comes the remnants of a German band&mdash;remnants
+because now there are only the cornet, the flute and the trumpet. Sadly
+wind-blown, drunken and diseased they are, and the Square can remember
+when there were a number of them, hale and hearty young fellows, but
+drink and competition have been too strong for them. On Wednesdays there
+is sometimes a lady who sings ballads in a voice that can only be
+described as that contradiction in terms &quot;a shrill contralto.&quot; Her notes
+are very piercing and can be heard from one end of the Square to the
+other. She sings &quot;Annie Laurie&quot; and &quot;Robin Adair,&quot; and wears a bat<a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a>tered
+hat of black straw. On Thursday there is a handsome Italian with a
+barrel organ that bears in its belly the very latest and most popular
+tunes. It is on Thursday that the Square learns the music of the moment;
+thus from one end of the year to the other does it keep pace with the
+movement.</p>
+
+<p>On Fridays there is a lean and ragged man wearing large and, to the
+children of the Square, terrifying spectacles. He is a very gloomy
+fellow and sings hymn-tunes, &quot;Rock of Ages,&quot; &quot;There is a Happy Land,&quot;
+and &quot;Jerusalem the Golden.&quot; On Saturdays there is a stout, happy little
+man with a harp. He has white hair and looks like a retired colonel. He
+cannot play the harp very much, but he is quite the most popular visitor
+of the week, and must be very rich indeed does he receive in other
+squares so handsome a reward for his melody as this one bestows; he is
+known as &quot;Colonel Harry.&quot; In and out of these regular visitors there
+are, of course, many others. There is a dark, sinister man with a
+harmonium and a shivering monkey on a chain; there is an Italian woman,
+wearing bright wraps round her head, and she has a cage of birds who
+tell fortunes; there is a horsey, stable-bred, ferret-<a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a>like man with,
+two performing dogs, and there is quite an old lady in a black bonnet
+and shawl who sings duets with her grand-daughter, a young thing of some
+fifty summers.</p>
+
+<p>There can be nothing in the world more charming than the way the Square
+receives its friends. Let it number amongst its guests a Duchess, that
+is no reason why it should scorn &quot;Colonel Harry&quot; or &quot;Mouldy Jim,&quot; the
+singer of hymns. Scorn, indeed, cannot be found within its grey walls,
+soft grey, soft green, soft white and blue&mdash;in these colours is the
+Square's body clothed, no anger in its mild eyes, nor contempt anywhere
+at its heart.</p>
+
+<p>The Square is proud, and is proud with reason, of its garden. It is not
+a large garden as London gardens go. It has in its centre a fountain.
+Neptune, with a fine wreath of seaweed about his middle, blowing water
+through, his conch. There are two statues, the one of a general who
+fought in the Indian Mutiny and afterwards lived and died in the Square,
+the other of a mid-Victorian philanthropist whose stout figure and
+urbane self-satisfaction (as portrayed by the sculptor) bear witness to
+an easy conscience and an unimaginative mind. There is, round and about
+the fountain, a lovely <a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a>green lawn, and there are many overhanging trees
+and shady corners. An air of peace the garden breathes, and that
+although children are for ever racing up and down it, shattering the
+stillness of the air with their cries, rivalling the bells of St.
+Matthew's round the corner with their piercing notes.</p>
+
+<p>But it is the quality of the Square that nothing can take from it its
+peace, nothing temper its tranquillity. In the heat of the days
+motor-cars will rattle through, bells will ring, all the bustle of a
+frantic world invade its security; for a moment it submits, but in the
+evening hour, when the colours are being washed from the sky, and the
+moon, apricot-tinted, is rising slowly through the smoke, March Square
+sinks, with a little sigh, back into her peace again. The modern world
+has not yet touched her, nor ever shall.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>The Duchess of Crole had three months ago a son, Henry Fitzgeorge,
+Marquis of Strether. Very fortunate that the first-born should be a son,
+very fortunate also that the first-born should be one of the healthiest,
+liveliest, merri<a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>est babies that it has ever been any one's good fortune
+to encounter. All smiles, chuckles and amiability is Henry Fitzgeorge;
+he is determined that all shall be well.</p>
+
+<p>His birth was for a little time the sensation of the Square. Every one
+knew the beautiful Duchess; they had seen her drive, they had seen her
+walk, they had seen her in the picture-papers, at race-meetings and
+coming away from fashionable weddings. The word went round day by day as
+to his health; he was watched when he came out in his perambulator, and
+there was gossip as to his appearance and behaviour.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A jolly little fellow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just like his father.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Rather early to say that, isn't it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I don't know, got the same smile. His mother's rather languid.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Beautiful woman, though.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, lovely!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Upon a certain afternoon in March about four o'clock, there was quite a
+gathering of persons in Henry Fitzgeorge's nursery. There was his
+mother, with those two great friends of hers, Lady Emily Blanchard and
+the Hon. Mrs. Vavasour; there was Her Grace's mother,<a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a> Mrs. P. Tunster
+(an enormously stout lady); there was Miss Helen Crasper, who was
+staying in the house. These people were gathered at the end of the cot,
+and they looked down upon Henry Fitzgeorge, and he lay upon his back,
+gazed at them thoughtfully, and clenched and unclenched his fat hands.</p>
+
+<p>Opposite his cot were some very wide windows, and three windows were
+filled with galleons of cloud&mdash;fat, bolster, swelling vessels, white,
+save where, in their curving sails, they had caught a faint radiance
+from the hidden sun. In fine procession, against the blue, they passed
+along. Very faint and muffled there came up from the Square the
+lingering notes of &quot;Robin Adair.&quot; This is a Wednesday afternoon, and it
+is the lady with the black straw hat who is singing. The nursery has
+white walls&mdash;it is filled with colour; the fire blazes with a yellow-red
+gleam that rises and falls across the shining floor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I brought him a rattle, Jane, dear,&quot; said Mrs. Tunster, shaking in the
+air a thing of coral and silver. &quot;He's got several, of course, but I
+guess you'll go a long way before you find anything cuter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's too pretty,&quot; said Lady Emily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a>Too lovely,&quot; said the Hon. Mrs. Vavasour.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess looked down upon her son. &quot;Isn't he old?&quot; she said.
+&quot;Thousands of years. You'd think he was laughing at the lot of us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Tunster shook her head. &quot;Now don't you go imagining things, Jane,
+my dear. I used to be just like that, and your father would say, 'Now,
+Alice.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her Grace raised her head. Her eyes were a little tired. She looked from
+her son to the clouds, and then back again to her son. She was
+remembering her own early days, the rich glowing colour of her own
+American country, the freedom, the space, the honesty.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I guess you're tired, dear,&quot; said her mother. &quot;With the party to-night
+and all. Why don't you go and rest a bit?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His eyes <i>are</i> old! He <i>does</i> despise us all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily, who believed in personal comfort and as little thinking as
+possible, put her arm through her friend's.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come along and give us some tea. He's a dear. Good-bye, you little
+darling. He <i>is</i> a pet. There, did you see him smiling? You <i>darling</i>.
+Tea I <i>must</i> have, Jane, dear&mdash;<i>at</i> once.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You go on. I'm coming. Ring for it. Tell<a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a> Hunter. I'll be with you in
+two minutes, mother.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Tunster left her rattle in the nurse's hands. Then, with the two
+others, departed. Outside the nursery door she said in an American
+whisper:&mdash;&quot;Jane isn't quite right yet. Went about a bit too soon. She's
+headstrong. She always has been. Doesn't do for her to think too much.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her Grace was alone now with her son and heir and the nurse. She bent
+over the cot and smiled upon Henry Fitzgeorge; he smiled back at her,
+and even gave an absent-minded crow; but his gaze almost instantly swung
+back again to the window, through which, deeply and with solemn
+absorption, he watched the clouds.</p>
+
+<p>She gave him her hand, and he closed his fingers about one of hers; but
+even that grasp was abstracted, as though he were not thinking of her at
+all, but was simply behaving like a gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't believe he's realised me a bit, nurse,&quot; she said, turning away
+from the cot.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Your Grace, they always take time. It's early days.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But what's he thinking of all the time?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a>Oh, just nothing, Your Grace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't believe it's nothing. He's trying to settle things. This&mdash;what
+it's all about&mdash;what he's got to do about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It may be so, Your Grace. All babies are like that at first.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His eyes are so old, so grave.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's a jolly little fellow, Your Grace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's very little trouble, isn't he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Less trouble than any baby I've ever had to do with. Got His Grace's
+happy temperament, if I may say so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; the mother laughed. She crossed over to the window and looked
+down. &quot;That poor woman singing down there. How awful! He'll be going
+down to Crole very shortly, Roberts. Splendid air for him there. But the
+Square's cheerful. He likes the garden, doesn't he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, Your Grace; all the children and the fountain. But he's a
+happy baby. I should say he'd like anything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a moment longer she looked down into the Square. The discordant
+voice was giving &quot;Annie Laurie&quot; to the world.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-bye, darling.&quot; She stepped forward, shook the silver and coral
+rattle. &quot;See what <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>grannie's given you!&quot; She left it lying near his
+hand, and, with a little sigh, was gone.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Now, as the sun was setting, the clouds had broken into little pink
+bubbles, lying idly here and there upon the sky. Higher, near the top of
+the window, they were large pink cushions, three fat ones, lying
+sedately against the blue. During three months now Henry Fitzgeorge
+Strether had been confronted with the new scene, the new urgency on his
+part to respond to it. At first he had refused absolutely to make any
+response; behind him, around him, above him, below him, were still the
+old conditions; but they were the old conditions viewed, for some reason
+unknown to him, at a distance, and at a distance that was ever
+increasing. With every day something here in this new and preposterous
+world struck his attention, and with every fresh lure was he drawn more
+certainly from his old consciousness. At first he had simply rebelled;
+then, very slowly, his curiosity had begun to stir. It had stirred at
+first through food and touch; very pleasant this, very pleasant that.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a>Milk, sleep, light things that he could hold very tightly with his
+hands. Now, upon this March afternoon, he watched the pink clouds with a
+more intent gaze than he had given to them before. Their colour and
+shape bore some reference to the life that he had left. They were &quot;like&quot;
+a little to those other things. There, too, shadowed against the wall,
+was his Friend, his Friend, now the last link with everything that he
+knew.</p>
+
+<p>At first, during the first week, he had demanded again and again to be
+taken back, and always he had been told to wait, to wait and see what
+was going to happen. So long as his Friend was there, he knew that he
+was not completely abandoned, and that this was only a temporary
+business, with its strange limiting circumstances, the way that one was
+tied and bound, the embarrassment of finding that all one's old means of
+communication were here useless. How desperate, indeed, would it have
+been had his Friend not been there, reassuring pervading him,
+surrounding him, always subduing those sudden inexplicable alarms.</p>
+
+<p>He would demand: &quot;When are we going to leave all this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>Wait. I know it seems absurd to you, but it's commanded you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, but&mdash;this is ridiculous. Where are all my old powers I Where are
+all the others?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will understand everything one day. I'm afraid you're very
+uncomfortable. You will be less so as time passes. Indeed, very soon you
+will be very happy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I'm doing my best to be cheerful. But you won't leave me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not so long as you want me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll stay until we go back again!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll never go back again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Across the light the nurse advanced. She took him in her arms for a
+moment, turned his pillows, then layed him down again. As he settled
+down into comfort he saw his Friend, huge, a great shadow, mingling with
+the coloured lights of the flaming sky. All the world was lit, the white
+room glowed. A pleasant smell was in his nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where are all the others? They would like to share this pleasant
+moment, and I would warn them about the unpleasant ones.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They are coming, some of them. I am with <a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a>them as I am with you.&quot;
+Swinging across the Square were the evening bells of St. Matthew's.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Fitzgeorge smiled, then chuckled, then dozed into a pleasant
+sleep.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Asleep, awake, it had been for the most part the same to him. He swung
+easily, lazily upon the clouds; warmth and light surrounded him; a part
+of him, his toes, perhaps, would be suddenly cold, then he would cry, or
+he would strike his head against the side of his cot and it would hurt,
+and so then he would cry again. But these tears would not be tears of
+grief, but simply declarations of astonishment and wonder.</p>
+
+<p>He did not, of course, realise that as, very slowly, very gradually he
+began to understand the terms and conditions of his new life, so with
+the same gradation, his Friend was expressed in those terms. Slowly that
+great shadow filled the room, took on human shape, until at last it
+would be only thus that he would appear. But Henry would not realise the
+change, soon he would not know that it had <a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a>ever been otherwise. Dimly,
+out of chaos, the world was being made for him. There a square of
+colour, here something round and hard that was cool to touch, now a
+gleaming rod that ran high into the air, now a shape very soft and warm
+against which it was pleasant to lean. The clouds, the sweep of dim
+colour, the vast horizons of that other world yielded, day by day, to
+little concrete things&mdash;a patch of carpet, the leg of a chair, the
+shadow of the fire, clouds beyond the window, buttons on some one's
+clothes, the rails of his cot. Then there were voices, the touch of
+hands, some one's soft hair, some one who sang little songs to him.</p>
+
+<p>He woke early one morning and realised the rattle that his grandmother
+had given to him. He suddenly realised it. He grasped the handle of it
+with his hand and found this cool and pleasant to touch. He then, by
+accident, made it tinkle, and instantly the prettiest noise replied to
+him. He shook it more lustily and the response was louder. He was, it
+seemed, master of this charming thing and could force it to do what he
+wished. He appealed to his Friend. Was not this a charming thing that he
+had found? He waved it and chuckled and crowed, and then his toes,
+sticking out beyond the bed-<a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a>clothes, were nipped by the cold so that he
+halloed loudly. Perhaps the rattle had nipped his toes. He did not know,
+but he would cry because that eased his feelings.</p>
+
+<p>That morning there came with his grandmother and mother a silly young
+woman who had, it was supposed, a great way with babies. &quot;I adore
+babies,&quot; she said. &quot;We understand one another in the most wonderful
+way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Henry Fitzgeorge looked at her as she leaned over the cot and made faces
+at him. &quot;Goo-goo-gum-goo,&quot; she cried.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is all this?&quot; he asked his Friend. He laid down the rattle, and
+felt suddenly lonely and unhappy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Little pet&mdash;ug&mdash;la&mdash;la&mdash;goo&mdash;losh!&quot; Henry Fitzgeorge raised his eyes.
+His Friend was a long, long way away; his eyes grew cold with contempt.
+He hated this thing that made the noises and closed out the light. He
+opened his eyes, he was about to burst into one of his most abandoned
+roars when his stare encountered his mother. Her eyes were watching him,
+and they had in them a glow and radiance that gave him a warm feeling of
+companionship. &quot;I know,&quot; they seemed to say, &quot;what you are thinking of.
+I agree with all that you are <a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a>feeling about her. Only don't cry, she
+really isn't worth it.&quot; His mouth slowly closed then to thank her for
+her assistance, he raised the rattle and shook it at her. His eyes never
+left her face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Little darling,&quot; said the lady friend, but nevertheless disappointed.
+&quot;Lift him up, Jane. I'd like to see him in your arms.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But she shook her head. She moved away from the cot. Something so
+precious had been in that smile of her son's that she would not risk any
+rebuff.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Fitzgeorge gave the strange lady one last look of disgust.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If that comes again I'll bite it,&quot; he said to his Friend.</p>
+
+<p>When these visitors had departed, he lay there remembering those eyes
+that had looked into his. All that day he remembered them, and it may be
+that his Friend, as he watched, sighed because the time for launching
+him had now come, that one more soul had passed from his sheltering arms
+out into the highroad of fine adventures. How easily they forget! How
+readily they forget! How eagerly they fling the pack of their old world
+from off their shoulders! He had seen, perhaps, so many go, thus
+<a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a>lustily, upon their way, and then how many, at the end of it all,
+tired, worn, beaten to their very shadows, had he received at the end!</p>
+
+<p>But it was so. This day was to see Henry Fitzgeorge's assertions of his
+independence. The hour when this life was to close, so definitely, so
+securely, the doors upon that other, had come. The shadow that had been
+so vast that it had filled the room, the Square, the world, was drawn
+now into small and human size.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Fitzgeorge was never again to look so old.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>As the fine, dim afternoon was closing, he was allowed, for half an hour
+before sleep, to sprawl upon the carpet in front of the fire. He had
+with him his rattle and a large bear which he stroked because it was
+comfortable; he had no personal feeling about it.</p>
+
+<p>His mother came in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let me have him for half an hour, nurse. Come back in half an hour's
+time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The nurse left them.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Fitzgeorge did not look at his mother.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a>He had the bear in his arms and was feeling it, and in his mind the
+warmth from the flickering, jumping flame and the soft, friendly
+submission of the fur beneath his fingers were part of the same mystery.</p>
+
+<p>His mother had been motoring; her cheeks were flushed, and her dark
+clothes heightened, by their contrast, her colour. She knelt down on the
+carpet and then, with her hands folded on her lap, watched her son. He
+rolled the bear over and over, he poked it, he banged its head upon the
+ground. Then he was tired with it and took up the rattle. Then he was
+tired of that, and he looked across at his mother and chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>His mind, however, was not at all concentrated upon her. He felt, on
+this afternoon, a new, a fresh interest in things. The carpet before him
+was a vast country and he did not propose to explore it, but sucking his
+thumb, stroking the bear's coat, feeling the firelight upon his face, he
+felt that now something would occur. He had realised that there was much
+to explore and that, after all, perhaps there might be more in this
+strange condition of things than he had only a little time ago
+considered possible. It was then that he <a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a>looked up and saw hanging
+round his mother's neck a gold chain. This was a long chain hanging
+right down to her lap; as it hung there, very slowly it swayed from side
+to side, and as it swayed, the firelight caught it and it gleamed and
+was splashed with light. His eyes, as he watched, grew rounder and
+rounder; he had never seen anything so wonderful. He put down the
+rattle, crawled, with great difficulty because of his long clothes, on
+to his knees and sat staring, his thumb in his mouth. His mother stayed,
+watching him. He pointed his finger, crowing. &quot;Come and fetch it,&quot; she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>He tumbled forward on to his nose and then lay there, with his face
+raised a little, watching it. She did not move at all, but knelt with
+her hands straight out upon her knees, and the chain with its large gold
+rings like flaming eyes swung from hand to hand. Then he tried to move
+forward, his whole soul in his gaze. He would raise a hand towards the
+treasure and then because that upset his balance he would fall, but at
+once he would be up again. He moved a little and breathed little gasps
+of pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>She bent forward to him, his hand was out<a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a>stretched. His eyes went up
+and, meeting hers, instantly the chain was forgotten. That recognition
+that they had given him before was there now.</p>
+
+<p>With a scramble and a lurch, desperate, heedless in its risks, he was in
+his mother's lap. Then he crowed. He crowed for all the world to hear
+because now, at last, he had become its citizen.</p>
+
+<p>Was there not then, from some one, disregarded and forgotten at that
+moment, a sigh, lighter than the air itself, half-ironic, half-wistful
+regret?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Ernest Henry</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>Young Ernest Henry Wilberforce, who had only yesterday achieved his
+second birthday, watched, with a speculative eye, his nurse. He was
+seated on the floor with his back to the high window that was flaming
+now with the light of the dying sun; his nurse was by the fire, her
+head, shadowed huge and fantastic on the wall, nodded and nodded and
+nodded. Ernest Henry was, in figure, stocky and square, with a head
+round, hard, and covered with yellow curls; rather light and cold blue
+eyes and a chin of no mean degree were further possessions. He was
+wearing a white blouse, a white skirt, white socks and shoes; his legs
+were fat and bulged above his socks; his cold blue eyes never moved from
+his nurse's broad back.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that, in a very short time, disturbance would begin. He knew
+that doors would <a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a>open and shut, that there would be movement, strange
+noises, then an attack upon himself, ultimately a removal of him to
+another place, a stripping off him of his blouse, his skirt, his socks
+and his shoes, a loathsome and strangely useless application of soap and
+water&mdash;it was only, of course, in later years that he learned the names
+of those abominable articles&mdash;and, finally, finally darkness. All this
+he felt hovering very close at hand; one nod too many of his nurse's
+head, and up she would start, off she would go, off <i>he</i> would go.... He
+watched her and stroked very softly his warm, fat calf.</p>
+
+<p>It was a fine, spacious room that he inhabited. The ceiling&mdash;very, very
+far away&mdash;was white and glimmering with shadowy spaces of gold flung by
+the sun across the breast of it. The wallpaper was dark-red, and there
+were many coloured pictures of ships and dogs and snowy Christmases, and
+swans eating from the hands of beautiful little girls, and one garden
+with roses and peacocks and a tumbling fountain. To Ernest Henry these
+were simply splashes of colour, and colour, moreover, scarcely so
+convincing as the bright blue screen by the fire, or the golden brown
+rug by the <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a>door; but he was dimly aware that, as the days passed, so
+did he find more and more to consider in the shapes and sizes between
+the deep black frames.... There might, after all, be something in it.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not the pictures that he was now considering.</p>
+
+<p>Before his nurse's descent upon him he was determined that he would
+walk&mdash;not crawl, but walk in his socks and shoes&mdash;from his place by the
+window to the blue screen by the fire. There had been days, and those
+not so long ago, when so hazardous an Odyssey had seemed the vainest of
+Blue Moon ambitions; it had once been the only rule of existence to
+sprawl and roll and sprawl again; but gradually some further force had
+stirred his limbs. It was a finer thing to be upright; there was a finer
+view, a more lordly sense of possession could be summoned to one's
+command. That, then, once decided, upright one must be and upright, with
+many sudden and alarming collapses, Ernest Henry was.</p>
+
+<p>He had marked out, from the first, the distance from the wall to the blue
+screen as a very decent distance. There was, half-way, a large
+rocking-chair that would be either a danger <a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a>or a deliverance, as Fate
+should have it. Save for this, it was, right across the brown, rose-strewn
+carpet, naked country. Truly a perilous business. As he sat there and
+looked at it, his heart a little misgave him; in this strange, new world
+into which he had been so roughly hustled, amongst a horde of alarming and
+painful occurrences, he had discovered nothing so disconcerting as that
+sudden giving of the knees, that rising of the floor to meet you, the
+collapse, the pain, and above all the disgrace. Moreover, let him fail
+now, and it meant, in short,&mdash;banishment&mdash;banishment and then darkness.
+There were risks. It was the most perilous thing that, in this new
+country, he had yet attempted, but attempt it he would.... He was as
+obstinate as his chin could make him.</p>
+
+<p>With his blue eyes still cautiously upon his nurse's shadow he raised
+himself very softly, his fat hand pressed against the wall, his mouth
+tightly closed, and from between his teeth there issued the most distant
+relation of that sound that the traditional ostler makes when he is
+cleaning down a horse. His knees quivered, straightened; he was up. Far
+away in the long, long distance were piled the toys that <a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a>yesterday's
+birthday had given him. They did not, as yet, mean anything to him at
+all. One day, perhaps when he had torn the dolls limb from limb, twisted
+the railways until they stood end upon end in sheer horror,
+disembowelled the bears and golliwogs so that they screamed again, he
+might have some personal feeling for them. At present there they lay in
+shining impersonal newness, and there for Ernest Henry they might lie
+for ever.</p>
+
+<p>For an instant, his hand against the wall, he was straight and
+motionless; then he took his hand away, and his journey began. At the
+first movement a strange, an amazing glory filled him. From the instant,
+two years ago, of his first arrival he had been disturbed by an
+irritating sense of inadequacy; he had been sent, it seemed, into this
+new and tiresome condition of things without any fitting provisions for
+his real needs. Demands were always made upon him that were, in the
+absurd lack of ways and means, impossible of fulfilment. But now, at
+last, he was using the world as it should be used.... He was fine, he
+was free, he was absolutely master. His legs might shake, his body lurch
+from side to side, his breath come in agitating gasps and whistles; the
+wall was <a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a>now far behind him, the screen most wonderfully near, the
+rocking-chair almost within his grasp. Great and mighty is Ernest Henry
+Wilberforce, dazzling and again dazzling the lighted avenues opening now
+before him; there is nothing, nothing, from the rendings of the toys to
+the deliberate defiance of his nurse and all those in authority over
+him, that he shall not now perform.... With a cry, with a wild wave of
+the arms, with a sickening foretaste of the bump with which the gay
+brown carpet would mark him, he was down, the Fates were upon him&mdash;the
+disturbance, the disrobing, the darkness. Nevertheless, even as he was
+carried, sobbing, into the farther room, there went with him a
+consciousness that life would never again be quite the dull,
+purposeless, monotonous thing that it had hitherto been.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>After a long time he was alone. About him the room, save for the yellow
+night-light above his head, was dark, humped with shadows, with grey
+pools of light near the windows, and a golden bar that some lamp beyond
+the house flung upon the wall. Ernest Henry lay and, <a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a>now and again,
+cautiously felt the bump on his forehead; there was butter on the bump,
+and an interesting confusion and pain and importance round and about it.
+Ernest Henry's eyes sought the golden bar, and then, lingering there,
+looked back upon the recent adventure. He had walked; yes, he had
+walked. This would, indeed, be something to tell his Friend.</p>
+
+<p>His friend, he knew, would be very shortly with him. It was not every
+night that he came, but always, before his coming, Ernest Henry knew of
+his approach&mdash;knew by the happy sense of comfort that stole softly about
+him, knew by the dismissal of all those fears and shapes and terrors
+that, otherwise, so easily beset him. He sucked his thumb now, and felt
+his bump, and stared at the ceiling and knew that he would come. During
+the first months after Ernest Henry's arrival on this planet his friend
+was never absent from him at all, was always there, drawing through his
+fingers the threads of the old happy life and the new alarming one,
+mingling them so that the transition from the one to the other might not
+be too sharp&mdash;reassuring, comforting, consoling. Then there had been
+hours when he had with<a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></a>drawn himself, and that earlier world had grown a
+little vaguer, a little more remote, and certain things, certain foods
+and smells and sounds had taken their place within the circle of
+realised facts. Then it had come to be that the friend only came at
+night, came at that moment when the nurse had gone, when the room was
+dark, and the possible beasts&mdash;the first beast, the second beast, and
+the third beast&mdash;began to creep amongst those cool, grey shadows in the
+hollow of the room. He always came then, was there with his arm about
+Ernest Henry, his great body, his dark beard, his large, firm hands&mdash;all
+so reassuring that the beasts might do the worst, and nothing could come
+of it. He brought with him, indeed, so much more than himself&mdash;brought a
+whole world of recollected wonders, of all that other time when Ernest
+Henry had other things to do, other disciplines, other triumphs, other
+defeats, and other glories. Of late his memory of the other time had
+been untrustworthy. Things during the day-time would remind him, but
+would remind him, nevertheless, with a strange mingling of the world at
+present about him, so that he was not sure of his visions. But when his
+friend was with him the mem<a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a>ories were real enough, and it was the
+nurse, the fire, the red wallpaper, the smell of toast, the taste of
+warm milk, that were faint and shadowy.</p>
+
+<p>His friend was there, just as always, suddenly sitting there on the bed
+with his arm round Ernest Henry's body, his dark beard just tickling
+Ernest Henry's neck, his hand tight about Ernest Henry's hand. They told
+one another things in the old way without tiresome words and sounds;
+but, for the benefit of those who are unfortunately too aged to remember
+that old and pleasant intercourse, one must make use of the English
+language. Ernest Henry displayed his bump, and explained its origin; and
+then, even as he did so, was aware that the reality of the bump made the
+other world just a little less real. He was proud that he had walked and
+stood up, and had been the master of his circumstance; but just because
+he had done so he was aware that his friend was a little, a very little
+farther away to-night than he had ever been before.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I'm very glad that you're going to stand on your own, because
+you'll have to. I'm going to leave you now&mdash;leave you for <a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a>longer, far
+longer than I've ever left you before.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leave me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. I shan't always be with you; indeed, later on you won't want me.
+Then you'll forget me, and at last you won't even believe that I ever
+existed&mdash;until, at the end of it all, I come to take you away. <i>Then</i> it
+will all come back to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, but that's absurd!&quot; Ernest Henry said confidently. Nevertheless, in
+his heart he knew that, during the day-time, other things did more and
+more compel his attention. There were long stretches during the day-time
+now when he forgot his friend.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After your second birthday I always leave you more to yourselves. I
+shall go now for quite a time, and you'll see that when the old feeling
+comes, and you know that I'm coming back, you'll be quite startled and
+surprised that you'd got on so well without me. Of course, some of you
+want me more than others do, and with some of you I stay quite late in
+life. There are one or two I never leave at all. But you're not like
+that; you'll get on quite well without me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a>Oh, no, I shan't,&quot; said Ernest Henry, and he clung very tightly and
+was most affectionate. But he suddenly put his fingers to his bump, felt
+the butter, and his chin shot up with self-satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To-morrow I'll get ever so much farther,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll behave, and not mind the beasts or the creatures?&quot; his friend
+said. &quot;You must remember that it's not the slightest use to call for me.
+You're on your own. Think of me, though. Don't forget me altogether. And
+don't forget all the other world in your new discoveries. Look out of
+the window sometimes. That will remind you more than anything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He had kissed him, had put his hand for a moment on Ernest Henry's
+curls, and was gone. Ernest Henry, his thumb in his mouth, was fast
+asleep.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Suddenly, with a wild, agonising clutch at the heart, he was awake. He
+was up in bed, his hands, clammy and hot, pressed together, his eyes
+staring, his mouth dry. The yellow night-<a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a>light was there, the bars of
+gold upon the walls, the cool, grey shadows, the white square of the
+window; but there, surely, also, were the beasts. He knew that they were
+there&mdash;one crouching right away there in the shadow, all black, damp;
+one crawling, blacker and damper, across the floor; one&mdash;yes, beyond
+question&mdash;one, the blackest and cruellest of them all, there beneath the
+bed. The bed seemed to heave, the room flamed with terror. He thought of
+his friend; on other nights he had invoked him, and instantly there had
+been assurance and comfort. Now that was of no avail; his friend would
+not come. He was utterly alone. Panic drove him; he thought that there,
+on the farther side of the bed, claws and a black arm appeared. He
+screamed and screamed and screamed.</p>
+
+<p>The door was flung open, there were lights, his nurse appeared. He was
+lying down now, his face towards the wall, and only dry, hard little
+sobs came from him. Her large red hand was upon his shoulder, but
+brought no comfort with it. Of what use was she against the three
+beasts? A poor creature.... He was ashamed that he should cry before
+her. He bit his lip.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a>Dreaming, I suppose, sir,&quot; she said to some one behind her. Another
+figure came forward. Some one sat down on the edge of the bed, put his
+arm round Ernest Henry's body and drew him towards him. For one wild
+moment Ernest Henry fancied that his friend had, after all, returned.
+But no. He knew that these were the conditions of this world, not of
+that other. When he crept close to his friend he was caught up into a
+soft, rosy comfort, was conscious of nothing except ease and rest. Here
+there were knobs and hard little buttons, and at first his head was
+pressed against a cold, slippery surface that hurt. Nevertheless, the
+pressure was pleasant and comforting. A warm hand stroked his hair. He
+liked it, jerked his head up, and hit his new friend's chin.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, damn!&quot; he heard quite clearly. This was a new sound to Ernest
+Henry; but just now he was interested in sounds, and had learnt lately
+quite a number. This was a soft, pleasant, easy sound. He liked it.</p>
+
+<p>And so, with it echoing in his head, his curly head against his father's
+shoulder, the bump glistening in the candle-light, the beasts defeated
+and derided, he tumbled into sleep.<a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a></p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>A pleasant sight at breakfast was Ernest Henry, with his yellow curls
+gleaming from his bath, his bib tied firmly under his determined chin,
+his fat fingers clutching a large spoon, his body barricaded into a high
+chair, his heels swinging and kicking and swinging again. Very fine,
+too, was the nursery on a sunny morning&mdash;the fire crackling, the roses
+on the brown carpet as lively as though they were real, and the whole
+place glittering, glowing with size and cleanliness and vigour. In the
+air was the crackling smell of toast and bacon, in a glass dish was
+strawberry jam, through the half-open window came all the fun of the
+Square&mdash;the sparrows, the carts, the motor-cars, the bells, and
+horses.... Oh, a fine morning was fine indeed!</p>
+
+<p>Ernest Henry, deep in the business of conveying securely his bread and
+milk from the bowl&mdash;a beautiful bowl with red robins all round the
+outside of it&mdash;to his mouth, laughed at the three beasts. Let them show
+themselves here in the sunlight, and they'd see what they'd get. Let
+them only dare!</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a>He surveyed, with pleased anticipation, the probable progress of his
+day. He glanced at the pile of toys in the farther corner of the room,
+and thought to himself that he might, after all, find some diversion
+there. Yesterday they had seemed disappointing; to-day in the glow of
+the sun they suggested, adventure. Then he looked towards that stretch
+of country&mdash;that wall-to-screen marathon&mdash;and, with an eye upon his
+nurse, meditated a further attempt. He put down his spoon, and felt his
+bump. It was better; perchance there would be two bumps by the evening.
+And then, suddenly, he remembered.... He felt again the terror, saw the
+lights and his nurse, then that new friend.... He pondered, lifted his
+spoon, waved it in the air; and then smiling with the happy recovery of
+a pleasant, friendly sound, repeated half to himself, half to his nurse:
+&quot;Damn! Damn! Damn!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That began for him the difficulties of his day. He was hustled, shaken;
+words, words, words were poured down upon him. He understood that, in
+some strange, unexpected, bewildering fashion he had done wrong. There
+was nothing more puzzling in his present surroundings than that
+amazingly sudden transition from se<a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a>renity to danger. Here one was, warm
+with food, bathed in sunlight, with a fine, ripe day in front of one....
+Then the mere murmur of a sound, and all was tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>He hated his toys, his nurse, his food, his world; he sat in a corner of
+the room and glowered.... How was he to know? If, under direct
+encouragement, he could be induced to say &quot;dada,&quot; or &quot;horse,&quot; or
+&quot;twain,&quot; he received nothing but applause and, often enough, reward.
+Yet, let him make use of that pleasant new sound that he had learnt, and
+he was in disgrace. Upon this day, more than any other in his young
+life, he ached, he longed for some explanation. Then, sitting there in
+his corner, there came to him a discovery, the force of which was never,
+throughout all his later life, to leave him. He had been deserted by his
+friend. His last link with that other life was broken. He was here,
+planted in the strangest of strange places, with nothing whatever to
+help him. He was alone; he must fight for his own hand. He would&mdash;from
+that moment, seated there beneath the window, Ernest Henry Wilberforce
+challenged the terrors of this world, and found them sawdust&mdash;he would
+say &quot;damn&quot; as often as he pleased. &quot;Damn, <a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a>damn, damn, damn,&quot; he
+whispered, and marked again, with meditative eye, the space from wall to
+screen.</p>
+
+<p>After this, greatly cheered, he bethought him of the Square. Last night
+his friend had said to him that when he wished to think of him, and go
+back for a time to the other world, a peep into the Square would assist
+him. He clambered up on to the window-seat, caught behind him those
+sounds, &quot;Now, Master Ernest,&quot; which he now definitely connected with
+condemnation and disapproval, shook his curls in defiance, and pressed
+his nose to the glass. The Square was a dazzling sight. He had not as
+yet names for any of the things that he saw there, nor, when he went out
+on his magnificent daily progress in his perambulator did he associate
+the things that he found immediately around him with the things that he
+saw from his lofty window; but, with every absorbed gaze they stood more
+securely before him, and were fixed ever more firmly in his memory.</p>
+
+<p>This was a Square with fine, white, lofty houses, and in the houses were
+an infinite number of windows, sometimes gay and sometimes glittering.
+In the middle of the Square was a <a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a>garden, and in the middle of the
+garden, very clearly visible from Ernest Henry's window, was a fountain.
+It was this fountain, always tossing and leaping, that gave Ernest Henry
+the key to his memories. Gazing at it he had no difficulty at all to
+find himself back in the old life. Even now, although only two years had
+passed, it was difficult not to reveal his old experiences by means of
+terms of his new discoveries. He thought, for instance, of the fountain
+as a door that led into the country whose citizen he had once been, and
+that country he saw now in terms of doors and passages and rooms and
+windows, whereas, in reality, it had been quite otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>But now, perched up there on the window-sill, he felt that if he could
+only bring the fountain in with him out of the Square into his nursery,
+he would have the key to both existences. He wanted to understand&mdash;to
+understand what was the relation between his friend who had left last
+night, why he might say &quot;dada,&quot; but mustn't say &quot;damn,&quot; why, finally, he
+was here at all. He did not consciously consider these things; his brain
+was only very slightly, as yet, concerned in his discoveries; but, like
+a flowing river, beneath his move<a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a>ments and actions, the interplay of
+his two existences drove him on through, his adventure.</p>
+
+<p>There were, of course, many other things in the Square besides the
+fountain. There was, at the farther corner, just out of the Square, but
+quite visible from Ernest Henry's window, a fruit-shop with coloured
+fruit piled high on the boards outside the windows. Indeed, that side
+street, of which one could only catch this glimpse, promised to be most
+wonderful always; when evening came a golden haze hovered round and
+about it. In the garden itself there were often many children, and for
+an hour every afternoon Ernest Henry might be found amongst them. There
+were two statues in the Square&mdash;one of a gentleman in a beard and a
+frock-coat, the other of a soldier riding very finely upon a restless
+horse; but Ernest Henry was not, as yet, old enough to realise the
+meaning and importance of these heroes.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the Square there were many dogs, and even now as he looked down
+from his window he could see a number of them, black and brown and
+white.</p>
+
+<p>The trees trembled in a little breeze, the fountain flashed in the sun,
+somewhere a bar<a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a>rel-organ was playing.... Ernest Henry gave a little
+sigh, of satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>He was back! He was back! He was slipping, slipping into distance
+through the window into the street, under the fountain, its glittering
+arms had caught him; he was up, the door was before him, he had the key.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Time for you to put your things on, Master Ernest. And 'ow you've
+dirtied your knees! There! Look!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shook himself, clambered down from the window, gave his nurse what
+she described as &quot;One of his old, old looks. Might be eighty when he's
+like that.... They're all like it when they're young.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With a sigh he translated himself back into this new, tiresome
+existence.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>But after that morning things were never again quite the same. He gave
+himself up deliberately to the new life.</p>
+
+<p>With that serious devotion towards anything likely to be of real
+practical value to him that was, in his later years, never to fail him,
+he attacked this business of &quot;words.&quot; He dis<a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a>covered that if he made
+certain sounds when certain things were said to him he provoked instant
+applause. He liked popularity; he liked the rewards that popularity
+brought him. He acquired a formula that amounted practically to &quot;Wash
+dat?&quot; And whenever he saw anything new he produced his question. He
+learnt with amazing rapidity. He was, his nurse repeatedly told his
+father, &quot;a most remarkable child.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It could not truthfully be said that during these weeks he forgot his
+friend altogether. There were still the dark hours at night when he
+longed for him, and once or twice he had cried aloud for him. But slowly
+that slipped away. He did not look often now at the fountain.</p>
+
+<p>There were times when his friend was almost there. One evening, kneeling
+on the floor before the fire, arranging shining soldiers in a row, he
+was aware of something that made him sharply pause and raise his head.
+He was, for the moment, alone in the room that was glowing and quivering
+now in the firelight. The faint stir and crackle of the fire, the rich
+flaming colour that rose and fell against the white ceiling might have
+been enough to make <a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a>him wonder. But there was also the scent of a clump
+of blue hyacinths standing in shadow by the darkened window, and this
+scent caught him, even as the fountain had caught him, caught him with
+the stillness, the leaping fire, the twisted sense of romantic
+splendours that came, like some magician's smoke and flame, up to his
+very heart and brain. He did not turn his head, but behind him he was
+sure, there on the golden-brown rug, his friend was standing, watching
+him with his smiling eyes, his dark beard; he would be ready, at the
+least movement, to catch him up and hold him. Swiftly, Ernest Henry
+turned. There was no one there.</p>
+
+<p>But those moments were few now; real people were intervening. He had no
+mother, and this was doubtless the reason why his nurse darkly addressed
+him as &quot;Poor Lamb&quot; on many occasions; but he was, of course, at present
+unaware of his misfortune. He <i>had</i> an aunt, and of this lady he was
+aware only too vividly. She was long and thin and black, and he would
+not have disliked her so cordially, perhaps, had he not from the very
+first been aware of the sharpness of her nose when she kissed him. Her
+nose hurt him, and so he hated her.<a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a> But, as he grew, he discovered that
+this hatred was well-founded. Miss Wilberforce had not a happy way with
+children; she was nervous when she should have been bold, and secret
+when she should have been honesty itself. When Ernest Henry was the
+merest atom in a cradle, he discovered that she was afraid of him; he
+hated the shiny stuff of her dress. She wore a gold chain that&mdash;when you
+pulled it&mdash;snapped and hit your fingers. There were sharp pins at the
+back of her dress. He hated her; he was not afraid of her, and yet on
+that critical night when his friend told him of his departure, it was
+the fear of being left alone with the black cold shiny thing that
+troubled him most; she bore of all the daylight things the closest
+resemblance to the three beasts.</p>
+
+<p>There was, of course, his nurse, and a great deal of his time was spent
+in her company; but she had strangely little connection with his main
+problem of the relation of this, his present world, to that, his
+preceding one. She was there to answer questions, to issue commands, to
+forbid. She had the key to various cupboards&mdash;to the cupboard with
+pretty cups and jam and sugar, to the cupboard with ugly things that
+tasted horrible, things that he re<a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a>sisted by instinct long before they
+arrived under his nose. She also had certain sounds, of which she made
+invariable use on all occasions. One was, &quot;Now, Master Ernest!&quot; Another:
+&quot;Mind-what-you're-about-now!&quot; And, at his &quot;Wash dat!&quot; always
+&quot;Oh-bother-the-boy!&quot; She was large and square to look upon, very often
+pins were in her mouth, and the slippers that she wore within doors
+often clipclapped upon the carpet. But she was not a person; she had
+nothing to do with his progress.</p>
+
+<p>The person who had to do with it was, of course, his father. That night
+when his friend had left him had been, indeed, a crisis, because it was
+on that night that his father had come to him. It was not that he had
+not been aware of his father before, but he had been aware of him only
+as he had been aware of light and heat and food. Now it had become a
+definite wonder as to whether this new friend had been sent to take the
+place of the old one. Certainly the new friend had very little to do
+with all that old life of which the fountain was the door. He belonged,
+most definitely, to the new one, and everything about him&mdash;the
+delightfully mysterious tick of his gold watch, the solid, firm grasp of
+his hand, the sure security of his <a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a>shoulder upon which Ernest Henry now
+gloriously rode&mdash;these things were of this world and none other.</p>
+
+<p>It was a different relationship, this, from any other that Ernest Henry
+had ever known, but there was no doubt at all about its pleasant
+flavour. Just as in other days he had watched for his friend's
+appearance, so now he waited for that evening hour that always brought
+his father. The door would open, the square, set figure would appear....
+Very pleasant, indeed. Meanwhile Ernest Henry was instructed that the
+right thing to say on his father's appearance was &quot;Dada.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But he knew better. His father's name was really &quot;Damn.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>The days and weeks passed. There had been no sign of his friend.... Then
+the crisis came.</p>
+
+<p>That old wall-to-screen marathon had been achieved, and so
+contemptuously banished. There was now the great business of marching
+without aid from one end of the room to the other. This was a long
+business, and always <a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a>hitherto somewhere about the middle of it Ernest
+Henry had sat down suddenly, pretending, even to himself, that his shoe
+<i>hurt</i>, or that he was bored with the game, and would prefer some other.</p>
+
+<p>There came, then, a beautiful spring evening. The long low evening sun
+flooded the room, and somewhere a bell was calling Christian people to
+their prayers, and somewhere else the old man with the harp, who always
+came round the Square once every week, was making beautiful music.</p>
+
+<p>Ernest Henry's father had taken the nurse's place for an hour, and was
+reading a <i>Globe</i> with absorbed attention by the window; Mr.
+Wilberforce, senior, was one of London's most famous barristers, and the
+<i>Globe</i> on this particular afternoon had a great deal to say about this
+able man's cleverness. Ernest Henry watched his father, watched the
+light, heard the bell and the harp, felt that the hour was ripe for his
+attempt.</p>
+
+<p>He started, and, even as he did so, was aware that, after he had
+succeeded in this great adventure, things&mdash;that is, life&mdash;would never be
+quite the same again. He knew by now every stage of the first half of
+his journey. The first <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a>instalment was defined by that picture of the
+garden and the roses and the peacocks; the second by the beginning of
+the square brown nursery table; and here there was always a swift and
+very testing temptation to cling, with a sticky hand, to the hard and
+shining corner. The third division was the end of the nursery table
+where one was again tempted to give the corner a final clutch before
+passing forth into the void. After this there was nothing, no rest, no
+possible harbour until the end.</p>
+
+<p>Off Ernest Henry started. He could see his father, there in the long
+distance, busied with his paper; he could see the nursery table, with
+bright-blue and red reels of cotton that nurse had left there; he could
+see a discarded railway engine that lay gaping there half-way across,
+ready to catch and trip him if he were not careful. His eyes were like
+saucers, the hissing noise came from between his teeth, his forehead
+frowned. He passed the peacock, he flung contemptuously aside the
+proffered corner of the table; he passed, as an Atlantic liner passes
+the Eddystone, the table's other end; he was on the last stretch.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly he paused. He lifted his head, caught with his eye a pink,
+round cloud <a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a>that sailed against the evening blue beyond the window,
+heard the harpist, heard his father turn and exclaim, as he saw him.</p>
+
+<p>He knew, as he stood there, that at last the moment had come. His friend
+had returned.</p>
+
+<p>All the room was buzzing with it. The dolls fell in a neglected heap,
+the train on the carpet, the fire behind the fender, the reels of cotton
+that were on the table&mdash;they all knew it.</p>
+
+<p>His friend had returned.</p>
+
+<p>His impulse was, there and then, to sit down.</p>
+
+<p>His friend was whispering: &quot;Come along!... Come along!... Come along!&quot;
+He knew that, on his surrender, his father would make sounds like,
+&quot;Well, old man, tired, eh? Bed, I suggest.&quot; He knew that bed would
+follow. Then darkness, then his friend.</p>
+
+<p>For an instant there was fierce battle between the old forces and the
+new. Then, with his eyes upon his father, resuming that hiss that is
+proper only to ostlers, he continued his march.</p>
+
+<p>He reached the wall. He caught his father's leg. He was raised on to his
+father's lap, was kissed, was for a moment triumphant; then suddenly
+burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, old man, what's the matter?&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a>But Ernest Henry could not explain. Had he but known it he had, in that
+rejection of his friend, completed the first stage of his &quot;Pilgrimage
+from this world to the next.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Angelina</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>Angelina Braid, on the morning of her third birthday, woke very early.
+It would be too much to say that she knew it was her birthday, but she
+awoke, excited. She looked at the glimmering room, heard the sparrows
+beyond her windows, heard the snoring of her nurse in the large bed
+opposite her own, and lay very still, with her heart thumping like
+anything. She made no noise, however, because it was not her way to make
+a noise. Angelina Braid was the quietest little girl in all the Square.
+&quot;You'd never meet one nigher a mouse in a week of Sundays,&quot; said her
+nurse, who was a &quot;gay one&quot; and liked life.</p>
+
+<p>It was not, however, entirely Angelina's fault that she took life
+quietly; in 21 March Square, it was exceedingly difficult to do anything
+else.<a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a> Angelina's parents were in India, and she was not conscious, very
+acutely, of their existence. Every morning and evening she prayed, &quot;God
+bless mother and father in India,&quot; but then she was not very acutely
+conscious of God either, and so her mind was apt to wander during her
+prayers.</p>
+
+<p>She lived with her two aunts&mdash;Miss Emmy Braid and Miss Violet Braid&mdash;in
+the smallest house in the Square. So slim was No. 21, and so ruthlessly
+squeezed between the opulent No. 20 and the stout ruddy-faced No. 22,
+that it made one quite breathless to look at it; it was exactly as
+though an old maid, driven by suffragette wildness, had been arrested by
+two of the finest possible policemen, and carried off into custody. Very
+little of any kind of wildness was there about the Misses Braid. They
+were slim, neat women, whose rather yellow faces had the flat, squashed
+look of lawn grass after a garden roller has passed over it. They
+believed in God according to the Reverend Stephen Hunt, of St.
+Matthew-in-the-Crescent&mdash;the church round the corner&mdash;but in no other
+kind of God whatever. They were not rich, and they were not poor; they
+went once a week&mdash;Fridays&mdash;to visit the poor of St. Matthew's, <a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a>and
+found the poor of St. Matthew's on the whole unappreciative of their
+efforts, but that made their task the nobler. Their house was dark and
+musty, and filled with little articles left them by their grand-parents,
+their parents, and other defunct relations. They had no friendly feeling
+towards one another, but missed one another when they were separated.
+They were, both of them, as strong as horses, but very hypochondriacal,
+and Dr. Armstrong of Mulberry Place made a very pleasant little income
+out of them.</p>
+
+<p>I have mentioned them at length, because they had a great deal to do
+with Angelina's quiet behaviour. No. 21 was not a house that welcomed a
+child's ringing laughter. But, in any case, the Misses Braid were not
+fond of children, but only took Angelina because they had a soft spot in
+their dry hearts for their brother Jim, and in any case it would have
+been difficult to say no.</p>
+
+<p>Their attitude to children was that they could not understand why they
+did not instantly see things as they, their elders, saw them; but then,
+on the other hand, if an especially bright child did take a grown-up
+point of view about <a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a>anything <i>that</i> was considered &quot;forward&quot; and
+&quot;conceited,&quot; so that it was really very difficult for Angelina.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a pity Jim's got such a dull child,&quot; Miss Violet would say. &quot;You
+never would have expected it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What I like about a child,&quot; said Miss Emmy, &quot;is a little cheerfulness
+and natural spirit&mdash;not all this moping.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Angelina was not, on the whole, popular.... The aunts had very little
+idea of making a house cheerful for a child. The room allotted to
+Angelina as a nursery was at the top of the house, and had once been a
+servant's bedroom. It possessed two rather grimy windows, a faded brown
+wallpaper, an old green carpet, and some very stiff, hard chairs. On one
+wall was a large map of the world, and on the other an old print of
+Romans sacking Jerusalem, a picture which frightened Angelina every
+night of her life, when the dark came and the lamp illuminated the
+writhing limbs, the falling bodies, the tottering walls. From the
+windows the Square was visible, and at the windows Angelina spent a
+great deal of her time, but her present nurse&mdash;nurses succeeded one
+another with startling frequency&mdash;objected <a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a>to what she called
+&quot;window-gazing.&quot; &quot;Makes a child dreamy,&quot; she said; &quot;lowers her spirits.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Angelina was, naturally, a dreamy child, and no amount of nurses could
+prevent her being one. She was dreamy because her loneliness forced her
+to be so, and if her dreams were the most real part of her day to her
+that was surely the faults of her aunts. But she was not at all a quick
+child; although to-day was her third birthday she could not talk very
+well, could not pronounce her r's, and lisped in what her trail of
+nurses told her was a ridiculous fashion for so big a girl. But, then,
+she was not really a big girl; her figure was short and stumpy, her
+features plain and pale with the pallor of her first Indian year. Her
+eyes were large and black and rather fine.</p>
+
+<p>On this morning she lay in bed, and knew that she was excited because
+her friend had come the night before and told her that to-day would be
+an important day. Angelina clung, with a desperate tenacity, to her
+memories of everything that happened to her before her arrival on this
+unpleasant planet. Those memories now were growing faint, and they came
+to her only in flashes, in sudden twists and <a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>turns of the scene, as
+though she were surrounded by curtains and, every now and then, was
+allowed a peep through. Her friend had been with her continually at
+first, and, whilst he had been there, the old life had been real and
+visible enough; but on her second birthday he had told her that it was
+right now that she should manage by herself. Since then, he had come
+when she least expected him; sometimes when she had needed him very
+badly he had not appeared.... She never knew. At any rate, he had said
+that to-day would be important.... She lay in bed, listening to her
+nurse's snores, and waited.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>At breakfast she knew that it was her birthday. There were presents from
+her aunts&mdash;a picture-book and a box of pencils&mdash;there was also a
+mysterious parcel. Angelina could not remember that she had ever had a
+parcel before, and the excitement of this one must be prolonged. She
+would not open it, but gazed at it, with her spoon in the air and her
+mouth wide open.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come, Miss Angelina&mdash;what a name to give <a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a>the poor lamb!&mdash;get on with
+your breakfast now, or you'll never have done. Why not open the pretty
+parcel?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. Do you think it is a twain?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say train&mdash;not twain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Train.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, of course not; not a thing that shape.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! Do you think it's a bear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Maybe&mdash;maybe. Come now, get on with your bread and butter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't want any more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Get down from your chair, then. Say your grace now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank God nice bweakfast, Amen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's right! Now open it, then.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Drat the child! Well, wipe your face, then.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Angelina carried her parcel to the window, and then, after gazing at it
+for a long time, at last opened it. Her eyes grew wider and wider, her
+chubby fingers trembled. Nurse undid the wrappings of paper, slowly
+folded up the sheets, then produced, all naked and unashamed, a large
+rag doll.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There! There's a pretty thing for you, Miss 'Lina.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a>She had her hand about the doll's head, and held her there, suspended.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Give her me! Give her me!&quot; Angelina rescued her, and, with eyes
+flaming, the doll laid lengthways in her arms, tottered off to the other
+corner of the room.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, there's gratitude,&quot; said the nurse, &quot;and never asking so much as
+who it's from.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But nurse, aunts, all the troubles and disappointments of this world had
+vanished from Angelina's heart and soul. She had seen, at that first
+glimpse that her nurse had so rudely given her, that here at last, after
+long, long waiting, was the blessing that she had so desired. She had
+had other dolls&mdash;quite a number of them. Even now Lizzie (without an
+eye) and Rachel (rather fine in bridesmaid's attire) were leaning their
+disconsolate backs against the boarding beneath the window seat. There
+had been, besides Rachel and Lizzie, two Annies, a Mary, a May, a
+Blackamoor, a Jap, a Sailor, and a Baby in a Bath. They were now as
+though they had never been; Angelina knew with absolute certainty of
+soul, with that blending of will and desire, passion, self-sacrifice and
+absence of humour that must inevitably accompany true love that here was
+her Fate.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a>It's been sent you by your kind Uncle Teny,&quot; said nurse. &quot;You'll have
+to write a nice letter and thank him.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>But Angelina knew better. She&mdash;a name had not yet been chosen&mdash;had been
+sent to her by her friend.... He had promised her last night that this
+should be a day of days.</p>
+
+<p>Her aunts, appearing to receive thanks where thanks were due, darkened
+the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-morning, mum. Good-morning, mum. Now, Miss 'Lina, thank your kind
+aunties for their beautiful presents.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She stood up, clutching the doll.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;T'ank you, Auntie Vi'let; t'ank you, Auntie Em'ly&mdash;your lovely
+pwesents.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's right, Angelina. I hope you'll use them sensibly. What's that
+she's holding, nurse?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a doll Mr. Edward's sent her, mum.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a hideous creature! Edward might have chosen something&mdash;&mdash; Time for
+her to go out, nurse, I think&mdash;now, while the sun's warm.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But she did not hear. She did not know that they had gone. She sat there
+in a dreamy ecstasy rocking the red-cheeked creature in <a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a>her arms,
+seeing, with her black eyes, visions and the beauty of a thousand
+worlds.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>The name Rose was given to her. Rose had been kept, as a name, until
+some one worthy should arrive.... &quot;Wosie Bwaid,&quot; a very good name. Her
+nakedness was clothed first in Rachel's bridesmaid's attire&mdash;alas! poor
+Rachel!&mdash;but the lace and finery did not suit those flaming red cheeks
+and beady black eyes. Rose was, there could be no question, a daughter
+of the soil; good red blood ran through her stout veins. Tess of the
+countryside, your laughing, chaffing, arms-akimbo dairymaid; no poor
+white product of the over-civilised cities. Angelina felt that the satin
+and lace were wrong; she tore them off, searched in the heaped-up
+cupboard for poor neglected Annie No. 1, found her, tore from her her
+red woollen skirt and white blouse, stretched them about Rose's portly
+body.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;T'ank God for nice Wose, Amen,&quot; she said, but she meant, not God, but
+her friend. He, her friend, had never sent her anything before, and now
+that Rose had come straight from him, <a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a>she must have a great deal to
+tell her about him. Nothing puzzled her more than the distressing fact
+that she wondered sometimes whether her friend was ever really coming
+again, whether any of the wonderful things that were happening on every
+side of her wouldn't suddenly one fine morning vanish altogether, and
+leave her to a dreary world of nurse, bread and milk, and the Romans
+sacking Jerusalem. She didn't, of course, put it like that; all that it
+meant to her was that stupid people and tiresome things were always
+interfering between herself and <i>real</i> fun. Now it was time to go out,
+now to go to bed, now to eat, now to be taken downstairs into that
+horrid room where she couldn't move because things would tumble off the
+tables so ... all this prevented her own life when she would sit and
+try, and try, and remember <i>what</i> it was all like once, and wonder why
+when once things had been so beautiful they were so ugly and
+disappointing now.</p>
+
+<p>Now Rose had come, and she could talk to Rose about it. &quot;What she sees
+in that ugly old doll!&quot; said the nurse to the housemaid. &quot;You can take
+my word, Mary, she'll sit in that window looking down at the gardens,
+nursing <a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a>that rag and just say nothing. It fair gives you the creeps ...
+left too much to herself, the poor child is. As for those old women
+downstairs, if I 'ad my way&mdash;but there! Living's living, and bread and
+butter's bread and butter!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But, of course, Angelina's heart was bursting with affection, and there
+had been, until Rose's arrival, no one upon whom she might bestow it.
+Rose might seem to the ordinary observer somewhat unresponsive. She sat
+there, whether it were tea-time, dressing-time, bed-time, always staring
+in front of her, her mouth closed, her arms, bow-shaped, standing
+stiffly away from her side, taking, it might seem, but little interest
+in her mistress's confidences. Did one give her tea she only dribbled at
+the lip; did one place upon her head a straw hat with red ribbon torn
+from poor May&mdash;once a reigning favourite&mdash;she made no effort to keep it
+upon her head. Jewels and gold could rouse no appreciation from her; she
+was sunk in a lethargy that her rose-red cheeks most shamefully belied.</p>
+
+<p>But Angelina had the key to her. Angelina understood that confiding
+silence, appreciated that tactful discretion, adored that complete
+<a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a>submission to her will. It was true that her friend had only come once
+to her now within the space of many, many weeks, but he had sent her
+Rose. &quot;He's coming soon, Wose&mdash;weally soon&mdash;to tell us stowies.
+Bu-ootiful ones.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She sat, gazing down into the Square, and her dreams were longer and
+longer and longer.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Miss Emily Braid was a softer creature than her sister, and she had,
+somewhere in her heart, some sort of affection for her niece. She made,
+now and then, little buccaneering raids upon the nursery, with the
+intention of arriving at some intimate terms with that strange animal.
+But she had no gift of ease with children; her attempts at friendliness
+were viewed by Angelina with the gravest suspicion and won no return.
+This annoyed Miss Emily, and because she was conscious that she herself
+was in reality to blame, she attacked Angelina all the more fiercely.
+&quot;This brooding must be stopped,&quot; she said. &quot;Really, it's most
+unhealthy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was quite impossible for her to believe that a child of three could
+really be interested <a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a>by golden sunsets, the colours of the fountain
+that was in the centre of the gardens, the soft, grey haze that clothed
+the houses on a spring evening; and when, therefore, she saw Angelina
+gazing at these things, she decided that the child was morbid. Any
+interest, however, that Angelina may have taken in her aunts before
+Rose's arrival was now reduced to less than nothing at all.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That doll that Edward gave the child,&quot; said Miss Emily to her sister,
+&quot;is having a very bad effect on her. Makes her more moody than ever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Such a hideous thing!&quot; said Miss Violet. &quot;Well, I shall take it away if
+I see much more of this nonsense.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was lucky for Rose meanwhile that she was of a healthy constitution.
+The meals, the dressing and undressing, the perpetual demands upon her
+undivided attention, the sudden rousings from her sleep, the swift
+rockings back into slumber again, the appeals for response, the abuses
+for indifference, these things would have slain within a week one of her
+more feeble sisters. But Rose was made of stern stuff, and her rosy
+cheeks were as rosy, the brightness of her eyes was undimmed. We <a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a>may
+believe&mdash;and surely many harder demands are made upon our faith&mdash;that
+there did arise a very special relationship between these two. The whole
+of Angelina's heart was now devoted to Rose's service, Rose's was not
+devoted to Angelina?... And always Angelina wondered when her friend
+would return, watched for him in the dusk, awoke in the early mornings
+and listened for him, searched the Square with its trees and its
+fountain for his presence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wosie, when did he say he'd come next?&quot; But Rose could not tell. There
+<i>were</i> times when Rose's impenetrability was, to put it at its mildest,
+aggravating.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the situation with Aunt Emily grew serious. Angelina was
+aware that Aunt Emily disliked Rose, and her mouth now shut very tightly
+and her eyes glared defiance when she thought of this, but her
+difference with her aunt went more deeply than this. She had known for a
+long, long time that both her aunts would stop her &quot;dreaming&quot; if they
+could. Did she tell them about her friend, about the kind of pictures of
+which the fountain reminded her, about the vivid, lively memories that
+the tree with the pink flowers&mdash;the almond tree&mdash;in the <a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a>corner of the
+gardens&mdash;you could just see it from the nursery window&mdash;called to her
+mind; she knew that she would be punished&mdash;put in the corner, or even
+sent to bed. She did not think these things out consecutively in her
+mind, but she knew that the dark room downstairs, the dark passages, the
+stillness and silence of it all frightened her, and that it was always
+out of these things that her aunts rose.</p>
+
+<p>At night when she lay in bed with Rosie clasped tightly to her, she
+whispered endlessly about the gardens, the fountain, the barrel organs,
+the dogs, the other children in the Square&mdash;she had names of her own for
+all these things&mdash;and him, who belonged, of course, to the world
+outside.... Then her whisper would sink, and she would warn Rose about
+the rooms downstairs, the dining-room with the black chairs, the soft
+carpet, and the stuffed birds in glass cases&mdash;for these things, too, she
+had names. Here was the hand of death and destruction, the land of
+crooked stairs, sudden dark doors, mysterious bells and drippings of
+water&mdash;out of all this her aunts came....</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately it was just at this moment that Miss Emily Braid decided
+that it was time <a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a>to take her niece in hand. &quot;The child's three, Violet,
+and very backward for her age. Why, Mrs. Mancaster's little girl, who's
+just Angelina's age, can talk fluently, and is beginning with her
+letters. We don't want Jim to be disappointed in the child when he comes
+home next year.&quot; It would be difficult to determine how much of this was
+true; Miss Emily was aggravated and, although she would never have
+confessed to so trivial a matter, the perpetual worship of Rose&mdash;&quot;the
+ugliest thing you ever saw&quot;&mdash;was irritating her. The days followed,
+then, when Angelina was constantly in her aunt's company, and to neither
+of them was this companionship pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You must ask me questions, child. How are you ever going to learn to
+talk properly if you don't ask me questions?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, auntie.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's that over there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Twee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say tree, not twee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tree.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now look at me. Put that wretched doll down.... Now.... That's right.
+Now tell me what you've been doing this morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We had bweakfast&mdash;nurse said I&mdash;(long <a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a>pause for breath)&mdash;was dood
+girl; Auntie Vi'let came; I dwew with my pencil.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say 'drew,' not 'dwew.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Drew.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>All this was very exhausting to Aunt Emily. She was no nearer the
+child's heart.... Angelina maintained an impenetrable reserve. Old maids
+have much time amongst the unsatisfied and sterile monotonies of their
+life&mdash;this is only true of <i>some</i> old maids; there are very delightful
+ones&mdash;to devote to fancies and microscopic imitations. It was
+astonishing now how largely in Miss Emily Braid's life loomed the figure
+of Rose, the rag doll.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If it weren't for that wretched doll, I believe one could get some
+sense out of the child.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think it's a mistake, nurse, to let Miss Angelina play with that doll
+so much.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, mum, it'd be difficult to take it from her now. She's that
+wrapped in it.&quot; ... And so she was.... Rose stood to Angelina for so
+much more than Rose.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Wosie, <i>when</i> will he come again.... P'r'aps never. And I'm
+forgetting. I can't remember at all about the funny water and the twee
+with the flowers, and all of it. Wosie, <i>you</i><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a> 'member&mdash;Whisper.&quot; And
+Rose offered in her own mysterious, taciturn way the desired comfort.</p>
+
+<p>And then, of course, the crisis arrived. I am sorry about this part of
+the story. Of all the invasions of Aunt Emily, perhaps none were more
+strongly resented by Angelina than the appropriation of the afternoon
+hour in the gardens. Nurse had been an admirable escort because, as a
+lady of voracious appetite for life with, at the moment, but slender
+opportunities for satisfying it, she was occupied alertly with the
+possible vision of any male person driven by a similar desire. Her eye
+wandered; the hand to which Angelina clung was an abstract, imperceptive
+hand&mdash;Angelina and Rose were free to pursue their own train of
+fancy&mdash;the garden was at their service. But with Aunt Emily how
+different! Aunt Emily pursued relentlessly her educational tactics. Her
+thin, damp, black glove gripped Angelina's hand; her eyes (they had a
+&quot;peering&quot; effect, as though they were always searching for something
+beyond their actual vision) wandered aimlessly about the garden, looking
+for educational subjects. And so up and down the paths they went,
+Angelina trotting, with Rose clasped <a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a>to her breast, walking just a
+little faster than she conveniently could.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Emily disliked the gardens, and would have greatly preferred that
+nurse should have been in charge, but this consciousness of trial
+inflamed her sense of merit. There came a lovely spring afternoon; the
+almond tree was in full blossom; a cloud of pink against the green
+hedge, clumps of daffodils rippled with little shudders of delight, even
+the statues of &quot;Sir Benjamin Bundle&quot; and &quot;General Sir Robinson Cleaver&quot;
+seemed to unbend a little from their stiff angularity. There were many
+babies and nurses, and children laughing and crying and shouting, and a
+sky of mild forget-me-not blue smiled protectingly upon them. Angelina's
+eyes were fixed upon the fountain, which flashed and sparkled in the air
+with a happy freedom that seemed to catch all the life of the garden
+within its heart. Angelina felt how immensely she and Rose might have
+enjoyed all this had they been alone. Her eyes gazed longingly at the
+almond tree; she wished that she might go off on a voyage of discovery
+for, on this day of all days, did its shadow seem to hold some pressing,
+intimate invitation. &quot;I shall get back&mdash;I shall get back.... He'll come
+and <a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a>take me; I'll remember all the old things,&quot; she thought. She and
+Rose&mdash;what a time they might have if only&mdash;&mdash; She glanced up at her aunt.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look at that nice little boy, Angelina,&quot; Aunt Emily said. &quot;See how
+good&mdash;&mdash;&quot; But at that very instant that same playful breeze that had been
+ruffling the daffodils, and sending shimmers through the fountain
+decided that now was the moment to catch Miss Emily's black hat at one
+corner, prove to her that the pin that should have fastened it to her
+hair was loose, and swing the whole affair to one side. Up went her
+hands; she gave a little cry of dismay.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly, then, Angelina was determined. She did not suppose that her
+freedom would be for long, nor did she hope to have time to reach the
+almond tree; but her small, stumpy legs started off down the path almost
+before she was aware of it. She started, and Rose bumped against her as
+she ran. She heard behind her cries; she saw in front of her the almond
+tree, and then coming swiftly towards her a small boy with a hoop....
+She stopped, hesitated, and then fell. The golden afternoon, with all
+its scents and sounds, passed on above her <a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a>head. She was conscious that
+a hand was on her shoulder, she was lifted and shaken. Tears trickling
+down the side of her nose were checked by little points of gravel. She
+was aware that the little boy with the hoop had stopped and said
+something. Above her, very large and grim, was her aunt. Some bird on a
+tree was making a noise like the drawing of a cork. (She had heard her
+nurse once draw one.) In her heart was utter misery. The gravel hurt her
+face, the almond tree was farther away than ever; she was captured more
+completely than she had ever been before.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you naughty little girl&mdash;you <i>naughty</i> girl,&quot; she heard her aunt
+say; and then, after her, the bird like a cork. She stood there, her
+mouth tightly shut, the marks of tears drying to muddy lines on her
+face.</p>
+
+<p>She was dragged off. Aunt Emily was furious at the child's silence; Aunt
+Emily was also aware that she must have looked what she would call &quot;a
+pretty figure of fun&quot; with her hat askew, her hair blown &quot;anyway,&quot; and a
+small child of three escaping from her charge as fast as she could go.</p>
+
+<p>Angelina was dragged across the street, in through the squeezed front
+door, over the dark <a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></a>stairs, up into the nursery. Miss Violet's voice
+was heard calling, &quot;Is that you, Emily? Tea's been waiting some time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was nurse's afternoon out, and the nursery was grimly empty; but
+through the open, window came the evening sounds of the happy Square.
+Miss Emily placed Angelina in the middle of the room. &quot;Now say you're
+sorry, you wicked child!&quot; she exclaimed breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sowwy,&quot; came slowly from Angelina. Then she looked down at her doll.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leave that doll alone. Speak as though you were sorry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm velly sowwy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What made you run away like that?&quot; Angelina said nothing. &quot;Come, now!
+Didn't you know it was very wicked?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, why did you do it, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't say 'don't know' like that. You must have had some reason. Don't
+look at the doll like that. Put the doll down.&quot; But this Angelina would
+not do. She clung to Rose with a ferocious tenacity. I do not think that
+one must blame Miss Emily for her exasperation. That doll had had a
+large place in her mind for <a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a>many weeks. It were as though she, Miss
+Emily Braid, had been personally, before the world, defied by a rag
+doll. Her temper, whose control had never been her strongest quality, at
+the vision of the dirty, obstinate child before her, at the thought of
+the dancing, mocking gardens behind her, flamed into sudden, trembling
+rage.</p>
+
+<p>She stepped forward, snatched Rose from Angelina's arms, crossed the
+room and had pushed the doll, with a fierce, energetic action, as though
+there was no possible time to be lost, into the fire. She snatched the
+poker, and with trembling hands pressed the doll down. There was a great
+flare of flame; Rose lifted one stolid arm to the gods for vengeance,
+then a stout leg in a last writhing agony. Only then, when it was all
+concluded, did Aunt Emily hear behind her the little half-strangled cry
+which made her turn. The child was standing, motionless, with so old, so
+desperate a gaze of despair that it was something indecent for any human
+being to watch.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>Nurse came in from her afternoon. She had heard nothing of the recent
+catastrophe, and, <a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a>as she saw Angelina sitting quietly in front of the
+fire she thought that she had had her tea, and was now &quot;dreaming&quot; as she
+so often did. Once, however, as she was busy in another part of the
+room, she caught half the face in the light of the fire. To any one of a
+more perceptive nature that glimpse must have seemed one of the most
+tragic things in the world. But this was a woman of &quot;a sensible, hearty&quot;
+nature; moreover, her &quot;afternoon&quot; had left her with happy reminiscences
+of her own charms and their effect on the opposite sex.</p>
+
+<p>She had, however, her moment.... She had left the room to fetch
+something. Returning she noticed that the dusk had fallen, and was about
+to switch on the light when, in the rise and fall of the firelight,
+something that she saw made her pause. She stood motionless by the door.</p>
+
+<p>Angelina had turned in her chair; her eyes were gazing, with rapt
+attention, toward the purple dusk by the window. She was listening.
+Nurse, as she had often assured her friends, &quot;was not cursed with
+imagination,&quot; but now fear held her so that she could not stir nor move
+save that her hand trembled against the wall paper. The chatter of the
+fire, the shouts <a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></a>of some boys in the Square, the ringing of the bell of
+St. Matthew's for evensong, all these things came into the room.
+Angelina, still listening, at last smiled; then, with a little sigh, sat
+back in her chair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Heavens! Miss 'Lina! What were you doing there? How you frightened me!&quot;
+Angelina left her chair, and went across to the window. &quot;Auntie Emily,&quot;
+she said, &quot;put Wosie into the fire, she did. But Wosie's saved.... He's
+just come and told me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lord, Miss 'Lina, how you talk!&quot; The room was right again now just as,
+a moment before, it had been wrong. She switched on the electric light,
+and, in the sudden blaze, caught the last flicker in the child's eyes of
+some vision, caught, held, now surrendered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis company she's wanting, poor lamb,&quot; she thought, &quot;all this being
+alone.... Fair gives one the creeps.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She heard with relief the opening of the door. Miss Emily came in,
+hesitated a moment, then walked over to her niece. In her hands she
+carried a beautiful doll with flaxen hair, long white robes, and the
+assured confidence of one who is spotless and knows it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There, Angelina,&quot; she said. &quot;I oughtn't <a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a>to have burnt your doll. I'm
+sorry. Here's a beautiful new one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Angelina took the spotless one; then with a little thrust of her hand
+she pushed the half-open window wider apart. Very deliberately she
+dropped the doll (at whose beauty she had not glanced) out, away, down
+into the Square.</p>
+
+<p>The doll, white in the dusk, tossed and whirled, and spun finally, a
+white speck far below, and struck the pavement.</p>
+
+<p>Then Angelina turned, and with a little sigh of satisfaction looked at
+her aunt.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Bim Rochester</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>This is the story of Bim Rochester's first Odyssey. It is a story that
+has Bim himself for the only proof of its veracity, but he has never, by
+a shadow of a word, faltered in his account of it, and has remained so
+unamazed at some of the strange aspects in it that it seems almost an
+impertinence that we ourselves should show any wonder. Benjamin (Bim)
+Rochester was probably the happiest little boy in March Square, and he
+was happy in spite of quite a number of disadvantages.</p>
+
+<p>A word about the Rochester family is here necessary. They inhabited the
+largest house in March Square&mdash;the large grey one at the corner by Lent
+Street&mdash;and yet it could not be said to be large enough for them. Mrs.
+Rochester was a black-haired woman with flaming <a name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></a>cheeks and a most
+untidy appearance. Her mother had been a Spaniard, and her father an
+English artist, and she was very much the child of both of them. Her
+hair was always coming down, her dress unfastened, her shoes untied, her
+boots unbuttoned. She rushed through life with an amazing shattering
+vigour, bearing children, flinging them into an already overcrowded
+nursery, rushing out to parties, filling the house with crowds of
+friends, acquaintances, strangers, laughing, chattering, singing, never
+out of temper, never serious, never, for a moment, to be depended on.
+Her husband, a grave, ball-faced man, spent most of his days in the City
+and at his club, but was fond of his wife, and admired what he called
+her &quot;energy.&quot; &quot;My wife's splendid,&quot; he would say to his friends, &quot;knows
+the whole of London, I believe. The <i>people</i> we have in our house!&quot; He
+would watch, sometimes, the strange, noisy parties, and then would
+retire to bridge at his club with a little sigh of pride.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, upstairs in the nursery there were children of all ages, and
+two nurses did their best to grapple with them. The nurses came and
+went, and always, after the first day or two, the new nurse would give
+in to the <a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a>conditions, and would lead, at first with amusement and a
+rather excited sense of adventure, afterwards with a growing feeling of
+dirt and discomfort, a tangled and helter-skelter existence. Some of the
+children were now at school, but Lucy, a girl ten years of age, was a
+supercilious child who rebelled against the conditions of her life, but
+was too idle and superior to attempt any alteration of them. After her
+there were Roger, Dorothy, and Robert. Then came Bim, four years of age
+a fortnight ago, and, last of all, Timothy, an infant of nine months.
+With the exception of Lucy and Bim they were exceedingly noisy children.
+Lucy should have passed her days in the schoolroom under the care of
+Miss Agg, a melancholy and hope-abandoned spinster, and, during lesson
+hours, there indeed she was. But in the schoolroom she had no one to
+impress with her amazing wisdom and dignity. &quot;Poor mummy,&quot; as she always
+thought of her mother, was quite unaware of her habits or movements, and
+Miss Agg was unable to restrain either the one or the other, so Lucy
+spent most of her time in the nursery, where she sat, calm and
+collected, in the midst of confusion that could have &quot;given old Babel
+points and won easy.&quot; She <a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></a>was reverenced by all the younger children
+for her sedate security, but by none of them so surely and so
+magnificently as Bim. Bim, because he was quieter than the other
+children, claimed for his opinions and movements the stronger interest.</p>
+
+<p>His nurses called him &quot;deep,&quot; &quot;although for a deep child I must say he's
+'appy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Both his depth and his happiness were at Lucy's complete disposal. The
+people who saw him in the Square called him &quot;a jolly little boy,&quot; and,
+indeed, his appearance of gravity was undermined by the curl of his
+upper lip and a dimple in the middle of his left cheek, so that he
+seemed to be always at the crisis of a prolonged chuckle. One very
+rarely heard him laugh out loud, and his sturdy, rather fat body was
+carried rather gravely, and he walked contemplatively as though he were
+thinking something out. He would look at you, too, very earnestly when
+you spoke to him, and would wait a little before he answered you, and
+then would speak slowly as though he were choosing his words with care.
+And yet he was, in spite of these things, really a &quot;jolly little boy.&quot;
+His &quot;jolliness&quot; was there in point of view, in the astounding interest
+he found in anything and <a name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></a>everything, in his refusal to be upset by any
+sort of thing whatever.</p>
+
+<p>But his really unusual quality was his mixture of stolid English
+matter-of-fact with an absolutely unbridled imagination. He would
+pursue, day by day, week after week, games, invented games of his own,
+that owed nothing, either for their inception or their execution, to any
+one else. They had their origin for the most part in stray sentences
+that he had overheard from his elders, but they also arose from his own
+private and personal experiences&mdash;experiences which were as real to him
+as going to the dentist or going to the pantomime were to his brothers
+and sisters. There was, for instance, a gentleman of whom he always
+spoke of as Mr. Jack. This friend no one had ever seen, but Bim quoted
+him frequently. He did not, apparently, see him very often now, but at
+one time when he had been quite a baby Mr. Jack had been always there.
+Bim explained, to any one who cared to listen, that Mr. Jack belonged to
+all the Other Time which he was now in very serious danger of
+forgetting, and when, at that point, he was asked with condescending
+indulgence, &quot;I suppose you mean fairies, dear!&quot; he always shook his head
+<a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a>scornfully and said he meant nothing of the kind, Mr. Jack was as real
+as mother, and, indeed, a great deal &quot;realer,&quot; because Mrs. Rochester
+was, in the course of her energetic career, able to devote only
+&quot;whirlwind&quot; visits to her &quot;dear, darling&quot; children.</p>
+
+<p>When the afternoon was spent in the gardens in the middle of the Square,
+Bim would detach himself from his family and would be found absorbed in
+some business of his own which he generally described as &quot;waiting for
+Mr. Jack.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not the sort of child,&quot; said Miss Agg, who had strong views about
+children being educated according to practical and common-sense ideas,
+&quot;not the sort of child that one would expect nonsense from.&quot; It may be
+quite safely asserted that never, in her very earliest years, had Miss
+Agg been guilty of any nonsense of the sort.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not Miss Agg's contempt for his experiences that worried Bim.
+He always regarded that lady with an amused indifference. &quot;She <i>bothers</i>
+so,&quot; he said once to Lucy. &quot;Do you think she's happy with us, Lucy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;P'r'aps. I'm sure it doesn't matter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose she'd go away if she wasn't,&quot;<a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a> he concluded, and thought no
+more about her.</p>
+
+<p>No, the real grief in his heart was that Lucy, the adored, the wonderful
+Lucy, treated his assertions with contempt.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, Bim, don't be such a silly baby. You know you can't have seen him.
+Nurse was there and a lot of us, and <i>we</i> didn't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I did though.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, Bim&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can't help it. He used to come lots and lots.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You <i>are</i> a silly! You're getting too old now&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm <i>not</i> a silly!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, you are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, well, of course, if you're going to be a naughty baby.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Bim was nearer tears on these occasions than on any other in all his
+mortal life. His adoration of Lucy was the foundation-stone of his
+existence, and she accepted it with a lofty assumption of indifference;
+but very sharply would she have missed it had it been taken from her,
+and in long after years she was to look back upon that love of his and
+wonder that she could <a name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></a>have accepted it so lightly; Bim found in her
+gravity and assurance all that he demanded of his elders. Lucy was never
+at a loss for an answer to any question, and Bim believed all that she
+told him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where's China, Lucy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, don't bother, Bim.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, but <i>where</i> is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a nuisance you are! It's near Africa.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where Uncle Alfred is?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, just there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But <i>is</i> Uncle Alfred in&mdash;China?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, silly, of course not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, then&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I didn't say China was in Africa. I said it was near.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! I see. Uncle Alfred could just go in the train?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, of course.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! I see. P'r'aps he will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But, for the most part, Bim, realising that Lucy &quot;didn't want to be
+bothered,&quot; pursued his life alone. Through all the turmoil and disorder
+of that tempestuous nursery he gravely went his way, at one moment
+fighting lions and tigers, at another being nurse on her after<a name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></a>noon out
+(this was a truly astonishing adventure composed of scraps flung to him
+from nurse's conversational table and including many incidents that were
+far indeed from any nurse's experience), or again, he would be his
+mother giving a party, and, in the course of this, a great deal of food
+would be eaten, his favourite dishes, treacle pudding and cottage pie,
+being always included.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of his enthusiasm for Lucy he was no sentimentalist.
+He hated being kissed, he did not care very greatly for Roger and
+Dorothy and Robert, and regarded them as nothing but nuisances when they
+interfered with his games or compelled him to join in theirs.</p>
+
+<p>And now this is the story of his Odyssey.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>It happened on a wet April afternoon. The morning had been fine, a
+golden morning with the scent in the air of the showers that had fallen
+during the night. Then, suddenly, after midday, the rain came down,
+splashing on to the shining pavements as it fell, beating on to the
+windows and then running, in little lines, <a name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></a>on to the ledges and falling
+from there in slow, heavy drops. The sky was black, the statues in the
+garden dejected, the almond tree beaten, all the little paths running
+with water, and on the garden seats the rain danced like a live thing.</p>
+
+<p>The children&mdash;Lucy, Roger, Dorothy, Robert, Bim, and Timothy&mdash;were, of
+course, in the nursery. The nurse was toasting her toes on the fender
+and enjoying immensely that story by Mrs. Henry Wood, entitled &quot;The
+Shadow of Ashlydyat.&quot; It is entirely impossible to present any adequate
+idea of the confusion and bizarrerie of that nursery. One must think of
+the most confused aspect of human life that one has ever known&mdash;say, a
+Suffrage attack upon the Houses of Parliament, or a Channel steamer on a
+Thursday morning, and then of the next most confused aspect. Then one
+must place them together and confess defeat. Mrs. Rochester was not, as
+I have said, very frequently to be found in her children's nursery, but
+she managed, nevertheless, to pervade the house, from cellar to garret,
+with her spirit. Toys were everywhere&mdash;dolls and trains and soldiers,
+bricks and puzzles and animals, cardboard boxes, articles of feminine
+attire, a zinc <a name="Page_131" id="Page_131"></a>bath, two cats, a cage with white mice, a pile of books
+resting in a dazzling pyramid on the very edge of the table, two glass
+jars containing minute fish of the new variety, and a bowl with
+goldfish. There were many other things, forgotten by me.</p>
+
+<p>Lucy, her pigtails neatly arranged, sat near the window and pretended to
+be reading that fascinating story, &quot;The Pillars of the House.&quot; I say
+pretending, because Lucy did not care about reading at any time, and
+especially disliked the works of Charlotte Mary Yonge, but she thought
+that it looked well that she and nurse should be engaged upon literature
+whilst the rest of the world rioted and gambolled their time away. There
+was no one who at the moment could watch and admire her fine spirit, but
+you never knew who might come in.</p>
+
+<p>The rioting and gambolling consisted in the attempts of Robert, Dorothy,
+and Roger, to give a realistic presentation to an audience of one,
+namely, the infant Timothy, of the life of the Red Indians and their
+Squaws. Underneath the nursery table, with a tablecloth, some chairs and
+a concertina, they were presenting an admirable and entirely engrossing
+performance.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></a>Bim, under the window and quite close to Lucy, was giving a party. He
+had possessed himself of some of Dorothy's dolls' tea things, he had
+begged a sponge cake from nurse, and could be heard breaking from time
+to time into such sentences as, &quot;Do have a little more tweacle pudding,
+Mrs. Smith. It's the best tweacle,&quot; and, &quot;It's a nice day, isn't it!&quot;
+but he was sorely interrupted by the noisy festivities of the Indians
+who broke, frequently, into realistic cries of &quot;Oh! Roger, you're
+pulling my hair,&quot; or &quot;I won't play if you don't look out!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It may be that these interruptions disturbed the actuality of Bim's
+festivities, or it may be that the rattling of the rain upon the window
+panes diverted his attention. Once he broke into a chuckle. &quot;Isn't they
+banging on the window, Lucy?&quot; he said, but she was, it appeared, too
+deeply engaged to answer him. He found that, in a moment of abstraction,
+he had eaten the whole of the sponge cake, so that it was obvious that
+the party was over. &quot;Good-bye, Mrs. Smith. It was really nice of you to
+come. Good-bye, dear, Mrs. &mdash;&mdash; I think the wain almost isn't coming
+now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He said farewell to them all and climbed up<a name="Page_133" id="Page_133"></a>on the window seat. Here,
+gazing down into the Square, he saw that the rain was stopping, and, on
+the farther side, above the roofs of the houses, a little splash of gold
+had crept into the grey. He watched the gold, heard the rain coming more
+slowly; at first, &quot;spatter-spatter-spatter,&quot; then, &quot;spatter&mdash;spatter.&quot;
+Then one drop very slowly after another drop. Then he saw that the sun
+from somewhere far away had found out the wet paths in the garden, and
+was now stealing, very secretly, along them. Soon it would strike the
+seat, and then the statue of the funny fat man in all his clothes, and
+then, perhaps, the fountain. He was unhappy a little, and he did not
+know why: he was conscious, perhaps, of the untidy, noisy room behind
+him, of his sister Dorothy who, now a Squaw of a quite genuine and
+realistic kind, was crying at the top of her voice: &quot;I don't care. I
+will have it if I want to. You're <i>not</i> to, Roger,&quot; and of Timothy, his
+baby brother, who, moved by his sister's cries, howled monotonously,
+persistently, hopelessly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, give over, do, Miss Dorothy!&quot; said the nurse, raising her eye for a
+moment from her book. &quot;Why can't you be quiet?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Outside the world was beginning to shine <a name="Page_134" id="Page_134"></a>and glitter, inside it was all
+horrid and noisy. He sighed a little, he wanted to express in some way
+his feelings. He looked at Lucy and drew closer to her. She had beside
+her a painted china mug which one of her uncles had brought her from
+Russia; she had stolen some daffodils from her mother's room downstairs
+and now was arranging them. This painted mug was one of her most valued
+possessions, and Bim himself thought it, with its strange red and brown
+figures running round it, the finest thing in all the world.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lucy,&quot; he said. &quot;Do you s'pose if you was going to jump all the way
+down to the street and wasn't afraid that p'r'aps your legs wouldn't get
+broken?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was not, in reality, greatly interested in the answer to his
+question, but the important thing always with Lucy was first to enchain
+her attention. He had learnt, long ago, that to tell her that he loved
+her, to invite tenderness from her in return, was to ask for certain
+rebuff&mdash;he always began his advances then in this roundabout manner.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>What do</i> you think, Lucy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I don't know. How can I tell? Don't bother.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></a>It was then that Bim felt what was, for him, a very rare sensation. He
+was irritated.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't bovver,&quot; he said, with a cross look in the direction of his
+brother and sister Rochesters. &quot;No, but, Lucy, s'pose some one&mdash;nurse,
+s'pose&mdash;<i>did</i> fall down into the street and broke all her legs and arms,
+she wouldn't be dead, would she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You silly little boy, of course not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at Lucy, saw the frown upon her forehead, and felt suddenly
+that all his devotion to her was wasted, that she didn't want him, that
+nobody wanted him&mdash;now when the sun was making the garden glitter like a
+jewel and the fountain to shine like a sword.</p>
+
+<p>He felt in his throat a hard, choking lump. He came closer to his
+sister.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You might pay 'tention, Lucy,&quot; he said plaintively.</p>
+
+<p>Lucy broke a daffodil stalk viciously. &quot;Go and talk to the others,&quot; she
+said. &quot;I haven't time for you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The tears were hot in his eyes and anger was in his heart&mdash;anger bred of
+the rain, of the noise, of the confusion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You <i>are</i> howwid,&quot; he said slowly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, go away, then, if I'm horrid,&quot; she <a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></a>pushed with her hand at his
+knee. &quot;I didn't ask you to come here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her touch infuriated him; he kicked and caught a very tender part of her
+calf.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! You little beast!&quot; She came to him, leant for a moment across him,
+then slapped his cheek.</p>
+
+<p>The pain, the indignity, and, above all, a strange confused love for his
+sister that was near to passionate rage, let loose all the devils that
+owned Bim for their habitation.</p>
+
+<p>He did three things: He screamed aloud, he bent forward and bit Lucy's
+hand hard, he seized Lucy's wonderful Russian mug and dashed it to the
+ground. He then stood staring at the shattered fragments.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>There followed, of course, confusion. Nurse started up. &quot;The Shadow of
+Ashlydyat&quot; descended into the ashes, the children rushed eagerly from
+beneath the table to the centre of hostilities.</p>
+
+<p>But there were no hostilities. Lucy and Bim were, both of them, utterly
+astonished, Lucy, as she looked at the scattered mug, was, indeed,
+<a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></a>sobbing, but absent-mindedly&mdash;her thoughts were elsewhere. Her
+thoughts, in fact, were with Bim. She realised suddenly that never
+before had he lost his temper with her; she was aware that his affection
+had been all this time of value to her, of much more value, indeed, than
+the stupid old mug. She bent down&mdash;still absent-mindedly sobbing&mdash;and
+began to pick up the pieces. She was really astonished&mdash;being a dry and
+rather hard little girl&mdash;at her affection for Bim.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse seized on the unresisting villain of the piece and shook him.
+&quot;You <i>naughty</i> little boy! To go and break your sister's beautiful mug.
+It's your horrid temper that'll be the ruin of you, mark my words, as
+I'm always telling you.&quot; (Bim had never been known to lose his temper
+before.) &quot;Yes, it will. You see, you naughty boy. And all the other
+children as good as gold and quiet as lambs, and you've got to go and do
+this. You shall stand in the corner all tea-time, and not a bite shall
+you have.&quot; Here Bim began, in a breathless, frightened way, to sob.
+&quot;Yes, well you may. Never mind, Miss Lucy, I dare say your uncle will
+bring you another.&quot; Here she became conscious of an attentive and deeply
+interested <a name="Page_138" id="Page_138"></a>audience. &quot;Now, children, time to get ready for tea. Run
+along, Miss Dorothy, now. What a nuisance you all are, to be sure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They were removed from the scene. Bim was placed in the corner with his
+face to the wall. He was aghast; no words can give, at all, any idea of
+how dumbly aghast he was. What possessed him? What, in an instant of
+time, had leapt down from the clouds, had sprung up from the Square and
+seized him? Between his amazed thoughts came little surprised sobs. But
+he had not abandoned himself to grief&mdash;he was too sternly set upon the
+problem of reparation. Something must be done, and that quickly.</p>
+
+<p>The great thought in his mind was that he must replace the mug. He had
+not been very often in the streets beyond the Square, but upon certain
+occasions he had seen their glories, and he knew that there had been
+shops and shops and shops. Quite close to him, upon a shelf, was his
+money-box, a squat, ugly affair of red tin, into whose large mouth he
+had been compelled to force those gifts that kind relations had
+bestowed. There must be now quite a fortune there&mdash;enough to buy many
+mugs. He could not himself open it, but he <a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"></a>did not doubt that the man
+in the shop would do that for him.</p>
+
+<p>Not for many more moments would he be left alone. His hat was lying on
+the table; he seized that and his money-box, and was out on the landing.</p>
+
+<p>The rest is <i>his</i> story. I cannot, as I have already said, vouch for the
+truth of it. At first, fortune was on his side. There seemed to be no
+one about the house. He went down the wide staircase without making any
+sound; in the hall he stopped for a moment because he heard voices, but
+no one came. Then with both hands, and standing on tiptoe, he turned the
+lock of the door, and was outside.</p>
+
+<p>The Square was bathed in golden sun, a sun, the stronger for his
+concealment, but tempered, too, with the fine gleam that the rain had
+left. Never before had Bim been outside that door alone; he was aware
+that this was a very tremendous adventure. The sky was a washed and
+delicate purple, and behold! on the high railings, a row of sparrows
+were chattering. Voices were cold and clear, echoing, as it seemed,
+against the straight, grey walls of the houses, and all the trees in the
+garden glistened with their wet leaves shining with gold; <a name="Page_140" id="Page_140"></a>there seemed
+to be, too, a dim veil of smoke that was homely and comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>It is not usual to see a small boy of four alone in a London square, but
+Bim met, at first, no one except a messenger boy, who stopped and looked
+after him. At the corner of the Square&mdash;just out of the Square so that
+it might not shame its grandeur&mdash;was a fruit and flower shop, and this
+shop was the entrance to a street that had much life and bustle about
+it. Here Bim paused with his money-box clasped very tightly to him. Then
+he made a step or two and was instantly engulfed, it seemed, in a
+perfect whirl of men and women, of carts and bicycles, of voices and
+cries and screams; there were lights of every colour, and especially one
+far above his head that came and disappeared and came again with
+terrifying wizardry.</p>
+
+<p>He was, quite suddenly, and as it were, by the agency of some outside
+person, desperately frightened. It was a new terror, different from
+anything that he had known before. It was as though a huge giant had
+suddenly lifted him up by the seat of his breeches, or a witch had
+transplanted him on to her broomstick and carried him off. It was as
+unusual as that.</p>
+
+<p>His under lip began to quiver, and he knew <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141"></a>that presently he would be
+crying. Then, as he always did, when something unusual occurred to him,
+he thought of &quot;Mr. Jack.&quot; At this point, when you ask him what happened,
+he always says: &quot;Oh! He came, you know&mdash;came walking along&mdash;like he
+always did.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Was he just like other people, Bim?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, just. With a beard, you know&mdash;just like he always was.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, but what sort of things did he wear?&quot; &quot;Oh, just ord'nary things,
+like you.&quot; There was no sense of excitement or wonder to be got out of
+him. It was true that Mr. Jack hadn't shown himself for quite a long
+time, but that, Bim felt, was natural enough. &quot;He'll come less and
+seldomer and seldomer as you get big, you know. It was just at first,
+when one was very little and didn't know one's way about&mdash;just to help
+babies not to be frightened. Timothy would tell you only he won't. Then
+he comes only a little&mdash;just at special times like this was.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Bim told you this with a slightly bored air, as though it were silly of
+you not to know, and really his air of certainty made an incredulous
+challenge a difficult thing. On the present occasion Mr. Jack was just
+there, in the middle <a name="Page_142" id="Page_142"></a>of the crowd, smiling and friendly. He took Bim's
+hand, and, &quot;Of course,&quot; Bim said, &quot;there didn't have to be any
+'splaining. <i>He</i> knew what I wanted.&quot; True or not, I like to think of
+them, in the evening air, serenely safe and comfortable, and in any
+case, it was surely strange that if, as one's common sense compels one
+to suppose, Bim were all alone in that crowd, no one wondered or stopped
+him nor asked him where his home was. At any rate, I have no opinions on
+the subject. Bim says that, at once, they found themselves out of the
+crowd in a quiet, little &quot;dinky&quot; street, as he called it, a street that,
+in his description of it, answered to nothing that I can remember in
+this part of the world. His account of it seems to present a dark,
+rather narrow place, with overhanging roofs and swinging signs, and
+nobody, he says, at all about, but a church with a bell, and outside one
+shop a row of bright-coloured clothes hanging. At any rate, here Bim
+found the place that he wanted. There was a little shop with steps down
+into it and a tinkling bell which made a tremendous noise when you
+pushed the old oak door. Inside there was every sort of thing. Bim lost
+himself here in the ecstasy of his description, lacking also <a name="Page_143" id="Page_143"></a>names for
+many of the things that he saw. But there was a whole suit of shining
+armour, and there were jewels, and old brass trays, and carpets, and a
+crocodile, which Bim called a &quot;crodocile.&quot; There was also a friendly old
+man with a white beard, and over everything a lovely smell, which Bim
+said was like &quot;roast potatoes&quot; and &quot;the stuff mother has in a bottle in
+her bedwoom.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Bim could, of course, have stayed there for ever, but Mr. Jack reminded
+him of a possibly anxious family. &quot;There, is that what you're after?&quot;
+he said, and, sure enough, there on a shelf, smiling and eager to be
+bought, was a mug exactly like the one that Bim had broken.</p>
+
+<p>There was then the business of paying for it, the money-box was produced
+and opened by the old man with &quot;a shining knife,&quot; and Bim was gravely
+informed that the money found in the box was exactly the right amount.
+Bim had been, for a moment, in an agony of agitation lest he should have
+too little, but as he told us, &quot;There was all Uncle Alfred's Christmas
+money, and what mother gave me for the tooth, and that silly lady with
+the green dress who <i>would</i> kiss me.&quot; So, you see, there must have been
+an awful amount.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144"></a>Then they went, Bim clasping his money-box in one hand and the mug in
+the other. The mug was wrapped in beautiful blue paper that smelt, as we
+were all afterwards to testify, of dates and spices. The crocodile
+flapped against the wall, the bell tinkled, and the shop was left behind
+them. &quot;Most at once,&quot; Bim said they were by the fruit shop again; he
+knew that Mr. Jack was going, and he had a sudden most urgent longing to
+go with him, to stay with him, to be with him always. He wanted to cry;
+he felt dreadfully unhappy, but all of his thanks, his strange desires,
+that he could bring out was, in a quavering voice, trying hard, you
+understand, not to cry, &quot;Mr. Jack. Oh! Mr.&mdash;&mdash;&quot; and his friend was gone.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>He trotted home; with every step his pride increased. What would Lucy
+say? And dim, unrealised, but forming, nevertheless, the basis for the
+whole of his triumph, was his consciousness that she who had scoffed,
+derided, at his &quot;Mr. Jack,&quot; should now so absolutely benefit by him.
+This was bringing together, at last, the two of them.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></a>His nurse, in a fine frenzy of agitation, met him. Her relief at his
+safety swallowed her anger. She could only gasp at him. &quot;Well, Master
+Bim, and a nice state&mdash;&mdash; Oh, dear! to think; wherever&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On the doorstep he forced his nurse to pause, and, turning, looked at
+the gardens now in shadow of spun gold, with the fountain blue as the
+sky. He nodded his head with satisfaction. It had been a splendid time.
+It would be a very long while, he knew, before he was allowed out again
+like that. Yes. He clasped the mug tightly, and the door closed behind
+him.</p>
+
+<p>I don't know that there is anything more to say. There were the empty
+money-box and the mug. There was Bim's unhesitating and unchangeable
+story. There <i>is</i> a shop, just behind the Square, where they have some
+Russian crockery. But Bim alone!</p>
+
+<p><i>I</i> don't know.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Nancy Ross</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>Mr. Munty Ross's house was certainly the smartest in March Square; No.
+14, where the Duchess of Crole lived, was shabby in comparison. Very
+often you may see a line of motor-cars and carriages stretching down the
+Square, then round the corner into Lent Street, and you may know
+then&mdash;as, indeed, all the Square did know and most carefully
+observed&mdash;that Mrs. Munty Boss was giving another of her smart little
+parties. That dark-green door, that neat overhanging balcony, those
+rows&mdash;in the summer months&mdash;of scarlet geraniums, that roll of carpet
+that ran, many times a week, from the door over the pavement to the very
+foot of the waiting vehicle&mdash;these things were Mrs. Munty Ross's.</p>
+
+<p>Munty Ross&mdash;a silent, ugly, black little man&mdash;had <a name="Page_147" id="Page_147"></a>had made his money in
+potted shrimps, or something equally compact and indigestible, and it
+really was very nice to think that anything in time could blossom out
+into beauty as striking as Mrs. Munty's lovely dresses, or melody as
+wonderful as the voice of M. Radiziwill, the famous tenor, whom she
+often &quot;turned on&quot; at her little evening parties. Upon Mr. Munty alone
+the shrimps seemed to have made no effect. He was as black, as
+insignificant, as ugly as ever he had been in the days before he knew of
+a shrimp's possibilities. He was very silent at his wife's parties, and
+sometimes dropped his h's. What Mrs. Munty had been before her marriage
+no one quite knew, but now she was flaxen and slim and beautifully
+clothed, with a voice like an insincere canary; she had &quot;a passion for
+the Opera,&quot; a &quot;passion for motoring,&quot; &quot;a passion for the latest
+religion,&quot; and &quot;a passion for the simple life.&quot; All these things did the
+shrimps enable her to gratify, and &quot;the simple life&quot; cost her more than
+all the others put together.</p>
+
+<p>Heaven had blessed them with one child, and that child was called Nancy.
+Nancy, her mother always said with pride, was old for her age, and, as
+her age was only just five, that remark <a name="Page_148" id="Page_148"></a>was quite true. Nancy Ross was
+old for any age. Had she herself, one is compelled when considering her
+to wonder, any conception during those first months of the things that
+were going to be made out of her, and had she, perhaps at the very
+commencement of it all, some instinct of protest and rebellion? Poor
+Nancy! The tragedy of her whole case was now none other than that she
+hadn't, here at five years old in March Square, the slightest picture of
+what she had become, nor could she, I suppose, have imagined it possible
+for her to become anything different. Nancy, in her own real and naked
+person, was a small child with a good flow of flaxen hair and light-blue
+eyes. All her features were small and delicate, and she gave you the
+impression that if you only pulled a string or pushed a button somewhere
+in the middle of her back you could evoke any cry, smile or exclamation
+that you cared to arouse. Her eyes were old and weary, her attitude
+always that of one who had learnt the ways of this world, had found them
+sawdust, but had nevertheless consented still to play the game. Just as
+the house was filled with little gilt chairs and china cockatoos, so was
+Nancy arrayed in ribbons and bows and lace. Mrs.<a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></a> Munty had, one must
+suppose, surveyed during certain periods in her life certain real
+emotions rather as the gaping villagers survey the tiger behind his bars
+in the travelling circus.</p>
+
+<p>The time had then come when she put these emotions away from her as
+childish things, and determined never to be faced with any of them
+again. It was not likely, then, that she would introduce Nancy to any of
+them. She introduced Nancy to clothes and deportment, and left it at
+that. She wanted her child to &quot;look nice.&quot; She was able, now that Nancy
+was five years old, to say that she &quot;looked very nice indeed.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>From the very beginning nurses were chosen who would take care of Nancy
+Boss's appearance. There was plenty of money to spend, and Nancy was a
+child who, with her flaxen hair and blue eyes, would repay trouble. She
+<i>did</i> repay it, because she had no desires towards grubbiness or
+rebellion, or any wildnesses whatever. She just sat there with her doll
+balanced neatly in her arms, and allowed herself to be pulled and
+twisted and squeezed <a name="Page_150" id="Page_150"></a>and stretched. &quot;There's a pretty little lady,&quot;
+said nurse, and a pretty little lady Nancy was sure that she was. The
+order for her day was that in the morning she went out for a walk in the
+gardens in the Square, and in the afternoon she went out for another.
+During these walks she moved slowly, her doll delicately carried, her
+beautiful clothes shining with approval of the way that they were worn,
+her head high, &quot;like a little queen,&quot; said her nurse. She was conscious
+of the other children in the gardens, who often stopped in the middle of
+their play and watched her. She thought them hot and dirty and very
+noisy. She was sorry for their mothers.</p>
+
+<p>It happened sometimes that she came downstairs, towards the end of a
+luncheon party, and was introduced to the guests. &quot;You pretty little
+thing,&quot; women in very large hats said to her. &quot;Lovely hair,&quot; or &quot;She's
+the very image of <i>you</i>, Clarice,&quot; to her mother. She liked to hear that
+because she greatly admired her mother. She knew that she, Nancy Ross,
+was beautiful; she knew that clothes were of an immense importance; she
+knew that other children were unpleasant. For the rest, she was neither
+extravagantly glad nor extravagantly <a name="Page_151" id="Page_151"></a>sorry. She preserved a fine
+indifference.... And yet, although, here my story may seem to
+matter-of-fact persons to take a turn towards the fantastic, this was
+not quite all. Nancy herself, dimly and yet uneasily, was aware that
+there was something else.</p>
+
+<p>She was not a little girl who believed in fairies or witches or the
+&quot;bogey man,&quot; or anything indeed that she could not see. She inherited
+from her mother a splendid confidence in the reality, the solid,
+unquestioned reality of all concrete and tangible things. She had been
+presented once with a fine edition of &quot;Grimm's Fairy Tales,&quot; an edition
+with coloured pictures and every allure. She had turned its pages with a
+look of incredulous amazement. &quot;What,&quot; she seemed to say&mdash;she was then
+aged three and a half&mdash;&quot;are these absurd things that you are telling me?
+People aren't like that. Mother isn't in the least like that. I don't
+understand this, and it's tedious!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm afraid the child has no imagination,&quot; said her nurse.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a lucky thing!&quot; said her mother.</p>
+
+<p>Nor could Mrs. Ross's house be said to be a place that encouraged
+fairies. They would <a name="Page_152" id="Page_152"></a>have found the gilt chairs hard to sit upon, and
+there were no mysterious corners. There was nothing mysterious at all.
+And yet Nancy Ross, sitting in her magnificent clothes, was conscious as
+she advanced towards her sixth year that she was not perfectly
+comfortable. To say that she felt lonely would be, perhaps, to emphasise
+too strongly her discomfort. It was perhaps rather that she felt
+inquisitive&mdash;only a little, a very little&mdash;but she did begin to wish
+that she could ask a few questions.</p>
+
+<p>There came a day&mdash;an astonishing day&mdash;when she felt irritated with her
+mother. She had during her walk through the garden seen a little boy and
+a little girl, who were grubbing about in a little pile of earth and
+sand there in the corner under the trees, and grubbing very happily.
+They had dirt upon their faces, but their nurse was sitting, apparently
+quite easy in her mind, and the sun had not stopped in its course nor
+had the birds upon the trees ceased to sing. Nancy stayed for a moment
+her progress and looked at them, and something not very far from envy
+struck, in some far-distant hiding-place, her soul. She moved on, but
+when she came indoors and was met by <a name="Page_153" id="Page_153"></a>her mamma and a handsome lady, her
+mamma's friend, who said: &quot;Isn't she a pretty dear?&quot; and her mother
+said: &quot;That's right, Nancy darling, been for your walk?&quot; she was, for an
+amazing moment, irritated with her beautiful mother.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Once she was conscious of this desire to ask questions she had no more
+peace. Although she was only five years of age, she had all the
+determination not &quot;to give herself away&quot; of a woman of forty. She was
+not going to show that she wanted anything in the world, and yet she
+would have liked&mdash;A little wistfully she looked at her nurse. But that
+good woman, carefully chosen by Mrs. Ross, was not the one to encourage
+questions. She was as shining as a new brass nail, and a great deal
+harder.</p>
+
+<p>The nursery was as neat as a pin, with a lovely bright rocking-horse
+upon which Nancy had never ridden; a pink doll's-house with every modern
+contrivance, whose doors had never been opened; a number of expensive
+dolls, which had never been disrobed. Nancy approached these
+joys&mdash;diffidently and with cau<a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></a>tion. She rode upon the horse, opened the
+doll's-house, embraced the dolls, but she had no natural imagination to
+bestow upon them, and the horse and the dolls, hurt, perhaps, at their
+long neglect, received her with frigidity. Those grubby little children
+in the Square would, she knew, have been &quot;there&quot; in a moment. She began
+then to be frightened. The nursery, her bedroom, the dark little passage
+outside, were suddenly alarming. Sometimes, when she was sitting quietly
+in her nursery, the house was so silent that she could have screamed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't think Miss Nancy's quite well, ma'am,&quot; said the nurse.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, dear! What a nuisance,&quot; said Mrs. Ross who liked her little girl to
+be always well and beautiful. &quot;I do hope she's not going to catch
+something.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She doesn't take that pleasure in her clothes she did,&quot; said the nurse.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps she wants some new ones,&quot; said her mother. &quot;Take her to
+Florice, nurse.&quot; Nancy went to Florice, and beautiful new garments were
+invented, and once again she was squeezed, and tightened, and stretched,
+and pulled. But Nancy was indifferent. As they <a name="Page_155" id="Page_155"></a>tried these clothes, and
+stood back, and stepped forward, and admired and criticised, she was
+thinking, &quot;I wish the nursery clock didn't make such a noise.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her little bedroom next to nurse's large one was a beautiful affair,
+with red roses up and down the wall-paper and in and out of the crockery
+and round and round the carpet. Her bed was magnificent, with lace and
+more roses, and there was a fine photograph of her beautiful mother in a
+silver frame on the mantelpiece. But all these things were of little
+avail when the dark came. She began to be frightened of the dark.</p>
+
+<p>There came a night when, waking with a suddenness that did of itself
+contribute to her alarm, she was conscious that the room was intensely
+dark, and that every one was very far away. The house, as she listened,
+seemed to be holding its breath, the clock in the nursery was ticking in
+a frightened, startled terror, and hesitating, whimsical noises broke,
+now close, now distant, upon the silence. She lay there, her heart
+beating as it had surely never been allowed to beat before. She was
+simply a very small, very frightened little girl. Then, before she could
+cry out, she was aware that some one <a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"></a>was standing beside her bed. She
+was aware of this before she looked, and then, strangely (even now she
+had taken no peep), she was frightened no longer.</p>
+
+<p>The room, the house, were suddenly comfortable and safe places; as water
+slips from a pool and leaves it dry, so had terror glided from her side.
+She looked up then, and, although the place had been so dark that she
+had been unable to distinguish the furniture, she could figure to
+herself quite clearly her visitor's form. She not only figured it, but
+also quite easily and readily recognised it. All these years she had
+forgotten him, but now at the vision of his large comfortable presence
+she was back again amongst experiences and recognitions that evoked for
+her once more all those odd first days when, with how much discomfort
+and puzzled dismay, she had been dropped, so suddenly, into this
+distressing world. He put his arms around her and held her; he bent down
+and kissed her, and her small hand went up to his beard in exactly the
+way that it used to do. She nestled up against him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a very long time, isn't it,&quot; he said, &quot;since I paid you a visit!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, a long, long time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_157" id="Page_157"></a>That's because you didn't want me. You got on so well without me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I didn't forget about you,&quot; she said. &quot;But I asked mummy about you
+once, and she said you were all nonsense, and I wasn't to think things
+like that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! your mother's forgotten altogether. She knew me once, but she
+hasn't wanted me for a very, very long time. She'll see me again,
+though, one day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm so glad you've come. You won't go away again now, will you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I never go away,&quot; he said. &quot;I'm always here. I've seen everything
+you've been doing, and a very dull time you've been making of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He talked to her and told her about some of the things the other
+children in the Square were doing. She was interested a little, but not
+very much; she still thought a great deal more about herself than about
+anything or anybody else.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do they all love you?&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no, not at all. Some of them think I'm horrid. Some of them forget
+me altogether, and then I never come back, until just at the end. Some
+of them only want me when <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"></a>they're in trouble. Some, very soon, think it
+silly to believe in me at all, and the older they grow the less they
+believe, generally. And when I do come they won't see me, they make up
+their minds not to. But I'm always there just the same; it makes no
+difference what they do. They can't help themselves. Only it's better
+for them just to remember me a little, because then it's much safer for
+them. You've been feeling rather lonely lately, haven't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she said. &quot;It's stupid now all by myself. There's nobody to ask
+questions of.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, there's somebody else in your house who's lonely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is there?&quot; She couldn't think of any one.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. Your father.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! Father&mdash;&mdash;&quot; She was uninterested.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. You see, if he isn't&mdash;&mdash;&quot; and then, at that, he was gone, she was
+alone and fast asleep.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning when she awoke, she remembered it all quite clearly, but,
+of course, it had all been a dream. &quot;Such a funny dream,&quot; she told her
+nurse, but she would give out no details.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Some food she's been eating,&quot; said her nurse.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159"></a>Nevertheless, when, on that afternoon, coming in from her walk, she met
+her dark, grubby little father in the hall, she did stay for a moment on
+the bottom step of the stairs to consider him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been for a walk, daddy,&quot; she said, and then, rather frightened at
+her boldness, tumbled up on the next step. He went forward to catch her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hold up,&quot; he said, held her for a moment, and then hurried, confused
+and rather agitated, into his dark sanctum. These were, very nearly, the
+first words that they had ever, in the course of their lives together,
+interchanged. Munty Ross was uneasy with grown-up persons (unless he was
+discussing business with them), but that discomfort was nothing to the
+uneasiness that he felt with children. Little girls (who certainly
+looked at him as though he were an ogre) frightened him quite horribly;
+moreover, Mrs. Munty had, for a great number of years, pursued a policy
+with regard to her husband that was not calculated to make him bright
+and easy in any society. &quot;Poor old Munty,&quot; she would say to her friends,
+&quot;it's not all his fault&mdash;&mdash;&quot; It was, as a fact, very largely hers. He had
+never been an eloquent <a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"></a>man, but her playful derision of his uncouthness
+slew any little seeds of polite conversation that might, under happier
+conditions, have grown into brilliant blossom. It had been understood
+from the very beginning that Nancy was not of her father's world. He
+would have been scarcely aware that he had a daughter had he not, at
+certain periods, paid bills for her clothes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's a child want with all this?&quot; he had ventured once to say.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hardly your business, my dear,&quot; his wife had told him. &quot;The child's
+clothes are marvellously cheap considering. I don't know how Florice
+does it for the money.&quot; He resented nothing&mdash;it was not his way&mdash;but he
+did feel, deep down in his heart, that the child was over-dressed, that
+it must be bad for any little girl to be praised in the way that his
+daughter was praised, that &quot;the kid will grow up with the most
+tremendous ideas.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He resented it, perhaps a little, that his young daughter had so easily
+accustomed herself to the thought that she had no father. &quot;She might
+just want to see me occasionally. But I'd only frighten her, I suppose,
+if she did.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"></a>Munty Ross had very little of the sentimentalist about him; he was
+completely cynical about the value of the human heart, and believed in
+the worth and goodness of no one at all. He had, for a brief wild
+moment, been in love with his wife, but she had taken care to kill that,
+&quot;the earlier the better.&quot; &quot;My dear,&quot; she would say to a chosen friend,
+&quot;what Munty's like when he's romantic!&quot; She never, after the first month
+of their married life together, caught a glimpse of that side of him.</p>
+
+<p>Now, however, he did permit his mind to linger over that vision of his
+little daughter tumbling on the stairs. He wondered what had made her do
+it. He was astonished at the difference that it made to him.</p>
+
+<p>To Nancy also it had made a great difference. She wished that she had
+stayed there on the stairs a little longer to hold a more important
+conversation. She had thought of her father as &quot;all horrid&quot;&mdash;now his
+very contrast to her little world pleased and interested her. It may
+also be that, although she was young, she had even now a picture in her
+mind of her father's loneliness. She may have seen into her mother's
+attitude with an acuteness much older than her actual years.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></a>She thought now continually about her father. She made little plans to
+meet him, but these meetings were not, as a rule, successful, because so
+often he was down in the city. She would wait at the end of her
+afternoon walk on the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come along, Miss Nancy, do. What are you hanging about there for?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll be disturbing your mother.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just a minute.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She peered anxiously, her little head almost held by the railings of the
+banisters; she gazed down into black, mysterious depths wherein her
+father might be hidden. She was driven to all this partly by some real
+affection that had hitherto found no outlet, partly by a desire for
+adventure, but partly, also, by some force that was behind her and quite
+recognised by her. It was as though she said: &quot;If I'm nice to my father
+and make friends with him, then you must promise that I shan't be
+frightened in the middle of the night, that the clock won't tick too
+loudly, that the blind won't flap, that it won't all be too dark and
+dreadful.&quot; She knew that she had made this compact.</p>
+
+<p>Then she had several little encounters with <a name="Page_163" id="Page_163"></a>her father. She met him one
+day on the doorstep. He had come up whilst she was standing there.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Had a good walk?&quot; he said nervously. She looked at him and laughed.
+Then he went hurriedly indoors.</p>
+
+<p>On the second occasion she had come down to be shown off at a luncheon
+party. She had been praised and petted, and then, in the hall, had run
+into her father's arms. He was in his top-hat, going down to his old
+city, looking, the nurse thought, &quot;just like a monkey.&quot; But Nancy
+stayed, holding on to the leg of his trousers. Suddenly he bent down and
+whispered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Were they nice to you in there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. Why weren't you there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was. I left. Got to go and work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What sort of work?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Making money for your clothes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Take me too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would you like to come?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. Take me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He bent down and kissed her, but, suddenly hearing the voices of the
+luncheon-party, they separated like conspirators. He crept out of the
+house.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164"></a>After that there was no question of their alliance. The sort of
+affection that most children feel for old, ugly, and battered dolls,
+Nancy now felt for her father, and the warmth of this affection melted
+her dried, stubborn little soul, caught her up into visions, wonders,
+sympathies that had seemed surely denied to her for ever.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now sit still, Miss Nancy, while I do up the back.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, silly old clothes!&quot; said Nancy.</p>
+
+<p>Then one day she declared,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want to be dirty like those children in the garden.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And a nice state your mother would be in!&quot; cried the amazed nurse.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Father wouldn't,&quot; Nancy thought. &quot;Father wouldn't mind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There came at last the wonderful day when her father penetrated into the
+nursery. He arrived furtively, very much, it appeared, ashamed of
+himself and exceedingly shy of the nurse. He did not remain very long.
+He said very little; a funny picture he had made with his blue face, his
+black shiny hair, his fat little legs, and his anxious, rather stupid
+eyes. He sat rather awkwardly in a chair, with Nancy <a name="Page_165" id="Page_165"></a>on his knee; he
+wrung his hair for things to say.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse left them for a moment alone together, and then Nancy
+whispered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Daddy, let's go into the gardens together, you and me; just us&mdash;no
+silly old nurse&mdash;one mornin'.&quot; (She found the little &quot;g&quot; still a
+difficulty.)</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would you like that?&quot; he whispered back. &quot;I don't know I'd be much good
+in a garden.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you'll be all right,&quot; she asserted with confidence. &quot;I want to
+dig.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She'd made up her mind then to that. As Hannibal determined to cross the
+Alps, as Napoleon set his feet towards Moscow, so did Nancy Ross resolve
+that she would, in the company of her father, dig in the gardens. She
+stroked her father's hand, rubbed her head upon his sleeve; exactly as
+she would have caressed, had she been another little girl, the damaged
+features of her old rag doll. She was beginning, however, for the first
+time in her life, to love some one other than herself.</p>
+
+<p>He came, then, quite often to the nursery. He would slip in, stay a
+moment or two, and slip out again. He brought her presents and sweets
+which made her ill. And always in the <a name="Page_166" id="Page_166"></a>presence of Mrs. Munty they
+appeared as strangers.</p>
+
+<p>The day came when Nancy achieved her desire&mdash;they had their great
+adventure.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>A fine summer morning came, and with it, in a bowler hat, at the nursery
+door, the hour being about eleven, Mr. Munty Boss.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll take Nancy this morning, nurse,&quot; he said, with a strange, choking
+little &quot;cluck&quot; in his throat. Now, the nurse, although, as I've said, of
+a shining and superficial appearance, was no fool. She had watched the
+development of the intrigue; her attitude to the master of the house was
+composed of pity, patronage, and a rather motherly interest. She did not
+see how her mistress could avoid her attitude: it was precisely the
+attitude that she would herself have adopted in that position, but,
+nevertheless, she was sorry for the man. &quot;So out of it as he is!&quot; Her
+maternal feelings were uppermost now. &quot;It's nice of the child,&quot; she
+thought, &quot;and him so ugly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course, sir,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall be back in about an hour.&quot; He <a name="Page_167" id="Page_167"></a>attempted an easy indifference,
+was conscious that he failed, and blushed.</p>
+
+<p>He was aware that his wife was out.</p>
+
+<p>He carried off his prize.</p>
+
+<p>The gardens were very full on this lovely summer morning, but Nancy,
+without any embarrassment or confusion, took charge of the proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where are we going?&quot; he said, gazing rather helplessly about him,
+feeling extremely shy. There were so many bold children&mdash;so many bolder
+nurses; even the birds on the trees seemed to deride him, and a stumpy
+fox-terrier puppy stood with its four legs planted wide barking at him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Over here,&quot; she said without a moment's hesitation, and she dragged him
+along. She halted at last in a corner of the gardens where was a large,
+overhanging chestnut and a wooden seat. Here the shouts and cries of the
+children came more dimly, the splashing of the fountain could be heard
+like a melodious refrain with a fascinating note of hesitation in it,
+and the deep green leaves of the tree made a cool, thick covering. &quot;Very
+nice,&quot; he said, and sat down on the seat, tilting his hat back and
+feeling very happy indeed.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168"></a>Nancy also was very happy. There, in front of her, was the delightful
+pile of earth and sand untouched, it seemed. In an instant, regardless
+of her frock, she was down upon her knees.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I ought to have a spade,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll make yourself dreadfully dirty, Nancy. Your beautiful frock&mdash;&mdash;&quot;
+But he had nevertheless the feeling that, after all, he had paid for it,
+and if he hadn't the right to see it ruined, who had?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!&quot; she murmured with the ecstasy of one who has abandoned herself,
+freely and with a glad heart, to all the vices. She dug her hands into
+the mire, she scattered it about her, she scooped and delved and
+excavated. It was her intention to build something in the nature of a
+high, high hill. She patted the surface of the sand, and behold! it was
+instantly a beautiful shape, very smooth and shining.</p>
+
+<p>It was hot, her hat fell back, her knees were thick with the good brown
+earth&mdash;that once lovely creation of Florice was stained and black.</p>
+
+<p>She then began softly, partly to herself, partly to her father, and
+partly to that other Friend who had helped her to these splendours, a
+song of joy and happiness. To the ordinary ob<a name="Page_169" id="Page_169"></a>server, it might have
+seemed merely a discordant noise proceeding from a little girl engaged
+in the making of mud pies. It was, in reality, as the chestnut tree, the
+birds, the fountain, the flowers, the various small children, even the
+very earth she played with, understood, a fine offering&mdash;thanksgiving
+and triumphal p&aelig;an to the God of Heaven, of the earth, and of the waters
+that were under the earth.</p>
+
+<p>Munty himself caught the refrain. He was recalled to a day when mud pies
+had been to him also things of surpassing joy. There was a day when, a
+naked and very ugly little boy, he had danced beside a mountain burn.</p>
+
+<p>He looked upon his daughter and his daughter looked upon him; they were
+friends for ever and ever. She rose; her fingers were so sticky with mud
+that they stood apart; down her right cheek ran a fine black smear; her
+knees were caked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good heavens!&quot; he exclaimed. She flung herself upon him and kissed him;
+down his cheek also now a fine smear marked its way.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at his watch&mdash;one o'clock. &quot;Good heavens!&quot; he said again. &quot;I
+say, old girl, we'll have to be going. Mother's got a party.&quot;<a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></a> He tried
+ineffectually to cleanse his daughter's face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We'll come back,&quot; she cried, looking down triumphantly upon her
+handiwork.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We'll have to smuggle you up into the nursery somehow.&quot; But he added,
+&quot;Yes, we'll come again.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>They hurried home. Very furtively Munty Boss fitted his key into the
+Yale lock of his fine door. They slipped into the hall. There before
+them were Mrs. Ross and two of her most splendid friends. Very fine was
+Munty's wife in a tight-clinging frock of light blue, and wearing upon
+her head a hat like a waste-paper basket with a blue handle at the back
+of it; very fine were her two lady friends, clothed also in the tightest
+of garments, shining and lovely and precious.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good God, Munty&mdash;and the child!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was a terrible moment. Quite unconscious was Munty of the mud that
+stained his cheek, perfectly tranquil his daughter as she gazed with
+glowing happiness about her. A terrible moment for Mrs. Ross, an
+unforgettable one <a name="Page_171" id="Page_171"></a>for her friends; nor were they likely to keep the
+humour of it entirely to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Down in a minute. Going up to clean.&quot; Smiling, he passed his wife. On
+the bottom step Nancy chanted:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We've had the most lovely mornin', daddy and I. We've been diggin'.
+We're goin' to dig again. Aren't I dirty, mummy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Round the corner of the stairs in the shadow Nancy kissed her father
+again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm never goin' to be clean any more,&quot; she announced. And you may
+fancy, if you please, that somewhere in the shadows of the house some
+one heard those words and chuckled with delighted pleasure.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">'Enery</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>Mrs. Slater was caretaker at No. 21 March. Square. Old Lady Cathcart
+lived with her middle-aged daughter at No. 21, and, during half the
+year, they were down at their place in Essex; during half the year,
+then, Mrs. Slater lived in the basement of No. 21 with her son Henry,
+aged six.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Slater was a widow; upon a certain afternoon, two and a half years
+ago, she had paused in her ironing and listened. &quot;Something,&quot; she told
+her friends afterwards, &quot;gave her a start&mdash;she couldn't say what nor
+how.&quot; Her ironing stayed, for that afternoon at least, where it was,
+because her husband, with his head in a pulp and his legs bent
+underneath him, was brought in on a stretcher, attended by two
+policemen. He had fallen <a name="Page_173" id="Page_173"></a>from a piece of scaffolding into Piccadilly
+Circus, and was unable to afford any further assistance to the
+improvements demanded by the Pavilion Music Hall. Mrs. Slater, a stout,
+amiable woman, who had never been one to worry; Henry Slater, Senior,
+had been a bad husband, &quot;what with women and the drink&quot;&mdash;she had no
+intention of lamenting him now that he was dead; she had done for ever
+with men, and devoted the whole of her time and energy to providing
+bread and butter for herself and her son.</p>
+
+<p>She had been Lady Cathcart's caretaker for a year and a half, and had
+given every satisfaction. When the old lady came up to London Mrs.
+Slater went down to Essex and defended the country place from
+suffragettes and burglars. &quot;I shouldn't care for it,&quot; said a lady
+friend, &quot;all alone in the country with no cheerful noises nor human
+beings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Doesn't frighten me, I give you my word, Mrs. East,&quot; said Mrs. Slater;
+&quot;not that I don't prefer the town, mind you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was, on the whole, a pleasant life, that carried with it a certain
+dignity. Nobody who had seen old Lady Cathcart drive in her open
+carriage, with her black bonnet, her <a name="Page_174" id="Page_174"></a>coachman, and her fine, straight
+back, could deny that she was one of Our Oldest and Best&mdash;none of your
+mushroom families come from Lord knows where&mdash;it was a position of
+trust, and as such Mrs. Slater considered it. For the rest she loved her
+son Henry with more than a mother's love; he was as unlike his poor
+father, bless him, as any child could be. Henry, although you would
+never think it to look at him, was not quite like other children; he had
+been, from his birth, a &quot;little queer, bless his heart,&quot; and Mrs. Slater
+attributed this to the fact that three weeks before the boy's birth,
+Horny Slater, Senior, had, in a fine frenzy of inebriation, hit her over
+the head with a chair. &quot;Dead drunk, 'e was, and never a thought to the
+child coming, ''Enery,' I said to him, 'it's the child you're hitting as
+well as me'; but 'e was too far gone, poor soul, to take a thought.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Henry was a fine, robust child, with rosy cheeks and a sturdy, thick-set
+body. He had large blue eyes and a happy, pleasant smile, but, although
+he was six years of age, he could hardly talk at all, and liked to spend
+the days twirling pieces of string round and round or looking into the
+fire. His eyes were unlike the eyes of other children, and in their blue
+depths <a name="Page_175" id="Page_175"></a>there lurked strange apprehensions, strange anticipations,
+strange remembrances. He had never, from the day of his birth, been
+known to cry. When he was frightened or distressed the colour would pass
+slowly from his cheeks, and strange little gasping breaths would come
+from him; his body would stiffen and his hands clench. If he was angry
+the colour in his face would darken and his eyes half close, and it was
+then that he did, indeed, seem in the possession of some disastrous
+thraldom&mdash;but he was angry very seldom, and only with certain people;
+for the most part he was a happy child, &quot;as quiet as a mouse.&quot; He was
+unusual, too, in that he was a very cleanly child, and loved to be
+washed, and took the greatest care of his clothes. He was very
+affectionate, fond of almost every one, and passionately devoted to his
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Slater was a woman with very little imagination. She never
+speculated on &quot;how different things would be if they were different,&quot;
+nor did she sigh after riches, nor possessions, nor any of the goods
+Fate bestows upon her favourites. She would, most certainly, have been
+less fond of Henry had he been more like other children, and his
+dependence upon her <a name="Page_176" id="Page_176"></a>gave her something of the feeling that very rich
+ladies have for very small dogs. She was too, in a way, proud. &quot;Never
+been able to talk, nor never will, they tell me, the lamb,&quot; she would
+assure her friends, &quot;but as gentle and as quiet!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She would sit, sometimes, in the evening before the fire and think of
+the old noisy, tiresome days when Henry, Senior, would beat her black
+and blue, and would feel that her life had indeed fallen into pleasant
+places.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing whatever in the house, all silent about her and filled
+with shrouded furniture, that could alarm her. &quot;Ghosts!&quot; she would cry.
+&quot;You show me one, that's all. I'll give you ghosts!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her digestion was excellent, her sleep undisturbed by conscience or
+creditors. She was a happy woman.</p>
+
+<p>Henry loved March Square. There was a window in an upstairs passage from
+behind whose glass he could gaze at the passing world. The Passing
+World!... the shrouded house behind him. One was as alive, as bustling,
+as demonstrative to him as the other, but between the two there was, for
+him, no communication.<a name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></a> His attitude to the Square and the people in it
+was that he knew more about them than anyone else did; his attitude to
+the House, that he knew nothing at all compared with what &quot;They&quot; knew.
+In the Square he could see through the lot of them, so superficial were
+they all; in the House he could only wait, with fingers on lip, for the
+next revelation that they might vouchsafe to him.</p>
+
+<p>Doors were, for the most part, locked, yet there were many days when
+fires were lit because the house was an old one, and damp Lady Cathcart
+had a horror of.</p>
+
+<p>Always for young Henry the house wore its buried and abandoned air. He
+was never to see it when the human beings in it would count more than
+its furniture, and the human life in it more than the house itself. He
+had come, a year and a half ago, into the very place that his dreams
+had, from the beginning, built for him. Those large, high rooms with the
+shining floors, the hooded furniture, the windows gaping without their
+curtains, the shadows and broad squares of light, the little whispers
+and rattles that doors and cupboards gave, the swirl of the wind as it
+sprang released from <a name="Page_178" id="Page_178"></a>corners and crevices, the lisp of some whisper,
+&quot;I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming!&quot; that, nevertheless, again and
+again defeated expectation. How could he but enjoy the fine field of
+affection that these provided for him?</p>
+
+<p>His mother watched him with maternal pride. &quot;He's <i>that</i> contented!&quot; she
+would say. &quot;Any other child would plague your life away, but 'Enery&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was part of Henry's unusual mind that he wondered at nothing. He
+remained in constant expectation, but whatever was to come to him it
+would not bring surprise with it. He was in a world where anything might
+happen. In all the house his favourite room was the high, thin
+drawing-room with an old gold mirror at one end of it and a piano
+muffled in brown holland. The mirror caught the piano with its peaked
+inquiring shape, that, in its inflection, looked so much more tremendous
+and ominous than it did in plain reality. Through the mirror the piano
+looked as though it might do anything, and to Henry, who knew nothing
+about pianos, it was responsible for almost everything that occurred in
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>The windows of the room gave a fine display of the gardens, the
+children, the carriages, and <a name="Page_179" id="Page_179"></a>the distant houses, but it was when the
+Square was empty that Henry liked best to gaze down into it, because
+then the empty house and the empty square prepared themselves together
+for some tremendous occurrence. Whenever such an interval of silence
+struck across the noise and traffic of the day, it seemed that all the
+world screwed itself up for the next event. &quot;One&mdash;two&mdash;three.&quot; But the
+crisis never came. The noise returned again, people laughed and shouted,
+bells rang and motors screamed. Nevertheless, one day something would
+surely happen.</p>
+
+<p>The house was full of company, and the boy would, sometimes, have
+yielded to the Fear that was never far away, had it not been for some
+one whom he had known from the very beginning of everything, some one
+who was as real as his mother, some one who was more powerful than
+anything or any one in the house, and kinder, far, far kinder.</p>
+
+<p>Often when Mrs. Slater would wonder of what her son was thinking as he
+sat twisting string round and round in front of the fire, he would be
+aware of his Friend in the shadow of the light, watching gravely, in the
+cheerful room, having beneath his hands all the powers, <a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a>good and evil,
+of the house. Just as Henry pictured quite clearly to himself other
+occupants of the house&mdash;some one with taloned claws behind the piano,
+another with black-hooded eyes and a peaked cap in the shadows of an
+upstairs passage, another brown, shrivelled and naked, who dwelt in a
+cupboard in one of the empty bedrooms so, too, he could see his Friend,
+vast and shadowy, with a flowing beard and eyes that were kind and
+shining.</p>
+
+<p>Often he had felt the pressure of his hand, had heard his reassuring
+whisper in his ears, had known the touch of his lips upon his forehead.
+No harm could come to him whilst his Friend was in the house&mdash;and his
+Friend was always there.</p>
+
+<p>He went always with his mother into the streets when she did her
+shopping or simply took the air. It was natural that on these occasions,
+he should be more frightened than during his hours in the house. In the
+first place his Friend did not accompany him on these out-of-door
+excursions, and his mother was not nearly so strong a protector as his
+Friend.</p>
+
+<p>Then he was disturbed by the people who <a name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></a>pressed and pushed about
+him&mdash;he had a sense that they were all like birds with flapping wings
+and strange cries, rushing down upon him&mdash;the colours and confusion of
+the shops bewildered him. There was too much here for him properly to
+understand; he had enough to do with the piano, the mirror, the shadowed
+passages, the staring windows.</p>
+
+<p>But in the Square he was happy again. Mrs. Slater never ventured into
+the gardens; they were for her superiors, and she complacently accepted
+a world in which things were so ordered as the only world possible. But
+there was plenty of life outside the gardens.</p>
+
+<p>There were, on the different days of the week, the various musicians,
+and Henry was friendly with them all. He delighted in music; as he stood
+there, listening to the barrel-organ, the ideas, pictures, dreams, flew
+like flocks of beautiful birds through his brain, fleet, and always just
+beyond his reach, so that he could catch nothing, but would nod his head
+and would hope that the tune would be repeated, because next time he
+might, perhaps, be more fortunate.</p>
+
+<p>The Major, who played the harp on Saturdays, was a friend of Mrs.
+Slater. &quot;Nice little <a name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></a>feller, that of yours, mum,&quot; he would say. &quot;'Ad
+one meself once.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sure enough.... Nice day.... Would you believe it, this is the
+only London square left for us to play in?... 'Tis, indeed. Cruel shame,
+I call it; life's 'ard.... You're right, mum, it is. Well, good-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Slater looked after him affectionately. &quot;Pore feller; and yet I
+dare say he makes a pretty hit of it if all was known.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Henry sighed. The birds were flown again. He was left with the
+blue-flecked sky and the grey houses that stood around the gardens like
+beasts about a water-pool. The sun (a red disc) peered over their
+shoulders. He went, with his mother within doors. Instantly on his
+entrance the house began to rustle and whisper.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Mrs. Slater, although an amiable and kind-hearted human being who
+believed with confident superstition in a God of other people's making,
+did not, on the whole, welcome her lady friends with much cordiality. It
+was not, as she often explained, as though she had her <a name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></a>own house into
+which to ask them. Her motto was, &quot;Friendly with All, Familiar with
+None,&quot; and to this she very faithfully held. But in her heart there was
+reason enough for this caution; there had been days&mdash;yes, and nights
+too&mdash;when, during her lamented husband's lifetime, she had &quot;taken a
+drop,&quot; taken it, obviously enough, as a comfort, and a solace when
+things were going very hard with her, and &quot;'Enery preferrin' 'er to be
+jolly 'erself to keep 'im company.&quot; She had protested, but Fate and
+Henry had been too strong for her. &quot;She had fallen into the habit!&quot;
+Then, when No. 21 had come under her care, she had put it all sternly
+behind her, but one did not know how weak one might be, and a kindly
+friend might with her persuasion&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Therefore did Mrs. Slater avoid her kindly friends. There was, however,
+one friend who was not so readily to be avoided; that was Mrs. Carter.
+Mrs. Carter also was a widow, or rather, to speak the direct truth, had
+discovered one morning, twenty years ago, that Mr. Carter &quot;was gone&quot;; he
+had never returned. Those who knew Mrs. Carter intimately said that, on
+the whole, &quot;things bein' as they was,&quot; his departure was not entirely to
+be wondered <a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></a>at. Mrs. Carter had a temper of her own, and nothing
+inflamed it so much as a drop of whisky, and there was nothing in the
+world she liked so much as &quot;a drop.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To meet her casually, you would judge her nothing less than the most
+amiable of womankind&mdash;a large, stout, jolly woman, with a face like a
+rose, and a quantity of black hair. At her best, in her fine Sunday
+clothes, she was a superb figure, and wore round her neck a rope of sham
+pearls that would have done credit to a sham countess. During the week,
+however, she slipped, on occasion, into &quot;d&eacute;shabille,&quot; and then she
+appeared not quite so attractive. No one knew the exact nature of her
+profession. She did a bit of &quot;char&quot;; she had at one time a little
+sweetshop, where she sold sweets, the <i>Police Budget</i>, and&mdash;although
+this was revealed only to her best friends&mdash;indecent photographs. It may
+be that the police discovered some of the sources of her income; at any
+rate the sweetshop was suddenly, one morning, abandoned. Her movements
+in everything were sudden; it was quite suddenly that she took a fancy
+to Mrs. Slater. She met her at a friend's, and at once, so she told Mrs.
+Slater, &quot;I liked yer, just as though I'd met yer before. But I'm like
+<a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></a>that. Sudden or not at all is <i>my</i> way, and not a bad way either!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Slater could not be said to be everything that was affectionate in
+return. She distrusted Mrs. Carter, disliked her brilliant colouring and
+her fluent experiences, felt shy before her rollicking suggestiveness,
+and timid at her innuendoes. For a considerable time she held her
+defences against the insidious attack. Then there came a day when Mrs.
+Carter burst into reluctant but passionate tears, asserting that Life
+and Mr. Carter had been, from the beginning, against her; that she had
+committed, indeed, acts of folly in the past, but only when driven
+desperately against a wall; that she bore no grudge against any one
+alive, but loved all humanity; that she was going to do her best to be a
+better woman, but couldn't really hope to arrive at any satisfactory
+improvement without Mrs. Slater's assistance; that Mrs. Slater, indeed,
+had shown her a New Way, a New Light, a New Path.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Slater, humble woman, had no illusions as to her own importance in
+the scheme of things; nothing touched her so surely as an appeal to her
+strength of character. She received Mrs. Carter with open arms,
+suggested <a name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></a>that they should read the Bible together on Sunday mornings,
+and go, side by side, to St. Matthew's on Sunday evenings. There was
+nothing like a study of the &quot;Holy Word&quot; for &quot;defeating the bottle,&quot; and
+there was nothing like &quot;defeating the bottle&quot; for getting back one's
+strength and firmness of character.</p>
+
+<p>It was along these lines that Mrs. Slater proposed to conduct Mrs.
+Carter.</p>
+
+<p>Now unfortunately Henry took an instant and truly savage dislike to his
+mother's new friend. He had been always, of course, &quot;odd&quot; in his
+feelings about people, but never was he &quot;odder&quot; than he was with Mrs.
+Carter. &quot;Little lamb,&quot; she said, when she saw him for the first time. &quot;I
+envy you that child, Mrs. Slater, I do indeed. Backwards 'e may be, but
+'is being dependent, as you may say, touches the 'eart. Little lamb!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She tried to embrace him; she offered him sweets. He shuddered at her
+approach, and his face was instantly grey, like a pool the moment after
+the sun's setting. Had he been himself able to put into words his
+sensations, he would have said that the sight of Mrs. Carter assured
+him, quite definitely, that something horrible would soon occur.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></a>The house upon whose atmosphere he so depended instantly darkened; his
+Friend was gone, not because he was no longer able to see him (his
+consciousness of him did not depend at all upon any visual assurance),
+but because there was now, Henry was perfectly assured, no chance
+whatever of his suddenly appearing. And, on the other hand, those
+Others&mdash;the one with the taloned claws behind the piano, the one with
+the black-hooded eyes&mdash;were stronger, more threatening, more dominating.
+But, beyond her influence on the house, Mrs. Carter, in her own physical
+and actual presence, tortured Henry. When she was in the room, Henry
+suffered agony. He would creep away were he allowed, and, if that were
+not possible, then he would retreat into the most distant corner and
+watch. If he were in the room his eyes never left Mrs. Carter for a
+moment, and it was this brooding gaze more than his disapproval that
+irritated her. &quot;You never can tell with poor little dears when they're
+'queer' what fancies they'll take. Why, he quite seems to dislike me,
+Mrs. Slater!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Slater could venture no denial; indeed, Henry's attitude aroused
+once again in her mind her earlier suspicions. She had all the
+<a name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></a>reverence of her class for her son's &quot;oddness.&quot; He knew more than
+ordinary mortal folk, and could see farther; he saw beyond Mrs. Carter's
+red cheeks and shining black hair, and the fact that he was, as a rule,
+tractable to cheerful kindness, made his rejection the more remarkable.
+But it might, nevertheless, be that the black things in Mrs. Carter's
+past were the marks impressed upon Henry's sensitive intelligence; and
+that he had not, as yet, perceived the new Mrs. Carter growing in grace
+now day by day.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'E'll get over 'is fancy, bless 'is 'eart.&quot; Mrs. Slater pursued then
+her work of redemption.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>On a certain evening in November, Mrs. Carter, coming in to see her
+friend, invited sympathy for a very bad cold.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Drippin' and runnin' at the nose I've been all day, my dear. Awake all
+night I was with it, and 'tain't often that I've one, but when I do it's
+somethin' cruel.&quot; It seemed to be better this evening, Mrs. Slater
+thought, but when she congratulated her friend on this, Mrs. Car<a name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></a>ter,
+shaking her head, remarked that it had left the nose and travelled into
+the throat and ears. &quot;Once it's earache, and I'm done,&quot; she said.
+Horrible pictures she drew of this earache, and it presently became
+clear that Mrs. Carter was in perfect terror of a night made sleepless
+with pain. Once, it seemed, had Mrs. Carter tried to commit suicide by
+hanging herself to a nail in a door, so maddening had the torture been.
+Luckily (Mrs. Carter thanked Heaven) the nail had been dragged from the
+door by her weight&mdash;&quot;not that I was anything very 'eavy, you
+understand.&quot; Finally, it appeared that only one thing in the world could
+be relied upon to stay the fiend.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Carter produced from her pocket a bottle of whisky.</p>
+
+<p>Upon that it followed that, since her reformation, Mrs. Carter had come
+to loathe the very smell of whisky, and as for the taste of it! But
+rather than be driven by flaming agony down the long stony passages of a
+sleepless night&mdash;anything.</p>
+
+<p>It was here, of course, that Mrs. Slater should have protested, but, in
+her heart, she was afraid of her friend, and afraid of herself.<a name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></a> Mrs.
+Carter's company had, of late, been pleasant to her. She had been
+strengthened in her own resolves towards a fine life by the sight of
+Mrs. Carter's struggle in that direction, and that good woman's genial
+amiability (when it was so obvious from her appearance that she could be
+far otherwise) flattered Mrs. Slater's sense of power. No, she could not
+now bear to let Mrs. Carter go.</p>
+
+<p>She said, therefore, nothing to her friend about the whisky, and on that
+evening Mrs. Carter did take the &quot;veriest sip.&quot; But the cold
+continued&mdash;it continued in a marvellous and terrible manner. It seemed
+&quot;to 'ave taken right 'old of 'er system.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After a few evenings it was part of the ceremonies that the bottle
+should be produced; the kettle was boiling happily on the fire, there
+was lemon, there was a lump of sugar.... On a certain wet and depressing
+evening Mrs. Slater herself had a glass &quot;just to see that she didn't get
+a cold like Mrs. Carter's.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Henry's bed-time was somewhere between the hours of eight and nine, but
+his mother did <a name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></a>not care to leave Mrs. Carter (dear friend, though she
+was) quite alone downstairs with the bottom half of the house unguarded
+(although, of course, the doors were locked), therefore, Mrs. Carter
+came upstairs with her friend to see the little fellow put to bed; &quot;and
+a hangel he looks, if ever I see one,&quot; declared the lady
+enthusiastically.</p>
+
+<p>When the two were gone and the house was still, Henry would sit up in
+bed and listen; then, moving quietly, he would creep out and listen
+again.</p>
+
+<p>There, in the passage, it seemed to him that he could hear the whole
+house talking&mdash;first one sound and then another would come, the wheeze
+of some straining floor, the creak of some whispering board, the shudder
+of a door. &quot;Look out! Look out! Look out!&quot; and then, above that murmur,
+some louder voice: &quot;Watch! there's danger in the place!&quot; Then, shivering
+with cold and his sense of evil, he would creep down into a lower
+passage and stand listening again; now the voices of the house were
+deafening, rising on every side of him, like the running of little
+streams suddenly heard on the turning of the corner of a hill. The dim
+light shrouded with fantasy the walls; <a name="Page_192" id="Page_192"></a>along the wide passage and
+cabinets, high china jars, the hollow scoop of the window at the
+far-distant end, were all alive and moving. And, in strange
+contradiction to the moving voices within the house, came the blurred
+echo of the London life, whirring, buzzing, like a cloud of gnats at the
+window-pane. &quot;Look out! Look out! Look out!&quot; the house cried, and Henry,
+with chattering teeth, was on guard.</p>
+
+<p>There came an evening when standing thus, shivering in his little shirt,
+he was aware that the terror, so long anticipated, was upon him. It
+seemed to him, on this evening, that the house was suddenly still; it
+was as though all the sounds, as of running water, that passed up and
+down the rooms and passages, were, in a flashing second, frozen. The
+house was holding its breath.</p>
+
+<p>He had to wait for a breathless, agonising interval before he heard the
+next sound, very faint and stifled breathing coming up to him out of the
+darkness in little uncertain gusts. He heard the breathings pause, then
+recommence again in quicker and louder succession. Henry, stirred
+simply, perhaps, by the terror of his anticipation, moved back into the
+darker shadows in the nook of the cabinet, and stayed <a name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></a>there with his
+shirt pressed against his little trembling knees.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed, after a long time, a half yellow circle of light that
+touched the top steps of the stairs and a square of the wall; behind the
+light was the stealthy figure of Mrs. Carter. She stood there for a
+moment, one hand with a candle raised, the other pressed against her
+breast; from one finger of this hand a bunch of heavy keys dangled. She
+stood there, with her wide, staring eyes, like glass in the
+candle-light, staring about her, her red cheeks rising and falling with
+her agitation, her body seeming enormous, her shadow on the wall huge in
+the flickering light. At the sight of his enemy Henry's terror was so
+frantic that his hands beat with little spasmodic movements against the
+wall.</p>
+
+<p>He did not <i>see</i> Mrs. Carter at all, but he saw rather the movement
+through the air and darkness of the house of something that would bring
+down upon him the full naked force of the Terror that he had all his
+life anticipated. He had always known that the awful hour would arrive
+when the Terror would grip him; again and again he had seen its eyes,
+felt its breath, heard its movements, and these movements had <a name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></a>been
+forewarnings of some future day. That day had arrived.</p>
+
+<p>There was only one thing that he could do; his Friend alone in all the
+world could help him. With his soul dizzy and faint from fear, he prayed
+for his Friend; had he been less frightened he would have screamed aloud
+for him to come and help him.</p>
+
+<p>The boy's breath came hot into his throat and stuck there, and his heart
+beat like a high, unresting hammer.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Carter, with the candle raised to throw light in front of her,
+moved forward very cautiously and softly. She passed down the passage,
+and then paused very near to the boy. She looked at the keys, and stole
+like some heavy, stealthy animal to the door of the long drawing-room.
+He watched her as she tried one key after another, making little
+dissatisfied noises as they refused to fit; then at last one turned the
+lock and she pushed back the door.</p>
+
+<p>It was certainly impossible for him, in the dim world of his mind, to
+realise what it was that she intended to do, but he knew, through some
+strange channel of knowledge, that his mother was concerned in this, and
+that some<a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a>thing more than the immediate peril of himself was involved.
+He had also, lost in the dim mazes of his mind, a consciousness that
+there <i>were</i> treasures in the house, and that his mother was placed
+there to guard them, and even that he himself shared her duty.</p>
+
+<p>It did not come to him that Mrs. Carter was in pursuit of these
+treasures, but he <i>did</i> realise that her presence there amongst them
+brought peril to his mother. Moved then by some desperate urgency which
+had at its heart his sense that to be left alone in the black passage
+was worse than the actual lighted vision of his Terror, he crept with
+trembling knees across the passage and through the door.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the room he saw that she had laid the candle upon the piano, and
+was bending over a drawer, trying again to fit a key. He stood in the
+doorway, a tiny figure, very, very cold, all his soul in his silent
+appeal for some help. His Friend <i>must</i> come. He was somewhere there in
+the house. &quot;Come! Help me!&quot; The candle suddenly flared into a finger of
+light that flung the room into vision. Mrs. Carter, startled, raised
+herself, and at that same moment Henry gave a cry, a weak little
+trembling sound.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></a>She turned and saw the boy; as their eyes met he felt the Terror
+rushing upon him. He flung a last desperate appeal for help, staring at
+her as though his eyes would never let her go, and she, finding him so
+unexpectedly, could only gape. In their silent gaze at one another, in
+the glassy stare of Mrs. Carter and the trembling, flickering one of
+Henry there was more than any ordinary challenge could have conveyed.
+Mrs. Carter must have felt at the first immediate confrontation of the
+strange little figure that her feet were on the very edge of some most
+desperate precipice. The long room and the passages beyond must have
+quivered. At that very first moment, with some stir, some hinted
+approach, Henry called, with the desperate summoning of all his ghostly
+world, upon his gods. They came....</p>
+
+<p>In her eyes he saw suddenly something else than vague terror. He saw
+recognition. He felt himself a rushing, heartening comfort; he knew that
+his Friend had somehow come, that he was no longer alone.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Carter's eyes were staring beyond him, over him, into the black
+passage. Her eyes seemed to grow as though the terror in them was
+pushing them out beyond their lids; <a name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></a>her breath, came in sharp, tearing
+gasps. The keys with a clang dropped from her hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, God! Oh, God!&quot; she whispered. He did not turn his head to grasp
+what it was that she saw in the passage. The terror had been transferred
+from himself to her.</p>
+
+<p>The colour in her cheeks went out, leaving her as though her face were
+suddenly shadowed by some overhanging shape.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes never moved nor faltered from the dark into whose heart she
+gazed. Then, there was a strangled, gasping cry, and she sank down,
+first onto her knees, then in a white faint, her eyes still staring, lay
+huddled on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Henry felt his Friend's hand on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, down in the kitchen, the fire had sunk into grey ashes, and
+Mrs. Slater was lying back in her chair, her head back, snoring thickly;
+an empty glass had tumbled across the table, and a few drops from it had
+dribbled over on to the tablecloth.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Barbara Flint</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>Barbara Flint was a little girl, aged seven, who lived with her parents
+at No. 36 March Square. Her brother and sister, Master Anthony and Miss
+Misabel Flint, were years and years older, so you must understand that
+she led rather a solitary life. She was a child with very pale flaxen
+hair, very pale blue eyes, very pale cheeks&mdash;she looked like a china
+doll who had been left by a careless mistress out in the rain. She was a
+very sensitive child, cried at the least provocation, very affectionate,
+too, and ready to imagine that people didn't like her.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Flint was a stout, elderly gentleman, whose favourite pursuit was to
+read the newspapers in his club, and to inveigh against the Liberals. He
+was pale and pasty, and suffered <a name="Page_199" id="Page_199"></a>from indigestion. Mrs. Flint was tall,
+thin and severe, and a great helper at St. Matthew's, the church round
+the corner. She gave up all her time to church work and the care of the
+poor, and it wasn't her fault that the poor hated her. Between the
+Scylla of politics and the Charybdis of religion there was very little
+left for poor Barbara; she faded away under the care of an elderly
+governess who suffered from a perfect cascade of ill-fated love affairs;
+it seemed that gentlemen were always &quot;playing with her feelings.&quot; But in
+all probability a too vivid imagination led her astray in this matter;
+at any rate, she cried so often during Barbara's lessons that the title
+of the lesson-book, &quot;Reading without Tears,&quot; was sadly belied. It might
+be expected that, under these unfavourable circumstances, Barbara was
+growing into a depressed and melancholy childhood.</p>
+
+<p>Barbara, happily, was saved by her imagination. Surely nothing quite
+like Barbara's imagination had ever been seen before, because it came to
+her, outside inheritance, outside environment, outside observation. She
+had it altogether, in spite of Flints past and present. But, perhaps,
+not altogether in spite of March<a name="Page_200" id="Page_200"></a> Square. It would be difficult to say
+how deeply the fountain, the almond tree, the green, flat shining grass
+had stung her intuition; but stung it only, not created it&mdash;the thing
+was there from the beginning of all time. She talked, at first to
+nurses, servants, her mother, about the things that she knew; about her
+Friend who often came to see her, who was there so many times&mdash;there in
+the room with her when they couldn't catch a glimpse of him; about the
+days and nights when she was away anywhere, up in the sky, out on the
+air, deep in the sea, about all the other experiences that she
+remembered but was now rapidly losing consciousness of. She talked, at
+first easily, naturally, and inviting, as it were, return confidences.
+Then, quite suddenly, she realised that she simply wasn't believed, that
+she was considered a wicked little girl &quot;for making things up so,&quot; that
+there was no hope at all for her unless she abandoned her &quot;lying ways.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The shock of this discovery flung her straight back upon herself; if
+they refused to believe these things, then there was nothing to be done.
+But for herself their incredulity should not stop her. She became a very
+quiet little girl&mdash;what her nurse called &quot;brooding.&quot; This incredulity
+<a name="Page_201" id="Page_201"></a>of theirs drove them all instantly into a hostile camp, and the
+affection that she had been longing to lavish upon them must now be
+reserved for other, and, she could not help feeling, wiser persons. This
+division of herself from the immediate world hurt her very much. From a
+very early age, indeed, we need reassurance as to the necessity for our
+existence. Barbara simply did not seem to be wanted.</p>
+
+<p>But still worse: now that her belief in certain things had been
+challenged, she herself began to question them. Was it true, possibly,
+when a flaming sunset struck a sword across the Square and caught the
+fountain, slashing it into a million glittering fragments, that that was
+all that occurred? Such a thing had been for Barbara simply a door into
+her earlier world. See the fountain&mdash;well, you have been tested; you are
+still simple enough to go back into the real world. But was Barbara
+simple enough? She was seven; it is just about then that we begin, under
+the guard of nurses carefully chosen for us by our parents, to drop our
+simplicity. It must, of course, be so, or the world would be all
+dreamers, and then there would be no commerce.</p>
+
+<p>Barbara knew nothing of commerce, but she <a name="Page_202" id="Page_202"></a>did know that she was
+unhappy, that her dolls gave her no happiness, and that her Friend did
+not come now so often to see her. She was, I am afraid, in character a
+&quot;Hopper.&quot; She must be affectionate, she must demand affection of others,
+and will they not give it her, then must they simulate it. The tragedy
+of it all was perhaps, that Barbara had not herself that coloured
+vitality in her that would prepare other people to be fond of her. The
+world is divided between those who place affection about, now here, now
+there, and those whose souls lie, like drawers, unawares, but ready for
+the affection to be laid there.</p>
+
+<p>Barbara could not &quot;place&quot; it about; she had neither optimism nor a sense
+of humour sufficient. But she wanted it&mdash;wanted it terribly. If she were
+not to be allowed to indulge her imagination, then must she, all the
+more, love some one with fervour: the two things were interdependent.
+She surveyed her world with an eye to this possible loving. There was
+her governess, who had been with her for a year now, tearful, bony,
+using Barbara as a means and never as an end. Barbara did not love
+her&mdash;how could she? Moreover, there were other physical things: the
+lean, shining <a name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></a>marble of Miss Letts's long fingers, the dry thinness of
+her hair, the way that the tip of her nose would be suddenly red, and
+then, like a blown-out candle, dull white again. Fingers and noses are
+not the only agents in the human affections, but they have most
+certainly something to do with them. Moreover, Miss Letts was too busily
+engaged with the survey of her relations, with now this gentleman, now
+that, to pay much attention to Barbara. She dismissed her as &quot;a queer
+little thing.&quot; There were in Miss Letts's world &quot;queer things&quot; and
+&quot;things not queer.&quot; The division was patent to anybody.</p>
+
+<p>Barbara's father and mother were also surveyed. Here Barbara was baffled
+by the determination on the part of both of them that she should talk,
+should think, should dream about all the things concerning which she
+could not talk, think nor dream. &quot;How to grow up into a nice little
+girl,&quot; &quot;How to pray to God,&quot; &quot;How never to tell lies,&quot; &quot;How to keep
+one's clothes clean,&quot;&mdash;these things did not interest Barbara in the
+least; but had she been given love with them she might have paid some
+attention. But a too rigidly defined politics, a too rigidly defined
+religion find love a poor, <a name="Page_204" id="Page_204"></a>loose, sentimental thing&mdash;very rightly so,
+perhaps. Mrs. Flint was afraid that Barbara was a &quot;silly little girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope, Miss Letts, that she no longer talks about her silly fancies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She has said nothing to me in that respect for a considerable period,
+Mrs. Flint.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All very young children have fancies, but such things are dangerous
+when they grow older.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I agree with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless the fountain continued to flash in the sun, and births,
+deaths, weddings, love and hate continued to play their part in March
+Square.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Barbara, groping about in the desolation of having no one to grope with
+her, discovered that her Friend came now less frequently to see her. She
+was even beginning to wonder whether he had ever really come at all. She
+had perhaps imagined him just as on occasion she would imagine her doll,
+Jane, the Queen of England, or her afternoon tea the most wonderful
+meal, with sausages, blackberry jam <a name="Page_205" id="Page_205"></a>and chocolates. Young though, she
+was, she was able to realise that this imagination of hers was <i>capable
+de tout</i>, and that every one older than herself said that it was wicked;
+therefore was her Friend, perhaps, wicked also.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, if the dark curtains that veiled the nursery windows at night,
+if the glimmering shape of the picture-frames, if the square black sides
+of the dolls' house were real, real also was the figure of her Friend,
+real his arousal in her of all the memories of the old days before she
+was Barbara Flint at all&mdash;real, too, his love, his care, his protection;
+as real, yes, as Miss Letts's bony figure. It was all very puzzling. But
+he did not come now as in the old days.</p>
+
+<p>Barbara played very often in the gardens in the middle of the Square,
+but because she was a timid little girl she did not make many friends.
+She knew many of the other children who played there, and sometimes she
+shared in their games; but her sensitive feelings were so easily hurt,
+she frequently retired in tears. Every day on going into the garden she
+looked about her, hoping that she would find before she left it again
+some one whom it would be <a name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></a>possible to worship. She tried on several
+occasions to erect altars, but our English temperament is against
+public display, and she was misunderstood.</p>
+
+<p>Then, quite suddenly, as though she had sprung out of the fountain, Mary
+Adams was there. Mary Adams was aged nine, and her difference from
+Barbara Flint was that, whereas Barbara craved for affection, she craved
+for attention: the two demands can be easily confused. Mary Adams was
+the only child of an aged philosopher, Mr. Adams, who, contrary to all
+that philosophy teaches, had married a young wife. The young wife,
+pleased that Mary was so unlike her father, made much of her, and Mary
+was delighted to be made much of. She was a little girl with flaxen
+hair, blue eyes, and a fine pink-and-white colouring. In a few years'
+time she will be so sure of the attention that her appearance is winning
+for her that she will make no effort to secure adherents, but just now
+she is not sufficiently confident&mdash;she must take trouble. She took
+trouble with Barbara.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting neatly upon a seat, Mary watched rude little boys throw sidelong
+glances in her direction. Her long black legs were quivering <a name="Page_207" id="Page_207"></a>with the
+perception of their interest, even though her eyes were haughtily
+indifferent. It was then that Barbara, with Miss Letts, an absent-minded
+companion, came and sat by her side. Barbara and Mary had met at a
+party&mdash;not quite on equal terms, because nine to seven is as sixty to
+thirty&mdash;but they had played hide-and-seek together, and had, by chance,
+hidden in the same cupboard.</p>
+
+<p>The little boys had moved away, and Mary Adams's legs dropped, suddenly,
+their tension.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm going to a party to-night,&quot; Mary said, with a studied indifference.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Letts knew of Mary's parents, and that, socially, they were &quot;all
+right&quot;&mdash;a little more &quot;all right,&quot; were we to be honest, than Mr. and
+Mrs. Flint. She said, therefore:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you, dear? That will be nice for you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Instantly Barbara was trembling with excitement. She knew that the
+remark had been made to her and not at all to Miss Letts. Barbara
+entered once again, and instantly, upon the field of the passions. Here
+she was fated by her temperament to be in all cases a miserable victim,
+because panic, whether she were accepted or rejected by the object of
+her devo<a name="Page_208" id="Page_208"></a>tion, reduced her to incoherent foolishness; she could only be
+foolish now, and, although her heart beat like a leaping animal inside
+her, allowed Miss Letts to carry on the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>But Miss Letts's wandering eye hurt Mary's pride. She was not really
+interested in her, and once Mary had come to that conclusion about any
+one, complete, utter oblivion enveloped them. She perceived, however,
+Barbara's agitation, and at that, flattered and appeased, she was
+amiable again. There followed between the two a strangled and
+disconnected conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Mary began:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've got four dolls at home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you?&quot; breathlessly from Barbara. By such slow accuracies as these
+are we conveyed, all our poor mortal days, from realism to romance, and
+with a shocking precipitance are we afterwards flung back, out of
+romance into realism, our natural home, again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes&mdash;four dolls I have. My mother will give me another if I ask her.
+Would your mother?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Barbara, untruthfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's my governess, Miss Marsh, there, <a name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></a>with the green hat, that is.
+I've had her two months.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Barbara, gazing with adoring eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's going away next week. There's another coming. I can do sums, can
+you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; again from Barbara.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can do up to twice-sixty-three. I'm nine. Miss Marsh says I'm
+clever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm seven,&quot; said Barbara.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I could read when I was seven&mdash;long, long words. Can you read?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this moment there arrived the green-hatted Miss Marsh, a plump,
+optimistic person, to whom Miss Letts was gloomily patronising. Miss
+Letts always distrusted stoutness in another; it looked like deliberate
+insult. Mary Adams was conveyed away; Barbara was bereft of her glory.</p>
+
+<p>But, rather, on that instant that Mary Adams vanished did she become
+glorified. Barbara had been too absurdly agitated to transform on to the
+mirror of her brain Mary's appearance. In all the dim-coloured splendour
+of flame and mist was Mary now enwrapped, with every step that Barbara
+took towards her home did the splendour grow.<a name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></a></p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Then followed an invitation to tea from Mary's mother. Barbara,
+preparing for the event, suffered her hair to be brushed, choked with
+strange half-sweet, half-terrible suffocation that comes from
+anticipated glories: half-sweet because things will, at their worst, be
+wonderful; half-terrible because we know that they will not be so good
+as we hope.</p>
+
+<p>Barbara, washed paler than ever, in a white frock with pink bows, was
+conducted by Miss Letts. She choked with terror in the strange hall,
+where she was received with great splendour by Mary. The schoolroom was
+large and fine and bright, finer far than Barbara's room, swamped by the
+waters of religion and politics. Barbara could only gulp and gulp, and
+feel still at her throat that half-sweet, half-terrible suffocation.
+Within her little body her heart, so huge and violent, was pounding.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A very nice room indeed,&quot; said Miss Letts, more friendly now to the
+optimist because she was leaving in a day or two, and could not,
+therefore, at the moment be considered a success. Her failure balanced
+her plumpness.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211"></a>Here, at any rate, was the beginning of a great friendship between
+Barbara Flint and Mary Adams. The character of Mary Adams was admittedly
+a difficult one to explore; her mother, a cloud of nurses and a company
+of governesses had been baffled completely by its dark caverns and
+recesses. One clue, beyond question, was selfishness; but this quality,
+by the very obviousness of it, may tempt us to believe that that is all.
+It may account, when we are displeased, for so much. It accounted for a
+great deal with Mary&mdash;but not all. She had, I believe, a quite genuine
+affection for Barbara, nothing very disturbing, that could rival the
+question as to whether she would receive a second helping of pudding or
+no, or whether she looked better in blue or pink. Nevertheless, the
+affection was there. During several months she considered Barbara more
+than she had ever considered any one in her life before. At that first
+tea party she was aware, perhaps, that Barbara's proffered devotion was
+for complete and absolute self-sacrifice, something that her vanity
+would not often find to feed it. There was, too, no question of
+comparison between them.</p>
+
+<p>Even when Barbara grew to be nine she <a name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></a>would be a poor thing beside the
+lusty self-confidence of Mary Adams&mdash;and this was quite as it should be.
+All that Barbara wanted was some one upon whom she might pour her
+devotion, and one of the things that Mary wanted was some one who would
+spend it upon her. But there stirred, nevertheless, some breath of
+emotion across that stagnant little pool, Mary's heart. She was moved,
+perhaps, by pity for Barbara's amazing simplicities, moved also by
+curiosity as to how far Barbara's devotion to her would go, moved even
+by some sense of distrust of her own self-satisfaction. She did, indeed,
+admire any one who could realise, as completely as did Barbara, the
+greatness of Mary Adams.</p>
+
+<p>It may seem strange to us, and almost terrible, that a small child of
+seven can feel anything as devastating as this passion of Barbara. But
+Barbara was made to be swept by storms stronger than she could control,
+and Mary Adams was the first storm of her life. They spent now a great
+deal of their time together. Mrs. Adams, who was beginning to find Mary
+more than she could control, hailed the gentle Barbara with joy; she
+welcomed also perhaps a certain note of rather haughty <a name="Page_213" id="Page_213"></a>protection which
+Mary seemed to be developing.</p>
+
+<p>During the hours when Barbara was alone she thought of the many things
+that she would say to her friend when they met, and then at the meeting
+could say nothing. Mary talked or she did not talk according to her
+mood, but she soon made it very plain that there was only one way of
+looking at everything inside and outside the earth, and that was Mary's
+way. Barbara had no affection, but a certain blind terror for God. It
+was precisely as though some one were standing with a hammer behind a
+tree, and were waiting to hit you on the back of your head at the first
+opportunity. But God was not, on the whole, of much importance; her
+Friend was the great problem, and before many days were passed Mary was
+told all about him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He used to come often and often. He'd be there just where you wanted
+him&mdash;when the light was out or anything. And he <i>was</i> nice.&quot; Barbara
+sighed.</p>
+
+<p>Mary stared at her, seeming in the first full sweep of confidence, to be
+almost alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't mean&mdash;&mdash;?&quot; She stopped, then cried, &quot;Why, you silly, you
+believe in ghosts!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></a>No, I don't,&quot; said Barbara, not far from tears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, you do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I don't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course you do, you silly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I don't. He&mdash;he's real.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; Mary said, with a final toss of the head, &quot;if you go seeing
+ghosts like that you can't have me for your friend, Barbara Flint&mdash;you
+can choose, that's all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Barbara was aghast. Such a catastrophe had never been contemplated. Lose
+Mary? Sooner life itself. She resolved, sorrowfully, to say no more
+about her Friend. But here occurred a strange thing. It was as though
+Mary felt that over this one matter Barbara had eluded her; she returned
+to it again and again, always with contemptuous but inquisitive
+allusion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did he come last night, Barbara?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;P'r'aps he did, only you were asleep.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, he didn't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't believe he'll come ever any more, do you? Now that I've said
+he isn't there really?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_215" id="Page_215"></a>Very well, then, I won't see you to-morrow&mdash;not at all&mdash;not all day&mdash;I
+won't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>These crises tore Barbara's spirit. Seven is not an age that can reason
+with life's difficulties, and Barbara had, in this business, no
+reasoning powers at all. She would die for Mary; she could not deny her
+Friend. What was she to do? And yet&mdash;just at this moment when, of all
+others, it was important that he should come to her and confirm his
+reality&mdash;he made no sign. Not only did he make no sign, but he seemed to
+withdraw, silently and surely, all his supports. Barbara discovered that
+the company of Mary Adams did in very truth make everything that was not
+sure and certain absurd and impossible. There was visible no longer, as
+there had been before, that country wherein anything was possible, where
+wonderful things had occurred and where wonderful things would surely
+occur again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're pretending,&quot; said Mary Adams sharply when Barbara ventured some
+possibly extravagant version of some ordinary occurrence, or suggested
+that events, rich and wonderful, had occurred during the night.
+&quot;Nonsense,&quot; said Mary sharply.</p>
+
+<p>She said &quot;nonsense&quot; as though it were the <a name="Page_216" id="Page_216"></a>very foundation of her creed
+of life&mdash;as, indeed, to the end of her days, it was. What, then, was
+Barbara to do? Her friend would not come, although passionately she
+begged and begged and begged that he would. Mary Adams was there every
+day, sharp, and shining, and resolved, demanding the whole of Barbara
+Flint, body and soul&mdash;nothing was to be kept from her, nothing. What was
+Barbara Flint to do?</p>
+
+<p>She denied her Friend, denied that earlier world, denied her dreams and
+her hopes. She cried a good deal, was very lonely in the dark. Mary
+Adams, as was her way, having won her victory, passed on to win another.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Mary began, now, to find Barbara rather tiresome. Having forced her to
+renounce her gods, she now despised her for so easy a renunciation.
+Every day did she force Barbara through her act of denial, and the
+Inquisition of Spain held, in all its records, nothing more cruel.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did he come last night?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He'll never come again, will he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></a>No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wasn't it silly of you to make up stories like that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Mary&mdash;yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There aren't ghosts, nor fairies, nor giants, nor wizards, nor Santa
+Claus?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; but, Mary, p'r'aps&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; there aren't. Say there aren't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There isn't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Poor Barbara, even as she concluded this ceremony, clutching her doll
+close to her to give her comfort, could not refrain from a hurried
+glance over her shoulder. He <i>might</i> be&mdash;&mdash; But upon Mary this all began
+soon enough to pall. She liked some opposition. She liked to defeat
+people and trample on them and then be gracious. Barbara was a poor
+little thing. Moreover, Barbara's standard of morality and righteousness
+annoyed her. Barbara seemed to have no idea that there was anything in
+this confused world of ours except wrong and right. No dialectician,
+argue he ever so stoutly, could have persuaded Barbara that there was
+such a colour in the world's paint-box as grey. &quot;It's bad to tell lies.
+It's bad to steal. It's bad to put your tongue out. It's good to be kind
+to poor people. It's good <a name="Page_218" id="Page_218"></a>to say 'No' when you want more pudding but
+mustn't have it.&quot; Barbara was no prig. She did not care the least little
+thing about these things, nor did she ever mention them, but let a
+question of conduct arise, then was Barbara's way plain and clear. She
+did not always take it, but there it was. With Mary, how very different!
+She had, I am afraid, no sense of right and wrong at all, but only a
+coolly ironical perception of the things that her elders disliked and
+permitted. Very foolish and absurd, these elders. We have always before
+our eyes some generation that provokes our irony, the one before us, the
+one behind us, our own perhaps; for Mary Adams it would always be any
+generation that was not her own. Her business in life was to avoid
+unpleasantness, to extract the honey from every flower, but above all to
+be admired, praised, preferred.</p>
+
+<p>At first with her pleasure at Barbara's adoration she had found, within
+herself, a truly alarming desire to be &quot;good.&quot; It might, after all, be
+rather amusing to be, in strict reality, all the fine things that
+Barbara considered her. She endeavoured for a week or two to adjust
+herself to this point of view, to <a name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></a>consider, however slightly, whether
+it were right or wrong to do something that she particularly wished to
+do.</p>
+
+<p>But she found it very tiresome. The effort spoilt her temper, and no one
+seemed to notice any change. She might as well be bad as good were there
+no one present to perceive the difference. She gave it up, and, from
+that moment found that she suffered Barbara less gladly than before.
+Meanwhile, in Barbara also strange forces had been at work. She found
+that her imagination (making up stories) simply, in spite of all the
+Mary Adamses in the world, refused to stop. Still would the almond tree
+and the fountain, the gold dust on the roofs of the houses when the sun
+was setting, the racing hurry of rain drops down the window-pane, the
+funny old woman with the red shawl who brought plants round in a
+wheelbarrow, start her story telling.</p>
+
+<p>Still could she not hold herself from fancying, at times, that her doll
+Jane was a queen, and that Miss Letts could make &quot;spells&quot; by the mere
+crook of her bony fingers. Worst of all, still she must think of her
+Friend, tell herself with an ache that he would never come back again,
+feel, sometimes, that she would give up<a name="Page_220" id="Page_220"></a> Mary and all the rest of the
+world if he would only be beside her bed, as he used to be, talking to
+her, holding her hand. During these days, had there been any one to
+observe her, she was a pathetic little figure, with her thin legs like
+black sticks, her saucer eyes that so readily filled with tears, her
+eager, half-apprehensive expression, the passionate clutch of the doll
+to her heart, and it is, after all, a painful business, this
+adoration&mdash;no human soul can live up to the heights of it, and, what is
+more, no human soul ought to.</p>
+
+<p>As Mary grew tired of Barbara she allowed to slip from her many of the
+virtuous graces that had hitherto, for Barbara's benefit, adorned her.
+She lost her temper, was cruel simply for the pleasure that Barbara's
+ill-restrained agitation yielded her, but, even beyond this, squandered
+recklessly her reputation for virtue. Twice, before Barbara's very eyes,
+she told lies, and told them, too, with a real mastery of the
+craft&mdash;long practice and a natural disposition had brought her very near
+perfection. Barbara, her heart beating wildly, refused to understand;
+Mary could not be so. She held Jane to her breast more tightly than
+before. And the denials continued; twice a day <a name="Page_221" id="Page_221"></a>now they were extorted
+from her&mdash;with every denial the ghost of her Friend stole more deeply
+into the mist. He was gone; he was gone; and what was left?</p>
+
+<p>Very soon, and with unexpected suddenness, the crisis came.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>Upon a day Barbara accompanied her mother to tea with Mrs. Adams. The
+ladies remained downstairs in the dull splendour of the drawing-room;
+Mary and Barbara were delivered to Miss Fortescue, the most recent
+guardian of Mary's life and prospects.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's simply awful. You needn't mind a word she says,&quot; Mary instructed
+her friend, and prepared then to behave accordingly. They had tea, and
+Mary did as she pleased. Miss Fortescue protested, scolded, was weak
+when she should have been strong, and said often, &quot;Now, Mary, there's a
+dear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Barbara, the faint colour coming and going in her cheeks, watched. She
+watched Mary now with quite a fresh intention. She had begun her voyage
+of discovery: what was in Mary's head, <i>what</i> would she do next? What<a name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></a>
+Mary did next was to propose, after tea, that they should travel through
+other parts of the house.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We'll be back in a moment,&quot; Mary flung over her head to Miss Fortescue.
+They proceeded then through passages, peering into dark rooms, looking
+behind curtains, Barbara following behind her friend, who seemed to be
+moved by a rather aimless intention of finding something to do that she
+shouldn't. They finally arrived at Mrs. Adams's private and particular
+sitting-room, a place that may be said, in the main, to stand as a
+protest against the rule of the ancient philosopher, being all pink and
+flimsy and fragile with precious vases and two post-impressionist
+pictures (a green apple tree one, the other a brown woman), and lace
+cushions and blue bowls with rose leaves in them. Barbara had never been
+into this room before, nor had she ever in all her seven years seen
+anything so lovely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mother says I'm never to come in here,&quot; announced Mary. &quot;But I
+do&mdash;lots. Isn't it pretty?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;P'r'aps we oughtn't&mdash;&mdash;&quot; began Barbara.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, we ought,&quot; answered Mary scornfully. &quot;Always you and your
+'oughtn't.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223"></a>She turned, and her shoulders brushed a low bracket that was close to
+the door. A large Nankin vase was at her feet, scattered into a thousand
+pieces. Even Mary's proud indifference was stirred by this catastrophe,
+and she was down on her knees in an instant, trying to pick up the
+pieces. Barbara stared, her eyes wide with horror.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Mary,&quot; she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You might help instead of just standing there!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then the door opened and, like the avenging gods from Olympus, in came
+the two ladies, eagerly, with smiles.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now I must just show you,&quot; began Mrs. Adams. Then the catastrophe was
+discovered&mdash;a moment's silence, then a cry from the poor lady: &quot;Oh, my
+vase! It was priceless!&quot; (It was not, but no matter.)</p>
+
+<p>About Barbara the air clung so thick with catastrophe that it was from a
+very long way indeed that she heard Mary's voice:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Barbara didn't mean&mdash;&mdash;-&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you do this, Barbara?&quot; her mother turned round upon her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know, Mary, I've told you a thousand times that you're not to come
+in here!&quot; this <a name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></a>from Mrs. Adams, who was obviously very angry indeed.</p>
+
+<p>Mary was on her feet now and, as she looked across at Barbara, there was
+in her glance a strange look, ironical, amused, inquisitive, even
+affectionate. &quot;Well, mother, I knew we mustn't. But Barbara wanted to
+<i>look</i> so I said we'd just <i>peep</i>, but that we weren't to touch
+anything, and then Barbara couldn't help it, really; her shoulder just
+brushed the shelf&mdash;&mdash;&quot; and still as she looked there was in her eyes
+that strange irony: &quot;Well, now you see me as I am&mdash;I'm bored by all this
+pretending. It's gone on long enough. Are you going to give me away?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But Barbara could do nothing. Her whole world was there, like the Nankin
+vase, smashed about her feet, as it never, never would be again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So you did this, Barbara?&quot; Mrs. Flint said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Barbara. Then she began to cry.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>At home she was sent to bed. Her mother read her a chapter of the Gospel
+according to St.<a name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></a> Matthew, and then left her; she lay there, sick with
+crying, her eyes stiff and red, wondering how she would ever get through
+the weeks and weeks of life that remained to her. She thought: &quot;I'll
+never love any one again. Mary took my Friend away&mdash;and then she wasn't
+there herself. There isn't anybody.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then it suddenly occurred to her that she need never be put through the
+agony of her denials again, that she could believe what she liked, make
+up stories.</p>
+
+<p>Her Friend would, of course, never come to see her any more, but at
+least now she would be able to think about him. She would be allowed to
+remember. Her brain was drowsy, her eyes half closed. Through the
+humming air something was coming; the dark curtains were parted, the
+light of the late afternoon sun was faint yellow upon the opposite
+wall&mdash;there was a little breeze. Drowsily, drowsily, her drooping eyes
+felt the light, the stir of the air, the sense that some one was in the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>She looked up; she gave a cry! He had come back! He had come back after
+all!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Sarah Trefusis</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>Sarah Trefusis lived, with her mother, in the smallest house in March
+Square, a really tiny house, like a box, squeezed breathlessly between
+two fat buildings, but looking, with its white paint and green doors,
+smarter than either of them. Lady Charlotte Trefusis, Sarah's mother,
+was elegant, penniless and a widow; Captain B. Trefusis, her husband,
+had led the merriest of lives until a game of polo carried him
+reluctantly from a delightful world and forced Lady Charlotte to
+consider the problem of having a good time alone on nothing at all. But
+it may be said that, on the whole, she succeeded. She was the
+best-dressed widow in London, and went everywhere, but the little house
+in March Square was the scene of a most strenuous campaign, every day
+presenting its <a name="Page_227" id="Page_227"></a>defeat or victory, and every minute of the day
+threatening overwhelming disaster if something were not done
+immediately. Lady Charlotte had the smallest feet and hands outside
+China, a pile of golden hair above the face of a pink-and-white doll.
+Staring from this face, however, were two of the loveliest, most
+unscrupulous of eyes, and those eyes did more for Lady Charlotte's
+precarious income than any other of her resources. She wore her
+expensive clothes quite beautifully, and gave lovely little lunches and
+dinners; no really merry house-party was complete without her.</p>
+
+<p>Sarah was her only child, and, although at the time of which I am
+writing she was not yet nine years of age, there was no one in London
+better suited to the adventurous and perilous existence that Fate had
+selected for her. Sarah was black as ink&mdash;that is, she had coal black
+hair, coal black eyes, and wonderful black eyelashes. Her eyelashes were
+her only beautiful feature, but she was, nevertheless, a most remarkable
+looking child. &quot;If ever a child's possessed of the devil, my dear
+Charlotte,&quot; said Captain James Trent to her mother, &quot;it's your precious
+daughter&mdash;she <i>is</i> the devil, I believe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_228" id="Page_228"></a>Well, she needs to be,&quot; said her mother, &quot;considering the life that's
+in store for her. We're very good friends, she and I, thank you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They were. They understood one another to perfection. Lady Charlotte was
+as hard as nails, and Sarah was harder. Sarah had never been known to
+cry. She had bitten the fingers of one of her nurses through to the
+bone, and had stuck a needle into the cheek of another whilst she slept,
+and had watched, with a curious abstracted gaze, the punishment dealt
+out to her, as though it had nothing to do with her at all. She never
+lost her temper, and one of the most terrible things about her was her
+absolute calm. She was utterly fearless, went to the dentist without a
+tremor, and, at the age of six, fell downstairs, broke her leg, and so
+lay until help arrived without a cry. She bullied and hurt anything or
+anybody that came her way, but carried out her plans always with the
+same deliberate abstraction as though she were obeying somebody's
+orders. She never nourished revenge or resentment, and it seemed to be
+her sense of humour (rather than any fierce or hostile feeling) that was
+tickled when she hurt any one.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229"></a>She was a child, apparently without imagination, but displayed, at a
+very early period, a strangely sharpened perception of what her nurse
+called &quot;the uncanny.&quot; She frightened even her mother by the expression
+that her face often wore of attention to something or somebody outside
+her companion's perception.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A broomstick is what she'll be flying away on one of these nights, you
+mark my word,&quot; a nurse declared. &quot;Little devil, she is, neither more nor
+less. It isn't decent the way she sits on the floor looking right
+through the wall into the next room, as you might say. Yes, and knows
+who's coming up the stairs long before she's seen 'em. No place for a
+decent Christian woman, and so I told her mother this very morning.&quot; It
+was, of course, quite impossible to find a nurse to stay with Sarah,
+and, when she arrived at the age of seven, nurses were dismissed, and
+she either looked after herself or was tended by an abandoned French
+maid of her mother's, who stayed with Lady Charlotte, like a wicked,
+familiar spirit, for a great number of years on a strange basis of
+confidante, fellow-plunderer, and sympathetic adventurer. This French
+maid, whose name was, appropriately enough, Hortense, had a real
+affection for<a name="Page_230" id="Page_230"></a> Sarah &quot;because she was the weeckedest child of 'er age
+she ever see.&quot; There was nothing of which Sarah, from the very earliest
+age, did not seem aware. Her mother's gentlemen friends she valued
+according to their status in the house, and, as they &quot;fell off&quot; or &quot;came
+on,&quot; so was her manner indifferent or pleasant. For Hortense, she had a
+real respect, but even that improper and brazen spirit quailed at times
+before her cynical and elfish regard. To say of a child that there is
+something &quot;unearthly&quot; about it is, as a rule, to pay a compliment to
+ethereal blue and gold. There was nothing ethereal about Sarah, and yet
+she was unearthly enough. Squatting on the floor, her legs tucked under
+her, her head thrust forward, her large black eyes staring at the wall,
+her black hair almost alive in the shining intensity of its colours, she
+had in her attitude the lithe poise of some animal ready to spring,
+waiting for its exact opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>When her mother, in a temper, struck her, she would push her hair back
+from her face with a sharp movement of her hand and then would watch
+broodingly and cynically for the next move. &quot;You hit me again,&quot; she
+seemed to say, &quot;and you <i>will</i> make a fool of yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231"></a>She was aware, of course, of a thousand influences in the house of
+which her mother and Hortense had never the slightest conception. From
+the cosy security of her cradle she had watched the friendly spirit who
+had accompanied (with hostile irritation) her entrance into this world.
+His shadow had, for a long period, darkened her nursery, but she
+repelled, with absolute assurance, His kindly advances.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not frightened. I don't, in the least, want things made comfortable
+for me. I can get along very nicely, indeed, without you. You're full of
+sentiment and gush&mdash;things that I detest&mdash;and it won't be the least use
+in the world for you to ask me to be good, and tender, and all the rest
+of it. I'm not like your other babies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He must have known, of course, that she was not, but, nevertheless, He
+stayed. &quot;I understand perfectly,&quot; He assured her. &quot;But, nevertheless, I
+don't give you up. You may be, for all you know, more interesting to me
+than all the others put together. And remember this&mdash;every time you do
+anything at all kind or thoughtful, every time you think of any one or
+care for them, every time you use your influence for good in any way, my
+power over you <a name="Page_232" id="Page_232"></a>is a little stronger, I shall be a little closer to you,
+your escape will be a little harder.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you needn't flatter yourself,&quot; she answered Him. &quot;There's precious
+little danger of <i>my</i> self-sacrifice or love for others. That's not
+going to be my attitude to life at all. You'd better not waste your time
+over me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She had not, she might triumphantly reflect, during these eight years,
+given Him many chances, and yet He was still there. She hated the
+thought of His patience, and somewhere deep within herself she dreaded
+the faint, dim beat of some response that, like a warning bell across a
+misty sea, cautioned her. &quot;You may think you're safe from Him, but He'll
+catch you yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He shan't,&quot; she replied. &quot;I'm stronger than He is.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>This must sound, in so prosaic a summary of it, fantastic, but nothing
+could be said to be fantastic about Sarah. She was, for one thing, quite
+the least troublesome of children. She could be relied upon, at any
+time, to find amusement for herself. She was full of resources, <a name="Page_233" id="Page_233"></a>but
+what these resources exactly were it would be difficult to say. She
+would sit for hours alone, staring in front of her. She never played
+with toys&mdash;she did not draw or read&mdash;but she was never dull, and always
+had the most perfect of appetites. She had never, from the day of her
+birth, known an hour's illness.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, in the company of other children that she was most
+characteristic. The nurses in the Square quite frankly hated her, but
+most of the mothers had a very real regard for Lady Charlotte's smart
+little lunches; moreover, it was impossible to detect Sarah's guilt in
+any positive fashion. It was not enough for the nurses to assure their
+mistresses that from the instant that the child entered the gardens all
+the other children were out of temper, rebellious, and finally
+unmanageable.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nonsense, Janet, you imagine things. She seems a very nice little
+girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, ma'am, all I can say is, I won't care to be answerable for Master
+Ronald's behaviour when she <i>does</i> come along, that's all. It's beyond
+belief the effect she 'as upon 'im.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The strangest thing of all was that Sarah herself liked the company of
+other children.<a name="Page_234" id="Page_234"></a> She went every morning into the gardens (with Hortense)
+and watched them at their play. She would sit, with her hands folded
+quietly on her lap, her large black eyes watching, watching, watching.
+It was odd, indeed, how, instantly, all the children in the garden were
+aware of her entrance. She, on her part, would appear to regard none of
+them, and yet would see them all. Perched on her seat she surveyed the
+gardens always with the same gaze of abstracted interest, watching the
+clear, decent paths across whose grey background at the period of this
+episode, the October leaves, golden, flaming, dun, gorgeous and
+shrivelled, fell through the still air, whirled, and with a little sigh
+of regret, one might fancy, sank and lay dead. The October colours, a
+faint haze of smoky mist, the pale blue of the distant sky, the brown
+moist earth, were gentle, mild, washed with the fading year's regretful
+tears; the cries of the children, the rhythmic splash of the fountain
+throbbed behind the colours like some hidden orchestra behind the
+curtain at the play; the statues in the garden, like fragments of the
+white bolster clouds that swung so lazily from tree to tree; had no
+meaning in that misty air beyond the background that <a name="Page_235" id="Page_235"></a>they helped to
+fill. The year, thus idly, with so pleasant a melancholy, was slipping
+into decay.</p>
+
+<p>Sarah would watch. Then, without a word, she would slip from her seat,
+and, walking solemnly, rather haughtily, would join some group of
+children. Day after day the same children came to the gardens, and they
+all of them knew Sarah by now. Hortense, in her turn also, sitting,
+stiff and superior, would watch. She would see Sarah's pleasant
+approach, her smile, her amiability. Very soon, however, there would be
+trouble&mdash;some child would cry out; there would be blows; nurses would
+run forward, scoldings, protests, captives led away weeping ... and then
+Sarah would return slowly to her seat, her gaze aloof, cynical, remote.
+She would carefully explain to Hortense the reason of the uproar. She
+had done nothing&mdash;her conscience was clear. These silly little idiots.
+She would break into French, culled elaborately from Hortense, would end
+disdainfully&mdash;&quot;mais, voil&agrave;,&quot;&mdash;very old for her age.</p>
+
+<p>Hortense was vicious, selfish, crude in her pursuit of pleasure,
+entirely unscrupulous, but, as the days passed, she was, in spite of
+herself, conscious of some half-acknowledged, half-decided terror of
+Sarah's possibilities.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236"></a>The child was eight years old. She was capable of anything; in her
+remote avoidance of any passion, any regret, any anticipated pleasure,
+any spontaneity, she was inhuman. Hortense thought that she detected in
+the chit's mother something of her own fear.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>There used to come to the gardens a little fat red-faced girl called
+Mary Kitson, the child of simple and ingenuous parents (her father was a
+writer of stories of adventure for boys' papers); she was herself
+simple-minded, lethargic, unadventurous, and happily stupid. Walking one
+day slowly with Hortense down one of the garden paths, Sarah saw Mary
+Kitson engaged in talking to two dolls, seated on a bench with them,
+patting their clothes, very happy, her nurse busy over a novelette.</p>
+
+<p>Sarah stopped.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll sit here,&quot; she said, walked across to the bench and sat down. Mary
+looked up from her dolls, and then, nervously and self-consciously, went
+back to her play. Sarah stared straight before her.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237"></a>Hortense amiably endeavoured to draw the nurse into conversation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You 'ave 'ere ze fine gardens,&quot; she said. &quot;It calls to mind my own
+Paris. Ah, the gardens in Paris!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the nurse had been taught to distrust all foreigners, and her views
+of Paris were coloured by her reading. She admired Hortense's clothes,
+but distrusted her advances.</p>
+
+<p>She buried herself even more deeply in the paper. Poor Mary Kitson,
+alas! found that, in some undefinable manner, the glory had departed
+from her dolls. Adrian and Emily were, of a sudden, glassy and lumpy
+abstractions of sawdust and china. Very timidly she raised her large,
+stupid eyes and regarded Sarah. Sarah returned the glance and smiled.
+Then she came close to Mary.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's better under there,&quot; she said, pointing to the shade of a friendly
+tree.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;May I?&quot; Mary said to her nurse with a frightened gasp.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, now, don't you go far,&quot; said the nurse, with a fierce look at
+Hortense.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You like where you are?&quot; asked Hortense, smiling more than ever. &quot;You
+'ave a good <a name="Page_238" id="Page_238"></a>place?&quot; Slowly the nurse yielded. The novelette was laid
+aside.</p>
+
+<p>Impossible to say what occurred under the tree. Now and again a rustle
+of wind would send the colours from the trees to short branches loaded
+with leaves of red gold, shivering through the air; a chequered, blazing
+canopy covered the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Kitson had, it appeared, very little to say. She sat some way from
+Sarah, clutching Adrian and Emily tightly to her breast, and always her
+large, startled eyes were on Sarah's face. She did not move to drive the
+leaves from her dress; her heart beat very fast, her cheeks were very
+red.</p>
+
+<p>Sarah talked a little, but not very much. She asked questions about
+Mary's home and her parents, and Mary answered these interrogations in
+monosyllabic gasps. It appeared that Mary had a kitten, and that this
+kitten was a central fact of Mary's existence. The kitten was called
+Alice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Alice is a silly name for a kitten. I shouldn't call a kitten Alice,&quot;
+said Sarah, and Mary started as though in some strange, sinister fashion
+she were instantly aware that Alice's life and safety were threatened.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239"></a>From that morning began a strange acquaintance that certainly could not
+be called a friendship. There could be no question at all that Mary was
+terrified of Sarah; there could also be no question that Mary was
+Sarah's obedient slave. The cynical Hortense, prepared as she was for
+anything strange and unexpected in Sarah's actions, was, nevertheless,
+puzzled now.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, wet and dismal, the two of them sitting in a little box
+of a room in the little box of a house, Sarah huddled in a chair, her
+eyes staring in front of her, Hortense sewing, her white, bony fingers
+moving sharply like knives, the maid asked a question:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you see&mdash;Sar-ah&mdash;in that infant?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What infant?&quot; asked Sarah, without moving her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That Mary with whom now you always are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We play games together,&quot; said Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You do not. You may be playing a game&mdash;she does nothing. She is
+terrified&mdash;out of her life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is very silly. It's funny how silly she is. I like her to be
+frightened.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary's nurse told Mary's mother that, in <a name="Page_240" id="Page_240"></a>her opinion, Sarah was not a
+nice child. But Sarah had been invited to tea at the confused, simple
+abode of the Kitson family, and had behaved perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think you must be wrong, nurse,&quot; said Mrs. Kitson. &quot;She seems a very
+nice little girl. Mary needs companions. It's good for her to be taken
+out of herself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Had Mrs. Kitson been of a less confused mind, however, had she had more
+time for the proper observation of her daughter, she would have noticed
+her daughter's pale cheeks, her daughter's fits of crying, her
+daughter's silences. Even as the bird is fascinated by the snake, so was
+Mary Kitson fascinated by Sarah Trefusis.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are torturing that infant,&quot; said Hortense, and Sarah smiled.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Mary was by no means the first of Sarah's victim's. There had been many
+others. Utterly aloof, herself, from all emotions of panic or terror, it
+had, from the very earliest age, interested her to see those passions at
+work in others. Cruelty for cruelty's sake had no in<a name="Page_241" id="Page_241"></a>terest for her at
+all; to pull the wings from flies, to tie kettles to the tails of
+agitated puppies, to throw stones at cats, did not, in the least, amuse
+her. She had once put a cat in the fire, but only because she had seen
+it play with a terrified mouse. That had affronted her sense of justice.
+But she was gravely and quite dispassionately interested in the terror
+of Mary Kitson. In later life a bull fight was to appear to her a
+tiresome affair, but the domination of one human being over another,
+absorbing. She had, too, at the very earliest age, that conviction that
+it was pleasant to combat all sentiment, all appeals to be &quot;good,&quot; all
+soft emotions of pity, anything that could suggest that Right was of
+more power than Might.</p>
+
+<p>It was as though she said, &quot;You may think that even now you will get me.
+I tell you I'm a rebel from the beginning; you'll never catch me showing
+affection or sympathy. If you do you may do your worst.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Beyond all things, her anxiety was that, suddenly, in spite of herself,
+she would do something &quot;soft,&quot; some weak kindness. Her power over Mary
+Kitson reassured her.</p>
+
+<p>The fascination of this power very soon became to her an overwhelming
+interest. Play<a name="Page_242" id="Page_242"></a>ing with Mary Kitson's mind was as absorbing to Sarah, as
+chess to an older enthusiast; her discoveries promised her a life full
+of entertainment, if, with her fellow-mortals, she was able, so easily,
+&quot;to do things,&quot; what a time she would always have. She discovered, very
+soon, that Mary Kitson was, by nature, truthful and obedient, that she
+had a great fear of God, and that she loved her parents. Here was fine
+material to work upon. She began by insisting on little lies.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say our clocks were all wrong, and you couldn't know what the time
+was.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, but&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, say it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Please, Sarah.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say it. Otherwise I'll be punished too. Mind, if you don't say it, I
+shall know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was the horrible threat that effected so much. Mary began soon to
+believe that Sarah was never absent from her, that she attended her,
+invisibly, her little dark face peering over Mary's shoulder, and when
+Mary was in bed at night, the lights out, and only shadows on the walls,
+Sarah was certainly there, her mocking eyes on Mary's face, her voice
+whispering things in Mary's ears.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243"></a>Sarah, Mary very soon discovered, believed in nothing, and knew
+everything. This horrible combination, naturally, affected Mary, who
+believed in everything and knew nothing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why should we obey our mothers?&quot; said Sarah. &quot;We're as good as they
+are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, <i>no</i>,&quot; said Mary, in a voice shocked to a strangled whisper.
+Nevertheless, she began, a little, to despise her confused parents.
+There came a day when Mary told a very large lie indeed; she said that
+she had brushed her teeth when she had not, and she told this lie quite
+unprompted by Sarah. She was more and more miserable as the days passed.</p>
+
+<p>No one knew exactly the things that the two little girls did when they
+were alone on an afternoon in Sarah's room. Sarah sent Hortense about
+her business, and then set herself to the subdual of Mary's mind and
+character. There would be moments like this, Sarah would turn off the
+electric light, and the room would be lit only by the dim shining of the
+evening sky.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, Mary, you go over to that corner&mdash;that dark one&mdash;and wait there
+till I tell you to come out. I'll go outside the room, and then you'll
+see what will happen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_244" id="Page_244"></a>Oh, no, Sarah, I don't want to.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not, you silly baby?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I&mdash;I don't want to.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, it will be much worse for you if you don't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want to go home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You can after you have done that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want to go home now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go into the corner first.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sarah would leave the room and Mary would stand with her face to the
+wall, a trembling prey to a thousand terrors. The light would quiver and
+shake, steps would tread the floor and cease, there would be a breath in
+her ears, a wind above her head. She would try to pray, but could
+remember no words. Sarah would lead her forth, shaking from head to
+foot.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You little silly. I was only playing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Once, and this hurried the climax of the episode, Mary attempted
+rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want to go home, Sarah.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you can't. You've got to hear the end of the story first.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't like the story. It's a horrid story. I'm going home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'd better not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I will, and I won't come again, and I <a name="Page_245" id="Page_245"></a>won't see you again. I hate
+you. I won't. I won't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary, as she very often did, began to cry. Sarah's lips curled with
+scorn.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All right, you can. You'll never see Alice again if you do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Alice?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, she'll be drowned, and you'll have the toothache, and I'll come in
+the middle of the night and wake you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I&mdash;I don't care. I'm go-going home. I'll t-t-ell m-other.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell her. But look out afterwards, that's all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary remained, but Sarah regarded the rebellion as ominous. She thought
+that the time had come to put Mary's submission really to the test.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>The climax of the affair was in this manner. Upon an afternoon when the
+rain was beating furiously upon the window-panes and the wind struggling
+up and down the chimney, Sarah and Mary played together in Sarah's room;
+the play consisted of Mary shutting her eyes and <a name="Page_246" id="Page_246"></a>pretending she was in
+a dark wood, whilst Sarah was the tiger who might at any moment spring
+upon her and devour her, who would, in any case, pinch her legs with a
+sudden thrust which would drive all the blood out of Mary's face and
+make her &quot;as white as the moon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This game ended, Sarah's black eyes moved about for a fresh diversion;
+her gaze rested upon Mary, and Mary whispered that she would like to go
+home.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. You can,&quot; said Sarah, staring at her, &quot;if you will do something
+when you get there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What?&quot; said Mary, her heart beating like a heavy and jumping hammer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's something I want. You've got to bring it me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary said nothing, only her wide eyes filled with tears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's something in your mother's drawing-room. You know in that
+little table with the glass top where there are the little gold boxes
+with the silver crosses and things. There's a ring there&mdash;a gold one
+with a red stone&mdash;very pretty. I want it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary drew a long, deep breath. Her fat legs in the tight, black
+stockings were shaking.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></a>You can go in when no one sees. The table isn't locked, I know,
+because I opened it once. You can get and bring it to me to-morrow in
+the garden.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh,&quot; Mary whispered, &quot;that would be stealing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course it wouldn't. Nobody wants the old ring. No one ever looks at
+it. It's just for fun.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said Mary, &quot;I mustn't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, you must. You'll be very sorry if you don't. Dreadful things
+will happen. Alice&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary cried softly, choking and spluttering and rubbing her eyes with the
+back of her hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you'd better go now. I'll be in the garden with Hortense
+to-morrow. You know, the same place. You'd better have it, that's all.
+And don't go on crying, or your mother will think I made you. What's
+there to cry about? No one will eat you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's stealing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I dare say it belongs to you, and, anyway, it will when your mother
+dies, so what <i>does</i> it matter? You <i>are</i> a baby!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After Mary's departure Sarah sat for a long <a name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></a>while alone in her nursery.
+She thought to herself: &quot;Mary will be going home now and she'll be
+snuffling to herself all the way back, and she won't tell the nurse
+anything, I know that. Now she's in the hall. She's upstairs now, having
+her things taken off. She's stopped crying, but her eyes and nose are
+red. She looks very ugly. She's gone to find Alice. She thinks something
+has happened to her. She begins to cry again when she sees her, and she
+begins to talk to her about it. Fancy talking to a cat....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The room was swallowed in darkness, and when Hortense came in and found
+Sarah sitting alone there, she thought to herself that, in spite of the
+profits that she secured from her mistress she would find another
+situation. She did not speak to Sarah, and Sarah did not speak to her.</p>
+
+<p>Once, during the night, Sarah woke up; she sat up in bed and stared into
+the darkness. Then she smiled to herself. As she lay down again she
+thought:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now I know that she will bring it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The next day was very fine, and in the glittering garden by the
+fountain, Sarah sat with Hortense, and waited. Soon Mary and her <a name="Page_249" id="Page_249"></a>nurse
+appeared. Sarah took Mary by the hand and they went away down the
+leaf-strewn path.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well!&quot; said Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>Mary quite silently felt in her pocket at the back of her short, green
+frock, produced the ring, gave it to Sarah, and, still without a word,
+turned back down the path and walked to her nurse. She stood there,
+clutching a doll in her hand, stared in front of her, and said nothing.
+Sarah looked at the ring, smiled, and put it into her pocket.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant the climax of the whole affair struck, like a blow from
+some one unseen, upon Sarah's consciousness. She should have been
+triumphant. She was not. Her one thought as she looked at the ring was
+that she wished Mary had not taken it. She had a strange feeling as
+though Mary, soft and heavy and fat, were hanging round her neck. She
+had &quot;got&quot; Mary for ever. She was suddenly conscious that she despised
+Mary, and had lost all interest in her. She didn't want the ring, nor
+did she ever wish to see Mary again.</p>
+
+<p>She gazed about the garden, shrugged her thin, little, bony shoulders as
+though she were fifty at least, and felt tired and dull, as on the day
+after a party. She stood and looked at<a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></a> Mary and her nurse; when she saw
+them walk away she did not move, but stayed there, staring after them.
+She was greatly disappointed; she did not feel any pleasure at having
+forced Mary to obey her, but would have liked to have smacked and bitten
+her, could these violent actions have driven her into speech. In some
+undetermined way Mary's silence had beaten Sarah. Mary was a stupid,
+silly little girl, and Sarah despised and scorned her, but, somehow,
+that was not enough; from all of this, it simply remained that Sarah
+would like now to forget her, and could not. What did the silly little
+thing mean by looking like that? &quot;She'll go and hug her Alice and cry
+over it.&quot; If only she had cried in front of Sarah that would have been
+something.</p>
+
+<p>Two days later Lady Charlotte was explaining to Sarah that so acute a
+financial crisis had arrived &quot;as likely as not we shan't have a roof
+over our heads in a day or two.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We'll take an organ and a monkey,&quot; said Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At any rate,&quot; Lady Charlotte said, &quot;when you grow up you'll be used to
+anything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kitson, untidy, in dishevelled clothing, and great distress, was
+shown in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_251" id="Page_251"></a>Dear Lady Charlotte, I must apologise&mdash;this absurd hour&mdash;but
+I&mdash;we&mdash;very unhappy about poor Mary. We can't think what's the matter
+with her. She's not slept for two nights&mdash;in a high fever, and cries and
+cries. The Doctor&mdash;Dr. Williamson&mdash;<i>really</i> clever&mdash;says she's unhappy
+about something. We thought&mdash;scarlet fever&mdash;no spots&mdash;can't
+think&mdash;perhaps your little girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor Mrs. Kitson. How tiresome for you. Do sit down. Perhaps Sarah&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sarah shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She didn't say she'd a headache in the garden the other day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kitson gazed appealingly at the little black figure in front of
+her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do try and remember, dear. Perhaps she told you something.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing&quot; said Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She cries and cries,&quot; said Mrs. Kitson, about whose person little white
+strings and tapes seemed to be continually appearing and disappearing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps she's eaten something?&quot; suggested Lady Charlotte.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Kitson had departed, Lady Charlotte turned to Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_252" id="Page_252"></a>What have you done to the poor child?&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing,&quot; said Sarah. &quot;I never want to see her again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you <i>have</i> done something?&quot; said Lady Charlotte.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's always crying,&quot; said Sarah, &quot;and she calls her kitten Alice,&quot; as
+though that were explanation sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>The strange truth remains, however, that the night that followed this
+conversation was the first unpleasant one that Sarah had ever spent; she
+remained awake during a great part of it. It was as though the hours
+that she had spent on that other afternoon, compelling, from her own
+dark room, Mary's will, had attached Mary to her. Mary was there with
+her now, in her bedroom. Mary, red-nosed, sniffing, her eyes wide and
+staring.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want to go home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Silly little thing,&quot; thought Sarah. &quot;I wish I'd never played with her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the morning Sarah was tired and white-faced. She would speak to no
+one. After luncheon she found her hat and coat for herself, let herself
+out of the house, and walked to Mrs. Kitson's, and was shown into the
+wide, <a name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></a>untidy drawing-room, where books and flowers and papers had a
+lost and strayed air as though a violent wind had blown through the
+place and disturbed everything.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kitson came in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>You</i>, dear?&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>Sarah looked at the room and then at Mrs. Kitson. Her eyes said: &quot;<i>What</i>
+a place! <i>What</i> a woman! <i>What</i> a fool!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I've come to explain about Mary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About Mary?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. It's my fault that she's ill. I took a ring out of that little
+table there&mdash;the gold ring with the red stone&mdash;and I made her promise
+not to tell. It's because she thinks she ought to tell that she's ill.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>You</i> took it? <i>You</i> stole it?&quot; Before Mrs. Kitson's simple mind an
+awful picture was now revealed. Here, in this little girl, whom she had
+preferred as a companion for her beloved Mary, was a thief, a liar, and
+one, as she could instantly perceive, without shame.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You <i>stole</i> it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; here it is.&quot; Sarah laid the ring on the table.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kitson gazed at her with horror, dismay, and even fear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_254" id="Page_254"></a>Why? Why? Don't you know how wrong it is to take things that don't
+belong to you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, all that!&quot; said Sarah, waving her hand scornfully. '&quot;I don't want
+the silly thing, and I don't suppose I'd have kept it, anyhow. I don't
+know why I've told you,&quot; she added. &quot;But I just don't want to be
+bothered with Mary any more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed, you won't be, you wicked girl,&quot; said Mrs. Kitson. &quot;To think
+that I&mdash;my grand-father's&mdash;I'd never missed it. And you haven't even
+said you're sorry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not,&quot; said Sarah quietly. &quot;If Mary wasn't so tiresome and silly
+those sort of things wouldn't happen. She <i>makes</i> me&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kitson's horror deprived her of all speech, so Sarah, after one
+more glance of amused cynicism about the room, retired.</p>
+
+<p>As she crossed the Square she knew, with happy relief, that she was free
+of Mary, that she need never bother about her again. Would <i>all</i> the
+people whom she compelled to obey her hang round her with all their
+stupidities afterwards? If so, life was not going to be so entertaining
+as she had hoped. In her dark little brain already was the perception of
+the trouble that good and stupid souls can cause to bold <a name="Page_255" id="Page_255"></a>and reckless
+ones. She would never bother with any one so feeble as Mary again, but,
+unless she did, how was she ever to have any fun again?</p>
+
+<p>Then as she climbed the stairs to her room, she was aware of something
+else.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've caught you, after all. You <i>have</i> been soft. You've yielded to
+your better nature. Try as you may you can't get right away from it. Now
+you'll have to reckon with me more than ever. You see you're not
+stronger than I am.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Before she opened the door of her room she knew that she would find Him
+there, triumphant.</p>
+
+<p>With a gesture of impatient irritation she pushed the door open.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Young John Scarlett</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>That fatal September&mdash;the September that was to see young John take his
+adventurous way to his first private school&mdash;surely, steadily
+approached.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Scarlett, an emotional and sentimental little woman, vibrating and
+taut like a telegraph wire, told herself repeatedly that she would make
+no sign. The preparations proceeded, the date&mdash;September 23rd&mdash;was
+constantly evoked, a dreadful ghost, by the careless, light-hearted
+family. Mr. Scarlett made no sign.</p>
+
+<p>From the hour of John's birth&mdash;nearly ten years ago&mdash;Mrs. Scarlett had
+never known a day when she had not been compelled to control her
+sentimental affections. From the first John had been an adorable baby,
+from the first <a name="Page_257" id="Page_257"></a>he had followed his father in the rejection of all
+sentiment as un-English, and even if larger questions are involved,
+unpatriotic, but also from the first he had hinted, in surprising,
+furtive, agitating moments, at poetry, imagination, hidden, romantic
+secrets. Tom, May, Clare, the older children, had never been known to
+hint at anything&mdash;hints were not at all in their line, and of
+imagination they had not, between them, enough to fill a silver
+thimble&mdash;they were good, sturdy, honest children, with healthy stomachs
+and an excellent determination to do exactly the things that their class
+and generation were bent upon doing. Mrs. Scarlett was fond of them, of
+course, and because she was a sentimental woman she was sometimes quite
+needlessly emotional about them, but John&mdash;no. John was of another
+world.</p>
+
+<p>The other children felt, beyond question, this difference. They deferred
+to John about everything and regarded him as leader of the family, and
+in their deference there was more than simply a recognition of his
+sturdy independence. Even John's father, Mr. Reginald Scarlett, a K.C.,
+and a man of a most decisive and emphatic bearing, felt John's
+difference.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258"></a>John's appearance was unengaging rather than handsome&mdash;a snub nose,
+grey eyes, rather large ears, a square, stocky body and short, stout
+legs. He was certainly the most independent small boy in England, and
+very obstinate; when any proposal that seemed on the face of it absurd
+was made to him, he shut up like a box. His mouth would close, his eyes
+disappear, all light and colour would die from his face, and it was as
+though he said: &quot;Well, if you are stupid enough to persist in this thing
+you can compel me, of course&mdash;you are physically stronger than I&mdash;but
+you will only get me like this quite dead and useless, and a lot of good
+may it do you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There were times, of course, when he could be most engagingly pleasant.
+He was courteous, on occasion, with all the beautiful manners that, we
+are told, are yielding so sadly before the spread of education and the
+speed of motor-cars&mdash;you never could foretell the guest that he would
+prefer, and it was nothing to him that here was an aunt, an uncle, or a
+grandfather who must be placated, and there an uninvited, undesired
+caller who mattered nothing at all. Mr. Scarlett's father he offended
+mortally by expressing, in front of him, <a name="Page_259" id="Page_259"></a>dislike for hair that grew in
+bushy profusion out of that old gentleman's ears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you could cut it off,&quot; he argued, in a voice thick with surprised
+disgust. His grandfather, who was a baronet, and very wealthy, predicted
+a dismal career for his grandchild.</p>
+
+<p>All the family realised quite definitely that nothing could be done with
+John. It was fortunate, indeed, that he was, on the whole, of a happy
+and friendly disposition. He liked the world and things that he found in
+it. He liked games, and food, and adventure&mdash;he liked quite tolerably
+his family&mdash;he liked immensely the prospect of going to school.</p>
+
+<p>There were other things&mdash;strange, uncertain things&mdash;that lay like the
+dim, uncertain pattern of some tapestry in the back of his mind. He gave
+<i>them</i>, as the months passed, less and less heed. Only sometimes when he
+was asleep....</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, his mother, with the heroism worthy of Boadicea, that great
+and savage warrior, kept his impulses of devotion, of sacrifice, of
+adoration, in her heart. John had no need of them; very long ago,
+Reginald Scarlett, then no K.C., with all the K.C. manner, had told her
+that <i>he</i> did not need them either. She gave her dinner parties, her
+receptions, her political <a name="Page_260" id="Page_260"></a>gatherings&mdash;tremulous and smiling she faced a
+world that thought her a wise, capable little woman, who would see her
+husband a judge and peer one of these days.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs. Scarlett&mdash;a woman of great social ambition,&quot; was their definition
+of her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs. Scarlett&mdash;the mother of John,&quot; was her own.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>On a certain night, early in the month of September, young John dreamt
+again&mdash;but for the first time for many months&mdash;the dream that had, in
+the old days, come to him so often. In those days, perhaps, he had not
+called it a dream. He had not given it a name, and in the quiet early
+days he had simply greeted, first a protector, then a friend. But that
+was all very long ago, when one was a baby and allowed oneself to
+imagine anything. He had, of course, grown ashamed of such confiding
+fancies, and as he had become more confident had shoved away, with
+stout, determined fingers, those dim memories, poignancies, regrets. How
+childish one had been at four, and five, and six! How independent and
+strong now, on <a name="Page_261" id="Page_261"></a>the very edge of the world of school! It perturbed him,
+therefore, that at this moment of crisis this old dream should recur,
+and it perturbed him the more, as he lay in bed next morning and thought
+it over, that it should have seemed to him at the time no dream at all,
+but simply a natural and actual occurrence.</p>
+
+<p>He had been asleep, and then he had been awake. He had seen, sitting on
+his bed and looking at him with mild, kind eyes his old Friend. His
+Friend was always the same, conveying so absolutely kindness and
+protection, and his beard, his hands, the appealing humour of his gaze,
+recalled to John the early years, with a swift, imperative urgency.
+John, so independent and assured, felt, nevertheless, again that old
+alarm of a strange, unreal world, and the necessity of an appeal for
+protection from the only one of them all who understood.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hallo!&quot; said John.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; said his Friend. &quot;It's many months since I've been to see you,
+isn't it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's not my fault,&quot; said John.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In a way, it is. You haven't wanted me, have you? Haven't given me a
+thought.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's been so much to do. I'm going to school, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_262" id="Page_262"></a>Of course. That's why I have come now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Beside the window a dark curtain blew forward a little, bulged as though
+some one were behind it, thinned again in the pale dim shadows of a moon
+that, beyond the window, fought with driving clouds. That curtain
+would&mdash;how many ages ago!&mdash;have tightened young John's heart with
+terror, and the contrast made by his present slim indifference drew him,
+in some warm, confiding fashion, closer to his visitor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Anyway, I'm jolly glad you've come now. I haven't really forgotten you,
+ever. Only in the day-time&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, you have,&quot; his Friend said, smiling. &quot;It's natural enough and
+right that you should. But if only you will believe always that I once
+was here, if only you'll not be persuaded into thinking me impossible,
+silly, absurd, sentimental&mdash;with ever so many other things&mdash;that's all
+I've come now to ask you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, how should I ever?&quot; John demanded indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After all, I <i>was</i> a help&mdash;for a long time when things were difficult
+and you had so much to learn&mdash;all that time you wanted me, and I was
+here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_263" id="Page_263"></a>Of course,&quot; said John politely, but feeling within him that warning of
+approaching sentiment that he had learnt by now so fundamentally to
+dread.</p>
+
+<p>Very well his friend understood his apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's all. I've only come to you now to ask you to make me a
+promise&mdash;a very easy one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes?&quot; said John.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's only that when you go off to school&mdash;before you leave this
+house&mdash;you will just, for a moment, remember me just then, and say
+good-bye to me. We've been a lot here in these rooms, in these passages,
+up and down together, and if only, as you go, you'll think of me, I'll
+be there.... Every year you've thought of me less&mdash;that doesn't
+matter&mdash;but it matters more than you know that you should remember me
+just for an instant, just to say good-bye. Will you promise me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, of course,&quot; said John.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't forget! Don't forget! Don't forget!&quot; And the kindly shadow had
+faded, the voice lingering about the room, mingling with the faint
+silver moonlight, passing out into the wider spaciousness of the rolling
+clouds.<a name="Page_264" id="Page_264"></a></p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>With the clear light of morning came the confident certainty that it had
+all been the merest dream, and yet that certainty did not sweep the
+affair, as it should have done, from young John's brain and heart. He
+was puzzled, perplexed, disturbed, unhappy. The &quot;twenty-third&quot; was
+approaching with terrible rapidity, and it was essential now that he
+should summon to aid all the forces of manly self-control and
+common-sense. And yet, just at this time, of all others, came that
+disturbing dream, and, in its train, absurd memories and fancies,
+burdened, too, with an urgent prompting of gratitude to some one or
+something. He shook it off, he obstinately rebelled, but he dreaded the
+night, and, with a sigh of relief, hailed the morning that followed a
+dreamless sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Worst of all, he caught himself yielding to thoughts like these: &quot;But he
+was kind to me&mdash;awfully decent&quot; (a phrase caught from his elder
+brother). &quot;I remember how He ...&quot; And then he would shake himself. &quot;It
+was only a silly old dream. He wasn't real a bit. I'm <a name="Page_265" id="Page_265"></a>not a rotten kid
+now that thinks fairies and all that true.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was bothered, too, by the affectionate sentiment (still disguised,
+but ever, as the days proceeded, more thinly) of his mother and sisters.
+The girls, May and Clare, adored young John. His elder brother was away
+with a school friend. John, therefore, was left to feminine attention,
+and very tiresome he found it. May and Clare, girls of no imagination,
+saw only the drama that they might extract for themselves out of the
+affair. They knew what school was like, especially at first&mdash;John was
+going to be utterly wretched, miserably homesick, bullied, kept in over
+horrible sums and impossible Latin exercises, ill-fed, and trodden upon
+at games. They did not really believe these things&mdash;they knew that their
+brother, Tom, had always had a most pleasant time, and John was
+precisely the type of boy who would prosper at school, but they
+indulged, just for this fortnight, their romantic sentiment, never
+alluded in speech to school and its terrors, but by their pitying
+avoidance of the subject filled the atmosphere with their agitation.
+They were working things for John&mdash;May, handkerchiefs, and Clare, a
+comforter; their voices were soft <a name="Page_266" id="Page_266"></a>and charged with omens, their eyes
+were bright with the drama of the event, as though they had been
+supporting some young Christian relation before his encounter with the
+lions. John hated more and more and more.</p>
+
+<p>But more terrible to him than his sisters was his mother. He was too
+young to understand what his departure meant to her, but he knew that
+there was something real here that needed comforting. He wanted to
+comfort her, and yet hated the atmosphere of emotion that he felt in
+himself as well as in her. They ought to know, he argued, that the least
+little thing would make him break down like an ass and behave as no man
+should, and yet they were doing everything.... Oh, if only Tom were
+here! Then, at any rate, would be brutal common-sense. There were
+special meals for him during this fortnight, and an eager inviting of
+his opinion as to how the days should be spent. On the last night of all
+they were to go to the theatre&mdash;a real play this time, none of your
+pantomime!</p>
+
+<p>There was, moreover, all the business of clothes&mdash;fine, rich, stiff new
+garments&mdash;a new Eton jacket, a round black coat, a shining bowler-hat,
+new boots. He watched this stir with <a name="Page_267" id="Page_267"></a>a brave assumption that he had
+been surveying it all his life, but a horrible tight pain in the bottom
+of his throat told him that he was a bravado, almost a liar.</p>
+
+<p>He found himself, now that the &quot;twenty-third&quot; was gaping right there in
+front of him, with its fiery throat wide and flaming, doing the
+strangest thing. He was frightened of the dusk, he would run through the
+passage and up the stairs at breathless speed, he would look for a
+moment at the lamp-lit square with the lights of the opposite houses
+tigers' eyes, and the trees filmy like smoke, then would hastily draw
+the curtains and greet the warm inhabited room with a little gasp of
+reassurance. Strangest of all, he found himself often in the old nursery
+at the top of the house. Very seldom did any one come there now, and it
+had the pathos of a room grown cold and comfortless. Most of the toys
+were put away or given to hospitals, but the rocking-horse with his
+Christmas-tree tail was there, and the doll's-house, and a railway with
+trains and stations.</p>
+
+<p>He was here. He was saying to himself: &quot;Yes, it was just over there, by
+the window, that He came that time. He talked to me there. That other
+time it was when I was down by <a name="Page_268" id="Page_268"></a>the doll's-house. He showed me the smoke
+coming up from the chimneys when the sun stuck through, and the moon was
+all red one night, and the stars.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He found himself gazing out over the square, over the twisted chimneys,
+that seemed to be laughing at him, over the shining wires and glittering
+roofs, out to the mist that wrapped the city beyond his vision&mdash;so vast,
+so huge, so many people&mdash;March Square was nothing. He was nothing&mdash;John
+Scarlett nothing at all.</p>
+
+<p>Then, with a sigh, he turned back. His Friend, the other night, had been
+real enough. Fairies, ghosts, goblins and dragons&mdash;everything was real.
+Everything. It was all terrible, terrible to think of, but, above and
+beyond all else, he must not forget, on the day of his departure, that
+farewell; something disastrous would come upon him were he so
+ungrateful.</p>
+
+<p>And then he would go downstairs again, down to newspapers and fires,
+toast and tea, the large print of Frith's &quot;Railway Station,&quot; and the
+coloured supplement of Greiffenhagen's &quot;Idyll,&quot; and the tattered numbers
+of the <i>Windsor</i> and the <i>Strand</i> magazines, and, behold, all these
+things were real and all the <a name="Page_269" id="Page_269"></a>things in the nursery unreal. Could it be
+that both worlds were real? Even now, at his tender years, that old
+business of connecting the Dream and the Business was at his throat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Teal Tea! Tea!&quot; Frantic screams from May. &quot;There's some new jam, and,
+John, mother says she wants you to try on some underclothes afterwards.
+Those others didn't do, she said....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There came then the disastrous hour&mdash;an hour that John was never, in all
+his after-life, to forget. On a wild stormy evening he found himself in
+the nursery. A week remained now&mdash;to-day fortnight he would be in
+another world, an alarming, fierce, tremendous world. He looked at the
+rocking-horse with its absurd tail and the patch on its back, that had
+been worn away by its faithful riders, and suddenly he was crying. This
+was a thing that he never did, that he had strenuously, persistently
+refrained from doing all these weeks, but now, in the strangest way, it
+was the conviction that the world into which he was going wouldn't care
+in the least for the doll's-house, and would mock brutally, derisively
+at the rocking-horse, that defeated him. It was even the knowledge
+<a name="Page_270" id="Page_270"></a>that, in a very short time, he himself would be mocking.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down on the floor and cried. The door opened; before he could
+resist or make any movement, his mother's arms were about him, his
+mother's cheek against his, and she was whispering: &quot;Oh, my darling, my
+darling!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The horrible thing then occurred. He was savage, with a wild, fierce,
+protesting rage. His cheeks flamed. His tears were instantly dried. That
+he should have been caught thus! That, when he had been presenting so
+brave and callous a front to the world, at the one weak and shameful
+moment he should have been discovered! He scarcely realised that this
+was his mother, he did not care who it was. It was as though he had been
+delivered into the most horrible and shameful of traps. He pushed her
+from him; he struggled fiercely on his feet. He regarded her with fiery
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It isn't&mdash;I wasn't&mdash;you oughtn't to have come in. You needn't
+imagine&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He burst from the room. A shameful, horrible experience.</p>
+
+<p>But it cannot be denied that he was ashamed afterwards. He loved his
+mother, whereas he <a name="Page_271" id="Page_271"></a>merely liked the rest of the family. He would not
+hurt her for worlds, and yet, why <i>must</i> she&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And strangely, mysteriously, her attitude was confused in his mind with
+his dreams, and his Friend, and the red moon, and the comic chimneys.</p>
+
+<p>He knew, however, that, during this last week he must be especially nice
+to his mother, and, with an elaborate courtesy and strained attention,
+he did his best.</p>
+
+<p>The last night arrived, and, very smart and excited, they went to the
+theatre. The boxes had been packed, and stood in a shining and
+self-conscious trio in John's bedroom. The new play-box was there, with
+its stolid freshness and the black bands at the corners; inside, there
+was a multitude of riches, and it was, of course, a symbol of absolute
+independence and maturity. John was wearing the new Eton jacket, also a
+new white waistcoat; the parting in his hair was straighter than it had
+ever been before, his ears were pink. The world seemed a confused
+mixture of soap and starch and lights. Piccadilly Circus was a cauldron
+of bubbling colour.</p>
+
+<p>His breath came in little gasps, but his face, <a name="Page_272" id="Page_272"></a>with its snub nose and
+large mouth, was grave and composed; up and down his back little shivers
+were running. When the car stopped outside the theatre he gave a little
+gulp. His father, who was, for once, moved by the occasion, said an
+idiotic thing;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Excited, my son?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With his head high he walked ahead of them, trod on a lady's dress,
+blushed, heard his father say: &quot;Look where you're going, my boy,&quot; heard
+May giggle, frowned indignantly, and was conscious of the horrid
+pressure of his collar-stud against his throat; arrived, hot, confused,
+and very proud, in the dark splendour of the box.</p>
+
+<p>The first play of his life, and how magnificent a play it was! It might
+have been a rotten affair with endless conversations&mdash;luckily there were
+no discussions at all. All the characters either loved or hated one
+another too deeply to waste time in talk. They were Roundheads and
+Cavaliers, and a splendid hero, who had once been a bad fellow, but was
+now sorry, fought nine Roundheads at once, and was tortured &quot;off&quot; with
+red lights and his lady waiting for results before a sympathetic
+audience.</p>
+
+<p>During the torture scene John's heart <a name="Page_273" id="Page_273"></a>stopped entirely, his brow was
+damp, his hand sought his mother's, found it, and held it very hard.
+She, as she felt his hot fingers pressing against hers, began to see the
+stage through a mist of tears. She had behaved very well during the past
+weeks, but the soul that she adored was, to-morrow morning, to be hurled
+out, wildly, helter-skelter, to receive such tarnishing as it might
+please Fate to think good.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I <i>can't</i> let him go! I <i>can't</i> let him go!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The curtain came down.</p>
+
+<p>John turned, his eyes wide, his cheeks pale with a pink spot on the
+middle of each.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I say, pass those chocolates along!&quot; he whispered hoarsely. Then,
+recovering himself a little: &quot;I wonder what they did to him? They <i>must</i>
+have done something to his legs, because they were all crooked when he
+came out.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="EPILOGUE" id="EPILOGUE"></a><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274"></a>EPILOGUE</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Hugh Seymour</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>It happened that Hugh Seymour, in the month of December, 1911, found
+himself in the dreamy orchard-bound cathedral city of Polchester.
+Polchester, as all its inhabitants well know, is famous for its
+cathedral, its buns, and its river, the cathedral being one of the
+oldest, the buns being among the sweetest, and the Pol being amongst the
+most beautiful of the cathedrals, buns and rivers of Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>Seymour had known Polchester since he was five years old, when he first
+lived there with his father and mother, but he had only once during the
+last ten years been able to visit Glebeshire, and then he had been to
+Rafiel, a fishing village on the south coast. He had, therefore, <a name="Page_275" id="Page_275"></a>not
+seen Polchester since his childhood, and now it seemed to him to have
+shrivelled from a world of infinite space and mystery into a toy town
+that would be soon packed away in a box and hidden in a cupboard. As he
+walked up and down the cobbled streets he was moved by a great affection
+and sentiment for it. As he climbed the hill to the cathedral, as he
+stood inside the Close with its lawns, its elm trees, its crooked
+cobbled walks, its gardens, its houses with old bow windows and deep
+overhanging doors, he was again a very small boy with soap in his eyes,
+a shining white collar tight about his neck, and his Eton jacket stiff
+and unfriendly. He was walking up the aisle with his mother, his boots
+creaked, the bell's note was dropping, dropping, the fat verger with his
+staff was undoing the cord of their seat, the boys of the choir-school
+were looking at him and he was blushing, he was on his knees and the
+edge of the kneeler was cutting into his trousers, the precentor's
+voice, as remote from things human as the cathedral bell itself, was
+crying, &quot;Dearly beloved brethren.&quot; He would stop there and wonder
+whether there could be any connection between that time and this,
+whether those things had really happened to <a name="Page_276" id="Page_276"></a>him, whether he might now
+be dreaming and would wake up presently to find that it would be soon
+time to start for the cathedral, that if he and his sisters were good
+they would have a chapter of the &quot;Pillars of the House&quot; read to them
+after tea, with one chocolate each at the end of every two pages. No, he
+was real, March Square was real, Polchester was real, Glebeshire and
+London were real together&mdash;nothing died, nothing passed away.</p>
+
+<p>On the second afternoon of his stay he was standing in the Close, bathed
+now in yellow sunlight, when he saw coming towards him a familiar
+figure. One glance was enough to assure him that this was the Rev.
+William Lasher, once Vicar of Clinton St. Mary, now Canon of Polchester
+Cathedral. Mr. Lasher it was, and Mr. Lasher the same as he had ever
+been. He was walking with his old energetic stride, his head up, his
+black overcoat flapping behind him, his eyes sharply investigating in
+and out and all round him. He saw Seymour, but did not recognise him,
+and would have passed on.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't know me?&quot; said Seymour, holding out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_277" id="Page_277"></a>I beg your pardon, I&mdash;&mdash;&quot; said Canon Lasher.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Seymour&mdash;Hugh Seymour&mdash;whom you were once kind enough to look after at
+Clinton St. Mary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why! Fancy! Indeed. My dear boy. My dear boy!&quot; Mr. Lasher was immensely
+cordial in exactly his old, healthy, direct manner. He insisted that
+Seymour should come with him and drink a cup of tea. Mrs. Lasher would
+be delighted. They had often wondered.... Only the other day Mrs. Lasher
+was saying.... &quot;And you're one of our novelists, I hear,&quot; said Canon
+Lasher in exactly the tone that he would have used had Seymour taken to
+tight-rope walking at the Halls.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no!&quot; said Seymour, laughing, &quot;that's another man of my name. I'm at
+the Bar.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah,&quot; said the Canon, greatly relieved, &quot;that's good! That's good! Very
+good indeed!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Lasher was, of course, immensely surprised. &quot;Why! Fancy! And it was
+only yesterday! Whoever would have expected! I never was more
+astonished! And tea just ready! How fortunate! Just fancy you meeting
+the Canon!&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278"></a>The Canon seemed, to Seymour, greatly mellowed by comfort and
+prosperity; there was even the possibility of corpulence in the not
+distant future. He was, indeed, a proper Canon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who,&quot; said Seymour, &quot;has Clinton St. Mary now?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One of the Trenchards,&quot; said Mr. Lasher. &quot;As you know, a very famous
+old Glebeshire family. There are some younger cousins of the Garth
+Trenchards, I believe. You know of the Trenchards of Garth? No? Ah, very
+delightful people. You should know them. Yes, Jim Trenchard, the man at
+Clinton, is a few years senior to myself. He was priest when I was
+deacon in&mdash;let me see&mdash;dear me, how the years fly&mdash;in&mdash;'pon my word, how
+time goes!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>All of which gave Seymour to understand that the Rev. James Trenchard
+was a failure in life, although a good enough fellow. Then it was that
+suddenly, in the heart of that warm and cosy drawing-room, Hugh Seymour
+was, sharply, as though by a douche of cold water, awakened to the fact
+that he must see Clinton St. Mary again. It appeared to him, now, with
+its lanes, its hedges, the village green, the moor, <a name="Page_279" id="Page_279"></a>the Borhaze Road,
+the pirates, yes, and the Scarecrow. It came there, across the Canon's
+sumptuous Turkey carpet, and demanded his presence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must go,&quot; Seymour said, getting up and speaking in a strange,
+bewildered voice as though he were just awakening from a dream. He left
+them, at last, promising to come and see them again.</p>
+
+<p>He heard the Canon's voice in his ears: &quot;Always a knife and fork, my
+boy ... any time if you let us know.&quot; He stepped down into the little
+lighted streets, into the town with its cosy security and some scent,
+even then in the heart of winter, perhaps, from the fruit of its many
+orchards. The moon, once again an orange feather in the sky, reminded
+him of those early days that seemed now to be streaming in upon him from
+every side.</p>
+
+<p>Early next morning he caught the ten o'clock train to Clinton.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>&quot;Why,&quot; in the train he continued to say to himself, &quot;have I let all
+these years pass with<a name="Page_280" id="Page_280"></a>out returning? Why have I never returned?... Why
+have I never returned?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The slow, sleepy train (the London express never stops at Clinton)
+jerked through the deep valleys, heavy with woods, golden brown at their
+heart, the low hills carrying, on their horizons, white drifting clouds
+that flung long grey shadows. Seymour felt suddenly as though he could
+never return to London again exactly as he had returned to it before.
+&quot;That period of my life is over, quite over.... Some one is taking me
+down here now&mdash;I know that I am being compelled to go. But I want to go.
+I am happier than I have ever been in my life before.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Often, in Glebeshire, December days are warm and mellow like the early
+days of September. It so was now; the country was wrapped in with happy
+content, birds rose and hung, like telegraph wires, beyond the windows.
+On a slanting brown field gulls from the sea, white and shining, were
+hovering, wheeling, sinking into the soil. And yet, as he went, he was
+not leaving March Square behind, but rather taking it with him. He was
+taking the children too&mdash;Bim, Angelina, John, even Sarah (against her
+will), and it was not her who was in charge of <a name="Page_281" id="Page_281"></a>the party. He felt as
+though, the railway carriages were full and he ought to say continually,
+&quot;Now, Bim, be quiet. Sit still and look at the picture-book I gave you.
+Sarah, I shall leave you at the next station if you aren't careful,&quot; and
+that she replied, giving him one of her dark sarcastic looks, &quot;I don't
+care if you do. I know how to get home all right without your help.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He wished that he hadn't brought her, and yet he couldn't help himself.
+They all had to come. Then, as he looked about the empty carriage, he
+laughed at himself. Only a fat farmer reading <i>The Glebeshire Times</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Marnin', sir,&quot; said the farmer. &quot;Warm Christmas we'll be havin', I
+reckon. Yes, indeed. I see the Bishop's dying&mdash;poor old soul too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When they arrived at Clinton he caught himself turning round as though
+to collect his charges; he thought that the farmer looked at him
+curiously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Coming back again has turned my wits.... Now, Angelina, hurry up, can't
+wait all day.&quot; He stopped then abruptly, to pull himself together. &quot;Look
+here, you're alone, and if you think you're not, you're mad. Remem<a name="Page_282" id="Page_282"></a>ber
+that you're at the Bar and not even a novelist, so that you have no
+excuse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The little platform&mdash;usually swept by all the winds of the sea, but now
+as warm as a toasted bun&mdash;flooded him with memory. It was a platform
+especially connected with school, with departure and return&mdash;departures
+when money in one's pocket and cake in one's play-box did not compensate
+for the hot pain in one's throat and the cold marble feeling of one's
+legs; but when every feeling of every sort was swallowed by the great
+overwhelming desire that the train would go so that one need not any
+longer be agonised by the efforts of replying to Mr. Lasher's continued
+last words: &quot;Well, good-bye, my boy. A good time, both at work and
+play&quot;&mdash;the train was off.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ticket, please, sir!&quot; said the long-legged young man at the little
+wooden gate. Seymour plunged down into the deep, high-hedged lane that
+even now, in winter, seemed to cover him with a fragrant odour of green
+leaves, of flowers, of wet soil, of sea spray. He was now so conscious
+of his company that the knowledge of it could not be avoided. It seemed
+to him that he heard them chattering together, knew <a name="Page_283" id="Page_283"></a>that behind his
+back Sarah was trying to whisper horrid things in Bim's ear, and that he
+was laughing at her, which made her furious.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must have eaten something,&quot; he thought. &quot;It's the strangest feeling
+I've ever had. I just won't take any notice of them. I'll go on as
+though they weren't there.&quot; But the strangest thing of all was that he
+felt as though he himself were being taken. He had the most comfortable
+feeling that there was no need for him to give any thought or any kind
+of trouble. &quot;You just leave it all to me,&quot; some one said to him. &quot;I've
+made all the arrangements.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The lane was hot, and the midday winter sun covered the paths with pools
+and splashes of colour. He came out on to the common and saw the
+village, the long straggling street with the white-washed cottages and
+the hideous grey-slate roofs; the church tower, rising out of the elms,
+and the pond, running to the common's edge, its water chequered with the
+reflection of the white clouds above it.</p>
+
+<p>The main street of Clinton is not a lovely street; the inland villages
+and towns of Glebeshire are, unless you love them, amongst the <a name="Page_284" id="Page_284"></a>ugliest
+things in England, but every step caught at Seymour's heart.</p>
+
+<p>There was Mr. Roscoe's shop which was also the post-office, and in its
+window was the same collection of liquorice sticks, saffron buns, reels
+of cotton, a coloured picture of the royal family, views of Trezent
+Head, Borhaze Beach, St. Arthe Church, cotton blouses made apparently
+for dolls, so minute were they, three books, &quot;Ben Hur,&quot; &quot;The Wide, Wide
+World,&quot; and &quot;St. Elmo,&quot; two bottles of sweets, some eau-de-Cologne, and
+a large white card with bone buttons on it. So moving was this
+collection to Seymour that he stared at the window as though he were in
+a trance.</p>
+
+<p>The arrangement of the articles was exactly the same as it had been in
+the earlier days&mdash;the royal family in the middle, supported by the jars
+of sweets; the three books, very dusty and faded, in the very front; and
+the bootlaces and liquorice sticks all mixed together as though Mr.
+Roscoe had forgotten which was which.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look here, Bim,&quot; he said aloud, &quot;I've left you up&mdash;I really am going
+off my head!&quot; he thought. He hurried away. &quot;If I <i>am</i> mad I'm awfully
+happy,&quot; he said.<a name="Page_285" id="Page_285"></a></p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>The white vicarage gate closed behind him with precisely the
+old-remembered sound&mdash;the whiz, the sudden startled pause, the satisfied
+click. Seymour stood on the sun-bathed lawn, glittering now like green
+glass, and stared at the house. Its square front of faded red brick
+preserved a tranquil silence; the only sound in the place was the
+movement of some birds, his old friend the robin perhaps in the laurel
+bushes behind him.</p>
+
+<p>Although the sun was so warm there was in the air a foreshadowing of a
+frosty night; and some Christmas roses, smiling at him from the flower
+beds to right and left of the hall door, seemed to him that they
+remembered him; but, indeed, the whole house seemed to tell him that.
+There it waited for him, so silent, laid ready for his acceptance under
+the blue sky and with no breath of wind stirring. So beautiful was the
+silence, that he made a movement with his hand as though to tell his
+companion to be quiet. He felt that they were crowded in an interested,
+amused group behind him waiting to see what he would do. Then a little
+bell <a name="Page_286" id="Page_286"></a>rang somewhere in the house, a voice cried &quot;Martha!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He moved forward and pulled the wire of the bell; there was a wheezy
+jangle, a pause, and then a sharp irritated sound far away in the heart
+of the house, as though he had hit it in the wind and it protested. An
+old woman, very neat (she was certainly a Glebeshire woman), told him
+that Mr. Trenchard was at home. She took him through the dark passages
+into the study that he knew so well, and said that Mr. Trenchard would
+be with him in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>It was the same study, and yet how different! Many of the old pieces of
+furniture were there&mdash;the deep, worn leather arm-chair in which Mr.
+Lasher had been sitting when he had his famous discussion with Mr.
+Pidgen, the same bookshelves, the same tiles in the fireplace with Bible
+pictures painted on them, the same huge black coal-scuttle, the same
+long, dark writing-table. But instead of the old order and discipline
+there was now a confusion that gave the room the air of a waste-paper
+basket. Books were piled, up and down, in the shelves, they dribbled on
+to the floor and lay in little trickling streams across the carpet; <a name="Page_287" id="Page_287"></a>old
+bundles of papers, yellow with age, tied with string and faded blue
+tape, were in heaps upon the window-sill, and in tumbling cascades in
+the very middle of the floor; the writing-table itself was so hopelessly
+littered with books, sermon papers, old letters and new letters, bottles
+of ink, bottles of glue, three huge volumes of a Bible Concordance,
+photographs, and sticks of sealing-wax, that the man who could be happy
+amid such confusion must surely be a kindly and benevolent creature. How
+orderly had been Mr. Lasher's table, with all the pens in rows, and
+little sharp drawers that clicked, marked A, B, and C, to put papers
+into.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trenchard entered.</p>
+
+<p>He was what the room had prophesied&mdash;fat, red-faced, bald, extremely
+untidy, with stains on his coat and tobacco on his coat, that was
+turning a little green, and chalk on his trousers. His eyes shone with
+pleased friendliness, but there was a little pucker in his forehead, as
+though his life had not always been pleasant. He rubbed his nose, as he
+talked, with the back of his hand, and made sudden little darts at the
+chalk on his trousers, as though he would brush it off. He had the face
+of an innocent baby, <a name="Page_288" id="Page_288"></a>and when he spoke he looked at his companion with
+exactly the gaze of trusting confidence that a child bestows upon its
+elders.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope you will forgive me,&quot; said Seymour, smiling; &quot;I've come, too, at
+such an awkward time, but the truth is I simply couldn't help myself. I
+ought, besides, to catch the four o'clock train back to Polchester.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, indeed,&quot; said Mr. Trenchard, smiling, rubbing his hands together,
+and altogether in the dark as to what his visitor might be wanting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, but I haven't explained; how stupid of me! My name is Seymour. I
+was here during several years, as a small boy, with Canon Lasher&mdash;in my
+holidays, you know. It's years ago, and I've never been back. I was at
+Polchester this morning and suddenly felt that I must come over. I
+wondered whether you'd be so good as to let me look a little at the
+house and garden.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing that Mr. Trenchard would like better. How was Canon
+Lasher? Well? Good. They met sometimes at meetings at Polchester. Canon
+Lasher, Mr. Trenchard believed, liked it better at Polchester than at
+Clinton. Honestly, it would break Mr. Trench<a name="Page_289" id="Page_289"></a>ard's heart if <i>he</i> had to
+leave the place. But there was no danger of that now. Would Mr.
+Seymour&mdash;his wife would be delighted&mdash;would he stay to luncheon?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, that is too kind of you,&quot; said Seymour, hesitating, &quot;but there are
+so many of us, such a lot&mdash;I mean,&quot; he said hurriedly, at Mr.
+Trenchard's innocent stare of surprise, &quot;that it's too hard on Mrs.
+Trenchard, with so little notice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He broke off confusedly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall only be too delighted,&quot; said Mr. Trenchard. &quot;And if you have
+friends ...&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no,&quot; said Seymour, &quot;I'm quite alone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When, afterwards, he was introduced to Mrs. Trenchard in the
+drawing-room, he liked her at once. She was a little woman, very neat,
+with grey hair brushed back from her forehead. She was like some fresh,
+mild-coloured fruit, and an old-fashioned dress of rather faded green
+silk, and a large locket that she wore gave her a settled, tranquil air
+as though she had always been the same, and would continue so for many
+years. She had a high, fresh colour, a beautiful complexion and her
+hands had the delicacy of fragile egg-shell china. She <a name="Page_290" id="Page_290"></a>was cheerful and
+friendly, but was, nevertheless, a sad woman; her eyes were dark and her
+voice was a little forced as though she had accustomed herself to be in
+good spirits. The love between herself and her husband was very pleasant
+to see.</p>
+
+<p>Like all simple people, they immediately trusted Seymour with their
+confidence. During luncheon they told him many things, of Rasselas,
+where Mr. Trenchard had been a curate, at their joy at getting the
+Clinton living, and of their happiness at being there, of the kindness
+of the people, of the beauty of the country, of their neighbours, of
+their relations, the George Trenchards, at Garth of Glebeshire
+generally, and what it meant to be a Trenchard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There've been Trenchards in Glebeshire,&quot; said the Vicar, greatly
+excited, &quot;since the beginning of time. If Adam and Eve were here, and
+Glebeshire was the Garden of Eden, as I daresay it was, why, then Adam
+was a Trenchard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards when they were smoking in the confused study, Seymour learnt
+why Mrs. Trenchard was a sad woman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We've had one trial, under God's grace,&quot;<a name="Page_291" id="Page_291"></a> said Mr. Trenchard. &quot;There
+was a boy and a girl&mdash;Francis and Jessamy. They died, both, in a bad
+epidemic of typhoid here, five years ago. Francis was five, Jessamy
+four. 'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.' It was hard losing
+both of them. They got ill together and died on the same day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He puffed furiously at his pipe. &quot;Mrs. Trenchard keeps the nursery just
+the same as it used to be. She'll show it to you, I daresay.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Later, when Mrs. Trenchard took him over the house, his sight of the
+nursery was more moving to him than any of his old memories. She
+unlocked the door with a sharp turn of the wrist and showed him the wide
+sun-lit room, still with fresh curtains, with a wall-paper of robins and
+cherries, with the toys&mdash;dolls, soldiers, a big dolls'-house, a
+rocking-horse, boxes of bricks.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Our two children, who died five years ago,&quot; she said in her quiet, calm
+voice, &quot;this was their room. These were their things. I haven't been
+able to change it as yet. Mr. Lasher,&quot; she said, smiling up at him, &quot;had
+no children, and you were too old for a nursery, I suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292"></a>It was then, as he stood in the doorway, bathed in a shaft of sunlight,
+that he was again, with absolute physical consciousness, aware of the
+children's presence. He could tell that they were pressing behind him,
+staring past him into the room, he could almost hear their whispered
+exclamations of delight.</p>
+
+<p>He turned to Mrs. Trenchard as though she must have perceived that he
+was not alone. But she had noticed nothing; with another sharp turn of
+the wrist she had locked the door.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>To-morrow was Christmas Eve: he had promised to spend Christmas with
+friends in Somerset. Now he went to the little village post-office and
+telegraphed that he was detained; he felt at that moment as though he
+would never like to leave Clinton again.</p>
+
+<p>The inn, the &quot;Hearty Cow,&quot; was kept by people who were new to
+him&mdash;&quot;foreigners, from up-country.&quot; The fat landlord complained to
+Seymour of the slowness of the Clinton people, that they never could be
+induced to see things to their own proper advantage. &quot;A dead-<a name="Page_293" id="Page_293"></a>alive
+place <i>I</i> call it,&quot; he said; &quot;but still, mind you,&quot; he added, &quot;it's got
+a sort of a 'old on one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>From the diamond-paned windows of his bedroom next morning he surveyed a
+glorious day, the very sky seemed to glitter with frost, and when his
+window was opened he could hear quite plainly the bell on Trezent Rock,
+so crystal was the air. He walked that morning for miles; he covered all
+his old ground, picking up memories as though he were building a
+pleasure-house. Here was his dream, there was disappointment, here that
+flaming discovery, there this sudden terror&mdash;nothing had changed for
+him, the Moor, St. Arthe Church, St. Dreot Woods, the high white gates
+and mysterious hidden park of Portcullis House&mdash;all were as though it
+had been yesterday that he had last seen them. Polchester had dwindled
+before his giant growth. Here the moor, the woods, the roads had grown,
+and it was he that had shrunken.</p>
+
+<p>At last he stood on the sand-dunes that bounded the moor and looked down
+upon the marbled sand, blue and gold after the retreating tide. The
+faint lisp and curdle of the sea sang to him. A row of sea-gulls, one
+and then <a name="Page_294" id="Page_294"></a>another quivering in the light, stood at the water's edge; the
+stiff grass that pushed its way fiercely from the sand of the dunes was
+white with hoar-frost, and the moon, silver now, and sharply curved,
+came climbing behind the hill.</p>
+
+<p>He turned back and went home. He had promised to have tea at the
+Vicarage, and he found Mrs. Trenchard putting holly over the pictures in
+the little dark square hall. She looked as though she had always been
+there, and as though, in some curious way, the holly, with its bright
+red berries, especially belonged to her.</p>
+
+<p>She asked him to help her, and Seymour thought that he must have known
+her all his life. She had a tranquil, restful air, but, now and then,
+hummed a little tune. She was very tidy as she moved about, picking up
+little scraps of holly. A row of pins shone in her green dress. After a
+while they went upstairs and hung holly in the passages.</p>
+
+<p>Seymour had turned his back to her and was balanced on a little ladder,
+when he heard her utter a sharp little cry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The nursery door's open,&quot; she said. He turned, and saw very clearly,
+against the half-<a name="Page_295" id="Page_295"></a>light, her startled eyes. Her hands were pressed
+against her dress and holly had fallen at her feet. He saw, too, that
+the nursery door was ajar.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I locked it myself, yesterday; you saw me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She gasped as though she had been running, and he saw that her face was
+white.</p>
+
+<p>He moved forward quickly and pushed open the door. The room itself was
+lightened by the gleam from the passage and also by the moonlight that
+came dimly through the window. The shadow of some great tree was flung
+upon the floor. He saw, at once, that the room was changed. The
+rocking-horse that had been yesterday against the wall had now been
+dragged far across the floor. The white front of the dolls'-house had
+swung open and the furniture was disturbed as though some child had been
+interrupted in his play. Four large dolls sat solemnly round a dolls'
+tea-table, and a dolls' tea service was arranged in front of them. In
+the very centre of the room a fine castle of bricks had been rising, a
+perfect Tower of Babel in its frustrated ambition.</p>
+
+<p>The shadow of the great tree shook and quivered above these things.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296"></a>Seymour saw Mrs. Trenchard's face, he heard her whisper:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is it? What is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then she fell upon her knees near the tower of bricks. She gazed at
+them, stared round the rest of the room, then looked up at him, saying
+very quietly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I knew that they would come back one day. I always waited. It must have
+been they. Only Francis ever built the bricks like that, with the red
+ones in the middle. He always said they <i>must</i> be....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She broke off and then, with her hands pressed to her face, cried, so
+softly and so gently that she made scarcely any sound.</p>
+
+<p>Seymour left her.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>He passed through the house without any one seeing him, crossed the
+common, and went up to his bedroom at the inn. He sat down before his
+window with his back to the room. He flung the rattling panes wide.</p>
+
+<p>The room looked out across on to the moor, and he could see, in the
+moonlight, the faint thread of the beginning of the Borhaze Road.<a name="Page_297" id="Page_297"></a> To
+the left of this there was some sharp point of light, some cottage
+perhaps. It flashed at him as though it were trying to attract his
+attention. The night was so magical, the world so wonderful, so without
+bound or limit, that he was prepared now to wait, passively, for his
+experience. That point of light was where the Scarecrow used to be, just
+where the brown fields rise up against the horizon. In all his walks
+to-day he had deliberately avoided that direction. The Scarecrow would
+not be there now; he had always in his heart fancied it there, and he
+would not change that picture that he had of it. But now the light
+flashed at him. As he stared at it he knew that to-day he had completed
+that adventure that had begun for him many years ago, on that Christmas
+Eve when he had met Mr. Pidgen.</p>
+
+<p>They were whispering in his ear, &quot;We've had a lovely day. It was the
+most beautiful nursery.... Two other children came too. They wore
+<i>their</i> things....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What, after all,&quot; said his Friend's voice, &quot;does it mean but that if
+you love enough we are with you everywhere&mdash;for ever?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then the children's voices again:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_298" id="Page_298"></a>She thought they'd come back, but they'd never gone away&mdash;really, you
+know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He gazed once more at the point of light, and then turned round and
+faced the dark room....</p>
+
+
+<h5>THE END</h5>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14201 ***</div>
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+eBook #14201 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14201)
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Scarecrow, by Hugh Walpole
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Golden Scarecrow
+
+Author: Hugh Walpole
+
+Release Date: November 29, 2004 [EBook #14201]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN SCARECROW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sara Peattie, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a>THE GOLDEN SCARECROW</h1>
+
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+
+<h2>HUGH WALPOLE</h2>
+
+
+<h4>AUTHOR OF</h4>
+
+<h4>&quot;THE DUCHESS OF WREXE,&quot; &quot;FORTITUDE,&quot; &quot;THE PRELUDE TO
+ADVENTURE,&quot; &quot;THE WOODEN HORSE.&quot; ETC.</h4>
+
+<h3>NEW YORK</h3>
+
+<h4>1915</h4>
+
+<h5>GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a></h5>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Content">
+<tr><th align='right'>Chapter</th><th align='left'>&nbsp;</th><th align='right'>Page</th></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><a href="#PROLOGUE">Prologue--Hugh Seymour</a></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td><td align='left'>Henry Fitzgeorge Strether</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td><td align='left'>Ernest Henry</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td><td align='left'>Angelina</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td><td align='left'>Bim Rochester</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td><td align='left'>Nancy Ross</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td><td align='left'>'Enery</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td><td align='left'>Barbara Flint</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_198">198</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td><td align='left'>Sarah Trefusis</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_226">226</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td><td align='left'>Young John Scarlet</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_256">256</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><a href="#EPILOGUE">Epilogue</a></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_274">274</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a></p>
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="PROLOGUE" id="PROLOGUE"></a>PROLOGUE</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Hugh Seymour</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>When Hugh Seymour was nine years of age he was sent from Ceylon, where
+his parents lived, to be educated in England. His relations having, for
+the most part, settled in foreign countries, he spent his holidays as a
+very minute and pale-faced &quot;paying guest&quot; in various houses where other
+children were of more importance than he, or where children as a race
+were of no importance at all. It was in this way that he became during
+certain months of 1889 and 1890 and '91 a resident in the family of the
+Rev. William Lasher, Vicar of Clinton St. Mary, that large rambling
+village on the edge of Roche St. Mary Moor in South Glebeshire.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>He spent there the two Christmases of 1890 and 1891 (when he was ten
+and eleven years of age), and it is with the second of these that the
+following incident, and indeed the whole of this book, has to do. Hugh
+Seymour could not, at the period of which I write, be called an
+attractive child; he was not even &quot;interesting&quot; or &quot;unusual.&quot; He was
+very minutely made, with bones so brittle that it seemed that, at any
+moment, he might crack and splinter into sharp little pieces; and I am
+afraid that no one would have minded very greatly had this occurred. But
+although, he was so thin his face had a white and overhanging
+appearance, his cheeks being pale and puffy and his under-lip jutted
+forward in front of projecting teeth&mdash;he was known as the &quot;White Rabbit&quot;
+by his schoolfellows. He was not, however, so ugly as this appearance
+would apparently convey, for his large, grey eyes, soft and even, at
+times agreeably humorous, were pleasant and cheerful.</p>
+
+<p>During these years when he knew Mr. Lasher he was undoubtedly
+unfortunate. He was shortsighted, but no one had, as yet, discovered
+this, and he was, therefore, blamed for much clumsiness that he could
+not prevent and for a good <a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>deal of sensitiveness that came quite simply
+from his eagerness to do what he was told and his inability to see his
+way to do it. He was not, at this time, easy with strangers and seemed
+to them both conceited and awkward. Conceit was far from him&mdash;he was, in
+fact, amazed at so feeble a creature as himself!&mdash;but awkward he was,
+and very often greedy, selfish, impetuous, untruthful and even cruel: he
+was nearly always dirty, and attributed this to the evil wishes of some
+malign fairy who flung mud upon him, dropped him into puddles and
+covered him with ink simply for the fun of the thing!</p>
+
+<p>He did not, at this time, care very greatly for reading; he told himself
+stories&mdash;long stories with enormous families in them, trains of
+elephants, ropes and ropes of pearls, towers of ivory, peacocks, and
+strange meals of saffron buns, roast chicken, and gingerbread. His
+active, everyday concern, however, was to become a sportsman; he wished
+to be the best cricketer, the best footballer, the fastest runner of his
+school, and he had not&mdash;even then faintly he knew it&mdash;the remotest
+chance of doing any of these things even moderately well. He was bullied
+at school until his ap<a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>pointment as his dormitory's story-teller gave
+him a certain status, but his efforts at cricket and football were
+mocked with jeers and insults. He could not throw a cricket-ball, he
+could not see to catch one after it was thrown to him, did he try to
+kick a football he missed it, and when he had run for five minutes he
+saw purple skies and silver stars and has cramp in his legs. He had,
+however, during these years at Mr. Lasher's, this great over mastering
+ambition.</p>
+
+<p>In his sleep, at any rate, he was a hero; in the wide-awake world he
+was, in the opinion of almost every one, a fool. He was exactly the type
+of boy whom the Rev. William Lasher could least easily understand. Mr.
+Lasher was tall and thin (his knees often cracked with a terrifying
+noise), blue-black about the cheeks hooked as to the nose, bald and
+shining as to the head, genial as to the manner, and practical to the
+shining tips of his fingers. He has not, at Cambridge, obtained a rowing
+blue, but &quot;had it not been for a most unfortunate attack of scarlet
+fever&mdash;&mdash;-&quot; He was President of the Clinton St. Mary Cricket Club, 1890
+(matches played, six; lost, five; drawn, one) knew how to slash the ball
+across the net at a <a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a>tennis garden party, always read the prayers in
+church as though he were imploring God to keep a straighter bat and
+improve His cut to leg, and had a passion for knocking nails into walls,
+screwing locks into doors, and making chicken runs. He was, he often
+thanked his stars, a practical Realist, and his wife, who was fat,
+stupid, and in a state of perpetual wonder, used to say of him, &quot;If Will
+hadn't been a clergyman he would have made <i>such</i> an engineer. If God
+had blessed us with a boy, I'm sure he would have been something
+scientific. Will's no dreamer.&quot; Mr. Lasher was kindly of heart so long
+as you allowed him to maintain that the world was made for one type of
+humanity only. He was as breezy as a west wind, loved to bathe in the
+garden pond on Christmas Day (&quot;had to break the ice that morning&quot;), and
+at penny readings at the village schoolroom would read extracts from
+&quot;Pickwick,&quot; and would laugh so heartily himself that he would have to
+stop and wipe his eyes. &quot;If you must read novels,&quot; he would say, &quot;read
+Dickens. Nothing to offend the youngest among us&mdash;fine breezy stuff with
+an optimism that does you good and people you get to know and be fond
+of. By Jove, I can <a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>still cry over Little Nell and am not ashamed of
+it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He had the heartiest contempt for &quot;wasters&quot; and &quot;failures,&quot; and he was
+afraid there were a great many in the world. &quot;Give me a man who is a
+man,&quot; he would say, &quot;a man who can hit a ball for six, run ten miles
+before breakfast and take his knocks with the best of them. Wasn't it
+Browning who said,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;'God's in His heaven,<br /></span>
+<span>All's right with the world.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Browning was a great teacher&mdash;after Tennyson, one of our greatest. Where
+are such men to-day!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was, therefore, in spite of his love for outdoor pursuits, a cultured
+man.</p>
+
+<p>It was natural, perhaps, that he should find Hugh Seymour &quot;a pity.&quot;
+Nearly everything that he said about Hugh Seymour began with the words&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a pity that&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a pity that you can't get some red into your cheeks, my boy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a pity you don't care about porridge. You must learn to like it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a>It's a pity you can't even make a little progress with your
+mathematics.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a pity you told me a lie because&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a pity you were rude to Mrs. Lasher. No gentleman&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a pity you weren't attending when&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lasher was, very earnestly, determined to do his best for the boy,
+and, as he said, &quot;You see, Hugh, if we do our best for you, you must do
+your best for us. Now I can't, I'm afraid, call this your best.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hugh would have liked to say that it <i>was</i> the best that he could do in
+that particular direction (very probably Euclid), but if only he might
+be allowed to try his hand in quite <i>another</i> direction, he might do
+something very fine indeed. He never, of course, had a chance of saying
+this, nor would such a declaration have greatly benefited him, because,
+for Mr. Lasher, there was only one way for every one and the sooner (if
+you were a small boy) you followed it the better.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't dream, Hugh,&quot; said Mr. Lasher, &quot;remember that no man ever did
+good-work by dreaming. The goal is to the strong. Remember that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a>Hugh, did remember it and would have liked very much to be as strong as
+possible, but whenever he tried feats of strength he failed and looked
+foolish.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear boy, <i>that's</i> not the way to do it,&quot; said Mr. Lasher; &quot;it's a
+pity that you don't listen to what I tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>A very remarkable fact about Mr. Lasher was this&mdash;that he paid no
+attention whatever to the county in which he lived. Now there are
+certain counties in England where it is possible to say, &quot;I am in
+England,&quot; and to leave it at that; their quality is simply English with
+no more individual personality. But Glebeshire has such an
+individuality, whether for good or evil, that it forces comment from the
+most sluggish and inattentive of human beings. Mr. Lasher was perhaps
+the only soul, living or dead, who succeeded in living in it during
+forty years (he is still there, he is a Canon now in Polchester) and
+never saying anything about it. When on his visits to London people
+inquired his opinion of Glebeshire, he would say: &quot;Ah well!... I'm
+afraid Methodism and in<a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a>temperance are very strong ... all the same,
+we're fighting 'em, fighting 'em!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This was the more remarkable in that Mr. Lasher lived upon the very edge
+of Roche St. Mary Moor, a stretch of moor and sand. Roche St. Mary Moor,
+that runs to the sea, contains the ruins of St. Arthe Church (buried
+until lately in the sand, but recently excavated through the kind
+generosity of Sir John Porthcullis, of Borhaze, and shown to visitors,
+6d. a head, Wednesday and Saturday afternoons free), and in one of the
+most romantic, mist-laden, moon-silvered, tempest-driven spots in the
+whole of Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>The road that ran from Clinton St. Mary to Borhaze across the moor was
+certainly a wild, rambling, beautiful affair, and when the sea-mists
+swept across it and the wind carried the cry of the Bell of Trezent Rock
+in and out above and below, you had a strange and moving experience. Mr.
+Lasher was certainly compelled to ride on his bicycle from Clinton St.
+Mary to Borhaze and back again, and never thought it either strange or
+moving. &quot;Only ten at the Bible meeting to-night. Borhaze wants waking
+up. We'll see what open-air services can do.&quot; What the moor <a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a>thought
+about Mr. Lasher it is impossible to know!</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Seymour thought about the moor continually, but he was afraid to
+mention his ideas of it in public. There was a legend in the village
+that several hundred years ago some pirates, driven by storm into
+Borhaze, found their way on to the moor and, caught by the mist,
+perished there; they are to be seen, says the village, in powdered wigs,
+red coats, gold lace, and swords, haunting the sand-dunes. God help the
+poor soul who may fall into their hands! This was a very pleasant story,
+and Hugh Seymour's thoughts often crept around and about it. He would
+like to find a pirate, to bring him to the vicarage, and present him to
+Mr. Lasher. He knew that Mrs. Lasher would say, &quot;Fancy, a pirate. Well!
+now, fancy! Well, here's a pirate!&quot; And that Mr. Lasher would say, &quot;It's
+a pity, Hugh, that you don't choose your company more carefully. Look at
+the man's nose!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hugh, although he was only eleven, knew this. Hugh did on one occasion
+mention the pirates. &quot;Dreaming again, Hugh! Pity they fill your head
+with such nonsense! If they read their Bibles more!&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a>Nevertheless, Hugh continued his dreaming. He dreamt of the moor, of
+the pirates, of the cobbled street in Borhaze, of the cry of the Trezent
+Bell, of the deep lanes and the smell of the flowers in them, of making
+five hundred not out at cricket, of doing a problem in Euclid to Mr.
+Lasher's satisfaction, of having a collar at the end of the week as
+clean as it had been at the beginning, of discovering the way to make a
+straight parting in the hair, of not wriggling in bed when Mrs. Lasher
+kissed him at night, of many, many other things.</p>
+
+<p>He was at this time a very lonely boy. Until Mr. Pidgen paid his visit
+he was most remarkably lonely. After that visit he was never lonely
+again.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Mr. Pidgen came on a visit to the vicarage three days before Christmas.
+Hugh Seymour saw him first from the garden. Mr. Pidgen was standing at
+the window of Mr. Lasher's study; he was staring in front of him at the
+sheets of light that flashed and darkened and flashed again across the
+lawn, at the green cluster of holly-berries by the drive-gate, at <a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a>the
+few flakes of snow that fell, lazily, carelessly, as though they were
+trying to decide whether they would make a grand affair of it or not,
+and perhaps at the small, grubby boy who was looking at him with one eye
+and trying to learn the Collect for the day (it was Sunday) with the
+other. Hugh had never before seen any one in the least like Mr. Pidgen.
+He was short and round, and his head was covered with tight little
+curls. His cheeks were chubby and red and his nose small, his mouth also
+very small. He had no chin. He was wearing a bright blue velvet
+waistcoat with brass buttons, and over his black shoes there shone white
+spats.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh had never seen white spats before. Mr. Pidgen shone with
+cleanliness, and he had supremely the air of having been exactly as he
+was, all in one piece, years ago. He was like one of the china ornaments
+in Mrs. Lasher's drawing-room that the housemaid is told to be so
+careful about, and concerning whose destruction Hugh heard her on at
+least one occasion declaring, in a voice half tears, half defiance,
+&quot;Please, ma'am, it wasn't me. It just slipped of itself!&quot; Mr. Pidgen
+would break very completely were he dropped.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a>The first thing about him that struck Hugh was his amazing difference
+from Mr. Lasher. It seemed strange that any two people so different
+could be in the same house. Mr. Lasher never gleamed or shone, he would
+not break with however violent an action you dropped him, he would
+certainly never wear white spats.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh liked Mr. Pidgen at once. They spoke for the first time at the
+mid-day meal, when Mr. Lasher said, &quot;More Yorkshire pudding, Pidgen?&quot;
+and Mr. Pidgen said, &quot;I adore it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now Yorkshire pudding happened to be one of Hugh's special passions just
+then, particularly when it was very brown and crinkly, so he said quite
+spontaneously and without taking thought, as he was always told to do,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So do I!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My <i>dear</i> Hugh!&quot; said Mrs. Lasher; &quot;how very greedy! Fancy! After all
+you've been told! Well, well! Manners, manners!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know,&quot; said Mr. Pidgen (his mouth was full). &quot;I said it first,
+and I'm older than he is. I should know better.... I like boys to be
+greedy, it's a good sign&mdash;a good sign. Besides. Sunday&mdash;after a
+sermon&mdash;one <a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a>naturally feels a bit peckish. Good enough sermon, Lasher,
+but a bit long.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lasher of course did not like this, and, indeed, it was evident to
+any one (even to a small boy) that the two gentlemen would have
+different opinions upon every possible subject. However, Hugh loved Mr.
+Pidgen there and then, and decided that he would put him into the story
+then running (appearing in nightly numbers from the moment of his
+departure to bed to the instant of slumber&mdash;say ten minutes); he would
+also, in the imaginary cricket matches that he worked out on paper, give
+Mr. Pidgen an innings of two hundred not out and make him captain of
+Kent. He now observed the vision very carefully and discovered several
+strange items in his general behaviour. Mr. Pidgen was fond of whistling
+and humming to himself; he was restless and would walk up and down a
+room with his head in the air and his hands behind his broad back,
+humming (out of tune) &quot;Sally in our Alley,&quot; or &quot;Drink to me only.&quot; Of
+course this amazed Mr. Lasher.</p>
+
+<p>He would quite suddenly stop, stand like a top spinning, balanced on his
+toes, and cry, &quot;Ah! Now I've got it! No, I haven't! Yes, I have. By God,
+it's gone again!&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a>To this also Mr. Lasher strongly objected, and Hugh heard him say,
+&quot;Really, Pidgen, think of the boy! Think of the boy!&quot; and Mr. Pidgen
+exclaimed, &quot;By God, so I should!... Beg pardon, Lasher! Won't do it
+again! Lord save me, I'm a careless old drunkard!&quot; He had any number of
+strange phrases that were new and brilliant and exciting to the boy, who
+listened to him. He would say, &quot;by the martyrs of Ephesus!&quot; or &quot;Sunshine
+and thunder!&quot; or &quot;God stir your slumbers!&quot; when he thought any one very
+stupid. He said this last one day to Mrs. Lasher, and of course she was
+very much astonished. She did not from the first like him at all. Mr.
+Pidgen and Mr. Lasher had been friends at Cambridge and had not met one
+another since, and every one knows that that is a dangerous basis for
+the renewal of friendship. They had a little dispute on the very
+afternoon of Mr. Pidgen's arrival, when Mr. Lasher asked his guest
+whether he played golf.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God preserve my soul! No!&quot; said Mr. Pidgen. Mr. Lasher then explained
+that playing golf made one thin, hungry and self-restrained. Mr. Pidgen
+said that he did not wish to be the first or last of these, and that he
+was always <a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a>the second, and that golf was turning the fair places of
+England into troughs for the moneyed pigs of the Stock Exchange to swill
+in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear Pidgen!&quot; cried Mr. Lasher, &quot;I'm afraid no one could call me a
+moneyed pig with any justice&mdash;more's the pity&mdash;and a game of golf to me
+is&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! you're a parson, Lasher,&quot; said his guest.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, by the evening of the second day of the visit it was obvious
+that Clinton St. Mary Vicarage might, very possibly, witness a disturbed
+Christmas. It was all very tiresome for poor Mrs. Lasher. On the late
+afternoon of Christmas Eve, Hugh heard the stormy conversation that
+follows&mdash;a conversation that altered the colour and texture of his
+after-life as such things may, when one is still a child.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Christmas Eve was always, to Hugh, a day with glamour. He did not any
+longer hang up his stocking (although he would greatly have liked to do
+so), but, all day, his heart beat thickly at the thought of the morrow,
+at the thought of something more than the giving and <a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a>receiving of
+presents, something more than the eating of food, something more than
+singing hymns that were delightfully familiar, something more than
+putting holly over the pictures and hanging mistletoe on to the lamp in
+the hall. Something there was in the day like going home, like meeting
+people again whom one had loved once, and not seen for many years,
+something as warm and romantic and lightly coloured <i>and</i> as comforting
+as the most inspired and impossible story that one could ever, lying in
+bed and waiting for sleep, invent.</p>
+
+<p>To-day there was no snow but a frost, and there was a long bar of
+saffron below the cold sky and a round red ball of a sun. Hugh was
+sitting in a corner of Mr. Lasher's study, looking at Dor&eacute;'s &quot;Don
+Quixote,&quot; when the two gentlemen came in. He was sitting in a dark
+corner and they, because they were angry with one another, did not
+recognise any one except themselves. Mr. Lasher pulled furiously at his
+pipe and Mr. Pidgen stood up by the fire with his short fat legs spread
+wide and his mouth smiling, but his eyes vexed and rather indignant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear Pidgen,&quot; said Mr. Lasher, &quot;you misunderstand me, you do indeed!
+It may be<a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a> (I would be the first to admit that, like most men, I have my
+weakness) that I lay too much stress upon the healthy, physical, normal
+life, upon seeing things as they are and not as one would like to see
+them to be. I don't believe that dreaming ever did any good to any man!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's only produced some of the finest literature the world has ever
+known,&quot; said Mr. Pidgen.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! Genius! If you or I were geniuses, Pidgen, that would be another
+affair. But we're not; we're plain, common-place humdrum human beings
+with souls to be saved and work to do&mdash;work to do!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a little pause after that, and Hugh, looking at Mr. Pidgen,
+saw the hurt look in his eyes deepen.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come now, Lasher,&quot; he said at last. &quot;Let's be honest one with another;
+that's your line, and you say it ought to be mine. Come now, as man to
+man, you think me a damnable failure now&mdash;beg pardon&mdash;complete
+failure&mdash;don't you? Don't be afraid of hurting me. I want to know!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lasher was really a kindly man, and when his eyes beheld
+things&mdash;there were of course many things that they never beheld&mdash;he
+<a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a>would do his best to help anybody. He wanted to help Mr. Pidgen now;
+but he was also a truthful man.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear Pidgen! Ha, ha! What a question! I'm sure many, many people
+enjoy your books immensely. I'm sure they do, oh, yes!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come, now, Lasher, the truth. You won't hurt my feelings. If you were
+discussing me with a third person you'd say, wouldn't you? 'Ah, poor
+Pidgen might have done something if he hadn't let his fancy run away
+with him. I was with him at Cambridge. He promised well, but I'm afraid
+one must admit that he's failed&mdash;he would never stick to anything.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now this was so exactly what Mr. Lasher had, on several occasions, said
+about his friend that he was really for the moment at a loss. He pulled
+at his pipe, looked very grave, and then said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear Pidgen, you must remember our lives have followed such
+different courses. I can only give you my point of view. I don't myself
+care greatly for romances&mdash;fairy tales and so on. It seems to me that
+for a grown-up man.... However, I don't pretend to be a literary fellow;
+I have other work, other duties, picturesque, but nevertheless
+necessary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a>Ah!&quot; exclaimed Mr. Pidgen, who, considering that he had invited his
+host's honest opinion, should not have become irritated because he had
+obtained it; &quot;that's just it. You people all think only <i>you</i> know what
+is necessary. Why shouldn't a fairy story be as necessary as a sermon? A
+lot more necessary, I dare say. You think you're the only people who can
+know anything about it. You people never use your imaginations.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nevertheless,&quot; said Mr. Lasher, very bitterly (for he had always said,
+&quot;If one does not bring one's imagination into one's work one's work is
+of no value&quot;), &quot;writers of idle tales are not the only people who use
+their imaginations. And, if you will allow me, without offence, to say
+so, Pidgen, your books, even amongst other things of the same sort, have
+not been the most successful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This remark seemed to pour water upon all the anger in Mr. Pidgen's
+heart. His eyes expressed scorn, but not now for Mr. Lasher&mdash;for
+himself. His whole figure drooped and was bowed like a robin in a
+thunderstorm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's true enough. Bless my soul, Lasher, that's true enough. They
+hardly sell at all. I've written a dozen of them now, 'The Blue<a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a> Pouncet
+Box,' 'The Three-tailed Griffin,' 'The Tree without any Branches,' but
+you won't want to be bothered with the names of them. 'The Griffin' went
+into two editions, but it was only because the pictures were rather
+sentimental. I've often said to myself, 'If a thing doesn't sell in
+these days it must be good,' but I've not really convinced myself. I'd
+like them to have sold. Always, until now, I've had hopes of the next
+one, and thought that it would turn out better, like a woman with her
+babies. I seem to have given up expecting that now. It isn't, you know,
+being always hard-up that I mind so much, although that, mind you, isn't
+pleasant, no, by Jehoshaphat, it isn't. But we would like now and again
+to find that other people have enjoyed what one hoped they <i>would</i>
+enjoy. But I don't know, they always seem too old for children and too
+young for grown-ups&mdash;my stories, I mean.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was one of the hardest traits in Mr. Lasher's character, as Hugh well
+realised, &quot;to rub it in&quot; over a fallen foe. He considered this his duty;
+it was also, I am afraid, a pleasure. &quot;It's a pity,&quot; he said, &quot;that
+things should not have gone better; but there are so many writers to-day
+that I wonder any one writes at all. We <a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a>live in a practical, realistic
+age. The leaders amongst us have decided that every man must gird his
+loins and go out to fight his battles with real weapons in a real cause,
+not sit dreaming at his windows looking down upon the busy
+market-place.&quot; (Mr. Lasher loved what he called &quot;images.&quot; There were
+many in his sermons.) &quot;But, my dear Pidgen, it is in no way too late.
+Give up your fairy stories now that they have been proved a failure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here Mr. Pidgen, in the most astonishing way, was suddenly in a terrible
+temper. &quot;They're not!&quot; he almost screamed. &quot;Not at all. Failures, from
+the worldly point of view, yes; but there are some who understand. I
+would not have done anything else if I could. You, Lasher, with your
+soup-tickets and your choir-treats, think there's no room for me and my
+fairy stories. I tell you, you may find yourself jolly well mistaken one
+of these days. Yes, by C&aelig;sar, you may. How do you know what's best worth
+doing? If you'd listened a little more to the things you were told when
+you were a baby, you'd be a more intelligent man now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I was a baby,&quot; said Mr. Lasher, incredulously, as though that were
+a thing that h<a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a>e never possibly could have been, &quot;my <i>dear</i> Pidgen!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, you think it absurd,&quot; said the other, a little cooler again. &quot;But
+how do you know who watched over your early years and wanted you to be a
+dreamy, fairy tale kind of person instead of the cayenne pepper sort of
+man you are. There's always some one there, I tell you, and you can have
+your choice, whether you'll believe more than you see all your life or
+less than you see. Every baby knows about it; then, as they grow older,
+it fades and, with many people, goes altogether. He's never left <i>me</i>,
+St. Christopher, you know, and that's one thing. Of course, the ideal
+thing is somewhere between the two; recognise St. Christopher and see
+the real world as well. I'm afraid neither you nor I is the ideal man,
+Lasher. Why, I tell you, any baby of three knows more than you do!
+You're proud of never seeing beyond your nose. I'm proud of never seeing
+my nose at all: we're both wrong. But I <i>am</i> ready to admit <i>your</i> uses.
+You <i>never</i> will admit mine; and it isn't any use your denying my
+Friend. He stayed with you a bit when you just arrived, but I expect he
+soon left you. You're jolly glad he did.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a>My <i>dear</i> Pidgen,&quot; said Mr. Lasher, &quot;I haven't understood a word.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Pidgen shook his head. &quot;You're right. That's just what's the matter with
+me. I can't even put what I see plainly.&quot; He sighed deeply. &quot;I've
+failed. There's no doubt about it. But, although I know that, I've had a
+happy life. That's the funny part of it. I've enjoyed it more than you
+ever will, Lasher. At least, I'm never lonely. I like my food, too, and
+one's head's always full of jolly ideas, if only they seemed jolly to
+other people.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Upon my word, Pidgen,&quot; said Mr. Lasher. At this moment Mrs. Lasher
+opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, well. Fancy! Sitting over the fire talking! Oh, you men! Tea!
+tea! Tea, Will! Fancy talking all the afternoon! Well!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>No one had noticed Hugh. He, however, had understood Mr. Pidgen better
+than Mr. Lasher did.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>This conversation aroused in Hugh, for various reasons, the greatest
+possible excitement. He would have liked to have asked Mr. Pidgen <a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a>many
+questions. Christmas Day came, and a beautiful day enthroned it: a pale
+blue sky, faint and clear, was a background to misty little clouds that
+hovered, then fled and disappeared, and from these flakes of snow fell
+now and then across the shining sunlight. Early in the winter afternoon
+a moon like an orange feather sailed into the sky as the lower stretches
+of blue changed into saffron and gold. Trees and hills and woods were
+crystal-clear, and shone with an intensity of outline as though their
+shapes had been cut by some giant knife against the background. Although
+there was no wind the air was so expectant that the ringing of church
+bells and the echo of voices came as though across still water. The
+colour of the sunlight was caught in the cups and runnels of the stiff
+frozen roads and a horse's hoofs echoed, sharp and ringing, over fields
+and hedges. The ponds were silvered into a sheet of ice, so thin that
+the water showed dark beneath it. All the trees were rimmed with
+hoar-frost.</p>
+
+<p>On Christmas afternoon, when three o'clock had just struck from the
+church tower, Hugh and Mr. Pidgen met, as though by some conspirator's
+agreement, by the garden gate.<a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a> They had said nothing to one another and
+yet there they were; they both glanced anxiously back at the house and
+then Mr. Pidgen said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Suppose we take a walk.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you very much,&quot; said Hugh. &quot;Tea isn't till half-past four.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well, then, suppose you lead the way.&quot; They walked a little, and
+then Hugh said: &quot;I was there yesterday, in the study, when you talked
+all that about your books, and everything.&quot; The words came from him in
+little breathless gusts because he was excited.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pidgen stopped and looked upon him. &quot;Thunder and sunshine! You don't
+say so! What under heaven were you doing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was reading, and you came in and then I was interested.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hugh dropped his voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I understood all that you meant. I'd like to read your books if I may.
+We haven't any in the house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bless my soul! Here's some one wants to read my books!&quot; Mr. Pidgen was
+undoubtedly pleased. &quot;I'll send you some. I'll send you them all!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hugh gasped with pleasure. &quot;I'll read them <a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a>all, however many there
+are!&quot; he said excitedly. &quot;Every word.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; said Mr. Pidgen, &quot;that's more than any one else has ever done.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'd rather be with you,&quot; said the boy very confidently, &quot;than Mr. Lasher.
+I'd rather write stories than preach sermons that no one wants to listen
+to.&quot; Then more timidly he continued: &quot;I know what you meant about the man
+who comes when you're a baby. I remember him quite well, but I never can
+say anything because they'd say I was silly. Sometimes I think he's still
+hanging round only he doesn't come to the vicarage much. He doesn't like
+Mr. Lasher much, I expect. But I <i>do</i> remember him. He had a beard and I
+used to think it funny the nurse didn't see him. That was before we went
+to Ceylon, you know, we used to live in Polchester then. When it was
+nearly dark and not quite he'd be there. I forgot about him in Ceylon, but
+since I've been here I've wondered ... it's sometimes like some one
+whispering to you and you know if you turn round he won't be there, but he
+<i>is</i> there all the same. I made twenty-five last summer against
+Porthington Grammar; they're not much good <i>really</i>, and it was our
+<a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>second eleven, and I was nearly out second ball; anyway I made
+twenty-five, and afterwards as I was ragging about I suddenly thought of
+him. I <i>know</i> he was pleased. If it had been a little darker I believe I'd
+have seen him. And then last night, after I was in bed and was thinking
+about what you'd said I <i>know</i> he was near the window, only I didn't look
+lest he should go away. But of course Mr. Lasher would say that's all rot,
+like the pirates, only I <i>know</i> it isn't.&quot; Hugh broke off for lack of
+breath, nothing else would have stopped him. When he was encouraged he was
+a terrible talker. He suddenly added in a sharp little voice like the
+report from a pistol: &quot;So one can't be lonely or anything, can one, if
+there's always some one about?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pidgen was greatly touched. He put his hand upon Hugh's shoulder.
+&quot;My dear boy,&quot; he said, &quot;my dear boy&mdash;dear me, dear me. I'm afraid
+you're going to have a dreadful time when you grow up. I really mustn't
+encourage you. And yet, who can help himself?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you said yourself that you'd seen him, that you knew him quite
+well?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And so I do&mdash;and so I do. But you'll find, as you grow older, there are
+many people who <a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a>won't believe you. And there's this, too. The more you
+live in your head, dreaming and seeing things that aren't there, the
+less you'll see the things that <i>are</i> there. You'll always be tumbling
+over things. You'll never get on. You'll never be a success.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never mind,&quot; said Hugh, &quot;it doesn't matter much what you say now,
+you're only talking 'for my good' like Mr. Lasher. I don't care, I heard
+what you said yesterday, and it's made all the difference. I'll come and
+stay with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, so you shall,&quot; said Mr. Pidgen. &quot;I can't help it. You shall come
+as often as you like. Upon my soul, I'm younger to-day than I've felt
+for a long time. We'll go to the pantomime together if you aren't too
+old for it. I'll manage to ruin you all right. What's that shining?&quot; He
+pointed in front of him.</p>
+
+<p>They had come to a rise in the Polwint Road. To their right, running to
+the very foot of their path, was the moor. It stretched away, like a
+cloud, vague and indeterminate to the horizon. To their left a dark
+brown field rose in an ascending wave to a ridge that cut the sky, now
+crocus-coloured. The field was lit with the soft <a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a>light of the setting
+sun. On the ridge of the field something, suspended, it seemed, in
+midair, was shining like a golden fire.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's that?&quot; said Mr. Pidgen again. &quot;It's hanging. What the devil!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They stopped for a moment, then started across the field. When they had
+gone a little way Mr. Pidgen paused again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's like a man with a golden helmet. He's got legs, he's coming to
+us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They walked on again. Then Hugh cried, &quot;Why, it's only an old Scarecrow.
+We might have guessed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sun, at that instant, sank behind the hills and the world was grey.</p>
+
+<p>The Scarecrow, perched on the high ridge, waved its tattered sleeves in
+the air. It was an old tin can that had caught the light; the can
+hanging over the stake that supported it in drunken fashion seemed to
+wink at them. The shadows came streaming up from the sea and the dark
+woods below in the hollow drew closer to them.</p>
+
+<p>The Scarecrow seemed to lament the departure of the light. &quot;Here, mind,&quot;
+he said to the two of them, &quot;you saw me in my glory just now and don't
+you forget it. I may be a <a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a>knight in shining armour after all. It only
+depends upon the point of view.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So it does,&quot; said Mr. Pidgen, taking his hat off, &quot;you were very fine,
+I shan't forget.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>They stood there in silence for a time....</p>
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+<p>At last they turned back and walked slowly home, the intimacy of their
+new friendship growing with their silence. Hugh was happier than he had
+ever been before. Behind the quiet evening light he saw wonderful
+prospects, a new life in which he might dream as he pleased, a new
+friend to whom he might tell these dreams, a new confidence in his own
+power....</p>
+
+<p>But it was not to be.</p>
+
+<p>That very night Mr. Pidgen died, very peacefully, in his sleep, from
+heart failure. He had had, as he had himself said, a happy life.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+<p>Years passed and Hugh Seymour grew up. I do not wish here to say much
+more about him.<a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a> It happened that when he was twenty-four his work
+compelled him to live in that Square in London known as March Square (it
+will be very carefully described in a minute). Here he lived for five
+years, and, during that time, he was happy enough to gain the intimacy
+and confidence of some of the children who played in the Gardens there.
+They trusted him and told him more than they told many people. He had
+never forgotten Mr. Pidgen; that walk, that vision of the Scarecrow,
+stood, as such childish things will, for a landmark in his history. He
+came to believe that those experiences that he knew, in his own life, to
+be true, were true also for some others. That's as it may be. I can only
+say that Barbara and Angelina, Bim and even Sarah Trefusis were his
+friends. I daresay his theory is all wrong.</p>
+
+<p>I can only say that I <i>know</i> that they were his friends; perhaps, after
+all, the Scarecrow <i>is</i> shining somewhere in golden armour. Perhaps,
+after all, one need not be so lonely as one often fancies that one is.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Henry Fitzgeorge Strether</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>March Square is not very far from Hyde Park Corner in London Town.
+Behind the whir and rattle of the traffic it stands, spacious and cool
+and very old, muffled by the little streets that guard it, happily
+unconscious, you would suppose, that there were any in all the world so
+unfortunate as to have less than five thousand a year for their support.
+Perhaps a hundred years ago March Square might boast of such superior
+ignorance, but fashions change, to prevent, it may be, our own too
+easily irritated monotonies, and, for some time now, the Square has been
+compelled, here, there, in one corner and another, to admit the invader.
+It is true that the solemn, respectable grey house, No. 3, can boast
+that it is the town residence of His Grace the<a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a> Duke of Crole and his
+beautiful young Duchess, n&eacute;e Miss Jane Tunster of New York City, but it
+is also true that No. &mdash;&mdash; is in the possession of Mr. Munty Ross of
+Potted Shrimp fame, and there are Dr. Cruthen, the Misses Dent, Herbert
+Hoskins and his wife, whose incomes are certainly nearer to &pound;500 than
+&pound;5,000. Yes, rents and blue blood have come down in March Square; it is,
+certainly, not the less interesting for that, but&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Some of the houses can boast the days of good Queen Anne for their
+period. There is one, at the very corner where Somers Street turns off
+towards the Park, that was built only yesterday, and has about it some
+air of shame, a furtive embarrassment that it will lose very speedily.
+There is no house that can claim beauty, and yet the Square, as a whole,
+has a fine charm, something that age and colour, haphazard adventure,
+space and quiet have all helped towards.</p>
+
+<p>There is, perhaps, no square in London that clings so tenaciously to any
+sign or symbol of old London that motor-cars and the increase of speed
+have not utterly destroyed. All the oldest London mendicants find their
+way, at different hours of the week, up and down the<a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a> Square. There is,
+I believe, no other square in London where musicians are permitted. On
+Monday morning there is the blind man with the black patch over one eye;
+he has an organ (a very old one, with a painted picture of the Battle of
+Trafalgar on the front of it) and he wears an old black skull-cap. He
+wheezes out his old tunes (they are older than other tunes that March
+Square hears, and so, perhaps, March Square loves them). He goes
+despondently, and the tap of his stick sounds all the way round the
+Square. A small and dirty boy&mdash;his grandson, maybe&mdash;pushes the organ for
+him. On Tuesday there comes the remnants of a German band&mdash;remnants
+because now there are only the cornet, the flute and the trumpet. Sadly
+wind-blown, drunken and diseased they are, and the Square can remember
+when there were a number of them, hale and hearty young fellows, but
+drink and competition have been too strong for them. On Wednesdays there
+is sometimes a lady who sings ballads in a voice that can only be
+described as that contradiction in terms &quot;a shrill contralto.&quot; Her notes
+are very piercing and can be heard from one end of the Square to the
+other. She sings &quot;Annie Laurie&quot; and &quot;Robin Adair,&quot; and wears a bat<a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a>tered
+hat of black straw. On Thursday there is a handsome Italian with a
+barrel organ that bears in its belly the very latest and most popular
+tunes. It is on Thursday that the Square learns the music of the moment;
+thus from one end of the year to the other does it keep pace with the
+movement.</p>
+
+<p>On Fridays there is a lean and ragged man wearing large and, to the
+children of the Square, terrifying spectacles. He is a very gloomy
+fellow and sings hymn-tunes, &quot;Rock of Ages,&quot; &quot;There is a Happy Land,&quot;
+and &quot;Jerusalem the Golden.&quot; On Saturdays there is a stout, happy little
+man with a harp. He has white hair and looks like a retired colonel. He
+cannot play the harp very much, but he is quite the most popular visitor
+of the week, and must be very rich indeed does he receive in other
+squares so handsome a reward for his melody as this one bestows; he is
+known as &quot;Colonel Harry.&quot; In and out of these regular visitors there
+are, of course, many others. There is a dark, sinister man with a
+harmonium and a shivering monkey on a chain; there is an Italian woman,
+wearing bright wraps round her head, and she has a cage of birds who
+tell fortunes; there is a horsey, stable-bred, ferret-<a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a>like man with,
+two performing dogs, and there is quite an old lady in a black bonnet
+and shawl who sings duets with her grand-daughter, a young thing of some
+fifty summers.</p>
+
+<p>There can be nothing in the world more charming than the way the Square
+receives its friends. Let it number amongst its guests a Duchess, that
+is no reason why it should scorn &quot;Colonel Harry&quot; or &quot;Mouldy Jim,&quot; the
+singer of hymns. Scorn, indeed, cannot be found within its grey walls,
+soft grey, soft green, soft white and blue&mdash;in these colours is the
+Square's body clothed, no anger in its mild eyes, nor contempt anywhere
+at its heart.</p>
+
+<p>The Square is proud, and is proud with reason, of its garden. It is not
+a large garden as London gardens go. It has in its centre a fountain.
+Neptune, with a fine wreath of seaweed about his middle, blowing water
+through, his conch. There are two statues, the one of a general who
+fought in the Indian Mutiny and afterwards lived and died in the Square,
+the other of a mid-Victorian philanthropist whose stout figure and
+urbane self-satisfaction (as portrayed by the sculptor) bear witness to
+an easy conscience and an unimaginative mind. There is, round and about
+the fountain, a lovely <a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a>green lawn, and there are many overhanging trees
+and shady corners. An air of peace the garden breathes, and that
+although children are for ever racing up and down it, shattering the
+stillness of the air with their cries, rivalling the bells of St.
+Matthew's round the corner with their piercing notes.</p>
+
+<p>But it is the quality of the Square that nothing can take from it its
+peace, nothing temper its tranquillity. In the heat of the days
+motor-cars will rattle through, bells will ring, all the bustle of a
+frantic world invade its security; for a moment it submits, but in the
+evening hour, when the colours are being washed from the sky, and the
+moon, apricot-tinted, is rising slowly through the smoke, March Square
+sinks, with a little sigh, back into her peace again. The modern world
+has not yet touched her, nor ever shall.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>The Duchess of Crole had three months ago a son, Henry Fitzgeorge,
+Marquis of Strether. Very fortunate that the first-born should be a son,
+very fortunate also that the first-born should be one of the healthiest,
+liveliest, merri<a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>est babies that it has ever been any one's good fortune
+to encounter. All smiles, chuckles and amiability is Henry Fitzgeorge;
+he is determined that all shall be well.</p>
+
+<p>His birth was for a little time the sensation of the Square. Every one
+knew the beautiful Duchess; they had seen her drive, they had seen her
+walk, they had seen her in the picture-papers, at race-meetings and
+coming away from fashionable weddings. The word went round day by day as
+to his health; he was watched when he came out in his perambulator, and
+there was gossip as to his appearance and behaviour.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A jolly little fellow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just like his father.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Rather early to say that, isn't it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I don't know, got the same smile. His mother's rather languid.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Beautiful woman, though.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, lovely!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Upon a certain afternoon in March about four o'clock, there was quite a
+gathering of persons in Henry Fitzgeorge's nursery. There was his
+mother, with those two great friends of hers, Lady Emily Blanchard and
+the Hon. Mrs. Vavasour; there was Her Grace's mother,<a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a> Mrs. P. Tunster
+(an enormously stout lady); there was Miss Helen Crasper, who was
+staying in the house. These people were gathered at the end of the cot,
+and they looked down upon Henry Fitzgeorge, and he lay upon his back,
+gazed at them thoughtfully, and clenched and unclenched his fat hands.</p>
+
+<p>Opposite his cot were some very wide windows, and three windows were
+filled with galleons of cloud&mdash;fat, bolster, swelling vessels, white,
+save where, in their curving sails, they had caught a faint radiance
+from the hidden sun. In fine procession, against the blue, they passed
+along. Very faint and muffled there came up from the Square the
+lingering notes of &quot;Robin Adair.&quot; This is a Wednesday afternoon, and it
+is the lady with the black straw hat who is singing. The nursery has
+white walls&mdash;it is filled with colour; the fire blazes with a yellow-red
+gleam that rises and falls across the shining floor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I brought him a rattle, Jane, dear,&quot; said Mrs. Tunster, shaking in the
+air a thing of coral and silver. &quot;He's got several, of course, but I
+guess you'll go a long way before you find anything cuter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's too pretty,&quot; said Lady Emily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a>Too lovely,&quot; said the Hon. Mrs. Vavasour.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess looked down upon her son. &quot;Isn't he old?&quot; she said.
+&quot;Thousands of years. You'd think he was laughing at the lot of us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Tunster shook her head. &quot;Now don't you go imagining things, Jane,
+my dear. I used to be just like that, and your father would say, 'Now,
+Alice.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her Grace raised her head. Her eyes were a little tired. She looked from
+her son to the clouds, and then back again to her son. She was
+remembering her own early days, the rich glowing colour of her own
+American country, the freedom, the space, the honesty.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I guess you're tired, dear,&quot; said her mother. &quot;With the party to-night
+and all. Why don't you go and rest a bit?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His eyes <i>are</i> old! He <i>does</i> despise us all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily, who believed in personal comfort and as little thinking as
+possible, put her arm through her friend's.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come along and give us some tea. He's a dear. Good-bye, you little
+darling. He <i>is</i> a pet. There, did you see him smiling? You <i>darling</i>.
+Tea I <i>must</i> have, Jane, dear&mdash;<i>at</i> once.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You go on. I'm coming. Ring for it. Tell<a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a> Hunter. I'll be with you in
+two minutes, mother.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Tunster left her rattle in the nurse's hands. Then, with the two
+others, departed. Outside the nursery door she said in an American
+whisper:&mdash;&quot;Jane isn't quite right yet. Went about a bit too soon. She's
+headstrong. She always has been. Doesn't do for her to think too much.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her Grace was alone now with her son and heir and the nurse. She bent
+over the cot and smiled upon Henry Fitzgeorge; he smiled back at her,
+and even gave an absent-minded crow; but his gaze almost instantly swung
+back again to the window, through which, deeply and with solemn
+absorption, he watched the clouds.</p>
+
+<p>She gave him her hand, and he closed his fingers about one of hers; but
+even that grasp was abstracted, as though he were not thinking of her at
+all, but was simply behaving like a gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't believe he's realised me a bit, nurse,&quot; she said, turning away
+from the cot.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Your Grace, they always take time. It's early days.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But what's he thinking of all the time?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a>Oh, just nothing, Your Grace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't believe it's nothing. He's trying to settle things. This&mdash;what
+it's all about&mdash;what he's got to do about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It may be so, Your Grace. All babies are like that at first.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His eyes are so old, so grave.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's a jolly little fellow, Your Grace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's very little trouble, isn't he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Less trouble than any baby I've ever had to do with. Got His Grace's
+happy temperament, if I may say so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; the mother laughed. She crossed over to the window and looked
+down. &quot;That poor woman singing down there. How awful! He'll be going
+down to Crole very shortly, Roberts. Splendid air for him there. But the
+Square's cheerful. He likes the garden, doesn't he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, Your Grace; all the children and the fountain. But he's a
+happy baby. I should say he'd like anything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a moment longer she looked down into the Square. The discordant
+voice was giving &quot;Annie Laurie&quot; to the world.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-bye, darling.&quot; She stepped forward, shook the silver and coral
+rattle. &quot;See what <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>grannie's given you!&quot; She left it lying near his
+hand, and, with a little sigh, was gone.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Now, as the sun was setting, the clouds had broken into little pink
+bubbles, lying idly here and there upon the sky. Higher, near the top of
+the window, they were large pink cushions, three fat ones, lying
+sedately against the blue. During three months now Henry Fitzgeorge
+Strether had been confronted with the new scene, the new urgency on his
+part to respond to it. At first he had refused absolutely to make any
+response; behind him, around him, above him, below him, were still the
+old conditions; but they were the old conditions viewed, for some reason
+unknown to him, at a distance, and at a distance that was ever
+increasing. With every day something here in this new and preposterous
+world struck his attention, and with every fresh lure was he drawn more
+certainly from his old consciousness. At first he had simply rebelled;
+then, very slowly, his curiosity had begun to stir. It had stirred at
+first through food and touch; very pleasant this, very pleasant that.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a>Milk, sleep, light things that he could hold very tightly with his
+hands. Now, upon this March afternoon, he watched the pink clouds with a
+more intent gaze than he had given to them before. Their colour and
+shape bore some reference to the life that he had left. They were &quot;like&quot;
+a little to those other things. There, too, shadowed against the wall,
+was his Friend, his Friend, now the last link with everything that he
+knew.</p>
+
+<p>At first, during the first week, he had demanded again and again to be
+taken back, and always he had been told to wait, to wait and see what
+was going to happen. So long as his Friend was there, he knew that he
+was not completely abandoned, and that this was only a temporary
+business, with its strange limiting circumstances, the way that one was
+tied and bound, the embarrassment of finding that all one's old means of
+communication were here useless. How desperate, indeed, would it have
+been had his Friend not been there, reassuring pervading him,
+surrounding him, always subduing those sudden inexplicable alarms.</p>
+
+<p>He would demand: &quot;When are we going to leave all this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>Wait. I know it seems absurd to you, but it's commanded you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, but&mdash;this is ridiculous. Where are all my old powers I Where are
+all the others?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will understand everything one day. I'm afraid you're very
+uncomfortable. You will be less so as time passes. Indeed, very soon you
+will be very happy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I'm doing my best to be cheerful. But you won't leave me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not so long as you want me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll stay until we go back again!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll never go back again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Across the light the nurse advanced. She took him in her arms for a
+moment, turned his pillows, then layed him down again. As he settled
+down into comfort he saw his Friend, huge, a great shadow, mingling with
+the coloured lights of the flaming sky. All the world was lit, the white
+room glowed. A pleasant smell was in his nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where are all the others? They would like to share this pleasant
+moment, and I would warn them about the unpleasant ones.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They are coming, some of them. I am with <a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a>them as I am with you.&quot;
+Swinging across the Square were the evening bells of St. Matthew's.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Fitzgeorge smiled, then chuckled, then dozed into a pleasant
+sleep.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Asleep, awake, it had been for the most part the same to him. He swung
+easily, lazily upon the clouds; warmth and light surrounded him; a part
+of him, his toes, perhaps, would be suddenly cold, then he would cry, or
+he would strike his head against the side of his cot and it would hurt,
+and so then he would cry again. But these tears would not be tears of
+grief, but simply declarations of astonishment and wonder.</p>
+
+<p>He did not, of course, realise that as, very slowly, very gradually he
+began to understand the terms and conditions of his new life, so with
+the same gradation, his Friend was expressed in those terms. Slowly that
+great shadow filled the room, took on human shape, until at last it
+would be only thus that he would appear. But Henry would not realise the
+change, soon he would not know that it had <a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a>ever been otherwise. Dimly,
+out of chaos, the world was being made for him. There a square of
+colour, here something round and hard that was cool to touch, now a
+gleaming rod that ran high into the air, now a shape very soft and warm
+against which it was pleasant to lean. The clouds, the sweep of dim
+colour, the vast horizons of that other world yielded, day by day, to
+little concrete things&mdash;a patch of carpet, the leg of a chair, the
+shadow of the fire, clouds beyond the window, buttons on some one's
+clothes, the rails of his cot. Then there were voices, the touch of
+hands, some one's soft hair, some one who sang little songs to him.</p>
+
+<p>He woke early one morning and realised the rattle that his grandmother
+had given to him. He suddenly realised it. He grasped the handle of it
+with his hand and found this cool and pleasant to touch. He then, by
+accident, made it tinkle, and instantly the prettiest noise replied to
+him. He shook it more lustily and the response was louder. He was, it
+seemed, master of this charming thing and could force it to do what he
+wished. He appealed to his Friend. Was not this a charming thing that he
+had found? He waved it and chuckled and crowed, and then his toes,
+sticking out beyond the bed-<a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a>clothes, were nipped by the cold so that he
+halloed loudly. Perhaps the rattle had nipped his toes. He did not know,
+but he would cry because that eased his feelings.</p>
+
+<p>That morning there came with his grandmother and mother a silly young
+woman who had, it was supposed, a great way with babies. &quot;I adore
+babies,&quot; she said. &quot;We understand one another in the most wonderful
+way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Henry Fitzgeorge looked at her as she leaned over the cot and made faces
+at him. &quot;Goo-goo-gum-goo,&quot; she cried.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is all this?&quot; he asked his Friend. He laid down the rattle, and
+felt suddenly lonely and unhappy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Little pet&mdash;ug&mdash;la&mdash;la&mdash;goo&mdash;losh!&quot; Henry Fitzgeorge raised his eyes.
+His Friend was a long, long way away; his eyes grew cold with contempt.
+He hated this thing that made the noises and closed out the light. He
+opened his eyes, he was about to burst into one of his most abandoned
+roars when his stare encountered his mother. Her eyes were watching him,
+and they had in them a glow and radiance that gave him a warm feeling of
+companionship. &quot;I know,&quot; they seemed to say, &quot;what you are thinking of.
+I agree with all that you are <a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a>feeling about her. Only don't cry, she
+really isn't worth it.&quot; His mouth slowly closed then to thank her for
+her assistance, he raised the rattle and shook it at her. His eyes never
+left her face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Little darling,&quot; said the lady friend, but nevertheless disappointed.
+&quot;Lift him up, Jane. I'd like to see him in your arms.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But she shook her head. She moved away from the cot. Something so
+precious had been in that smile of her son's that she would not risk any
+rebuff.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Fitzgeorge gave the strange lady one last look of disgust.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If that comes again I'll bite it,&quot; he said to his Friend.</p>
+
+<p>When these visitors had departed, he lay there remembering those eyes
+that had looked into his. All that day he remembered them, and it may be
+that his Friend, as he watched, sighed because the time for launching
+him had now come, that one more soul had passed from his sheltering arms
+out into the highroad of fine adventures. How easily they forget! How
+readily they forget! How eagerly they fling the pack of their old world
+from off their shoulders! He had seen, perhaps, so many go, thus
+<a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a>lustily, upon their way, and then how many, at the end of it all,
+tired, worn, beaten to their very shadows, had he received at the end!</p>
+
+<p>But it was so. This day was to see Henry Fitzgeorge's assertions of his
+independence. The hour when this life was to close, so definitely, so
+securely, the doors upon that other, had come. The shadow that had been
+so vast that it had filled the room, the Square, the world, was drawn
+now into small and human size.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Fitzgeorge was never again to look so old.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>As the fine, dim afternoon was closing, he was allowed, for half an hour
+before sleep, to sprawl upon the carpet in front of the fire. He had
+with him his rattle and a large bear which he stroked because it was
+comfortable; he had no personal feeling about it.</p>
+
+<p>His mother came in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let me have him for half an hour, nurse. Come back in half an hour's
+time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The nurse left them.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Fitzgeorge did not look at his mother.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a>He had the bear in his arms and was feeling it, and in his mind the
+warmth from the flickering, jumping flame and the soft, friendly
+submission of the fur beneath his fingers were part of the same mystery.</p>
+
+<p>His mother had been motoring; her cheeks were flushed, and her dark
+clothes heightened, by their contrast, her colour. She knelt down on the
+carpet and then, with her hands folded on her lap, watched her son. He
+rolled the bear over and over, he poked it, he banged its head upon the
+ground. Then he was tired with it and took up the rattle. Then he was
+tired of that, and he looked across at his mother and chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>His mind, however, was not at all concentrated upon her. He felt, on
+this afternoon, a new, a fresh interest in things. The carpet before him
+was a vast country and he did not propose to explore it, but sucking his
+thumb, stroking the bear's coat, feeling the firelight upon his face, he
+felt that now something would occur. He had realised that there was much
+to explore and that, after all, perhaps there might be more in this
+strange condition of things than he had only a little time ago
+considered possible. It was then that he <a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a>looked up and saw hanging
+round his mother's neck a gold chain. This was a long chain hanging
+right down to her lap; as it hung there, very slowly it swayed from side
+to side, and as it swayed, the firelight caught it and it gleamed and
+was splashed with light. His eyes, as he watched, grew rounder and
+rounder; he had never seen anything so wonderful. He put down the
+rattle, crawled, with great difficulty because of his long clothes, on
+to his knees and sat staring, his thumb in his mouth. His mother stayed,
+watching him. He pointed his finger, crowing. &quot;Come and fetch it,&quot; she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>He tumbled forward on to his nose and then lay there, with his face
+raised a little, watching it. She did not move at all, but knelt with
+her hands straight out upon her knees, and the chain with its large gold
+rings like flaming eyes swung from hand to hand. Then he tried to move
+forward, his whole soul in his gaze. He would raise a hand towards the
+treasure and then because that upset his balance he would fall, but at
+once he would be up again. He moved a little and breathed little gasps
+of pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>She bent forward to him, his hand was out<a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a>stretched. His eyes went up
+and, meeting hers, instantly the chain was forgotten. That recognition
+that they had given him before was there now.</p>
+
+<p>With a scramble and a lurch, desperate, heedless in its risks, he was in
+his mother's lap. Then he crowed. He crowed for all the world to hear
+because now, at last, he had become its citizen.</p>
+
+<p>Was there not then, from some one, disregarded and forgotten at that
+moment, a sigh, lighter than the air itself, half-ironic, half-wistful
+regret?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Ernest Henry</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>Young Ernest Henry Wilberforce, who had only yesterday achieved his
+second birthday, watched, with a speculative eye, his nurse. He was
+seated on the floor with his back to the high window that was flaming
+now with the light of the dying sun; his nurse was by the fire, her
+head, shadowed huge and fantastic on the wall, nodded and nodded and
+nodded. Ernest Henry was, in figure, stocky and square, with a head
+round, hard, and covered with yellow curls; rather light and cold blue
+eyes and a chin of no mean degree were further possessions. He was
+wearing a white blouse, a white skirt, white socks and shoes; his legs
+were fat and bulged above his socks; his cold blue eyes never moved from
+his nurse's broad back.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that, in a very short time, disturbance would begin. He knew
+that doors would <a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a>open and shut, that there would be movement, strange
+noises, then an attack upon himself, ultimately a removal of him to
+another place, a stripping off him of his blouse, his skirt, his socks
+and his shoes, a loathsome and strangely useless application of soap and
+water&mdash;it was only, of course, in later years that he learned the names
+of those abominable articles&mdash;and, finally, finally darkness. All this
+he felt hovering very close at hand; one nod too many of his nurse's
+head, and up she would start, off she would go, off <i>he</i> would go.... He
+watched her and stroked very softly his warm, fat calf.</p>
+
+<p>It was a fine, spacious room that he inhabited. The ceiling&mdash;very, very
+far away&mdash;was white and glimmering with shadowy spaces of gold flung by
+the sun across the breast of it. The wallpaper was dark-red, and there
+were many coloured pictures of ships and dogs and snowy Christmases, and
+swans eating from the hands of beautiful little girls, and one garden
+with roses and peacocks and a tumbling fountain. To Ernest Henry these
+were simply splashes of colour, and colour, moreover, scarcely so
+convincing as the bright blue screen by the fire, or the golden brown
+rug by the <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a>door; but he was dimly aware that, as the days passed, so
+did he find more and more to consider in the shapes and sizes between
+the deep black frames.... There might, after all, be something in it.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not the pictures that he was now considering.</p>
+
+<p>Before his nurse's descent upon him he was determined that he would
+walk&mdash;not crawl, but walk in his socks and shoes&mdash;from his place by the
+window to the blue screen by the fire. There had been days, and those
+not so long ago, when so hazardous an Odyssey had seemed the vainest of
+Blue Moon ambitions; it had once been the only rule of existence to
+sprawl and roll and sprawl again; but gradually some further force had
+stirred his limbs. It was a finer thing to be upright; there was a finer
+view, a more lordly sense of possession could be summoned to one's
+command. That, then, once decided, upright one must be and upright, with
+many sudden and alarming collapses, Ernest Henry was.</p>
+
+<p>He had marked out, from the first, the distance from the wall to the blue
+screen as a very decent distance. There was, half-way, a large
+rocking-chair that would be either a danger <a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a>or a deliverance, as Fate
+should have it. Save for this, it was, right across the brown, rose-strewn
+carpet, naked country. Truly a perilous business. As he sat there and
+looked at it, his heart a little misgave him; in this strange, new world
+into which he had been so roughly hustled, amongst a horde of alarming and
+painful occurrences, he had discovered nothing so disconcerting as that
+sudden giving of the knees, that rising of the floor to meet you, the
+collapse, the pain, and above all the disgrace. Moreover, let him fail
+now, and it meant, in short,&mdash;banishment&mdash;banishment and then darkness.
+There were risks. It was the most perilous thing that, in this new
+country, he had yet attempted, but attempt it he would.... He was as
+obstinate as his chin could make him.</p>
+
+<p>With his blue eyes still cautiously upon his nurse's shadow he raised
+himself very softly, his fat hand pressed against the wall, his mouth
+tightly closed, and from between his teeth there issued the most distant
+relation of that sound that the traditional ostler makes when he is
+cleaning down a horse. His knees quivered, straightened; he was up. Far
+away in the long, long distance were piled the toys that <a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a>yesterday's
+birthday had given him. They did not, as yet, mean anything to him at
+all. One day, perhaps when he had torn the dolls limb from limb, twisted
+the railways until they stood end upon end in sheer horror,
+disembowelled the bears and golliwogs so that they screamed again, he
+might have some personal feeling for them. At present there they lay in
+shining impersonal newness, and there for Ernest Henry they might lie
+for ever.</p>
+
+<p>For an instant, his hand against the wall, he was straight and
+motionless; then he took his hand away, and his journey began. At the
+first movement a strange, an amazing glory filled him. From the instant,
+two years ago, of his first arrival he had been disturbed by an
+irritating sense of inadequacy; he had been sent, it seemed, into this
+new and tiresome condition of things without any fitting provisions for
+his real needs. Demands were always made upon him that were, in the
+absurd lack of ways and means, impossible of fulfilment. But now, at
+last, he was using the world as it should be used.... He was fine, he
+was free, he was absolutely master. His legs might shake, his body lurch
+from side to side, his breath come in agitating gasps and whistles; the
+wall was <a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a>now far behind him, the screen most wonderfully near, the
+rocking-chair almost within his grasp. Great and mighty is Ernest Henry
+Wilberforce, dazzling and again dazzling the lighted avenues opening now
+before him; there is nothing, nothing, from the rendings of the toys to
+the deliberate defiance of his nurse and all those in authority over
+him, that he shall not now perform.... With a cry, with a wild wave of
+the arms, with a sickening foretaste of the bump with which the gay
+brown carpet would mark him, he was down, the Fates were upon him&mdash;the
+disturbance, the disrobing, the darkness. Nevertheless, even as he was
+carried, sobbing, into the farther room, there went with him a
+consciousness that life would never again be quite the dull,
+purposeless, monotonous thing that it had hitherto been.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>After a long time he was alone. About him the room, save for the yellow
+night-light above his head, was dark, humped with shadows, with grey
+pools of light near the windows, and a golden bar that some lamp beyond
+the house flung upon the wall. Ernest Henry lay and, <a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a>now and again,
+cautiously felt the bump on his forehead; there was butter on the bump,
+and an interesting confusion and pain and importance round and about it.
+Ernest Henry's eyes sought the golden bar, and then, lingering there,
+looked back upon the recent adventure. He had walked; yes, he had
+walked. This would, indeed, be something to tell his Friend.</p>
+
+<p>His friend, he knew, would be very shortly with him. It was not every
+night that he came, but always, before his coming, Ernest Henry knew of
+his approach&mdash;knew by the happy sense of comfort that stole softly about
+him, knew by the dismissal of all those fears and shapes and terrors
+that, otherwise, so easily beset him. He sucked his thumb now, and felt
+his bump, and stared at the ceiling and knew that he would come. During
+the first months after Ernest Henry's arrival on this planet his friend
+was never absent from him at all, was always there, drawing through his
+fingers the threads of the old happy life and the new alarming one,
+mingling them so that the transition from the one to the other might not
+be too sharp&mdash;reassuring, comforting, consoling. Then there had been
+hours when he had with<a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></a>drawn himself, and that earlier world had grown a
+little vaguer, a little more remote, and certain things, certain foods
+and smells and sounds had taken their place within the circle of
+realised facts. Then it had come to be that the friend only came at
+night, came at that moment when the nurse had gone, when the room was
+dark, and the possible beasts&mdash;the first beast, the second beast, and
+the third beast&mdash;began to creep amongst those cool, grey shadows in the
+hollow of the room. He always came then, was there with his arm about
+Ernest Henry, his great body, his dark beard, his large, firm hands&mdash;all
+so reassuring that the beasts might do the worst, and nothing could come
+of it. He brought with him, indeed, so much more than himself&mdash;brought a
+whole world of recollected wonders, of all that other time when Ernest
+Henry had other things to do, other disciplines, other triumphs, other
+defeats, and other glories. Of late his memory of the other time had
+been untrustworthy. Things during the day-time would remind him, but
+would remind him, nevertheless, with a strange mingling of the world at
+present about him, so that he was not sure of his visions. But when his
+friend was with him the mem<a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a>ories were real enough, and it was the
+nurse, the fire, the red wallpaper, the smell of toast, the taste of
+warm milk, that were faint and shadowy.</p>
+
+<p>His friend was there, just as always, suddenly sitting there on the bed
+with his arm round Ernest Henry's body, his dark beard just tickling
+Ernest Henry's neck, his hand tight about Ernest Henry's hand. They told
+one another things in the old way without tiresome words and sounds;
+but, for the benefit of those who are unfortunately too aged to remember
+that old and pleasant intercourse, one must make use of the English
+language. Ernest Henry displayed his bump, and explained its origin; and
+then, even as he did so, was aware that the reality of the bump made the
+other world just a little less real. He was proud that he had walked and
+stood up, and had been the master of his circumstance; but just because
+he had done so he was aware that his friend was a little, a very little
+farther away to-night than he had ever been before.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I'm very glad that you're going to stand on your own, because
+you'll have to. I'm going to leave you now&mdash;leave you for <a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a>longer, far
+longer than I've ever left you before.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leave me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. I shan't always be with you; indeed, later on you won't want me.
+Then you'll forget me, and at last you won't even believe that I ever
+existed&mdash;until, at the end of it all, I come to take you away. <i>Then</i> it
+will all come back to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, but that's absurd!&quot; Ernest Henry said confidently. Nevertheless, in
+his heart he knew that, during the day-time, other things did more and
+more compel his attention. There were long stretches during the day-time
+now when he forgot his friend.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After your second birthday I always leave you more to yourselves. I
+shall go now for quite a time, and you'll see that when the old feeling
+comes, and you know that I'm coming back, you'll be quite startled and
+surprised that you'd got on so well without me. Of course, some of you
+want me more than others do, and with some of you I stay quite late in
+life. There are one or two I never leave at all. But you're not like
+that; you'll get on quite well without me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a>Oh, no, I shan't,&quot; said Ernest Henry, and he clung very tightly and
+was most affectionate. But he suddenly put his fingers to his bump, felt
+the butter, and his chin shot up with self-satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To-morrow I'll get ever so much farther,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll behave, and not mind the beasts or the creatures?&quot; his friend
+said. &quot;You must remember that it's not the slightest use to call for me.
+You're on your own. Think of me, though. Don't forget me altogether. And
+don't forget all the other world in your new discoveries. Look out of
+the window sometimes. That will remind you more than anything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He had kissed him, had put his hand for a moment on Ernest Henry's
+curls, and was gone. Ernest Henry, his thumb in his mouth, was fast
+asleep.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Suddenly, with a wild, agonising clutch at the heart, he was awake. He
+was up in bed, his hands, clammy and hot, pressed together, his eyes
+staring, his mouth dry. The yellow night-<a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a>light was there, the bars of
+gold upon the walls, the cool, grey shadows, the white square of the
+window; but there, surely, also, were the beasts. He knew that they were
+there&mdash;one crouching right away there in the shadow, all black, damp;
+one crawling, blacker and damper, across the floor; one&mdash;yes, beyond
+question&mdash;one, the blackest and cruellest of them all, there beneath the
+bed. The bed seemed to heave, the room flamed with terror. He thought of
+his friend; on other nights he had invoked him, and instantly there had
+been assurance and comfort. Now that was of no avail; his friend would
+not come. He was utterly alone. Panic drove him; he thought that there,
+on the farther side of the bed, claws and a black arm appeared. He
+screamed and screamed and screamed.</p>
+
+<p>The door was flung open, there were lights, his nurse appeared. He was
+lying down now, his face towards the wall, and only dry, hard little
+sobs came from him. Her large red hand was upon his shoulder, but
+brought no comfort with it. Of what use was she against the three
+beasts? A poor creature.... He was ashamed that he should cry before
+her. He bit his lip.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a>Dreaming, I suppose, sir,&quot; she said to some one behind her. Another
+figure came forward. Some one sat down on the edge of the bed, put his
+arm round Ernest Henry's body and drew him towards him. For one wild
+moment Ernest Henry fancied that his friend had, after all, returned.
+But no. He knew that these were the conditions of this world, not of
+that other. When he crept close to his friend he was caught up into a
+soft, rosy comfort, was conscious of nothing except ease and rest. Here
+there were knobs and hard little buttons, and at first his head was
+pressed against a cold, slippery surface that hurt. Nevertheless, the
+pressure was pleasant and comforting. A warm hand stroked his hair. He
+liked it, jerked his head up, and hit his new friend's chin.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, damn!&quot; he heard quite clearly. This was a new sound to Ernest
+Henry; but just now he was interested in sounds, and had learnt lately
+quite a number. This was a soft, pleasant, easy sound. He liked it.</p>
+
+<p>And so, with it echoing in his head, his curly head against his father's
+shoulder, the bump glistening in the candle-light, the beasts defeated
+and derided, he tumbled into sleep.<a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a></p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>A pleasant sight at breakfast was Ernest Henry, with his yellow curls
+gleaming from his bath, his bib tied firmly under his determined chin,
+his fat fingers clutching a large spoon, his body barricaded into a high
+chair, his heels swinging and kicking and swinging again. Very fine,
+too, was the nursery on a sunny morning&mdash;the fire crackling, the roses
+on the brown carpet as lively as though they were real, and the whole
+place glittering, glowing with size and cleanliness and vigour. In the
+air was the crackling smell of toast and bacon, in a glass dish was
+strawberry jam, through the half-open window came all the fun of the
+Square&mdash;the sparrows, the carts, the motor-cars, the bells, and
+horses.... Oh, a fine morning was fine indeed!</p>
+
+<p>Ernest Henry, deep in the business of conveying securely his bread and
+milk from the bowl&mdash;a beautiful bowl with red robins all round the
+outside of it&mdash;to his mouth, laughed at the three beasts. Let them show
+themselves here in the sunlight, and they'd see what they'd get. Let
+them only dare!</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a>He surveyed, with pleased anticipation, the probable progress of his
+day. He glanced at the pile of toys in the farther corner of the room,
+and thought to himself that he might, after all, find some diversion
+there. Yesterday they had seemed disappointing; to-day in the glow of
+the sun they suggested, adventure. Then he looked towards that stretch
+of country&mdash;that wall-to-screen marathon&mdash;and, with an eye upon his
+nurse, meditated a further attempt. He put down his spoon, and felt his
+bump. It was better; perchance there would be two bumps by the evening.
+And then, suddenly, he remembered.... He felt again the terror, saw the
+lights and his nurse, then that new friend.... He pondered, lifted his
+spoon, waved it in the air; and then smiling with the happy recovery of
+a pleasant, friendly sound, repeated half to himself, half to his nurse:
+&quot;Damn! Damn! Damn!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That began for him the difficulties of his day. He was hustled, shaken;
+words, words, words were poured down upon him. He understood that, in
+some strange, unexpected, bewildering fashion he had done wrong. There
+was nothing more puzzling in his present surroundings than that
+amazingly sudden transition from se<a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a>renity to danger. Here one was, warm
+with food, bathed in sunlight, with a fine, ripe day in front of one....
+Then the mere murmur of a sound, and all was tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>He hated his toys, his nurse, his food, his world; he sat in a corner of
+the room and glowered.... How was he to know? If, under direct
+encouragement, he could be induced to say &quot;dada,&quot; or &quot;horse,&quot; or
+&quot;twain,&quot; he received nothing but applause and, often enough, reward.
+Yet, let him make use of that pleasant new sound that he had learnt, and
+he was in disgrace. Upon this day, more than any other in his young
+life, he ached, he longed for some explanation. Then, sitting there in
+his corner, there came to him a discovery, the force of which was never,
+throughout all his later life, to leave him. He had been deserted by his
+friend. His last link with that other life was broken. He was here,
+planted in the strangest of strange places, with nothing whatever to
+help him. He was alone; he must fight for his own hand. He would&mdash;from
+that moment, seated there beneath the window, Ernest Henry Wilberforce
+challenged the terrors of this world, and found them sawdust&mdash;he would
+say &quot;damn&quot; as often as he pleased. &quot;Damn, <a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a>damn, damn, damn,&quot; he
+whispered, and marked again, with meditative eye, the space from wall to
+screen.</p>
+
+<p>After this, greatly cheered, he bethought him of the Square. Last night
+his friend had said to him that when he wished to think of him, and go
+back for a time to the other world, a peep into the Square would assist
+him. He clambered up on to the window-seat, caught behind him those
+sounds, &quot;Now, Master Ernest,&quot; which he now definitely connected with
+condemnation and disapproval, shook his curls in defiance, and pressed
+his nose to the glass. The Square was a dazzling sight. He had not as
+yet names for any of the things that he saw there, nor, when he went out
+on his magnificent daily progress in his perambulator did he associate
+the things that he found immediately around him with the things that he
+saw from his lofty window; but, with every absorbed gaze they stood more
+securely before him, and were fixed ever more firmly in his memory.</p>
+
+<p>This was a Square with fine, white, lofty houses, and in the houses were
+an infinite number of windows, sometimes gay and sometimes glittering.
+In the middle of the Square was a <a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a>garden, and in the middle of the
+garden, very clearly visible from Ernest Henry's window, was a fountain.
+It was this fountain, always tossing and leaping, that gave Ernest Henry
+the key to his memories. Gazing at it he had no difficulty at all to
+find himself back in the old life. Even now, although only two years had
+passed, it was difficult not to reveal his old experiences by means of
+terms of his new discoveries. He thought, for instance, of the fountain
+as a door that led into the country whose citizen he had once been, and
+that country he saw now in terms of doors and passages and rooms and
+windows, whereas, in reality, it had been quite otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>But now, perched up there on the window-sill, he felt that if he could
+only bring the fountain in with him out of the Square into his nursery,
+he would have the key to both existences. He wanted to understand&mdash;to
+understand what was the relation between his friend who had left last
+night, why he might say &quot;dada,&quot; but mustn't say &quot;damn,&quot; why, finally, he
+was here at all. He did not consciously consider these things; his brain
+was only very slightly, as yet, concerned in his discoveries; but, like
+a flowing river, beneath his move<a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a>ments and actions, the interplay of
+his two existences drove him on through, his adventure.</p>
+
+<p>There were, of course, many other things in the Square besides the
+fountain. There was, at the farther corner, just out of the Square, but
+quite visible from Ernest Henry's window, a fruit-shop with coloured
+fruit piled high on the boards outside the windows. Indeed, that side
+street, of which one could only catch this glimpse, promised to be most
+wonderful always; when evening came a golden haze hovered round and
+about it. In the garden itself there were often many children, and for
+an hour every afternoon Ernest Henry might be found amongst them. There
+were two statues in the Square&mdash;one of a gentleman in a beard and a
+frock-coat, the other of a soldier riding very finely upon a restless
+horse; but Ernest Henry was not, as yet, old enough to realise the
+meaning and importance of these heroes.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the Square there were many dogs, and even now as he looked down
+from his window he could see a number of them, black and brown and
+white.</p>
+
+<p>The trees trembled in a little breeze, the fountain flashed in the sun,
+somewhere a bar<a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a>rel-organ was playing.... Ernest Henry gave a little
+sigh, of satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>He was back! He was back! He was slipping, slipping into distance
+through the window into the street, under the fountain, its glittering
+arms had caught him; he was up, the door was before him, he had the key.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Time for you to put your things on, Master Ernest. And 'ow you've
+dirtied your knees! There! Look!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shook himself, clambered down from the window, gave his nurse what
+she described as &quot;One of his old, old looks. Might be eighty when he's
+like that.... They're all like it when they're young.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With a sigh he translated himself back into this new, tiresome
+existence.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>But after that morning things were never again quite the same. He gave
+himself up deliberately to the new life.</p>
+
+<p>With that serious devotion towards anything likely to be of real
+practical value to him that was, in his later years, never to fail him,
+he attacked this business of &quot;words.&quot; He dis<a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a>covered that if he made
+certain sounds when certain things were said to him he provoked instant
+applause. He liked popularity; he liked the rewards that popularity
+brought him. He acquired a formula that amounted practically to &quot;Wash
+dat?&quot; And whenever he saw anything new he produced his question. He
+learnt with amazing rapidity. He was, his nurse repeatedly told his
+father, &quot;a most remarkable child.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It could not truthfully be said that during these weeks he forgot his
+friend altogether. There were still the dark hours at night when he
+longed for him, and once or twice he had cried aloud for him. But slowly
+that slipped away. He did not look often now at the fountain.</p>
+
+<p>There were times when his friend was almost there. One evening, kneeling
+on the floor before the fire, arranging shining soldiers in a row, he
+was aware of something that made him sharply pause and raise his head.
+He was, for the moment, alone in the room that was glowing and quivering
+now in the firelight. The faint stir and crackle of the fire, the rich
+flaming colour that rose and fell against the white ceiling might have
+been enough to make <a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a>him wonder. But there was also the scent of a clump
+of blue hyacinths standing in shadow by the darkened window, and this
+scent caught him, even as the fountain had caught him, caught him with
+the stillness, the leaping fire, the twisted sense of romantic
+splendours that came, like some magician's smoke and flame, up to his
+very heart and brain. He did not turn his head, but behind him he was
+sure, there on the golden-brown rug, his friend was standing, watching
+him with his smiling eyes, his dark beard; he would be ready, at the
+least movement, to catch him up and hold him. Swiftly, Ernest Henry
+turned. There was no one there.</p>
+
+<p>But those moments were few now; real people were intervening. He had no
+mother, and this was doubtless the reason why his nurse darkly addressed
+him as &quot;Poor Lamb&quot; on many occasions; but he was, of course, at present
+unaware of his misfortune. He <i>had</i> an aunt, and of this lady he was
+aware only too vividly. She was long and thin and black, and he would
+not have disliked her so cordially, perhaps, had he not from the very
+first been aware of the sharpness of her nose when she kissed him. Her
+nose hurt him, and so he hated her.<a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a> But, as he grew, he discovered that
+this hatred was well-founded. Miss Wilberforce had not a happy way with
+children; she was nervous when she should have been bold, and secret
+when she should have been honesty itself. When Ernest Henry was the
+merest atom in a cradle, he discovered that she was afraid of him; he
+hated the shiny stuff of her dress. She wore a gold chain that&mdash;when you
+pulled it&mdash;snapped and hit your fingers. There were sharp pins at the
+back of her dress. He hated her; he was not afraid of her, and yet on
+that critical night when his friend told him of his departure, it was
+the fear of being left alone with the black cold shiny thing that
+troubled him most; she bore of all the daylight things the closest
+resemblance to the three beasts.</p>
+
+<p>There was, of course, his nurse, and a great deal of his time was spent
+in her company; but she had strangely little connection with his main
+problem of the relation of this, his present world, to that, his
+preceding one. She was there to answer questions, to issue commands, to
+forbid. She had the key to various cupboards&mdash;to the cupboard with
+pretty cups and jam and sugar, to the cupboard with ugly things that
+tasted horrible, things that he re<a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a>sisted by instinct long before they
+arrived under his nose. She also had certain sounds, of which she made
+invariable use on all occasions. One was, &quot;Now, Master Ernest!&quot; Another:
+&quot;Mind-what-you're-about-now!&quot; And, at his &quot;Wash dat!&quot; always
+&quot;Oh-bother-the-boy!&quot; She was large and square to look upon, very often
+pins were in her mouth, and the slippers that she wore within doors
+often clipclapped upon the carpet. But she was not a person; she had
+nothing to do with his progress.</p>
+
+<p>The person who had to do with it was, of course, his father. That night
+when his friend had left him had been, indeed, a crisis, because it was
+on that night that his father had come to him. It was not that he had
+not been aware of his father before, but he had been aware of him only
+as he had been aware of light and heat and food. Now it had become a
+definite wonder as to whether this new friend had been sent to take the
+place of the old one. Certainly the new friend had very little to do
+with all that old life of which the fountain was the door. He belonged,
+most definitely, to the new one, and everything about him&mdash;the
+delightfully mysterious tick of his gold watch, the solid, firm grasp of
+his hand, the sure security of his <a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a>shoulder upon which Ernest Henry now
+gloriously rode&mdash;these things were of this world and none other.</p>
+
+<p>It was a different relationship, this, from any other that Ernest Henry
+had ever known, but there was no doubt at all about its pleasant
+flavour. Just as in other days he had watched for his friend's
+appearance, so now he waited for that evening hour that always brought
+his father. The door would open, the square, set figure would appear....
+Very pleasant, indeed. Meanwhile Ernest Henry was instructed that the
+right thing to say on his father's appearance was &quot;Dada.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But he knew better. His father's name was really &quot;Damn.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>The days and weeks passed. There had been no sign of his friend.... Then
+the crisis came.</p>
+
+<p>That old wall-to-screen marathon had been achieved, and so
+contemptuously banished. There was now the great business of marching
+without aid from one end of the room to the other. This was a long
+business, and always <a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a>hitherto somewhere about the middle of it Ernest
+Henry had sat down suddenly, pretending, even to himself, that his shoe
+<i>hurt</i>, or that he was bored with the game, and would prefer some other.</p>
+
+<p>There came, then, a beautiful spring evening. The long low evening sun
+flooded the room, and somewhere a bell was calling Christian people to
+their prayers, and somewhere else the old man with the harp, who always
+came round the Square once every week, was making beautiful music.</p>
+
+<p>Ernest Henry's father had taken the nurse's place for an hour, and was
+reading a <i>Globe</i> with absorbed attention by the window; Mr.
+Wilberforce, senior, was one of London's most famous barristers, and the
+<i>Globe</i> on this particular afternoon had a great deal to say about this
+able man's cleverness. Ernest Henry watched his father, watched the
+light, heard the bell and the harp, felt that the hour was ripe for his
+attempt.</p>
+
+<p>He started, and, even as he did so, was aware that, after he had
+succeeded in this great adventure, things&mdash;that is, life&mdash;would never be
+quite the same again. He knew by now every stage of the first half of
+his journey. The first <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a>instalment was defined by that picture of the
+garden and the roses and the peacocks; the second by the beginning of
+the square brown nursery table; and here there was always a swift and
+very testing temptation to cling, with a sticky hand, to the hard and
+shining corner. The third division was the end of the nursery table
+where one was again tempted to give the corner a final clutch before
+passing forth into the void. After this there was nothing, no rest, no
+possible harbour until the end.</p>
+
+<p>Off Ernest Henry started. He could see his father, there in the long
+distance, busied with his paper; he could see the nursery table, with
+bright-blue and red reels of cotton that nurse had left there; he could
+see a discarded railway engine that lay gaping there half-way across,
+ready to catch and trip him if he were not careful. His eyes were like
+saucers, the hissing noise came from between his teeth, his forehead
+frowned. He passed the peacock, he flung contemptuously aside the
+proffered corner of the table; he passed, as an Atlantic liner passes
+the Eddystone, the table's other end; he was on the last stretch.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly he paused. He lifted his head, caught with his eye a pink,
+round cloud <a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a>that sailed against the evening blue beyond the window,
+heard the harpist, heard his father turn and exclaim, as he saw him.</p>
+
+<p>He knew, as he stood there, that at last the moment had come. His friend
+had returned.</p>
+
+<p>All the room was buzzing with it. The dolls fell in a neglected heap,
+the train on the carpet, the fire behind the fender, the reels of cotton
+that were on the table&mdash;they all knew it.</p>
+
+<p>His friend had returned.</p>
+
+<p>His impulse was, there and then, to sit down.</p>
+
+<p>His friend was whispering: &quot;Come along!... Come along!... Come along!&quot;
+He knew that, on his surrender, his father would make sounds like,
+&quot;Well, old man, tired, eh? Bed, I suggest.&quot; He knew that bed would
+follow. Then darkness, then his friend.</p>
+
+<p>For an instant there was fierce battle between the old forces and the
+new. Then, with his eyes upon his father, resuming that hiss that is
+proper only to ostlers, he continued his march.</p>
+
+<p>He reached the wall. He caught his father's leg. He was raised on to his
+father's lap, was kissed, was for a moment triumphant; then suddenly
+burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, old man, what's the matter?&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a>But Ernest Henry could not explain. Had he but known it he had, in that
+rejection of his friend, completed the first stage of his &quot;Pilgrimage
+from this world to the next.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Angelina</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>Angelina Braid, on the morning of her third birthday, woke very early.
+It would be too much to say that she knew it was her birthday, but she
+awoke, excited. She looked at the glimmering room, heard the sparrows
+beyond her windows, heard the snoring of her nurse in the large bed
+opposite her own, and lay very still, with her heart thumping like
+anything. She made no noise, however, because it was not her way to make
+a noise. Angelina Braid was the quietest little girl in all the Square.
+&quot;You'd never meet one nigher a mouse in a week of Sundays,&quot; said her
+nurse, who was a &quot;gay one&quot; and liked life.</p>
+
+<p>It was not, however, entirely Angelina's fault that she took life
+quietly; in 21 March Square, it was exceedingly difficult to do anything
+else.<a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a> Angelina's parents were in India, and she was not conscious, very
+acutely, of their existence. Every morning and evening she prayed, &quot;God
+bless mother and father in India,&quot; but then she was not very acutely
+conscious of God either, and so her mind was apt to wander during her
+prayers.</p>
+
+<p>She lived with her two aunts&mdash;Miss Emmy Braid and Miss Violet Braid&mdash;in
+the smallest house in the Square. So slim was No. 21, and so ruthlessly
+squeezed between the opulent No. 20 and the stout ruddy-faced No. 22,
+that it made one quite breathless to look at it; it was exactly as
+though an old maid, driven by suffragette wildness, had been arrested by
+two of the finest possible policemen, and carried off into custody. Very
+little of any kind of wildness was there about the Misses Braid. They
+were slim, neat women, whose rather yellow faces had the flat, squashed
+look of lawn grass after a garden roller has passed over it. They
+believed in God according to the Reverend Stephen Hunt, of St.
+Matthew-in-the-Crescent&mdash;the church round the corner&mdash;but in no other
+kind of God whatever. They were not rich, and they were not poor; they
+went once a week&mdash;Fridays&mdash;to visit the poor of St. Matthew's, <a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a>and
+found the poor of St. Matthew's on the whole unappreciative of their
+efforts, but that made their task the nobler. Their house was dark and
+musty, and filled with little articles left them by their grand-parents,
+their parents, and other defunct relations. They had no friendly feeling
+towards one another, but missed one another when they were separated.
+They were, both of them, as strong as horses, but very hypochondriacal,
+and Dr. Armstrong of Mulberry Place made a very pleasant little income
+out of them.</p>
+
+<p>I have mentioned them at length, because they had a great deal to do
+with Angelina's quiet behaviour. No. 21 was not a house that welcomed a
+child's ringing laughter. But, in any case, the Misses Braid were not
+fond of children, but only took Angelina because they had a soft spot in
+their dry hearts for their brother Jim, and in any case it would have
+been difficult to say no.</p>
+
+<p>Their attitude to children was that they could not understand why they
+did not instantly see things as they, their elders, saw them; but then,
+on the other hand, if an especially bright child did take a grown-up
+point of view about <a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a>anything <i>that</i> was considered &quot;forward&quot; and
+&quot;conceited,&quot; so that it was really very difficult for Angelina.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a pity Jim's got such a dull child,&quot; Miss Violet would say. &quot;You
+never would have expected it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What I like about a child,&quot; said Miss Emmy, &quot;is a little cheerfulness
+and natural spirit&mdash;not all this moping.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Angelina was not, on the whole, popular.... The aunts had very little
+idea of making a house cheerful for a child. The room allotted to
+Angelina as a nursery was at the top of the house, and had once been a
+servant's bedroom. It possessed two rather grimy windows, a faded brown
+wallpaper, an old green carpet, and some very stiff, hard chairs. On one
+wall was a large map of the world, and on the other an old print of
+Romans sacking Jerusalem, a picture which frightened Angelina every
+night of her life, when the dark came and the lamp illuminated the
+writhing limbs, the falling bodies, the tottering walls. From the
+windows the Square was visible, and at the windows Angelina spent a
+great deal of her time, but her present nurse&mdash;nurses succeeded one
+another with startling frequency&mdash;objected <a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a>to what she called
+&quot;window-gazing.&quot; &quot;Makes a child dreamy,&quot; she said; &quot;lowers her spirits.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Angelina was, naturally, a dreamy child, and no amount of nurses could
+prevent her being one. She was dreamy because her loneliness forced her
+to be so, and if her dreams were the most real part of her day to her
+that was surely the faults of her aunts. But she was not at all a quick
+child; although to-day was her third birthday she could not talk very
+well, could not pronounce her r's, and lisped in what her trail of
+nurses told her was a ridiculous fashion for so big a girl. But, then,
+she was not really a big girl; her figure was short and stumpy, her
+features plain and pale with the pallor of her first Indian year. Her
+eyes were large and black and rather fine.</p>
+
+<p>On this morning she lay in bed, and knew that she was excited because
+her friend had come the night before and told her that to-day would be
+an important day. Angelina clung, with a desperate tenacity, to her
+memories of everything that happened to her before her arrival on this
+unpleasant planet. Those memories now were growing faint, and they came
+to her only in flashes, in sudden twists and <a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>turns of the scene, as
+though she were surrounded by curtains and, every now and then, was
+allowed a peep through. Her friend had been with her continually at
+first, and, whilst he had been there, the old life had been real and
+visible enough; but on her second birthday he had told her that it was
+right now that she should manage by herself. Since then, he had come
+when she least expected him; sometimes when she had needed him very
+badly he had not appeared.... She never knew. At any rate, he had said
+that to-day would be important.... She lay in bed, listening to her
+nurse's snores, and waited.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>At breakfast she knew that it was her birthday. There were presents from
+her aunts&mdash;a picture-book and a box of pencils&mdash;there was also a
+mysterious parcel. Angelina could not remember that she had ever had a
+parcel before, and the excitement of this one must be prolonged. She
+would not open it, but gazed at it, with her spoon in the air and her
+mouth wide open.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come, Miss Angelina&mdash;what a name to give <a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a>the poor lamb!&mdash;get on with
+your breakfast now, or you'll never have done. Why not open the pretty
+parcel?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. Do you think it is a twain?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say train&mdash;not twain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Train.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, of course not; not a thing that shape.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! Do you think it's a bear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Maybe&mdash;maybe. Come now, get on with your bread and butter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't want any more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Get down from your chair, then. Say your grace now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank God nice bweakfast, Amen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's right! Now open it, then.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Drat the child! Well, wipe your face, then.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Angelina carried her parcel to the window, and then, after gazing at it
+for a long time, at last opened it. Her eyes grew wider and wider, her
+chubby fingers trembled. Nurse undid the wrappings of paper, slowly
+folded up the sheets, then produced, all naked and unashamed, a large
+rag doll.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There! There's a pretty thing for you, Miss 'Lina.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a>She had her hand about the doll's head, and held her there, suspended.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Give her me! Give her me!&quot; Angelina rescued her, and, with eyes
+flaming, the doll laid lengthways in her arms, tottered off to the other
+corner of the room.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, there's gratitude,&quot; said the nurse, &quot;and never asking so much as
+who it's from.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But nurse, aunts, all the troubles and disappointments of this world had
+vanished from Angelina's heart and soul. She had seen, at that first
+glimpse that her nurse had so rudely given her, that here at last, after
+long, long waiting, was the blessing that she had so desired. She had
+had other dolls&mdash;quite a number of them. Even now Lizzie (without an
+eye) and Rachel (rather fine in bridesmaid's attire) were leaning their
+disconsolate backs against the boarding beneath the window seat. There
+had been, besides Rachel and Lizzie, two Annies, a Mary, a May, a
+Blackamoor, a Jap, a Sailor, and a Baby in a Bath. They were now as
+though they had never been; Angelina knew with absolute certainty of
+soul, with that blending of will and desire, passion, self-sacrifice and
+absence of humour that must inevitably accompany true love that here was
+her Fate.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a>It's been sent you by your kind Uncle Teny,&quot; said nurse. &quot;You'll have
+to write a nice letter and thank him.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>But Angelina knew better. She&mdash;a name had not yet been chosen&mdash;had been
+sent to her by her friend.... He had promised her last night that this
+should be a day of days.</p>
+
+<p>Her aunts, appearing to receive thanks where thanks were due, darkened
+the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-morning, mum. Good-morning, mum. Now, Miss 'Lina, thank your kind
+aunties for their beautiful presents.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She stood up, clutching the doll.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;T'ank you, Auntie Vi'let; t'ank you, Auntie Em'ly&mdash;your lovely
+pwesents.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's right, Angelina. I hope you'll use them sensibly. What's that
+she's holding, nurse?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a doll Mr. Edward's sent her, mum.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a hideous creature! Edward might have chosen something&mdash;&mdash; Time for
+her to go out, nurse, I think&mdash;now, while the sun's warm.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But she did not hear. She did not know that they had gone. She sat there
+in a dreamy ecstasy rocking the red-cheeked creature in <a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a>her arms,
+seeing, with her black eyes, visions and the beauty of a thousand
+worlds.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>The name Rose was given to her. Rose had been kept, as a name, until
+some one worthy should arrive.... &quot;Wosie Bwaid,&quot; a very good name. Her
+nakedness was clothed first in Rachel's bridesmaid's attire&mdash;alas! poor
+Rachel!&mdash;but the lace and finery did not suit those flaming red cheeks
+and beady black eyes. Rose was, there could be no question, a daughter
+of the soil; good red blood ran through her stout veins. Tess of the
+countryside, your laughing, chaffing, arms-akimbo dairymaid; no poor
+white product of the over-civilised cities. Angelina felt that the satin
+and lace were wrong; she tore them off, searched in the heaped-up
+cupboard for poor neglected Annie No. 1, found her, tore from her her
+red woollen skirt and white blouse, stretched them about Rose's portly
+body.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;T'ank God for nice Wose, Amen,&quot; she said, but she meant, not God, but
+her friend. He, her friend, had never sent her anything before, and now
+that Rose had come straight from him, <a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a>she must have a great deal to
+tell her about him. Nothing puzzled her more than the distressing fact
+that she wondered sometimes whether her friend was ever really coming
+again, whether any of the wonderful things that were happening on every
+side of her wouldn't suddenly one fine morning vanish altogether, and
+leave her to a dreary world of nurse, bread and milk, and the Romans
+sacking Jerusalem. She didn't, of course, put it like that; all that it
+meant to her was that stupid people and tiresome things were always
+interfering between herself and <i>real</i> fun. Now it was time to go out,
+now to go to bed, now to eat, now to be taken downstairs into that
+horrid room where she couldn't move because things would tumble off the
+tables so ... all this prevented her own life when she would sit and
+try, and try, and remember <i>what</i> it was all like once, and wonder why
+when once things had been so beautiful they were so ugly and
+disappointing now.</p>
+
+<p>Now Rose had come, and she could talk to Rose about it. &quot;What she sees
+in that ugly old doll!&quot; said the nurse to the housemaid. &quot;You can take
+my word, Mary, she'll sit in that window looking down at the gardens,
+nursing <a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a>that rag and just say nothing. It fair gives you the creeps ...
+left too much to herself, the poor child is. As for those old women
+downstairs, if I 'ad my way&mdash;but there! Living's living, and bread and
+butter's bread and butter!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But, of course, Angelina's heart was bursting with affection, and there
+had been, until Rose's arrival, no one upon whom she might bestow it.
+Rose might seem to the ordinary observer somewhat unresponsive. She sat
+there, whether it were tea-time, dressing-time, bed-time, always staring
+in front of her, her mouth closed, her arms, bow-shaped, standing
+stiffly away from her side, taking, it might seem, but little interest
+in her mistress's confidences. Did one give her tea she only dribbled at
+the lip; did one place upon her head a straw hat with red ribbon torn
+from poor May&mdash;once a reigning favourite&mdash;she made no effort to keep it
+upon her head. Jewels and gold could rouse no appreciation from her; she
+was sunk in a lethargy that her rose-red cheeks most shamefully belied.</p>
+
+<p>But Angelina had the key to her. Angelina understood that confiding
+silence, appreciated that tactful discretion, adored that complete
+<a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a>submission to her will. It was true that her friend had only come once
+to her now within the space of many, many weeks, but he had sent her
+Rose. &quot;He's coming soon, Wose&mdash;weally soon&mdash;to tell us stowies.
+Bu-ootiful ones.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She sat, gazing down into the Square, and her dreams were longer and
+longer and longer.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Miss Emily Braid was a softer creature than her sister, and she had,
+somewhere in her heart, some sort of affection for her niece. She made,
+now and then, little buccaneering raids upon the nursery, with the
+intention of arriving at some intimate terms with that strange animal.
+But she had no gift of ease with children; her attempts at friendliness
+were viewed by Angelina with the gravest suspicion and won no return.
+This annoyed Miss Emily, and because she was conscious that she herself
+was in reality to blame, she attacked Angelina all the more fiercely.
+&quot;This brooding must be stopped,&quot; she said. &quot;Really, it's most
+unhealthy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was quite impossible for her to believe that a child of three could
+really be interested <a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a>by golden sunsets, the colours of the fountain
+that was in the centre of the gardens, the soft, grey haze that clothed
+the houses on a spring evening; and when, therefore, she saw Angelina
+gazing at these things, she decided that the child was morbid. Any
+interest, however, that Angelina may have taken in her aunts before
+Rose's arrival was now reduced to less than nothing at all.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That doll that Edward gave the child,&quot; said Miss Emily to her sister,
+&quot;is having a very bad effect on her. Makes her more moody than ever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Such a hideous thing!&quot; said Miss Violet. &quot;Well, I shall take it away if
+I see much more of this nonsense.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was lucky for Rose meanwhile that she was of a healthy constitution.
+The meals, the dressing and undressing, the perpetual demands upon her
+undivided attention, the sudden rousings from her sleep, the swift
+rockings back into slumber again, the appeals for response, the abuses
+for indifference, these things would have slain within a week one of her
+more feeble sisters. But Rose was made of stern stuff, and her rosy
+cheeks were as rosy, the brightness of her eyes was undimmed. We <a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a>may
+believe&mdash;and surely many harder demands are made upon our faith&mdash;that
+there did arise a very special relationship between these two. The whole
+of Angelina's heart was now devoted to Rose's service, Rose's was not
+devoted to Angelina?... And always Angelina wondered when her friend
+would return, watched for him in the dusk, awoke in the early mornings
+and listened for him, searched the Square with its trees and its
+fountain for his presence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wosie, when did he say he'd come next?&quot; But Rose could not tell. There
+<i>were</i> times when Rose's impenetrability was, to put it at its mildest,
+aggravating.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the situation with Aunt Emily grew serious. Angelina was
+aware that Aunt Emily disliked Rose, and her mouth now shut very tightly
+and her eyes glared defiance when she thought of this, but her
+difference with her aunt went more deeply than this. She had known for a
+long, long time that both her aunts would stop her &quot;dreaming&quot; if they
+could. Did she tell them about her friend, about the kind of pictures of
+which the fountain reminded her, about the vivid, lively memories that
+the tree with the pink flowers&mdash;the almond tree&mdash;in the <a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a>corner of the
+gardens&mdash;you could just see it from the nursery window&mdash;called to her
+mind; she knew that she would be punished&mdash;put in the corner, or even
+sent to bed. She did not think these things out consecutively in her
+mind, but she knew that the dark room downstairs, the dark passages, the
+stillness and silence of it all frightened her, and that it was always
+out of these things that her aunts rose.</p>
+
+<p>At night when she lay in bed with Rosie clasped tightly to her, she
+whispered endlessly about the gardens, the fountain, the barrel organs,
+the dogs, the other children in the Square&mdash;she had names of her own for
+all these things&mdash;and him, who belonged, of course, to the world
+outside.... Then her whisper would sink, and she would warn Rose about
+the rooms downstairs, the dining-room with the black chairs, the soft
+carpet, and the stuffed birds in glass cases&mdash;for these things, too, she
+had names. Here was the hand of death and destruction, the land of
+crooked stairs, sudden dark doors, mysterious bells and drippings of
+water&mdash;out of all this her aunts came....</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately it was just at this moment that Miss Emily Braid decided
+that it was time <a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a>to take her niece in hand. &quot;The child's three, Violet,
+and very backward for her age. Why, Mrs. Mancaster's little girl, who's
+just Angelina's age, can talk fluently, and is beginning with her
+letters. We don't want Jim to be disappointed in the child when he comes
+home next year.&quot; It would be difficult to determine how much of this was
+true; Miss Emily was aggravated and, although she would never have
+confessed to so trivial a matter, the perpetual worship of Rose&mdash;&quot;the
+ugliest thing you ever saw&quot;&mdash;was irritating her. The days followed,
+then, when Angelina was constantly in her aunt's company, and to neither
+of them was this companionship pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You must ask me questions, child. How are you ever going to learn to
+talk properly if you don't ask me questions?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, auntie.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's that over there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Twee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say tree, not twee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tree.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now look at me. Put that wretched doll down.... Now.... That's right.
+Now tell me what you've been doing this morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We had bweakfast&mdash;nurse said I&mdash;(long <a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a>pause for breath)&mdash;was dood
+girl; Auntie Vi'let came; I dwew with my pencil.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say 'drew,' not 'dwew.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Drew.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>All this was very exhausting to Aunt Emily. She was no nearer the
+child's heart.... Angelina maintained an impenetrable reserve. Old maids
+have much time amongst the unsatisfied and sterile monotonies of their
+life&mdash;this is only true of <i>some</i> old maids; there are very delightful
+ones&mdash;to devote to fancies and microscopic imitations. It was
+astonishing now how largely in Miss Emily Braid's life loomed the figure
+of Rose, the rag doll.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If it weren't for that wretched doll, I believe one could get some
+sense out of the child.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think it's a mistake, nurse, to let Miss Angelina play with that doll
+so much.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, mum, it'd be difficult to take it from her now. She's that
+wrapped in it.&quot; ... And so she was.... Rose stood to Angelina for so
+much more than Rose.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Wosie, <i>when</i> will he come again.... P'r'aps never. And I'm
+forgetting. I can't remember at all about the funny water and the twee
+with the flowers, and all of it. Wosie, <i>you</i><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a> 'member&mdash;Whisper.&quot; And
+Rose offered in her own mysterious, taciturn way the desired comfort.</p>
+
+<p>And then, of course, the crisis arrived. I am sorry about this part of
+the story. Of all the invasions of Aunt Emily, perhaps none were more
+strongly resented by Angelina than the appropriation of the afternoon
+hour in the gardens. Nurse had been an admirable escort because, as a
+lady of voracious appetite for life with, at the moment, but slender
+opportunities for satisfying it, she was occupied alertly with the
+possible vision of any male person driven by a similar desire. Her eye
+wandered; the hand to which Angelina clung was an abstract, imperceptive
+hand&mdash;Angelina and Rose were free to pursue their own train of
+fancy&mdash;the garden was at their service. But with Aunt Emily how
+different! Aunt Emily pursued relentlessly her educational tactics. Her
+thin, damp, black glove gripped Angelina's hand; her eyes (they had a
+&quot;peering&quot; effect, as though they were always searching for something
+beyond their actual vision) wandered aimlessly about the garden, looking
+for educational subjects. And so up and down the paths they went,
+Angelina trotting, with Rose clasped <a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a>to her breast, walking just a
+little faster than she conveniently could.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Emily disliked the gardens, and would have greatly preferred that
+nurse should have been in charge, but this consciousness of trial
+inflamed her sense of merit. There came a lovely spring afternoon; the
+almond tree was in full blossom; a cloud of pink against the green
+hedge, clumps of daffodils rippled with little shudders of delight, even
+the statues of &quot;Sir Benjamin Bundle&quot; and &quot;General Sir Robinson Cleaver&quot;
+seemed to unbend a little from their stiff angularity. There were many
+babies and nurses, and children laughing and crying and shouting, and a
+sky of mild forget-me-not blue smiled protectingly upon them. Angelina's
+eyes were fixed upon the fountain, which flashed and sparkled in the air
+with a happy freedom that seemed to catch all the life of the garden
+within its heart. Angelina felt how immensely she and Rose might have
+enjoyed all this had they been alone. Her eyes gazed longingly at the
+almond tree; she wished that she might go off on a voyage of discovery
+for, on this day of all days, did its shadow seem to hold some pressing,
+intimate invitation. &quot;I shall get back&mdash;I shall get back.... He'll come
+and <a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a>take me; I'll remember all the old things,&quot; she thought. She and
+Rose&mdash;what a time they might have if only&mdash;&mdash; She glanced up at her aunt.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look at that nice little boy, Angelina,&quot; Aunt Emily said. &quot;See how
+good&mdash;&mdash;&quot; But at that very instant that same playful breeze that had been
+ruffling the daffodils, and sending shimmers through the fountain
+decided that now was the moment to catch Miss Emily's black hat at one
+corner, prove to her that the pin that should have fastened it to her
+hair was loose, and swing the whole affair to one side. Up went her
+hands; she gave a little cry of dismay.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly, then, Angelina was determined. She did not suppose that her
+freedom would be for long, nor did she hope to have time to reach the
+almond tree; but her small, stumpy legs started off down the path almost
+before she was aware of it. She started, and Rose bumped against her as
+she ran. She heard behind her cries; she saw in front of her the almond
+tree, and then coming swiftly towards her a small boy with a hoop....
+She stopped, hesitated, and then fell. The golden afternoon, with all
+its scents and sounds, passed on above her <a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a>head. She was conscious that
+a hand was on her shoulder, she was lifted and shaken. Tears trickling
+down the side of her nose were checked by little points of gravel. She
+was aware that the little boy with the hoop had stopped and said
+something. Above her, very large and grim, was her aunt. Some bird on a
+tree was making a noise like the drawing of a cork. (She had heard her
+nurse once draw one.) In her heart was utter misery. The gravel hurt her
+face, the almond tree was farther away than ever; she was captured more
+completely than she had ever been before.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you naughty little girl&mdash;you <i>naughty</i> girl,&quot; she heard her aunt
+say; and then, after her, the bird like a cork. She stood there, her
+mouth tightly shut, the marks of tears drying to muddy lines on her
+face.</p>
+
+<p>She was dragged off. Aunt Emily was furious at the child's silence; Aunt
+Emily was also aware that she must have looked what she would call &quot;a
+pretty figure of fun&quot; with her hat askew, her hair blown &quot;anyway,&quot; and a
+small child of three escaping from her charge as fast as she could go.</p>
+
+<p>Angelina was dragged across the street, in through the squeezed front
+door, over the dark <a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></a>stairs, up into the nursery. Miss Violet's voice
+was heard calling, &quot;Is that you, Emily? Tea's been waiting some time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was nurse's afternoon out, and the nursery was grimly empty; but
+through the open, window came the evening sounds of the happy Square.
+Miss Emily placed Angelina in the middle of the room. &quot;Now say you're
+sorry, you wicked child!&quot; she exclaimed breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sowwy,&quot; came slowly from Angelina. Then she looked down at her doll.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leave that doll alone. Speak as though you were sorry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm velly sowwy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What made you run away like that?&quot; Angelina said nothing. &quot;Come, now!
+Didn't you know it was very wicked?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, why did you do it, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't say 'don't know' like that. You must have had some reason. Don't
+look at the doll like that. Put the doll down.&quot; But this Angelina would
+not do. She clung to Rose with a ferocious tenacity. I do not think that
+one must blame Miss Emily for her exasperation. That doll had had a
+large place in her mind for <a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a>many weeks. It were as though she, Miss
+Emily Braid, had been personally, before the world, defied by a rag
+doll. Her temper, whose control had never been her strongest quality, at
+the vision of the dirty, obstinate child before her, at the thought of
+the dancing, mocking gardens behind her, flamed into sudden, trembling
+rage.</p>
+
+<p>She stepped forward, snatched Rose from Angelina's arms, crossed the
+room and had pushed the doll, with a fierce, energetic action, as though
+there was no possible time to be lost, into the fire. She snatched the
+poker, and with trembling hands pressed the doll down. There was a great
+flare of flame; Rose lifted one stolid arm to the gods for vengeance,
+then a stout leg in a last writhing agony. Only then, when it was all
+concluded, did Aunt Emily hear behind her the little half-strangled cry
+which made her turn. The child was standing, motionless, with so old, so
+desperate a gaze of despair that it was something indecent for any human
+being to watch.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>Nurse came in from her afternoon. She had heard nothing of the recent
+catastrophe, and, <a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a>as she saw Angelina sitting quietly in front of the
+fire she thought that she had had her tea, and was now &quot;dreaming&quot; as she
+so often did. Once, however, as she was busy in another part of the
+room, she caught half the face in the light of the fire. To any one of a
+more perceptive nature that glimpse must have seemed one of the most
+tragic things in the world. But this was a woman of &quot;a sensible, hearty&quot;
+nature; moreover, her &quot;afternoon&quot; had left her with happy reminiscences
+of her own charms and their effect on the opposite sex.</p>
+
+<p>She had, however, her moment.... She had left the room to fetch
+something. Returning she noticed that the dusk had fallen, and was about
+to switch on the light when, in the rise and fall of the firelight,
+something that she saw made her pause. She stood motionless by the door.</p>
+
+<p>Angelina had turned in her chair; her eyes were gazing, with rapt
+attention, toward the purple dusk by the window. She was listening.
+Nurse, as she had often assured her friends, &quot;was not cursed with
+imagination,&quot; but now fear held her so that she could not stir nor move
+save that her hand trembled against the wall paper. The chatter of the
+fire, the shouts <a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></a>of some boys in the Square, the ringing of the bell of
+St. Matthew's for evensong, all these things came into the room.
+Angelina, still listening, at last smiled; then, with a little sigh, sat
+back in her chair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Heavens! Miss 'Lina! What were you doing there? How you frightened me!&quot;
+Angelina left her chair, and went across to the window. &quot;Auntie Emily,&quot;
+she said, &quot;put Wosie into the fire, she did. But Wosie's saved.... He's
+just come and told me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lord, Miss 'Lina, how you talk!&quot; The room was right again now just as,
+a moment before, it had been wrong. She switched on the electric light,
+and, in the sudden blaze, caught the last flicker in the child's eyes of
+some vision, caught, held, now surrendered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis company she's wanting, poor lamb,&quot; she thought, &quot;all this being
+alone.... Fair gives one the creeps.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She heard with relief the opening of the door. Miss Emily came in,
+hesitated a moment, then walked over to her niece. In her hands she
+carried a beautiful doll with flaxen hair, long white robes, and the
+assured confidence of one who is spotless and knows it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There, Angelina,&quot; she said. &quot;I oughtn't <a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a>to have burnt your doll. I'm
+sorry. Here's a beautiful new one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Angelina took the spotless one; then with a little thrust of her hand
+she pushed the half-open window wider apart. Very deliberately she
+dropped the doll (at whose beauty she had not glanced) out, away, down
+into the Square.</p>
+
+<p>The doll, white in the dusk, tossed and whirled, and spun finally, a
+white speck far below, and struck the pavement.</p>
+
+<p>Then Angelina turned, and with a little sigh of satisfaction looked at
+her aunt.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Bim Rochester</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>This is the story of Bim Rochester's first Odyssey. It is a story that
+has Bim himself for the only proof of its veracity, but he has never, by
+a shadow of a word, faltered in his account of it, and has remained so
+unamazed at some of the strange aspects in it that it seems almost an
+impertinence that we ourselves should show any wonder. Benjamin (Bim)
+Rochester was probably the happiest little boy in March Square, and he
+was happy in spite of quite a number of disadvantages.</p>
+
+<p>A word about the Rochester family is here necessary. They inhabited the
+largest house in March Square&mdash;the large grey one at the corner by Lent
+Street&mdash;and yet it could not be said to be large enough for them. Mrs.
+Rochester was a black-haired woman with flaming <a name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></a>cheeks and a most
+untidy appearance. Her mother had been a Spaniard, and her father an
+English artist, and she was very much the child of both of them. Her
+hair was always coming down, her dress unfastened, her shoes untied, her
+boots unbuttoned. She rushed through life with an amazing shattering
+vigour, bearing children, flinging them into an already overcrowded
+nursery, rushing out to parties, filling the house with crowds of
+friends, acquaintances, strangers, laughing, chattering, singing, never
+out of temper, never serious, never, for a moment, to be depended on.
+Her husband, a grave, ball-faced man, spent most of his days in the City
+and at his club, but was fond of his wife, and admired what he called
+her &quot;energy.&quot; &quot;My wife's splendid,&quot; he would say to his friends, &quot;knows
+the whole of London, I believe. The <i>people</i> we have in our house!&quot; He
+would watch, sometimes, the strange, noisy parties, and then would
+retire to bridge at his club with a little sigh of pride.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, upstairs in the nursery there were children of all ages, and
+two nurses did their best to grapple with them. The nurses came and
+went, and always, after the first day or two, the new nurse would give
+in to the <a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a>conditions, and would lead, at first with amusement and a
+rather excited sense of adventure, afterwards with a growing feeling of
+dirt and discomfort, a tangled and helter-skelter existence. Some of the
+children were now at school, but Lucy, a girl ten years of age, was a
+supercilious child who rebelled against the conditions of her life, but
+was too idle and superior to attempt any alteration of them. After her
+there were Roger, Dorothy, and Robert. Then came Bim, four years of age
+a fortnight ago, and, last of all, Timothy, an infant of nine months.
+With the exception of Lucy and Bim they were exceedingly noisy children.
+Lucy should have passed her days in the schoolroom under the care of
+Miss Agg, a melancholy and hope-abandoned spinster, and, during lesson
+hours, there indeed she was. But in the schoolroom she had no one to
+impress with her amazing wisdom and dignity. &quot;Poor mummy,&quot; as she always
+thought of her mother, was quite unaware of her habits or movements, and
+Miss Agg was unable to restrain either the one or the other, so Lucy
+spent most of her time in the nursery, where she sat, calm and
+collected, in the midst of confusion that could have &quot;given old Babel
+points and won easy.&quot; She <a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></a>was reverenced by all the younger children
+for her sedate security, but by none of them so surely and so
+magnificently as Bim. Bim, because he was quieter than the other
+children, claimed for his opinions and movements the stronger interest.</p>
+
+<p>His nurses called him &quot;deep,&quot; &quot;although for a deep child I must say he's
+'appy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Both his depth and his happiness were at Lucy's complete disposal. The
+people who saw him in the Square called him &quot;a jolly little boy,&quot; and,
+indeed, his appearance of gravity was undermined by the curl of his
+upper lip and a dimple in the middle of his left cheek, so that he
+seemed to be always at the crisis of a prolonged chuckle. One very
+rarely heard him laugh out loud, and his sturdy, rather fat body was
+carried rather gravely, and he walked contemplatively as though he were
+thinking something out. He would look at you, too, very earnestly when
+you spoke to him, and would wait a little before he answered you, and
+then would speak slowly as though he were choosing his words with care.
+And yet he was, in spite of these things, really a &quot;jolly little boy.&quot;
+His &quot;jolliness&quot; was there in point of view, in the astounding interest
+he found in anything and <a name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></a>everything, in his refusal to be upset by any
+sort of thing whatever.</p>
+
+<p>But his really unusual quality was his mixture of stolid English
+matter-of-fact with an absolutely unbridled imagination. He would
+pursue, day by day, week after week, games, invented games of his own,
+that owed nothing, either for their inception or their execution, to any
+one else. They had their origin for the most part in stray sentences
+that he had overheard from his elders, but they also arose from his own
+private and personal experiences&mdash;experiences which were as real to him
+as going to the dentist or going to the pantomime were to his brothers
+and sisters. There was, for instance, a gentleman of whom he always
+spoke of as Mr. Jack. This friend no one had ever seen, but Bim quoted
+him frequently. He did not, apparently, see him very often now, but at
+one time when he had been quite a baby Mr. Jack had been always there.
+Bim explained, to any one who cared to listen, that Mr. Jack belonged to
+all the Other Time which he was now in very serious danger of
+forgetting, and when, at that point, he was asked with condescending
+indulgence, &quot;I suppose you mean fairies, dear!&quot; he always shook his head
+<a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a>scornfully and said he meant nothing of the kind, Mr. Jack was as real
+as mother, and, indeed, a great deal &quot;realer,&quot; because Mrs. Rochester
+was, in the course of her energetic career, able to devote only
+&quot;whirlwind&quot; visits to her &quot;dear, darling&quot; children.</p>
+
+<p>When the afternoon was spent in the gardens in the middle of the Square,
+Bim would detach himself from his family and would be found absorbed in
+some business of his own which he generally described as &quot;waiting for
+Mr. Jack.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not the sort of child,&quot; said Miss Agg, who had strong views about
+children being educated according to practical and common-sense ideas,
+&quot;not the sort of child that one would expect nonsense from.&quot; It may be
+quite safely asserted that never, in her very earliest years, had Miss
+Agg been guilty of any nonsense of the sort.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not Miss Agg's contempt for his experiences that worried Bim.
+He always regarded that lady with an amused indifference. &quot;She <i>bothers</i>
+so,&quot; he said once to Lucy. &quot;Do you think she's happy with us, Lucy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;P'r'aps. I'm sure it doesn't matter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose she'd go away if she wasn't,&quot;<a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a> he concluded, and thought no
+more about her.</p>
+
+<p>No, the real grief in his heart was that Lucy, the adored, the wonderful
+Lucy, treated his assertions with contempt.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, Bim, don't be such a silly baby. You know you can't have seen him.
+Nurse was there and a lot of us, and <i>we</i> didn't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I did though.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, Bim&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can't help it. He used to come lots and lots.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You <i>are</i> a silly! You're getting too old now&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm <i>not</i> a silly!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, you are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, well, of course, if you're going to be a naughty baby.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Bim was nearer tears on these occasions than on any other in all his
+mortal life. His adoration of Lucy was the foundation-stone of his
+existence, and she accepted it with a lofty assumption of indifference;
+but very sharply would she have missed it had it been taken from her,
+and in long after years she was to look back upon that love of his and
+wonder that she could <a name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></a>have accepted it so lightly; Bim found in her
+gravity and assurance all that he demanded of his elders. Lucy was never
+at a loss for an answer to any question, and Bim believed all that she
+told him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where's China, Lucy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, don't bother, Bim.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, but <i>where</i> is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a nuisance you are! It's near Africa.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where Uncle Alfred is?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, just there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But <i>is</i> Uncle Alfred in&mdash;China?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, silly, of course not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, then&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I didn't say China was in Africa. I said it was near.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! I see. Uncle Alfred could just go in the train?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, of course.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! I see. P'r'aps he will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But, for the most part, Bim, realising that Lucy &quot;didn't want to be
+bothered,&quot; pursued his life alone. Through all the turmoil and disorder
+of that tempestuous nursery he gravely went his way, at one moment
+fighting lions and tigers, at another being nurse on her after<a name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></a>noon out
+(this was a truly astonishing adventure composed of scraps flung to him
+from nurse's conversational table and including many incidents that were
+far indeed from any nurse's experience), or again, he would be his
+mother giving a party, and, in the course of this, a great deal of food
+would be eaten, his favourite dishes, treacle pudding and cottage pie,
+being always included.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of his enthusiasm for Lucy he was no sentimentalist.
+He hated being kissed, he did not care very greatly for Roger and
+Dorothy and Robert, and regarded them as nothing but nuisances when they
+interfered with his games or compelled him to join in theirs.</p>
+
+<p>And now this is the story of his Odyssey.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>It happened on a wet April afternoon. The morning had been fine, a
+golden morning with the scent in the air of the showers that had fallen
+during the night. Then, suddenly, after midday, the rain came down,
+splashing on to the shining pavements as it fell, beating on to the
+windows and then running, in little lines, <a name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></a>on to the ledges and falling
+from there in slow, heavy drops. The sky was black, the statues in the
+garden dejected, the almond tree beaten, all the little paths running
+with water, and on the garden seats the rain danced like a live thing.</p>
+
+<p>The children&mdash;Lucy, Roger, Dorothy, Robert, Bim, and Timothy&mdash;were, of
+course, in the nursery. The nurse was toasting her toes on the fender
+and enjoying immensely that story by Mrs. Henry Wood, entitled &quot;The
+Shadow of Ashlydyat.&quot; It is entirely impossible to present any adequate
+idea of the confusion and bizarrerie of that nursery. One must think of
+the most confused aspect of human life that one has ever known&mdash;say, a
+Suffrage attack upon the Houses of Parliament, or a Channel steamer on a
+Thursday morning, and then of the next most confused aspect. Then one
+must place them together and confess defeat. Mrs. Rochester was not, as
+I have said, very frequently to be found in her children's nursery, but
+she managed, nevertheless, to pervade the house, from cellar to garret,
+with her spirit. Toys were everywhere&mdash;dolls and trains and soldiers,
+bricks and puzzles and animals, cardboard boxes, articles of feminine
+attire, a zinc <a name="Page_131" id="Page_131"></a>bath, two cats, a cage with white mice, a pile of books
+resting in a dazzling pyramid on the very edge of the table, two glass
+jars containing minute fish of the new variety, and a bowl with
+goldfish. There were many other things, forgotten by me.</p>
+
+<p>Lucy, her pigtails neatly arranged, sat near the window and pretended to
+be reading that fascinating story, &quot;The Pillars of the House.&quot; I say
+pretending, because Lucy did not care about reading at any time, and
+especially disliked the works of Charlotte Mary Yonge, but she thought
+that it looked well that she and nurse should be engaged upon literature
+whilst the rest of the world rioted and gambolled their time away. There
+was no one who at the moment could watch and admire her fine spirit, but
+you never knew who might come in.</p>
+
+<p>The rioting and gambolling consisted in the attempts of Robert, Dorothy,
+and Roger, to give a realistic presentation to an audience of one,
+namely, the infant Timothy, of the life of the Red Indians and their
+Squaws. Underneath the nursery table, with a tablecloth, some chairs and
+a concertina, they were presenting an admirable and entirely engrossing
+performance.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></a>Bim, under the window and quite close to Lucy, was giving a party. He
+had possessed himself of some of Dorothy's dolls' tea things, he had
+begged a sponge cake from nurse, and could be heard breaking from time
+to time into such sentences as, &quot;Do have a little more tweacle pudding,
+Mrs. Smith. It's the best tweacle,&quot; and, &quot;It's a nice day, isn't it!&quot;
+but he was sorely interrupted by the noisy festivities of the Indians
+who broke, frequently, into realistic cries of &quot;Oh! Roger, you're
+pulling my hair,&quot; or &quot;I won't play if you don't look out!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It may be that these interruptions disturbed the actuality of Bim's
+festivities, or it may be that the rattling of the rain upon the window
+panes diverted his attention. Once he broke into a chuckle. &quot;Isn't they
+banging on the window, Lucy?&quot; he said, but she was, it appeared, too
+deeply engaged to answer him. He found that, in a moment of abstraction,
+he had eaten the whole of the sponge cake, so that it was obvious that
+the party was over. &quot;Good-bye, Mrs. Smith. It was really nice of you to
+come. Good-bye, dear, Mrs. &mdash;&mdash; I think the wain almost isn't coming
+now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He said farewell to them all and climbed up<a name="Page_133" id="Page_133"></a>on the window seat. Here,
+gazing down into the Square, he saw that the rain was stopping, and, on
+the farther side, above the roofs of the houses, a little splash of gold
+had crept into the grey. He watched the gold, heard the rain coming more
+slowly; at first, &quot;spatter-spatter-spatter,&quot; then, &quot;spatter&mdash;spatter.&quot;
+Then one drop very slowly after another drop. Then he saw that the sun
+from somewhere far away had found out the wet paths in the garden, and
+was now stealing, very secretly, along them. Soon it would strike the
+seat, and then the statue of the funny fat man in all his clothes, and
+then, perhaps, the fountain. He was unhappy a little, and he did not
+know why: he was conscious, perhaps, of the untidy, noisy room behind
+him, of his sister Dorothy who, now a Squaw of a quite genuine and
+realistic kind, was crying at the top of her voice: &quot;I don't care. I
+will have it if I want to. You're <i>not</i> to, Roger,&quot; and of Timothy, his
+baby brother, who, moved by his sister's cries, howled monotonously,
+persistently, hopelessly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, give over, do, Miss Dorothy!&quot; said the nurse, raising her eye for a
+moment from her book. &quot;Why can't you be quiet?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Outside the world was beginning to shine <a name="Page_134" id="Page_134"></a>and glitter, inside it was all
+horrid and noisy. He sighed a little, he wanted to express in some way
+his feelings. He looked at Lucy and drew closer to her. She had beside
+her a painted china mug which one of her uncles had brought her from
+Russia; she had stolen some daffodils from her mother's room downstairs
+and now was arranging them. This painted mug was one of her most valued
+possessions, and Bim himself thought it, with its strange red and brown
+figures running round it, the finest thing in all the world.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lucy,&quot; he said. &quot;Do you s'pose if you was going to jump all the way
+down to the street and wasn't afraid that p'r'aps your legs wouldn't get
+broken?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was not, in reality, greatly interested in the answer to his
+question, but the important thing always with Lucy was first to enchain
+her attention. He had learnt, long ago, that to tell her that he loved
+her, to invite tenderness from her in return, was to ask for certain
+rebuff&mdash;he always began his advances then in this roundabout manner.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>What do</i> you think, Lucy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I don't know. How can I tell? Don't bother.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></a>It was then that Bim felt what was, for him, a very rare sensation. He
+was irritated.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't bovver,&quot; he said, with a cross look in the direction of his
+brother and sister Rochesters. &quot;No, but, Lucy, s'pose some one&mdash;nurse,
+s'pose&mdash;<i>did</i> fall down into the street and broke all her legs and arms,
+she wouldn't be dead, would she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You silly little boy, of course not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at Lucy, saw the frown upon her forehead, and felt suddenly
+that all his devotion to her was wasted, that she didn't want him, that
+nobody wanted him&mdash;now when the sun was making the garden glitter like a
+jewel and the fountain to shine like a sword.</p>
+
+<p>He felt in his throat a hard, choking lump. He came closer to his
+sister.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You might pay 'tention, Lucy,&quot; he said plaintively.</p>
+
+<p>Lucy broke a daffodil stalk viciously. &quot;Go and talk to the others,&quot; she
+said. &quot;I haven't time for you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The tears were hot in his eyes and anger was in his heart&mdash;anger bred of
+the rain, of the noise, of the confusion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You <i>are</i> howwid,&quot; he said slowly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, go away, then, if I'm horrid,&quot; she <a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></a>pushed with her hand at his
+knee. &quot;I didn't ask you to come here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her touch infuriated him; he kicked and caught a very tender part of her
+calf.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! You little beast!&quot; She came to him, leant for a moment across him,
+then slapped his cheek.</p>
+
+<p>The pain, the indignity, and, above all, a strange confused love for his
+sister that was near to passionate rage, let loose all the devils that
+owned Bim for their habitation.</p>
+
+<p>He did three things: He screamed aloud, he bent forward and bit Lucy's
+hand hard, he seized Lucy's wonderful Russian mug and dashed it to the
+ground. He then stood staring at the shattered fragments.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>There followed, of course, confusion. Nurse started up. &quot;The Shadow of
+Ashlydyat&quot; descended into the ashes, the children rushed eagerly from
+beneath the table to the centre of hostilities.</p>
+
+<p>But there were no hostilities. Lucy and Bim were, both of them, utterly
+astonished, Lucy, as she looked at the scattered mug, was, indeed,
+<a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></a>sobbing, but absent-mindedly&mdash;her thoughts were elsewhere. Her
+thoughts, in fact, were with Bim. She realised suddenly that never
+before had he lost his temper with her; she was aware that his affection
+had been all this time of value to her, of much more value, indeed, than
+the stupid old mug. She bent down&mdash;still absent-mindedly sobbing&mdash;and
+began to pick up the pieces. She was really astonished&mdash;being a dry and
+rather hard little girl&mdash;at her affection for Bim.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse seized on the unresisting villain of the piece and shook him.
+&quot;You <i>naughty</i> little boy! To go and break your sister's beautiful mug.
+It's your horrid temper that'll be the ruin of you, mark my words, as
+I'm always telling you.&quot; (Bim had never been known to lose his temper
+before.) &quot;Yes, it will. You see, you naughty boy. And all the other
+children as good as gold and quiet as lambs, and you've got to go and do
+this. You shall stand in the corner all tea-time, and not a bite shall
+you have.&quot; Here Bim began, in a breathless, frightened way, to sob.
+&quot;Yes, well you may. Never mind, Miss Lucy, I dare say your uncle will
+bring you another.&quot; Here she became conscious of an attentive and deeply
+interested <a name="Page_138" id="Page_138"></a>audience. &quot;Now, children, time to get ready for tea. Run
+along, Miss Dorothy, now. What a nuisance you all are, to be sure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They were removed from the scene. Bim was placed in the corner with his
+face to the wall. He was aghast; no words can give, at all, any idea of
+how dumbly aghast he was. What possessed him? What, in an instant of
+time, had leapt down from the clouds, had sprung up from the Square and
+seized him? Between his amazed thoughts came little surprised sobs. But
+he had not abandoned himself to grief&mdash;he was too sternly set upon the
+problem of reparation. Something must be done, and that quickly.</p>
+
+<p>The great thought in his mind was that he must replace the mug. He had
+not been very often in the streets beyond the Square, but upon certain
+occasions he had seen their glories, and he knew that there had been
+shops and shops and shops. Quite close to him, upon a shelf, was his
+money-box, a squat, ugly affair of red tin, into whose large mouth he
+had been compelled to force those gifts that kind relations had
+bestowed. There must be now quite a fortune there&mdash;enough to buy many
+mugs. He could not himself open it, but he <a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"></a>did not doubt that the man
+in the shop would do that for him.</p>
+
+<p>Not for many more moments would he be left alone. His hat was lying on
+the table; he seized that and his money-box, and was out on the landing.</p>
+
+<p>The rest is <i>his</i> story. I cannot, as I have already said, vouch for the
+truth of it. At first, fortune was on his side. There seemed to be no
+one about the house. He went down the wide staircase without making any
+sound; in the hall he stopped for a moment because he heard voices, but
+no one came. Then with both hands, and standing on tiptoe, he turned the
+lock of the door, and was outside.</p>
+
+<p>The Square was bathed in golden sun, a sun, the stronger for his
+concealment, but tempered, too, with the fine gleam that the rain had
+left. Never before had Bim been outside that door alone; he was aware
+that this was a very tremendous adventure. The sky was a washed and
+delicate purple, and behold! on the high railings, a row of sparrows
+were chattering. Voices were cold and clear, echoing, as it seemed,
+against the straight, grey walls of the houses, and all the trees in the
+garden glistened with their wet leaves shining with gold; <a name="Page_140" id="Page_140"></a>there seemed
+to be, too, a dim veil of smoke that was homely and comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>It is not usual to see a small boy of four alone in a London square, but
+Bim met, at first, no one except a messenger boy, who stopped and looked
+after him. At the corner of the Square&mdash;just out of the Square so that
+it might not shame its grandeur&mdash;was a fruit and flower shop, and this
+shop was the entrance to a street that had much life and bustle about
+it. Here Bim paused with his money-box clasped very tightly to him. Then
+he made a step or two and was instantly engulfed, it seemed, in a
+perfect whirl of men and women, of carts and bicycles, of voices and
+cries and screams; there were lights of every colour, and especially one
+far above his head that came and disappeared and came again with
+terrifying wizardry.</p>
+
+<p>He was, quite suddenly, and as it were, by the agency of some outside
+person, desperately frightened. It was a new terror, different from
+anything that he had known before. It was as though a huge giant had
+suddenly lifted him up by the seat of his breeches, or a witch had
+transplanted him on to her broomstick and carried him off. It was as
+unusual as that.</p>
+
+<p>His under lip began to quiver, and he knew <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141"></a>that presently he would be
+crying. Then, as he always did, when something unusual occurred to him,
+he thought of &quot;Mr. Jack.&quot; At this point, when you ask him what happened,
+he always says: &quot;Oh! He came, you know&mdash;came walking along&mdash;like he
+always did.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Was he just like other people, Bim?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, just. With a beard, you know&mdash;just like he always was.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, but what sort of things did he wear?&quot; &quot;Oh, just ord'nary things,
+like you.&quot; There was no sense of excitement or wonder to be got out of
+him. It was true that Mr. Jack hadn't shown himself for quite a long
+time, but that, Bim felt, was natural enough. &quot;He'll come less and
+seldomer and seldomer as you get big, you know. It was just at first,
+when one was very little and didn't know one's way about&mdash;just to help
+babies not to be frightened. Timothy would tell you only he won't. Then
+he comes only a little&mdash;just at special times like this was.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Bim told you this with a slightly bored air, as though it were silly of
+you not to know, and really his air of certainty made an incredulous
+challenge a difficult thing. On the present occasion Mr. Jack was just
+there, in the middle <a name="Page_142" id="Page_142"></a>of the crowd, smiling and friendly. He took Bim's
+hand, and, &quot;Of course,&quot; Bim said, &quot;there didn't have to be any
+'splaining. <i>He</i> knew what I wanted.&quot; True or not, I like to think of
+them, in the evening air, serenely safe and comfortable, and in any
+case, it was surely strange that if, as one's common sense compels one
+to suppose, Bim were all alone in that crowd, no one wondered or stopped
+him nor asked him where his home was. At any rate, I have no opinions on
+the subject. Bim says that, at once, they found themselves out of the
+crowd in a quiet, little &quot;dinky&quot; street, as he called it, a street that,
+in his description of it, answered to nothing that I can remember in
+this part of the world. His account of it seems to present a dark,
+rather narrow place, with overhanging roofs and swinging signs, and
+nobody, he says, at all about, but a church with a bell, and outside one
+shop a row of bright-coloured clothes hanging. At any rate, here Bim
+found the place that he wanted. There was a little shop with steps down
+into it and a tinkling bell which made a tremendous noise when you
+pushed the old oak door. Inside there was every sort of thing. Bim lost
+himself here in the ecstasy of his description, lacking also <a name="Page_143" id="Page_143"></a>names for
+many of the things that he saw. But there was a whole suit of shining
+armour, and there were jewels, and old brass trays, and carpets, and a
+crocodile, which Bim called a &quot;crodocile.&quot; There was also a friendly old
+man with a white beard, and over everything a lovely smell, which Bim
+said was like &quot;roast potatoes&quot; and &quot;the stuff mother has in a bottle in
+her bedwoom.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Bim could, of course, have stayed there for ever, but Mr. Jack reminded
+him of a possibly anxious family. &quot;There, is that what you're after?&quot;
+he said, and, sure enough, there on a shelf, smiling and eager to be
+bought, was a mug exactly like the one that Bim had broken.</p>
+
+<p>There was then the business of paying for it, the money-box was produced
+and opened by the old man with &quot;a shining knife,&quot; and Bim was gravely
+informed that the money found in the box was exactly the right amount.
+Bim had been, for a moment, in an agony of agitation lest he should have
+too little, but as he told us, &quot;There was all Uncle Alfred's Christmas
+money, and what mother gave me for the tooth, and that silly lady with
+the green dress who <i>would</i> kiss me.&quot; So, you see, there must have been
+an awful amount.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144"></a>Then they went, Bim clasping his money-box in one hand and the mug in
+the other. The mug was wrapped in beautiful blue paper that smelt, as we
+were all afterwards to testify, of dates and spices. The crocodile
+flapped against the wall, the bell tinkled, and the shop was left behind
+them. &quot;Most at once,&quot; Bim said they were by the fruit shop again; he
+knew that Mr. Jack was going, and he had a sudden most urgent longing to
+go with him, to stay with him, to be with him always. He wanted to cry;
+he felt dreadfully unhappy, but all of his thanks, his strange desires,
+that he could bring out was, in a quavering voice, trying hard, you
+understand, not to cry, &quot;Mr. Jack. Oh! Mr.&mdash;&mdash;&quot; and his friend was gone.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>He trotted home; with every step his pride increased. What would Lucy
+say? And dim, unrealised, but forming, nevertheless, the basis for the
+whole of his triumph, was his consciousness that she who had scoffed,
+derided, at his &quot;Mr. Jack,&quot; should now so absolutely benefit by him.
+This was bringing together, at last, the two of them.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></a>His nurse, in a fine frenzy of agitation, met him. Her relief at his
+safety swallowed her anger. She could only gasp at him. &quot;Well, Master
+Bim, and a nice state&mdash;&mdash; Oh, dear! to think; wherever&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On the doorstep he forced his nurse to pause, and, turning, looked at
+the gardens now in shadow of spun gold, with the fountain blue as the
+sky. He nodded his head with satisfaction. It had been a splendid time.
+It would be a very long while, he knew, before he was allowed out again
+like that. Yes. He clasped the mug tightly, and the door closed behind
+him.</p>
+
+<p>I don't know that there is anything more to say. There were the empty
+money-box and the mug. There was Bim's unhesitating and unchangeable
+story. There <i>is</i> a shop, just behind the Square, where they have some
+Russian crockery. But Bim alone!</p>
+
+<p><i>I</i> don't know.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Nancy Ross</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>Mr. Munty Ross's house was certainly the smartest in March Square; No.
+14, where the Duchess of Crole lived, was shabby in comparison. Very
+often you may see a line of motor-cars and carriages stretching down the
+Square, then round the corner into Lent Street, and you may know
+then&mdash;as, indeed, all the Square did know and most carefully
+observed&mdash;that Mrs. Munty Boss was giving another of her smart little
+parties. That dark-green door, that neat overhanging balcony, those
+rows&mdash;in the summer months&mdash;of scarlet geraniums, that roll of carpet
+that ran, many times a week, from the door over the pavement to the very
+foot of the waiting vehicle&mdash;these things were Mrs. Munty Ross's.</p>
+
+<p>Munty Ross&mdash;a silent, ugly, black little man&mdash;had <a name="Page_147" id="Page_147"></a>had made his money in
+potted shrimps, or something equally compact and indigestible, and it
+really was very nice to think that anything in time could blossom out
+into beauty as striking as Mrs. Munty's lovely dresses, or melody as
+wonderful as the voice of M. Radiziwill, the famous tenor, whom she
+often &quot;turned on&quot; at her little evening parties. Upon Mr. Munty alone
+the shrimps seemed to have made no effect. He was as black, as
+insignificant, as ugly as ever he had been in the days before he knew of
+a shrimp's possibilities. He was very silent at his wife's parties, and
+sometimes dropped his h's. What Mrs. Munty had been before her marriage
+no one quite knew, but now she was flaxen and slim and beautifully
+clothed, with a voice like an insincere canary; she had &quot;a passion for
+the Opera,&quot; a &quot;passion for motoring,&quot; &quot;a passion for the latest
+religion,&quot; and &quot;a passion for the simple life.&quot; All these things did the
+shrimps enable her to gratify, and &quot;the simple life&quot; cost her more than
+all the others put together.</p>
+
+<p>Heaven had blessed them with one child, and that child was called Nancy.
+Nancy, her mother always said with pride, was old for her age, and, as
+her age was only just five, that remark <a name="Page_148" id="Page_148"></a>was quite true. Nancy Ross was
+old for any age. Had she herself, one is compelled when considering her
+to wonder, any conception during those first months of the things that
+were going to be made out of her, and had she, perhaps at the very
+commencement of it all, some instinct of protest and rebellion? Poor
+Nancy! The tragedy of her whole case was now none other than that she
+hadn't, here at five years old in March Square, the slightest picture of
+what she had become, nor could she, I suppose, have imagined it possible
+for her to become anything different. Nancy, in her own real and naked
+person, was a small child with a good flow of flaxen hair and light-blue
+eyes. All her features were small and delicate, and she gave you the
+impression that if you only pulled a string or pushed a button somewhere
+in the middle of her back you could evoke any cry, smile or exclamation
+that you cared to arouse. Her eyes were old and weary, her attitude
+always that of one who had learnt the ways of this world, had found them
+sawdust, but had nevertheless consented still to play the game. Just as
+the house was filled with little gilt chairs and china cockatoos, so was
+Nancy arrayed in ribbons and bows and lace. Mrs.<a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></a> Munty had, one must
+suppose, surveyed during certain periods in her life certain real
+emotions rather as the gaping villagers survey the tiger behind his bars
+in the travelling circus.</p>
+
+<p>The time had then come when she put these emotions away from her as
+childish things, and determined never to be faced with any of them
+again. It was not likely, then, that she would introduce Nancy to any of
+them. She introduced Nancy to clothes and deportment, and left it at
+that. She wanted her child to &quot;look nice.&quot; She was able, now that Nancy
+was five years old, to say that she &quot;looked very nice indeed.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>From the very beginning nurses were chosen who would take care of Nancy
+Boss's appearance. There was plenty of money to spend, and Nancy was a
+child who, with her flaxen hair and blue eyes, would repay trouble. She
+<i>did</i> repay it, because she had no desires towards grubbiness or
+rebellion, or any wildnesses whatever. She just sat there with her doll
+balanced neatly in her arms, and allowed herself to be pulled and
+twisted and squeezed <a name="Page_150" id="Page_150"></a>and stretched. &quot;There's a pretty little lady,&quot;
+said nurse, and a pretty little lady Nancy was sure that she was. The
+order for her day was that in the morning she went out for a walk in the
+gardens in the Square, and in the afternoon she went out for another.
+During these walks she moved slowly, her doll delicately carried, her
+beautiful clothes shining with approval of the way that they were worn,
+her head high, &quot;like a little queen,&quot; said her nurse. She was conscious
+of the other children in the gardens, who often stopped in the middle of
+their play and watched her. She thought them hot and dirty and very
+noisy. She was sorry for their mothers.</p>
+
+<p>It happened sometimes that she came downstairs, towards the end of a
+luncheon party, and was introduced to the guests. &quot;You pretty little
+thing,&quot; women in very large hats said to her. &quot;Lovely hair,&quot; or &quot;She's
+the very image of <i>you</i>, Clarice,&quot; to her mother. She liked to hear that
+because she greatly admired her mother. She knew that she, Nancy Ross,
+was beautiful; she knew that clothes were of an immense importance; she
+knew that other children were unpleasant. For the rest, she was neither
+extravagantly glad nor extravagantly <a name="Page_151" id="Page_151"></a>sorry. She preserved a fine
+indifference.... And yet, although, here my story may seem to
+matter-of-fact persons to take a turn towards the fantastic, this was
+not quite all. Nancy herself, dimly and yet uneasily, was aware that
+there was something else.</p>
+
+<p>She was not a little girl who believed in fairies or witches or the
+&quot;bogey man,&quot; or anything indeed that she could not see. She inherited
+from her mother a splendid confidence in the reality, the solid,
+unquestioned reality of all concrete and tangible things. She had been
+presented once with a fine edition of &quot;Grimm's Fairy Tales,&quot; an edition
+with coloured pictures and every allure. She had turned its pages with a
+look of incredulous amazement. &quot;What,&quot; she seemed to say&mdash;she was then
+aged three and a half&mdash;&quot;are these absurd things that you are telling me?
+People aren't like that. Mother isn't in the least like that. I don't
+understand this, and it's tedious!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm afraid the child has no imagination,&quot; said her nurse.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a lucky thing!&quot; said her mother.</p>
+
+<p>Nor could Mrs. Ross's house be said to be a place that encouraged
+fairies. They would <a name="Page_152" id="Page_152"></a>have found the gilt chairs hard to sit upon, and
+there were no mysterious corners. There was nothing mysterious at all.
+And yet Nancy Ross, sitting in her magnificent clothes, was conscious as
+she advanced towards her sixth year that she was not perfectly
+comfortable. To say that she felt lonely would be, perhaps, to emphasise
+too strongly her discomfort. It was perhaps rather that she felt
+inquisitive&mdash;only a little, a very little&mdash;but she did begin to wish
+that she could ask a few questions.</p>
+
+<p>There came a day&mdash;an astonishing day&mdash;when she felt irritated with her
+mother. She had during her walk through the garden seen a little boy and
+a little girl, who were grubbing about in a little pile of earth and
+sand there in the corner under the trees, and grubbing very happily.
+They had dirt upon their faces, but their nurse was sitting, apparently
+quite easy in her mind, and the sun had not stopped in its course nor
+had the birds upon the trees ceased to sing. Nancy stayed for a moment
+her progress and looked at them, and something not very far from envy
+struck, in some far-distant hiding-place, her soul. She moved on, but
+when she came indoors and was met by <a name="Page_153" id="Page_153"></a>her mamma and a handsome lady, her
+mamma's friend, who said: &quot;Isn't she a pretty dear?&quot; and her mother
+said: &quot;That's right, Nancy darling, been for your walk?&quot; she was, for an
+amazing moment, irritated with her beautiful mother.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Once she was conscious of this desire to ask questions she had no more
+peace. Although she was only five years of age, she had all the
+determination not &quot;to give herself away&quot; of a woman of forty. She was
+not going to show that she wanted anything in the world, and yet she
+would have liked&mdash;A little wistfully she looked at her nurse. But that
+good woman, carefully chosen by Mrs. Ross, was not the one to encourage
+questions. She was as shining as a new brass nail, and a great deal
+harder.</p>
+
+<p>The nursery was as neat as a pin, with a lovely bright rocking-horse
+upon which Nancy had never ridden; a pink doll's-house with every modern
+contrivance, whose doors had never been opened; a number of expensive
+dolls, which had never been disrobed. Nancy approached these
+joys&mdash;diffidently and with cau<a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></a>tion. She rode upon the horse, opened the
+doll's-house, embraced the dolls, but she had no natural imagination to
+bestow upon them, and the horse and the dolls, hurt, perhaps, at their
+long neglect, received her with frigidity. Those grubby little children
+in the Square would, she knew, have been &quot;there&quot; in a moment. She began
+then to be frightened. The nursery, her bedroom, the dark little passage
+outside, were suddenly alarming. Sometimes, when she was sitting quietly
+in her nursery, the house was so silent that she could have screamed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't think Miss Nancy's quite well, ma'am,&quot; said the nurse.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, dear! What a nuisance,&quot; said Mrs. Ross who liked her little girl to
+be always well and beautiful. &quot;I do hope she's not going to catch
+something.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She doesn't take that pleasure in her clothes she did,&quot; said the nurse.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps she wants some new ones,&quot; said her mother. &quot;Take her to
+Florice, nurse.&quot; Nancy went to Florice, and beautiful new garments were
+invented, and once again she was squeezed, and tightened, and stretched,
+and pulled. But Nancy was indifferent. As they <a name="Page_155" id="Page_155"></a>tried these clothes, and
+stood back, and stepped forward, and admired and criticised, she was
+thinking, &quot;I wish the nursery clock didn't make such a noise.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her little bedroom next to nurse's large one was a beautiful affair,
+with red roses up and down the wall-paper and in and out of the crockery
+and round and round the carpet. Her bed was magnificent, with lace and
+more roses, and there was a fine photograph of her beautiful mother in a
+silver frame on the mantelpiece. But all these things were of little
+avail when the dark came. She began to be frightened of the dark.</p>
+
+<p>There came a night when, waking with a suddenness that did of itself
+contribute to her alarm, she was conscious that the room was intensely
+dark, and that every one was very far away. The house, as she listened,
+seemed to be holding its breath, the clock in the nursery was ticking in
+a frightened, startled terror, and hesitating, whimsical noises broke,
+now close, now distant, upon the silence. She lay there, her heart
+beating as it had surely never been allowed to beat before. She was
+simply a very small, very frightened little girl. Then, before she could
+cry out, she was aware that some one <a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"></a>was standing beside her bed. She
+was aware of this before she looked, and then, strangely (even now she
+had taken no peep), she was frightened no longer.</p>
+
+<p>The room, the house, were suddenly comfortable and safe places; as water
+slips from a pool and leaves it dry, so had terror glided from her side.
+She looked up then, and, although the place had been so dark that she
+had been unable to distinguish the furniture, she could figure to
+herself quite clearly her visitor's form. She not only figured it, but
+also quite easily and readily recognised it. All these years she had
+forgotten him, but now at the vision of his large comfortable presence
+she was back again amongst experiences and recognitions that evoked for
+her once more all those odd first days when, with how much discomfort
+and puzzled dismay, she had been dropped, so suddenly, into this
+distressing world. He put his arms around her and held her; he bent down
+and kissed her, and her small hand went up to his beard in exactly the
+way that it used to do. She nestled up against him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a very long time, isn't it,&quot; he said, &quot;since I paid you a visit!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, a long, long time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_157" id="Page_157"></a>That's because you didn't want me. You got on so well without me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I didn't forget about you,&quot; she said. &quot;But I asked mummy about you
+once, and she said you were all nonsense, and I wasn't to think things
+like that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! your mother's forgotten altogether. She knew me once, but she
+hasn't wanted me for a very, very long time. She'll see me again,
+though, one day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm so glad you've come. You won't go away again now, will you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I never go away,&quot; he said. &quot;I'm always here. I've seen everything
+you've been doing, and a very dull time you've been making of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He talked to her and told her about some of the things the other
+children in the Square were doing. She was interested a little, but not
+very much; she still thought a great deal more about herself than about
+anything or anybody else.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do they all love you?&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no, not at all. Some of them think I'm horrid. Some of them forget
+me altogether, and then I never come back, until just at the end. Some
+of them only want me when <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"></a>they're in trouble. Some, very soon, think it
+silly to believe in me at all, and the older they grow the less they
+believe, generally. And when I do come they won't see me, they make up
+their minds not to. But I'm always there just the same; it makes no
+difference what they do. They can't help themselves. Only it's better
+for them just to remember me a little, because then it's much safer for
+them. You've been feeling rather lonely lately, haven't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she said. &quot;It's stupid now all by myself. There's nobody to ask
+questions of.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, there's somebody else in your house who's lonely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is there?&quot; She couldn't think of any one.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. Your father.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! Father&mdash;&mdash;&quot; She was uninterested.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. You see, if he isn't&mdash;&mdash;&quot; and then, at that, he was gone, she was
+alone and fast asleep.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning when she awoke, she remembered it all quite clearly, but,
+of course, it had all been a dream. &quot;Such a funny dream,&quot; she told her
+nurse, but she would give out no details.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Some food she's been eating,&quot; said her nurse.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159"></a>Nevertheless, when, on that afternoon, coming in from her walk, she met
+her dark, grubby little father in the hall, she did stay for a moment on
+the bottom step of the stairs to consider him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been for a walk, daddy,&quot; she said, and then, rather frightened at
+her boldness, tumbled up on the next step. He went forward to catch her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hold up,&quot; he said, held her for a moment, and then hurried, confused
+and rather agitated, into his dark sanctum. These were, very nearly, the
+first words that they had ever, in the course of their lives together,
+interchanged. Munty Ross was uneasy with grown-up persons (unless he was
+discussing business with them), but that discomfort was nothing to the
+uneasiness that he felt with children. Little girls (who certainly
+looked at him as though he were an ogre) frightened him quite horribly;
+moreover, Mrs. Munty had, for a great number of years, pursued a policy
+with regard to her husband that was not calculated to make him bright
+and easy in any society. &quot;Poor old Munty,&quot; she would say to her friends,
+&quot;it's not all his fault&mdash;&mdash;&quot; It was, as a fact, very largely hers. He had
+never been an eloquent <a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"></a>man, but her playful derision of his uncouthness
+slew any little seeds of polite conversation that might, under happier
+conditions, have grown into brilliant blossom. It had been understood
+from the very beginning that Nancy was not of her father's world. He
+would have been scarcely aware that he had a daughter had he not, at
+certain periods, paid bills for her clothes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's a child want with all this?&quot; he had ventured once to say.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hardly your business, my dear,&quot; his wife had told him. &quot;The child's
+clothes are marvellously cheap considering. I don't know how Florice
+does it for the money.&quot; He resented nothing&mdash;it was not his way&mdash;but he
+did feel, deep down in his heart, that the child was over-dressed, that
+it must be bad for any little girl to be praised in the way that his
+daughter was praised, that &quot;the kid will grow up with the most
+tremendous ideas.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He resented it, perhaps a little, that his young daughter had so easily
+accustomed herself to the thought that she had no father. &quot;She might
+just want to see me occasionally. But I'd only frighten her, I suppose,
+if she did.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"></a>Munty Ross had very little of the sentimentalist about him; he was
+completely cynical about the value of the human heart, and believed in
+the worth and goodness of no one at all. He had, for a brief wild
+moment, been in love with his wife, but she had taken care to kill that,
+&quot;the earlier the better.&quot; &quot;My dear,&quot; she would say to a chosen friend,
+&quot;what Munty's like when he's romantic!&quot; She never, after the first month
+of their married life together, caught a glimpse of that side of him.</p>
+
+<p>Now, however, he did permit his mind to linger over that vision of his
+little daughter tumbling on the stairs. He wondered what had made her do
+it. He was astonished at the difference that it made to him.</p>
+
+<p>To Nancy also it had made a great difference. She wished that she had
+stayed there on the stairs a little longer to hold a more important
+conversation. She had thought of her father as &quot;all horrid&quot;&mdash;now his
+very contrast to her little world pleased and interested her. It may
+also be that, although she was young, she had even now a picture in her
+mind of her father's loneliness. She may have seen into her mother's
+attitude with an acuteness much older than her actual years.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></a>She thought now continually about her father. She made little plans to
+meet him, but these meetings were not, as a rule, successful, because so
+often he was down in the city. She would wait at the end of her
+afternoon walk on the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come along, Miss Nancy, do. What are you hanging about there for?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll be disturbing your mother.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just a minute.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She peered anxiously, her little head almost held by the railings of the
+banisters; she gazed down into black, mysterious depths wherein her
+father might be hidden. She was driven to all this partly by some real
+affection that had hitherto found no outlet, partly by a desire for
+adventure, but partly, also, by some force that was behind her and quite
+recognised by her. It was as though she said: &quot;If I'm nice to my father
+and make friends with him, then you must promise that I shan't be
+frightened in the middle of the night, that the clock won't tick too
+loudly, that the blind won't flap, that it won't all be too dark and
+dreadful.&quot; She knew that she had made this compact.</p>
+
+<p>Then she had several little encounters with <a name="Page_163" id="Page_163"></a>her father. She met him one
+day on the doorstep. He had come up whilst she was standing there.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Had a good walk?&quot; he said nervously. She looked at him and laughed.
+Then he went hurriedly indoors.</p>
+
+<p>On the second occasion she had come down to be shown off at a luncheon
+party. She had been praised and petted, and then, in the hall, had run
+into her father's arms. He was in his top-hat, going down to his old
+city, looking, the nurse thought, &quot;just like a monkey.&quot; But Nancy
+stayed, holding on to the leg of his trousers. Suddenly he bent down and
+whispered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Were they nice to you in there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. Why weren't you there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was. I left. Got to go and work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What sort of work?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Making money for your clothes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Take me too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would you like to come?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. Take me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He bent down and kissed her, but, suddenly hearing the voices of the
+luncheon-party, they separated like conspirators. He crept out of the
+house.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164"></a>After that there was no question of their alliance. The sort of
+affection that most children feel for old, ugly, and battered dolls,
+Nancy now felt for her father, and the warmth of this affection melted
+her dried, stubborn little soul, caught her up into visions, wonders,
+sympathies that had seemed surely denied to her for ever.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now sit still, Miss Nancy, while I do up the back.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, silly old clothes!&quot; said Nancy.</p>
+
+<p>Then one day she declared,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want to be dirty like those children in the garden.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And a nice state your mother would be in!&quot; cried the amazed nurse.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Father wouldn't,&quot; Nancy thought. &quot;Father wouldn't mind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There came at last the wonderful day when her father penetrated into the
+nursery. He arrived furtively, very much, it appeared, ashamed of
+himself and exceedingly shy of the nurse. He did not remain very long.
+He said very little; a funny picture he had made with his blue face, his
+black shiny hair, his fat little legs, and his anxious, rather stupid
+eyes. He sat rather awkwardly in a chair, with Nancy <a name="Page_165" id="Page_165"></a>on his knee; he
+wrung his hair for things to say.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse left them for a moment alone together, and then Nancy
+whispered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Daddy, let's go into the gardens together, you and me; just us&mdash;no
+silly old nurse&mdash;one mornin'.&quot; (She found the little &quot;g&quot; still a
+difficulty.)</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would you like that?&quot; he whispered back. &quot;I don't know I'd be much good
+in a garden.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you'll be all right,&quot; she asserted with confidence. &quot;I want to
+dig.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She'd made up her mind then to that. As Hannibal determined to cross the
+Alps, as Napoleon set his feet towards Moscow, so did Nancy Ross resolve
+that she would, in the company of her father, dig in the gardens. She
+stroked her father's hand, rubbed her head upon his sleeve; exactly as
+she would have caressed, had she been another little girl, the damaged
+features of her old rag doll. She was beginning, however, for the first
+time in her life, to love some one other than herself.</p>
+
+<p>He came, then, quite often to the nursery. He would slip in, stay a
+moment or two, and slip out again. He brought her presents and sweets
+which made her ill. And always in the <a name="Page_166" id="Page_166"></a>presence of Mrs. Munty they
+appeared as strangers.</p>
+
+<p>The day came when Nancy achieved her desire&mdash;they had their great
+adventure.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>A fine summer morning came, and with it, in a bowler hat, at the nursery
+door, the hour being about eleven, Mr. Munty Boss.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll take Nancy this morning, nurse,&quot; he said, with a strange, choking
+little &quot;cluck&quot; in his throat. Now, the nurse, although, as I've said, of
+a shining and superficial appearance, was no fool. She had watched the
+development of the intrigue; her attitude to the master of the house was
+composed of pity, patronage, and a rather motherly interest. She did not
+see how her mistress could avoid her attitude: it was precisely the
+attitude that she would herself have adopted in that position, but,
+nevertheless, she was sorry for the man. &quot;So out of it as he is!&quot; Her
+maternal feelings were uppermost now. &quot;It's nice of the child,&quot; she
+thought, &quot;and him so ugly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course, sir,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall be back in about an hour.&quot; He <a name="Page_167" id="Page_167"></a>attempted an easy indifference,
+was conscious that he failed, and blushed.</p>
+
+<p>He was aware that his wife was out.</p>
+
+<p>He carried off his prize.</p>
+
+<p>The gardens were very full on this lovely summer morning, but Nancy,
+without any embarrassment or confusion, took charge of the proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where are we going?&quot; he said, gazing rather helplessly about him,
+feeling extremely shy. There were so many bold children&mdash;so many bolder
+nurses; even the birds on the trees seemed to deride him, and a stumpy
+fox-terrier puppy stood with its four legs planted wide barking at him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Over here,&quot; she said without a moment's hesitation, and she dragged him
+along. She halted at last in a corner of the gardens where was a large,
+overhanging chestnut and a wooden seat. Here the shouts and cries of the
+children came more dimly, the splashing of the fountain could be heard
+like a melodious refrain with a fascinating note of hesitation in it,
+and the deep green leaves of the tree made a cool, thick covering. &quot;Very
+nice,&quot; he said, and sat down on the seat, tilting his hat back and
+feeling very happy indeed.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168"></a>Nancy also was very happy. There, in front of her, was the delightful
+pile of earth and sand untouched, it seemed. In an instant, regardless
+of her frock, she was down upon her knees.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I ought to have a spade,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll make yourself dreadfully dirty, Nancy. Your beautiful frock&mdash;&mdash;&quot;
+But he had nevertheless the feeling that, after all, he had paid for it,
+and if he hadn't the right to see it ruined, who had?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!&quot; she murmured with the ecstasy of one who has abandoned herself,
+freely and with a glad heart, to all the vices. She dug her hands into
+the mire, she scattered it about her, she scooped and delved and
+excavated. It was her intention to build something in the nature of a
+high, high hill. She patted the surface of the sand, and behold! it was
+instantly a beautiful shape, very smooth and shining.</p>
+
+<p>It was hot, her hat fell back, her knees were thick with the good brown
+earth&mdash;that once lovely creation of Florice was stained and black.</p>
+
+<p>She then began softly, partly to herself, partly to her father, and
+partly to that other Friend who had helped her to these splendours, a
+song of joy and happiness. To the ordinary ob<a name="Page_169" id="Page_169"></a>server, it might have
+seemed merely a discordant noise proceeding from a little girl engaged
+in the making of mud pies. It was, in reality, as the chestnut tree, the
+birds, the fountain, the flowers, the various small children, even the
+very earth she played with, understood, a fine offering&mdash;thanksgiving
+and triumphal p&aelig;an to the God of Heaven, of the earth, and of the waters
+that were under the earth.</p>
+
+<p>Munty himself caught the refrain. He was recalled to a day when mud pies
+had been to him also things of surpassing joy. There was a day when, a
+naked and very ugly little boy, he had danced beside a mountain burn.</p>
+
+<p>He looked upon his daughter and his daughter looked upon him; they were
+friends for ever and ever. She rose; her fingers were so sticky with mud
+that they stood apart; down her right cheek ran a fine black smear; her
+knees were caked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good heavens!&quot; he exclaimed. She flung herself upon him and kissed him;
+down his cheek also now a fine smear marked its way.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at his watch&mdash;one o'clock. &quot;Good heavens!&quot; he said again. &quot;I
+say, old girl, we'll have to be going. Mother's got a party.&quot;<a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></a> He tried
+ineffectually to cleanse his daughter's face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We'll come back,&quot; she cried, looking down triumphantly upon her
+handiwork.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We'll have to smuggle you up into the nursery somehow.&quot; But he added,
+&quot;Yes, we'll come again.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>They hurried home. Very furtively Munty Boss fitted his key into the
+Yale lock of his fine door. They slipped into the hall. There before
+them were Mrs. Ross and two of her most splendid friends. Very fine was
+Munty's wife in a tight-clinging frock of light blue, and wearing upon
+her head a hat like a waste-paper basket with a blue handle at the back
+of it; very fine were her two lady friends, clothed also in the tightest
+of garments, shining and lovely and precious.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good God, Munty&mdash;and the child!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was a terrible moment. Quite unconscious was Munty of the mud that
+stained his cheek, perfectly tranquil his daughter as she gazed with
+glowing happiness about her. A terrible moment for Mrs. Ross, an
+unforgettable one <a name="Page_171" id="Page_171"></a>for her friends; nor were they likely to keep the
+humour of it entirely to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Down in a minute. Going up to clean.&quot; Smiling, he passed his wife. On
+the bottom step Nancy chanted:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We've had the most lovely mornin', daddy and I. We've been diggin'.
+We're goin' to dig again. Aren't I dirty, mummy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Round the corner of the stairs in the shadow Nancy kissed her father
+again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm never goin' to be clean any more,&quot; she announced. And you may
+fancy, if you please, that somewhere in the shadows of the house some
+one heard those words and chuckled with delighted pleasure.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">'Enery</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>Mrs. Slater was caretaker at No. 21 March. Square. Old Lady Cathcart
+lived with her middle-aged daughter at No. 21, and, during half the
+year, they were down at their place in Essex; during half the year,
+then, Mrs. Slater lived in the basement of No. 21 with her son Henry,
+aged six.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Slater was a widow; upon a certain afternoon, two and a half years
+ago, she had paused in her ironing and listened. &quot;Something,&quot; she told
+her friends afterwards, &quot;gave her a start&mdash;she couldn't say what nor
+how.&quot; Her ironing stayed, for that afternoon at least, where it was,
+because her husband, with his head in a pulp and his legs bent
+underneath him, was brought in on a stretcher, attended by two
+policemen. He had fallen <a name="Page_173" id="Page_173"></a>from a piece of scaffolding into Piccadilly
+Circus, and was unable to afford any further assistance to the
+improvements demanded by the Pavilion Music Hall. Mrs. Slater, a stout,
+amiable woman, who had never been one to worry; Henry Slater, Senior,
+had been a bad husband, &quot;what with women and the drink&quot;&mdash;she had no
+intention of lamenting him now that he was dead; she had done for ever
+with men, and devoted the whole of her time and energy to providing
+bread and butter for herself and her son.</p>
+
+<p>She had been Lady Cathcart's caretaker for a year and a half, and had
+given every satisfaction. When the old lady came up to London Mrs.
+Slater went down to Essex and defended the country place from
+suffragettes and burglars. &quot;I shouldn't care for it,&quot; said a lady
+friend, &quot;all alone in the country with no cheerful noises nor human
+beings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Doesn't frighten me, I give you my word, Mrs. East,&quot; said Mrs. Slater;
+&quot;not that I don't prefer the town, mind you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was, on the whole, a pleasant life, that carried with it a certain
+dignity. Nobody who had seen old Lady Cathcart drive in her open
+carriage, with her black bonnet, her <a name="Page_174" id="Page_174"></a>coachman, and her fine, straight
+back, could deny that she was one of Our Oldest and Best&mdash;none of your
+mushroom families come from Lord knows where&mdash;it was a position of
+trust, and as such Mrs. Slater considered it. For the rest she loved her
+son Henry with more than a mother's love; he was as unlike his poor
+father, bless him, as any child could be. Henry, although you would
+never think it to look at him, was not quite like other children; he had
+been, from his birth, a &quot;little queer, bless his heart,&quot; and Mrs. Slater
+attributed this to the fact that three weeks before the boy's birth,
+Horny Slater, Senior, had, in a fine frenzy of inebriation, hit her over
+the head with a chair. &quot;Dead drunk, 'e was, and never a thought to the
+child coming, ''Enery,' I said to him, 'it's the child you're hitting as
+well as me'; but 'e was too far gone, poor soul, to take a thought.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Henry was a fine, robust child, with rosy cheeks and a sturdy, thick-set
+body. He had large blue eyes and a happy, pleasant smile, but, although
+he was six years of age, he could hardly talk at all, and liked to spend
+the days twirling pieces of string round and round or looking into the
+fire. His eyes were unlike the eyes of other children, and in their blue
+depths <a name="Page_175" id="Page_175"></a>there lurked strange apprehensions, strange anticipations,
+strange remembrances. He had never, from the day of his birth, been
+known to cry. When he was frightened or distressed the colour would pass
+slowly from his cheeks, and strange little gasping breaths would come
+from him; his body would stiffen and his hands clench. If he was angry
+the colour in his face would darken and his eyes half close, and it was
+then that he did, indeed, seem in the possession of some disastrous
+thraldom&mdash;but he was angry very seldom, and only with certain people;
+for the most part he was a happy child, &quot;as quiet as a mouse.&quot; He was
+unusual, too, in that he was a very cleanly child, and loved to be
+washed, and took the greatest care of his clothes. He was very
+affectionate, fond of almost every one, and passionately devoted to his
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Slater was a woman with very little imagination. She never
+speculated on &quot;how different things would be if they were different,&quot;
+nor did she sigh after riches, nor possessions, nor any of the goods
+Fate bestows upon her favourites. She would, most certainly, have been
+less fond of Henry had he been more like other children, and his
+dependence upon her <a name="Page_176" id="Page_176"></a>gave her something of the feeling that very rich
+ladies have for very small dogs. She was too, in a way, proud. &quot;Never
+been able to talk, nor never will, they tell me, the lamb,&quot; she would
+assure her friends, &quot;but as gentle and as quiet!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She would sit, sometimes, in the evening before the fire and think of
+the old noisy, tiresome days when Henry, Senior, would beat her black
+and blue, and would feel that her life had indeed fallen into pleasant
+places.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing whatever in the house, all silent about her and filled
+with shrouded furniture, that could alarm her. &quot;Ghosts!&quot; she would cry.
+&quot;You show me one, that's all. I'll give you ghosts!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her digestion was excellent, her sleep undisturbed by conscience or
+creditors. She was a happy woman.</p>
+
+<p>Henry loved March Square. There was a window in an upstairs passage from
+behind whose glass he could gaze at the passing world. The Passing
+World!... the shrouded house behind him. One was as alive, as bustling,
+as demonstrative to him as the other, but between the two there was, for
+him, no communication.<a name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></a> His attitude to the Square and the people in it
+was that he knew more about them than anyone else did; his attitude to
+the House, that he knew nothing at all compared with what &quot;They&quot; knew.
+In the Square he could see through the lot of them, so superficial were
+they all; in the House he could only wait, with fingers on lip, for the
+next revelation that they might vouchsafe to him.</p>
+
+<p>Doors were, for the most part, locked, yet there were many days when
+fires were lit because the house was an old one, and damp Lady Cathcart
+had a horror of.</p>
+
+<p>Always for young Henry the house wore its buried and abandoned air. He
+was never to see it when the human beings in it would count more than
+its furniture, and the human life in it more than the house itself. He
+had come, a year and a half ago, into the very place that his dreams
+had, from the beginning, built for him. Those large, high rooms with the
+shining floors, the hooded furniture, the windows gaping without their
+curtains, the shadows and broad squares of light, the little whispers
+and rattles that doors and cupboards gave, the swirl of the wind as it
+sprang released from <a name="Page_178" id="Page_178"></a>corners and crevices, the lisp of some whisper,
+&quot;I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming!&quot; that, nevertheless, again and
+again defeated expectation. How could he but enjoy the fine field of
+affection that these provided for him?</p>
+
+<p>His mother watched him with maternal pride. &quot;He's <i>that</i> contented!&quot; she
+would say. &quot;Any other child would plague your life away, but 'Enery&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was part of Henry's unusual mind that he wondered at nothing. He
+remained in constant expectation, but whatever was to come to him it
+would not bring surprise with it. He was in a world where anything might
+happen. In all the house his favourite room was the high, thin
+drawing-room with an old gold mirror at one end of it and a piano
+muffled in brown holland. The mirror caught the piano with its peaked
+inquiring shape, that, in its inflection, looked so much more tremendous
+and ominous than it did in plain reality. Through the mirror the piano
+looked as though it might do anything, and to Henry, who knew nothing
+about pianos, it was responsible for almost everything that occurred in
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>The windows of the room gave a fine display of the gardens, the
+children, the carriages, and <a name="Page_179" id="Page_179"></a>the distant houses, but it was when the
+Square was empty that Henry liked best to gaze down into it, because
+then the empty house and the empty square prepared themselves together
+for some tremendous occurrence. Whenever such an interval of silence
+struck across the noise and traffic of the day, it seemed that all the
+world screwed itself up for the next event. &quot;One&mdash;two&mdash;three.&quot; But the
+crisis never came. The noise returned again, people laughed and shouted,
+bells rang and motors screamed. Nevertheless, one day something would
+surely happen.</p>
+
+<p>The house was full of company, and the boy would, sometimes, have
+yielded to the Fear that was never far away, had it not been for some
+one whom he had known from the very beginning of everything, some one
+who was as real as his mother, some one who was more powerful than
+anything or any one in the house, and kinder, far, far kinder.</p>
+
+<p>Often when Mrs. Slater would wonder of what her son was thinking as he
+sat twisting string round and round in front of the fire, he would be
+aware of his Friend in the shadow of the light, watching gravely, in the
+cheerful room, having beneath his hands all the powers, <a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a>good and evil,
+of the house. Just as Henry pictured quite clearly to himself other
+occupants of the house&mdash;some one with taloned claws behind the piano,
+another with black-hooded eyes and a peaked cap in the shadows of an
+upstairs passage, another brown, shrivelled and naked, who dwelt in a
+cupboard in one of the empty bedrooms so, too, he could see his Friend,
+vast and shadowy, with a flowing beard and eyes that were kind and
+shining.</p>
+
+<p>Often he had felt the pressure of his hand, had heard his reassuring
+whisper in his ears, had known the touch of his lips upon his forehead.
+No harm could come to him whilst his Friend was in the house&mdash;and his
+Friend was always there.</p>
+
+<p>He went always with his mother into the streets when she did her
+shopping or simply took the air. It was natural that on these occasions,
+he should be more frightened than during his hours in the house. In the
+first place his Friend did not accompany him on these out-of-door
+excursions, and his mother was not nearly so strong a protector as his
+Friend.</p>
+
+<p>Then he was disturbed by the people who <a name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></a>pressed and pushed about
+him&mdash;he had a sense that they were all like birds with flapping wings
+and strange cries, rushing down upon him&mdash;the colours and confusion of
+the shops bewildered him. There was too much here for him properly to
+understand; he had enough to do with the piano, the mirror, the shadowed
+passages, the staring windows.</p>
+
+<p>But in the Square he was happy again. Mrs. Slater never ventured into
+the gardens; they were for her superiors, and she complacently accepted
+a world in which things were so ordered as the only world possible. But
+there was plenty of life outside the gardens.</p>
+
+<p>There were, on the different days of the week, the various musicians,
+and Henry was friendly with them all. He delighted in music; as he stood
+there, listening to the barrel-organ, the ideas, pictures, dreams, flew
+like flocks of beautiful birds through his brain, fleet, and always just
+beyond his reach, so that he could catch nothing, but would nod his head
+and would hope that the tune would be repeated, because next time he
+might, perhaps, be more fortunate.</p>
+
+<p>The Major, who played the harp on Saturdays, was a friend of Mrs.
+Slater. &quot;Nice little <a name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></a>feller, that of yours, mum,&quot; he would say. &quot;'Ad
+one meself once.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sure enough.... Nice day.... Would you believe it, this is the
+only London square left for us to play in?... 'Tis, indeed. Cruel shame,
+I call it; life's 'ard.... You're right, mum, it is. Well, good-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Slater looked after him affectionately. &quot;Pore feller; and yet I
+dare say he makes a pretty hit of it if all was known.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Henry sighed. The birds were flown again. He was left with the
+blue-flecked sky and the grey houses that stood around the gardens like
+beasts about a water-pool. The sun (a red disc) peered over their
+shoulders. He went, with his mother within doors. Instantly on his
+entrance the house began to rustle and whisper.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Mrs. Slater, although an amiable and kind-hearted human being who
+believed with confident superstition in a God of other people's making,
+did not, on the whole, welcome her lady friends with much cordiality. It
+was not, as she often explained, as though she had her <a name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></a>own house into
+which to ask them. Her motto was, &quot;Friendly with All, Familiar with
+None,&quot; and to this she very faithfully held. But in her heart there was
+reason enough for this caution; there had been days&mdash;yes, and nights
+too&mdash;when, during her lamented husband's lifetime, she had &quot;taken a
+drop,&quot; taken it, obviously enough, as a comfort, and a solace when
+things were going very hard with her, and &quot;'Enery preferrin' 'er to be
+jolly 'erself to keep 'im company.&quot; She had protested, but Fate and
+Henry had been too strong for her. &quot;She had fallen into the habit!&quot;
+Then, when No. 21 had come under her care, she had put it all sternly
+behind her, but one did not know how weak one might be, and a kindly
+friend might with her persuasion&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Therefore did Mrs. Slater avoid her kindly friends. There was, however,
+one friend who was not so readily to be avoided; that was Mrs. Carter.
+Mrs. Carter also was a widow, or rather, to speak the direct truth, had
+discovered one morning, twenty years ago, that Mr. Carter &quot;was gone&quot;; he
+had never returned. Those who knew Mrs. Carter intimately said that, on
+the whole, &quot;things bein' as they was,&quot; his departure was not entirely to
+be wondered <a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></a>at. Mrs. Carter had a temper of her own, and nothing
+inflamed it so much as a drop of whisky, and there was nothing in the
+world she liked so much as &quot;a drop.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To meet her casually, you would judge her nothing less than the most
+amiable of womankind&mdash;a large, stout, jolly woman, with a face like a
+rose, and a quantity of black hair. At her best, in her fine Sunday
+clothes, she was a superb figure, and wore round her neck a rope of sham
+pearls that would have done credit to a sham countess. During the week,
+however, she slipped, on occasion, into &quot;d&eacute;shabille,&quot; and then she
+appeared not quite so attractive. No one knew the exact nature of her
+profession. She did a bit of &quot;char&quot;; she had at one time a little
+sweetshop, where she sold sweets, the <i>Police Budget</i>, and&mdash;although
+this was revealed only to her best friends&mdash;indecent photographs. It may
+be that the police discovered some of the sources of her income; at any
+rate the sweetshop was suddenly, one morning, abandoned. Her movements
+in everything were sudden; it was quite suddenly that she took a fancy
+to Mrs. Slater. She met her at a friend's, and at once, so she told Mrs.
+Slater, &quot;I liked yer, just as though I'd met yer before. But I'm like
+<a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></a>that. Sudden or not at all is <i>my</i> way, and not a bad way either!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Slater could not be said to be everything that was affectionate in
+return. She distrusted Mrs. Carter, disliked her brilliant colouring and
+her fluent experiences, felt shy before her rollicking suggestiveness,
+and timid at her innuendoes. For a considerable time she held her
+defences against the insidious attack. Then there came a day when Mrs.
+Carter burst into reluctant but passionate tears, asserting that Life
+and Mr. Carter had been, from the beginning, against her; that she had
+committed, indeed, acts of folly in the past, but only when driven
+desperately against a wall; that she bore no grudge against any one
+alive, but loved all humanity; that she was going to do her best to be a
+better woman, but couldn't really hope to arrive at any satisfactory
+improvement without Mrs. Slater's assistance; that Mrs. Slater, indeed,
+had shown her a New Way, a New Light, a New Path.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Slater, humble woman, had no illusions as to her own importance in
+the scheme of things; nothing touched her so surely as an appeal to her
+strength of character. She received Mrs. Carter with open arms,
+suggested <a name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></a>that they should read the Bible together on Sunday mornings,
+and go, side by side, to St. Matthew's on Sunday evenings. There was
+nothing like a study of the &quot;Holy Word&quot; for &quot;defeating the bottle,&quot; and
+there was nothing like &quot;defeating the bottle&quot; for getting back one's
+strength and firmness of character.</p>
+
+<p>It was along these lines that Mrs. Slater proposed to conduct Mrs.
+Carter.</p>
+
+<p>Now unfortunately Henry took an instant and truly savage dislike to his
+mother's new friend. He had been always, of course, &quot;odd&quot; in his
+feelings about people, but never was he &quot;odder&quot; than he was with Mrs.
+Carter. &quot;Little lamb,&quot; she said, when she saw him for the first time. &quot;I
+envy you that child, Mrs. Slater, I do indeed. Backwards 'e may be, but
+'is being dependent, as you may say, touches the 'eart. Little lamb!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She tried to embrace him; she offered him sweets. He shuddered at her
+approach, and his face was instantly grey, like a pool the moment after
+the sun's setting. Had he been himself able to put into words his
+sensations, he would have said that the sight of Mrs. Carter assured
+him, quite definitely, that something horrible would soon occur.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></a>The house upon whose atmosphere he so depended instantly darkened; his
+Friend was gone, not because he was no longer able to see him (his
+consciousness of him did not depend at all upon any visual assurance),
+but because there was now, Henry was perfectly assured, no chance
+whatever of his suddenly appearing. And, on the other hand, those
+Others&mdash;the one with the taloned claws behind the piano, the one with
+the black-hooded eyes&mdash;were stronger, more threatening, more dominating.
+But, beyond her influence on the house, Mrs. Carter, in her own physical
+and actual presence, tortured Henry. When she was in the room, Henry
+suffered agony. He would creep away were he allowed, and, if that were
+not possible, then he would retreat into the most distant corner and
+watch. If he were in the room his eyes never left Mrs. Carter for a
+moment, and it was this brooding gaze more than his disapproval that
+irritated her. &quot;You never can tell with poor little dears when they're
+'queer' what fancies they'll take. Why, he quite seems to dislike me,
+Mrs. Slater!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Slater could venture no denial; indeed, Henry's attitude aroused
+once again in her mind her earlier suspicions. She had all the
+<a name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></a>reverence of her class for her son's &quot;oddness.&quot; He knew more than
+ordinary mortal folk, and could see farther; he saw beyond Mrs. Carter's
+red cheeks and shining black hair, and the fact that he was, as a rule,
+tractable to cheerful kindness, made his rejection the more remarkable.
+But it might, nevertheless, be that the black things in Mrs. Carter's
+past were the marks impressed upon Henry's sensitive intelligence; and
+that he had not, as yet, perceived the new Mrs. Carter growing in grace
+now day by day.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'E'll get over 'is fancy, bless 'is 'eart.&quot; Mrs. Slater pursued then
+her work of redemption.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>On a certain evening in November, Mrs. Carter, coming in to see her
+friend, invited sympathy for a very bad cold.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Drippin' and runnin' at the nose I've been all day, my dear. Awake all
+night I was with it, and 'tain't often that I've one, but when I do it's
+somethin' cruel.&quot; It seemed to be better this evening, Mrs. Slater
+thought, but when she congratulated her friend on this, Mrs. Car<a name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></a>ter,
+shaking her head, remarked that it had left the nose and travelled into
+the throat and ears. &quot;Once it's earache, and I'm done,&quot; she said.
+Horrible pictures she drew of this earache, and it presently became
+clear that Mrs. Carter was in perfect terror of a night made sleepless
+with pain. Once, it seemed, had Mrs. Carter tried to commit suicide by
+hanging herself to a nail in a door, so maddening had the torture been.
+Luckily (Mrs. Carter thanked Heaven) the nail had been dragged from the
+door by her weight&mdash;&quot;not that I was anything very 'eavy, you
+understand.&quot; Finally, it appeared that only one thing in the world could
+be relied upon to stay the fiend.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Carter produced from her pocket a bottle of whisky.</p>
+
+<p>Upon that it followed that, since her reformation, Mrs. Carter had come
+to loathe the very smell of whisky, and as for the taste of it! But
+rather than be driven by flaming agony down the long stony passages of a
+sleepless night&mdash;anything.</p>
+
+<p>It was here, of course, that Mrs. Slater should have protested, but, in
+her heart, she was afraid of her friend, and afraid of herself.<a name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></a> Mrs.
+Carter's company had, of late, been pleasant to her. She had been
+strengthened in her own resolves towards a fine life by the sight of
+Mrs. Carter's struggle in that direction, and that good woman's genial
+amiability (when it was so obvious from her appearance that she could be
+far otherwise) flattered Mrs. Slater's sense of power. No, she could not
+now bear to let Mrs. Carter go.</p>
+
+<p>She said, therefore, nothing to her friend about the whisky, and on that
+evening Mrs. Carter did take the &quot;veriest sip.&quot; But the cold
+continued&mdash;it continued in a marvellous and terrible manner. It seemed
+&quot;to 'ave taken right 'old of 'er system.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After a few evenings it was part of the ceremonies that the bottle
+should be produced; the kettle was boiling happily on the fire, there
+was lemon, there was a lump of sugar.... On a certain wet and depressing
+evening Mrs. Slater herself had a glass &quot;just to see that she didn't get
+a cold like Mrs. Carter's.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Henry's bed-time was somewhere between the hours of eight and nine, but
+his mother did <a name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></a>not care to leave Mrs. Carter (dear friend, though she
+was) quite alone downstairs with the bottom half of the house unguarded
+(although, of course, the doors were locked), therefore, Mrs. Carter
+came upstairs with her friend to see the little fellow put to bed; &quot;and
+a hangel he looks, if ever I see one,&quot; declared the lady
+enthusiastically.</p>
+
+<p>When the two were gone and the house was still, Henry would sit up in
+bed and listen; then, moving quietly, he would creep out and listen
+again.</p>
+
+<p>There, in the passage, it seemed to him that he could hear the whole
+house talking&mdash;first one sound and then another would come, the wheeze
+of some straining floor, the creak of some whispering board, the shudder
+of a door. &quot;Look out! Look out! Look out!&quot; and then, above that murmur,
+some louder voice: &quot;Watch! there's danger in the place!&quot; Then, shivering
+with cold and his sense of evil, he would creep down into a lower
+passage and stand listening again; now the voices of the house were
+deafening, rising on every side of him, like the running of little
+streams suddenly heard on the turning of the corner of a hill. The dim
+light shrouded with fantasy the walls; <a name="Page_192" id="Page_192"></a>along the wide passage and
+cabinets, high china jars, the hollow scoop of the window at the
+far-distant end, were all alive and moving. And, in strange
+contradiction to the moving voices within the house, came the blurred
+echo of the London life, whirring, buzzing, like a cloud of gnats at the
+window-pane. &quot;Look out! Look out! Look out!&quot; the house cried, and Henry,
+with chattering teeth, was on guard.</p>
+
+<p>There came an evening when standing thus, shivering in his little shirt,
+he was aware that the terror, so long anticipated, was upon him. It
+seemed to him, on this evening, that the house was suddenly still; it
+was as though all the sounds, as of running water, that passed up and
+down the rooms and passages, were, in a flashing second, frozen. The
+house was holding its breath.</p>
+
+<p>He had to wait for a breathless, agonising interval before he heard the
+next sound, very faint and stifled breathing coming up to him out of the
+darkness in little uncertain gusts. He heard the breathings pause, then
+recommence again in quicker and louder succession. Henry, stirred
+simply, perhaps, by the terror of his anticipation, moved back into the
+darker shadows in the nook of the cabinet, and stayed <a name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></a>there with his
+shirt pressed against his little trembling knees.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed, after a long time, a half yellow circle of light that
+touched the top steps of the stairs and a square of the wall; behind the
+light was the stealthy figure of Mrs. Carter. She stood there for a
+moment, one hand with a candle raised, the other pressed against her
+breast; from one finger of this hand a bunch of heavy keys dangled. She
+stood there, with her wide, staring eyes, like glass in the
+candle-light, staring about her, her red cheeks rising and falling with
+her agitation, her body seeming enormous, her shadow on the wall huge in
+the flickering light. At the sight of his enemy Henry's terror was so
+frantic that his hands beat with little spasmodic movements against the
+wall.</p>
+
+<p>He did not <i>see</i> Mrs. Carter at all, but he saw rather the movement
+through the air and darkness of the house of something that would bring
+down upon him the full naked force of the Terror that he had all his
+life anticipated. He had always known that the awful hour would arrive
+when the Terror would grip him; again and again he had seen its eyes,
+felt its breath, heard its movements, and these movements had <a name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></a>been
+forewarnings of some future day. That day had arrived.</p>
+
+<p>There was only one thing that he could do; his Friend alone in all the
+world could help him. With his soul dizzy and faint from fear, he prayed
+for his Friend; had he been less frightened he would have screamed aloud
+for him to come and help him.</p>
+
+<p>The boy's breath came hot into his throat and stuck there, and his heart
+beat like a high, unresting hammer.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Carter, with the candle raised to throw light in front of her,
+moved forward very cautiously and softly. She passed down the passage,
+and then paused very near to the boy. She looked at the keys, and stole
+like some heavy, stealthy animal to the door of the long drawing-room.
+He watched her as she tried one key after another, making little
+dissatisfied noises as they refused to fit; then at last one turned the
+lock and she pushed back the door.</p>
+
+<p>It was certainly impossible for him, in the dim world of his mind, to
+realise what it was that she intended to do, but he knew, through some
+strange channel of knowledge, that his mother was concerned in this, and
+that some<a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a>thing more than the immediate peril of himself was involved.
+He had also, lost in the dim mazes of his mind, a consciousness that
+there <i>were</i> treasures in the house, and that his mother was placed
+there to guard them, and even that he himself shared her duty.</p>
+
+<p>It did not come to him that Mrs. Carter was in pursuit of these
+treasures, but he <i>did</i> realise that her presence there amongst them
+brought peril to his mother. Moved then by some desperate urgency which
+had at its heart his sense that to be left alone in the black passage
+was worse than the actual lighted vision of his Terror, he crept with
+trembling knees across the passage and through the door.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the room he saw that she had laid the candle upon the piano, and
+was bending over a drawer, trying again to fit a key. He stood in the
+doorway, a tiny figure, very, very cold, all his soul in his silent
+appeal for some help. His Friend <i>must</i> come. He was somewhere there in
+the house. &quot;Come! Help me!&quot; The candle suddenly flared into a finger of
+light that flung the room into vision. Mrs. Carter, startled, raised
+herself, and at that same moment Henry gave a cry, a weak little
+trembling sound.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></a>She turned and saw the boy; as their eyes met he felt the Terror
+rushing upon him. He flung a last desperate appeal for help, staring at
+her as though his eyes would never let her go, and she, finding him so
+unexpectedly, could only gape. In their silent gaze at one another, in
+the glassy stare of Mrs. Carter and the trembling, flickering one of
+Henry there was more than any ordinary challenge could have conveyed.
+Mrs. Carter must have felt at the first immediate confrontation of the
+strange little figure that her feet were on the very edge of some most
+desperate precipice. The long room and the passages beyond must have
+quivered. At that very first moment, with some stir, some hinted
+approach, Henry called, with the desperate summoning of all his ghostly
+world, upon his gods. They came....</p>
+
+<p>In her eyes he saw suddenly something else than vague terror. He saw
+recognition. He felt himself a rushing, heartening comfort; he knew that
+his Friend had somehow come, that he was no longer alone.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Carter's eyes were staring beyond him, over him, into the black
+passage. Her eyes seemed to grow as though the terror in them was
+pushing them out beyond their lids; <a name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></a>her breath, came in sharp, tearing
+gasps. The keys with a clang dropped from her hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, God! Oh, God!&quot; she whispered. He did not turn his head to grasp
+what it was that she saw in the passage. The terror had been transferred
+from himself to her.</p>
+
+<p>The colour in her cheeks went out, leaving her as though her face were
+suddenly shadowed by some overhanging shape.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes never moved nor faltered from the dark into whose heart she
+gazed. Then, there was a strangled, gasping cry, and she sank down,
+first onto her knees, then in a white faint, her eyes still staring, lay
+huddled on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Henry felt his Friend's hand on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, down in the kitchen, the fire had sunk into grey ashes, and
+Mrs. Slater was lying back in her chair, her head back, snoring thickly;
+an empty glass had tumbled across the table, and a few drops from it had
+dribbled over on to the tablecloth.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Barbara Flint</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>Barbara Flint was a little girl, aged seven, who lived with her parents
+at No. 36 March Square. Her brother and sister, Master Anthony and Miss
+Misabel Flint, were years and years older, so you must understand that
+she led rather a solitary life. She was a child with very pale flaxen
+hair, very pale blue eyes, very pale cheeks&mdash;she looked like a china
+doll who had been left by a careless mistress out in the rain. She was a
+very sensitive child, cried at the least provocation, very affectionate,
+too, and ready to imagine that people didn't like her.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Flint was a stout, elderly gentleman, whose favourite pursuit was to
+read the newspapers in his club, and to inveigh against the Liberals. He
+was pale and pasty, and suffered <a name="Page_199" id="Page_199"></a>from indigestion. Mrs. Flint was tall,
+thin and severe, and a great helper at St. Matthew's, the church round
+the corner. She gave up all her time to church work and the care of the
+poor, and it wasn't her fault that the poor hated her. Between the
+Scylla of politics and the Charybdis of religion there was very little
+left for poor Barbara; she faded away under the care of an elderly
+governess who suffered from a perfect cascade of ill-fated love affairs;
+it seemed that gentlemen were always &quot;playing with her feelings.&quot; But in
+all probability a too vivid imagination led her astray in this matter;
+at any rate, she cried so often during Barbara's lessons that the title
+of the lesson-book, &quot;Reading without Tears,&quot; was sadly belied. It might
+be expected that, under these unfavourable circumstances, Barbara was
+growing into a depressed and melancholy childhood.</p>
+
+<p>Barbara, happily, was saved by her imagination. Surely nothing quite
+like Barbara's imagination had ever been seen before, because it came to
+her, outside inheritance, outside environment, outside observation. She
+had it altogether, in spite of Flints past and present. But, perhaps,
+not altogether in spite of March<a name="Page_200" id="Page_200"></a> Square. It would be difficult to say
+how deeply the fountain, the almond tree, the green, flat shining grass
+had stung her intuition; but stung it only, not created it&mdash;the thing
+was there from the beginning of all time. She talked, at first to
+nurses, servants, her mother, about the things that she knew; about her
+Friend who often came to see her, who was there so many times&mdash;there in
+the room with her when they couldn't catch a glimpse of him; about the
+days and nights when she was away anywhere, up in the sky, out on the
+air, deep in the sea, about all the other experiences that she
+remembered but was now rapidly losing consciousness of. She talked, at
+first easily, naturally, and inviting, as it were, return confidences.
+Then, quite suddenly, she realised that she simply wasn't believed, that
+she was considered a wicked little girl &quot;for making things up so,&quot; that
+there was no hope at all for her unless she abandoned her &quot;lying ways.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The shock of this discovery flung her straight back upon herself; if
+they refused to believe these things, then there was nothing to be done.
+But for herself their incredulity should not stop her. She became a very
+quiet little girl&mdash;what her nurse called &quot;brooding.&quot; This incredulity
+<a name="Page_201" id="Page_201"></a>of theirs drove them all instantly into a hostile camp, and the
+affection that she had been longing to lavish upon them must now be
+reserved for other, and, she could not help feeling, wiser persons. This
+division of herself from the immediate world hurt her very much. From a
+very early age, indeed, we need reassurance as to the necessity for our
+existence. Barbara simply did not seem to be wanted.</p>
+
+<p>But still worse: now that her belief in certain things had been
+challenged, she herself began to question them. Was it true, possibly,
+when a flaming sunset struck a sword across the Square and caught the
+fountain, slashing it into a million glittering fragments, that that was
+all that occurred? Such a thing had been for Barbara simply a door into
+her earlier world. See the fountain&mdash;well, you have been tested; you are
+still simple enough to go back into the real world. But was Barbara
+simple enough? She was seven; it is just about then that we begin, under
+the guard of nurses carefully chosen for us by our parents, to drop our
+simplicity. It must, of course, be so, or the world would be all
+dreamers, and then there would be no commerce.</p>
+
+<p>Barbara knew nothing of commerce, but she <a name="Page_202" id="Page_202"></a>did know that she was
+unhappy, that her dolls gave her no happiness, and that her Friend did
+not come now so often to see her. She was, I am afraid, in character a
+&quot;Hopper.&quot; She must be affectionate, she must demand affection of others,
+and will they not give it her, then must they simulate it. The tragedy
+of it all was perhaps, that Barbara had not herself that coloured
+vitality in her that would prepare other people to be fond of her. The
+world is divided between those who place affection about, now here, now
+there, and those whose souls lie, like drawers, unawares, but ready for
+the affection to be laid there.</p>
+
+<p>Barbara could not &quot;place&quot; it about; she had neither optimism nor a sense
+of humour sufficient. But she wanted it&mdash;wanted it terribly. If she were
+not to be allowed to indulge her imagination, then must she, all the
+more, love some one with fervour: the two things were interdependent.
+She surveyed her world with an eye to this possible loving. There was
+her governess, who had been with her for a year now, tearful, bony,
+using Barbara as a means and never as an end. Barbara did not love
+her&mdash;how could she? Moreover, there were other physical things: the
+lean, shining <a name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></a>marble of Miss Letts's long fingers, the dry thinness of
+her hair, the way that the tip of her nose would be suddenly red, and
+then, like a blown-out candle, dull white again. Fingers and noses are
+not the only agents in the human affections, but they have most
+certainly something to do with them. Moreover, Miss Letts was too busily
+engaged with the survey of her relations, with now this gentleman, now
+that, to pay much attention to Barbara. She dismissed her as &quot;a queer
+little thing.&quot; There were in Miss Letts's world &quot;queer things&quot; and
+&quot;things not queer.&quot; The division was patent to anybody.</p>
+
+<p>Barbara's father and mother were also surveyed. Here Barbara was baffled
+by the determination on the part of both of them that she should talk,
+should think, should dream about all the things concerning which she
+could not talk, think nor dream. &quot;How to grow up into a nice little
+girl,&quot; &quot;How to pray to God,&quot; &quot;How never to tell lies,&quot; &quot;How to keep
+one's clothes clean,&quot;&mdash;these things did not interest Barbara in the
+least; but had she been given love with them she might have paid some
+attention. But a too rigidly defined politics, a too rigidly defined
+religion find love a poor, <a name="Page_204" id="Page_204"></a>loose, sentimental thing&mdash;very rightly so,
+perhaps. Mrs. Flint was afraid that Barbara was a &quot;silly little girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope, Miss Letts, that she no longer talks about her silly fancies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She has said nothing to me in that respect for a considerable period,
+Mrs. Flint.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All very young children have fancies, but such things are dangerous
+when they grow older.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I agree with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless the fountain continued to flash in the sun, and births,
+deaths, weddings, love and hate continued to play their part in March
+Square.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Barbara, groping about in the desolation of having no one to grope with
+her, discovered that her Friend came now less frequently to see her. She
+was even beginning to wonder whether he had ever really come at all. She
+had perhaps imagined him just as on occasion she would imagine her doll,
+Jane, the Queen of England, or her afternoon tea the most wonderful
+meal, with sausages, blackberry jam <a name="Page_205" id="Page_205"></a>and chocolates. Young though, she
+was, she was able to realise that this imagination of hers was <i>capable
+de tout</i>, and that every one older than herself said that it was wicked;
+therefore was her Friend, perhaps, wicked also.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, if the dark curtains that veiled the nursery windows at night,
+if the glimmering shape of the picture-frames, if the square black sides
+of the dolls' house were real, real also was the figure of her Friend,
+real his arousal in her of all the memories of the old days before she
+was Barbara Flint at all&mdash;real, too, his love, his care, his protection;
+as real, yes, as Miss Letts's bony figure. It was all very puzzling. But
+he did not come now as in the old days.</p>
+
+<p>Barbara played very often in the gardens in the middle of the Square,
+but because she was a timid little girl she did not make many friends.
+She knew many of the other children who played there, and sometimes she
+shared in their games; but her sensitive feelings were so easily hurt,
+she frequently retired in tears. Every day on going into the garden she
+looked about her, hoping that she would find before she left it again
+some one whom it would be <a name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></a>possible to worship. She tried on several
+occasions to erect altars, but our English temperament is against
+public display, and she was misunderstood.</p>
+
+<p>Then, quite suddenly, as though she had sprung out of the fountain, Mary
+Adams was there. Mary Adams was aged nine, and her difference from
+Barbara Flint was that, whereas Barbara craved for affection, she craved
+for attention: the two demands can be easily confused. Mary Adams was
+the only child of an aged philosopher, Mr. Adams, who, contrary to all
+that philosophy teaches, had married a young wife. The young wife,
+pleased that Mary was so unlike her father, made much of her, and Mary
+was delighted to be made much of. She was a little girl with flaxen
+hair, blue eyes, and a fine pink-and-white colouring. In a few years'
+time she will be so sure of the attention that her appearance is winning
+for her that she will make no effort to secure adherents, but just now
+she is not sufficiently confident&mdash;she must take trouble. She took
+trouble with Barbara.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting neatly upon a seat, Mary watched rude little boys throw sidelong
+glances in her direction. Her long black legs were quivering <a name="Page_207" id="Page_207"></a>with the
+perception of their interest, even though her eyes were haughtily
+indifferent. It was then that Barbara, with Miss Letts, an absent-minded
+companion, came and sat by her side. Barbara and Mary had met at a
+party&mdash;not quite on equal terms, because nine to seven is as sixty to
+thirty&mdash;but they had played hide-and-seek together, and had, by chance,
+hidden in the same cupboard.</p>
+
+<p>The little boys had moved away, and Mary Adams's legs dropped, suddenly,
+their tension.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm going to a party to-night,&quot; Mary said, with a studied indifference.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Letts knew of Mary's parents, and that, socially, they were &quot;all
+right&quot;&mdash;a little more &quot;all right,&quot; were we to be honest, than Mr. and
+Mrs. Flint. She said, therefore:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you, dear? That will be nice for you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Instantly Barbara was trembling with excitement. She knew that the
+remark had been made to her and not at all to Miss Letts. Barbara
+entered once again, and instantly, upon the field of the passions. Here
+she was fated by her temperament to be in all cases a miserable victim,
+because panic, whether she were accepted or rejected by the object of
+her devo<a name="Page_208" id="Page_208"></a>tion, reduced her to incoherent foolishness; she could only be
+foolish now, and, although her heart beat like a leaping animal inside
+her, allowed Miss Letts to carry on the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>But Miss Letts's wandering eye hurt Mary's pride. She was not really
+interested in her, and once Mary had come to that conclusion about any
+one, complete, utter oblivion enveloped them. She perceived, however,
+Barbara's agitation, and at that, flattered and appeased, she was
+amiable again. There followed between the two a strangled and
+disconnected conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Mary began:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've got four dolls at home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you?&quot; breathlessly from Barbara. By such slow accuracies as these
+are we conveyed, all our poor mortal days, from realism to romance, and
+with a shocking precipitance are we afterwards flung back, out of
+romance into realism, our natural home, again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes&mdash;four dolls I have. My mother will give me another if I ask her.
+Would your mother?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Barbara, untruthfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's my governess, Miss Marsh, there, <a name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></a>with the green hat, that is.
+I've had her two months.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Barbara, gazing with adoring eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's going away next week. There's another coming. I can do sums, can
+you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; again from Barbara.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can do up to twice-sixty-three. I'm nine. Miss Marsh says I'm
+clever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm seven,&quot; said Barbara.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I could read when I was seven&mdash;long, long words. Can you read?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this moment there arrived the green-hatted Miss Marsh, a plump,
+optimistic person, to whom Miss Letts was gloomily patronising. Miss
+Letts always distrusted stoutness in another; it looked like deliberate
+insult. Mary Adams was conveyed away; Barbara was bereft of her glory.</p>
+
+<p>But, rather, on that instant that Mary Adams vanished did she become
+glorified. Barbara had been too absurdly agitated to transform on to the
+mirror of her brain Mary's appearance. In all the dim-coloured splendour
+of flame and mist was Mary now enwrapped, with every step that Barbara
+took towards her home did the splendour grow.<a name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></a></p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Then followed an invitation to tea from Mary's mother. Barbara,
+preparing for the event, suffered her hair to be brushed, choked with
+strange half-sweet, half-terrible suffocation that comes from
+anticipated glories: half-sweet because things will, at their worst, be
+wonderful; half-terrible because we know that they will not be so good
+as we hope.</p>
+
+<p>Barbara, washed paler than ever, in a white frock with pink bows, was
+conducted by Miss Letts. She choked with terror in the strange hall,
+where she was received with great splendour by Mary. The schoolroom was
+large and fine and bright, finer far than Barbara's room, swamped by the
+waters of religion and politics. Barbara could only gulp and gulp, and
+feel still at her throat that half-sweet, half-terrible suffocation.
+Within her little body her heart, so huge and violent, was pounding.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A very nice room indeed,&quot; said Miss Letts, more friendly now to the
+optimist because she was leaving in a day or two, and could not,
+therefore, at the moment be considered a success. Her failure balanced
+her plumpness.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211"></a>Here, at any rate, was the beginning of a great friendship between
+Barbara Flint and Mary Adams. The character of Mary Adams was admittedly
+a difficult one to explore; her mother, a cloud of nurses and a company
+of governesses had been baffled completely by its dark caverns and
+recesses. One clue, beyond question, was selfishness; but this quality,
+by the very obviousness of it, may tempt us to believe that that is all.
+It may account, when we are displeased, for so much. It accounted for a
+great deal with Mary&mdash;but not all. She had, I believe, a quite genuine
+affection for Barbara, nothing very disturbing, that could rival the
+question as to whether she would receive a second helping of pudding or
+no, or whether she looked better in blue or pink. Nevertheless, the
+affection was there. During several months she considered Barbara more
+than she had ever considered any one in her life before. At that first
+tea party she was aware, perhaps, that Barbara's proffered devotion was
+for complete and absolute self-sacrifice, something that her vanity
+would not often find to feed it. There was, too, no question of
+comparison between them.</p>
+
+<p>Even when Barbara grew to be nine she <a name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></a>would be a poor thing beside the
+lusty self-confidence of Mary Adams&mdash;and this was quite as it should be.
+All that Barbara wanted was some one upon whom she might pour her
+devotion, and one of the things that Mary wanted was some one who would
+spend it upon her. But there stirred, nevertheless, some breath of
+emotion across that stagnant little pool, Mary's heart. She was moved,
+perhaps, by pity for Barbara's amazing simplicities, moved also by
+curiosity as to how far Barbara's devotion to her would go, moved even
+by some sense of distrust of her own self-satisfaction. She did, indeed,
+admire any one who could realise, as completely as did Barbara, the
+greatness of Mary Adams.</p>
+
+<p>It may seem strange to us, and almost terrible, that a small child of
+seven can feel anything as devastating as this passion of Barbara. But
+Barbara was made to be swept by storms stronger than she could control,
+and Mary Adams was the first storm of her life. They spent now a great
+deal of their time together. Mrs. Adams, who was beginning to find Mary
+more than she could control, hailed the gentle Barbara with joy; she
+welcomed also perhaps a certain note of rather haughty <a name="Page_213" id="Page_213"></a>protection which
+Mary seemed to be developing.</p>
+
+<p>During the hours when Barbara was alone she thought of the many things
+that she would say to her friend when they met, and then at the meeting
+could say nothing. Mary talked or she did not talk according to her
+mood, but she soon made it very plain that there was only one way of
+looking at everything inside and outside the earth, and that was Mary's
+way. Barbara had no affection, but a certain blind terror for God. It
+was precisely as though some one were standing with a hammer behind a
+tree, and were waiting to hit you on the back of your head at the first
+opportunity. But God was not, on the whole, of much importance; her
+Friend was the great problem, and before many days were passed Mary was
+told all about him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He used to come often and often. He'd be there just where you wanted
+him&mdash;when the light was out or anything. And he <i>was</i> nice.&quot; Barbara
+sighed.</p>
+
+<p>Mary stared at her, seeming in the first full sweep of confidence, to be
+almost alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't mean&mdash;&mdash;?&quot; She stopped, then cried, &quot;Why, you silly, you
+believe in ghosts!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></a>No, I don't,&quot; said Barbara, not far from tears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, you do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I don't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course you do, you silly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I don't. He&mdash;he's real.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; Mary said, with a final toss of the head, &quot;if you go seeing
+ghosts like that you can't have me for your friend, Barbara Flint&mdash;you
+can choose, that's all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Barbara was aghast. Such a catastrophe had never been contemplated. Lose
+Mary? Sooner life itself. She resolved, sorrowfully, to say no more
+about her Friend. But here occurred a strange thing. It was as though
+Mary felt that over this one matter Barbara had eluded her; she returned
+to it again and again, always with contemptuous but inquisitive
+allusion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did he come last night, Barbara?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;P'r'aps he did, only you were asleep.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, he didn't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't believe he'll come ever any more, do you? Now that I've said
+he isn't there really?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_215" id="Page_215"></a>Very well, then, I won't see you to-morrow&mdash;not at all&mdash;not all day&mdash;I
+won't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>These crises tore Barbara's spirit. Seven is not an age that can reason
+with life's difficulties, and Barbara had, in this business, no
+reasoning powers at all. She would die for Mary; she could not deny her
+Friend. What was she to do? And yet&mdash;just at this moment when, of all
+others, it was important that he should come to her and confirm his
+reality&mdash;he made no sign. Not only did he make no sign, but he seemed to
+withdraw, silently and surely, all his supports. Barbara discovered that
+the company of Mary Adams did in very truth make everything that was not
+sure and certain absurd and impossible. There was visible no longer, as
+there had been before, that country wherein anything was possible, where
+wonderful things had occurred and where wonderful things would surely
+occur again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're pretending,&quot; said Mary Adams sharply when Barbara ventured some
+possibly extravagant version of some ordinary occurrence, or suggested
+that events, rich and wonderful, had occurred during the night.
+&quot;Nonsense,&quot; said Mary sharply.</p>
+
+<p>She said &quot;nonsense&quot; as though it were the <a name="Page_216" id="Page_216"></a>very foundation of her creed
+of life&mdash;as, indeed, to the end of her days, it was. What, then, was
+Barbara to do? Her friend would not come, although passionately she
+begged and begged and begged that he would. Mary Adams was there every
+day, sharp, and shining, and resolved, demanding the whole of Barbara
+Flint, body and soul&mdash;nothing was to be kept from her, nothing. What was
+Barbara Flint to do?</p>
+
+<p>She denied her Friend, denied that earlier world, denied her dreams and
+her hopes. She cried a good deal, was very lonely in the dark. Mary
+Adams, as was her way, having won her victory, passed on to win another.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Mary began, now, to find Barbara rather tiresome. Having forced her to
+renounce her gods, she now despised her for so easy a renunciation.
+Every day did she force Barbara through her act of denial, and the
+Inquisition of Spain held, in all its records, nothing more cruel.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did he come last night?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He'll never come again, will he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></a>No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wasn't it silly of you to make up stories like that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Mary&mdash;yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There aren't ghosts, nor fairies, nor giants, nor wizards, nor Santa
+Claus?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; but, Mary, p'r'aps&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; there aren't. Say there aren't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There isn't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Poor Barbara, even as she concluded this ceremony, clutching her doll
+close to her to give her comfort, could not refrain from a hurried
+glance over her shoulder. He <i>might</i> be&mdash;&mdash; But upon Mary this all began
+soon enough to pall. She liked some opposition. She liked to defeat
+people and trample on them and then be gracious. Barbara was a poor
+little thing. Moreover, Barbara's standard of morality and righteousness
+annoyed her. Barbara seemed to have no idea that there was anything in
+this confused world of ours except wrong and right. No dialectician,
+argue he ever so stoutly, could have persuaded Barbara that there was
+such a colour in the world's paint-box as grey. &quot;It's bad to tell lies.
+It's bad to steal. It's bad to put your tongue out. It's good to be kind
+to poor people. It's good <a name="Page_218" id="Page_218"></a>to say 'No' when you want more pudding but
+mustn't have it.&quot; Barbara was no prig. She did not care the least little
+thing about these things, nor did she ever mention them, but let a
+question of conduct arise, then was Barbara's way plain and clear. She
+did not always take it, but there it was. With Mary, how very different!
+She had, I am afraid, no sense of right and wrong at all, but only a
+coolly ironical perception of the things that her elders disliked and
+permitted. Very foolish and absurd, these elders. We have always before
+our eyes some generation that provokes our irony, the one before us, the
+one behind us, our own perhaps; for Mary Adams it would always be any
+generation that was not her own. Her business in life was to avoid
+unpleasantness, to extract the honey from every flower, but above all to
+be admired, praised, preferred.</p>
+
+<p>At first with her pleasure at Barbara's adoration she had found, within
+herself, a truly alarming desire to be &quot;good.&quot; It might, after all, be
+rather amusing to be, in strict reality, all the fine things that
+Barbara considered her. She endeavoured for a week or two to adjust
+herself to this point of view, to <a name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></a>consider, however slightly, whether
+it were right or wrong to do something that she particularly wished to
+do.</p>
+
+<p>But she found it very tiresome. The effort spoilt her temper, and no one
+seemed to notice any change. She might as well be bad as good were there
+no one present to perceive the difference. She gave it up, and, from
+that moment found that she suffered Barbara less gladly than before.
+Meanwhile, in Barbara also strange forces had been at work. She found
+that her imagination (making up stories) simply, in spite of all the
+Mary Adamses in the world, refused to stop. Still would the almond tree
+and the fountain, the gold dust on the roofs of the houses when the sun
+was setting, the racing hurry of rain drops down the window-pane, the
+funny old woman with the red shawl who brought plants round in a
+wheelbarrow, start her story telling.</p>
+
+<p>Still could she not hold herself from fancying, at times, that her doll
+Jane was a queen, and that Miss Letts could make &quot;spells&quot; by the mere
+crook of her bony fingers. Worst of all, still she must think of her
+Friend, tell herself with an ache that he would never come back again,
+feel, sometimes, that she would give up<a name="Page_220" id="Page_220"></a> Mary and all the rest of the
+world if he would only be beside her bed, as he used to be, talking to
+her, holding her hand. During these days, had there been any one to
+observe her, she was a pathetic little figure, with her thin legs like
+black sticks, her saucer eyes that so readily filled with tears, her
+eager, half-apprehensive expression, the passionate clutch of the doll
+to her heart, and it is, after all, a painful business, this
+adoration&mdash;no human soul can live up to the heights of it, and, what is
+more, no human soul ought to.</p>
+
+<p>As Mary grew tired of Barbara she allowed to slip from her many of the
+virtuous graces that had hitherto, for Barbara's benefit, adorned her.
+She lost her temper, was cruel simply for the pleasure that Barbara's
+ill-restrained agitation yielded her, but, even beyond this, squandered
+recklessly her reputation for virtue. Twice, before Barbara's very eyes,
+she told lies, and told them, too, with a real mastery of the
+craft&mdash;long practice and a natural disposition had brought her very near
+perfection. Barbara, her heart beating wildly, refused to understand;
+Mary could not be so. She held Jane to her breast more tightly than
+before. And the denials continued; twice a day <a name="Page_221" id="Page_221"></a>now they were extorted
+from her&mdash;with every denial the ghost of her Friend stole more deeply
+into the mist. He was gone; he was gone; and what was left?</p>
+
+<p>Very soon, and with unexpected suddenness, the crisis came.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>Upon a day Barbara accompanied her mother to tea with Mrs. Adams. The
+ladies remained downstairs in the dull splendour of the drawing-room;
+Mary and Barbara were delivered to Miss Fortescue, the most recent
+guardian of Mary's life and prospects.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's simply awful. You needn't mind a word she says,&quot; Mary instructed
+her friend, and prepared then to behave accordingly. They had tea, and
+Mary did as she pleased. Miss Fortescue protested, scolded, was weak
+when she should have been strong, and said often, &quot;Now, Mary, there's a
+dear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Barbara, the faint colour coming and going in her cheeks, watched. She
+watched Mary now with quite a fresh intention. She had begun her voyage
+of discovery: what was in Mary's head, <i>what</i> would she do next? What<a name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></a>
+Mary did next was to propose, after tea, that they should travel through
+other parts of the house.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We'll be back in a moment,&quot; Mary flung over her head to Miss Fortescue.
+They proceeded then through passages, peering into dark rooms, looking
+behind curtains, Barbara following behind her friend, who seemed to be
+moved by a rather aimless intention of finding something to do that she
+shouldn't. They finally arrived at Mrs. Adams's private and particular
+sitting-room, a place that may be said, in the main, to stand as a
+protest against the rule of the ancient philosopher, being all pink and
+flimsy and fragile with precious vases and two post-impressionist
+pictures (a green apple tree one, the other a brown woman), and lace
+cushions and blue bowls with rose leaves in them. Barbara had never been
+into this room before, nor had she ever in all her seven years seen
+anything so lovely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mother says I'm never to come in here,&quot; announced Mary. &quot;But I
+do&mdash;lots. Isn't it pretty?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;P'r'aps we oughtn't&mdash;&mdash;&quot; began Barbara.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, we ought,&quot; answered Mary scornfully. &quot;Always you and your
+'oughtn't.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223"></a>She turned, and her shoulders brushed a low bracket that was close to
+the door. A large Nankin vase was at her feet, scattered into a thousand
+pieces. Even Mary's proud indifference was stirred by this catastrophe,
+and she was down on her knees in an instant, trying to pick up the
+pieces. Barbara stared, her eyes wide with horror.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Mary,&quot; she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You might help instead of just standing there!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then the door opened and, like the avenging gods from Olympus, in came
+the two ladies, eagerly, with smiles.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now I must just show you,&quot; began Mrs. Adams. Then the catastrophe was
+discovered&mdash;a moment's silence, then a cry from the poor lady: &quot;Oh, my
+vase! It was priceless!&quot; (It was not, but no matter.)</p>
+
+<p>About Barbara the air clung so thick with catastrophe that it was from a
+very long way indeed that she heard Mary's voice:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Barbara didn't mean&mdash;&mdash;-&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you do this, Barbara?&quot; her mother turned round upon her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know, Mary, I've told you a thousand times that you're not to come
+in here!&quot; this <a name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></a>from Mrs. Adams, who was obviously very angry indeed.</p>
+
+<p>Mary was on her feet now and, as she looked across at Barbara, there was
+in her glance a strange look, ironical, amused, inquisitive, even
+affectionate. &quot;Well, mother, I knew we mustn't. But Barbara wanted to
+<i>look</i> so I said we'd just <i>peep</i>, but that we weren't to touch
+anything, and then Barbara couldn't help it, really; her shoulder just
+brushed the shelf&mdash;&mdash;&quot; and still as she looked there was in her eyes
+that strange irony: &quot;Well, now you see me as I am&mdash;I'm bored by all this
+pretending. It's gone on long enough. Are you going to give me away?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But Barbara could do nothing. Her whole world was there, like the Nankin
+vase, smashed about her feet, as it never, never would be again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So you did this, Barbara?&quot; Mrs. Flint said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Barbara. Then she began to cry.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>At home she was sent to bed. Her mother read her a chapter of the Gospel
+according to St.<a name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></a> Matthew, and then left her; she lay there, sick with
+crying, her eyes stiff and red, wondering how she would ever get through
+the weeks and weeks of life that remained to her. She thought: &quot;I'll
+never love any one again. Mary took my Friend away&mdash;and then she wasn't
+there herself. There isn't anybody.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then it suddenly occurred to her that she need never be put through the
+agony of her denials again, that she could believe what she liked, make
+up stories.</p>
+
+<p>Her Friend would, of course, never come to see her any more, but at
+least now she would be able to think about him. She would be allowed to
+remember. Her brain was drowsy, her eyes half closed. Through the
+humming air something was coming; the dark curtains were parted, the
+light of the late afternoon sun was faint yellow upon the opposite
+wall&mdash;there was a little breeze. Drowsily, drowsily, her drooping eyes
+felt the light, the stir of the air, the sense that some one was in the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>She looked up; she gave a cry! He had come back! He had come back after
+all!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Sarah Trefusis</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>Sarah Trefusis lived, with her mother, in the smallest house in March
+Square, a really tiny house, like a box, squeezed breathlessly between
+two fat buildings, but looking, with its white paint and green doors,
+smarter than either of them. Lady Charlotte Trefusis, Sarah's mother,
+was elegant, penniless and a widow; Captain B. Trefusis, her husband,
+had led the merriest of lives until a game of polo carried him
+reluctantly from a delightful world and forced Lady Charlotte to
+consider the problem of having a good time alone on nothing at all. But
+it may be said that, on the whole, she succeeded. She was the
+best-dressed widow in London, and went everywhere, but the little house
+in March Square was the scene of a most strenuous campaign, every day
+presenting its <a name="Page_227" id="Page_227"></a>defeat or victory, and every minute of the day
+threatening overwhelming disaster if something were not done
+immediately. Lady Charlotte had the smallest feet and hands outside
+China, a pile of golden hair above the face of a pink-and-white doll.
+Staring from this face, however, were two of the loveliest, most
+unscrupulous of eyes, and those eyes did more for Lady Charlotte's
+precarious income than any other of her resources. She wore her
+expensive clothes quite beautifully, and gave lovely little lunches and
+dinners; no really merry house-party was complete without her.</p>
+
+<p>Sarah was her only child, and, although at the time of which I am
+writing she was not yet nine years of age, there was no one in London
+better suited to the adventurous and perilous existence that Fate had
+selected for her. Sarah was black as ink&mdash;that is, she had coal black
+hair, coal black eyes, and wonderful black eyelashes. Her eyelashes were
+her only beautiful feature, but she was, nevertheless, a most remarkable
+looking child. &quot;If ever a child's possessed of the devil, my dear
+Charlotte,&quot; said Captain James Trent to her mother, &quot;it's your precious
+daughter&mdash;she <i>is</i> the devil, I believe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_228" id="Page_228"></a>Well, she needs to be,&quot; said her mother, &quot;considering the life that's
+in store for her. We're very good friends, she and I, thank you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They were. They understood one another to perfection. Lady Charlotte was
+as hard as nails, and Sarah was harder. Sarah had never been known to
+cry. She had bitten the fingers of one of her nurses through to the
+bone, and had stuck a needle into the cheek of another whilst she slept,
+and had watched, with a curious abstracted gaze, the punishment dealt
+out to her, as though it had nothing to do with her at all. She never
+lost her temper, and one of the most terrible things about her was her
+absolute calm. She was utterly fearless, went to the dentist without a
+tremor, and, at the age of six, fell downstairs, broke her leg, and so
+lay until help arrived without a cry. She bullied and hurt anything or
+anybody that came her way, but carried out her plans always with the
+same deliberate abstraction as though she were obeying somebody's
+orders. She never nourished revenge or resentment, and it seemed to be
+her sense of humour (rather than any fierce or hostile feeling) that was
+tickled when she hurt any one.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229"></a>She was a child, apparently without imagination, but displayed, at a
+very early period, a strangely sharpened perception of what her nurse
+called &quot;the uncanny.&quot; She frightened even her mother by the expression
+that her face often wore of attention to something or somebody outside
+her companion's perception.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A broomstick is what she'll be flying away on one of these nights, you
+mark my word,&quot; a nurse declared. &quot;Little devil, she is, neither more nor
+less. It isn't decent the way she sits on the floor looking right
+through the wall into the next room, as you might say. Yes, and knows
+who's coming up the stairs long before she's seen 'em. No place for a
+decent Christian woman, and so I told her mother this very morning.&quot; It
+was, of course, quite impossible to find a nurse to stay with Sarah,
+and, when she arrived at the age of seven, nurses were dismissed, and
+she either looked after herself or was tended by an abandoned French
+maid of her mother's, who stayed with Lady Charlotte, like a wicked,
+familiar spirit, for a great number of years on a strange basis of
+confidante, fellow-plunderer, and sympathetic adventurer. This French
+maid, whose name was, appropriately enough, Hortense, had a real
+affection for<a name="Page_230" id="Page_230"></a> Sarah &quot;because she was the weeckedest child of 'er age
+she ever see.&quot; There was nothing of which Sarah, from the very earliest
+age, did not seem aware. Her mother's gentlemen friends she valued
+according to their status in the house, and, as they &quot;fell off&quot; or &quot;came
+on,&quot; so was her manner indifferent or pleasant. For Hortense, she had a
+real respect, but even that improper and brazen spirit quailed at times
+before her cynical and elfish regard. To say of a child that there is
+something &quot;unearthly&quot; about it is, as a rule, to pay a compliment to
+ethereal blue and gold. There was nothing ethereal about Sarah, and yet
+she was unearthly enough. Squatting on the floor, her legs tucked under
+her, her head thrust forward, her large black eyes staring at the wall,
+her black hair almost alive in the shining intensity of its colours, she
+had in her attitude the lithe poise of some animal ready to spring,
+waiting for its exact opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>When her mother, in a temper, struck her, she would push her hair back
+from her face with a sharp movement of her hand and then would watch
+broodingly and cynically for the next move. &quot;You hit me again,&quot; she
+seemed to say, &quot;and you <i>will</i> make a fool of yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231"></a>She was aware, of course, of a thousand influences in the house of
+which her mother and Hortense had never the slightest conception. From
+the cosy security of her cradle she had watched the friendly spirit who
+had accompanied (with hostile irritation) her entrance into this world.
+His shadow had, for a long period, darkened her nursery, but she
+repelled, with absolute assurance, His kindly advances.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not frightened. I don't, in the least, want things made comfortable
+for me. I can get along very nicely, indeed, without you. You're full of
+sentiment and gush&mdash;things that I detest&mdash;and it won't be the least use
+in the world for you to ask me to be good, and tender, and all the rest
+of it. I'm not like your other babies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He must have known, of course, that she was not, but, nevertheless, He
+stayed. &quot;I understand perfectly,&quot; He assured her. &quot;But, nevertheless, I
+don't give you up. You may be, for all you know, more interesting to me
+than all the others put together. And remember this&mdash;every time you do
+anything at all kind or thoughtful, every time you think of any one or
+care for them, every time you use your influence for good in any way, my
+power over you <a name="Page_232" id="Page_232"></a>is a little stronger, I shall be a little closer to you,
+your escape will be a little harder.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you needn't flatter yourself,&quot; she answered Him. &quot;There's precious
+little danger of <i>my</i> self-sacrifice or love for others. That's not
+going to be my attitude to life at all. You'd better not waste your time
+over me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She had not, she might triumphantly reflect, during these eight years,
+given Him many chances, and yet He was still there. She hated the
+thought of His patience, and somewhere deep within herself she dreaded
+the faint, dim beat of some response that, like a warning bell across a
+misty sea, cautioned her. &quot;You may think you're safe from Him, but He'll
+catch you yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He shan't,&quot; she replied. &quot;I'm stronger than He is.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>This must sound, in so prosaic a summary of it, fantastic, but nothing
+could be said to be fantastic about Sarah. She was, for one thing, quite
+the least troublesome of children. She could be relied upon, at any
+time, to find amusement for herself. She was full of resources, <a name="Page_233" id="Page_233"></a>but
+what these resources exactly were it would be difficult to say. She
+would sit for hours alone, staring in front of her. She never played
+with toys&mdash;she did not draw or read&mdash;but she was never dull, and always
+had the most perfect of appetites. She had never, from the day of her
+birth, known an hour's illness.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, in the company of other children that she was most
+characteristic. The nurses in the Square quite frankly hated her, but
+most of the mothers had a very real regard for Lady Charlotte's smart
+little lunches; moreover, it was impossible to detect Sarah's guilt in
+any positive fashion. It was not enough for the nurses to assure their
+mistresses that from the instant that the child entered the gardens all
+the other children were out of temper, rebellious, and finally
+unmanageable.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nonsense, Janet, you imagine things. She seems a very nice little
+girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, ma'am, all I can say is, I won't care to be answerable for Master
+Ronald's behaviour when she <i>does</i> come along, that's all. It's beyond
+belief the effect she 'as upon 'im.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The strangest thing of all was that Sarah herself liked the company of
+other children.<a name="Page_234" id="Page_234"></a> She went every morning into the gardens (with Hortense)
+and watched them at their play. She would sit, with her hands folded
+quietly on her lap, her large black eyes watching, watching, watching.
+It was odd, indeed, how, instantly, all the children in the garden were
+aware of her entrance. She, on her part, would appear to regard none of
+them, and yet would see them all. Perched on her seat she surveyed the
+gardens always with the same gaze of abstracted interest, watching the
+clear, decent paths across whose grey background at the period of this
+episode, the October leaves, golden, flaming, dun, gorgeous and
+shrivelled, fell through the still air, whirled, and with a little sigh
+of regret, one might fancy, sank and lay dead. The October colours, a
+faint haze of smoky mist, the pale blue of the distant sky, the brown
+moist earth, were gentle, mild, washed with the fading year's regretful
+tears; the cries of the children, the rhythmic splash of the fountain
+throbbed behind the colours like some hidden orchestra behind the
+curtain at the play; the statues in the garden, like fragments of the
+white bolster clouds that swung so lazily from tree to tree; had no
+meaning in that misty air beyond the background that <a name="Page_235" id="Page_235"></a>they helped to
+fill. The year, thus idly, with so pleasant a melancholy, was slipping
+into decay.</p>
+
+<p>Sarah would watch. Then, without a word, she would slip from her seat,
+and, walking solemnly, rather haughtily, would join some group of
+children. Day after day the same children came to the gardens, and they
+all of them knew Sarah by now. Hortense, in her turn also, sitting,
+stiff and superior, would watch. She would see Sarah's pleasant
+approach, her smile, her amiability. Very soon, however, there would be
+trouble&mdash;some child would cry out; there would be blows; nurses would
+run forward, scoldings, protests, captives led away weeping ... and then
+Sarah would return slowly to her seat, her gaze aloof, cynical, remote.
+She would carefully explain to Hortense the reason of the uproar. She
+had done nothing&mdash;her conscience was clear. These silly little idiots.
+She would break into French, culled elaborately from Hortense, would end
+disdainfully&mdash;&quot;mais, voil&agrave;,&quot;&mdash;very old for her age.</p>
+
+<p>Hortense was vicious, selfish, crude in her pursuit of pleasure,
+entirely unscrupulous, but, as the days passed, she was, in spite of
+herself, conscious of some half-acknowledged, half-decided terror of
+Sarah's possibilities.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236"></a>The child was eight years old. She was capable of anything; in her
+remote avoidance of any passion, any regret, any anticipated pleasure,
+any spontaneity, she was inhuman. Hortense thought that she detected in
+the chit's mother something of her own fear.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>There used to come to the gardens a little fat red-faced girl called
+Mary Kitson, the child of simple and ingenuous parents (her father was a
+writer of stories of adventure for boys' papers); she was herself
+simple-minded, lethargic, unadventurous, and happily stupid. Walking one
+day slowly with Hortense down one of the garden paths, Sarah saw Mary
+Kitson engaged in talking to two dolls, seated on a bench with them,
+patting their clothes, very happy, her nurse busy over a novelette.</p>
+
+<p>Sarah stopped.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll sit here,&quot; she said, walked across to the bench and sat down. Mary
+looked up from her dolls, and then, nervously and self-consciously, went
+back to her play. Sarah stared straight before her.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237"></a>Hortense amiably endeavoured to draw the nurse into conversation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You 'ave 'ere ze fine gardens,&quot; she said. &quot;It calls to mind my own
+Paris. Ah, the gardens in Paris!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the nurse had been taught to distrust all foreigners, and her views
+of Paris were coloured by her reading. She admired Hortense's clothes,
+but distrusted her advances.</p>
+
+<p>She buried herself even more deeply in the paper. Poor Mary Kitson,
+alas! found that, in some undefinable manner, the glory had departed
+from her dolls. Adrian and Emily were, of a sudden, glassy and lumpy
+abstractions of sawdust and china. Very timidly she raised her large,
+stupid eyes and regarded Sarah. Sarah returned the glance and smiled.
+Then she came close to Mary.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's better under there,&quot; she said, pointing to the shade of a friendly
+tree.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;May I?&quot; Mary said to her nurse with a frightened gasp.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, now, don't you go far,&quot; said the nurse, with a fierce look at
+Hortense.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You like where you are?&quot; asked Hortense, smiling more than ever. &quot;You
+'ave a good <a name="Page_238" id="Page_238"></a>place?&quot; Slowly the nurse yielded. The novelette was laid
+aside.</p>
+
+<p>Impossible to say what occurred under the tree. Now and again a rustle
+of wind would send the colours from the trees to short branches loaded
+with leaves of red gold, shivering through the air; a chequered, blazing
+canopy covered the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Kitson had, it appeared, very little to say. She sat some way from
+Sarah, clutching Adrian and Emily tightly to her breast, and always her
+large, startled eyes were on Sarah's face. She did not move to drive the
+leaves from her dress; her heart beat very fast, her cheeks were very
+red.</p>
+
+<p>Sarah talked a little, but not very much. She asked questions about
+Mary's home and her parents, and Mary answered these interrogations in
+monosyllabic gasps. It appeared that Mary had a kitten, and that this
+kitten was a central fact of Mary's existence. The kitten was called
+Alice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Alice is a silly name for a kitten. I shouldn't call a kitten Alice,&quot;
+said Sarah, and Mary started as though in some strange, sinister fashion
+she were instantly aware that Alice's life and safety were threatened.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239"></a>From that morning began a strange acquaintance that certainly could not
+be called a friendship. There could be no question at all that Mary was
+terrified of Sarah; there could also be no question that Mary was
+Sarah's obedient slave. The cynical Hortense, prepared as she was for
+anything strange and unexpected in Sarah's actions, was, nevertheless,
+puzzled now.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, wet and dismal, the two of them sitting in a little box
+of a room in the little box of a house, Sarah huddled in a chair, her
+eyes staring in front of her, Hortense sewing, her white, bony fingers
+moving sharply like knives, the maid asked a question:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you see&mdash;Sar-ah&mdash;in that infant?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What infant?&quot; asked Sarah, without moving her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That Mary with whom now you always are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We play games together,&quot; said Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You do not. You may be playing a game&mdash;she does nothing. She is
+terrified&mdash;out of her life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is very silly. It's funny how silly she is. I like her to be
+frightened.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary's nurse told Mary's mother that, in <a name="Page_240" id="Page_240"></a>her opinion, Sarah was not a
+nice child. But Sarah had been invited to tea at the confused, simple
+abode of the Kitson family, and had behaved perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think you must be wrong, nurse,&quot; said Mrs. Kitson. &quot;She seems a very
+nice little girl. Mary needs companions. It's good for her to be taken
+out of herself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Had Mrs. Kitson been of a less confused mind, however, had she had more
+time for the proper observation of her daughter, she would have noticed
+her daughter's pale cheeks, her daughter's fits of crying, her
+daughter's silences. Even as the bird is fascinated by the snake, so was
+Mary Kitson fascinated by Sarah Trefusis.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are torturing that infant,&quot; said Hortense, and Sarah smiled.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Mary was by no means the first of Sarah's victim's. There had been many
+others. Utterly aloof, herself, from all emotions of panic or terror, it
+had, from the very earliest age, interested her to see those passions at
+work in others. Cruelty for cruelty's sake had no in<a name="Page_241" id="Page_241"></a>terest for her at
+all; to pull the wings from flies, to tie kettles to the tails of
+agitated puppies, to throw stones at cats, did not, in the least, amuse
+her. She had once put a cat in the fire, but only because she had seen
+it play with a terrified mouse. That had affronted her sense of justice.
+But she was gravely and quite dispassionately interested in the terror
+of Mary Kitson. In later life a bull fight was to appear to her a
+tiresome affair, but the domination of one human being over another,
+absorbing. She had, too, at the very earliest age, that conviction that
+it was pleasant to combat all sentiment, all appeals to be &quot;good,&quot; all
+soft emotions of pity, anything that could suggest that Right was of
+more power than Might.</p>
+
+<p>It was as though she said, &quot;You may think that even now you will get me.
+I tell you I'm a rebel from the beginning; you'll never catch me showing
+affection or sympathy. If you do you may do your worst.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Beyond all things, her anxiety was that, suddenly, in spite of herself,
+she would do something &quot;soft,&quot; some weak kindness. Her power over Mary
+Kitson reassured her.</p>
+
+<p>The fascination of this power very soon became to her an overwhelming
+interest. Play<a name="Page_242" id="Page_242"></a>ing with Mary Kitson's mind was as absorbing to Sarah, as
+chess to an older enthusiast; her discoveries promised her a life full
+of entertainment, if, with her fellow-mortals, she was able, so easily,
+&quot;to do things,&quot; what a time she would always have. She discovered, very
+soon, that Mary Kitson was, by nature, truthful and obedient, that she
+had a great fear of God, and that she loved her parents. Here was fine
+material to work upon. She began by insisting on little lies.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say our clocks were all wrong, and you couldn't know what the time
+was.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, but&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, say it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Please, Sarah.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say it. Otherwise I'll be punished too. Mind, if you don't say it, I
+shall know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was the horrible threat that effected so much. Mary began soon to
+believe that Sarah was never absent from her, that she attended her,
+invisibly, her little dark face peering over Mary's shoulder, and when
+Mary was in bed at night, the lights out, and only shadows on the walls,
+Sarah was certainly there, her mocking eyes on Mary's face, her voice
+whispering things in Mary's ears.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243"></a>Sarah, Mary very soon discovered, believed in nothing, and knew
+everything. This horrible combination, naturally, affected Mary, who
+believed in everything and knew nothing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why should we obey our mothers?&quot; said Sarah. &quot;We're as good as they
+are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, <i>no</i>,&quot; said Mary, in a voice shocked to a strangled whisper.
+Nevertheless, she began, a little, to despise her confused parents.
+There came a day when Mary told a very large lie indeed; she said that
+she had brushed her teeth when she had not, and she told this lie quite
+unprompted by Sarah. She was more and more miserable as the days passed.</p>
+
+<p>No one knew exactly the things that the two little girls did when they
+were alone on an afternoon in Sarah's room. Sarah sent Hortense about
+her business, and then set herself to the subdual of Mary's mind and
+character. There would be moments like this, Sarah would turn off the
+electric light, and the room would be lit only by the dim shining of the
+evening sky.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, Mary, you go over to that corner&mdash;that dark one&mdash;and wait there
+till I tell you to come out. I'll go outside the room, and then you'll
+see what will happen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_244" id="Page_244"></a>Oh, no, Sarah, I don't want to.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not, you silly baby?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I&mdash;I don't want to.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, it will be much worse for you if you don't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want to go home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You can after you have done that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want to go home now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go into the corner first.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sarah would leave the room and Mary would stand with her face to the
+wall, a trembling prey to a thousand terrors. The light would quiver and
+shake, steps would tread the floor and cease, there would be a breath in
+her ears, a wind above her head. She would try to pray, but could
+remember no words. Sarah would lead her forth, shaking from head to
+foot.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You little silly. I was only playing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Once, and this hurried the climax of the episode, Mary attempted
+rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want to go home, Sarah.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you can't. You've got to hear the end of the story first.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't like the story. It's a horrid story. I'm going home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'd better not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I will, and I won't come again, and I <a name="Page_245" id="Page_245"></a>won't see you again. I hate
+you. I won't. I won't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary, as she very often did, began to cry. Sarah's lips curled with
+scorn.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All right, you can. You'll never see Alice again if you do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Alice?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, she'll be drowned, and you'll have the toothache, and I'll come in
+the middle of the night and wake you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I&mdash;I don't care. I'm go-going home. I'll t-t-ell m-other.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell her. But look out afterwards, that's all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary remained, but Sarah regarded the rebellion as ominous. She thought
+that the time had come to put Mary's submission really to the test.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>The climax of the affair was in this manner. Upon an afternoon when the
+rain was beating furiously upon the window-panes and the wind struggling
+up and down the chimney, Sarah and Mary played together in Sarah's room;
+the play consisted of Mary shutting her eyes and <a name="Page_246" id="Page_246"></a>pretending she was in
+a dark wood, whilst Sarah was the tiger who might at any moment spring
+upon her and devour her, who would, in any case, pinch her legs with a
+sudden thrust which would drive all the blood out of Mary's face and
+make her &quot;as white as the moon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This game ended, Sarah's black eyes moved about for a fresh diversion;
+her gaze rested upon Mary, and Mary whispered that she would like to go
+home.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. You can,&quot; said Sarah, staring at her, &quot;if you will do something
+when you get there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What?&quot; said Mary, her heart beating like a heavy and jumping hammer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's something I want. You've got to bring it me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary said nothing, only her wide eyes filled with tears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's something in your mother's drawing-room. You know in that
+little table with the glass top where there are the little gold boxes
+with the silver crosses and things. There's a ring there&mdash;a gold one
+with a red stone&mdash;very pretty. I want it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary drew a long, deep breath. Her fat legs in the tight, black
+stockings were shaking.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></a>You can go in when no one sees. The table isn't locked, I know,
+because I opened it once. You can get and bring it to me to-morrow in
+the garden.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh,&quot; Mary whispered, &quot;that would be stealing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course it wouldn't. Nobody wants the old ring. No one ever looks at
+it. It's just for fun.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said Mary, &quot;I mustn't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, you must. You'll be very sorry if you don't. Dreadful things
+will happen. Alice&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary cried softly, choking and spluttering and rubbing her eyes with the
+back of her hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you'd better go now. I'll be in the garden with Hortense
+to-morrow. You know, the same place. You'd better have it, that's all.
+And don't go on crying, or your mother will think I made you. What's
+there to cry about? No one will eat you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's stealing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I dare say it belongs to you, and, anyway, it will when your mother
+dies, so what <i>does</i> it matter? You <i>are</i> a baby!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After Mary's departure Sarah sat for a long <a name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></a>while alone in her nursery.
+She thought to herself: &quot;Mary will be going home now and she'll be
+snuffling to herself all the way back, and she won't tell the nurse
+anything, I know that. Now she's in the hall. She's upstairs now, having
+her things taken off. She's stopped crying, but her eyes and nose are
+red. She looks very ugly. She's gone to find Alice. She thinks something
+has happened to her. She begins to cry again when she sees her, and she
+begins to talk to her about it. Fancy talking to a cat....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The room was swallowed in darkness, and when Hortense came in and found
+Sarah sitting alone there, she thought to herself that, in spite of the
+profits that she secured from her mistress she would find another
+situation. She did not speak to Sarah, and Sarah did not speak to her.</p>
+
+<p>Once, during the night, Sarah woke up; she sat up in bed and stared into
+the darkness. Then she smiled to herself. As she lay down again she
+thought:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now I know that she will bring it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The next day was very fine, and in the glittering garden by the
+fountain, Sarah sat with Hortense, and waited. Soon Mary and her <a name="Page_249" id="Page_249"></a>nurse
+appeared. Sarah took Mary by the hand and they went away down the
+leaf-strewn path.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well!&quot; said Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>Mary quite silently felt in her pocket at the back of her short, green
+frock, produced the ring, gave it to Sarah, and, still without a word,
+turned back down the path and walked to her nurse. She stood there,
+clutching a doll in her hand, stared in front of her, and said nothing.
+Sarah looked at the ring, smiled, and put it into her pocket.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant the climax of the whole affair struck, like a blow from
+some one unseen, upon Sarah's consciousness. She should have been
+triumphant. She was not. Her one thought as she looked at the ring was
+that she wished Mary had not taken it. She had a strange feeling as
+though Mary, soft and heavy and fat, were hanging round her neck. She
+had &quot;got&quot; Mary for ever. She was suddenly conscious that she despised
+Mary, and had lost all interest in her. She didn't want the ring, nor
+did she ever wish to see Mary again.</p>
+
+<p>She gazed about the garden, shrugged her thin, little, bony shoulders as
+though she were fifty at least, and felt tired and dull, as on the day
+after a party. She stood and looked at<a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></a> Mary and her nurse; when she saw
+them walk away she did not move, but stayed there, staring after them.
+She was greatly disappointed; she did not feel any pleasure at having
+forced Mary to obey her, but would have liked to have smacked and bitten
+her, could these violent actions have driven her into speech. In some
+undetermined way Mary's silence had beaten Sarah. Mary was a stupid,
+silly little girl, and Sarah despised and scorned her, but, somehow,
+that was not enough; from all of this, it simply remained that Sarah
+would like now to forget her, and could not. What did the silly little
+thing mean by looking like that? &quot;She'll go and hug her Alice and cry
+over it.&quot; If only she had cried in front of Sarah that would have been
+something.</p>
+
+<p>Two days later Lady Charlotte was explaining to Sarah that so acute a
+financial crisis had arrived &quot;as likely as not we shan't have a roof
+over our heads in a day or two.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We'll take an organ and a monkey,&quot; said Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At any rate,&quot; Lady Charlotte said, &quot;when you grow up you'll be used to
+anything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kitson, untidy, in dishevelled clothing, and great distress, was
+shown in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_251" id="Page_251"></a>Dear Lady Charlotte, I must apologise&mdash;this absurd hour&mdash;but
+I&mdash;we&mdash;very unhappy about poor Mary. We can't think what's the matter
+with her. She's not slept for two nights&mdash;in a high fever, and cries and
+cries. The Doctor&mdash;Dr. Williamson&mdash;<i>really</i> clever&mdash;says she's unhappy
+about something. We thought&mdash;scarlet fever&mdash;no spots&mdash;can't
+think&mdash;perhaps your little girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor Mrs. Kitson. How tiresome for you. Do sit down. Perhaps Sarah&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sarah shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She didn't say she'd a headache in the garden the other day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kitson gazed appealingly at the little black figure in front of
+her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do try and remember, dear. Perhaps she told you something.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing&quot; said Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She cries and cries,&quot; said Mrs. Kitson, about whose person little white
+strings and tapes seemed to be continually appearing and disappearing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps she's eaten something?&quot; suggested Lady Charlotte.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Kitson had departed, Lady Charlotte turned to Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_252" id="Page_252"></a>What have you done to the poor child?&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing,&quot; said Sarah. &quot;I never want to see her again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you <i>have</i> done something?&quot; said Lady Charlotte.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's always crying,&quot; said Sarah, &quot;and she calls her kitten Alice,&quot; as
+though that were explanation sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>The strange truth remains, however, that the night that followed this
+conversation was the first unpleasant one that Sarah had ever spent; she
+remained awake during a great part of it. It was as though the hours
+that she had spent on that other afternoon, compelling, from her own
+dark room, Mary's will, had attached Mary to her. Mary was there with
+her now, in her bedroom. Mary, red-nosed, sniffing, her eyes wide and
+staring.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want to go home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Silly little thing,&quot; thought Sarah. &quot;I wish I'd never played with her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the morning Sarah was tired and white-faced. She would speak to no
+one. After luncheon she found her hat and coat for herself, let herself
+out of the house, and walked to Mrs. Kitson's, and was shown into the
+wide, <a name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></a>untidy drawing-room, where books and flowers and papers had a
+lost and strayed air as though a violent wind had blown through the
+place and disturbed everything.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kitson came in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>You</i>, dear?&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>Sarah looked at the room and then at Mrs. Kitson. Her eyes said: &quot;<i>What</i>
+a place! <i>What</i> a woman! <i>What</i> a fool!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I've come to explain about Mary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About Mary?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. It's my fault that she's ill. I took a ring out of that little
+table there&mdash;the gold ring with the red stone&mdash;and I made her promise
+not to tell. It's because she thinks she ought to tell that she's ill.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>You</i> took it? <i>You</i> stole it?&quot; Before Mrs. Kitson's simple mind an
+awful picture was now revealed. Here, in this little girl, whom she had
+preferred as a companion for her beloved Mary, was a thief, a liar, and
+one, as she could instantly perceive, without shame.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You <i>stole</i> it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; here it is.&quot; Sarah laid the ring on the table.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kitson gazed at her with horror, dismay, and even fear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_254" id="Page_254"></a>Why? Why? Don't you know how wrong it is to take things that don't
+belong to you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, all that!&quot; said Sarah, waving her hand scornfully. '&quot;I don't want
+the silly thing, and I don't suppose I'd have kept it, anyhow. I don't
+know why I've told you,&quot; she added. &quot;But I just don't want to be
+bothered with Mary any more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed, you won't be, you wicked girl,&quot; said Mrs. Kitson. &quot;To think
+that I&mdash;my grand-father's&mdash;I'd never missed it. And you haven't even
+said you're sorry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not,&quot; said Sarah quietly. &quot;If Mary wasn't so tiresome and silly
+those sort of things wouldn't happen. She <i>makes</i> me&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kitson's horror deprived her of all speech, so Sarah, after one
+more glance of amused cynicism about the room, retired.</p>
+
+<p>As she crossed the Square she knew, with happy relief, that she was free
+of Mary, that she need never bother about her again. Would <i>all</i> the
+people whom she compelled to obey her hang round her with all their
+stupidities afterwards? If so, life was not going to be so entertaining
+as she had hoped. In her dark little brain already was the perception of
+the trouble that good and stupid souls can cause to bold <a name="Page_255" id="Page_255"></a>and reckless
+ones. She would never bother with any one so feeble as Mary again, but,
+unless she did, how was she ever to have any fun again?</p>
+
+<p>Then as she climbed the stairs to her room, she was aware of something
+else.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've caught you, after all. You <i>have</i> been soft. You've yielded to
+your better nature. Try as you may you can't get right away from it. Now
+you'll have to reckon with me more than ever. You see you're not
+stronger than I am.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Before she opened the door of her room she knew that she would find Him
+there, triumphant.</p>
+
+<p>With a gesture of impatient irritation she pushed the door open.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Young John Scarlett</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>That fatal September&mdash;the September that was to see young John take his
+adventurous way to his first private school&mdash;surely, steadily
+approached.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Scarlett, an emotional and sentimental little woman, vibrating and
+taut like a telegraph wire, told herself repeatedly that she would make
+no sign. The preparations proceeded, the date&mdash;September 23rd&mdash;was
+constantly evoked, a dreadful ghost, by the careless, light-hearted
+family. Mr. Scarlett made no sign.</p>
+
+<p>From the hour of John's birth&mdash;nearly ten years ago&mdash;Mrs. Scarlett had
+never known a day when she had not been compelled to control her
+sentimental affections. From the first John had been an adorable baby,
+from the first <a name="Page_257" id="Page_257"></a>he had followed his father in the rejection of all
+sentiment as un-English, and even if larger questions are involved,
+unpatriotic, but also from the first he had hinted, in surprising,
+furtive, agitating moments, at poetry, imagination, hidden, romantic
+secrets. Tom, May, Clare, the older children, had never been known to
+hint at anything&mdash;hints were not at all in their line, and of
+imagination they had not, between them, enough to fill a silver
+thimble&mdash;they were good, sturdy, honest children, with healthy stomachs
+and an excellent determination to do exactly the things that their class
+and generation were bent upon doing. Mrs. Scarlett was fond of them, of
+course, and because she was a sentimental woman she was sometimes quite
+needlessly emotional about them, but John&mdash;no. John was of another
+world.</p>
+
+<p>The other children felt, beyond question, this difference. They deferred
+to John about everything and regarded him as leader of the family, and
+in their deference there was more than simply a recognition of his
+sturdy independence. Even John's father, Mr. Reginald Scarlett, a K.C.,
+and a man of a most decisive and emphatic bearing, felt John's
+difference.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258"></a>John's appearance was unengaging rather than handsome&mdash;a snub nose,
+grey eyes, rather large ears, a square, stocky body and short, stout
+legs. He was certainly the most independent small boy in England, and
+very obstinate; when any proposal that seemed on the face of it absurd
+was made to him, he shut up like a box. His mouth would close, his eyes
+disappear, all light and colour would die from his face, and it was as
+though he said: &quot;Well, if you are stupid enough to persist in this thing
+you can compel me, of course&mdash;you are physically stronger than I&mdash;but
+you will only get me like this quite dead and useless, and a lot of good
+may it do you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There were times, of course, when he could be most engagingly pleasant.
+He was courteous, on occasion, with all the beautiful manners that, we
+are told, are yielding so sadly before the spread of education and the
+speed of motor-cars&mdash;you never could foretell the guest that he would
+prefer, and it was nothing to him that here was an aunt, an uncle, or a
+grandfather who must be placated, and there an uninvited, undesired
+caller who mattered nothing at all. Mr. Scarlett's father he offended
+mortally by expressing, in front of him, <a name="Page_259" id="Page_259"></a>dislike for hair that grew in
+bushy profusion out of that old gentleman's ears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you could cut it off,&quot; he argued, in a voice thick with surprised
+disgust. His grandfather, who was a baronet, and very wealthy, predicted
+a dismal career for his grandchild.</p>
+
+<p>All the family realised quite definitely that nothing could be done with
+John. It was fortunate, indeed, that he was, on the whole, of a happy
+and friendly disposition. He liked the world and things that he found in
+it. He liked games, and food, and adventure&mdash;he liked quite tolerably
+his family&mdash;he liked immensely the prospect of going to school.</p>
+
+<p>There were other things&mdash;strange, uncertain things&mdash;that lay like the
+dim, uncertain pattern of some tapestry in the back of his mind. He gave
+<i>them</i>, as the months passed, less and less heed. Only sometimes when he
+was asleep....</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, his mother, with the heroism worthy of Boadicea, that great
+and savage warrior, kept his impulses of devotion, of sacrifice, of
+adoration, in her heart. John had no need of them; very long ago,
+Reginald Scarlett, then no K.C., with all the K.C. manner, had told her
+that <i>he</i> did not need them either. She gave her dinner parties, her
+receptions, her political <a name="Page_260" id="Page_260"></a>gatherings&mdash;tremulous and smiling she faced a
+world that thought her a wise, capable little woman, who would see her
+husband a judge and peer one of these days.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs. Scarlett&mdash;a woman of great social ambition,&quot; was their definition
+of her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs. Scarlett&mdash;the mother of John,&quot; was her own.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>On a certain night, early in the month of September, young John dreamt
+again&mdash;but for the first time for many months&mdash;the dream that had, in
+the old days, come to him so often. In those days, perhaps, he had not
+called it a dream. He had not given it a name, and in the quiet early
+days he had simply greeted, first a protector, then a friend. But that
+was all very long ago, when one was a baby and allowed oneself to
+imagine anything. He had, of course, grown ashamed of such confiding
+fancies, and as he had become more confident had shoved away, with
+stout, determined fingers, those dim memories, poignancies, regrets. How
+childish one had been at four, and five, and six! How independent and
+strong now, on <a name="Page_261" id="Page_261"></a>the very edge of the world of school! It perturbed him,
+therefore, that at this moment of crisis this old dream should recur,
+and it perturbed him the more, as he lay in bed next morning and thought
+it over, that it should have seemed to him at the time no dream at all,
+but simply a natural and actual occurrence.</p>
+
+<p>He had been asleep, and then he had been awake. He had seen, sitting on
+his bed and looking at him with mild, kind eyes his old Friend. His
+Friend was always the same, conveying so absolutely kindness and
+protection, and his beard, his hands, the appealing humour of his gaze,
+recalled to John the early years, with a swift, imperative urgency.
+John, so independent and assured, felt, nevertheless, again that old
+alarm of a strange, unreal world, and the necessity of an appeal for
+protection from the only one of them all who understood.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hallo!&quot; said John.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; said his Friend. &quot;It's many months since I've been to see you,
+isn't it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's not my fault,&quot; said John.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In a way, it is. You haven't wanted me, have you? Haven't given me a
+thought.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's been so much to do. I'm going to school, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_262" id="Page_262"></a>Of course. That's why I have come now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Beside the window a dark curtain blew forward a little, bulged as though
+some one were behind it, thinned again in the pale dim shadows of a moon
+that, beyond the window, fought with driving clouds. That curtain
+would&mdash;how many ages ago!&mdash;have tightened young John's heart with
+terror, and the contrast made by his present slim indifference drew him,
+in some warm, confiding fashion, closer to his visitor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Anyway, I'm jolly glad you've come now. I haven't really forgotten you,
+ever. Only in the day-time&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, you have,&quot; his Friend said, smiling. &quot;It's natural enough and
+right that you should. But if only you will believe always that I once
+was here, if only you'll not be persuaded into thinking me impossible,
+silly, absurd, sentimental&mdash;with ever so many other things&mdash;that's all
+I've come now to ask you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, how should I ever?&quot; John demanded indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After all, I <i>was</i> a help&mdash;for a long time when things were difficult
+and you had so much to learn&mdash;all that time you wanted me, and I was
+here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_263" id="Page_263"></a>Of course,&quot; said John politely, but feeling within him that warning of
+approaching sentiment that he had learnt by now so fundamentally to
+dread.</p>
+
+<p>Very well his friend understood his apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's all. I've only come to you now to ask you to make me a
+promise&mdash;a very easy one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes?&quot; said John.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's only that when you go off to school&mdash;before you leave this
+house&mdash;you will just, for a moment, remember me just then, and say
+good-bye to me. We've been a lot here in these rooms, in these passages,
+up and down together, and if only, as you go, you'll think of me, I'll
+be there.... Every year you've thought of me less&mdash;that doesn't
+matter&mdash;but it matters more than you know that you should remember me
+just for an instant, just to say good-bye. Will you promise me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, of course,&quot; said John.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't forget! Don't forget! Don't forget!&quot; And the kindly shadow had
+faded, the voice lingering about the room, mingling with the faint
+silver moonlight, passing out into the wider spaciousness of the rolling
+clouds.<a name="Page_264" id="Page_264"></a></p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>With the clear light of morning came the confident certainty that it had
+all been the merest dream, and yet that certainty did not sweep the
+affair, as it should have done, from young John's brain and heart. He
+was puzzled, perplexed, disturbed, unhappy. The &quot;twenty-third&quot; was
+approaching with terrible rapidity, and it was essential now that he
+should summon to aid all the forces of manly self-control and
+common-sense. And yet, just at this time, of all others, came that
+disturbing dream, and, in its train, absurd memories and fancies,
+burdened, too, with an urgent prompting of gratitude to some one or
+something. He shook it off, he obstinately rebelled, but he dreaded the
+night, and, with a sigh of relief, hailed the morning that followed a
+dreamless sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Worst of all, he caught himself yielding to thoughts like these: &quot;But he
+was kind to me&mdash;awfully decent&quot; (a phrase caught from his elder
+brother). &quot;I remember how He ...&quot; And then he would shake himself. &quot;It
+was only a silly old dream. He wasn't real a bit. I'm <a name="Page_265" id="Page_265"></a>not a rotten kid
+now that thinks fairies and all that true.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was bothered, too, by the affectionate sentiment (still disguised,
+but ever, as the days proceeded, more thinly) of his mother and sisters.
+The girls, May and Clare, adored young John. His elder brother was away
+with a school friend. John, therefore, was left to feminine attention,
+and very tiresome he found it. May and Clare, girls of no imagination,
+saw only the drama that they might extract for themselves out of the
+affair. They knew what school was like, especially at first&mdash;John was
+going to be utterly wretched, miserably homesick, bullied, kept in over
+horrible sums and impossible Latin exercises, ill-fed, and trodden upon
+at games. They did not really believe these things&mdash;they knew that their
+brother, Tom, had always had a most pleasant time, and John was
+precisely the type of boy who would prosper at school, but they
+indulged, just for this fortnight, their romantic sentiment, never
+alluded in speech to school and its terrors, but by their pitying
+avoidance of the subject filled the atmosphere with their agitation.
+They were working things for John&mdash;May, handkerchiefs, and Clare, a
+comforter; their voices were soft <a name="Page_266" id="Page_266"></a>and charged with omens, their eyes
+were bright with the drama of the event, as though they had been
+supporting some young Christian relation before his encounter with the
+lions. John hated more and more and more.</p>
+
+<p>But more terrible to him than his sisters was his mother. He was too
+young to understand what his departure meant to her, but he knew that
+there was something real here that needed comforting. He wanted to
+comfort her, and yet hated the atmosphere of emotion that he felt in
+himself as well as in her. They ought to know, he argued, that the least
+little thing would make him break down like an ass and behave as no man
+should, and yet they were doing everything.... Oh, if only Tom were
+here! Then, at any rate, would be brutal common-sense. There were
+special meals for him during this fortnight, and an eager inviting of
+his opinion as to how the days should be spent. On the last night of all
+they were to go to the theatre&mdash;a real play this time, none of your
+pantomime!</p>
+
+<p>There was, moreover, all the business of clothes&mdash;fine, rich, stiff new
+garments&mdash;a new Eton jacket, a round black coat, a shining bowler-hat,
+new boots. He watched this stir with <a name="Page_267" id="Page_267"></a>a brave assumption that he had
+been surveying it all his life, but a horrible tight pain in the bottom
+of his throat told him that he was a bravado, almost a liar.</p>
+
+<p>He found himself, now that the &quot;twenty-third&quot; was gaping right there in
+front of him, with its fiery throat wide and flaming, doing the
+strangest thing. He was frightened of the dusk, he would run through the
+passage and up the stairs at breathless speed, he would look for a
+moment at the lamp-lit square with the lights of the opposite houses
+tigers' eyes, and the trees filmy like smoke, then would hastily draw
+the curtains and greet the warm inhabited room with a little gasp of
+reassurance. Strangest of all, he found himself often in the old nursery
+at the top of the house. Very seldom did any one come there now, and it
+had the pathos of a room grown cold and comfortless. Most of the toys
+were put away or given to hospitals, but the rocking-horse with his
+Christmas-tree tail was there, and the doll's-house, and a railway with
+trains and stations.</p>
+
+<p>He was here. He was saying to himself: &quot;Yes, it was just over there, by
+the window, that He came that time. He talked to me there. That other
+time it was when I was down by <a name="Page_268" id="Page_268"></a>the doll's-house. He showed me the smoke
+coming up from the chimneys when the sun stuck through, and the moon was
+all red one night, and the stars.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He found himself gazing out over the square, over the twisted chimneys,
+that seemed to be laughing at him, over the shining wires and glittering
+roofs, out to the mist that wrapped the city beyond his vision&mdash;so vast,
+so huge, so many people&mdash;March Square was nothing. He was nothing&mdash;John
+Scarlett nothing at all.</p>
+
+<p>Then, with a sigh, he turned back. His Friend, the other night, had been
+real enough. Fairies, ghosts, goblins and dragons&mdash;everything was real.
+Everything. It was all terrible, terrible to think of, but, above and
+beyond all else, he must not forget, on the day of his departure, that
+farewell; something disastrous would come upon him were he so
+ungrateful.</p>
+
+<p>And then he would go downstairs again, down to newspapers and fires,
+toast and tea, the large print of Frith's &quot;Railway Station,&quot; and the
+coloured supplement of Greiffenhagen's &quot;Idyll,&quot; and the tattered numbers
+of the <i>Windsor</i> and the <i>Strand</i> magazines, and, behold, all these
+things were real and all the <a name="Page_269" id="Page_269"></a>things in the nursery unreal. Could it be
+that both worlds were real? Even now, at his tender years, that old
+business of connecting the Dream and the Business was at his throat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Teal Tea! Tea!&quot; Frantic screams from May. &quot;There's some new jam, and,
+John, mother says she wants you to try on some underclothes afterwards.
+Those others didn't do, she said....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There came then the disastrous hour&mdash;an hour that John was never, in all
+his after-life, to forget. On a wild stormy evening he found himself in
+the nursery. A week remained now&mdash;to-day fortnight he would be in
+another world, an alarming, fierce, tremendous world. He looked at the
+rocking-horse with its absurd tail and the patch on its back, that had
+been worn away by its faithful riders, and suddenly he was crying. This
+was a thing that he never did, that he had strenuously, persistently
+refrained from doing all these weeks, but now, in the strangest way, it
+was the conviction that the world into which he was going wouldn't care
+in the least for the doll's-house, and would mock brutally, derisively
+at the rocking-horse, that defeated him. It was even the knowledge
+<a name="Page_270" id="Page_270"></a>that, in a very short time, he himself would be mocking.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down on the floor and cried. The door opened; before he could
+resist or make any movement, his mother's arms were about him, his
+mother's cheek against his, and she was whispering: &quot;Oh, my darling, my
+darling!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The horrible thing then occurred. He was savage, with a wild, fierce,
+protesting rage. His cheeks flamed. His tears were instantly dried. That
+he should have been caught thus! That, when he had been presenting so
+brave and callous a front to the world, at the one weak and shameful
+moment he should have been discovered! He scarcely realised that this
+was his mother, he did not care who it was. It was as though he had been
+delivered into the most horrible and shameful of traps. He pushed her
+from him; he struggled fiercely on his feet. He regarded her with fiery
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It isn't&mdash;I wasn't&mdash;you oughtn't to have come in. You needn't
+imagine&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He burst from the room. A shameful, horrible experience.</p>
+
+<p>But it cannot be denied that he was ashamed afterwards. He loved his
+mother, whereas he <a name="Page_271" id="Page_271"></a>merely liked the rest of the family. He would not
+hurt her for worlds, and yet, why <i>must</i> she&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And strangely, mysteriously, her attitude was confused in his mind with
+his dreams, and his Friend, and the red moon, and the comic chimneys.</p>
+
+<p>He knew, however, that, during this last week he must be especially nice
+to his mother, and, with an elaborate courtesy and strained attention,
+he did his best.</p>
+
+<p>The last night arrived, and, very smart and excited, they went to the
+theatre. The boxes had been packed, and stood in a shining and
+self-conscious trio in John's bedroom. The new play-box was there, with
+its stolid freshness and the black bands at the corners; inside, there
+was a multitude of riches, and it was, of course, a symbol of absolute
+independence and maturity. John was wearing the new Eton jacket, also a
+new white waistcoat; the parting in his hair was straighter than it had
+ever been before, his ears were pink. The world seemed a confused
+mixture of soap and starch and lights. Piccadilly Circus was a cauldron
+of bubbling colour.</p>
+
+<p>His breath came in little gasps, but his face, <a name="Page_272" id="Page_272"></a>with its snub nose and
+large mouth, was grave and composed; up and down his back little shivers
+were running. When the car stopped outside the theatre he gave a little
+gulp. His father, who was, for once, moved by the occasion, said an
+idiotic thing;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Excited, my son?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With his head high he walked ahead of them, trod on a lady's dress,
+blushed, heard his father say: &quot;Look where you're going, my boy,&quot; heard
+May giggle, frowned indignantly, and was conscious of the horrid
+pressure of his collar-stud against his throat; arrived, hot, confused,
+and very proud, in the dark splendour of the box.</p>
+
+<p>The first play of his life, and how magnificent a play it was! It might
+have been a rotten affair with endless conversations&mdash;luckily there were
+no discussions at all. All the characters either loved or hated one
+another too deeply to waste time in talk. They were Roundheads and
+Cavaliers, and a splendid hero, who had once been a bad fellow, but was
+now sorry, fought nine Roundheads at once, and was tortured &quot;off&quot; with
+red lights and his lady waiting for results before a sympathetic
+audience.</p>
+
+<p>During the torture scene John's heart <a name="Page_273" id="Page_273"></a>stopped entirely, his brow was
+damp, his hand sought his mother's, found it, and held it very hard.
+She, as she felt his hot fingers pressing against hers, began to see the
+stage through a mist of tears. She had behaved very well during the past
+weeks, but the soul that she adored was, to-morrow morning, to be hurled
+out, wildly, helter-skelter, to receive such tarnishing as it might
+please Fate to think good.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I <i>can't</i> let him go! I <i>can't</i> let him go!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The curtain came down.</p>
+
+<p>John turned, his eyes wide, his cheeks pale with a pink spot on the
+middle of each.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I say, pass those chocolates along!&quot; he whispered hoarsely. Then,
+recovering himself a little: &quot;I wonder what they did to him? They <i>must</i>
+have done something to his legs, because they were all crooked when he
+came out.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="EPILOGUE" id="EPILOGUE"></a><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274"></a>EPILOGUE</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">Hugh Seymour</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>It happened that Hugh Seymour, in the month of December, 1911, found
+himself in the dreamy orchard-bound cathedral city of Polchester.
+Polchester, as all its inhabitants well know, is famous for its
+cathedral, its buns, and its river, the cathedral being one of the
+oldest, the buns being among the sweetest, and the Pol being amongst the
+most beautiful of the cathedrals, buns and rivers of Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>Seymour had known Polchester since he was five years old, when he first
+lived there with his father and mother, but he had only once during the
+last ten years been able to visit Glebeshire, and then he had been to
+Rafiel, a fishing village on the south coast. He had, therefore, <a name="Page_275" id="Page_275"></a>not
+seen Polchester since his childhood, and now it seemed to him to have
+shrivelled from a world of infinite space and mystery into a toy town
+that would be soon packed away in a box and hidden in a cupboard. As he
+walked up and down the cobbled streets he was moved by a great affection
+and sentiment for it. As he climbed the hill to the cathedral, as he
+stood inside the Close with its lawns, its elm trees, its crooked
+cobbled walks, its gardens, its houses with old bow windows and deep
+overhanging doors, he was again a very small boy with soap in his eyes,
+a shining white collar tight about his neck, and his Eton jacket stiff
+and unfriendly. He was walking up the aisle with his mother, his boots
+creaked, the bell's note was dropping, dropping, the fat verger with his
+staff was undoing the cord of their seat, the boys of the choir-school
+were looking at him and he was blushing, he was on his knees and the
+edge of the kneeler was cutting into his trousers, the precentor's
+voice, as remote from things human as the cathedral bell itself, was
+crying, &quot;Dearly beloved brethren.&quot; He would stop there and wonder
+whether there could be any connection between that time and this,
+whether those things had really happened to <a name="Page_276" id="Page_276"></a>him, whether he might now
+be dreaming and would wake up presently to find that it would be soon
+time to start for the cathedral, that if he and his sisters were good
+they would have a chapter of the &quot;Pillars of the House&quot; read to them
+after tea, with one chocolate each at the end of every two pages. No, he
+was real, March Square was real, Polchester was real, Glebeshire and
+London were real together&mdash;nothing died, nothing passed away.</p>
+
+<p>On the second afternoon of his stay he was standing in the Close, bathed
+now in yellow sunlight, when he saw coming towards him a familiar
+figure. One glance was enough to assure him that this was the Rev.
+William Lasher, once Vicar of Clinton St. Mary, now Canon of Polchester
+Cathedral. Mr. Lasher it was, and Mr. Lasher the same as he had ever
+been. He was walking with his old energetic stride, his head up, his
+black overcoat flapping behind him, his eyes sharply investigating in
+and out and all round him. He saw Seymour, but did not recognise him,
+and would have passed on.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't know me?&quot; said Seymour, holding out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_277" id="Page_277"></a>I beg your pardon, I&mdash;&mdash;&quot; said Canon Lasher.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Seymour&mdash;Hugh Seymour&mdash;whom you were once kind enough to look after at
+Clinton St. Mary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why! Fancy! Indeed. My dear boy. My dear boy!&quot; Mr. Lasher was immensely
+cordial in exactly his old, healthy, direct manner. He insisted that
+Seymour should come with him and drink a cup of tea. Mrs. Lasher would
+be delighted. They had often wondered.... Only the other day Mrs. Lasher
+was saying.... &quot;And you're one of our novelists, I hear,&quot; said Canon
+Lasher in exactly the tone that he would have used had Seymour taken to
+tight-rope walking at the Halls.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no!&quot; said Seymour, laughing, &quot;that's another man of my name. I'm at
+the Bar.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah,&quot; said the Canon, greatly relieved, &quot;that's good! That's good! Very
+good indeed!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Lasher was, of course, immensely surprised. &quot;Why! Fancy! And it was
+only yesterday! Whoever would have expected! I never was more
+astonished! And tea just ready! How fortunate! Just fancy you meeting
+the Canon!&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278"></a>The Canon seemed, to Seymour, greatly mellowed by comfort and
+prosperity; there was even the possibility of corpulence in the not
+distant future. He was, indeed, a proper Canon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who,&quot; said Seymour, &quot;has Clinton St. Mary now?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One of the Trenchards,&quot; said Mr. Lasher. &quot;As you know, a very famous
+old Glebeshire family. There are some younger cousins of the Garth
+Trenchards, I believe. You know of the Trenchards of Garth? No? Ah, very
+delightful people. You should know them. Yes, Jim Trenchard, the man at
+Clinton, is a few years senior to myself. He was priest when I was
+deacon in&mdash;let me see&mdash;dear me, how the years fly&mdash;in&mdash;'pon my word, how
+time goes!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>All of which gave Seymour to understand that the Rev. James Trenchard
+was a failure in life, although a good enough fellow. Then it was that
+suddenly, in the heart of that warm and cosy drawing-room, Hugh Seymour
+was, sharply, as though by a douche of cold water, awakened to the fact
+that he must see Clinton St. Mary again. It appeared to him, now, with
+its lanes, its hedges, the village green, the moor, <a name="Page_279" id="Page_279"></a>the Borhaze Road,
+the pirates, yes, and the Scarecrow. It came there, across the Canon's
+sumptuous Turkey carpet, and demanded his presence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must go,&quot; Seymour said, getting up and speaking in a strange,
+bewildered voice as though he were just awakening from a dream. He left
+them, at last, promising to come and see them again.</p>
+
+<p>He heard the Canon's voice in his ears: &quot;Always a knife and fork, my
+boy ... any time if you let us know.&quot; He stepped down into the little
+lighted streets, into the town with its cosy security and some scent,
+even then in the heart of winter, perhaps, from the fruit of its many
+orchards. The moon, once again an orange feather in the sky, reminded
+him of those early days that seemed now to be streaming in upon him from
+every side.</p>
+
+<p>Early next morning he caught the ten o'clock train to Clinton.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>&quot;Why,&quot; in the train he continued to say to himself, &quot;have I let all
+these years pass with<a name="Page_280" id="Page_280"></a>out returning? Why have I never returned?... Why
+have I never returned?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The slow, sleepy train (the London express never stops at Clinton)
+jerked through the deep valleys, heavy with woods, golden brown at their
+heart, the low hills carrying, on their horizons, white drifting clouds
+that flung long grey shadows. Seymour felt suddenly as though he could
+never return to London again exactly as he had returned to it before.
+&quot;That period of my life is over, quite over.... Some one is taking me
+down here now&mdash;I know that I am being compelled to go. But I want to go.
+I am happier than I have ever been in my life before.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Often, in Glebeshire, December days are warm and mellow like the early
+days of September. It so was now; the country was wrapped in with happy
+content, birds rose and hung, like telegraph wires, beyond the windows.
+On a slanting brown field gulls from the sea, white and shining, were
+hovering, wheeling, sinking into the soil. And yet, as he went, he was
+not leaving March Square behind, but rather taking it with him. He was
+taking the children too&mdash;Bim, Angelina, John, even Sarah (against her
+will), and it was not her who was in charge of <a name="Page_281" id="Page_281"></a>the party. He felt as
+though, the railway carriages were full and he ought to say continually,
+&quot;Now, Bim, be quiet. Sit still and look at the picture-book I gave you.
+Sarah, I shall leave you at the next station if you aren't careful,&quot; and
+that she replied, giving him one of her dark sarcastic looks, &quot;I don't
+care if you do. I know how to get home all right without your help.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He wished that he hadn't brought her, and yet he couldn't help himself.
+They all had to come. Then, as he looked about the empty carriage, he
+laughed at himself. Only a fat farmer reading <i>The Glebeshire Times</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Marnin', sir,&quot; said the farmer. &quot;Warm Christmas we'll be havin', I
+reckon. Yes, indeed. I see the Bishop's dying&mdash;poor old soul too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When they arrived at Clinton he caught himself turning round as though
+to collect his charges; he thought that the farmer looked at him
+curiously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Coming back again has turned my wits.... Now, Angelina, hurry up, can't
+wait all day.&quot; He stopped then abruptly, to pull himself together. &quot;Look
+here, you're alone, and if you think you're not, you're mad. Remem<a name="Page_282" id="Page_282"></a>ber
+that you're at the Bar and not even a novelist, so that you have no
+excuse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The little platform&mdash;usually swept by all the winds of the sea, but now
+as warm as a toasted bun&mdash;flooded him with memory. It was a platform
+especially connected with school, with departure and return&mdash;departures
+when money in one's pocket and cake in one's play-box did not compensate
+for the hot pain in one's throat and the cold marble feeling of one's
+legs; but when every feeling of every sort was swallowed by the great
+overwhelming desire that the train would go so that one need not any
+longer be agonised by the efforts of replying to Mr. Lasher's continued
+last words: &quot;Well, good-bye, my boy. A good time, both at work and
+play&quot;&mdash;the train was off.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ticket, please, sir!&quot; said the long-legged young man at the little
+wooden gate. Seymour plunged down into the deep, high-hedged lane that
+even now, in winter, seemed to cover him with a fragrant odour of green
+leaves, of flowers, of wet soil, of sea spray. He was now so conscious
+of his company that the knowledge of it could not be avoided. It seemed
+to him that he heard them chattering together, knew <a name="Page_283" id="Page_283"></a>that behind his
+back Sarah was trying to whisper horrid things in Bim's ear, and that he
+was laughing at her, which made her furious.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must have eaten something,&quot; he thought. &quot;It's the strangest feeling
+I've ever had. I just won't take any notice of them. I'll go on as
+though they weren't there.&quot; But the strangest thing of all was that he
+felt as though he himself were being taken. He had the most comfortable
+feeling that there was no need for him to give any thought or any kind
+of trouble. &quot;You just leave it all to me,&quot; some one said to him. &quot;I've
+made all the arrangements.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The lane was hot, and the midday winter sun covered the paths with pools
+and splashes of colour. He came out on to the common and saw the
+village, the long straggling street with the white-washed cottages and
+the hideous grey-slate roofs; the church tower, rising out of the elms,
+and the pond, running to the common's edge, its water chequered with the
+reflection of the white clouds above it.</p>
+
+<p>The main street of Clinton is not a lovely street; the inland villages
+and towns of Glebeshire are, unless you love them, amongst the <a name="Page_284" id="Page_284"></a>ugliest
+things in England, but every step caught at Seymour's heart.</p>
+
+<p>There was Mr. Roscoe's shop which was also the post-office, and in its
+window was the same collection of liquorice sticks, saffron buns, reels
+of cotton, a coloured picture of the royal family, views of Trezent
+Head, Borhaze Beach, St. Arthe Church, cotton blouses made apparently
+for dolls, so minute were they, three books, &quot;Ben Hur,&quot; &quot;The Wide, Wide
+World,&quot; and &quot;St. Elmo,&quot; two bottles of sweets, some eau-de-Cologne, and
+a large white card with bone buttons on it. So moving was this
+collection to Seymour that he stared at the window as though he were in
+a trance.</p>
+
+<p>The arrangement of the articles was exactly the same as it had been in
+the earlier days&mdash;the royal family in the middle, supported by the jars
+of sweets; the three books, very dusty and faded, in the very front; and
+the bootlaces and liquorice sticks all mixed together as though Mr.
+Roscoe had forgotten which was which.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look here, Bim,&quot; he said aloud, &quot;I've left you up&mdash;I really am going
+off my head!&quot; he thought. He hurried away. &quot;If I <i>am</i> mad I'm awfully
+happy,&quot; he said.<a name="Page_285" id="Page_285"></a></p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>The white vicarage gate closed behind him with precisely the
+old-remembered sound&mdash;the whiz, the sudden startled pause, the satisfied
+click. Seymour stood on the sun-bathed lawn, glittering now like green
+glass, and stared at the house. Its square front of faded red brick
+preserved a tranquil silence; the only sound in the place was the
+movement of some birds, his old friend the robin perhaps in the laurel
+bushes behind him.</p>
+
+<p>Although the sun was so warm there was in the air a foreshadowing of a
+frosty night; and some Christmas roses, smiling at him from the flower
+beds to right and left of the hall door, seemed to him that they
+remembered him; but, indeed, the whole house seemed to tell him that.
+There it waited for him, so silent, laid ready for his acceptance under
+the blue sky and with no breath of wind stirring. So beautiful was the
+silence, that he made a movement with his hand as though to tell his
+companion to be quiet. He felt that they were crowded in an interested,
+amused group behind him waiting to see what he would do. Then a little
+bell <a name="Page_286" id="Page_286"></a>rang somewhere in the house, a voice cried &quot;Martha!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He moved forward and pulled the wire of the bell; there was a wheezy
+jangle, a pause, and then a sharp irritated sound far away in the heart
+of the house, as though he had hit it in the wind and it protested. An
+old woman, very neat (she was certainly a Glebeshire woman), told him
+that Mr. Trenchard was at home. She took him through the dark passages
+into the study that he knew so well, and said that Mr. Trenchard would
+be with him in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>It was the same study, and yet how different! Many of the old pieces of
+furniture were there&mdash;the deep, worn leather arm-chair in which Mr.
+Lasher had been sitting when he had his famous discussion with Mr.
+Pidgen, the same bookshelves, the same tiles in the fireplace with Bible
+pictures painted on them, the same huge black coal-scuttle, the same
+long, dark writing-table. But instead of the old order and discipline
+there was now a confusion that gave the room the air of a waste-paper
+basket. Books were piled, up and down, in the shelves, they dribbled on
+to the floor and lay in little trickling streams across the carpet; <a name="Page_287" id="Page_287"></a>old
+bundles of papers, yellow with age, tied with string and faded blue
+tape, were in heaps upon the window-sill, and in tumbling cascades in
+the very middle of the floor; the writing-table itself was so hopelessly
+littered with books, sermon papers, old letters and new letters, bottles
+of ink, bottles of glue, three huge volumes of a Bible Concordance,
+photographs, and sticks of sealing-wax, that the man who could be happy
+amid such confusion must surely be a kindly and benevolent creature. How
+orderly had been Mr. Lasher's table, with all the pens in rows, and
+little sharp drawers that clicked, marked A, B, and C, to put papers
+into.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trenchard entered.</p>
+
+<p>He was what the room had prophesied&mdash;fat, red-faced, bald, extremely
+untidy, with stains on his coat and tobacco on his coat, that was
+turning a little green, and chalk on his trousers. His eyes shone with
+pleased friendliness, but there was a little pucker in his forehead, as
+though his life had not always been pleasant. He rubbed his nose, as he
+talked, with the back of his hand, and made sudden little darts at the
+chalk on his trousers, as though he would brush it off. He had the face
+of an innocent baby, <a name="Page_288" id="Page_288"></a>and when he spoke he looked at his companion with
+exactly the gaze of trusting confidence that a child bestows upon its
+elders.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope you will forgive me,&quot; said Seymour, smiling; &quot;I've come, too, at
+such an awkward time, but the truth is I simply couldn't help myself. I
+ought, besides, to catch the four o'clock train back to Polchester.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, indeed,&quot; said Mr. Trenchard, smiling, rubbing his hands together,
+and altogether in the dark as to what his visitor might be wanting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, but I haven't explained; how stupid of me! My name is Seymour. I
+was here during several years, as a small boy, with Canon Lasher&mdash;in my
+holidays, you know. It's years ago, and I've never been back. I was at
+Polchester this morning and suddenly felt that I must come over. I
+wondered whether you'd be so good as to let me look a little at the
+house and garden.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing that Mr. Trenchard would like better. How was Canon
+Lasher? Well? Good. They met sometimes at meetings at Polchester. Canon
+Lasher, Mr. Trenchard believed, liked it better at Polchester than at
+Clinton. Honestly, it would break Mr. Trench<a name="Page_289" id="Page_289"></a>ard's heart if <i>he</i> had to
+leave the place. But there was no danger of that now. Would Mr.
+Seymour&mdash;his wife would be delighted&mdash;would he stay to luncheon?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, that is too kind of you,&quot; said Seymour, hesitating, &quot;but there are
+so many of us, such a lot&mdash;I mean,&quot; he said hurriedly, at Mr.
+Trenchard's innocent stare of surprise, &quot;that it's too hard on Mrs.
+Trenchard, with so little notice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He broke off confusedly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall only be too delighted,&quot; said Mr. Trenchard. &quot;And if you have
+friends ...&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no,&quot; said Seymour, &quot;I'm quite alone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When, afterwards, he was introduced to Mrs. Trenchard in the
+drawing-room, he liked her at once. She was a little woman, very neat,
+with grey hair brushed back from her forehead. She was like some fresh,
+mild-coloured fruit, and an old-fashioned dress of rather faded green
+silk, and a large locket that she wore gave her a settled, tranquil air
+as though she had always been the same, and would continue so for many
+years. She had a high, fresh colour, a beautiful complexion and her
+hands had the delicacy of fragile egg-shell china. She <a name="Page_290" id="Page_290"></a>was cheerful and
+friendly, but was, nevertheless, a sad woman; her eyes were dark and her
+voice was a little forced as though she had accustomed herself to be in
+good spirits. The love between herself and her husband was very pleasant
+to see.</p>
+
+<p>Like all simple people, they immediately trusted Seymour with their
+confidence. During luncheon they told him many things, of Rasselas,
+where Mr. Trenchard had been a curate, at their joy at getting the
+Clinton living, and of their happiness at being there, of the kindness
+of the people, of the beauty of the country, of their neighbours, of
+their relations, the George Trenchards, at Garth of Glebeshire
+generally, and what it meant to be a Trenchard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There've been Trenchards in Glebeshire,&quot; said the Vicar, greatly
+excited, &quot;since the beginning of time. If Adam and Eve were here, and
+Glebeshire was the Garden of Eden, as I daresay it was, why, then Adam
+was a Trenchard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards when they were smoking in the confused study, Seymour learnt
+why Mrs. Trenchard was a sad woman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We've had one trial, under God's grace,&quot;<a name="Page_291" id="Page_291"></a> said Mr. Trenchard. &quot;There
+was a boy and a girl&mdash;Francis and Jessamy. They died, both, in a bad
+epidemic of typhoid here, five years ago. Francis was five, Jessamy
+four. 'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.' It was hard losing
+both of them. They got ill together and died on the same day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He puffed furiously at his pipe. &quot;Mrs. Trenchard keeps the nursery just
+the same as it used to be. She'll show it to you, I daresay.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Later, when Mrs. Trenchard took him over the house, his sight of the
+nursery was more moving to him than any of his old memories. She
+unlocked the door with a sharp turn of the wrist and showed him the wide
+sun-lit room, still with fresh curtains, with a wall-paper of robins and
+cherries, with the toys&mdash;dolls, soldiers, a big dolls'-house, a
+rocking-horse, boxes of bricks.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Our two children, who died five years ago,&quot; she said in her quiet, calm
+voice, &quot;this was their room. These were their things. I haven't been
+able to change it as yet. Mr. Lasher,&quot; she said, smiling up at him, &quot;had
+no children, and you were too old for a nursery, I suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292"></a>It was then, as he stood in the doorway, bathed in a shaft of sunlight,
+that he was again, with absolute physical consciousness, aware of the
+children's presence. He could tell that they were pressing behind him,
+staring past him into the room, he could almost hear their whispered
+exclamations of delight.</p>
+
+<p>He turned to Mrs. Trenchard as though she must have perceived that he
+was not alone. But she had noticed nothing; with another sharp turn of
+the wrist she had locked the door.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>To-morrow was Christmas Eve: he had promised to spend Christmas with
+friends in Somerset. Now he went to the little village post-office and
+telegraphed that he was detained; he felt at that moment as though he
+would never like to leave Clinton again.</p>
+
+<p>The inn, the &quot;Hearty Cow,&quot; was kept by people who were new to
+him&mdash;&quot;foreigners, from up-country.&quot; The fat landlord complained to
+Seymour of the slowness of the Clinton people, that they never could be
+induced to see things to their own proper advantage. &quot;A dead-<a name="Page_293" id="Page_293"></a>alive
+place <i>I</i> call it,&quot; he said; &quot;but still, mind you,&quot; he added, &quot;it's got
+a sort of a 'old on one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>From the diamond-paned windows of his bedroom next morning he surveyed a
+glorious day, the very sky seemed to glitter with frost, and when his
+window was opened he could hear quite plainly the bell on Trezent Rock,
+so crystal was the air. He walked that morning for miles; he covered all
+his old ground, picking up memories as though he were building a
+pleasure-house. Here was his dream, there was disappointment, here that
+flaming discovery, there this sudden terror&mdash;nothing had changed for
+him, the Moor, St. Arthe Church, St. Dreot Woods, the high white gates
+and mysterious hidden park of Portcullis House&mdash;all were as though it
+had been yesterday that he had last seen them. Polchester had dwindled
+before his giant growth. Here the moor, the woods, the roads had grown,
+and it was he that had shrunken.</p>
+
+<p>At last he stood on the sand-dunes that bounded the moor and looked down
+upon the marbled sand, blue and gold after the retreating tide. The
+faint lisp and curdle of the sea sang to him. A row of sea-gulls, one
+and then <a name="Page_294" id="Page_294"></a>another quivering in the light, stood at the water's edge; the
+stiff grass that pushed its way fiercely from the sand of the dunes was
+white with hoar-frost, and the moon, silver now, and sharply curved,
+came climbing behind the hill.</p>
+
+<p>He turned back and went home. He had promised to have tea at the
+Vicarage, and he found Mrs. Trenchard putting holly over the pictures in
+the little dark square hall. She looked as though she had always been
+there, and as though, in some curious way, the holly, with its bright
+red berries, especially belonged to her.</p>
+
+<p>She asked him to help her, and Seymour thought that he must have known
+her all his life. She had a tranquil, restful air, but, now and then,
+hummed a little tune. She was very tidy as she moved about, picking up
+little scraps of holly. A row of pins shone in her green dress. After a
+while they went upstairs and hung holly in the passages.</p>
+
+<p>Seymour had turned his back to her and was balanced on a little ladder,
+when he heard her utter a sharp little cry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The nursery door's open,&quot; she said. He turned, and saw very clearly,
+against the half-<a name="Page_295" id="Page_295"></a>light, her startled eyes. Her hands were pressed
+against her dress and holly had fallen at her feet. He saw, too, that
+the nursery door was ajar.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I locked it myself, yesterday; you saw me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She gasped as though she had been running, and he saw that her face was
+white.</p>
+
+<p>He moved forward quickly and pushed open the door. The room itself was
+lightened by the gleam from the passage and also by the moonlight that
+came dimly through the window. The shadow of some great tree was flung
+upon the floor. He saw, at once, that the room was changed. The
+rocking-horse that had been yesterday against the wall had now been
+dragged far across the floor. The white front of the dolls'-house had
+swung open and the furniture was disturbed as though some child had been
+interrupted in his play. Four large dolls sat solemnly round a dolls'
+tea-table, and a dolls' tea service was arranged in front of them. In
+the very centre of the room a fine castle of bricks had been rising, a
+perfect Tower of Babel in its frustrated ambition.</p>
+
+<p>The shadow of the great tree shook and quivered above these things.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296"></a>Seymour saw Mrs. Trenchard's face, he heard her whisper:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is it? What is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then she fell upon her knees near the tower of bricks. She gazed at
+them, stared round the rest of the room, then looked up at him, saying
+very quietly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I knew that they would come back one day. I always waited. It must have
+been they. Only Francis ever built the bricks like that, with the red
+ones in the middle. He always said they <i>must</i> be....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She broke off and then, with her hands pressed to her face, cried, so
+softly and so gently that she made scarcely any sound.</p>
+
+<p>Seymour left her.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>He passed through the house without any one seeing him, crossed the
+common, and went up to his bedroom at the inn. He sat down before his
+window with his back to the room. He flung the rattling panes wide.</p>
+
+<p>The room looked out across on to the moor, and he could see, in the
+moonlight, the faint thread of the beginning of the Borhaze Road.<a name="Page_297" id="Page_297"></a> To
+the left of this there was some sharp point of light, some cottage
+perhaps. It flashed at him as though it were trying to attract his
+attention. The night was so magical, the world so wonderful, so without
+bound or limit, that he was prepared now to wait, passively, for his
+experience. That point of light was where the Scarecrow used to be, just
+where the brown fields rise up against the horizon. In all his walks
+to-day he had deliberately avoided that direction. The Scarecrow would
+not be there now; he had always in his heart fancied it there, and he
+would not change that picture that he had of it. But now the light
+flashed at him. As he stared at it he knew that to-day he had completed
+that adventure that had begun for him many years ago, on that Christmas
+Eve when he had met Mr. Pidgen.</p>
+
+<p>They were whispering in his ear, &quot;We've had a lovely day. It was the
+most beautiful nursery.... Two other children came too. They wore
+<i>their</i> things....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What, after all,&quot; said his Friend's voice, &quot;does it mean but that if
+you love enough we are with you everywhere&mdash;for ever?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then the children's voices again:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_298" id="Page_298"></a>She thought they'd come back, but they'd never gone away&mdash;really, you
+know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He gazed once more at the point of light, and then turned round and
+faced the dark room....</p>
+
+
+<h5>THE END</h5>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Scarecrow, by Hugh Walpole
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Scarecrow, by Hugh Walpole
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Golden Scarecrow
+
+Author: Hugh Walpole
+
+Release Date: November 29, 2004 [EBook #14201]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN SCARECROW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sara Peattie, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN SCARECROW
+
+
+BY
+
+
+HUGH WALPOLE
+
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"THE DUCHESS OF WREXE," "FORTITUDE," "THE PRELUDE TO
+ADVENTURE," "THE WOODEN HORSE." ETC.
+
+NEW YORK
+
+1915
+
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  CHAPTER                            PAGE
+        PROLOGUE--HUGH SEYMOUR         11
+     I. HENRY FITZGEORGE STRETHER      43
+    II. ERNEST HENRY                   65
+   III. ANGELINA                       94
+    IV. BIM ROCHESTER                 121
+     V. NANCY ROSS                    146
+    VI. 'ENERY                        172
+   VII. BARBARA FLINT                 198
+  VIII. SARAH TREFUSIS                226
+    IX. YOUNG JOHN SCARLET            256
+        EPILOGUE                      274
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+HUGH SEYMOUR
+
+
+I
+
+When Hugh Seymour was nine years of age he was sent from Ceylon, where
+his parents lived, to be educated in England. His relations having, for
+the most part, settled in foreign countries, he spent his holidays as a
+very minute and pale-faced "paying guest" in various houses where other
+children were of more importance than he, or where children as a race
+were of no importance at all. It was in this way that he became during
+certain months of 1889 and 1890 and '91 a resident in the family of the
+Rev. William Lasher, Vicar of Clinton St. Mary, that large rambling
+village on the edge of Roche St. Mary Moor in South Glebeshire.
+
+He spent there the two Christmases of 1890 and 1891 (when he was ten
+and eleven years of age), and it is with the second of these that the
+following incident, and indeed the whole of this book, has to do. Hugh
+Seymour could not, at the period of which I write, be called an
+attractive child; he was not even "interesting" or "unusual." He was
+very minutely made, with bones so brittle that it seemed that, at any
+moment, he might crack and splinter into sharp little pieces; and I am
+afraid that no one would have minded very greatly had this occurred. But
+although, he was so thin his face had a white and overhanging
+appearance, his cheeks being pale and puffy and his under-lip jutted
+forward in front of projecting teeth--he was known as the "White Rabbit"
+by his schoolfellows. He was not, however, so ugly as this appearance
+would apparently convey, for his large, grey eyes, soft and even, at
+times agreeably humorous, were pleasant and cheerful.
+
+During these years when he knew Mr. Lasher he was undoubtedly
+unfortunate. He was shortsighted, but no one had, as yet, discovered
+this, and he was, therefore, blamed for much clumsiness that he could
+not prevent and for a good deal of sensitiveness that came quite simply
+from his eagerness to do what he was told and his inability to see his
+way to do it. He was not, at this time, easy with strangers and seemed
+to them both conceited and awkward. Conceit was far from him--he was, in
+fact, amazed at so feeble a creature as himself!--but awkward he was,
+and very often greedy, selfish, impetuous, untruthful and even cruel: he
+was nearly always dirty, and attributed this to the evil wishes of some
+malign fairy who flung mud upon him, dropped him into puddles and
+covered him with ink simply for the fun of the thing!
+
+He did not, at this time, care very greatly for reading; he told himself
+stories--long stories with enormous families in them, trains of
+elephants, ropes and ropes of pearls, towers of ivory, peacocks, and
+strange meals of saffron buns, roast chicken, and gingerbread. His
+active, everyday concern, however, was to become a sportsman; he wished
+to be the best cricketer, the best footballer, the fastest runner of his
+school, and he had not--even then faintly he knew it--the remotest
+chance of doing any of these things even moderately well. He was bullied
+at school until his appointment as his dormitory's story-teller gave
+him a certain status, but his efforts at cricket and football were
+mocked with jeers and insults. He could not throw a cricket-ball, he
+could not see to catch one after it was thrown to him, did he try to
+kick a football he missed it, and when he had run for five minutes he
+saw purple skies and silver stars and has cramp in his legs. He had,
+however, during these years at Mr. Lasher's, this great over mastering
+ambition.
+
+In his sleep, at any rate, he was a hero; in the wide-awake world he
+was, in the opinion of almost every one, a fool. He was exactly the type
+of boy whom the Rev. William Lasher could least easily understand. Mr.
+Lasher was tall and thin (his knees often cracked with a terrifying
+noise), blue-black about the cheeks hooked as to the nose, bald and
+shining as to the head, genial as to the manner, and practical to the
+shining tips of his fingers. He has not, at Cambridge, obtained a rowing
+blue, but "had it not been for a most unfortunate attack of scarlet
+fever-----" He was President of the Clinton St. Mary Cricket Club, 1890
+(matches played, six; lost, five; drawn, one) knew how to slash the ball
+across the net at a tennis garden party, always read the prayers in
+church as though he were imploring God to keep a straighter bat and
+improve His cut to leg, and had a passion for knocking nails into walls,
+screwing locks into doors, and making chicken runs. He was, he often
+thanked his stars, a practical Realist, and his wife, who was fat,
+stupid, and in a state of perpetual wonder, used to say of him, "If Will
+hadn't been a clergyman he would have made _such_ an engineer. If God
+had blessed us with a boy, I'm sure he would have been something
+scientific. Will's no dreamer." Mr. Lasher was kindly of heart so long
+as you allowed him to maintain that the world was made for one type of
+humanity only. He was as breezy as a west wind, loved to bathe in the
+garden pond on Christmas Day ("had to break the ice that morning"), and
+at penny readings at the village schoolroom would read extracts from
+"Pickwick," and would laugh so heartily himself that he would have to
+stop and wipe his eyes. "If you must read novels," he would say, "read
+Dickens. Nothing to offend the youngest among us--fine breezy stuff with
+an optimism that does you good and people you get to know and be fond
+of. By Jove, I can still cry over Little Nell and am not ashamed of
+it."
+
+He had the heartiest contempt for "wasters" and "failures," and he was
+afraid there were a great many in the world. "Give me a man who is a
+man," he would say, "a man who can hit a ball for six, run ten miles
+before breakfast and take his knocks with the best of them. Wasn't it
+Browning who said,
+
+  "'God's in His heaven,
+  All's right with the world.'
+
+Browning was a great teacher--after Tennyson, one of our greatest. Where
+are such men to-day!"
+
+He was, therefore, in spite of his love for outdoor pursuits, a cultured
+man.
+
+It was natural, perhaps, that he should find Hugh Seymour "a pity."
+Nearly everything that he said about Hugh Seymour began with the words----
+
+"It's a pity that----"
+
+"It's a pity that you can't get some red into your cheeks, my boy."
+
+"It's a pity you don't care about porridge. You must learn to like it."
+
+"It's a pity you can't even make a little progress with your
+mathematics."
+
+"It's a pity you told me a lie because----"
+
+"It's a pity you were rude to Mrs. Lasher. No gentleman----"
+
+"It's a pity you weren't attending when----"
+
+Mr. Lasher was, very earnestly, determined to do his best for the boy,
+and, as he said, "You see, Hugh, if we do our best for you, you must do
+your best for us. Now I can't, I'm afraid, call this your best."
+
+Hugh would have liked to say that it _was_ the best that he could do in
+that particular direction (very probably Euclid), but if only he might
+be allowed to try his hand in quite _another_ direction, he might do
+something very fine indeed. He never, of course, had a chance of saying
+this, nor would such a declaration have greatly benefited him, because,
+for Mr. Lasher, there was only one way for every one and the sooner (if
+you were a small boy) you followed it the better.
+
+"Don't dream, Hugh," said Mr. Lasher, "remember that no man ever did
+good-work by dreaming. The goal is to the strong. Remember that."
+
+Hugh, did remember it and would have liked very much to be as strong as
+possible, but whenever he tried feats of strength he failed and looked
+foolish.
+
+"My dear boy, _that's_ not the way to do it," said Mr. Lasher; "it's a
+pity that you don't listen to what I tell you."
+
+
+II
+
+A very remarkable fact about Mr. Lasher was this--that he paid no
+attention whatever to the county in which he lived. Now there are
+certain counties in England where it is possible to say, "I am in
+England," and to leave it at that; their quality is simply English with
+no more individual personality. But Glebeshire has such an
+individuality, whether for good or evil, that it forces comment from the
+most sluggish and inattentive of human beings. Mr. Lasher was perhaps
+the only soul, living or dead, who succeeded in living in it during
+forty years (he is still there, he is a Canon now in Polchester) and
+never saying anything about it. When on his visits to London people
+inquired his opinion of Glebeshire, he would say: "Ah well!... I'm
+afraid Methodism and intemperance are very strong ... all the same,
+we're fighting 'em, fighting 'em!"
+
+This was the more remarkable in that Mr. Lasher lived upon the very edge
+of Roche St. Mary Moor, a stretch of moor and sand. Roche St. Mary Moor,
+that runs to the sea, contains the ruins of St. Arthe Church (buried
+until lately in the sand, but recently excavated through the kind
+generosity of Sir John Porthcullis, of Borhaze, and shown to visitors,
+6d. a head, Wednesday and Saturday afternoons free), and in one of the
+most romantic, mist-laden, moon-silvered, tempest-driven spots in the
+whole of Great Britain.
+
+The road that ran from Clinton St. Mary to Borhaze across the moor was
+certainly a wild, rambling, beautiful affair, and when the sea-mists
+swept across it and the wind carried the cry of the Bell of Trezent Rock
+in and out above and below, you had a strange and moving experience. Mr.
+Lasher was certainly compelled to ride on his bicycle from Clinton St.
+Mary to Borhaze and back again, and never thought it either strange or
+moving. "Only ten at the Bible meeting to-night. Borhaze wants waking
+up. We'll see what open-air services can do." What the moor thought
+about Mr. Lasher it is impossible to know!
+
+Hugh Seymour thought about the moor continually, but he was afraid to
+mention his ideas of it in public. There was a legend in the village
+that several hundred years ago some pirates, driven by storm into
+Borhaze, found their way on to the moor and, caught by the mist,
+perished there; they are to be seen, says the village, in powdered wigs,
+red coats, gold lace, and swords, haunting the sand-dunes. God help the
+poor soul who may fall into their hands! This was a very pleasant story,
+and Hugh Seymour's thoughts often crept around and about it. He would
+like to find a pirate, to bring him to the vicarage, and present him to
+Mr. Lasher. He knew that Mrs. Lasher would say, "Fancy, a pirate. Well!
+now, fancy! Well, here's a pirate!" And that Mr. Lasher would say, "It's
+a pity, Hugh, that you don't choose your company more carefully. Look at
+the man's nose!"
+
+Hugh, although he was only eleven, knew this. Hugh did on one occasion
+mention the pirates. "Dreaming again, Hugh! Pity they fill your head
+with such nonsense! If they read their Bibles more!"
+
+Nevertheless, Hugh continued his dreaming. He dreamt of the moor, of
+the pirates, of the cobbled street in Borhaze, of the cry of the Trezent
+Bell, of the deep lanes and the smell of the flowers in them, of making
+five hundred not out at cricket, of doing a problem in Euclid to Mr.
+Lasher's satisfaction, of having a collar at the end of the week as
+clean as it had been at the beginning, of discovering the way to make a
+straight parting in the hair, of not wriggling in bed when Mrs. Lasher
+kissed him at night, of many, many other things.
+
+He was at this time a very lonely boy. Until Mr. Pidgen paid his visit
+he was most remarkably lonely. After that visit he was never lonely
+again.
+
+
+III
+
+Mr. Pidgen came on a visit to the vicarage three days before Christmas.
+Hugh Seymour saw him first from the garden. Mr. Pidgen was standing at
+the window of Mr. Lasher's study; he was staring in front of him at the
+sheets of light that flashed and darkened and flashed again across the
+lawn, at the green cluster of holly-berries by the drive-gate, at the
+few flakes of snow that fell, lazily, carelessly, as though they were
+trying to decide whether they would make a grand affair of it or not,
+and perhaps at the small, grubby boy who was looking at him with one eye
+and trying to learn the Collect for the day (it was Sunday) with the
+other. Hugh had never before seen any one in the least like Mr. Pidgen.
+He was short and round, and his head was covered with tight little
+curls. His cheeks were chubby and red and his nose small, his mouth also
+very small. He had no chin. He was wearing a bright blue velvet
+waistcoat with brass buttons, and over his black shoes there shone white
+spats.
+
+Hugh had never seen white spats before. Mr. Pidgen shone with
+cleanliness, and he had supremely the air of having been exactly as he
+was, all in one piece, years ago. He was like one of the china ornaments
+in Mrs. Lasher's drawing-room that the housemaid is told to be so
+careful about, and concerning whose destruction Hugh heard her on at
+least one occasion declaring, in a voice half tears, half defiance,
+"Please, ma'am, it wasn't me. It just slipped of itself!" Mr. Pidgen
+would break very completely were he dropped.
+
+The first thing about him that struck Hugh was his amazing difference
+from Mr. Lasher. It seemed strange that any two people so different
+could be in the same house. Mr. Lasher never gleamed or shone, he would
+not break with however violent an action you dropped him, he would
+certainly never wear white spats.
+
+Hugh liked Mr. Pidgen at once. They spoke for the first time at the
+mid-day meal, when Mr. Lasher said, "More Yorkshire pudding, Pidgen?"
+and Mr. Pidgen said, "I adore it."
+
+Now Yorkshire pudding happened to be one of Hugh's special passions just
+then, particularly when it was very brown and crinkly, so he said quite
+spontaneously and without taking thought, as he was always told to do,
+
+"So do I!"
+
+"My _dear_ Hugh!" said Mrs. Lasher; "how very greedy! Fancy! After all
+you've been told! Well, well! Manners, manners!"
+
+"I don't know," said Mr. Pidgen (his mouth was full). "I said it first,
+and I'm older than he is. I should know better.... I like boys to be
+greedy, it's a good sign--a good sign. Besides. Sunday--after a
+sermon--one naturally feels a bit peckish. Good enough sermon, Lasher,
+but a bit long."
+
+Mr. Lasher of course did not like this, and, indeed, it was evident to
+any one (even to a small boy) that the two gentlemen would have
+different opinions upon every possible subject. However, Hugh loved Mr.
+Pidgen there and then, and decided that he would put him into the story
+then running (appearing in nightly numbers from the moment of his
+departure to bed to the instant of slumber--say ten minutes); he would
+also, in the imaginary cricket matches that he worked out on paper, give
+Mr. Pidgen an innings of two hundred not out and make him captain of
+Kent. He now observed the vision very carefully and discovered several
+strange items in his general behaviour. Mr. Pidgen was fond of whistling
+and humming to himself; he was restless and would walk up and down a
+room with his head in the air and his hands behind his broad back,
+humming (out of tune) "Sally in our Alley," or "Drink to me only." Of
+course this amazed Mr. Lasher.
+
+He would quite suddenly stop, stand like a top spinning, balanced on his
+toes, and cry, "Ah! Now I've got it! No, I haven't! Yes, I have. By God,
+it's gone again!"
+
+To this also Mr. Lasher strongly objected, and Hugh heard him say,
+"Really, Pidgen, think of the boy! Think of the boy!" and Mr. Pidgen
+exclaimed, "By God, so I should!... Beg pardon, Lasher! Won't do it
+again! Lord save me, I'm a careless old drunkard!" He had any number of
+strange phrases that were new and brilliant and exciting to the boy, who
+listened to him. He would say, "by the martyrs of Ephesus!" or "Sunshine
+and thunder!" or "God stir your slumbers!" when he thought any one very
+stupid. He said this last one day to Mrs. Lasher, and of course she was
+very much astonished. She did not from the first like him at all. Mr.
+Pidgen and Mr. Lasher had been friends at Cambridge and had not met one
+another since, and every one knows that that is a dangerous basis for
+the renewal of friendship. They had a little dispute on the very
+afternoon of Mr. Pidgen's arrival, when Mr. Lasher asked his guest
+whether he played golf.
+
+"God preserve my soul! No!" said Mr. Pidgen. Mr. Lasher then explained
+that playing golf made one thin, hungry and self-restrained. Mr. Pidgen
+said that he did not wish to be the first or last of these, and that he
+was always the second, and that golf was turning the fair places of
+England into troughs for the moneyed pigs of the Stock Exchange to swill
+in.
+
+"My dear Pidgen!" cried Mr. Lasher, "I'm afraid no one could call me a
+moneyed pig with any justice--more's the pity--and a game of golf to me
+is----"
+
+"Ah! you're a parson, Lasher," said his guest.
+
+In fact, by the evening of the second day of the visit it was obvious
+that Clinton St. Mary Vicarage might, very possibly, witness a disturbed
+Christmas. It was all very tiresome for poor Mrs. Lasher. On the late
+afternoon of Christmas Eve, Hugh heard the stormy conversation that
+follows--a conversation that altered the colour and texture of his
+after-life as such things may, when one is still a child.
+
+
+IV
+
+Christmas Eve was always, to Hugh, a day with glamour. He did not any
+longer hang up his stocking (although he would greatly have liked to do
+so), but, all day, his heart beat thickly at the thought of the morrow,
+at the thought of something more than the giving and receiving of
+presents, something more than the eating of food, something more than
+singing hymns that were delightfully familiar, something more than
+putting holly over the pictures and hanging mistletoe on to the lamp in
+the hall. Something there was in the day like going home, like meeting
+people again whom one had loved once, and not seen for many years,
+something as warm and romantic and lightly coloured _and_ as comforting
+as the most inspired and impossible story that one could ever, lying in
+bed and waiting for sleep, invent.
+
+To-day there was no snow but a frost, and there was a long bar of
+saffron below the cold sky and a round red ball of a sun. Hugh was
+sitting in a corner of Mr. Lasher's study, looking at Doré's "Don
+Quixote," when the two gentlemen came in. He was sitting in a dark
+corner and they, because they were angry with one another, did not
+recognise any one except themselves. Mr. Lasher pulled furiously at his
+pipe and Mr. Pidgen stood up by the fire with his short fat legs spread
+wide and his mouth smiling, but his eyes vexed and rather indignant.
+
+"My dear Pidgen," said Mr. Lasher, "you misunderstand me, you do indeed!
+It may be (I would be the first to admit that, like most men, I have my
+weakness) that I lay too much stress upon the healthy, physical, normal
+life, upon seeing things as they are and not as one would like to see
+them to be. I don't believe that dreaming ever did any good to any man!"
+
+"It's only produced some of the finest literature the world has ever
+known," said Mr. Pidgen.
+
+"Ah! Genius! If you or I were geniuses, Pidgen, that would be another
+affair. But we're not; we're plain, common-place humdrum human beings
+with souls to be saved and work to do--work to do!"
+
+There was a little pause after that, and Hugh, looking at Mr. Pidgen,
+saw the hurt look in his eyes deepen.
+
+"Come now, Lasher," he said at last. "Let's be honest one with another;
+that's your line, and you say it ought to be mine. Come now, as man to
+man, you think me a damnable failure now--beg pardon--complete
+failure--don't you? Don't be afraid of hurting me. I want to know!"
+
+Mr. Lasher was really a kindly man, and when his eyes beheld
+things--there were of course many things that they never beheld--he
+would do his best to help anybody. He wanted to help Mr. Pidgen now;
+but he was also a truthful man.
+
+"My dear Pidgen! Ha, ha! What a question! I'm sure many, many people
+enjoy your books immensely. I'm sure they do, oh, yes!"
+
+"Come, now, Lasher, the truth. You won't hurt my feelings. If you were
+discussing me with a third person you'd say, wouldn't you? 'Ah, poor
+Pidgen might have done something if he hadn't let his fancy run away
+with him. I was with him at Cambridge. He promised well, but I'm afraid
+one must admit that he's failed--he would never stick to anything.'"
+
+Now this was so exactly what Mr. Lasher had, on several occasions, said
+about his friend that he was really for the moment at a loss. He pulled
+at his pipe, looked very grave, and then said:
+
+"My dear Pidgen, you must remember our lives have followed such
+different courses. I can only give you my point of view. I don't myself
+care greatly for romances--fairy tales and so on. It seems to me that
+for a grown-up man.... However, I don't pretend to be a literary fellow;
+I have other work, other duties, picturesque, but nevertheless
+necessary."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Pidgen, who, considering that he had invited his
+host's honest opinion, should not have become irritated because he had
+obtained it; "that's just it. You people all think only _you_ know what
+is necessary. Why shouldn't a fairy story be as necessary as a sermon? A
+lot more necessary, I dare say. You think you're the only people who can
+know anything about it. You people never use your imaginations."
+
+"Nevertheless," said Mr. Lasher, very bitterly (for he had always said,
+"If one does not bring one's imagination into one's work one's work is
+of no value"), "writers of idle tales are not the only people who use
+their imaginations. And, if you will allow me, without offence, to say
+so, Pidgen, your books, even amongst other things of the same sort, have
+not been the most successful."
+
+This remark seemed to pour water upon all the anger in Mr. Pidgen's
+heart. His eyes expressed scorn, but not now for Mr. Lasher--for
+himself. His whole figure drooped and was bowed like a robin in a
+thunderstorm.
+
+"That's true enough. Bless my soul, Lasher, that's true enough. They
+hardly sell at all. I've written a dozen of them now, 'The Blue Pouncet
+Box,' 'The Three-tailed Griffin,' 'The Tree without any Branches,' but
+you won't want to be bothered with the names of them. 'The Griffin' went
+into two editions, but it was only because the pictures were rather
+sentimental. I've often said to myself, 'If a thing doesn't sell in
+these days it must be good,' but I've not really convinced myself. I'd
+like them to have sold. Always, until now, I've had hopes of the next
+one, and thought that it would turn out better, like a woman with her
+babies. I seem to have given up expecting that now. It isn't, you know,
+being always hard-up that I mind so much, although that, mind you, isn't
+pleasant, no, by Jehoshaphat, it isn't. But we would like now and again
+to find that other people have enjoyed what one hoped they _would_
+enjoy. But I don't know, they always seem too old for children and too
+young for grown-ups--my stories, I mean."
+
+It was one of the hardest traits in Mr. Lasher's character, as Hugh well
+realised, "to rub it in" over a fallen foe. He considered this his duty;
+it was also, I am afraid, a pleasure. "It's a pity," he said, "that
+things should not have gone better; but there are so many writers to-day
+that I wonder any one writes at all. We live in a practical, realistic
+age. The leaders amongst us have decided that every man must gird his
+loins and go out to fight his battles with real weapons in a real cause,
+not sit dreaming at his windows looking down upon the busy
+market-place." (Mr. Lasher loved what he called "images." There were
+many in his sermons.) "But, my dear Pidgen, it is in no way too late.
+Give up your fairy stories now that they have been proved a failure."
+
+Here Mr. Pidgen, in the most astonishing way, was suddenly in a terrible
+temper. "They're not!" he almost screamed. "Not at all. Failures, from
+the worldly point of view, yes; but there are some who understand. I
+would not have done anything else if I could. You, Lasher, with your
+soup-tickets and your choir-treats, think there's no room for me and my
+fairy stories. I tell you, you may find yourself jolly well mistaken one
+of these days. Yes, by Cæsar, you may. How do you know what's best worth
+doing? If you'd listened a little more to the things you were told when
+you were a baby, you'd be a more intelligent man now."
+
+"When I was a baby," said Mr. Lasher, incredulously, as though that were
+a thing that he never possibly could have been, "my _dear_ Pidgen!"
+
+"Ah, you think it absurd," said the other, a little cooler again. "But
+how do you know who watched over your early years and wanted you to be a
+dreamy, fairy tale kind of person instead of the cayenne pepper sort of
+man you are. There's always some one there, I tell you, and you can have
+your choice, whether you'll believe more than you see all your life or
+less than you see. Every baby knows about it; then, as they grow older,
+it fades and, with many people, goes altogether. He's never left _me_,
+St. Christopher, you know, and that's one thing. Of course, the ideal
+thing is somewhere between the two; recognise St. Christopher and see
+the real world as well. I'm afraid neither you nor I is the ideal man,
+Lasher. Why, I tell you, any baby of three knows more than you do!
+You're proud of never seeing beyond your nose. I'm proud of never seeing
+my nose at all: we're both wrong. But I _am_ ready to admit _your_ uses.
+You _never_ will admit mine; and it isn't any use your denying my
+Friend. He stayed with you a bit when you just arrived, but I expect he
+soon left you. You're jolly glad he did."
+
+"My _dear_ Pidgen," said Mr. Lasher, "I haven't understood a word."
+
+Pidgen shook his head. "You're right. That's just what's the matter with
+me. I can't even put what I see plainly." He sighed deeply. "I've
+failed. There's no doubt about it. But, although I know that, I've had a
+happy life. That's the funny part of it. I've enjoyed it more than you
+ever will, Lasher. At least, I'm never lonely. I like my food, too, and
+one's head's always full of jolly ideas, if only they seemed jolly to
+other people."
+
+"Upon my word, Pidgen," said Mr. Lasher. At this moment Mrs. Lasher
+opened the door.
+
+"Well, well. Fancy! Sitting over the fire talking! Oh, you men! Tea!
+tea! Tea, Will! Fancy talking all the afternoon! Well!"
+
+No one had noticed Hugh. He, however, had understood Mr. Pidgen better
+than Mr. Lasher did.
+
+
+V
+
+This conversation aroused in Hugh, for various reasons, the greatest
+possible excitement. He would have liked to have asked Mr. Pidgen many
+questions. Christmas Day came, and a beautiful day enthroned it: a pale
+blue sky, faint and clear, was a background to misty little clouds that
+hovered, then fled and disappeared, and from these flakes of snow fell
+now and then across the shining sunlight. Early in the winter afternoon
+a moon like an orange feather sailed into the sky as the lower stretches
+of blue changed into saffron and gold. Trees and hills and woods were
+crystal-clear, and shone with an intensity of outline as though their
+shapes had been cut by some giant knife against the background. Although
+there was no wind the air was so expectant that the ringing of church
+bells and the echo of voices came as though across still water. The
+colour of the sunlight was caught in the cups and runnels of the stiff
+frozen roads and a horse's hoofs echoed, sharp and ringing, over fields
+and hedges. The ponds were silvered into a sheet of ice, so thin that
+the water showed dark beneath it. All the trees were rimmed with
+hoar-frost.
+
+On Christmas afternoon, when three o'clock had just struck from the
+church tower, Hugh and Mr. Pidgen met, as though by some conspirator's
+agreement, by the garden gate. They had said nothing to one another and
+yet there they were; they both glanced anxiously back at the house and
+then Mr. Pidgen said:
+
+"Suppose we take a walk."
+
+"Thank you very much," said Hugh. "Tea isn't till half-past four."
+
+"Very well, then, suppose you lead the way." They walked a little, and
+then Hugh said: "I was there yesterday, in the study, when you talked
+all that about your books, and everything." The words came from him in
+little breathless gusts because he was excited.
+
+Mr. Pidgen stopped and looked upon him. "Thunder and sunshine! You don't
+say so! What under heaven were you doing?"
+
+"I was reading, and you came in and then I was interested."
+
+"Well?"
+
+Hugh dropped his voice.
+
+"I understood all that you meant. I'd like to read your books if I may.
+We haven't any in the house."
+
+"Bless my soul! Here's some one wants to read my books!" Mr. Pidgen was
+undoubtedly pleased. "I'll send you some. I'll send you them all!"
+
+Hugh gasped with pleasure. "I'll read them all, however many there
+are!" he said excitedly. "Every word."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Pidgen, "that's more than any one else has ever done."
+
+"I'd rather be with you," said the boy very confidently, "than Mr. Lasher.
+I'd rather write stories than preach sermons that no one wants to listen
+to." Then more timidly he continued: "I know what you meant about the man
+who comes when you're a baby. I remember him quite well, but I never can
+say anything because they'd say I was silly. Sometimes I think he's still
+hanging round only he doesn't come to the vicarage much. He doesn't like
+Mr. Lasher much, I expect. But I _do_ remember him. He had a beard and I
+used to think it funny the nurse didn't see him. That was before we went
+to Ceylon, you know, we used to live in Polchester then. When it was
+nearly dark and not quite he'd be there. I forgot about him in Ceylon, but
+since I've been here I've wondered ... it's sometimes like some one
+whispering to you and you know if you turn round he won't be there, but he
+_is_ there all the same. I made twenty-five last summer against
+Porthington Grammar; they're not much good _really_, and it was our
+second eleven, and I was nearly out second ball; anyway I made
+twenty-five, and afterwards as I was ragging about I suddenly thought of
+him. I _know_ he was pleased. If it had been a little darker I believe I'd
+have seen him. And then last night, after I was in bed and was thinking
+about what you'd said I _know_ he was near the window, only I didn't look
+lest he should go away. But of course Mr. Lasher would say that's all rot,
+like the pirates, only I _know_ it isn't." Hugh broke off for lack of
+breath, nothing else would have stopped him. When he was encouraged he was
+a terrible talker. He suddenly added in a sharp little voice like the
+report from a pistol: "So one can't be lonely or anything, can one, if
+there's always some one about?"
+
+Mr. Pidgen was greatly touched. He put his hand upon Hugh's shoulder.
+"My dear boy," he said, "my dear boy--dear me, dear me. I'm afraid
+you're going to have a dreadful time when you grow up. I really mustn't
+encourage you. And yet, who can help himself?"
+
+"But you said yourself that you'd seen him, that you knew him quite
+well?"
+
+"And so I do--and so I do. But you'll find, as you grow older, there are
+many people who won't believe you. And there's this, too. The more you
+live in your head, dreaming and seeing things that aren't there, the
+less you'll see the things that _are_ there. You'll always be tumbling
+over things. You'll never get on. You'll never be a success."
+
+"Never mind," said Hugh, "it doesn't matter much what you say now,
+you're only talking 'for my good' like Mr. Lasher. I don't care, I heard
+what you said yesterday, and it's made all the difference. I'll come and
+stay with you."
+
+"Well, so you shall," said Mr. Pidgen. "I can't help it. You shall come
+as often as you like. Upon my soul, I'm younger to-day than I've felt
+for a long time. We'll go to the pantomime together if you aren't too
+old for it. I'll manage to ruin you all right. What's that shining?" He
+pointed in front of him.
+
+They had come to a rise in the Polwint Road. To their right, running to
+the very foot of their path, was the moor. It stretched away, like a
+cloud, vague and indeterminate to the horizon. To their left a dark
+brown field rose in an ascending wave to a ridge that cut the sky, now
+crocus-coloured. The field was lit with the soft light of the setting
+sun. On the ridge of the field something, suspended, it seemed, in
+midair, was shining like a golden fire.
+
+"What's that?" said Mr. Pidgen again. "It's hanging. What the devil!"
+
+They stopped for a moment, then started across the field. When they had
+gone a little way Mr. Pidgen paused again.
+
+"It's like a man with a golden helmet. He's got legs, he's coming to
+us."
+
+They walked on again. Then Hugh cried, "Why, it's only an old Scarecrow.
+We might have guessed."
+
+The sun, at that instant, sank behind the hills and the world was grey.
+
+The Scarecrow, perched on the high ridge, waved its tattered sleeves in
+the air. It was an old tin can that had caught the light; the can
+hanging over the stake that supported it in drunken fashion seemed to
+wink at them. The shadows came streaming up from the sea and the dark
+woods below in the hollow drew closer to them.
+
+The Scarecrow seemed to lament the departure of the light. "Here, mind,"
+he said to the two of them, "you saw me in my glory just now and don't
+you forget it. I may be a knight in shining armour after all. It only
+depends upon the point of view."
+
+"So it does," said Mr. Pidgen, taking his hat off, "you were very fine,
+I shan't forget."
+
+
+VI
+
+They stood there in silence for a time....
+
+
+VII
+
+At last they turned back and walked slowly home, the intimacy of their
+new friendship growing with their silence. Hugh was happier than he had
+ever been before. Behind the quiet evening light he saw wonderful
+prospects, a new life in which he might dream as he pleased, a new
+friend to whom he might tell these dreams, a new confidence in his own
+power....
+
+But it was not to be.
+
+That very night Mr. Pidgen died, very peacefully, in his sleep, from
+heart failure. He had had, as he had himself said, a happy life.
+
+
+VIII
+
+Years passed and Hugh Seymour grew up. I do not wish here to say much
+more about him. It happened that when he was twenty-four his work
+compelled him to live in that Square in London known as March Square (it
+will be very carefully described in a minute). Here he lived for five
+years, and, during that time, he was happy enough to gain the intimacy
+and confidence of some of the children who played in the Gardens there.
+They trusted him and told him more than they told many people. He had
+never forgotten Mr. Pidgen; that walk, that vision of the Scarecrow,
+stood, as such childish things will, for a landmark in his history. He
+came to believe that those experiences that he knew, in his own life, to
+be true, were true also for some others. That's as it may be. I can only
+say that Barbara and Angelina, Bim and even Sarah Trefusis were his
+friends. I daresay his theory is all wrong.
+
+I can only say that I _know_ that they were his friends; perhaps, after
+all, the Scarecrow _is_ shining somewhere in golden armour. Perhaps,
+after all, one need not be so lonely as one often fancies that one is.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HENRY FITZGEORGE STRETHER
+
+
+I
+
+March Square is not very far from Hyde Park Corner in London Town.
+Behind the whir and rattle of the traffic it stands, spacious and cool
+and very old, muffled by the little streets that guard it, happily
+unconscious, you would suppose, that there were any in all the world so
+unfortunate as to have less than five thousand a year for their support.
+Perhaps a hundred years ago March Square might boast of such superior
+ignorance, but fashions change, to prevent, it may be, our own too
+easily irritated monotonies, and, for some time now, the Square has been
+compelled, here, there, in one corner and another, to admit the invader.
+It is true that the solemn, respectable grey house, No. 3, can boast
+that it is the town residence of His Grace the Duke of Crole and his
+beautiful young Duchess, née Miss Jane Tunster of New York City, but it
+is also true that No. ---- is in the possession of Mr. Munty Ross of
+Potted Shrimp fame, and there are Dr. Cruthen, the Misses Dent, Herbert
+Hoskins and his wife, whose incomes are certainly nearer to £500 than
+£5,000. Yes, rents and blue blood have come down in March Square; it is,
+certainly, not the less interesting for that, but----
+
+Some of the houses can boast the days of good Queen Anne for their
+period. There is one, at the very corner where Somers Street turns off
+towards the Park, that was built only yesterday, and has about it some
+air of shame, a furtive embarrassment that it will lose very speedily.
+There is no house that can claim beauty, and yet the Square, as a whole,
+has a fine charm, something that age and colour, haphazard adventure,
+space and quiet have all helped towards.
+
+There is, perhaps, no square in London that clings so tenaciously to any
+sign or symbol of old London that motor-cars and the increase of speed
+have not utterly destroyed. All the oldest London mendicants find their
+way, at different hours of the week, up and down the Square. There is,
+I believe, no other square in London where musicians are permitted. On
+Monday morning there is the blind man with the black patch over one eye;
+he has an organ (a very old one, with a painted picture of the Battle of
+Trafalgar on the front of it) and he wears an old black skull-cap. He
+wheezes out his old tunes (they are older than other tunes that March
+Square hears, and so, perhaps, March Square loves them). He goes
+despondently, and the tap of his stick sounds all the way round the
+Square. A small and dirty boy--his grandson, maybe--pushes the organ for
+him. On Tuesday there comes the remnants of a German band--remnants
+because now there are only the cornet, the flute and the trumpet. Sadly
+wind-blown, drunken and diseased they are, and the Square can remember
+when there were a number of them, hale and hearty young fellows, but
+drink and competition have been too strong for them. On Wednesdays there
+is sometimes a lady who sings ballads in a voice that can only be
+described as that contradiction in terms "a shrill contralto." Her notes
+are very piercing and can be heard from one end of the Square to the
+other. She sings "Annie Laurie" and "Robin Adair," and wears a battered
+hat of black straw. On Thursday there is a handsome Italian with a
+barrel organ that bears in its belly the very latest and most popular
+tunes. It is on Thursday that the Square learns the music of the moment;
+thus from one end of the year to the other does it keep pace with the
+movement.
+
+On Fridays there is a lean and ragged man wearing large and, to the
+children of the Square, terrifying spectacles. He is a very gloomy
+fellow and sings hymn-tunes, "Rock of Ages," "There is a Happy Land,"
+and "Jerusalem the Golden." On Saturdays there is a stout, happy little
+man with a harp. He has white hair and looks like a retired colonel. He
+cannot play the harp very much, but he is quite the most popular visitor
+of the week, and must be very rich indeed does he receive in other
+squares so handsome a reward for his melody as this one bestows; he is
+known as "Colonel Harry." In and out of these regular visitors there
+are, of course, many others. There is a dark, sinister man with a
+harmonium and a shivering monkey on a chain; there is an Italian woman,
+wearing bright wraps round her head, and she has a cage of birds who
+tell fortunes; there is a horsey, stable-bred, ferret-like man with,
+two performing dogs, and there is quite an old lady in a black bonnet
+and shawl who sings duets with her grand-daughter, a young thing of some
+fifty summers.
+
+There can be nothing in the world more charming than the way the Square
+receives its friends. Let it number amongst its guests a Duchess, that
+is no reason why it should scorn "Colonel Harry" or "Mouldy Jim," the
+singer of hymns. Scorn, indeed, cannot be found within its grey walls,
+soft grey, soft green, soft white and blue--in these colours is the
+Square's body clothed, no anger in its mild eyes, nor contempt anywhere
+at its heart.
+
+The Square is proud, and is proud with reason, of its garden. It is not
+a large garden as London gardens go. It has in its centre a fountain.
+Neptune, with a fine wreath of seaweed about his middle, blowing water
+through, his conch. There are two statues, the one of a general who
+fought in the Indian Mutiny and afterwards lived and died in the Square,
+the other of a mid-Victorian philanthropist whose stout figure and
+urbane self-satisfaction (as portrayed by the sculptor) bear witness to
+an easy conscience and an unimaginative mind. There is, round and about
+the fountain, a lovely green lawn, and there are many overhanging trees
+and shady corners. An air of peace the garden breathes, and that
+although children are for ever racing up and down it, shattering the
+stillness of the air with their cries, rivalling the bells of St.
+Matthew's round the corner with their piercing notes.
+
+But it is the quality of the Square that nothing can take from it its
+peace, nothing temper its tranquillity. In the heat of the days
+motor-cars will rattle through, bells will ring, all the bustle of a
+frantic world invade its security; for a moment it submits, but in the
+evening hour, when the colours are being washed from the sky, and the
+moon, apricot-tinted, is rising slowly through the smoke, March Square
+sinks, with a little sigh, back into her peace again. The modern world
+has not yet touched her, nor ever shall.
+
+
+II
+
+The Duchess of Crole had three months ago a son, Henry Fitzgeorge,
+Marquis of Strether. Very fortunate that the first-born should be a son,
+very fortunate also that the first-born should be one of the healthiest,
+liveliest, merriest babies that it has ever been any one's good fortune
+to encounter. All smiles, chuckles and amiability is Henry Fitzgeorge;
+he is determined that all shall be well.
+
+His birth was for a little time the sensation of the Square. Every one
+knew the beautiful Duchess; they had seen her drive, they had seen her
+walk, they had seen her in the picture-papers, at race-meetings and
+coming away from fashionable weddings. The word went round day by day as
+to his health; he was watched when he came out in his perambulator, and
+there was gossip as to his appearance and behaviour.
+
+"A jolly little fellow."
+
+"Just like his father."
+
+"Rather early to say that, isn't it?"
+
+"Well, I don't know, got the same smile. His mother's rather languid."
+
+"Beautiful woman, though."
+
+"Oh, lovely!"
+
+Upon a certain afternoon in March about four o'clock, there was quite a
+gathering of persons in Henry Fitzgeorge's nursery. There was his
+mother, with those two great friends of hers, Lady Emily Blanchard and
+the Hon. Mrs. Vavasour; there was Her Grace's mother, Mrs. P. Tunster
+(an enormously stout lady); there was Miss Helen Crasper, who was
+staying in the house. These people were gathered at the end of the cot,
+and they looked down upon Henry Fitzgeorge, and he lay upon his back,
+gazed at them thoughtfully, and clenched and unclenched his fat hands.
+
+Opposite his cot were some very wide windows, and three windows were
+filled with galleons of cloud--fat, bolster, swelling vessels, white,
+save where, in their curving sails, they had caught a faint radiance
+from the hidden sun. In fine procession, against the blue, they passed
+along. Very faint and muffled there came up from the Square the
+lingering notes of "Robin Adair." This is a Wednesday afternoon, and it
+is the lady with the black straw hat who is singing. The nursery has
+white walls--it is filled with colour; the fire blazes with a yellow-red
+gleam that rises and falls across the shining floor.
+
+"I brought him a rattle, Jane, dear," said Mrs. Tunster, shaking in the
+air a thing of coral and silver. "He's got several, of course, but I
+guess you'll go a long way before you find anything cuter."
+
+"It's too pretty," said Lady Emily.
+
+"Too lovely," said the Hon. Mrs. Vavasour.
+
+The Duchess looked down upon her son. "Isn't he old?" she said.
+"Thousands of years. You'd think he was laughing at the lot of us."
+
+Mrs. Tunster shook her head. "Now don't you go imagining things, Jane,
+my dear. I used to be just like that, and your father would say, 'Now,
+Alice.'"
+
+Her Grace raised her head. Her eyes were a little tired. She looked from
+her son to the clouds, and then back again to her son. She was
+remembering her own early days, the rich glowing colour of her own
+American country, the freedom, the space, the honesty.
+
+"I guess you're tired, dear," said her mother. "With the party to-night
+and all. Why don't you go and rest a bit?"
+
+"His eyes _are_ old! He _does_ despise us all."
+
+Lady Emily, who believed in personal comfort and as little thinking as
+possible, put her arm through her friend's.
+
+"Come along and give us some tea. He's a dear. Good-bye, you little
+darling. He _is_ a pet. There, did you see him smiling? You _darling_.
+Tea I _must_ have, Jane, dear--_at_ once."
+
+"You go on. I'm coming. Ring for it. Tell Hunter. I'll be with you in
+two minutes, mother."
+
+Mrs. Tunster left her rattle in the nurse's hands. Then, with the two
+others, departed. Outside the nursery door she said in an American
+whisper:--"Jane isn't quite right yet. Went about a bit too soon. She's
+headstrong. She always has been. Doesn't do for her to think too much."
+
+Her Grace was alone now with her son and heir and the nurse. She bent
+over the cot and smiled upon Henry Fitzgeorge; he smiled back at her,
+and even gave an absent-minded crow; but his gaze almost instantly swung
+back again to the window, through which, deeply and with solemn
+absorption, he watched the clouds.
+
+She gave him her hand, and he closed his fingers about one of hers; but
+even that grasp was abstracted, as though he were not thinking of her at
+all, but was simply behaving like a gentleman.
+
+"I don't believe he's realised me a bit, nurse," she said, turning away
+from the cot.
+
+"Well, Your Grace, they always take time. It's early days."
+
+"But what's he thinking of all the time?"
+
+"Oh, just nothing, Your Grace."
+
+"I don't believe it's nothing. He's trying to settle things. This--what
+it's all about--what he's got to do about it."
+
+"It may be so, Your Grace. All babies are like that at first."
+
+"His eyes are so old, so grave."
+
+"He's a jolly little fellow, Your Grace."
+
+"He's very little trouble, isn't he?"
+
+"Less trouble than any baby I've ever had to do with. Got His Grace's
+happy temperament, if I may say so."
+
+"Yes," the mother laughed. She crossed over to the window and looked
+down. "That poor woman singing down there. How awful! He'll be going
+down to Crole very shortly, Roberts. Splendid air for him there. But the
+Square's cheerful. He likes the garden, doesn't he?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Your Grace; all the children and the fountain. But he's a
+happy baby. I should say he'd like anything."
+
+For a moment longer she looked down into the Square. The discordant
+voice was giving "Annie Laurie" to the world.
+
+"Good-bye, darling." She stepped forward, shook the silver and coral
+rattle. "See what grannie's given you!" She left it lying near his
+hand, and, with a little sigh, was gone.
+
+
+III
+
+Now, as the sun was setting, the clouds had broken into little pink
+bubbles, lying idly here and there upon the sky. Higher, near the top of
+the window, they were large pink cushions, three fat ones, lying
+sedately against the blue. During three months now Henry Fitzgeorge
+Strether had been confronted with the new scene, the new urgency on his
+part to respond to it. At first he had refused absolutely to make any
+response; behind him, around him, above him, below him, were still the
+old conditions; but they were the old conditions viewed, for some reason
+unknown to him, at a distance, and at a distance that was ever
+increasing. With every day something here in this new and preposterous
+world struck his attention, and with every fresh lure was he drawn more
+certainly from his old consciousness. At first he had simply rebelled;
+then, very slowly, his curiosity had begun to stir. It had stirred at
+first through food and touch; very pleasant this, very pleasant that.
+
+Milk, sleep, light things that he could hold very tightly with his
+hands. Now, upon this March afternoon, he watched the pink clouds with a
+more intent gaze than he had given to them before. Their colour and
+shape bore some reference to the life that he had left. They were "like"
+a little to those other things. There, too, shadowed against the wall,
+was his Friend, his Friend, now the last link with everything that he
+knew.
+
+At first, during the first week, he had demanded again and again to be
+taken back, and always he had been told to wait, to wait and see what
+was going to happen. So long as his Friend was there, he knew that he
+was not completely abandoned, and that this was only a temporary
+business, with its strange limiting circumstances, the way that one was
+tied and bound, the embarrassment of finding that all one's old means of
+communication were here useless. How desperate, indeed, would it have
+been had his Friend not been there, reassuring pervading him,
+surrounding him, always subduing those sudden inexplicable alarms.
+
+He would demand: "When are we going to leave all this?"
+
+"Wait. I know it seems absurd to you, but it's commanded you."
+
+"Well, but--this is ridiculous. Where are all my old powers I Where are
+all the others?"
+
+"You will understand everything one day. I'm afraid you're very
+uncomfortable. You will be less so as time passes. Indeed, very soon you
+will be very happy."
+
+"Well, I'm doing my best to be cheerful. But you won't leave me?"
+
+"Not so long as you want me."
+
+"You'll stay until we go back again!"
+
+"You'll never go back again."
+
+"Never?"
+
+"No."
+
+Across the light the nurse advanced. She took him in her arms for a
+moment, turned his pillows, then layed him down again. As he settled
+down into comfort he saw his Friend, huge, a great shadow, mingling with
+the coloured lights of the flaming sky. All the world was lit, the white
+room glowed. A pleasant smell was in his nostrils.
+
+"Where are all the others? They would like to share this pleasant
+moment, and I would warn them about the unpleasant ones."
+
+"They are coming, some of them. I am with them as I am with you."
+Swinging across the Square were the evening bells of St. Matthew's.
+
+Henry Fitzgeorge smiled, then chuckled, then dozed into a pleasant
+sleep.
+
+
+IV
+
+Asleep, awake, it had been for the most part the same to him. He swung
+easily, lazily upon the clouds; warmth and light surrounded him; a part
+of him, his toes, perhaps, would be suddenly cold, then he would cry, or
+he would strike his head against the side of his cot and it would hurt,
+and so then he would cry again. But these tears would not be tears of
+grief, but simply declarations of astonishment and wonder.
+
+He did not, of course, realise that as, very slowly, very gradually he
+began to understand the terms and conditions of his new life, so with
+the same gradation, his Friend was expressed in those terms. Slowly that
+great shadow filled the room, took on human shape, until at last it
+would be only thus that he would appear. But Henry would not realise the
+change, soon he would not know that it had ever been otherwise. Dimly,
+out of chaos, the world was being made for him. There a square of
+colour, here something round and hard that was cool to touch, now a
+gleaming rod that ran high into the air, now a shape very soft and warm
+against which it was pleasant to lean. The clouds, the sweep of dim
+colour, the vast horizons of that other world yielded, day by day, to
+little concrete things--a patch of carpet, the leg of a chair, the
+shadow of the fire, clouds beyond the window, buttons on some one's
+clothes, the rails of his cot. Then there were voices, the touch of
+hands, some one's soft hair, some one who sang little songs to him.
+
+He woke early one morning and realised the rattle that his grandmother
+had given to him. He suddenly realised it. He grasped the handle of it
+with his hand and found this cool and pleasant to touch. He then, by
+accident, made it tinkle, and instantly the prettiest noise replied to
+him. He shook it more lustily and the response was louder. He was, it
+seemed, master of this charming thing and could force it to do what he
+wished. He appealed to his Friend. Was not this a charming thing that he
+had found? He waved it and chuckled and crowed, and then his toes,
+sticking out beyond the bed-clothes, were nipped by the cold so that he
+halloed loudly. Perhaps the rattle had nipped his toes. He did not know,
+but he would cry because that eased his feelings.
+
+That morning there came with his grandmother and mother a silly young
+woman who had, it was supposed, a great way with babies. "I adore
+babies," she said. "We understand one another in the most wonderful
+way."
+
+Henry Fitzgeorge looked at her as she leaned over the cot and made faces
+at him. "Goo-goo-gum-goo," she cried.
+
+"What is all this?" he asked his Friend. He laid down the rattle, and
+felt suddenly lonely and unhappy.
+
+"Little pet--ug--la--la--goo--losh!" Henry Fitzgeorge raised his eyes.
+His Friend was a long, long way away; his eyes grew cold with contempt.
+He hated this thing that made the noises and closed out the light. He
+opened his eyes, he was about to burst into one of his most abandoned
+roars when his stare encountered his mother. Her eyes were watching him,
+and they had in them a glow and radiance that gave him a warm feeling of
+companionship. "I know," they seemed to say, "what you are thinking of.
+I agree with all that you are feeling about her. Only don't cry, she
+really isn't worth it." His mouth slowly closed then to thank her for
+her assistance, he raised the rattle and shook it at her. His eyes never
+left her face.
+
+"Little darling," said the lady friend, but nevertheless disappointed.
+"Lift him up, Jane. I'd like to see him in your arms."
+
+But she shook her head. She moved away from the cot. Something so
+precious had been in that smile of her son's that she would not risk any
+rebuff.
+
+Henry Fitzgeorge gave the strange lady one last look of disgust.
+
+"If that comes again I'll bite it," he said to his Friend.
+
+When these visitors had departed, he lay there remembering those eyes
+that had looked into his. All that day he remembered them, and it may be
+that his Friend, as he watched, sighed because the time for launching
+him had now come, that one more soul had passed from his sheltering arms
+out into the highroad of fine adventures. How easily they forget! How
+readily they forget! How eagerly they fling the pack of their old world
+from off their shoulders! He had seen, perhaps, so many go, thus
+lustily, upon their way, and then how many, at the end of it all,
+tired, worn, beaten to their very shadows, had he received at the end!
+
+But it was so. This day was to see Henry Fitzgeorge's assertions of his
+independence. The hour when this life was to close, so definitely, so
+securely, the doors upon that other, had come. The shadow that had been
+so vast that it had filled the room, the Square, the world, was drawn
+now into small and human size.
+
+Henry Fitzgeorge was never again to look so old.
+
+
+V
+
+As the fine, dim afternoon was closing, he was allowed, for half an hour
+before sleep, to sprawl upon the carpet in front of the fire. He had
+with him his rattle and a large bear which he stroked because it was
+comfortable; he had no personal feeling about it.
+
+His mother came in.
+
+"Let me have him for half an hour, nurse. Come back in half an hour's
+time."
+
+The nurse left them.
+
+Henry Fitzgeorge did not look at his mother.
+
+He had the bear in his arms and was feeling it, and in his mind the
+warmth from the flickering, jumping flame and the soft, friendly
+submission of the fur beneath his fingers were part of the same mystery.
+
+His mother had been motoring; her cheeks were flushed, and her dark
+clothes heightened, by their contrast, her colour. She knelt down on the
+carpet and then, with her hands folded on her lap, watched her son. He
+rolled the bear over and over, he poked it, he banged its head upon the
+ground. Then he was tired with it and took up the rattle. Then he was
+tired of that, and he looked across at his mother and chuckled.
+
+His mind, however, was not at all concentrated upon her. He felt, on
+this afternoon, a new, a fresh interest in things. The carpet before him
+was a vast country and he did not propose to explore it, but sucking his
+thumb, stroking the bear's coat, feeling the firelight upon his face, he
+felt that now something would occur. He had realised that there was much
+to explore and that, after all, perhaps there might be more in this
+strange condition of things than he had only a little time ago
+considered possible. It was then that he looked up and saw hanging
+round his mother's neck a gold chain. This was a long chain hanging
+right down to her lap; as it hung there, very slowly it swayed from side
+to side, and as it swayed, the firelight caught it and it gleamed and
+was splashed with light. His eyes, as he watched, grew rounder and
+rounder; he had never seen anything so wonderful. He put down the
+rattle, crawled, with great difficulty because of his long clothes, on
+to his knees and sat staring, his thumb in his mouth. His mother stayed,
+watching him. He pointed his finger, crowing. "Come and fetch it," she
+said.
+
+He tumbled forward on to his nose and then lay there, with his face
+raised a little, watching it. She did not move at all, but knelt with
+her hands straight out upon her knees, and the chain with its large gold
+rings like flaming eyes swung from hand to hand. Then he tried to move
+forward, his whole soul in his gaze. He would raise a hand towards the
+treasure and then because that upset his balance he would fall, but at
+once he would be up again. He moved a little and breathed little gasps
+of pleasure.
+
+She bent forward to him, his hand was outstretched. His eyes went up
+and, meeting hers, instantly the chain was forgotten. That recognition
+that they had given him before was there now.
+
+With a scramble and a lurch, desperate, heedless in its risks, he was in
+his mother's lap. Then he crowed. He crowed for all the world to hear
+because now, at last, he had become its citizen.
+
+Was there not then, from some one, disregarded and forgotten at that
+moment, a sigh, lighter than the air itself, half-ironic, half-wistful
+regret?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ERNEST HENRY
+
+
+I
+
+Young Ernest Henry Wilberforce, who had only yesterday achieved his
+second birthday, watched, with a speculative eye, his nurse. He was
+seated on the floor with his back to the high window that was flaming
+now with the light of the dying sun; his nurse was by the fire, her
+head, shadowed huge and fantastic on the wall, nodded and nodded and
+nodded. Ernest Henry was, in figure, stocky and square, with a head
+round, hard, and covered with yellow curls; rather light and cold blue
+eyes and a chin of no mean degree were further possessions. He was
+wearing a white blouse, a white skirt, white socks and shoes; his legs
+were fat and bulged above his socks; his cold blue eyes never moved from
+his nurse's broad back.
+
+He knew that, in a very short time, disturbance would begin. He knew
+that doors would open and shut, that there would be movement, strange
+noises, then an attack upon himself, ultimately a removal of him to
+another place, a stripping off him of his blouse, his skirt, his socks
+and his shoes, a loathsome and strangely useless application of soap and
+water--it was only, of course, in later years that he learned the names
+of those abominable articles--and, finally, finally darkness. All this
+he felt hovering very close at hand; one nod too many of his nurse's
+head, and up she would start, off she would go, off _he_ would go.... He
+watched her and stroked very softly his warm, fat calf.
+
+It was a fine, spacious room that he inhabited. The ceiling--very, very
+far away--was white and glimmering with shadowy spaces of gold flung by
+the sun across the breast of it. The wallpaper was dark-red, and there
+were many coloured pictures of ships and dogs and snowy Christmases, and
+swans eating from the hands of beautiful little girls, and one garden
+with roses and peacocks and a tumbling fountain. To Ernest Henry these
+were simply splashes of colour, and colour, moreover, scarcely so
+convincing as the bright blue screen by the fire, or the golden brown
+rug by the door; but he was dimly aware that, as the days passed, so
+did he find more and more to consider in the shapes and sizes between
+the deep black frames.... There might, after all, be something in it.
+
+But it was not the pictures that he was now considering.
+
+Before his nurse's descent upon him he was determined that he would
+walk--not crawl, but walk in his socks and shoes--from his place by the
+window to the blue screen by the fire. There had been days, and those
+not so long ago, when so hazardous an Odyssey had seemed the vainest of
+Blue Moon ambitions; it had once been the only rule of existence to
+sprawl and roll and sprawl again; but gradually some further force had
+stirred his limbs. It was a finer thing to be upright; there was a finer
+view, a more lordly sense of possession could be summoned to one's
+command. That, then, once decided, upright one must be and upright, with
+many sudden and alarming collapses, Ernest Henry was.
+
+He had marked out, from the first, the distance from the wall to the blue
+screen as a very decent distance. There was, half-way, a large
+rocking-chair that would be either a danger or a deliverance, as Fate
+should have it. Save for this, it was, right across the brown, rose-strewn
+carpet, naked country. Truly a perilous business. As he sat there and
+looked at it, his heart a little misgave him; in this strange, new world
+into which he had been so roughly hustled, amongst a horde of alarming and
+painful occurrences, he had discovered nothing so disconcerting as that
+sudden giving of the knees, that rising of the floor to meet you, the
+collapse, the pain, and above all the disgrace. Moreover, let him fail
+now, and it meant, in short,--banishment--banishment and then darkness.
+There were risks. It was the most perilous thing that, in this new
+country, he had yet attempted, but attempt it he would.... He was as
+obstinate as his chin could make him.
+
+With his blue eyes still cautiously upon his nurse's shadow he raised
+himself very softly, his fat hand pressed against the wall, his mouth
+tightly closed, and from between his teeth there issued the most distant
+relation of that sound that the traditional ostler makes when he is
+cleaning down a horse. His knees quivered, straightened; he was up. Far
+away in the long, long distance were piled the toys that yesterday's
+birthday had given him. They did not, as yet, mean anything to him at
+all. One day, perhaps when he had torn the dolls limb from limb, twisted
+the railways until they stood end upon end in sheer horror,
+disembowelled the bears and golliwogs so that they screamed again, he
+might have some personal feeling for them. At present there they lay in
+shining impersonal newness, and there for Ernest Henry they might lie
+for ever.
+
+For an instant, his hand against the wall, he was straight and
+motionless; then he took his hand away, and his journey began. At the
+first movement a strange, an amazing glory filled him. From the instant,
+two years ago, of his first arrival he had been disturbed by an
+irritating sense of inadequacy; he had been sent, it seemed, into this
+new and tiresome condition of things without any fitting provisions for
+his real needs. Demands were always made upon him that were, in the
+absurd lack of ways and means, impossible of fulfilment. But now, at
+last, he was using the world as it should be used.... He was fine, he
+was free, he was absolutely master. His legs might shake, his body lurch
+from side to side, his breath come in agitating gasps and whistles; the
+wall was now far behind him, the screen most wonderfully near, the
+rocking-chair almost within his grasp. Great and mighty is Ernest Henry
+Wilberforce, dazzling and again dazzling the lighted avenues opening now
+before him; there is nothing, nothing, from the rendings of the toys to
+the deliberate defiance of his nurse and all those in authority over
+him, that he shall not now perform.... With a cry, with a wild wave of
+the arms, with a sickening foretaste of the bump with which the gay
+brown carpet would mark him, he was down, the Fates were upon him--the
+disturbance, the disrobing, the darkness. Nevertheless, even as he was
+carried, sobbing, into the farther room, there went with him a
+consciousness that life would never again be quite the dull,
+purposeless, monotonous thing that it had hitherto been.
+
+
+II
+
+After a long time he was alone. About him the room, save for the yellow
+night-light above his head, was dark, humped with shadows, with grey
+pools of light near the windows, and a golden bar that some lamp beyond
+the house flung upon the wall. Ernest Henry lay and, now and again,
+cautiously felt the bump on his forehead; there was butter on the bump,
+and an interesting confusion and pain and importance round and about it.
+Ernest Henry's eyes sought the golden bar, and then, lingering there,
+looked back upon the recent adventure. He had walked; yes, he had
+walked. This would, indeed, be something to tell his Friend.
+
+His friend, he knew, would be very shortly with him. It was not every
+night that he came, but always, before his coming, Ernest Henry knew of
+his approach--knew by the happy sense of comfort that stole softly about
+him, knew by the dismissal of all those fears and shapes and terrors
+that, otherwise, so easily beset him. He sucked his thumb now, and felt
+his bump, and stared at the ceiling and knew that he would come. During
+the first months after Ernest Henry's arrival on this planet his friend
+was never absent from him at all, was always there, drawing through his
+fingers the threads of the old happy life and the new alarming one,
+mingling them so that the transition from the one to the other might not
+be too sharp--reassuring, comforting, consoling. Then there had been
+hours when he had withdrawn himself, and that earlier world had grown a
+little vaguer, a little more remote, and certain things, certain foods
+and smells and sounds had taken their place within the circle of
+realised facts. Then it had come to be that the friend only came at
+night, came at that moment when the nurse had gone, when the room was
+dark, and the possible beasts--the first beast, the second beast, and
+the third beast--began to creep amongst those cool, grey shadows in the
+hollow of the room. He always came then, was there with his arm about
+Ernest Henry, his great body, his dark beard, his large, firm hands--all
+so reassuring that the beasts might do the worst, and nothing could come
+of it. He brought with him, indeed, so much more than himself--brought a
+whole world of recollected wonders, of all that other time when Ernest
+Henry had other things to do, other disciplines, other triumphs, other
+defeats, and other glories. Of late his memory of the other time had
+been untrustworthy. Things during the day-time would remind him, but
+would remind him, nevertheless, with a strange mingling of the world at
+present about him, so that he was not sure of his visions. But when his
+friend was with him the memories were real enough, and it was the
+nurse, the fire, the red wallpaper, the smell of toast, the taste of
+warm milk, that were faint and shadowy.
+
+His friend was there, just as always, suddenly sitting there on the bed
+with his arm round Ernest Henry's body, his dark beard just tickling
+Ernest Henry's neck, his hand tight about Ernest Henry's hand. They told
+one another things in the old way without tiresome words and sounds;
+but, for the benefit of those who are unfortunately too aged to remember
+that old and pleasant intercourse, one must make use of the English
+language. Ernest Henry displayed his bump, and explained its origin; and
+then, even as he did so, was aware that the reality of the bump made the
+other world just a little less real. He was proud that he had walked and
+stood up, and had been the master of his circumstance; but just because
+he had done so he was aware that his friend was a little, a very little
+farther away to-night than he had ever been before.
+
+"Well, I'm very glad that you're going to stand on your own, because
+you'll have to. I'm going to leave you now--leave you for longer, far
+longer than I've ever left you before."
+
+"Leave me?"
+
+"Yes. I shan't always be with you; indeed, later on you won't want me.
+Then you'll forget me, and at last you won't even believe that I ever
+existed--until, at the end of it all, I come to take you away. _Then_ it
+will all come back to you."
+
+"Oh, but that's absurd!" Ernest Henry said confidently. Nevertheless, in
+his heart he knew that, during the day-time, other things did more and
+more compel his attention. There were long stretches during the day-time
+now when he forgot his friend.
+
+"After your second birthday I always leave you more to yourselves. I
+shall go now for quite a time, and you'll see that when the old feeling
+comes, and you know that I'm coming back, you'll be quite startled and
+surprised that you'd got on so well without me. Of course, some of you
+want me more than others do, and with some of you I stay quite late in
+life. There are one or two I never leave at all. But you're not like
+that; you'll get on quite well without me."
+
+"Oh, no, I shan't," said Ernest Henry, and he clung very tightly and
+was most affectionate. But he suddenly put his fingers to his bump, felt
+the butter, and his chin shot up with self-satisfaction.
+
+"To-morrow I'll get ever so much farther," he said.
+
+"You'll behave, and not mind the beasts or the creatures?" his friend
+said. "You must remember that it's not the slightest use to call for me.
+You're on your own. Think of me, though. Don't forget me altogether. And
+don't forget all the other world in your new discoveries. Look out of
+the window sometimes. That will remind you more than anything."
+
+He had kissed him, had put his hand for a moment on Ernest Henry's
+curls, and was gone. Ernest Henry, his thumb in his mouth, was fast
+asleep.
+
+
+III
+
+Suddenly, with a wild, agonising clutch at the heart, he was awake. He
+was up in bed, his hands, clammy and hot, pressed together, his eyes
+staring, his mouth dry. The yellow night-light was there, the bars of
+gold upon the walls, the cool, grey shadows, the white square of the
+window; but there, surely, also, were the beasts. He knew that they were
+there--one crouching right away there in the shadow, all black, damp;
+one crawling, blacker and damper, across the floor; one--yes, beyond
+question--one, the blackest and cruellest of them all, there beneath the
+bed. The bed seemed to heave, the room flamed with terror. He thought of
+his friend; on other nights he had invoked him, and instantly there had
+been assurance and comfort. Now that was of no avail; his friend would
+not come. He was utterly alone. Panic drove him; he thought that there,
+on the farther side of the bed, claws and a black arm appeared. He
+screamed and screamed and screamed.
+
+The door was flung open, there were lights, his nurse appeared. He was
+lying down now, his face towards the wall, and only dry, hard little
+sobs came from him. Her large red hand was upon his shoulder, but
+brought no comfort with it. Of what use was she against the three
+beasts? A poor creature.... He was ashamed that he should cry before
+her. He bit his lip.
+
+"Dreaming, I suppose, sir," she said to some one behind her. Another
+figure came forward. Some one sat down on the edge of the bed, put his
+arm round Ernest Henry's body and drew him towards him. For one wild
+moment Ernest Henry fancied that his friend had, after all, returned.
+But no. He knew that these were the conditions of this world, not of
+that other. When he crept close to his friend he was caught up into a
+soft, rosy comfort, was conscious of nothing except ease and rest. Here
+there were knobs and hard little buttons, and at first his head was
+pressed against a cold, slippery surface that hurt. Nevertheless, the
+pressure was pleasant and comforting. A warm hand stroked his hair. He
+liked it, jerked his head up, and hit his new friend's chin.
+
+"Oh, damn!" he heard quite clearly. This was a new sound to Ernest
+Henry; but just now he was interested in sounds, and had learnt lately
+quite a number. This was a soft, pleasant, easy sound. He liked it.
+
+And so, with it echoing in his head, his curly head against his father's
+shoulder, the bump glistening in the candle-light, the beasts defeated
+and derided, he tumbled into sleep.
+
+
+IV
+
+A pleasant sight at breakfast was Ernest Henry, with his yellow curls
+gleaming from his bath, his bib tied firmly under his determined chin,
+his fat fingers clutching a large spoon, his body barricaded into a high
+chair, his heels swinging and kicking and swinging again. Very fine,
+too, was the nursery on a sunny morning--the fire crackling, the roses
+on the brown carpet as lively as though they were real, and the whole
+place glittering, glowing with size and cleanliness and vigour. In the
+air was the crackling smell of toast and bacon, in a glass dish was
+strawberry jam, through the half-open window came all the fun of the
+Square--the sparrows, the carts, the motor-cars, the bells, and
+horses.... Oh, a fine morning was fine indeed!
+
+Ernest Henry, deep in the business of conveying securely his bread and
+milk from the bowl--a beautiful bowl with red robins all round the
+outside of it--to his mouth, laughed at the three beasts. Let them show
+themselves here in the sunlight, and they'd see what they'd get. Let
+them only dare!
+
+He surveyed, with pleased anticipation, the probable progress of his
+day. He glanced at the pile of toys in the farther corner of the room,
+and thought to himself that he might, after all, find some diversion
+there. Yesterday they had seemed disappointing; to-day in the glow of
+the sun they suggested, adventure. Then he looked towards that stretch
+of country--that wall-to-screen marathon--and, with an eye upon his
+nurse, meditated a further attempt. He put down his spoon, and felt his
+bump. It was better; perchance there would be two bumps by the evening.
+And then, suddenly, he remembered.... He felt again the terror, saw the
+lights and his nurse, then that new friend.... He pondered, lifted his
+spoon, waved it in the air; and then smiling with the happy recovery of
+a pleasant, friendly sound, repeated half to himself, half to his nurse:
+"Damn! Damn! Damn!"
+
+That began for him the difficulties of his day. He was hustled, shaken;
+words, words, words were poured down upon him. He understood that, in
+some strange, unexpected, bewildering fashion he had done wrong. There
+was nothing more puzzling in his present surroundings than that
+amazingly sudden transition from serenity to danger. Here one was, warm
+with food, bathed in sunlight, with a fine, ripe day in front of one....
+Then the mere murmur of a sound, and all was tragedy.
+
+He hated his toys, his nurse, his food, his world; he sat in a corner of
+the room and glowered.... How was he to know? If, under direct
+encouragement, he could be induced to say "dada," or "horse," or
+"twain," he received nothing but applause and, often enough, reward.
+Yet, let him make use of that pleasant new sound that he had learnt, and
+he was in disgrace. Upon this day, more than any other in his young
+life, he ached, he longed for some explanation. Then, sitting there in
+his corner, there came to him a discovery, the force of which was never,
+throughout all his later life, to leave him. He had been deserted by his
+friend. His last link with that other life was broken. He was here,
+planted in the strangest of strange places, with nothing whatever to
+help him. He was alone; he must fight for his own hand. He would--from
+that moment, seated there beneath the window, Ernest Henry Wilberforce
+challenged the terrors of this world, and found them sawdust--he would
+say "damn" as often as he pleased. "Damn, damn, damn, damn," he
+whispered, and marked again, with meditative eye, the space from wall to
+screen.
+
+After this, greatly cheered, he bethought him of the Square. Last night
+his friend had said to him that when he wished to think of him, and go
+back for a time to the other world, a peep into the Square would assist
+him. He clambered up on to the window-seat, caught behind him those
+sounds, "Now, Master Ernest," which he now definitely connected with
+condemnation and disapproval, shook his curls in defiance, and pressed
+his nose to the glass. The Square was a dazzling sight. He had not as
+yet names for any of the things that he saw there, nor, when he went out
+on his magnificent daily progress in his perambulator did he associate
+the things that he found immediately around him with the things that he
+saw from his lofty window; but, with every absorbed gaze they stood more
+securely before him, and were fixed ever more firmly in his memory.
+
+This was a Square with fine, white, lofty houses, and in the houses were
+an infinite number of windows, sometimes gay and sometimes glittering.
+In the middle of the Square was a garden, and in the middle of the
+garden, very clearly visible from Ernest Henry's window, was a fountain.
+It was this fountain, always tossing and leaping, that gave Ernest Henry
+the key to his memories. Gazing at it he had no difficulty at all to
+find himself back in the old life. Even now, although only two years had
+passed, it was difficult not to reveal his old experiences by means of
+terms of his new discoveries. He thought, for instance, of the fountain
+as a door that led into the country whose citizen he had once been, and
+that country he saw now in terms of doors and passages and rooms and
+windows, whereas, in reality, it had been quite otherwise.
+
+But now, perched up there on the window-sill, he felt that if he could
+only bring the fountain in with him out of the Square into his nursery,
+he would have the key to both existences. He wanted to understand--to
+understand what was the relation between his friend who had left last
+night, why he might say "dada," but mustn't say "damn," why, finally, he
+was here at all. He did not consciously consider these things; his brain
+was only very slightly, as yet, concerned in his discoveries; but, like
+a flowing river, beneath his movements and actions, the interplay of
+his two existences drove him on through, his adventure.
+
+There were, of course, many other things in the Square besides the
+fountain. There was, at the farther corner, just out of the Square, but
+quite visible from Ernest Henry's window, a fruit-shop with coloured
+fruit piled high on the boards outside the windows. Indeed, that side
+street, of which one could only catch this glimpse, promised to be most
+wonderful always; when evening came a golden haze hovered round and
+about it. In the garden itself there were often many children, and for
+an hour every afternoon Ernest Henry might be found amongst them. There
+were two statues in the Square--one of a gentleman in a beard and a
+frock-coat, the other of a soldier riding very finely upon a restless
+horse; but Ernest Henry was not, as yet, old enough to realise the
+meaning and importance of these heroes.
+
+Outside the Square there were many dogs, and even now as he looked down
+from his window he could see a number of them, black and brown and
+white.
+
+The trees trembled in a little breeze, the fountain flashed in the sun,
+somewhere a barrel-organ was playing.... Ernest Henry gave a little
+sigh, of satisfaction.
+
+He was back! He was back! He was slipping, slipping into distance
+through the window into the street, under the fountain, its glittering
+arms had caught him; he was up, the door was before him, he had the key.
+
+"Time for you to put your things on, Master Ernest. And 'ow you've
+dirtied your knees! There! Look!"
+
+He shook himself, clambered down from the window, gave his nurse what
+she described as "One of his old, old looks. Might be eighty when he's
+like that.... They're all like it when they're young."
+
+With a sigh he translated himself back into this new, tiresome
+existence.
+
+
+V
+
+But after that morning things were never again quite the same. He gave
+himself up deliberately to the new life.
+
+With that serious devotion towards anything likely to be of real
+practical value to him that was, in his later years, never to fail him,
+he attacked this business of "words." He discovered that if he made
+certain sounds when certain things were said to him he provoked instant
+applause. He liked popularity; he liked the rewards that popularity
+brought him. He acquired a formula that amounted practically to "Wash
+dat?" And whenever he saw anything new he produced his question. He
+learnt with amazing rapidity. He was, his nurse repeatedly told his
+father, "a most remarkable child."
+
+It could not truthfully be said that during these weeks he forgot his
+friend altogether. There were still the dark hours at night when he
+longed for him, and once or twice he had cried aloud for him. But slowly
+that slipped away. He did not look often now at the fountain.
+
+There were times when his friend was almost there. One evening, kneeling
+on the floor before the fire, arranging shining soldiers in a row, he
+was aware of something that made him sharply pause and raise his head.
+He was, for the moment, alone in the room that was glowing and quivering
+now in the firelight. The faint stir and crackle of the fire, the rich
+flaming colour that rose and fell against the white ceiling might have
+been enough to make him wonder. But there was also the scent of a clump
+of blue hyacinths standing in shadow by the darkened window, and this
+scent caught him, even as the fountain had caught him, caught him with
+the stillness, the leaping fire, the twisted sense of romantic
+splendours that came, like some magician's smoke and flame, up to his
+very heart and brain. He did not turn his head, but behind him he was
+sure, there on the golden-brown rug, his friend was standing, watching
+him with his smiling eyes, his dark beard; he would be ready, at the
+least movement, to catch him up and hold him. Swiftly, Ernest Henry
+turned. There was no one there.
+
+But those moments were few now; real people were intervening. He had no
+mother, and this was doubtless the reason why his nurse darkly addressed
+him as "Poor Lamb" on many occasions; but he was, of course, at present
+unaware of his misfortune. He _had_ an aunt, and of this lady he was
+aware only too vividly. She was long and thin and black, and he would
+not have disliked her so cordially, perhaps, had he not from the very
+first been aware of the sharpness of her nose when she kissed him. Her
+nose hurt him, and so he hated her. But, as he grew, he discovered that
+this hatred was well-founded. Miss Wilberforce had not a happy way with
+children; she was nervous when she should have been bold, and secret
+when she should have been honesty itself. When Ernest Henry was the
+merest atom in a cradle, he discovered that she was afraid of him; he
+hated the shiny stuff of her dress. She wore a gold chain that--when you
+pulled it--snapped and hit your fingers. There were sharp pins at the
+back of her dress. He hated her; he was not afraid of her, and yet on
+that critical night when his friend told him of his departure, it was
+the fear of being left alone with the black cold shiny thing that
+troubled him most; she bore of all the daylight things the closest
+resemblance to the three beasts.
+
+There was, of course, his nurse, and a great deal of his time was spent
+in her company; but she had strangely little connection with his main
+problem of the relation of this, his present world, to that, his
+preceding one. She was there to answer questions, to issue commands, to
+forbid. She had the key to various cupboards--to the cupboard with
+pretty cups and jam and sugar, to the cupboard with ugly things that
+tasted horrible, things that he resisted by instinct long before they
+arrived under his nose. She also had certain sounds, of which she made
+invariable use on all occasions. One was, "Now, Master Ernest!" Another:
+"Mind-what-you're-about-now!" And, at his "Wash dat!" always
+"Oh-bother-the-boy!" She was large and square to look upon, very often
+pins were in her mouth, and the slippers that she wore within doors
+often clipclapped upon the carpet. But she was not a person; she had
+nothing to do with his progress.
+
+The person who had to do with it was, of course, his father. That night
+when his friend had left him had been, indeed, a crisis, because it was
+on that night that his father had come to him. It was not that he had
+not been aware of his father before, but he had been aware of him only
+as he had been aware of light and heat and food. Now it had become a
+definite wonder as to whether this new friend had been sent to take the
+place of the old one. Certainly the new friend had very little to do
+with all that old life of which the fountain was the door. He belonged,
+most definitely, to the new one, and everything about him--the
+delightfully mysterious tick of his gold watch, the solid, firm grasp of
+his hand, the sure security of his shoulder upon which Ernest Henry now
+gloriously rode--these things were of this world and none other.
+
+It was a different relationship, this, from any other that Ernest Henry
+had ever known, but there was no doubt at all about its pleasant
+flavour. Just as in other days he had watched for his friend's
+appearance, so now he waited for that evening hour that always brought
+his father. The door would open, the square, set figure would appear....
+Very pleasant, indeed. Meanwhile Ernest Henry was instructed that the
+right thing to say on his father's appearance was "Dada."
+
+But he knew better. His father's name was really "Damn."
+
+
+VI
+
+The days and weeks passed. There had been no sign of his friend.... Then
+the crisis came.
+
+That old wall-to-screen marathon had been achieved, and so
+contemptuously banished. There was now the great business of marching
+without aid from one end of the room to the other. This was a long
+business, and always hitherto somewhere about the middle of it Ernest
+Henry had sat down suddenly, pretending, even to himself, that his shoe
+_hurt_, or that he was bored with the game, and would prefer some other.
+
+There came, then, a beautiful spring evening. The long low evening sun
+flooded the room, and somewhere a bell was calling Christian people to
+their prayers, and somewhere else the old man with the harp, who always
+came round the Square once every week, was making beautiful music.
+
+Ernest Henry's father had taken the nurse's place for an hour, and was
+reading a _Globe_ with absorbed attention by the window; Mr.
+Wilberforce, senior, was one of London's most famous barristers, and the
+_Globe_ on this particular afternoon had a great deal to say about this
+able man's cleverness. Ernest Henry watched his father, watched the
+light, heard the bell and the harp, felt that the hour was ripe for his
+attempt.
+
+He started, and, even as he did so, was aware that, after he had
+succeeded in this great adventure, things--that is, life--would never be
+quite the same again. He knew by now every stage of the first half of
+his journey. The first instalment was defined by that picture of the
+garden and the roses and the peacocks; the second by the beginning of
+the square brown nursery table; and here there was always a swift and
+very testing temptation to cling, with a sticky hand, to the hard and
+shining corner. The third division was the end of the nursery table
+where one was again tempted to give the corner a final clutch before
+passing forth into the void. After this there was nothing, no rest, no
+possible harbour until the end.
+
+Off Ernest Henry started. He could see his father, there in the long
+distance, busied with his paper; he could see the nursery table, with
+bright-blue and red reels of cotton that nurse had left there; he could
+see a discarded railway engine that lay gaping there half-way across,
+ready to catch and trip him if he were not careful. His eyes were like
+saucers, the hissing noise came from between his teeth, his forehead
+frowned. He passed the peacock, he flung contemptuously aside the
+proffered corner of the table; he passed, as an Atlantic liner passes
+the Eddystone, the table's other end; he was on the last stretch.
+
+Then suddenly he paused. He lifted his head, caught with his eye a pink,
+round cloud that sailed against the evening blue beyond the window,
+heard the harpist, heard his father turn and exclaim, as he saw him.
+
+He knew, as he stood there, that at last the moment had come. His friend
+had returned.
+
+All the room was buzzing with it. The dolls fell in a neglected heap,
+the train on the carpet, the fire behind the fender, the reels of cotton
+that were on the table--they all knew it.
+
+His friend had returned.
+
+His impulse was, there and then, to sit down.
+
+His friend was whispering: "Come along!... Come along!... Come along!"
+He knew that, on his surrender, his father would make sounds like,
+"Well, old man, tired, eh? Bed, I suggest." He knew that bed would
+follow. Then darkness, then his friend.
+
+For an instant there was fierce battle between the old forces and the
+new. Then, with his eyes upon his father, resuming that hiss that is
+proper only to ostlers, he continued his march.
+
+He reached the wall. He caught his father's leg. He was raised on to his
+father's lap, was kissed, was for a moment triumphant; then suddenly
+burst into tears.
+
+"Why, old man, what's the matter?"
+
+But Ernest Henry could not explain. Had he but known it he had, in that
+rejection of his friend, completed the first stage of his "Pilgrimage
+from this world to the next."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ANGELINA
+
+
+I
+
+Angelina Braid, on the morning of her third birthday, woke very early.
+It would be too much to say that she knew it was her birthday, but she
+awoke, excited. She looked at the glimmering room, heard the sparrows
+beyond her windows, heard the snoring of her nurse in the large bed
+opposite her own, and lay very still, with her heart thumping like
+anything. She made no noise, however, because it was not her way to make
+a noise. Angelina Braid was the quietest little girl in all the Square.
+"You'd never meet one nigher a mouse in a week of Sundays," said her
+nurse, who was a "gay one" and liked life.
+
+It was not, however, entirely Angelina's fault that she took life
+quietly; in 21 March Square, it was exceedingly difficult to do anything
+else. Angelina's parents were in India, and she was not conscious, very
+acutely, of their existence. Every morning and evening she prayed, "God
+bless mother and father in India," but then she was not very acutely
+conscious of God either, and so her mind was apt to wander during her
+prayers.
+
+She lived with her two aunts--Miss Emmy Braid and Miss Violet Braid--in
+the smallest house in the Square. So slim was No. 21, and so ruthlessly
+squeezed between the opulent No. 20 and the stout ruddy-faced No. 22,
+that it made one quite breathless to look at it; it was exactly as
+though an old maid, driven by suffragette wildness, had been arrested by
+two of the finest possible policemen, and carried off into custody. Very
+little of any kind of wildness was there about the Misses Braid. They
+were slim, neat women, whose rather yellow faces had the flat, squashed
+look of lawn grass after a garden roller has passed over it. They
+believed in God according to the Reverend Stephen Hunt, of St.
+Matthew-in-the-Crescent--the church round the corner--but in no other
+kind of God whatever. They were not rich, and they were not poor; they
+went once a week--Fridays--to visit the poor of St. Matthew's, and
+found the poor of St. Matthew's on the whole unappreciative of their
+efforts, but that made their task the nobler. Their house was dark and
+musty, and filled with little articles left them by their grand-parents,
+their parents, and other defunct relations. They had no friendly feeling
+towards one another, but missed one another when they were separated.
+They were, both of them, as strong as horses, but very hypochondriacal,
+and Dr. Armstrong of Mulberry Place made a very pleasant little income
+out of them.
+
+I have mentioned them at length, because they had a great deal to do
+with Angelina's quiet behaviour. No. 21 was not a house that welcomed a
+child's ringing laughter. But, in any case, the Misses Braid were not
+fond of children, but only took Angelina because they had a soft spot in
+their dry hearts for their brother Jim, and in any case it would have
+been difficult to say no.
+
+Their attitude to children was that they could not understand why they
+did not instantly see things as they, their elders, saw them; but then,
+on the other hand, if an especially bright child did take a grown-up
+point of view about anything _that_ was considered "forward" and
+"conceited," so that it was really very difficult for Angelina.
+
+"It's a pity Jim's got such a dull child," Miss Violet would say. "You
+never would have expected it."
+
+"What I like about a child," said Miss Emmy, "is a little cheerfulness
+and natural spirit--not all this moping."
+
+Angelina was not, on the whole, popular.... The aunts had very little
+idea of making a house cheerful for a child. The room allotted to
+Angelina as a nursery was at the top of the house, and had once been a
+servant's bedroom. It possessed two rather grimy windows, a faded brown
+wallpaper, an old green carpet, and some very stiff, hard chairs. On one
+wall was a large map of the world, and on the other an old print of
+Romans sacking Jerusalem, a picture which frightened Angelina every
+night of her life, when the dark came and the lamp illuminated the
+writhing limbs, the falling bodies, the tottering walls. From the
+windows the Square was visible, and at the windows Angelina spent a
+great deal of her time, but her present nurse--nurses succeeded one
+another with startling frequency--objected to what she called
+"window-gazing." "Makes a child dreamy," she said; "lowers her spirits."
+
+Angelina was, naturally, a dreamy child, and no amount of nurses could
+prevent her being one. She was dreamy because her loneliness forced her
+to be so, and if her dreams were the most real part of her day to her
+that was surely the faults of her aunts. But she was not at all a quick
+child; although to-day was her third birthday she could not talk very
+well, could not pronounce her r's, and lisped in what her trail of
+nurses told her was a ridiculous fashion for so big a girl. But, then,
+she was not really a big girl; her figure was short and stumpy, her
+features plain and pale with the pallor of her first Indian year. Her
+eyes were large and black and rather fine.
+
+On this morning she lay in bed, and knew that she was excited because
+her friend had come the night before and told her that to-day would be
+an important day. Angelina clung, with a desperate tenacity, to her
+memories of everything that happened to her before her arrival on this
+unpleasant planet. Those memories now were growing faint, and they came
+to her only in flashes, in sudden twists and turns of the scene, as
+though she were surrounded by curtains and, every now and then, was
+allowed a peep through. Her friend had been with her continually at
+first, and, whilst he had been there, the old life had been real and
+visible enough; but on her second birthday he had told her that it was
+right now that she should manage by herself. Since then, he had come
+when she least expected him; sometimes when she had needed him very
+badly he had not appeared.... She never knew. At any rate, he had said
+that to-day would be important.... She lay in bed, listening to her
+nurse's snores, and waited.
+
+
+II
+
+At breakfast she knew that it was her birthday. There were presents from
+her aunts--a picture-book and a box of pencils--there was also a
+mysterious parcel. Angelina could not remember that she had ever had a
+parcel before, and the excitement of this one must be prolonged. She
+would not open it, but gazed at it, with her spoon in the air and her
+mouth wide open.
+
+"Come, Miss Angelina--what a name to give the poor lamb!--get on with
+your breakfast now, or you'll never have done. Why not open the pretty
+parcel?"
+
+"No. Do you think it is a twain?"
+
+"Say train--not twain."
+
+"Train."
+
+"No, of course not; not a thing that shape."
+
+"Oh! Do you think it's a bear?"
+
+"Maybe--maybe. Come now, get on with your bread and butter."
+
+"Don't want any more."
+
+"Get down from your chair, then. Say your grace now."
+
+"Thank God nice bweakfast, Amen."
+
+"That's right! Now open it, then."
+
+"No, not now."
+
+"Drat the child! Well, wipe your face, then."
+
+Angelina carried her parcel to the window, and then, after gazing at it
+for a long time, at last opened it. Her eyes grew wider and wider, her
+chubby fingers trembled. Nurse undid the wrappings of paper, slowly
+folded up the sheets, then produced, all naked and unashamed, a large
+rag doll.
+
+"There! There's a pretty thing for you, Miss 'Lina."
+
+She had her hand about the doll's head, and held her there, suspended.
+
+"Give her me! Give her me!" Angelina rescued her, and, with eyes
+flaming, the doll laid lengthways in her arms, tottered off to the other
+corner of the room.
+
+"Well, there's gratitude," said the nurse, "and never asking so much as
+who it's from."
+
+But nurse, aunts, all the troubles and disappointments of this world had
+vanished from Angelina's heart and soul. She had seen, at that first
+glimpse that her nurse had so rudely given her, that here at last, after
+long, long waiting, was the blessing that she had so desired. She had
+had other dolls--quite a number of them. Even now Lizzie (without an
+eye) and Rachel (rather fine in bridesmaid's attire) were leaning their
+disconsolate backs against the boarding beneath the window seat. There
+had been, besides Rachel and Lizzie, two Annies, a Mary, a May, a
+Blackamoor, a Jap, a Sailor, and a Baby in a Bath. They were now as
+though they had never been; Angelina knew with absolute certainty of
+soul, with that blending of will and desire, passion, self-sacrifice and
+absence of humour that must inevitably accompany true love that here was
+her Fate.
+
+"It's been sent you by your kind Uncle Teny," said nurse. "You'll have
+to write a nice letter and thank him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Angelina knew better. She--a name had not yet been chosen--had been
+sent to her by her friend.... He had promised her last night that this
+should be a day of days.
+
+Her aunts, appearing to receive thanks where thanks were due, darkened
+the doorway.
+
+"Good-morning, mum. Good-morning, mum. Now, Miss 'Lina, thank your kind
+aunties for their beautiful presents."
+
+She stood up, clutching the doll.
+
+"T'ank you, Auntie Vi'let; t'ank you, Auntie Em'ly--your lovely
+pwesents."
+
+"That's right, Angelina. I hope you'll use them sensibly. What's that
+she's holding, nurse?"
+
+"It's a doll Mr. Edward's sent her, mum."
+
+"What a hideous creature! Edward might have chosen something---- Time for
+her to go out, nurse, I think--now, while the sun's warm."
+
+But she did not hear. She did not know that they had gone. She sat there
+in a dreamy ecstasy rocking the red-cheeked creature in her arms,
+seeing, with her black eyes, visions and the beauty of a thousand
+worlds.
+
+
+III
+
+The name Rose was given to her. Rose had been kept, as a name, until
+some one worthy should arrive.... "Wosie Bwaid," a very good name. Her
+nakedness was clothed first in Rachel's bridesmaid's attire--alas! poor
+Rachel!--but the lace and finery did not suit those flaming red cheeks
+and beady black eyes. Rose was, there could be no question, a daughter
+of the soil; good red blood ran through her stout veins. Tess of the
+countryside, your laughing, chaffing, arms-akimbo dairymaid; no poor
+white product of the over-civilised cities. Angelina felt that the satin
+and lace were wrong; she tore them off, searched in the heaped-up
+cupboard for poor neglected Annie No. 1, found her, tore from her her
+red woollen skirt and white blouse, stretched them about Rose's portly
+body.
+
+"T'ank God for nice Wose, Amen," she said, but she meant, not God, but
+her friend. He, her friend, had never sent her anything before, and now
+that Rose had come straight from him, she must have a great deal to
+tell her about him. Nothing puzzled her more than the distressing fact
+that she wondered sometimes whether her friend was ever really coming
+again, whether any of the wonderful things that were happening on every
+side of her wouldn't suddenly one fine morning vanish altogether, and
+leave her to a dreary world of nurse, bread and milk, and the Romans
+sacking Jerusalem. She didn't, of course, put it like that; all that it
+meant to her was that stupid people and tiresome things were always
+interfering between herself and _real_ fun. Now it was time to go out,
+now to go to bed, now to eat, now to be taken downstairs into that
+horrid room where she couldn't move because things would tumble off the
+tables so ... all this prevented her own life when she would sit and
+try, and try, and remember _what_ it was all like once, and wonder why
+when once things had been so beautiful they were so ugly and
+disappointing now.
+
+Now Rose had come, and she could talk to Rose about it. "What she sees
+in that ugly old doll!" said the nurse to the housemaid. "You can take
+my word, Mary, she'll sit in that window looking down at the gardens,
+nursing that rag and just say nothing. It fair gives you the creeps ...
+left too much to herself, the poor child is. As for those old women
+downstairs, if I 'ad my way--but there! Living's living, and bread and
+butter's bread and butter!"
+
+But, of course, Angelina's heart was bursting with affection, and there
+had been, until Rose's arrival, no one upon whom she might bestow it.
+Rose might seem to the ordinary observer somewhat unresponsive. She sat
+there, whether it were tea-time, dressing-time, bed-time, always staring
+in front of her, her mouth closed, her arms, bow-shaped, standing
+stiffly away from her side, taking, it might seem, but little interest
+in her mistress's confidences. Did one give her tea she only dribbled at
+the lip; did one place upon her head a straw hat with red ribbon torn
+from poor May--once a reigning favourite--she made no effort to keep it
+upon her head. Jewels and gold could rouse no appreciation from her; she
+was sunk in a lethargy that her rose-red cheeks most shamefully belied.
+
+But Angelina had the key to her. Angelina understood that confiding
+silence, appreciated that tactful discretion, adored that complete
+submission to her will. It was true that her friend had only come once
+to her now within the space of many, many weeks, but he had sent her
+Rose. "He's coming soon, Wose--weally soon--to tell us stowies.
+Bu-ootiful ones."
+
+She sat, gazing down into the Square, and her dreams were longer and
+longer and longer.
+
+
+IV
+
+Miss Emily Braid was a softer creature than her sister, and she had,
+somewhere in her heart, some sort of affection for her niece. She made,
+now and then, little buccaneering raids upon the nursery, with the
+intention of arriving at some intimate terms with that strange animal.
+But she had no gift of ease with children; her attempts at friendliness
+were viewed by Angelina with the gravest suspicion and won no return.
+This annoyed Miss Emily, and because she was conscious that she herself
+was in reality to blame, she attacked Angelina all the more fiercely.
+"This brooding must be stopped," she said. "Really, it's most
+unhealthy."
+
+It was quite impossible for her to believe that a child of three could
+really be interested by golden sunsets, the colours of the fountain
+that was in the centre of the gardens, the soft, grey haze that clothed
+the houses on a spring evening; and when, therefore, she saw Angelina
+gazing at these things, she decided that the child was morbid. Any
+interest, however, that Angelina may have taken in her aunts before
+Rose's arrival was now reduced to less than nothing at all.
+
+"That doll that Edward gave the child," said Miss Emily to her sister,
+"is having a very bad effect on her. Makes her more moody than ever."
+
+"Such a hideous thing!" said Miss Violet. "Well, I shall take it away if
+I see much more of this nonsense."
+
+It was lucky for Rose meanwhile that she was of a healthy constitution.
+The meals, the dressing and undressing, the perpetual demands upon her
+undivided attention, the sudden rousings from her sleep, the swift
+rockings back into slumber again, the appeals for response, the abuses
+for indifference, these things would have slain within a week one of her
+more feeble sisters. But Rose was made of stern stuff, and her rosy
+cheeks were as rosy, the brightness of her eyes was undimmed. We may
+believe--and surely many harder demands are made upon our faith--that
+there did arise a very special relationship between these two. The whole
+of Angelina's heart was now devoted to Rose's service, Rose's was not
+devoted to Angelina?... And always Angelina wondered when her friend
+would return, watched for him in the dusk, awoke in the early mornings
+and listened for him, searched the Square with its trees and its
+fountain for his presence.
+
+"Wosie, when did he say he'd come next?" But Rose could not tell. There
+_were_ times when Rose's impenetrability was, to put it at its mildest,
+aggravating.
+
+Meanwhile, the situation with Aunt Emily grew serious. Angelina was
+aware that Aunt Emily disliked Rose, and her mouth now shut very tightly
+and her eyes glared defiance when she thought of this, but her
+difference with her aunt went more deeply than this. She had known for a
+long, long time that both her aunts would stop her "dreaming" if they
+could. Did she tell them about her friend, about the kind of pictures of
+which the fountain reminded her, about the vivid, lively memories that
+the tree with the pink flowers--the almond tree--in the corner of the
+gardens--you could just see it from the nursery window--called to her
+mind; she knew that she would be punished--put in the corner, or even
+sent to bed. She did not think these things out consecutively in her
+mind, but she knew that the dark room downstairs, the dark passages, the
+stillness and silence of it all frightened her, and that it was always
+out of these things that her aunts rose.
+
+At night when she lay in bed with Rosie clasped tightly to her, she
+whispered endlessly about the gardens, the fountain, the barrel organs,
+the dogs, the other children in the Square--she had names of her own for
+all these things--and him, who belonged, of course, to the world
+outside.... Then her whisper would sink, and she would warn Rose about
+the rooms downstairs, the dining-room with the black chairs, the soft
+carpet, and the stuffed birds in glass cases--for these things, too, she
+had names. Here was the hand of death and destruction, the land of
+crooked stairs, sudden dark doors, mysterious bells and drippings of
+water--out of all this her aunts came....
+
+Unfortunately it was just at this moment that Miss Emily Braid decided
+that it was time to take her niece in hand. "The child's three, Violet,
+and very backward for her age. Why, Mrs. Mancaster's little girl, who's
+just Angelina's age, can talk fluently, and is beginning with her
+letters. We don't want Jim to be disappointed in the child when he comes
+home next year." It would be difficult to determine how much of this was
+true; Miss Emily was aggravated and, although she would never have
+confessed to so trivial a matter, the perpetual worship of Rose--"the
+ugliest thing you ever saw"--was irritating her. The days followed,
+then, when Angelina was constantly in her aunt's company, and to neither
+of them was this companionship pleasant.
+
+"You must ask me questions, child. How are you ever going to learn to
+talk properly if you don't ask me questions?"
+
+"Yes, auntie."
+
+"What's that over there?"
+
+"Twee."
+
+"Say tree, not twee."
+
+"Tree."
+
+"Now look at me. Put that wretched doll down.... Now.... That's right.
+Now tell me what you've been doing this morning."
+
+"We had bweakfast--nurse said I--(long pause for breath)--was dood
+girl; Auntie Vi'let came; I dwew with my pencil."
+
+"Say 'drew,' not 'dwew.'"
+
+"Drew."
+
+All this was very exhausting to Aunt Emily. She was no nearer the
+child's heart.... Angelina maintained an impenetrable reserve. Old maids
+have much time amongst the unsatisfied and sterile monotonies of their
+life--this is only true of _some_ old maids; there are very delightful
+ones--to devote to fancies and microscopic imitations. It was
+astonishing now how largely in Miss Emily Braid's life loomed the figure
+of Rose, the rag doll.
+
+"If it weren't for that wretched doll, I believe one could get some
+sense out of the child."
+
+"I think it's a mistake, nurse, to let Miss Angelina play with that doll
+so much."
+
+"Well, mum, it'd be difficult to take it from her now. She's that
+wrapped in it." ... And so she was.... Rose stood to Angelina for so
+much more than Rose.
+
+"Oh, Wosie, _when_ will he come again.... P'r'aps never. And I'm
+forgetting. I can't remember at all about the funny water and the twee
+with the flowers, and all of it. Wosie, _you_ 'member--Whisper." And
+Rose offered in her own mysterious, taciturn way the desired comfort.
+
+And then, of course, the crisis arrived. I am sorry about this part of
+the story. Of all the invasions of Aunt Emily, perhaps none were more
+strongly resented by Angelina than the appropriation of the afternoon
+hour in the gardens. Nurse had been an admirable escort because, as a
+lady of voracious appetite for life with, at the moment, but slender
+opportunities for satisfying it, she was occupied alertly with the
+possible vision of any male person driven by a similar desire. Her eye
+wandered; the hand to which Angelina clung was an abstract, imperceptive
+hand--Angelina and Rose were free to pursue their own train of
+fancy--the garden was at their service. But with Aunt Emily how
+different! Aunt Emily pursued relentlessly her educational tactics. Her
+thin, damp, black glove gripped Angelina's hand; her eyes (they had a
+"peering" effect, as though they were always searching for something
+beyond their actual vision) wandered aimlessly about the garden, looking
+for educational subjects. And so up and down the paths they went,
+Angelina trotting, with Rose clasped to her breast, walking just a
+little faster than she conveniently could.
+
+Miss Emily disliked the gardens, and would have greatly preferred that
+nurse should have been in charge, but this consciousness of trial
+inflamed her sense of merit. There came a lovely spring afternoon; the
+almond tree was in full blossom; a cloud of pink against the green
+hedge, clumps of daffodils rippled with little shudders of delight, even
+the statues of "Sir Benjamin Bundle" and "General Sir Robinson Cleaver"
+seemed to unbend a little from their stiff angularity. There were many
+babies and nurses, and children laughing and crying and shouting, and a
+sky of mild forget-me-not blue smiled protectingly upon them. Angelina's
+eyes were fixed upon the fountain, which flashed and sparkled in the air
+with a happy freedom that seemed to catch all the life of the garden
+within its heart. Angelina felt how immensely she and Rose might have
+enjoyed all this had they been alone. Her eyes gazed longingly at the
+almond tree; she wished that she might go off on a voyage of discovery
+for, on this day of all days, did its shadow seem to hold some pressing,
+intimate invitation. "I shall get back--I shall get back.... He'll come
+and take me; I'll remember all the old things," she thought. She and
+Rose--what a time they might have if only---- She glanced up at her aunt.
+
+"Look at that nice little boy, Angelina," Aunt Emily said. "See how
+good----" But at that very instant that same playful breeze that had been
+ruffling the daffodils, and sending shimmers through the fountain
+decided that now was the moment to catch Miss Emily's black hat at one
+corner, prove to her that the pin that should have fastened it to her
+hair was loose, and swing the whole affair to one side. Up went her
+hands; she gave a little cry of dismay.
+
+Instantly, then, Angelina was determined. She did not suppose that her
+freedom would be for long, nor did she hope to have time to reach the
+almond tree; but her small, stumpy legs started off down the path almost
+before she was aware of it. She started, and Rose bumped against her as
+she ran. She heard behind her cries; she saw in front of her the almond
+tree, and then coming swiftly towards her a small boy with a hoop....
+She stopped, hesitated, and then fell. The golden afternoon, with all
+its scents and sounds, passed on above her head. She was conscious that
+a hand was on her shoulder, she was lifted and shaken. Tears trickling
+down the side of her nose were checked by little points of gravel. She
+was aware that the little boy with the hoop had stopped and said
+something. Above her, very large and grim, was her aunt. Some bird on a
+tree was making a noise like the drawing of a cork. (She had heard her
+nurse once draw one.) In her heart was utter misery. The gravel hurt her
+face, the almond tree was farther away than ever; she was captured more
+completely than she had ever been before.
+
+"Oh, you naughty little girl--you _naughty_ girl," she heard her aunt
+say; and then, after her, the bird like a cork. She stood there, her
+mouth tightly shut, the marks of tears drying to muddy lines on her
+face.
+
+She was dragged off. Aunt Emily was furious at the child's silence; Aunt
+Emily was also aware that she must have looked what she would call "a
+pretty figure of fun" with her hat askew, her hair blown "anyway," and a
+small child of three escaping from her charge as fast as she could go.
+
+Angelina was dragged across the street, in through the squeezed front
+door, over the dark stairs, up into the nursery. Miss Violet's voice
+was heard calling, "Is that you, Emily? Tea's been waiting some time."
+
+It was nurse's afternoon out, and the nursery was grimly empty; but
+through the open, window came the evening sounds of the happy Square.
+Miss Emily placed Angelina in the middle of the room. "Now say you're
+sorry, you wicked child!" she exclaimed breathlessly.
+
+"Sowwy," came slowly from Angelina. Then she looked down at her doll.
+
+"Leave that doll alone. Speak as though you were sorry."
+
+"I'm velly sowwy."
+
+"What made you run away like that?" Angelina said nothing. "Come, now!
+Didn't you know it was very wicked?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, why did you do it, then?"
+
+"Don't know."
+
+"Don't say 'don't know' like that. You must have had some reason. Don't
+look at the doll like that. Put the doll down." But this Angelina would
+not do. She clung to Rose with a ferocious tenacity. I do not think that
+one must blame Miss Emily for her exasperation. That doll had had a
+large place in her mind for many weeks. It were as though she, Miss
+Emily Braid, had been personally, before the world, defied by a rag
+doll. Her temper, whose control had never been her strongest quality, at
+the vision of the dirty, obstinate child before her, at the thought of
+the dancing, mocking gardens behind her, flamed into sudden, trembling
+rage.
+
+She stepped forward, snatched Rose from Angelina's arms, crossed the
+room and had pushed the doll, with a fierce, energetic action, as though
+there was no possible time to be lost, into the fire. She snatched the
+poker, and with trembling hands pressed the doll down. There was a great
+flare of flame; Rose lifted one stolid arm to the gods for vengeance,
+then a stout leg in a last writhing agony. Only then, when it was all
+concluded, did Aunt Emily hear behind her the little half-strangled cry
+which made her turn. The child was standing, motionless, with so old, so
+desperate a gaze of despair that it was something indecent for any human
+being to watch.
+
+
+V
+
+Nurse came in from her afternoon. She had heard nothing of the recent
+catastrophe, and, as she saw Angelina sitting quietly in front of the
+fire she thought that she had had her tea, and was now "dreaming" as she
+so often did. Once, however, as she was busy in another part of the
+room, she caught half the face in the light of the fire. To any one of a
+more perceptive nature that glimpse must have seemed one of the most
+tragic things in the world. But this was a woman of "a sensible, hearty"
+nature; moreover, her "afternoon" had left her with happy reminiscences
+of her own charms and their effect on the opposite sex.
+
+She had, however, her moment.... She had left the room to fetch
+something. Returning she noticed that the dusk had fallen, and was about
+to switch on the light when, in the rise and fall of the firelight,
+something that she saw made her pause. She stood motionless by the door.
+
+Angelina had turned in her chair; her eyes were gazing, with rapt
+attention, toward the purple dusk by the window. She was listening.
+Nurse, as she had often assured her friends, "was not cursed with
+imagination," but now fear held her so that she could not stir nor move
+save that her hand trembled against the wall paper. The chatter of the
+fire, the shouts of some boys in the Square, the ringing of the bell of
+St. Matthew's for evensong, all these things came into the room.
+Angelina, still listening, at last smiled; then, with a little sigh, sat
+back in her chair.
+
+"Heavens! Miss 'Lina! What were you doing there? How you frightened me!"
+Angelina left her chair, and went across to the window. "Auntie Emily,"
+she said, "put Wosie into the fire, she did. But Wosie's saved.... He's
+just come and told me."
+
+"Lord, Miss 'Lina, how you talk!" The room was right again now just as,
+a moment before, it had been wrong. She switched on the electric light,
+and, in the sudden blaze, caught the last flicker in the child's eyes of
+some vision, caught, held, now surrendered.
+
+"'Tis company she's wanting, poor lamb," she thought, "all this being
+alone.... Fair gives one the creeps."
+
+She heard with relief the opening of the door. Miss Emily came in,
+hesitated a moment, then walked over to her niece. In her hands she
+carried a beautiful doll with flaxen hair, long white robes, and the
+assured confidence of one who is spotless and knows it.
+
+"There, Angelina," she said. "I oughtn't to have burnt your doll. I'm
+sorry. Here's a beautiful new one."
+
+Angelina took the spotless one; then with a little thrust of her hand
+she pushed the half-open window wider apart. Very deliberately she
+dropped the doll (at whose beauty she had not glanced) out, away, down
+into the Square.
+
+The doll, white in the dusk, tossed and whirled, and spun finally, a
+white speck far below, and struck the pavement.
+
+Then Angelina turned, and with a little sigh of satisfaction looked at
+her aunt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+BIM ROCHESTER
+
+
+I
+
+This is the story of Bim Rochester's first Odyssey. It is a story that
+has Bim himself for the only proof of its veracity, but he has never, by
+a shadow of a word, faltered in his account of it, and has remained so
+unamazed at some of the strange aspects in it that it seems almost an
+impertinence that we ourselves should show any wonder. Benjamin (Bim)
+Rochester was probably the happiest little boy in March Square, and he
+was happy in spite of quite a number of disadvantages.
+
+A word about the Rochester family is here necessary. They inhabited the
+largest house in March Square--the large grey one at the corner by Lent
+Street--and yet it could not be said to be large enough for them. Mrs.
+Rochester was a black-haired woman with flaming cheeks and a most
+untidy appearance. Her mother had been a Spaniard, and her father an
+English artist, and she was very much the child of both of them. Her
+hair was always coming down, her dress unfastened, her shoes untied, her
+boots unbuttoned. She rushed through life with an amazing shattering
+vigour, bearing children, flinging them into an already overcrowded
+nursery, rushing out to parties, filling the house with crowds of
+friends, acquaintances, strangers, laughing, chattering, singing, never
+out of temper, never serious, never, for a moment, to be depended on.
+Her husband, a grave, ball-faced man, spent most of his days in the City
+and at his club, but was fond of his wife, and admired what he called
+her "energy." "My wife's splendid," he would say to his friends, "knows
+the whole of London, I believe. The _people_ we have in our house!" He
+would watch, sometimes, the strange, noisy parties, and then would
+retire to bridge at his club with a little sigh of pride.
+
+Meanwhile, upstairs in the nursery there were children of all ages, and
+two nurses did their best to grapple with them. The nurses came and
+went, and always, after the first day or two, the new nurse would give
+in to the conditions, and would lead, at first with amusement and a
+rather excited sense of adventure, afterwards with a growing feeling of
+dirt and discomfort, a tangled and helter-skelter existence. Some of the
+children were now at school, but Lucy, a girl ten years of age, was a
+supercilious child who rebelled against the conditions of her life, but
+was too idle and superior to attempt any alteration of them. After her
+there were Roger, Dorothy, and Robert. Then came Bim, four years of age
+a fortnight ago, and, last of all, Timothy, an infant of nine months.
+With the exception of Lucy and Bim they were exceedingly noisy children.
+Lucy should have passed her days in the schoolroom under the care of
+Miss Agg, a melancholy and hope-abandoned spinster, and, during lesson
+hours, there indeed she was. But in the schoolroom she had no one to
+impress with her amazing wisdom and dignity. "Poor mummy," as she always
+thought of her mother, was quite unaware of her habits or movements, and
+Miss Agg was unable to restrain either the one or the other, so Lucy
+spent most of her time in the nursery, where she sat, calm and
+collected, in the midst of confusion that could have "given old Babel
+points and won easy." She was reverenced by all the younger children
+for her sedate security, but by none of them so surely and so
+magnificently as Bim. Bim, because he was quieter than the other
+children, claimed for his opinions and movements the stronger interest.
+
+His nurses called him "deep," "although for a deep child I must say he's
+'appy."
+
+Both his depth and his happiness were at Lucy's complete disposal. The
+people who saw him in the Square called him "a jolly little boy," and,
+indeed, his appearance of gravity was undermined by the curl of his
+upper lip and a dimple in the middle of his left cheek, so that he
+seemed to be always at the crisis of a prolonged chuckle. One very
+rarely heard him laugh out loud, and his sturdy, rather fat body was
+carried rather gravely, and he walked contemplatively as though he were
+thinking something out. He would look at you, too, very earnestly when
+you spoke to him, and would wait a little before he answered you, and
+then would speak slowly as though he were choosing his words with care.
+And yet he was, in spite of these things, really a "jolly little boy."
+His "jolliness" was there in point of view, in the astounding interest
+he found in anything and everything, in his refusal to be upset by any
+sort of thing whatever.
+
+But his really unusual quality was his mixture of stolid English
+matter-of-fact with an absolutely unbridled imagination. He would
+pursue, day by day, week after week, games, invented games of his own,
+that owed nothing, either for their inception or their execution, to any
+one else. They had their origin for the most part in stray sentences
+that he had overheard from his elders, but they also arose from his own
+private and personal experiences--experiences which were as real to him
+as going to the dentist or going to the pantomime were to his brothers
+and sisters. There was, for instance, a gentleman of whom he always
+spoke of as Mr. Jack. This friend no one had ever seen, but Bim quoted
+him frequently. He did not, apparently, see him very often now, but at
+one time when he had been quite a baby Mr. Jack had been always there.
+Bim explained, to any one who cared to listen, that Mr. Jack belonged to
+all the Other Time which he was now in very serious danger of
+forgetting, and when, at that point, he was asked with condescending
+indulgence, "I suppose you mean fairies, dear!" he always shook his head
+scornfully and said he meant nothing of the kind, Mr. Jack was as real
+as mother, and, indeed, a great deal "realer," because Mrs. Rochester
+was, in the course of her energetic career, able to devote only
+"whirlwind" visits to her "dear, darling" children.
+
+When the afternoon was spent in the gardens in the middle of the Square,
+Bim would detach himself from his family and would be found absorbed in
+some business of his own which he generally described as "waiting for
+Mr. Jack."
+
+"Not the sort of child," said Miss Agg, who had strong views about
+children being educated according to practical and common-sense ideas,
+"not the sort of child that one would expect nonsense from." It may be
+quite safely asserted that never, in her very earliest years, had Miss
+Agg been guilty of any nonsense of the sort.
+
+But it was not Miss Agg's contempt for his experiences that worried Bim.
+He always regarded that lady with an amused indifference. "She _bothers_
+so," he said once to Lucy. "Do you think she's happy with us, Lucy?"
+
+"P'r'aps. I'm sure it doesn't matter."
+
+"I suppose she'd go away if she wasn't," he concluded, and thought no
+more about her.
+
+No, the real grief in his heart was that Lucy, the adored, the wonderful
+Lucy, treated his assertions with contempt.
+
+"But, Bim, don't be such a silly baby. You know you can't have seen him.
+Nurse was there and a lot of us, and _we_ didn't."
+
+"I did though."
+
+"But, Bim----"
+
+"Can't help it. He used to come lots and lots."
+
+"You _are_ a silly! You're getting too old now----"
+
+"I'm _not_ a silly!"
+
+"Yes, you are."
+
+"I'm not!"
+
+"Oh, well, of course, if you're going to be a naughty baby."
+
+Bim was nearer tears on these occasions than on any other in all his
+mortal life. His adoration of Lucy was the foundation-stone of his
+existence, and she accepted it with a lofty assumption of indifference;
+but very sharply would she have missed it had it been taken from her,
+and in long after years she was to look back upon that love of his and
+wonder that she could have accepted it so lightly; Bim found in her
+gravity and assurance all that he demanded of his elders. Lucy was never
+at a loss for an answer to any question, and Bim believed all that she
+told him.
+
+"Where's China, Lucy?"
+
+"Oh, don't bother, Bim."
+
+"No, but _where_ is it?"
+
+"What a nuisance you are! It's near Africa."
+
+"Where Uncle Alfred is?"
+
+"Yes, just there."
+
+"But _is_ Uncle Alfred in--China?"
+
+"No, silly, of course not."
+
+"Well, then----"
+
+"I didn't say China was in Africa. I said it was near."
+
+"Oh! I see. Uncle Alfred could just go in the train?"
+
+"Yes, of course."
+
+"Oh! I see. P'r'aps he will."
+
+But, for the most part, Bim, realising that Lucy "didn't want to be
+bothered," pursued his life alone. Through all the turmoil and disorder
+of that tempestuous nursery he gravely went his way, at one moment
+fighting lions and tigers, at another being nurse on her afternoon out
+(this was a truly astonishing adventure composed of scraps flung to him
+from nurse's conversational table and including many incidents that were
+far indeed from any nurse's experience), or again, he would be his
+mother giving a party, and, in the course of this, a great deal of food
+would be eaten, his favourite dishes, treacle pudding and cottage pie,
+being always included.
+
+With the exception of his enthusiasm for Lucy he was no sentimentalist.
+He hated being kissed, he did not care very greatly for Roger and
+Dorothy and Robert, and regarded them as nothing but nuisances when they
+interfered with his games or compelled him to join in theirs.
+
+And now this is the story of his Odyssey.
+
+
+II
+
+It happened on a wet April afternoon. The morning had been fine, a
+golden morning with the scent in the air of the showers that had fallen
+during the night. Then, suddenly, after midday, the rain came down,
+splashing on to the shining pavements as it fell, beating on to the
+windows and then running, in little lines, on to the ledges and falling
+from there in slow, heavy drops. The sky was black, the statues in the
+garden dejected, the almond tree beaten, all the little paths running
+with water, and on the garden seats the rain danced like a live thing.
+
+The children--Lucy, Roger, Dorothy, Robert, Bim, and Timothy--were, of
+course, in the nursery. The nurse was toasting her toes on the fender
+and enjoying immensely that story by Mrs. Henry Wood, entitled "The
+Shadow of Ashlydyat." It is entirely impossible to present any adequate
+idea of the confusion and bizarrerie of that nursery. One must think of
+the most confused aspect of human life that one has ever known--say, a
+Suffrage attack upon the Houses of Parliament, or a Channel steamer on a
+Thursday morning, and then of the next most confused aspect. Then one
+must place them together and confess defeat. Mrs. Rochester was not, as
+I have said, very frequently to be found in her children's nursery, but
+she managed, nevertheless, to pervade the house, from cellar to garret,
+with her spirit. Toys were everywhere--dolls and trains and soldiers,
+bricks and puzzles and animals, cardboard boxes, articles of feminine
+attire, a zinc bath, two cats, a cage with white mice, a pile of books
+resting in a dazzling pyramid on the very edge of the table, two glass
+jars containing minute fish of the new variety, and a bowl with
+goldfish. There were many other things, forgotten by me.
+
+Lucy, her pigtails neatly arranged, sat near the window and pretended to
+be reading that fascinating story, "The Pillars of the House." I say
+pretending, because Lucy did not care about reading at any time, and
+especially disliked the works of Charlotte Mary Yonge, but she thought
+that it looked well that she and nurse should be engaged upon literature
+whilst the rest of the world rioted and gambolled their time away. There
+was no one who at the moment could watch and admire her fine spirit, but
+you never knew who might come in.
+
+The rioting and gambolling consisted in the attempts of Robert, Dorothy,
+and Roger, to give a realistic presentation to an audience of one,
+namely, the infant Timothy, of the life of the Red Indians and their
+Squaws. Underneath the nursery table, with a tablecloth, some chairs and
+a concertina, they were presenting an admirable and entirely engrossing
+performance.
+
+Bim, under the window and quite close to Lucy, was giving a party. He
+had possessed himself of some of Dorothy's dolls' tea things, he had
+begged a sponge cake from nurse, and could be heard breaking from time
+to time into such sentences as, "Do have a little more tweacle pudding,
+Mrs. Smith. It's the best tweacle," and, "It's a nice day, isn't it!"
+but he was sorely interrupted by the noisy festivities of the Indians
+who broke, frequently, into realistic cries of "Oh! Roger, you're
+pulling my hair," or "I won't play if you don't look out!"
+
+It may be that these interruptions disturbed the actuality of Bim's
+festivities, or it may be that the rattling of the rain upon the window
+panes diverted his attention. Once he broke into a chuckle. "Isn't they
+banging on the window, Lucy?" he said, but she was, it appeared, too
+deeply engaged to answer him. He found that, in a moment of abstraction,
+he had eaten the whole of the sponge cake, so that it was obvious that
+the party was over. "Good-bye, Mrs. Smith. It was really nice of you to
+come. Good-bye, dear, Mrs. ---- I think the wain almost isn't coming
+now."
+
+He said farewell to them all and climbed upon the window seat. Here,
+gazing down into the Square, he saw that the rain was stopping, and, on
+the farther side, above the roofs of the houses, a little splash of gold
+had crept into the grey. He watched the gold, heard the rain coming more
+slowly; at first, "spatter-spatter-spatter," then, "spatter--spatter."
+Then one drop very slowly after another drop. Then he saw that the sun
+from somewhere far away had found out the wet paths in the garden, and
+was now stealing, very secretly, along them. Soon it would strike the
+seat, and then the statue of the funny fat man in all his clothes, and
+then, perhaps, the fountain. He was unhappy a little, and he did not
+know why: he was conscious, perhaps, of the untidy, noisy room behind
+him, of his sister Dorothy who, now a Squaw of a quite genuine and
+realistic kind, was crying at the top of her voice: "I don't care. I
+will have it if I want to. You're _not_ to, Roger," and of Timothy, his
+baby brother, who, moved by his sister's cries, howled monotonously,
+persistently, hopelessly.
+
+"Oh, give over, do, Miss Dorothy!" said the nurse, raising her eye for a
+moment from her book. "Why can't you be quiet?"
+
+Outside the world was beginning to shine and glitter, inside it was all
+horrid and noisy. He sighed a little, he wanted to express in some way
+his feelings. He looked at Lucy and drew closer to her. She had beside
+her a painted china mug which one of her uncles had brought her from
+Russia; she had stolen some daffodils from her mother's room downstairs
+and now was arranging them. This painted mug was one of her most valued
+possessions, and Bim himself thought it, with its strange red and brown
+figures running round it, the finest thing in all the world.
+
+"Lucy," he said. "Do you s'pose if you was going to jump all the way
+down to the street and wasn't afraid that p'r'aps your legs wouldn't get
+broken?"
+
+He was not, in reality, greatly interested in the answer to his
+question, but the important thing always with Lucy was first to enchain
+her attention. He had learnt, long ago, that to tell her that he loved
+her, to invite tenderness from her in return, was to ask for certain
+rebuff--he always began his advances then in this roundabout manner.
+
+"_What do_ you think, Lucy?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. How can I tell? Don't bother."
+
+It was then that Bim felt what was, for him, a very rare sensation. He
+was irritated.
+
+"I don't bovver," he said, with a cross look in the direction of his
+brother and sister Rochesters. "No, but, Lucy, s'pose some one--nurse,
+s'pose--_did_ fall down into the street and broke all her legs and arms,
+she wouldn't be dead, would she?"
+
+"You silly little boy, of course not."
+
+He looked at Lucy, saw the frown upon her forehead, and felt suddenly
+that all his devotion to her was wasted, that she didn't want him, that
+nobody wanted him--now when the sun was making the garden glitter like a
+jewel and the fountain to shine like a sword.
+
+He felt in his throat a hard, choking lump. He came closer to his
+sister.
+
+"You might pay 'tention, Lucy," he said plaintively.
+
+Lucy broke a daffodil stalk viciously. "Go and talk to the others," she
+said. "I haven't time for you."
+
+The tears were hot in his eyes and anger was in his heart--anger bred of
+the rain, of the noise, of the confusion.
+
+"You _are_ howwid," he said slowly.
+
+"Well, go away, then, if I'm horrid," she pushed with her hand at his
+knee. "I didn't ask you to come here."
+
+Her touch infuriated him; he kicked and caught a very tender part of her
+calf.
+
+"Oh! You little beast!" She came to him, leant for a moment across him,
+then slapped his cheek.
+
+The pain, the indignity, and, above all, a strange confused love for his
+sister that was near to passionate rage, let loose all the devils that
+owned Bim for their habitation.
+
+He did three things: He screamed aloud, he bent forward and bit Lucy's
+hand hard, he seized Lucy's wonderful Russian mug and dashed it to the
+ground. He then stood staring at the shattered fragments.
+
+
+III
+
+There followed, of course, confusion. Nurse started up. "The Shadow of
+Ashlydyat" descended into the ashes, the children rushed eagerly from
+beneath the table to the centre of hostilities.
+
+But there were no hostilities. Lucy and Bim were, both of them, utterly
+astonished, Lucy, as she looked at the scattered mug, was, indeed,
+sobbing, but absent-mindedly--her thoughts were elsewhere. Her
+thoughts, in fact, were with Bim. She realised suddenly that never
+before had he lost his temper with her; she was aware that his affection
+had been all this time of value to her, of much more value, indeed, than
+the stupid old mug. She bent down--still absent-mindedly sobbing--and
+began to pick up the pieces. She was really astonished--being a dry and
+rather hard little girl--at her affection for Bim.
+
+The nurse seized on the unresisting villain of the piece and shook him.
+"You _naughty_ little boy! To go and break your sister's beautiful mug.
+It's your horrid temper that'll be the ruin of you, mark my words, as
+I'm always telling you." (Bim had never been known to lose his temper
+before.) "Yes, it will. You see, you naughty boy. And all the other
+children as good as gold and quiet as lambs, and you've got to go and do
+this. You shall stand in the corner all tea-time, and not a bite shall
+you have." Here Bim began, in a breathless, frightened way, to sob.
+"Yes, well you may. Never mind, Miss Lucy, I dare say your uncle will
+bring you another." Here she became conscious of an attentive and deeply
+interested audience. "Now, children, time to get ready for tea. Run
+along, Miss Dorothy, now. What a nuisance you all are, to be sure."
+
+They were removed from the scene. Bim was placed in the corner with his
+face to the wall. He was aghast; no words can give, at all, any idea of
+how dumbly aghast he was. What possessed him? What, in an instant of
+time, had leapt down from the clouds, had sprung up from the Square and
+seized him? Between his amazed thoughts came little surprised sobs. But
+he had not abandoned himself to grief--he was too sternly set upon the
+problem of reparation. Something must be done, and that quickly.
+
+The great thought in his mind was that he must replace the mug. He had
+not been very often in the streets beyond the Square, but upon certain
+occasions he had seen their glories, and he knew that there had been
+shops and shops and shops. Quite close to him, upon a shelf, was his
+money-box, a squat, ugly affair of red tin, into whose large mouth he
+had been compelled to force those gifts that kind relations had
+bestowed. There must be now quite a fortune there--enough to buy many
+mugs. He could not himself open it, but he did not doubt that the man
+in the shop would do that for him.
+
+Not for many more moments would he be left alone. His hat was lying on
+the table; he seized that and his money-box, and was out on the landing.
+
+The rest is _his_ story. I cannot, as I have already said, vouch for the
+truth of it. At first, fortune was on his side. There seemed to be no
+one about the house. He went down the wide staircase without making any
+sound; in the hall he stopped for a moment because he heard voices, but
+no one came. Then with both hands, and standing on tiptoe, he turned the
+lock of the door, and was outside.
+
+The Square was bathed in golden sun, a sun, the stronger for his
+concealment, but tempered, too, with the fine gleam that the rain had
+left. Never before had Bim been outside that door alone; he was aware
+that this was a very tremendous adventure. The sky was a washed and
+delicate purple, and behold! on the high railings, a row of sparrows
+were chattering. Voices were cold and clear, echoing, as it seemed,
+against the straight, grey walls of the houses, and all the trees in the
+garden glistened with their wet leaves shining with gold; there seemed
+to be, too, a dim veil of smoke that was homely and comfortable.
+
+It is not usual to see a small boy of four alone in a London square, but
+Bim met, at first, no one except a messenger boy, who stopped and looked
+after him. At the corner of the Square--just out of the Square so that
+it might not shame its grandeur--was a fruit and flower shop, and this
+shop was the entrance to a street that had much life and bustle about
+it. Here Bim paused with his money-box clasped very tightly to him. Then
+he made a step or two and was instantly engulfed, it seemed, in a
+perfect whirl of men and women, of carts and bicycles, of voices and
+cries and screams; there were lights of every colour, and especially one
+far above his head that came and disappeared and came again with
+terrifying wizardry.
+
+He was, quite suddenly, and as it were, by the agency of some outside
+person, desperately frightened. It was a new terror, different from
+anything that he had known before. It was as though a huge giant had
+suddenly lifted him up by the seat of his breeches, or a witch had
+transplanted him on to her broomstick and carried him off. It was as
+unusual as that.
+
+His under lip began to quiver, and he knew that presently he would be
+crying. Then, as he always did, when something unusual occurred to him,
+he thought of "Mr. Jack." At this point, when you ask him what happened,
+he always says: "Oh! He came, you know--came walking along--like he
+always did."
+
+"Was he just like other people, Bim?"
+
+"Yes, just. With a beard, you know--just like he always was."
+
+"Yes, but what sort of things did he wear?" "Oh, just ord'nary things,
+like you." There was no sense of excitement or wonder to be got out of
+him. It was true that Mr. Jack hadn't shown himself for quite a long
+time, but that, Bim felt, was natural enough. "He'll come less and
+seldomer and seldomer as you get big, you know. It was just at first,
+when one was very little and didn't know one's way about--just to help
+babies not to be frightened. Timothy would tell you only he won't. Then
+he comes only a little--just at special times like this was."
+
+Bim told you this with a slightly bored air, as though it were silly of
+you not to know, and really his air of certainty made an incredulous
+challenge a difficult thing. On the present occasion Mr. Jack was just
+there, in the middle of the crowd, smiling and friendly. He took Bim's
+hand, and, "Of course," Bim said, "there didn't have to be any
+'splaining. _He_ knew what I wanted." True or not, I like to think of
+them, in the evening air, serenely safe and comfortable, and in any
+case, it was surely strange that if, as one's common sense compels one
+to suppose, Bim were all alone in that crowd, no one wondered or stopped
+him nor asked him where his home was. At any rate, I have no opinions on
+the subject. Bim says that, at once, they found themselves out of the
+crowd in a quiet, little "dinky" street, as he called it, a street that,
+in his description of it, answered to nothing that I can remember in
+this part of the world. His account of it seems to present a dark,
+rather narrow place, with overhanging roofs and swinging signs, and
+nobody, he says, at all about, but a church with a bell, and outside one
+shop a row of bright-coloured clothes hanging. At any rate, here Bim
+found the place that he wanted. There was a little shop with steps down
+into it and a tinkling bell which made a tremendous noise when you
+pushed the old oak door. Inside there was every sort of thing. Bim lost
+himself here in the ecstasy of his description, lacking also names for
+many of the things that he saw. But there was a whole suit of shining
+armour, and there were jewels, and old brass trays, and carpets, and a
+crocodile, which Bim called a "crodocile." There was also a friendly old
+man with a white beard, and over everything a lovely smell, which Bim
+said was like "roast potatoes" and "the stuff mother has in a bottle in
+her bedwoom."
+
+Bim could, of course, have stayed there for ever, but Mr. Jack reminded
+him of a possibly anxious family. "There, is that what you're after?"
+he said, and, sure enough, there on a shelf, smiling and eager to be
+bought, was a mug exactly like the one that Bim had broken.
+
+There was then the business of paying for it, the money-box was produced
+and opened by the old man with "a shining knife," and Bim was gravely
+informed that the money found in the box was exactly the right amount.
+Bim had been, for a moment, in an agony of agitation lest he should have
+too little, but as he told us, "There was all Uncle Alfred's Christmas
+money, and what mother gave me for the tooth, and that silly lady with
+the green dress who _would_ kiss me." So, you see, there must have been
+an awful amount.
+
+Then they went, Bim clasping his money-box in one hand and the mug in
+the other. The mug was wrapped in beautiful blue paper that smelt, as we
+were all afterwards to testify, of dates and spices. The crocodile
+flapped against the wall, the bell tinkled, and the shop was left behind
+them. "Most at once," Bim said they were by the fruit shop again; he
+knew that Mr. Jack was going, and he had a sudden most urgent longing to
+go with him, to stay with him, to be with him always. He wanted to cry;
+he felt dreadfully unhappy, but all of his thanks, his strange desires,
+that he could bring out was, in a quavering voice, trying hard, you
+understand, not to cry, "Mr. Jack. Oh! Mr.----" and his friend was gone.
+
+
+IV
+
+He trotted home; with every step his pride increased. What would Lucy
+say? And dim, unrealised, but forming, nevertheless, the basis for the
+whole of his triumph, was his consciousness that she who had scoffed,
+derided, at his "Mr. Jack," should now so absolutely benefit by him.
+This was bringing together, at last, the two of them.
+
+His nurse, in a fine frenzy of agitation, met him. Her relief at his
+safety swallowed her anger. She could only gasp at him. "Well, Master
+Bim, and a nice state---- Oh, dear! to think; wherever----"
+
+On the doorstep he forced his nurse to pause, and, turning, looked at
+the gardens now in shadow of spun gold, with the fountain blue as the
+sky. He nodded his head with satisfaction. It had been a splendid time.
+It would be a very long while, he knew, before he was allowed out again
+like that. Yes. He clasped the mug tightly, and the door closed behind
+him.
+
+I don't know that there is anything more to say. There were the empty
+money-box and the mug. There was Bim's unhesitating and unchangeable
+story. There _is_ a shop, just behind the Square, where they have some
+Russian crockery. But Bim alone!
+
+_I_ don't know.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+NANCY ROSS
+
+
+I
+
+Mr. Munty Ross's house was certainly the smartest in March Square; No.
+14, where the Duchess of Crole lived, was shabby in comparison. Very
+often you may see a line of motor-cars and carriages stretching down the
+Square, then round the corner into Lent Street, and you may know
+then--as, indeed, all the Square did know and most carefully
+observed--that Mrs. Munty Boss was giving another of her smart little
+parties. That dark-green door, that neat overhanging balcony, those
+rows--in the summer months--of scarlet geraniums, that roll of carpet
+that ran, many times a week, from the door over the pavement to the very
+foot of the waiting vehicle--these things were Mrs. Munty Ross's.
+
+Munty Ross--a silent, ugly, black little man--had had made his money in
+potted shrimps, or something equally compact and indigestible, and it
+really was very nice to think that anything in time could blossom out
+into beauty as striking as Mrs. Munty's lovely dresses, or melody as
+wonderful as the voice of M. Radiziwill, the famous tenor, whom she
+often "turned on" at her little evening parties. Upon Mr. Munty alone
+the shrimps seemed to have made no effect. He was as black, as
+insignificant, as ugly as ever he had been in the days before he knew of
+a shrimp's possibilities. He was very silent at his wife's parties, and
+sometimes dropped his h's. What Mrs. Munty had been before her marriage
+no one quite knew, but now she was flaxen and slim and beautifully
+clothed, with a voice like an insincere canary; she had "a passion for
+the Opera," a "passion for motoring," "a passion for the latest
+religion," and "a passion for the simple life." All these things did the
+shrimps enable her to gratify, and "the simple life" cost her more than
+all the others put together.
+
+Heaven had blessed them with one child, and that child was called Nancy.
+Nancy, her mother always said with pride, was old for her age, and, as
+her age was only just five, that remark was quite true. Nancy Ross was
+old for any age. Had she herself, one is compelled when considering her
+to wonder, any conception during those first months of the things that
+were going to be made out of her, and had she, perhaps at the very
+commencement of it all, some instinct of protest and rebellion? Poor
+Nancy! The tragedy of her whole case was now none other than that she
+hadn't, here at five years old in March Square, the slightest picture of
+what she had become, nor could she, I suppose, have imagined it possible
+for her to become anything different. Nancy, in her own real and naked
+person, was a small child with a good flow of flaxen hair and light-blue
+eyes. All her features were small and delicate, and she gave you the
+impression that if you only pulled a string or pushed a button somewhere
+in the middle of her back you could evoke any cry, smile or exclamation
+that you cared to arouse. Her eyes were old and weary, her attitude
+always that of one who had learnt the ways of this world, had found them
+sawdust, but had nevertheless consented still to play the game. Just as
+the house was filled with little gilt chairs and china cockatoos, so was
+Nancy arrayed in ribbons and bows and lace. Mrs. Munty had, one must
+suppose, surveyed during certain periods in her life certain real
+emotions rather as the gaping villagers survey the tiger behind his bars
+in the travelling circus.
+
+The time had then come when she put these emotions away from her as
+childish things, and determined never to be faced with any of them
+again. It was not likely, then, that she would introduce Nancy to any of
+them. She introduced Nancy to clothes and deportment, and left it at
+that. She wanted her child to "look nice." She was able, now that Nancy
+was five years old, to say that she "looked very nice indeed."
+
+
+II
+
+From the very beginning nurses were chosen who would take care of Nancy
+Boss's appearance. There was plenty of money to spend, and Nancy was a
+child who, with her flaxen hair and blue eyes, would repay trouble. She
+_did_ repay it, because she had no desires towards grubbiness or
+rebellion, or any wildnesses whatever. She just sat there with her doll
+balanced neatly in her arms, and allowed herself to be pulled and
+twisted and squeezed and stretched. "There's a pretty little lady,"
+said nurse, and a pretty little lady Nancy was sure that she was. The
+order for her day was that in the morning she went out for a walk in the
+gardens in the Square, and in the afternoon she went out for another.
+During these walks she moved slowly, her doll delicately carried, her
+beautiful clothes shining with approval of the way that they were worn,
+her head high, "like a little queen," said her nurse. She was conscious
+of the other children in the gardens, who often stopped in the middle of
+their play and watched her. She thought them hot and dirty and very
+noisy. She was sorry for their mothers.
+
+It happened sometimes that she came downstairs, towards the end of a
+luncheon party, and was introduced to the guests. "You pretty little
+thing," women in very large hats said to her. "Lovely hair," or "She's
+the very image of _you_, Clarice," to her mother. She liked to hear that
+because she greatly admired her mother. She knew that she, Nancy Ross,
+was beautiful; she knew that clothes were of an immense importance; she
+knew that other children were unpleasant. For the rest, she was neither
+extravagantly glad nor extravagantly sorry. She preserved a fine
+indifference.... And yet, although, here my story may seem to
+matter-of-fact persons to take a turn towards the fantastic, this was
+not quite all. Nancy herself, dimly and yet uneasily, was aware that
+there was something else.
+
+She was not a little girl who believed in fairies or witches or the
+"bogey man," or anything indeed that she could not see. She inherited
+from her mother a splendid confidence in the reality, the solid,
+unquestioned reality of all concrete and tangible things. She had been
+presented once with a fine edition of "Grimm's Fairy Tales," an edition
+with coloured pictures and every allure. She had turned its pages with a
+look of incredulous amazement. "What," she seemed to say--she was then
+aged three and a half--"are these absurd things that you are telling me?
+People aren't like that. Mother isn't in the least like that. I don't
+understand this, and it's tedious!"
+
+"I'm afraid the child has no imagination," said her nurse.
+
+"What a lucky thing!" said her mother.
+
+Nor could Mrs. Ross's house be said to be a place that encouraged
+fairies. They would have found the gilt chairs hard to sit upon, and
+there were no mysterious corners. There was nothing mysterious at all.
+And yet Nancy Ross, sitting in her magnificent clothes, was conscious as
+she advanced towards her sixth year that she was not perfectly
+comfortable. To say that she felt lonely would be, perhaps, to emphasise
+too strongly her discomfort. It was perhaps rather that she felt
+inquisitive--only a little, a very little--but she did begin to wish
+that she could ask a few questions.
+
+There came a day--an astonishing day--when she felt irritated with her
+mother. She had during her walk through the garden seen a little boy and
+a little girl, who were grubbing about in a little pile of earth and
+sand there in the corner under the trees, and grubbing very happily.
+They had dirt upon their faces, but their nurse was sitting, apparently
+quite easy in her mind, and the sun had not stopped in its course nor
+had the birds upon the trees ceased to sing. Nancy stayed for a moment
+her progress and looked at them, and something not very far from envy
+struck, in some far-distant hiding-place, her soul. She moved on, but
+when she came indoors and was met by her mamma and a handsome lady, her
+mamma's friend, who said: "Isn't she a pretty dear?" and her mother
+said: "That's right, Nancy darling, been for your walk?" she was, for an
+amazing moment, irritated with her beautiful mother.
+
+
+III
+
+Once she was conscious of this desire to ask questions she had no more
+peace. Although she was only five years of age, she had all the
+determination not "to give herself away" of a woman of forty. She was
+not going to show that she wanted anything in the world, and yet she
+would have liked--A little wistfully she looked at her nurse. But that
+good woman, carefully chosen by Mrs. Ross, was not the one to encourage
+questions. She was as shining as a new brass nail, and a great deal
+harder.
+
+The nursery was as neat as a pin, with a lovely bright rocking-horse
+upon which Nancy had never ridden; a pink doll's-house with every modern
+contrivance, whose doors had never been opened; a number of expensive
+dolls, which had never been disrobed. Nancy approached these
+joys--diffidently and with caution. She rode upon the horse, opened the
+doll's-house, embraced the dolls, but she had no natural imagination to
+bestow upon them, and the horse and the dolls, hurt, perhaps, at their
+long neglect, received her with frigidity. Those grubby little children
+in the Square would, she knew, have been "there" in a moment. She began
+then to be frightened. The nursery, her bedroom, the dark little passage
+outside, were suddenly alarming. Sometimes, when she was sitting quietly
+in her nursery, the house was so silent that she could have screamed.
+
+"I don't think Miss Nancy's quite well, ma'am," said the nurse.
+
+"Oh, dear! What a nuisance," said Mrs. Ross who liked her little girl to
+be always well and beautiful. "I do hope she's not going to catch
+something."
+
+"She doesn't take that pleasure in her clothes she did," said the nurse.
+
+"Perhaps she wants some new ones," said her mother. "Take her to
+Florice, nurse." Nancy went to Florice, and beautiful new garments were
+invented, and once again she was squeezed, and tightened, and stretched,
+and pulled. But Nancy was indifferent. As they tried these clothes, and
+stood back, and stepped forward, and admired and criticised, she was
+thinking, "I wish the nursery clock didn't make such a noise."
+
+Her little bedroom next to nurse's large one was a beautiful affair,
+with red roses up and down the wall-paper and in and out of the crockery
+and round and round the carpet. Her bed was magnificent, with lace and
+more roses, and there was a fine photograph of her beautiful mother in a
+silver frame on the mantelpiece. But all these things were of little
+avail when the dark came. She began to be frightened of the dark.
+
+There came a night when, waking with a suddenness that did of itself
+contribute to her alarm, she was conscious that the room was intensely
+dark, and that every one was very far away. The house, as she listened,
+seemed to be holding its breath, the clock in the nursery was ticking in
+a frightened, startled terror, and hesitating, whimsical noises broke,
+now close, now distant, upon the silence. She lay there, her heart
+beating as it had surely never been allowed to beat before. She was
+simply a very small, very frightened little girl. Then, before she could
+cry out, she was aware that some one was standing beside her bed. She
+was aware of this before she looked, and then, strangely (even now she
+had taken no peep), she was frightened no longer.
+
+The room, the house, were suddenly comfortable and safe places; as water
+slips from a pool and leaves it dry, so had terror glided from her side.
+She looked up then, and, although the place had been so dark that she
+had been unable to distinguish the furniture, she could figure to
+herself quite clearly her visitor's form. She not only figured it, but
+also quite easily and readily recognised it. All these years she had
+forgotten him, but now at the vision of his large comfortable presence
+she was back again amongst experiences and recognitions that evoked for
+her once more all those odd first days when, with how much discomfort
+and puzzled dismay, she had been dropped, so suddenly, into this
+distressing world. He put his arms around her and held her; he bent down
+and kissed her, and her small hand went up to his beard in exactly the
+way that it used to do. She nestled up against him.
+
+"It's a very long time, isn't it," he said, "since I paid you a visit!"
+
+"Yes, a long, long time."
+
+"That's because you didn't want me. You got on so well without me."
+
+"I didn't forget about you," she said. "But I asked mummy about you
+once, and she said you were all nonsense, and I wasn't to think things
+like that."
+
+"Ah! your mother's forgotten altogether. She knew me once, but she
+hasn't wanted me for a very, very long time. She'll see me again,
+though, one day."
+
+"I'm so glad you've come. You won't go away again now, will you?"
+
+"I never go away," he said. "I'm always here. I've seen everything
+you've been doing, and a very dull time you've been making of it."
+
+He talked to her and told her about some of the things the other
+children in the Square were doing. She was interested a little, but not
+very much; she still thought a great deal more about herself than about
+anything or anybody else.
+
+"Do they all love you?" she said.
+
+"Oh, no, not at all. Some of them think I'm horrid. Some of them forget
+me altogether, and then I never come back, until just at the end. Some
+of them only want me when they're in trouble. Some, very soon, think it
+silly to believe in me at all, and the older they grow the less they
+believe, generally. And when I do come they won't see me, they make up
+their minds not to. But I'm always there just the same; it makes no
+difference what they do. They can't help themselves. Only it's better
+for them just to remember me a little, because then it's much safer for
+them. You've been feeling rather lonely lately, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes," she said. "It's stupid now all by myself. There's nobody to ask
+questions of."
+
+"Well, there's somebody else in your house who's lonely."
+
+"Is there?" She couldn't think of any one.
+
+"Yes. Your father."
+
+"Oh! Father----" She was uninterested.
+
+"Yes. You see, if he isn't----" and then, at that, he was gone, she was
+alone and fast asleep.
+
+In the morning when she awoke, she remembered it all quite clearly, but,
+of course, it had all been a dream. "Such a funny dream," she told her
+nurse, but she would give out no details.
+
+"Some food she's been eating," said her nurse.
+
+Nevertheless, when, on that afternoon, coming in from her walk, she met
+her dark, grubby little father in the hall, she did stay for a moment on
+the bottom step of the stairs to consider him.
+
+"I've been for a walk, daddy," she said, and then, rather frightened at
+her boldness, tumbled up on the next step. He went forward to catch her.
+
+"Hold up," he said, held her for a moment, and then hurried, confused
+and rather agitated, into his dark sanctum. These were, very nearly, the
+first words that they had ever, in the course of their lives together,
+interchanged. Munty Ross was uneasy with grown-up persons (unless he was
+discussing business with them), but that discomfort was nothing to the
+uneasiness that he felt with children. Little girls (who certainly
+looked at him as though he were an ogre) frightened him quite horribly;
+moreover, Mrs. Munty had, for a great number of years, pursued a policy
+with regard to her husband that was not calculated to make him bright
+and easy in any society. "Poor old Munty," she would say to her friends,
+"it's not all his fault----" It was, as a fact, very largely hers. He had
+never been an eloquent man, but her playful derision of his uncouthness
+slew any little seeds of polite conversation that might, under happier
+conditions, have grown into brilliant blossom. It had been understood
+from the very beginning that Nancy was not of her father's world. He
+would have been scarcely aware that he had a daughter had he not, at
+certain periods, paid bills for her clothes.
+
+"What's a child want with all this?" he had ventured once to say.
+
+"Hardly your business, my dear," his wife had told him. "The child's
+clothes are marvellously cheap considering. I don't know how Florice
+does it for the money." He resented nothing--it was not his way--but he
+did feel, deep down in his heart, that the child was over-dressed, that
+it must be bad for any little girl to be praised in the way that his
+daughter was praised, that "the kid will grow up with the most
+tremendous ideas."
+
+He resented it, perhaps a little, that his young daughter had so easily
+accustomed herself to the thought that she had no father. "She might
+just want to see me occasionally. But I'd only frighten her, I suppose,
+if she did."
+
+Munty Ross had very little of the sentimentalist about him; he was
+completely cynical about the value of the human heart, and believed in
+the worth and goodness of no one at all. He had, for a brief wild
+moment, been in love with his wife, but she had taken care to kill that,
+"the earlier the better." "My dear," she would say to a chosen friend,
+"what Munty's like when he's romantic!" She never, after the first month
+of their married life together, caught a glimpse of that side of him.
+
+Now, however, he did permit his mind to linger over that vision of his
+little daughter tumbling on the stairs. He wondered what had made her do
+it. He was astonished at the difference that it made to him.
+
+To Nancy also it had made a great difference. She wished that she had
+stayed there on the stairs a little longer to hold a more important
+conversation. She had thought of her father as "all horrid"--now his
+very contrast to her little world pleased and interested her. It may
+also be that, although she was young, she had even now a picture in her
+mind of her father's loneliness. She may have seen into her mother's
+attitude with an acuteness much older than her actual years.
+
+She thought now continually about her father. She made little plans to
+meet him, but these meetings were not, as a rule, successful, because so
+often he was down in the city. She would wait at the end of her
+afternoon walk on the stairs.
+
+"Come along, Miss Nancy, do. What are you hanging about there for?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"You'll be disturbing your mother."
+
+"Just a minute."
+
+She peered anxiously, her little head almost held by the railings of the
+banisters; she gazed down into black, mysterious depths wherein her
+father might be hidden. She was driven to all this partly by some real
+affection that had hitherto found no outlet, partly by a desire for
+adventure, but partly, also, by some force that was behind her and quite
+recognised by her. It was as though she said: "If I'm nice to my father
+and make friends with him, then you must promise that I shan't be
+frightened in the middle of the night, that the clock won't tick too
+loudly, that the blind won't flap, that it won't all be too dark and
+dreadful." She knew that she had made this compact.
+
+Then she had several little encounters with her father. She met him one
+day on the doorstep. He had come up whilst she was standing there.
+
+"Had a good walk?" he said nervously. She looked at him and laughed.
+Then he went hurriedly indoors.
+
+On the second occasion she had come down to be shown off at a luncheon
+party. She had been praised and petted, and then, in the hall, had run
+into her father's arms. He was in his top-hat, going down to his old
+city, looking, the nurse thought, "just like a monkey." But Nancy
+stayed, holding on to the leg of his trousers. Suddenly he bent down and
+whispered:
+
+"Were they nice to you in there?"
+
+"Yes. Why weren't you there?"
+
+"I was. I left. Got to go and work."
+
+"What sort of work?"
+
+"Making money for your clothes."
+
+"Take me too."
+
+"Would you like to come?"
+
+"Yes. Take me."
+
+He bent down and kissed her, but, suddenly hearing the voices of the
+luncheon-party, they separated like conspirators. He crept out of the
+house.
+
+After that there was no question of their alliance. The sort of
+affection that most children feel for old, ugly, and battered dolls,
+Nancy now felt for her father, and the warmth of this affection melted
+her dried, stubborn little soul, caught her up into visions, wonders,
+sympathies that had seemed surely denied to her for ever.
+
+"Now sit still, Miss Nancy, while I do up the back."
+
+"Oh, silly old clothes!" said Nancy.
+
+Then one day she declared,
+
+"I want to be dirty like those children in the garden."
+
+"And a nice state your mother would be in!" cried the amazed nurse.
+
+"Father wouldn't," Nancy thought. "Father wouldn't mind."
+
+There came at last the wonderful day when her father penetrated into the
+nursery. He arrived furtively, very much, it appeared, ashamed of
+himself and exceedingly shy of the nurse. He did not remain very long.
+He said very little; a funny picture he had made with his blue face, his
+black shiny hair, his fat little legs, and his anxious, rather stupid
+eyes. He sat rather awkwardly in a chair, with Nancy on his knee; he
+wrung his hair for things to say.
+
+The nurse left them for a moment alone together, and then Nancy
+whispered:
+
+"Daddy, let's go into the gardens together, you and me; just us--no
+silly old nurse--one mornin'." (She found the little "g" still a
+difficulty.)
+
+"Would you like that?" he whispered back. "I don't know I'd be much good
+in a garden."
+
+"Oh, you'll be all right," she asserted with confidence. "I want to
+dig."
+
+She'd made up her mind then to that. As Hannibal determined to cross the
+Alps, as Napoleon set his feet towards Moscow, so did Nancy Ross resolve
+that she would, in the company of her father, dig in the gardens. She
+stroked her father's hand, rubbed her head upon his sleeve; exactly as
+she would have caressed, had she been another little girl, the damaged
+features of her old rag doll. She was beginning, however, for the first
+time in her life, to love some one other than herself.
+
+He came, then, quite often to the nursery. He would slip in, stay a
+moment or two, and slip out again. He brought her presents and sweets
+which made her ill. And always in the presence of Mrs. Munty they
+appeared as strangers.
+
+The day came when Nancy achieved her desire--they had their great
+adventure.
+
+
+IV
+
+A fine summer morning came, and with it, in a bowler hat, at the nursery
+door, the hour being about eleven, Mr. Munty Boss.
+
+"I'll take Nancy this morning, nurse," he said, with a strange, choking
+little "cluck" in his throat. Now, the nurse, although, as I've said, of
+a shining and superficial appearance, was no fool. She had watched the
+development of the intrigue; her attitude to the master of the house was
+composed of pity, patronage, and a rather motherly interest. She did not
+see how her mistress could avoid her attitude: it was precisely the
+attitude that she would herself have adopted in that position, but,
+nevertheless, she was sorry for the man. "So out of it as he is!" Her
+maternal feelings were uppermost now. "It's nice of the child," she
+thought, "and him so ugly."
+
+"Of course, sir," she said.
+
+"We shall be back in about an hour." He attempted an easy indifference,
+was conscious that he failed, and blushed.
+
+He was aware that his wife was out.
+
+He carried off his prize.
+
+The gardens were very full on this lovely summer morning, but Nancy,
+without any embarrassment or confusion, took charge of the proceedings.
+
+"Where are we going?" he said, gazing rather helplessly about him,
+feeling extremely shy. There were so many bold children--so many bolder
+nurses; even the birds on the trees seemed to deride him, and a stumpy
+fox-terrier puppy stood with its four legs planted wide barking at him.
+
+"Over here," she said without a moment's hesitation, and she dragged him
+along. She halted at last in a corner of the gardens where was a large,
+overhanging chestnut and a wooden seat. Here the shouts and cries of the
+children came more dimly, the splashing of the fountain could be heard
+like a melodious refrain with a fascinating note of hesitation in it,
+and the deep green leaves of the tree made a cool, thick covering. "Very
+nice," he said, and sat down on the seat, tilting his hat back and
+feeling very happy indeed.
+
+Nancy also was very happy. There, in front of her, was the delightful
+pile of earth and sand untouched, it seemed. In an instant, regardless
+of her frock, she was down upon her knees.
+
+"I ought to have a spade," she said.
+
+"You'll make yourself dreadfully dirty, Nancy. Your beautiful frock----"
+But he had nevertheless the feeling that, after all, he had paid for it,
+and if he hadn't the right to see it ruined, who had?
+
+"Oh!" she murmured with the ecstasy of one who has abandoned herself,
+freely and with a glad heart, to all the vices. She dug her hands into
+the mire, she scattered it about her, she scooped and delved and
+excavated. It was her intention to build something in the nature of a
+high, high hill. She patted the surface of the sand, and behold! it was
+instantly a beautiful shape, very smooth and shining.
+
+It was hot, her hat fell back, her knees were thick with the good brown
+earth--that once lovely creation of Florice was stained and black.
+
+She then began softly, partly to herself, partly to her father, and
+partly to that other Friend who had helped her to these splendours, a
+song of joy and happiness. To the ordinary observer, it might have
+seemed merely a discordant noise proceeding from a little girl engaged
+in the making of mud pies. It was, in reality, as the chestnut tree, the
+birds, the fountain, the flowers, the various small children, even the
+very earth she played with, understood, a fine offering--thanksgiving
+and triumphal pæan to the God of Heaven, of the earth, and of the waters
+that were under the earth.
+
+Munty himself caught the refrain. He was recalled to a day when mud pies
+had been to him also things of surpassing joy. There was a day when, a
+naked and very ugly little boy, he had danced beside a mountain burn.
+
+He looked upon his daughter and his daughter looked upon him; they were
+friends for ever and ever. She rose; her fingers were so sticky with mud
+that they stood apart; down her right cheek ran a fine black smear; her
+knees were caked.
+
+"Good heavens!" he exclaimed. She flung herself upon him and kissed him;
+down his cheek also now a fine smear marked its way.
+
+He looked at his watch--one o'clock. "Good heavens!" he said again. "I
+say, old girl, we'll have to be going. Mother's got a party." He tried
+ineffectually to cleanse his daughter's face.
+
+"We'll come back," she cried, looking down triumphantly upon her
+handiwork.
+
+"We'll have to smuggle you up into the nursery somehow." But he added,
+"Yes, we'll come again."
+
+
+V
+
+They hurried home. Very furtively Munty Boss fitted his key into the
+Yale lock of his fine door. They slipped into the hall. There before
+them were Mrs. Ross and two of her most splendid friends. Very fine was
+Munty's wife in a tight-clinging frock of light blue, and wearing upon
+her head a hat like a waste-paper basket with a blue handle at the back
+of it; very fine were her two lady friends, clothed also in the tightest
+of garments, shining and lovely and precious.
+
+"Good God, Munty--and the child!"
+
+It was a terrible moment. Quite unconscious was Munty of the mud that
+stained his cheek, perfectly tranquil his daughter as she gazed with
+glowing happiness about her. A terrible moment for Mrs. Ross, an
+unforgettable one for her friends; nor were they likely to keep the
+humour of it entirely to themselves.
+
+"Down in a minute. Going up to clean." Smiling, he passed his wife. On
+the bottom step Nancy chanted:
+
+"We've had the most lovely mornin', daddy and I. We've been diggin'.
+We're goin' to dig again. Aren't I dirty, mummy?"
+
+Round the corner of the stairs in the shadow Nancy kissed her father
+again.
+
+"I'm never goin' to be clean any more," she announced. And you may
+fancy, if you please, that somewhere in the shadows of the house some
+one heard those words and chuckled with delighted pleasure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+'ENERY
+
+
+I
+
+Mrs. Slater was caretaker at No. 21 March. Square. Old Lady Cathcart
+lived with her middle-aged daughter at No. 21, and, during half the
+year, they were down at their place in Essex; during half the year,
+then, Mrs. Slater lived in the basement of No. 21 with her son Henry,
+aged six.
+
+Mrs. Slater was a widow; upon a certain afternoon, two and a half years
+ago, she had paused in her ironing and listened. "Something," she told
+her friends afterwards, "gave her a start--she couldn't say what nor
+how." Her ironing stayed, for that afternoon at least, where it was,
+because her husband, with his head in a pulp and his legs bent
+underneath him, was brought in on a stretcher, attended by two
+policemen. He had fallen from a piece of scaffolding into Piccadilly
+Circus, and was unable to afford any further assistance to the
+improvements demanded by the Pavilion Music Hall. Mrs. Slater, a stout,
+amiable woman, who had never been one to worry; Henry Slater, Senior,
+had been a bad husband, "what with women and the drink"--she had no
+intention of lamenting him now that he was dead; she had done for ever
+with men, and devoted the whole of her time and energy to providing
+bread and butter for herself and her son.
+
+She had been Lady Cathcart's caretaker for a year and a half, and had
+given every satisfaction. When the old lady came up to London Mrs.
+Slater went down to Essex and defended the country place from
+suffragettes and burglars. "I shouldn't care for it," said a lady
+friend, "all alone in the country with no cheerful noises nor human
+beings."
+
+"Doesn't frighten me, I give you my word, Mrs. East," said Mrs. Slater;
+"not that I don't prefer the town, mind you."
+
+It was, on the whole, a pleasant life, that carried with it a certain
+dignity. Nobody who had seen old Lady Cathcart drive in her open
+carriage, with her black bonnet, her coachman, and her fine, straight
+back, could deny that she was one of Our Oldest and Best--none of your
+mushroom families come from Lord knows where--it was a position of
+trust, and as such Mrs. Slater considered it. For the rest she loved her
+son Henry with more than a mother's love; he was as unlike his poor
+father, bless him, as any child could be. Henry, although you would
+never think it to look at him, was not quite like other children; he had
+been, from his birth, a "little queer, bless his heart," and Mrs. Slater
+attributed this to the fact that three weeks before the boy's birth,
+Horny Slater, Senior, had, in a fine frenzy of inebriation, hit her over
+the head with a chair. "Dead drunk, 'e was, and never a thought to the
+child coming, ''Enery,' I said to him, 'it's the child you're hitting as
+well as me'; but 'e was too far gone, poor soul, to take a thought."
+
+Henry was a fine, robust child, with rosy cheeks and a sturdy, thick-set
+body. He had large blue eyes and a happy, pleasant smile, but, although
+he was six years of age, he could hardly talk at all, and liked to spend
+the days twirling pieces of string round and round or looking into the
+fire. His eyes were unlike the eyes of other children, and in their blue
+depths there lurked strange apprehensions, strange anticipations,
+strange remembrances. He had never, from the day of his birth, been
+known to cry. When he was frightened or distressed the colour would pass
+slowly from his cheeks, and strange little gasping breaths would come
+from him; his body would stiffen and his hands clench. If he was angry
+the colour in his face would darken and his eyes half close, and it was
+then that he did, indeed, seem in the possession of some disastrous
+thraldom--but he was angry very seldom, and only with certain people;
+for the most part he was a happy child, "as quiet as a mouse." He was
+unusual, too, in that he was a very cleanly child, and loved to be
+washed, and took the greatest care of his clothes. He was very
+affectionate, fond of almost every one, and passionately devoted to his
+mother.
+
+Mrs. Slater was a woman with very little imagination. She never
+speculated on "how different things would be if they were different,"
+nor did she sigh after riches, nor possessions, nor any of the goods
+Fate bestows upon her favourites. She would, most certainly, have been
+less fond of Henry had he been more like other children, and his
+dependence upon her gave her something of the feeling that very rich
+ladies have for very small dogs. She was too, in a way, proud. "Never
+been able to talk, nor never will, they tell me, the lamb," she would
+assure her friends, "but as gentle and as quiet!"
+
+She would sit, sometimes, in the evening before the fire and think of
+the old noisy, tiresome days when Henry, Senior, would beat her black
+and blue, and would feel that her life had indeed fallen into pleasant
+places.
+
+There was nothing whatever in the house, all silent about her and filled
+with shrouded furniture, that could alarm her. "Ghosts!" she would cry.
+"You show me one, that's all. I'll give you ghosts!"
+
+Her digestion was excellent, her sleep undisturbed by conscience or
+creditors. She was a happy woman.
+
+Henry loved March Square. There was a window in an upstairs passage from
+behind whose glass he could gaze at the passing world. The Passing
+World!... the shrouded house behind him. One was as alive, as bustling,
+as demonstrative to him as the other, but between the two there was, for
+him, no communication. His attitude to the Square and the people in it
+was that he knew more about them than anyone else did; his attitude to
+the House, that he knew nothing at all compared with what "They" knew.
+In the Square he could see through the lot of them, so superficial were
+they all; in the House he could only wait, with fingers on lip, for the
+next revelation that they might vouchsafe to him.
+
+Doors were, for the most part, locked, yet there were many days when
+fires were lit because the house was an old one, and damp Lady Cathcart
+had a horror of.
+
+Always for young Henry the house wore its buried and abandoned air. He
+was never to see it when the human beings in it would count more than
+its furniture, and the human life in it more than the house itself. He
+had come, a year and a half ago, into the very place that his dreams
+had, from the beginning, built for him. Those large, high rooms with the
+shining floors, the hooded furniture, the windows gaping without their
+curtains, the shadows and broad squares of light, the little whispers
+and rattles that doors and cupboards gave, the swirl of the wind as it
+sprang released from corners and crevices, the lisp of some whisper,
+"I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming!" that, nevertheless, again and
+again defeated expectation. How could he but enjoy the fine field of
+affection that these provided for him?
+
+His mother watched him with maternal pride. "He's _that_ contented!" she
+would say. "Any other child would plague your life away, but 'Enery----"
+
+It was part of Henry's unusual mind that he wondered at nothing. He
+remained in constant expectation, but whatever was to come to him it
+would not bring surprise with it. He was in a world where anything might
+happen. In all the house his favourite room was the high, thin
+drawing-room with an old gold mirror at one end of it and a piano
+muffled in brown holland. The mirror caught the piano with its peaked
+inquiring shape, that, in its inflection, looked so much more tremendous
+and ominous than it did in plain reality. Through the mirror the piano
+looked as though it might do anything, and to Henry, who knew nothing
+about pianos, it was responsible for almost everything that occurred in
+the house.
+
+The windows of the room gave a fine display of the gardens, the
+children, the carriages, and the distant houses, but it was when the
+Square was empty that Henry liked best to gaze down into it, because
+then the empty house and the empty square prepared themselves together
+for some tremendous occurrence. Whenever such an interval of silence
+struck across the noise and traffic of the day, it seemed that all the
+world screwed itself up for the next event. "One--two--three." But the
+crisis never came. The noise returned again, people laughed and shouted,
+bells rang and motors screamed. Nevertheless, one day something would
+surely happen.
+
+The house was full of company, and the boy would, sometimes, have
+yielded to the Fear that was never far away, had it not been for some
+one whom he had known from the very beginning of everything, some one
+who was as real as his mother, some one who was more powerful than
+anything or any one in the house, and kinder, far, far kinder.
+
+Often when Mrs. Slater would wonder of what her son was thinking as he
+sat twisting string round and round in front of the fire, he would be
+aware of his Friend in the shadow of the light, watching gravely, in the
+cheerful room, having beneath his hands all the powers, good and evil,
+of the house. Just as Henry pictured quite clearly to himself other
+occupants of the house--some one with taloned claws behind the piano,
+another with black-hooded eyes and a peaked cap in the shadows of an
+upstairs passage, another brown, shrivelled and naked, who dwelt in a
+cupboard in one of the empty bedrooms so, too, he could see his Friend,
+vast and shadowy, with a flowing beard and eyes that were kind and
+shining.
+
+Often he had felt the pressure of his hand, had heard his reassuring
+whisper in his ears, had known the touch of his lips upon his forehead.
+No harm could come to him whilst his Friend was in the house--and his
+Friend was always there.
+
+He went always with his mother into the streets when she did her
+shopping or simply took the air. It was natural that on these occasions,
+he should be more frightened than during his hours in the house. In the
+first place his Friend did not accompany him on these out-of-door
+excursions, and his mother was not nearly so strong a protector as his
+Friend.
+
+Then he was disturbed by the people who pressed and pushed about
+him--he had a sense that they were all like birds with flapping wings
+and strange cries, rushing down upon him--the colours and confusion of
+the shops bewildered him. There was too much here for him properly to
+understand; he had enough to do with the piano, the mirror, the shadowed
+passages, the staring windows.
+
+But in the Square he was happy again. Mrs. Slater never ventured into
+the gardens; they were for her superiors, and she complacently accepted
+a world in which things were so ordered as the only world possible. But
+there was plenty of life outside the gardens.
+
+There were, on the different days of the week, the various musicians,
+and Henry was friendly with them all. He delighted in music; as he stood
+there, listening to the barrel-organ, the ideas, pictures, dreams, flew
+like flocks of beautiful birds through his brain, fleet, and always just
+beyond his reach, so that he could catch nothing, but would nod his head
+and would hope that the tune would be repeated, because next time he
+might, perhaps, be more fortunate.
+
+The Major, who played the harp on Saturdays, was a friend of Mrs.
+Slater. "Nice little feller, that of yours, mum," he would say. "'Ad
+one meself once."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Yes, sure enough.... Nice day.... Would you believe it, this is the
+only London square left for us to play in?... 'Tis, indeed. Cruel shame,
+I call it; life's 'ard.... You're right, mum, it is. Well, good-day."
+
+Mrs. Slater looked after him affectionately. "Pore feller; and yet I
+dare say he makes a pretty hit of it if all was known."
+
+Henry sighed. The birds were flown again. He was left with the
+blue-flecked sky and the grey houses that stood around the gardens like
+beasts about a water-pool. The sun (a red disc) peered over their
+shoulders. He went, with his mother within doors. Instantly on his
+entrance the house began to rustle and whisper.
+
+
+II
+
+Mrs. Slater, although an amiable and kind-hearted human being who
+believed with confident superstition in a God of other people's making,
+did not, on the whole, welcome her lady friends with much cordiality. It
+was not, as she often explained, as though she had her own house into
+which to ask them. Her motto was, "Friendly with All, Familiar with
+None," and to this she very faithfully held. But in her heart there was
+reason enough for this caution; there had been days--yes, and nights
+too--when, during her lamented husband's lifetime, she had "taken a
+drop," taken it, obviously enough, as a comfort, and a solace when
+things were going very hard with her, and "'Enery preferrin' 'er to be
+jolly 'erself to keep 'im company." She had protested, but Fate and
+Henry had been too strong for her. "She had fallen into the habit!"
+Then, when No. 21 had come under her care, she had put it all sternly
+behind her, but one did not know how weak one might be, and a kindly
+friend might with her persuasion----
+
+Therefore did Mrs. Slater avoid her kindly friends. There was, however,
+one friend who was not so readily to be avoided; that was Mrs. Carter.
+Mrs. Carter also was a widow, or rather, to speak the direct truth, had
+discovered one morning, twenty years ago, that Mr. Carter "was gone"; he
+had never returned. Those who knew Mrs. Carter intimately said that, on
+the whole, "things bein' as they was," his departure was not entirely to
+be wondered at. Mrs. Carter had a temper of her own, and nothing
+inflamed it so much as a drop of whisky, and there was nothing in the
+world she liked so much as "a drop."
+
+To meet her casually, you would judge her nothing less than the most
+amiable of womankind--a large, stout, jolly woman, with a face like a
+rose, and a quantity of black hair. At her best, in her fine Sunday
+clothes, she was a superb figure, and wore round her neck a rope of sham
+pearls that would have done credit to a sham countess. During the week,
+however, she slipped, on occasion, into "déshabille," and then she
+appeared not quite so attractive. No one knew the exact nature of her
+profession. She did a bit of "char"; she had at one time a little
+sweetshop, where she sold sweets, the _Police Budget_, and--although
+this was revealed only to her best friends--indecent photographs. It may
+be that the police discovered some of the sources of her income; at any
+rate the sweetshop was suddenly, one morning, abandoned. Her movements
+in everything were sudden; it was quite suddenly that she took a fancy
+to Mrs. Slater. She met her at a friend's, and at once, so she told Mrs.
+Slater, "I liked yer, just as though I'd met yer before. But I'm like
+that. Sudden or not at all is _my_ way, and not a bad way either!"
+
+Mrs. Slater could not be said to be everything that was affectionate in
+return. She distrusted Mrs. Carter, disliked her brilliant colouring and
+her fluent experiences, felt shy before her rollicking suggestiveness,
+and timid at her innuendoes. For a considerable time she held her
+defences against the insidious attack. Then there came a day when Mrs.
+Carter burst into reluctant but passionate tears, asserting that Life
+and Mr. Carter had been, from the beginning, against her; that she had
+committed, indeed, acts of folly in the past, but only when driven
+desperately against a wall; that she bore no grudge against any one
+alive, but loved all humanity; that she was going to do her best to be a
+better woman, but couldn't really hope to arrive at any satisfactory
+improvement without Mrs. Slater's assistance; that Mrs. Slater, indeed,
+had shown her a New Way, a New Light, a New Path.
+
+Mrs. Slater, humble woman, had no illusions as to her own importance in
+the scheme of things; nothing touched her so surely as an appeal to her
+strength of character. She received Mrs. Carter with open arms,
+suggested that they should read the Bible together on Sunday mornings,
+and go, side by side, to St. Matthew's on Sunday evenings. There was
+nothing like a study of the "Holy Word" for "defeating the bottle," and
+there was nothing like "defeating the bottle" for getting back one's
+strength and firmness of character.
+
+It was along these lines that Mrs. Slater proposed to conduct Mrs.
+Carter.
+
+Now unfortunately Henry took an instant and truly savage dislike to his
+mother's new friend. He had been always, of course, "odd" in his
+feelings about people, but never was he "odder" than he was with Mrs.
+Carter. "Little lamb," she said, when she saw him for the first time. "I
+envy you that child, Mrs. Slater, I do indeed. Backwards 'e may be, but
+'is being dependent, as you may say, touches the 'eart. Little lamb!"
+
+She tried to embrace him; she offered him sweets. He shuddered at her
+approach, and his face was instantly grey, like a pool the moment after
+the sun's setting. Had he been himself able to put into words his
+sensations, he would have said that the sight of Mrs. Carter assured
+him, quite definitely, that something horrible would soon occur.
+
+The house upon whose atmosphere he so depended instantly darkened; his
+Friend was gone, not because he was no longer able to see him (his
+consciousness of him did not depend at all upon any visual assurance),
+but because there was now, Henry was perfectly assured, no chance
+whatever of his suddenly appearing. And, on the other hand, those
+Others--the one with the taloned claws behind the piano, the one with
+the black-hooded eyes--were stronger, more threatening, more dominating.
+But, beyond her influence on the house, Mrs. Carter, in her own physical
+and actual presence, tortured Henry. When she was in the room, Henry
+suffered agony. He would creep away were he allowed, and, if that were
+not possible, then he would retreat into the most distant corner and
+watch. If he were in the room his eyes never left Mrs. Carter for a
+moment, and it was this brooding gaze more than his disapproval that
+irritated her. "You never can tell with poor little dears when they're
+'queer' what fancies they'll take. Why, he quite seems to dislike me,
+Mrs. Slater!"
+
+Mrs. Slater could venture no denial; indeed, Henry's attitude aroused
+once again in her mind her earlier suspicions. She had all the
+reverence of her class for her son's "oddness." He knew more than
+ordinary mortal folk, and could see farther; he saw beyond Mrs. Carter's
+red cheeks and shining black hair, and the fact that he was, as a rule,
+tractable to cheerful kindness, made his rejection the more remarkable.
+But it might, nevertheless, be that the black things in Mrs. Carter's
+past were the marks impressed upon Henry's sensitive intelligence; and
+that he had not, as yet, perceived the new Mrs. Carter growing in grace
+now day by day.
+
+"'E'll get over 'is fancy, bless 'is 'eart." Mrs. Slater pursued then
+her work of redemption.
+
+
+III
+
+On a certain evening in November, Mrs. Carter, coming in to see her
+friend, invited sympathy for a very bad cold.
+
+"Drippin' and runnin' at the nose I've been all day, my dear. Awake all
+night I was with it, and 'tain't often that I've one, but when I do it's
+somethin' cruel." It seemed to be better this evening, Mrs. Slater
+thought, but when she congratulated her friend on this, Mrs. Carter,
+shaking her head, remarked that it had left the nose and travelled into
+the throat and ears. "Once it's earache, and I'm done," she said.
+Horrible pictures she drew of this earache, and it presently became
+clear that Mrs. Carter was in perfect terror of a night made sleepless
+with pain. Once, it seemed, had Mrs. Carter tried to commit suicide by
+hanging herself to a nail in a door, so maddening had the torture been.
+Luckily (Mrs. Carter thanked Heaven) the nail had been dragged from the
+door by her weight--"not that I was anything very 'eavy, you
+understand." Finally, it appeared that only one thing in the world could
+be relied upon to stay the fiend.
+
+Mrs. Carter produced from her pocket a bottle of whisky.
+
+Upon that it followed that, since her reformation, Mrs. Carter had come
+to loathe the very smell of whisky, and as for the taste of it! But
+rather than be driven by flaming agony down the long stony passages of a
+sleepless night--anything.
+
+It was here, of course, that Mrs. Slater should have protested, but, in
+her heart, she was afraid of her friend, and afraid of herself. Mrs.
+Carter's company had, of late, been pleasant to her. She had been
+strengthened in her own resolves towards a fine life by the sight of
+Mrs. Carter's struggle in that direction, and that good woman's genial
+amiability (when it was so obvious from her appearance that she could be
+far otherwise) flattered Mrs. Slater's sense of power. No, she could not
+now bear to let Mrs. Carter go.
+
+She said, therefore, nothing to her friend about the whisky, and on that
+evening Mrs. Carter did take the "veriest sip." But the cold
+continued--it continued in a marvellous and terrible manner. It seemed
+"to 'ave taken right 'old of 'er system."
+
+After a few evenings it was part of the ceremonies that the bottle
+should be produced; the kettle was boiling happily on the fire, there
+was lemon, there was a lump of sugar.... On a certain wet and depressing
+evening Mrs. Slater herself had a glass "just to see that she didn't get
+a cold like Mrs. Carter's."
+
+
+IV
+
+Henry's bed-time was somewhere between the hours of eight and nine, but
+his mother did not care to leave Mrs. Carter (dear friend, though she
+was) quite alone downstairs with the bottom half of the house unguarded
+(although, of course, the doors were locked), therefore, Mrs. Carter
+came upstairs with her friend to see the little fellow put to bed; "and
+a hangel he looks, if ever I see one," declared the lady
+enthusiastically.
+
+When the two were gone and the house was still, Henry would sit up in
+bed and listen; then, moving quietly, he would creep out and listen
+again.
+
+There, in the passage, it seemed to him that he could hear the whole
+house talking--first one sound and then another would come, the wheeze
+of some straining floor, the creak of some whispering board, the shudder
+of a door. "Look out! Look out! Look out!" and then, above that murmur,
+some louder voice: "Watch! there's danger in the place!" Then, shivering
+with cold and his sense of evil, he would creep down into a lower
+passage and stand listening again; now the voices of the house were
+deafening, rising on every side of him, like the running of little
+streams suddenly heard on the turning of the corner of a hill. The dim
+light shrouded with fantasy the walls; along the wide passage and
+cabinets, high china jars, the hollow scoop of the window at the
+far-distant end, were all alive and moving. And, in strange
+contradiction to the moving voices within the house, came the blurred
+echo of the London life, whirring, buzzing, like a cloud of gnats at the
+window-pane. "Look out! Look out! Look out!" the house cried, and Henry,
+with chattering teeth, was on guard.
+
+There came an evening when standing thus, shivering in his little shirt,
+he was aware that the terror, so long anticipated, was upon him. It
+seemed to him, on this evening, that the house was suddenly still; it
+was as though all the sounds, as of running water, that passed up and
+down the rooms and passages, were, in a flashing second, frozen. The
+house was holding its breath.
+
+He had to wait for a breathless, agonising interval before he heard the
+next sound, very faint and stifled breathing coming up to him out of the
+darkness in little uncertain gusts. He heard the breathings pause, then
+recommence again in quicker and louder succession. Henry, stirred
+simply, perhaps, by the terror of his anticipation, moved back into the
+darker shadows in the nook of the cabinet, and stayed there with his
+shirt pressed against his little trembling knees.
+
+Then followed, after a long time, a half yellow circle of light that
+touched the top steps of the stairs and a square of the wall; behind the
+light was the stealthy figure of Mrs. Carter. She stood there for a
+moment, one hand with a candle raised, the other pressed against her
+breast; from one finger of this hand a bunch of heavy keys dangled. She
+stood there, with her wide, staring eyes, like glass in the
+candle-light, staring about her, her red cheeks rising and falling with
+her agitation, her body seeming enormous, her shadow on the wall huge in
+the flickering light. At the sight of his enemy Henry's terror was so
+frantic that his hands beat with little spasmodic movements against the
+wall.
+
+He did not _see_ Mrs. Carter at all, but he saw rather the movement
+through the air and darkness of the house of something that would bring
+down upon him the full naked force of the Terror that he had all his
+life anticipated. He had always known that the awful hour would arrive
+when the Terror would grip him; again and again he had seen its eyes,
+felt its breath, heard its movements, and these movements had been
+forewarnings of some future day. That day had arrived.
+
+There was only one thing that he could do; his Friend alone in all the
+world could help him. With his soul dizzy and faint from fear, he prayed
+for his Friend; had he been less frightened he would have screamed aloud
+for him to come and help him.
+
+The boy's breath came hot into his throat and stuck there, and his heart
+beat like a high, unresting hammer.
+
+Mrs. Carter, with the candle raised to throw light in front of her,
+moved forward very cautiously and softly. She passed down the passage,
+and then paused very near to the boy. She looked at the keys, and stole
+like some heavy, stealthy animal to the door of the long drawing-room.
+He watched her as she tried one key after another, making little
+dissatisfied noises as they refused to fit; then at last one turned the
+lock and she pushed back the door.
+
+It was certainly impossible for him, in the dim world of his mind, to
+realise what it was that she intended to do, but he knew, through some
+strange channel of knowledge, that his mother was concerned in this, and
+that something more than the immediate peril of himself was involved.
+He had also, lost in the dim mazes of his mind, a consciousness that
+there _were_ treasures in the house, and that his mother was placed
+there to guard them, and even that he himself shared her duty.
+
+It did not come to him that Mrs. Carter was in pursuit of these
+treasures, but he _did_ realise that her presence there amongst them
+brought peril to his mother. Moved then by some desperate urgency which
+had at its heart his sense that to be left alone in the black passage
+was worse than the actual lighted vision of his Terror, he crept with
+trembling knees across the passage and through the door.
+
+Inside the room he saw that she had laid the candle upon the piano, and
+was bending over a drawer, trying again to fit a key. He stood in the
+doorway, a tiny figure, very, very cold, all his soul in his silent
+appeal for some help. His Friend _must_ come. He was somewhere there in
+the house. "Come! Help me!" The candle suddenly flared into a finger of
+light that flung the room into vision. Mrs. Carter, startled, raised
+herself, and at that same moment Henry gave a cry, a weak little
+trembling sound.
+
+She turned and saw the boy; as their eyes met he felt the Terror
+rushing upon him. He flung a last desperate appeal for help, staring at
+her as though his eyes would never let her go, and she, finding him so
+unexpectedly, could only gape. In their silent gaze at one another, in
+the glassy stare of Mrs. Carter and the trembling, flickering one of
+Henry there was more than any ordinary challenge could have conveyed.
+Mrs. Carter must have felt at the first immediate confrontation of the
+strange little figure that her feet were on the very edge of some most
+desperate precipice. The long room and the passages beyond must have
+quivered. At that very first moment, with some stir, some hinted
+approach, Henry called, with the desperate summoning of all his ghostly
+world, upon his gods. They came....
+
+In her eyes he saw suddenly something else than vague terror. He saw
+recognition. He felt himself a rushing, heartening comfort; he knew that
+his Friend had somehow come, that he was no longer alone.
+
+But Mrs. Carter's eyes were staring beyond him, over him, into the black
+passage. Her eyes seemed to grow as though the terror in them was
+pushing them out beyond their lids; her breath, came in sharp, tearing
+gasps. The keys with a clang dropped from her hand.
+
+"Oh, God! Oh, God!" she whispered. He did not turn his head to grasp
+what it was that she saw in the passage. The terror had been transferred
+from himself to her.
+
+The colour in her cheeks went out, leaving her as though her face were
+suddenly shadowed by some overhanging shape.
+
+Her eyes never moved nor faltered from the dark into whose heart she
+gazed. Then, there was a strangled, gasping cry, and she sank down,
+first onto her knees, then in a white faint, her eyes still staring, lay
+huddled on the floor.
+
+Henry felt his Friend's hand on his shoulder.
+
+Meanwhile, down in the kitchen, the fire had sunk into grey ashes, and
+Mrs. Slater was lying back in her chair, her head back, snoring thickly;
+an empty glass had tumbled across the table, and a few drops from it had
+dribbled over on to the tablecloth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+BARBARA FLINT
+
+
+I
+
+Barbara Flint was a little girl, aged seven, who lived with her parents
+at No. 36 March Square. Her brother and sister, Master Anthony and Miss
+Misabel Flint, were years and years older, so you must understand that
+she led rather a solitary life. She was a child with very pale flaxen
+hair, very pale blue eyes, very pale cheeks--she looked like a china
+doll who had been left by a careless mistress out in the rain. She was a
+very sensitive child, cried at the least provocation, very affectionate,
+too, and ready to imagine that people didn't like her.
+
+Mr. Flint was a stout, elderly gentleman, whose favourite pursuit was to
+read the newspapers in his club, and to inveigh against the Liberals. He
+was pale and pasty, and suffered from indigestion. Mrs. Flint was tall,
+thin and severe, and a great helper at St. Matthew's, the church round
+the corner. She gave up all her time to church work and the care of the
+poor, and it wasn't her fault that the poor hated her. Between the
+Scylla of politics and the Charybdis of religion there was very little
+left for poor Barbara; she faded away under the care of an elderly
+governess who suffered from a perfect cascade of ill-fated love affairs;
+it seemed that gentlemen were always "playing with her feelings." But in
+all probability a too vivid imagination led her astray in this matter;
+at any rate, she cried so often during Barbara's lessons that the title
+of the lesson-book, "Reading without Tears," was sadly belied. It might
+be expected that, under these unfavourable circumstances, Barbara was
+growing into a depressed and melancholy childhood.
+
+Barbara, happily, was saved by her imagination. Surely nothing quite
+like Barbara's imagination had ever been seen before, because it came to
+her, outside inheritance, outside environment, outside observation. She
+had it altogether, in spite of Flints past and present. But, perhaps,
+not altogether in spite of March Square. It would be difficult to say
+how deeply the fountain, the almond tree, the green, flat shining grass
+had stung her intuition; but stung it only, not created it--the thing
+was there from the beginning of all time. She talked, at first to
+nurses, servants, her mother, about the things that she knew; about her
+Friend who often came to see her, who was there so many times--there in
+the room with her when they couldn't catch a glimpse of him; about the
+days and nights when she was away anywhere, up in the sky, out on the
+air, deep in the sea, about all the other experiences that she
+remembered but was now rapidly losing consciousness of. She talked, at
+first easily, naturally, and inviting, as it were, return confidences.
+Then, quite suddenly, she realised that she simply wasn't believed, that
+she was considered a wicked little girl "for making things up so," that
+there was no hope at all for her unless she abandoned her "lying ways."
+
+The shock of this discovery flung her straight back upon herself; if
+they refused to believe these things, then there was nothing to be done.
+But for herself their incredulity should not stop her. She became a very
+quiet little girl--what her nurse called "brooding." This incredulity
+of theirs drove them all instantly into a hostile camp, and the
+affection that she had been longing to lavish upon them must now be
+reserved for other, and, she could not help feeling, wiser persons. This
+division of herself from the immediate world hurt her very much. From a
+very early age, indeed, we need reassurance as to the necessity for our
+existence. Barbara simply did not seem to be wanted.
+
+But still worse: now that her belief in certain things had been
+challenged, she herself began to question them. Was it true, possibly,
+when a flaming sunset struck a sword across the Square and caught the
+fountain, slashing it into a million glittering fragments, that that was
+all that occurred? Such a thing had been for Barbara simply a door into
+her earlier world. See the fountain--well, you have been tested; you are
+still simple enough to go back into the real world. But was Barbara
+simple enough? She was seven; it is just about then that we begin, under
+the guard of nurses carefully chosen for us by our parents, to drop our
+simplicity. It must, of course, be so, or the world would be all
+dreamers, and then there would be no commerce.
+
+Barbara knew nothing of commerce, but she did know that she was
+unhappy, that her dolls gave her no happiness, and that her Friend did
+not come now so often to see her. She was, I am afraid, in character a
+"Hopper." She must be affectionate, she must demand affection of others,
+and will they not give it her, then must they simulate it. The tragedy
+of it all was perhaps, that Barbara had not herself that coloured
+vitality in her that would prepare other people to be fond of her. The
+world is divided between those who place affection about, now here, now
+there, and those whose souls lie, like drawers, unawares, but ready for
+the affection to be laid there.
+
+Barbara could not "place" it about; she had neither optimism nor a sense
+of humour sufficient. But she wanted it--wanted it terribly. If she were
+not to be allowed to indulge her imagination, then must she, all the
+more, love some one with fervour: the two things were interdependent.
+She surveyed her world with an eye to this possible loving. There was
+her governess, who had been with her for a year now, tearful, bony,
+using Barbara as a means and never as an end. Barbara did not love
+her--how could she? Moreover, there were other physical things: the
+lean, shining marble of Miss Letts's long fingers, the dry thinness of
+her hair, the way that the tip of her nose would be suddenly red, and
+then, like a blown-out candle, dull white again. Fingers and noses are
+not the only agents in the human affections, but they have most
+certainly something to do with them. Moreover, Miss Letts was too busily
+engaged with the survey of her relations, with now this gentleman, now
+that, to pay much attention to Barbara. She dismissed her as "a queer
+little thing." There were in Miss Letts's world "queer things" and
+"things not queer." The division was patent to anybody.
+
+Barbara's father and mother were also surveyed. Here Barbara was baffled
+by the determination on the part of both of them that she should talk,
+should think, should dream about all the things concerning which she
+could not talk, think nor dream. "How to grow up into a nice little
+girl," "How to pray to God," "How never to tell lies," "How to keep
+one's clothes clean,"--these things did not interest Barbara in the
+least; but had she been given love with them she might have paid some
+attention. But a too rigidly defined politics, a too rigidly defined
+religion find love a poor, loose, sentimental thing--very rightly so,
+perhaps. Mrs. Flint was afraid that Barbara was a "silly little girl."
+
+"I hope, Miss Letts, that she no longer talks about her silly fancies."
+
+"She has said nothing to me in that respect for a considerable period,
+Mrs. Flint."
+
+"All very young children have fancies, but such things are dangerous
+when they grow older."
+
+"I agree with you."
+
+Nevertheless the fountain continued to flash in the sun, and births,
+deaths, weddings, love and hate continued to play their part in March
+Square.
+
+
+II
+
+Barbara, groping about in the desolation of having no one to grope with
+her, discovered that her Friend came now less frequently to see her. She
+was even beginning to wonder whether he had ever really come at all. She
+had perhaps imagined him just as on occasion she would imagine her doll,
+Jane, the Queen of England, or her afternoon tea the most wonderful
+meal, with sausages, blackberry jam and chocolates. Young though, she
+was, she was able to realise that this imagination of hers was _capable
+de tout_, and that every one older than herself said that it was wicked;
+therefore was her Friend, perhaps, wicked also.
+
+And yet, if the dark curtains that veiled the nursery windows at night,
+if the glimmering shape of the picture-frames, if the square black sides
+of the dolls' house were real, real also was the figure of her Friend,
+real his arousal in her of all the memories of the old days before she
+was Barbara Flint at all--real, too, his love, his care, his protection;
+as real, yes, as Miss Letts's bony figure. It was all very puzzling. But
+he did not come now as in the old days.
+
+Barbara played very often in the gardens in the middle of the Square,
+but because she was a timid little girl she did not make many friends.
+She knew many of the other children who played there, and sometimes she
+shared in their games; but her sensitive feelings were so easily hurt,
+she frequently retired in tears. Every day on going into the garden she
+looked about her, hoping that she would find before she left it again
+some one whom it would be possible to worship. She tried on several
+occasions to erect altars, but our English temperament is against
+public display, and she was misunderstood.
+
+Then, quite suddenly, as though she had sprung out of the fountain, Mary
+Adams was there. Mary Adams was aged nine, and her difference from
+Barbara Flint was that, whereas Barbara craved for affection, she craved
+for attention: the two demands can be easily confused. Mary Adams was
+the only child of an aged philosopher, Mr. Adams, who, contrary to all
+that philosophy teaches, had married a young wife. The young wife,
+pleased that Mary was so unlike her father, made much of her, and Mary
+was delighted to be made much of. She was a little girl with flaxen
+hair, blue eyes, and a fine pink-and-white colouring. In a few years'
+time she will be so sure of the attention that her appearance is winning
+for her that she will make no effort to secure adherents, but just now
+she is not sufficiently confident--she must take trouble. She took
+trouble with Barbara.
+
+Sitting neatly upon a seat, Mary watched rude little boys throw sidelong
+glances in her direction. Her long black legs were quivering with the
+perception of their interest, even though her eyes were haughtily
+indifferent. It was then that Barbara, with Miss Letts, an absent-minded
+companion, came and sat by her side. Barbara and Mary had met at a
+party--not quite on equal terms, because nine to seven is as sixty to
+thirty--but they had played hide-and-seek together, and had, by chance,
+hidden in the same cupboard.
+
+The little boys had moved away, and Mary Adams's legs dropped, suddenly,
+their tension.
+
+"I'm going to a party to-night," Mary said, with a studied indifference.
+
+Miss Letts knew of Mary's parents, and that, socially, they were "all
+right"--a little more "all right," were we to be honest, than Mr. and
+Mrs. Flint. She said, therefore:
+
+"Are you, dear? That will be nice for you."
+
+Instantly Barbara was trembling with excitement. She knew that the
+remark had been made to her and not at all to Miss Letts. Barbara
+entered once again, and instantly, upon the field of the passions. Here
+she was fated by her temperament to be in all cases a miserable victim,
+because panic, whether she were accepted or rejected by the object of
+her devotion, reduced her to incoherent foolishness; she could only be
+foolish now, and, although her heart beat like a leaping animal inside
+her, allowed Miss Letts to carry on the conversation.
+
+But Miss Letts's wandering eye hurt Mary's pride. She was not really
+interested in her, and once Mary had come to that conclusion about any
+one, complete, utter oblivion enveloped them. She perceived, however,
+Barbara's agitation, and at that, flattered and appeased, she was
+amiable again. There followed between the two a strangled and
+disconnected conversation.
+
+Mary began:
+
+"I've got four dolls at home."
+
+"Have you?" breathlessly from Barbara. By such slow accuracies as these
+are we conveyed, all our poor mortal days, from realism to romance, and
+with a shocking precipitance are we afterwards flung back, out of
+romance into realism, our natural home, again.
+
+"Yes--four dolls I have. My mother will give me another if I ask her.
+Would your mother?"
+
+"Yes," said Barbara, untruthfully.
+
+"That's my governess, Miss Marsh, there, with the green hat, that is.
+I've had her two months."
+
+"Yes," said Barbara, gazing with adoring eyes.
+
+"She's going away next week. There's another coming. I can do sums, can
+you?"
+
+"Yes," again from Barbara.
+
+"I can do up to twice-sixty-three. I'm nine. Miss Marsh says I'm
+clever."
+
+"I'm seven," said Barbara.
+
+"I could read when I was seven--long, long words. Can you read?"
+
+At this moment there arrived the green-hatted Miss Marsh, a plump,
+optimistic person, to whom Miss Letts was gloomily patronising. Miss
+Letts always distrusted stoutness in another; it looked like deliberate
+insult. Mary Adams was conveyed away; Barbara was bereft of her glory.
+
+But, rather, on that instant that Mary Adams vanished did she become
+glorified. Barbara had been too absurdly agitated to transform on to the
+mirror of her brain Mary's appearance. In all the dim-coloured splendour
+of flame and mist was Mary now enwrapped, with every step that Barbara
+took towards her home did the splendour grow.
+
+
+III
+
+Then followed an invitation to tea from Mary's mother. Barbara,
+preparing for the event, suffered her hair to be brushed, choked with
+strange half-sweet, half-terrible suffocation that comes from
+anticipated glories: half-sweet because things will, at their worst, be
+wonderful; half-terrible because we know that they will not be so good
+as we hope.
+
+Barbara, washed paler than ever, in a white frock with pink bows, was
+conducted by Miss Letts. She choked with terror in the strange hall,
+where she was received with great splendour by Mary. The schoolroom was
+large and fine and bright, finer far than Barbara's room, swamped by the
+waters of religion and politics. Barbara could only gulp and gulp, and
+feel still at her throat that half-sweet, half-terrible suffocation.
+Within her little body her heart, so huge and violent, was pounding.
+
+"A very nice room indeed," said Miss Letts, more friendly now to the
+optimist because she was leaving in a day or two, and could not,
+therefore, at the moment be considered a success. Her failure balanced
+her plumpness.
+
+Here, at any rate, was the beginning of a great friendship between
+Barbara Flint and Mary Adams. The character of Mary Adams was admittedly
+a difficult one to explore; her mother, a cloud of nurses and a company
+of governesses had been baffled completely by its dark caverns and
+recesses. One clue, beyond question, was selfishness; but this quality,
+by the very obviousness of it, may tempt us to believe that that is all.
+It may account, when we are displeased, for so much. It accounted for a
+great deal with Mary--but not all. She had, I believe, a quite genuine
+affection for Barbara, nothing very disturbing, that could rival the
+question as to whether she would receive a second helping of pudding or
+no, or whether she looked better in blue or pink. Nevertheless, the
+affection was there. During several months she considered Barbara more
+than she had ever considered any one in her life before. At that first
+tea party she was aware, perhaps, that Barbara's proffered devotion was
+for complete and absolute self-sacrifice, something that her vanity
+would not often find to feed it. There was, too, no question of
+comparison between them.
+
+Even when Barbara grew to be nine she would be a poor thing beside the
+lusty self-confidence of Mary Adams--and this was quite as it should be.
+All that Barbara wanted was some one upon whom she might pour her
+devotion, and one of the things that Mary wanted was some one who would
+spend it upon her. But there stirred, nevertheless, some breath of
+emotion across that stagnant little pool, Mary's heart. She was moved,
+perhaps, by pity for Barbara's amazing simplicities, moved also by
+curiosity as to how far Barbara's devotion to her would go, moved even
+by some sense of distrust of her own self-satisfaction. She did, indeed,
+admire any one who could realise, as completely as did Barbara, the
+greatness of Mary Adams.
+
+It may seem strange to us, and almost terrible, that a small child of
+seven can feel anything as devastating as this passion of Barbara. But
+Barbara was made to be swept by storms stronger than she could control,
+and Mary Adams was the first storm of her life. They spent now a great
+deal of their time together. Mrs. Adams, who was beginning to find Mary
+more than she could control, hailed the gentle Barbara with joy; she
+welcomed also perhaps a certain note of rather haughty protection which
+Mary seemed to be developing.
+
+During the hours when Barbara was alone she thought of the many things
+that she would say to her friend when they met, and then at the meeting
+could say nothing. Mary talked or she did not talk according to her
+mood, but she soon made it very plain that there was only one way of
+looking at everything inside and outside the earth, and that was Mary's
+way. Barbara had no affection, but a certain blind terror for God. It
+was precisely as though some one were standing with a hammer behind a
+tree, and were waiting to hit you on the back of your head at the first
+opportunity. But God was not, on the whole, of much importance; her
+Friend was the great problem, and before many days were passed Mary was
+told all about him.
+
+"He used to come often and often. He'd be there just where you wanted
+him--when the light was out or anything. And he _was_ nice." Barbara
+sighed.
+
+Mary stared at her, seeming in the first full sweep of confidence, to be
+almost alarmed.
+
+"You don't mean----?" She stopped, then cried, "Why, you silly, you
+believe in ghosts!"
+
+"No, I don't," said Barbara, not far from tears.
+
+"Yes, you do."
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"Of course you do, you silly."
+
+"No, I don't. He--he's real."
+
+"Well," Mary said, with a final toss of the head, "if you go seeing
+ghosts like that you can't have me for your friend, Barbara Flint--you
+can choose, that's all."
+
+Barbara was aghast. Such a catastrophe had never been contemplated. Lose
+Mary? Sooner life itself. She resolved, sorrowfully, to say no more
+about her Friend. But here occurred a strange thing. It was as though
+Mary felt that over this one matter Barbara had eluded her; she returned
+to it again and again, always with contemptuous but inquisitive
+allusion.
+
+"Did he come last night, Barbara?"
+
+"No."
+
+"P'r'aps he did, only you were asleep."
+
+"No, he didn't."
+
+"You don't believe he'll come ever any more, do you? Now that I've said
+he isn't there really?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Very well, then, I won't see you to-morrow--not at all--not all day--I
+won't."
+
+These crises tore Barbara's spirit. Seven is not an age that can reason
+with life's difficulties, and Barbara had, in this business, no
+reasoning powers at all. She would die for Mary; she could not deny her
+Friend. What was she to do? And yet--just at this moment when, of all
+others, it was important that he should come to her and confirm his
+reality--he made no sign. Not only did he make no sign, but he seemed to
+withdraw, silently and surely, all his supports. Barbara discovered that
+the company of Mary Adams did in very truth make everything that was not
+sure and certain absurd and impossible. There was visible no longer, as
+there had been before, that country wherein anything was possible, where
+wonderful things had occurred and where wonderful things would surely
+occur again.
+
+"You're pretending," said Mary Adams sharply when Barbara ventured some
+possibly extravagant version of some ordinary occurrence, or suggested
+that events, rich and wonderful, had occurred during the night.
+"Nonsense," said Mary sharply.
+
+She said "nonsense" as though it were the very foundation of her creed
+of life--as, indeed, to the end of her days, it was. What, then, was
+Barbara to do? Her friend would not come, although passionately she
+begged and begged and begged that he would. Mary Adams was there every
+day, sharp, and shining, and resolved, demanding the whole of Barbara
+Flint, body and soul--nothing was to be kept from her, nothing. What was
+Barbara Flint to do?
+
+She denied her Friend, denied that earlier world, denied her dreams and
+her hopes. She cried a good deal, was very lonely in the dark. Mary
+Adams, as was her way, having won her victory, passed on to win another.
+
+
+IV
+
+Mary began, now, to find Barbara rather tiresome. Having forced her to
+renounce her gods, she now despised her for so easy a renunciation.
+Every day did she force Barbara through her act of denial, and the
+Inquisition of Spain held, in all its records, nothing more cruel.
+
+"Did he come last night?"
+
+"No."
+
+"He'll never come again, will he?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Wasn't it silly of you to make up stories like that?"
+
+"Oh, Mary--yes."
+
+"There aren't ghosts, nor fairies, nor giants, nor wizards, nor Santa
+Claus?"
+
+"No; but, Mary, p'r'aps----"
+
+"No; there aren't. Say there aren't."
+
+"There isn't."
+
+Poor Barbara, even as she concluded this ceremony, clutching her doll
+close to her to give her comfort, could not refrain from a hurried
+glance over her shoulder. He _might_ be---- But upon Mary this all began
+soon enough to pall. She liked some opposition. She liked to defeat
+people and trample on them and then be gracious. Barbara was a poor
+little thing. Moreover, Barbara's standard of morality and righteousness
+annoyed her. Barbara seemed to have no idea that there was anything in
+this confused world of ours except wrong and right. No dialectician,
+argue he ever so stoutly, could have persuaded Barbara that there was
+such a colour in the world's paint-box as grey. "It's bad to tell lies.
+It's bad to steal. It's bad to put your tongue out. It's good to be kind
+to poor people. It's good to say 'No' when you want more pudding but
+mustn't have it." Barbara was no prig. She did not care the least little
+thing about these things, nor did she ever mention them, but let a
+question of conduct arise, then was Barbara's way plain and clear. She
+did not always take it, but there it was. With Mary, how very different!
+She had, I am afraid, no sense of right and wrong at all, but only a
+coolly ironical perception of the things that her elders disliked and
+permitted. Very foolish and absurd, these elders. We have always before
+our eyes some generation that provokes our irony, the one before us, the
+one behind us, our own perhaps; for Mary Adams it would always be any
+generation that was not her own. Her business in life was to avoid
+unpleasantness, to extract the honey from every flower, but above all to
+be admired, praised, preferred.
+
+At first with her pleasure at Barbara's adoration she had found, within
+herself, a truly alarming desire to be "good." It might, after all, be
+rather amusing to be, in strict reality, all the fine things that
+Barbara considered her. She endeavoured for a week or two to adjust
+herself to this point of view, to consider, however slightly, whether
+it were right or wrong to do something that she particularly wished to
+do.
+
+But she found it very tiresome. The effort spoilt her temper, and no one
+seemed to notice any change. She might as well be bad as good were there
+no one present to perceive the difference. She gave it up, and, from
+that moment found that she suffered Barbara less gladly than before.
+Meanwhile, in Barbara also strange forces had been at work. She found
+that her imagination (making up stories) simply, in spite of all the
+Mary Adamses in the world, refused to stop. Still would the almond tree
+and the fountain, the gold dust on the roofs of the houses when the sun
+was setting, the racing hurry of rain drops down the window-pane, the
+funny old woman with the red shawl who brought plants round in a
+wheelbarrow, start her story telling.
+
+Still could she not hold herself from fancying, at times, that her doll
+Jane was a queen, and that Miss Letts could make "spells" by the mere
+crook of her bony fingers. Worst of all, still she must think of her
+Friend, tell herself with an ache that he would never come back again,
+feel, sometimes, that she would give up Mary and all the rest of the
+world if he would only be beside her bed, as he used to be, talking to
+her, holding her hand. During these days, had there been any one to
+observe her, she was a pathetic little figure, with her thin legs like
+black sticks, her saucer eyes that so readily filled with tears, her
+eager, half-apprehensive expression, the passionate clutch of the doll
+to her heart, and it is, after all, a painful business, this
+adoration--no human soul can live up to the heights of it, and, what is
+more, no human soul ought to.
+
+As Mary grew tired of Barbara she allowed to slip from her many of the
+virtuous graces that had hitherto, for Barbara's benefit, adorned her.
+She lost her temper, was cruel simply for the pleasure that Barbara's
+ill-restrained agitation yielded her, but, even beyond this, squandered
+recklessly her reputation for virtue. Twice, before Barbara's very eyes,
+she told lies, and told them, too, with a real mastery of the
+craft--long practice and a natural disposition had brought her very near
+perfection. Barbara, her heart beating wildly, refused to understand;
+Mary could not be so. She held Jane to her breast more tightly than
+before. And the denials continued; twice a day now they were extorted
+from her--with every denial the ghost of her Friend stole more deeply
+into the mist. He was gone; he was gone; and what was left?
+
+Very soon, and with unexpected suddenness, the crisis came.
+
+
+V
+
+Upon a day Barbara accompanied her mother to tea with Mrs. Adams. The
+ladies remained downstairs in the dull splendour of the drawing-room;
+Mary and Barbara were delivered to Miss Fortescue, the most recent
+guardian of Mary's life and prospects.
+
+"She's simply awful. You needn't mind a word she says," Mary instructed
+her friend, and prepared then to behave accordingly. They had tea, and
+Mary did as she pleased. Miss Fortescue protested, scolded, was weak
+when she should have been strong, and said often, "Now, Mary, there's a
+dear."
+
+Barbara, the faint colour coming and going in her cheeks, watched. She
+watched Mary now with quite a fresh intention. She had begun her voyage
+of discovery: what was in Mary's head, _what_ would she do next? What
+Mary did next was to propose, after tea, that they should travel through
+other parts of the house.
+
+"We'll be back in a moment," Mary flung over her head to Miss Fortescue.
+They proceeded then through passages, peering into dark rooms, looking
+behind curtains, Barbara following behind her friend, who seemed to be
+moved by a rather aimless intention of finding something to do that she
+shouldn't. They finally arrived at Mrs. Adams's private and particular
+sitting-room, a place that may be said, in the main, to stand as a
+protest against the rule of the ancient philosopher, being all pink and
+flimsy and fragile with precious vases and two post-impressionist
+pictures (a green apple tree one, the other a brown woman), and lace
+cushions and blue bowls with rose leaves in them. Barbara had never been
+into this room before, nor had she ever in all her seven years seen
+anything so lovely.
+
+"Mother says I'm never to come in here," announced Mary. "But I
+do--lots. Isn't it pretty?"
+
+"P'r'aps we oughtn't----" began Barbara.
+
+"Oh, yes, we ought," answered Mary scornfully. "Always you and your
+'oughtn't.'"
+
+She turned, and her shoulders brushed a low bracket that was close to
+the door. A large Nankin vase was at her feet, scattered into a thousand
+pieces. Even Mary's proud indifference was stirred by this catastrophe,
+and she was down on her knees in an instant, trying to pick up the
+pieces. Barbara stared, her eyes wide with horror.
+
+"Oh, Mary," she gasped.
+
+"You might help instead of just standing there!"
+
+Then the door opened and, like the avenging gods from Olympus, in came
+the two ladies, eagerly, with smiles.
+
+"Now I must just show you," began Mrs. Adams. Then the catastrophe was
+discovered--a moment's silence, then a cry from the poor lady: "Oh, my
+vase! It was priceless!" (It was not, but no matter.)
+
+About Barbara the air clung so thick with catastrophe that it was from a
+very long way indeed that she heard Mary's voice:
+
+"Barbara didn't mean-----"
+
+"Did you do this, Barbara?" her mother turned round upon her.
+
+"You know, Mary, I've told you a thousand times that you're not to come
+in here!" this from Mrs. Adams, who was obviously very angry indeed.
+
+Mary was on her feet now and, as she looked across at Barbara, there was
+in her glance a strange look, ironical, amused, inquisitive, even
+affectionate. "Well, mother, I knew we mustn't. But Barbara wanted to
+_look_ so I said we'd just _peep_, but that we weren't to touch
+anything, and then Barbara couldn't help it, really; her shoulder just
+brushed the shelf----" and still as she looked there was in her eyes
+that strange irony: "Well, now you see me as I am--I'm bored by all this
+pretending. It's gone on long enough. Are you going to give me away?"
+
+But Barbara could do nothing. Her whole world was there, like the Nankin
+vase, smashed about her feet, as it never, never would be again.
+
+"So you did this, Barbara?" Mrs. Flint said.
+
+"Yes," said Barbara. Then she began to cry.
+
+
+VI
+
+At home she was sent to bed. Her mother read her a chapter of the Gospel
+according to St. Matthew, and then left her; she lay there, sick with
+crying, her eyes stiff and red, wondering how she would ever get through
+the weeks and weeks of life that remained to her. She thought: "I'll
+never love any one again. Mary took my Friend away--and then she wasn't
+there herself. There isn't anybody."
+
+Then it suddenly occurred to her that she need never be put through the
+agony of her denials again, that she could believe what she liked, make
+up stories.
+
+Her Friend would, of course, never come to see her any more, but at
+least now she would be able to think about him. She would be allowed to
+remember. Her brain was drowsy, her eyes half closed. Through the
+humming air something was coming; the dark curtains were parted, the
+light of the late afternoon sun was faint yellow upon the opposite
+wall--there was a little breeze. Drowsily, drowsily, her drooping eyes
+felt the light, the stir of the air, the sense that some one was in the
+room.
+
+She looked up; she gave a cry! He had come back! He had come back after
+all!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+SARAH TREFUSIS
+
+
+I
+
+Sarah Trefusis lived, with her mother, in the smallest house in March
+Square, a really tiny house, like a box, squeezed breathlessly between
+two fat buildings, but looking, with its white paint and green doors,
+smarter than either of them. Lady Charlotte Trefusis, Sarah's mother,
+was elegant, penniless and a widow; Captain B. Trefusis, her husband,
+had led the merriest of lives until a game of polo carried him
+reluctantly from a delightful world and forced Lady Charlotte to
+consider the problem of having a good time alone on nothing at all. But
+it may be said that, on the whole, she succeeded. She was the
+best-dressed widow in London, and went everywhere, but the little house
+in March Square was the scene of a most strenuous campaign, every day
+presenting its defeat or victory, and every minute of the day
+threatening overwhelming disaster if something were not done
+immediately. Lady Charlotte had the smallest feet and hands outside
+China, a pile of golden hair above the face of a pink-and-white doll.
+Staring from this face, however, were two of the loveliest, most
+unscrupulous of eyes, and those eyes did more for Lady Charlotte's
+precarious income than any other of her resources. She wore her
+expensive clothes quite beautifully, and gave lovely little lunches and
+dinners; no really merry house-party was complete without her.
+
+Sarah was her only child, and, although at the time of which I am
+writing she was not yet nine years of age, there was no one in London
+better suited to the adventurous and perilous existence that Fate had
+selected for her. Sarah was black as ink--that is, she had coal black
+hair, coal black eyes, and wonderful black eyelashes. Her eyelashes were
+her only beautiful feature, but she was, nevertheless, a most remarkable
+looking child. "If ever a child's possessed of the devil, my dear
+Charlotte," said Captain James Trent to her mother, "it's your precious
+daughter--she _is_ the devil, I believe."
+
+"Well, she needs to be," said her mother, "considering the life that's
+in store for her. We're very good friends, she and I, thank you."
+
+They were. They understood one another to perfection. Lady Charlotte was
+as hard as nails, and Sarah was harder. Sarah had never been known to
+cry. She had bitten the fingers of one of her nurses through to the
+bone, and had stuck a needle into the cheek of another whilst she slept,
+and had watched, with a curious abstracted gaze, the punishment dealt
+out to her, as though it had nothing to do with her at all. She never
+lost her temper, and one of the most terrible things about her was her
+absolute calm. She was utterly fearless, went to the dentist without a
+tremor, and, at the age of six, fell downstairs, broke her leg, and so
+lay until help arrived without a cry. She bullied and hurt anything or
+anybody that came her way, but carried out her plans always with the
+same deliberate abstraction as though she were obeying somebody's
+orders. She never nourished revenge or resentment, and it seemed to be
+her sense of humour (rather than any fierce or hostile feeling) that was
+tickled when she hurt any one.
+
+She was a child, apparently without imagination, but displayed, at a
+very early period, a strangely sharpened perception of what her nurse
+called "the uncanny." She frightened even her mother by the expression
+that her face often wore of attention to something or somebody outside
+her companion's perception.
+
+"A broomstick is what she'll be flying away on one of these nights, you
+mark my word," a nurse declared. "Little devil, she is, neither more nor
+less. It isn't decent the way she sits on the floor looking right
+through the wall into the next room, as you might say. Yes, and knows
+who's coming up the stairs long before she's seen 'em. No place for a
+decent Christian woman, and so I told her mother this very morning." It
+was, of course, quite impossible to find a nurse to stay with Sarah,
+and, when she arrived at the age of seven, nurses were dismissed, and
+she either looked after herself or was tended by an abandoned French
+maid of her mother's, who stayed with Lady Charlotte, like a wicked,
+familiar spirit, for a great number of years on a strange basis of
+confidante, fellow-plunderer, and sympathetic adventurer. This French
+maid, whose name was, appropriately enough, Hortense, had a real
+affection for Sarah "because she was the weeckedest child of 'er age
+she ever see." There was nothing of which Sarah, from the very earliest
+age, did not seem aware. Her mother's gentlemen friends she valued
+according to their status in the house, and, as they "fell off" or "came
+on," so was her manner indifferent or pleasant. For Hortense, she had a
+real respect, but even that improper and brazen spirit quailed at times
+before her cynical and elfish regard. To say of a child that there is
+something "unearthly" about it is, as a rule, to pay a compliment to
+ethereal blue and gold. There was nothing ethereal about Sarah, and yet
+she was unearthly enough. Squatting on the floor, her legs tucked under
+her, her head thrust forward, her large black eyes staring at the wall,
+her black hair almost alive in the shining intensity of its colours, she
+had in her attitude the lithe poise of some animal ready to spring,
+waiting for its exact opportunity.
+
+When her mother, in a temper, struck her, she would push her hair back
+from her face with a sharp movement of her hand and then would watch
+broodingly and cynically for the next move. "You hit me again," she
+seemed to say, "and you _will_ make a fool of yourself."
+
+She was aware, of course, of a thousand influences in the house of
+which her mother and Hortense had never the slightest conception. From
+the cosy security of her cradle she had watched the friendly spirit who
+had accompanied (with hostile irritation) her entrance into this world.
+His shadow had, for a long period, darkened her nursery, but she
+repelled, with absolute assurance, His kindly advances.
+
+"I'm not frightened. I don't, in the least, want things made comfortable
+for me. I can get along very nicely, indeed, without you. You're full of
+sentiment and gush--things that I detest--and it won't be the least use
+in the world for you to ask me to be good, and tender, and all the rest
+of it. I'm not like your other babies."
+
+He must have known, of course, that she was not, but, nevertheless, He
+stayed. "I understand perfectly," He assured her. "But, nevertheless, I
+don't give you up. You may be, for all you know, more interesting to me
+than all the others put together. And remember this--every time you do
+anything at all kind or thoughtful, every time you think of any one or
+care for them, every time you use your influence for good in any way, my
+power over you is a little stronger, I shall be a little closer to you,
+your escape will be a little harder."
+
+"Oh, you needn't flatter yourself," she answered Him. "There's precious
+little danger of _my_ self-sacrifice or love for others. That's not
+going to be my attitude to life at all. You'd better not waste your time
+over me."
+
+She had not, she might triumphantly reflect, during these eight years,
+given Him many chances, and yet He was still there. She hated the
+thought of His patience, and somewhere deep within herself she dreaded
+the faint, dim beat of some response that, like a warning bell across a
+misty sea, cautioned her. "You may think you're safe from Him, but He'll
+catch you yet."
+
+"He shan't," she replied. "I'm stronger than He is."
+
+
+II
+
+This must sound, in so prosaic a summary of it, fantastic, but nothing
+could be said to be fantastic about Sarah. She was, for one thing, quite
+the least troublesome of children. She could be relied upon, at any
+time, to find amusement for herself. She was full of resources, but
+what these resources exactly were it would be difficult to say. She
+would sit for hours alone, staring in front of her. She never played
+with toys--she did not draw or read--but she was never dull, and always
+had the most perfect of appetites. She had never, from the day of her
+birth, known an hour's illness.
+
+It was, however, in the company of other children that she was most
+characteristic. The nurses in the Square quite frankly hated her, but
+most of the mothers had a very real regard for Lady Charlotte's smart
+little lunches; moreover, it was impossible to detect Sarah's guilt in
+any positive fashion. It was not enough for the nurses to assure their
+mistresses that from the instant that the child entered the gardens all
+the other children were out of temper, rebellious, and finally
+unmanageable.
+
+"Nonsense, Janet, you imagine things. She seems a very nice little
+girl."
+
+"Well, ma'am, all I can say is, I won't care to be answerable for Master
+Ronald's behaviour when she _does_ come along, that's all. It's beyond
+belief the effect she 'as upon 'im."
+
+The strangest thing of all was that Sarah herself liked the company of
+other children. She went every morning into the gardens (with Hortense)
+and watched them at their play. She would sit, with her hands folded
+quietly on her lap, her large black eyes watching, watching, watching.
+It was odd, indeed, how, instantly, all the children in the garden were
+aware of her entrance. She, on her part, would appear to regard none of
+them, and yet would see them all. Perched on her seat she surveyed the
+gardens always with the same gaze of abstracted interest, watching the
+clear, decent paths across whose grey background at the period of this
+episode, the October leaves, golden, flaming, dun, gorgeous and
+shrivelled, fell through the still air, whirled, and with a little sigh
+of regret, one might fancy, sank and lay dead. The October colours, a
+faint haze of smoky mist, the pale blue of the distant sky, the brown
+moist earth, were gentle, mild, washed with the fading year's regretful
+tears; the cries of the children, the rhythmic splash of the fountain
+throbbed behind the colours like some hidden orchestra behind the
+curtain at the play; the statues in the garden, like fragments of the
+white bolster clouds that swung so lazily from tree to tree; had no
+meaning in that misty air beyond the background that they helped to
+fill. The year, thus idly, with so pleasant a melancholy, was slipping
+into decay.
+
+Sarah would watch. Then, without a word, she would slip from her seat,
+and, walking solemnly, rather haughtily, would join some group of
+children. Day after day the same children came to the gardens, and they
+all of them knew Sarah by now. Hortense, in her turn also, sitting,
+stiff and superior, would watch. She would see Sarah's pleasant
+approach, her smile, her amiability. Very soon, however, there would be
+trouble--some child would cry out; there would be blows; nurses would
+run forward, scoldings, protests, captives led away weeping ... and then
+Sarah would return slowly to her seat, her gaze aloof, cynical, remote.
+She would carefully explain to Hortense the reason of the uproar. She
+had done nothing--her conscience was clear. These silly little idiots.
+She would break into French, culled elaborately from Hortense, would end
+disdainfully--"mais, voilà,"--very old for her age.
+
+Hortense was vicious, selfish, crude in her pursuit of pleasure,
+entirely unscrupulous, but, as the days passed, she was, in spite of
+herself, conscious of some half-acknowledged, half-decided terror of
+Sarah's possibilities.
+
+The child was eight years old. She was capable of anything; in her
+remote avoidance of any passion, any regret, any anticipated pleasure,
+any spontaneity, she was inhuman. Hortense thought that she detected in
+the chit's mother something of her own fear.
+
+
+III
+
+There used to come to the gardens a little fat red-faced girl called
+Mary Kitson, the child of simple and ingenuous parents (her father was a
+writer of stories of adventure for boys' papers); she was herself
+simple-minded, lethargic, unadventurous, and happily stupid. Walking one
+day slowly with Hortense down one of the garden paths, Sarah saw Mary
+Kitson engaged in talking to two dolls, seated on a bench with them,
+patting their clothes, very happy, her nurse busy over a novelette.
+
+Sarah stopped.
+
+"I'll sit here," she said, walked across to the bench and sat down. Mary
+looked up from her dolls, and then, nervously and self-consciously, went
+back to her play. Sarah stared straight before her.
+
+Hortense amiably endeavoured to draw the nurse into conversation.
+
+"You 'ave 'ere ze fine gardens," she said. "It calls to mind my own
+Paris. Ah, the gardens in Paris!"
+
+But the nurse had been taught to distrust all foreigners, and her views
+of Paris were coloured by her reading. She admired Hortense's clothes,
+but distrusted her advances.
+
+She buried herself even more deeply in the paper. Poor Mary Kitson,
+alas! found that, in some undefinable manner, the glory had departed
+from her dolls. Adrian and Emily were, of a sudden, glassy and lumpy
+abstractions of sawdust and china. Very timidly she raised her large,
+stupid eyes and regarded Sarah. Sarah returned the glance and smiled.
+Then she came close to Mary.
+
+"It's better under there," she said, pointing to the shade of a friendly
+tree.
+
+"May I?" Mary said to her nurse with a frightened gasp.
+
+"Well, now, don't you go far," said the nurse, with a fierce look at
+Hortense.
+
+"You like where you are?" asked Hortense, smiling more than ever. "You
+'ave a good place?" Slowly the nurse yielded. The novelette was laid
+aside.
+
+Impossible to say what occurred under the tree. Now and again a rustle
+of wind would send the colours from the trees to short branches loaded
+with leaves of red gold, shivering through the air; a chequered, blazing
+canopy covered the ground.
+
+Mary Kitson had, it appeared, very little to say. She sat some way from
+Sarah, clutching Adrian and Emily tightly to her breast, and always her
+large, startled eyes were on Sarah's face. She did not move to drive the
+leaves from her dress; her heart beat very fast, her cheeks were very
+red.
+
+Sarah talked a little, but not very much. She asked questions about
+Mary's home and her parents, and Mary answered these interrogations in
+monosyllabic gasps. It appeared that Mary had a kitten, and that this
+kitten was a central fact of Mary's existence. The kitten was called
+Alice.
+
+"Alice is a silly name for a kitten. I shouldn't call a kitten Alice,"
+said Sarah, and Mary started as though in some strange, sinister fashion
+she were instantly aware that Alice's life and safety were threatened.
+
+From that morning began a strange acquaintance that certainly could not
+be called a friendship. There could be no question at all that Mary was
+terrified of Sarah; there could also be no question that Mary was
+Sarah's obedient slave. The cynical Hortense, prepared as she was for
+anything strange and unexpected in Sarah's actions, was, nevertheless,
+puzzled now.
+
+One afternoon, wet and dismal, the two of them sitting in a little box
+of a room in the little box of a house, Sarah huddled in a chair, her
+eyes staring in front of her, Hortense sewing, her white, bony fingers
+moving sharply like knives, the maid asked a question:
+
+"What do you see--Sar-ah--in that infant?"
+
+"What infant?" asked Sarah, without moving her eyes.
+
+"That Mary with whom now you always are."
+
+"We play games together," said Sarah.
+
+"You do not. You may be playing a game--she does nothing. She is
+terrified--out of her life."
+
+"She is very silly. It's funny how silly she is. I like her to be
+frightened."
+
+Mary's nurse told Mary's mother that, in her opinion, Sarah was not a
+nice child. But Sarah had been invited to tea at the confused, simple
+abode of the Kitson family, and had behaved perfectly.
+
+"I think you must be wrong, nurse," said Mrs. Kitson. "She seems a very
+nice little girl. Mary needs companions. It's good for her to be taken
+out of herself."
+
+Had Mrs. Kitson been of a less confused mind, however, had she had more
+time for the proper observation of her daughter, she would have noticed
+her daughter's pale cheeks, her daughter's fits of crying, her
+daughter's silences. Even as the bird is fascinated by the snake, so was
+Mary Kitson fascinated by Sarah Trefusis.
+
+"You are torturing that infant," said Hortense, and Sarah smiled.
+
+
+IV
+
+Mary was by no means the first of Sarah's victim's. There had been many
+others. Utterly aloof, herself, from all emotions of panic or terror, it
+had, from the very earliest age, interested her to see those passions at
+work in others. Cruelty for cruelty's sake had no interest for her at
+all; to pull the wings from flies, to tie kettles to the tails of
+agitated puppies, to throw stones at cats, did not, in the least, amuse
+her. She had once put a cat in the fire, but only because she had seen
+it play with a terrified mouse. That had affronted her sense of justice.
+But she was gravely and quite dispassionately interested in the terror
+of Mary Kitson. In later life a bull fight was to appear to her a
+tiresome affair, but the domination of one human being over another,
+absorbing. She had, too, at the very earliest age, that conviction that
+it was pleasant to combat all sentiment, all appeals to be "good," all
+soft emotions of pity, anything that could suggest that Right was of
+more power than Might.
+
+It was as though she said, "You may think that even now you will get me.
+I tell you I'm a rebel from the beginning; you'll never catch me showing
+affection or sympathy. If you do you may do your worst."
+
+Beyond all things, her anxiety was that, suddenly, in spite of herself,
+she would do something "soft," some weak kindness. Her power over Mary
+Kitson reassured her.
+
+The fascination of this power very soon became to her an overwhelming
+interest. Playing with Mary Kitson's mind was as absorbing to Sarah, as
+chess to an older enthusiast; her discoveries promised her a life full
+of entertainment, if, with her fellow-mortals, she was able, so easily,
+"to do things," what a time she would always have. She discovered, very
+soon, that Mary Kitson was, by nature, truthful and obedient, that she
+had a great fear of God, and that she loved her parents. Here was fine
+material to work upon. She began by insisting on little lies.
+
+"Say our clocks were all wrong, and you couldn't know what the time
+was."
+
+"Oh, but----"
+
+"Yes, say it."
+
+"Please, Sarah."
+
+"Say it. Otherwise I'll be punished too. Mind, if you don't say it, I
+shall know."
+
+There was the horrible threat that effected so much. Mary began soon to
+believe that Sarah was never absent from her, that she attended her,
+invisibly, her little dark face peering over Mary's shoulder, and when
+Mary was in bed at night, the lights out, and only shadows on the walls,
+Sarah was certainly there, her mocking eyes on Mary's face, her voice
+whispering things in Mary's ears.
+
+Sarah, Mary very soon discovered, believed in nothing, and knew
+everything. This horrible combination, naturally, affected Mary, who
+believed in everything and knew nothing.
+
+"Why should we obey our mothers?" said Sarah. "We're as good as they
+are."
+
+"Oh, _no_," said Mary, in a voice shocked to a strangled whisper.
+Nevertheless, she began, a little, to despise her confused parents.
+There came a day when Mary told a very large lie indeed; she said that
+she had brushed her teeth when she had not, and she told this lie quite
+unprompted by Sarah. She was more and more miserable as the days passed.
+
+No one knew exactly the things that the two little girls did when they
+were alone on an afternoon in Sarah's room. Sarah sent Hortense about
+her business, and then set herself to the subdual of Mary's mind and
+character. There would be moments like this, Sarah would turn off the
+electric light, and the room would be lit only by the dim shining of the
+evening sky.
+
+"Now, Mary, you go over to that corner--that dark one--and wait there
+till I tell you to come out. I'll go outside the room, and then you'll
+see what will happen."
+
+"Oh, no, Sarah, I don't want to."
+
+"Why not, you silly baby?"
+
+"I--I don't want to."
+
+"Well, it will be much worse for you if you don't."
+
+"I want to go home."
+
+"You can after you have done that."
+
+"I want to go home now."
+
+"Go into the corner first."
+
+Sarah would leave the room and Mary would stand with her face to the
+wall, a trembling prey to a thousand terrors. The light would quiver and
+shake, steps would tread the floor and cease, there would be a breath in
+her ears, a wind above her head. She would try to pray, but could
+remember no words. Sarah would lead her forth, shaking from head to
+foot.
+
+"You little silly. I was only playing."
+
+Once, and this hurried the climax of the episode, Mary attempted
+rebellion.
+
+"I want to go home, Sarah."
+
+"Well, you can't. You've got to hear the end of the story first."
+
+"I don't like the story. It's a horrid story. I'm going home."
+
+"You'd better not."
+
+"Yes, I will, and I won't come again, and I won't see you again. I hate
+you. I won't. I won't."
+
+Mary, as she very often did, began to cry. Sarah's lips curled with
+scorn.
+
+"All right, you can. You'll never see Alice again if you do."
+
+"Alice?"
+
+"Yes, she'll be drowned, and you'll have the toothache, and I'll come in
+the middle of the night and wake you."
+
+"I--I don't care. I'm go-going home. I'll t-t-ell m-other."
+
+"Tell her. But look out afterwards, that's all."
+
+Mary remained, but Sarah regarded the rebellion as ominous. She thought
+that the time had come to put Mary's submission really to the test.
+
+
+V
+
+The climax of the affair was in this manner. Upon an afternoon when the
+rain was beating furiously upon the window-panes and the wind struggling
+up and down the chimney, Sarah and Mary played together in Sarah's room;
+the play consisted of Mary shutting her eyes and pretending she was in
+a dark wood, whilst Sarah was the tiger who might at any moment spring
+upon her and devour her, who would, in any case, pinch her legs with a
+sudden thrust which would drive all the blood out of Mary's face and
+make her "as white as the moon."
+
+This game ended, Sarah's black eyes moved about for a fresh diversion;
+her gaze rested upon Mary, and Mary whispered that she would like to go
+home.
+
+"Yes. You can," said Sarah, staring at her, "if you will do something
+when you get there."
+
+"What?" said Mary, her heart beating like a heavy and jumping hammer.
+
+"There's something I want. You've got to bring it me."
+
+Mary said nothing, only her wide eyes filled with tears.
+
+"There's something in your mother's drawing-room. You know in that
+little table with the glass top where there are the little gold boxes
+with the silver crosses and things. There's a ring there--a gold one
+with a red stone--very pretty. I want it."
+
+Mary drew a long, deep breath. Her fat legs in the tight, black
+stockings were shaking.
+
+"You can go in when no one sees. The table isn't locked, I know,
+because I opened it once. You can get and bring it to me to-morrow in
+the garden."
+
+"Oh," Mary whispered, "that would be stealing."
+
+"Of course it wouldn't. Nobody wants the old ring. No one ever looks at
+it. It's just for fun."
+
+"No," said Mary, "I mustn't."
+
+"Oh, yes, you must. You'll be very sorry if you don't. Dreadful things
+will happen. Alice----"
+
+Mary cried softly, choking and spluttering and rubbing her eyes with the
+back of her hand.
+
+"Well, you'd better go now. I'll be in the garden with Hortense
+to-morrow. You know, the same place. You'd better have it, that's all.
+And don't go on crying, or your mother will think I made you. What's
+there to cry about? No one will eat you."
+
+"It's stealing."
+
+"I dare say it belongs to you, and, anyway, it will when your mother
+dies, so what _does_ it matter? You _are_ a baby!"
+
+After Mary's departure Sarah sat for a long while alone in her nursery.
+She thought to herself: "Mary will be going home now and she'll be
+snuffling to herself all the way back, and she won't tell the nurse
+anything, I know that. Now she's in the hall. She's upstairs now, having
+her things taken off. She's stopped crying, but her eyes and nose are
+red. She looks very ugly. She's gone to find Alice. She thinks something
+has happened to her. She begins to cry again when she sees her, and she
+begins to talk to her about it. Fancy talking to a cat...."
+
+The room was swallowed in darkness, and when Hortense came in and found
+Sarah sitting alone there, she thought to herself that, in spite of the
+profits that she secured from her mistress she would find another
+situation. She did not speak to Sarah, and Sarah did not speak to her.
+
+Once, during the night, Sarah woke up; she sat up in bed and stared into
+the darkness. Then she smiled to herself. As she lay down again she
+thought:
+
+"Now I know that she will bring it."
+
+The next day was very fine, and in the glittering garden by the
+fountain, Sarah sat with Hortense, and waited. Soon Mary and her nurse
+appeared. Sarah took Mary by the hand and they went away down the
+leaf-strewn path.
+
+"Well!" said Sarah.
+
+Mary quite silently felt in her pocket at the back of her short, green
+frock, produced the ring, gave it to Sarah, and, still without a word,
+turned back down the path and walked to her nurse. She stood there,
+clutching a doll in her hand, stared in front of her, and said nothing.
+Sarah looked at the ring, smiled, and put it into her pocket.
+
+At that instant the climax of the whole affair struck, like a blow from
+some one unseen, upon Sarah's consciousness. She should have been
+triumphant. She was not. Her one thought as she looked at the ring was
+that she wished Mary had not taken it. She had a strange feeling as
+though Mary, soft and heavy and fat, were hanging round her neck. She
+had "got" Mary for ever. She was suddenly conscious that she despised
+Mary, and had lost all interest in her. She didn't want the ring, nor
+did she ever wish to see Mary again.
+
+She gazed about the garden, shrugged her thin, little, bony shoulders as
+though she were fifty at least, and felt tired and dull, as on the day
+after a party. She stood and looked at Mary and her nurse; when she saw
+them walk away she did not move, but stayed there, staring after them.
+She was greatly disappointed; she did not feel any pleasure at having
+forced Mary to obey her, but would have liked to have smacked and bitten
+her, could these violent actions have driven her into speech. In some
+undetermined way Mary's silence had beaten Sarah. Mary was a stupid,
+silly little girl, and Sarah despised and scorned her, but, somehow,
+that was not enough; from all of this, it simply remained that Sarah
+would like now to forget her, and could not. What did the silly little
+thing mean by looking like that? "She'll go and hug her Alice and cry
+over it." If only she had cried in front of Sarah that would have been
+something.
+
+Two days later Lady Charlotte was explaining to Sarah that so acute a
+financial crisis had arrived "as likely as not we shan't have a roof
+over our heads in a day or two."
+
+"We'll take an organ and a monkey," said Sarah.
+
+"At any rate," Lady Charlotte said, "when you grow up you'll be used to
+anything."
+
+Mrs. Kitson, untidy, in dishevelled clothing, and great distress, was
+shown in.
+
+"Dear Lady Charlotte, I must apologise--this absurd hour--but
+I--we--very unhappy about poor Mary. We can't think what's the matter
+with her. She's not slept for two nights--in a high fever, and cries and
+cries. The Doctor--Dr. Williamson--_really_ clever--says she's unhappy
+about something. We thought--scarlet fever--no spots--can't
+think--perhaps your little girl."
+
+"Poor Mrs. Kitson. How tiresome for you. Do sit down. Perhaps Sarah----"
+
+Sarah shook her head.
+
+"She didn't say she'd a headache in the garden the other day."
+
+Mrs. Kitson gazed appealingly at the little black figure in front of
+her.
+
+"Do try and remember, dear. Perhaps she told you something."
+
+"Nothing" said Sarah.
+
+"She cries and cries," said Mrs. Kitson, about whose person little white
+strings and tapes seemed to be continually appearing and disappearing.
+
+"Perhaps she's eaten something?" suggested Lady Charlotte.
+
+When Mrs. Kitson had departed, Lady Charlotte turned to Sarah.
+
+"What have you done to the poor child?" she said.
+
+"Nothing," said Sarah. "I never want to see her again."
+
+"Then you _have_ done something?" said Lady Charlotte.
+
+"She's always crying," said Sarah, "and she calls her kitten Alice," as
+though that were explanation sufficient.
+
+The strange truth remains, however, that the night that followed this
+conversation was the first unpleasant one that Sarah had ever spent; she
+remained awake during a great part of it. It was as though the hours
+that she had spent on that other afternoon, compelling, from her own
+dark room, Mary's will, had attached Mary to her. Mary was there with
+her now, in her bedroom. Mary, red-nosed, sniffing, her eyes wide and
+staring.
+
+"I want to go home."
+
+"Silly little thing," thought Sarah. "I wish I'd never played with her."
+
+In the morning Sarah was tired and white-faced. She would speak to no
+one. After luncheon she found her hat and coat for herself, let herself
+out of the house, and walked to Mrs. Kitson's, and was shown into the
+wide, untidy drawing-room, where books and flowers and papers had a
+lost and strayed air as though a violent wind had blown through the
+place and disturbed everything.
+
+Mrs. Kitson came in.
+
+"_You_, dear?" she said.
+
+Sarah looked at the room and then at Mrs. Kitson. Her eyes said: "_What_
+a place! _What_ a woman! _What_ a fool!"
+
+"Yes, I've come to explain about Mary."
+
+"About Mary?"
+
+"Yes. It's my fault that she's ill. I took a ring out of that little
+table there--the gold ring with the red stone--and I made her promise
+not to tell. It's because she thinks she ought to tell that she's ill."
+
+"_You_ took it? _You_ stole it?" Before Mrs. Kitson's simple mind an
+awful picture was now revealed. Here, in this little girl, whom she had
+preferred as a companion for her beloved Mary, was a thief, a liar, and
+one, as she could instantly perceive, without shame.
+
+"You _stole_ it!"
+
+"Yes; here it is." Sarah laid the ring on the table.
+
+Mrs. Kitson gazed at her with horror, dismay, and even fear.
+
+"Why? Why? Don't you know how wrong it is to take things that don't
+belong to you?"
+
+"Oh, all that!" said Sarah, waving her hand scornfully. '"I don't want
+the silly thing, and I don't suppose I'd have kept it, anyhow. I don't
+know why I've told you," she added. "But I just don't want to be
+bothered with Mary any more."
+
+"Indeed, you won't be, you wicked girl," said Mrs. Kitson. "To think
+that I--my grand-father's--I'd never missed it. And you haven't even
+said you're sorry."
+
+"I'm not," said Sarah quietly. "If Mary wasn't so tiresome and silly
+those sort of things wouldn't happen. She _makes_ me----"
+
+Mrs. Kitson's horror deprived her of all speech, so Sarah, after one
+more glance of amused cynicism about the room, retired.
+
+As she crossed the Square she knew, with happy relief, that she was free
+of Mary, that she need never bother about her again. Would _all_ the
+people whom she compelled to obey her hang round her with all their
+stupidities afterwards? If so, life was not going to be so entertaining
+as she had hoped. In her dark little brain already was the perception of
+the trouble that good and stupid souls can cause to bold and reckless
+ones. She would never bother with any one so feeble as Mary again, but,
+unless she did, how was she ever to have any fun again?
+
+Then as she climbed the stairs to her room, she was aware of something
+else.
+
+"I've caught you, after all. You _have_ been soft. You've yielded to
+your better nature. Try as you may you can't get right away from it. Now
+you'll have to reckon with me more than ever. You see you're not
+stronger than I am."
+
+Before she opened the door of her room she knew that she would find Him
+there, triumphant.
+
+With a gesture of impatient irritation she pushed the door open.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+YOUNG JOHN SCARLETT
+
+
+I
+
+That fatal September--the September that was to see young John take his
+adventurous way to his first private school--surely, steadily
+approached.
+
+Mrs. Scarlett, an emotional and sentimental little woman, vibrating and
+taut like a telegraph wire, told herself repeatedly that she would make
+no sign. The preparations proceeded, the date--September 23rd--was
+constantly evoked, a dreadful ghost, by the careless, light-hearted
+family. Mr. Scarlett made no sign.
+
+From the hour of John's birth--nearly ten years ago--Mrs. Scarlett had
+never known a day when she had not been compelled to control her
+sentimental affections. From the first John had been an adorable baby,
+from the first he had followed his father in the rejection of all
+sentiment as un-English, and even if larger questions are involved,
+unpatriotic, but also from the first he had hinted, in surprising,
+furtive, agitating moments, at poetry, imagination, hidden, romantic
+secrets. Tom, May, Clare, the older children, had never been known to
+hint at anything--hints were not at all in their line, and of
+imagination they had not, between them, enough to fill a silver
+thimble--they were good, sturdy, honest children, with healthy stomachs
+and an excellent determination to do exactly the things that their class
+and generation were bent upon doing. Mrs. Scarlett was fond of them, of
+course, and because she was a sentimental woman she was sometimes quite
+needlessly emotional about them, but John--no. John was of another
+world.
+
+The other children felt, beyond question, this difference. They deferred
+to John about everything and regarded him as leader of the family, and
+in their deference there was more than simply a recognition of his
+sturdy independence. Even John's father, Mr. Reginald Scarlett, a K.C.,
+and a man of a most decisive and emphatic bearing, felt John's
+difference.
+
+John's appearance was unengaging rather than handsome--a snub nose,
+grey eyes, rather large ears, a square, stocky body and short, stout
+legs. He was certainly the most independent small boy in England, and
+very obstinate; when any proposal that seemed on the face of it absurd
+was made to him, he shut up like a box. His mouth would close, his eyes
+disappear, all light and colour would die from his face, and it was as
+though he said: "Well, if you are stupid enough to persist in this thing
+you can compel me, of course--you are physically stronger than I--but
+you will only get me like this quite dead and useless, and a lot of good
+may it do you!"
+
+There were times, of course, when he could be most engagingly pleasant.
+He was courteous, on occasion, with all the beautiful manners that, we
+are told, are yielding so sadly before the spread of education and the
+speed of motor-cars--you never could foretell the guest that he would
+prefer, and it was nothing to him that here was an aunt, an uncle, or a
+grandfather who must be placated, and there an uninvited, undesired
+caller who mattered nothing at all. Mr. Scarlett's father he offended
+mortally by expressing, in front of him, dislike for hair that grew in
+bushy profusion out of that old gentleman's ears.
+
+"But you could cut it off," he argued, in a voice thick with surprised
+disgust. His grandfather, who was a baronet, and very wealthy, predicted
+a dismal career for his grandchild.
+
+All the family realised quite definitely that nothing could be done with
+John. It was fortunate, indeed, that he was, on the whole, of a happy
+and friendly disposition. He liked the world and things that he found in
+it. He liked games, and food, and adventure--he liked quite tolerably
+his family--he liked immensely the prospect of going to school.
+
+There were other things--strange, uncertain things--that lay like the
+dim, uncertain pattern of some tapestry in the back of his mind. He gave
+_them_, as the months passed, less and less heed. Only sometimes when he
+was asleep....
+
+Meanwhile, his mother, with the heroism worthy of Boadicea, that great
+and savage warrior, kept his impulses of devotion, of sacrifice, of
+adoration, in her heart. John had no need of them; very long ago,
+Reginald Scarlett, then no K.C., with all the K.C. manner, had told her
+that _he_ did not need them either. She gave her dinner parties, her
+receptions, her political gatherings--tremulous and smiling she faced a
+world that thought her a wise, capable little woman, who would see her
+husband a judge and peer one of these days.
+
+"Mrs. Scarlett--a woman of great social ambition," was their definition
+of her.
+
+"Mrs. Scarlett--the mother of John," was her own.
+
+
+II
+
+On a certain night, early in the month of September, young John dreamt
+again--but for the first time for many months--the dream that had, in
+the old days, come to him so often. In those days, perhaps, he had not
+called it a dream. He had not given it a name, and in the quiet early
+days he had simply greeted, first a protector, then a friend. But that
+was all very long ago, when one was a baby and allowed oneself to
+imagine anything. He had, of course, grown ashamed of such confiding
+fancies, and as he had become more confident had shoved away, with
+stout, determined fingers, those dim memories, poignancies, regrets. How
+childish one had been at four, and five, and six! How independent and
+strong now, on the very edge of the world of school! It perturbed him,
+therefore, that at this moment of crisis this old dream should recur,
+and it perturbed him the more, as he lay in bed next morning and thought
+it over, that it should have seemed to him at the time no dream at all,
+but simply a natural and actual occurrence.
+
+He had been asleep, and then he had been awake. He had seen, sitting on
+his bed and looking at him with mild, kind eyes his old Friend. His
+Friend was always the same, conveying so absolutely kindness and
+protection, and his beard, his hands, the appealing humour of his gaze,
+recalled to John the early years, with a swift, imperative urgency.
+John, so independent and assured, felt, nevertheless, again that old
+alarm of a strange, unreal world, and the necessity of an appeal for
+protection from the only one of them all who understood.
+
+"Hallo!" said John.
+
+"Well?" said his Friend. "It's many months since I've been to see you,
+isn't it?"
+
+"That's not my fault," said John.
+
+"In a way, it is. You haven't wanted me, have you? Haven't given me a
+thought."
+
+"There's been so much to do. I'm going to school, you know."
+
+"Of course. That's why I have come now."
+
+Beside the window a dark curtain blew forward a little, bulged as though
+some one were behind it, thinned again in the pale dim shadows of a moon
+that, beyond the window, fought with driving clouds. That curtain
+would--how many ages ago!--have tightened young John's heart with
+terror, and the contrast made by his present slim indifference drew him,
+in some warm, confiding fashion, closer to his visitor.
+
+"Anyway, I'm jolly glad you've come now. I haven't really forgotten you,
+ever. Only in the day-time----"
+
+"Oh, yes, you have," his Friend said, smiling. "It's natural enough and
+right that you should. But if only you will believe always that I once
+was here, if only you'll not be persuaded into thinking me impossible,
+silly, absurd, sentimental--with ever so many other things--that's all
+I've come now to ask you."
+
+"Why, how should I ever?" John demanded indignantly.
+
+"After all, I _was_ a help--for a long time when things were difficult
+and you had so much to learn--all that time you wanted me, and I was
+here."
+
+"Of course," said John politely, but feeling within him that warning of
+approaching sentiment that he had learnt by now so fundamentally to
+dread.
+
+Very well his friend understood his apprehension.
+
+"That's all. I've only come to you now to ask you to make me a
+promise--a very easy one."
+
+"Yes?" said John.
+
+"It's only that when you go off to school--before you leave this
+house--you will just, for a moment, remember me just then, and say
+good-bye to me. We've been a lot here in these rooms, in these passages,
+up and down together, and if only, as you go, you'll think of me, I'll
+be there.... Every year you've thought of me less--that doesn't
+matter--but it matters more than you know that you should remember me
+just for an instant, just to say good-bye. Will you promise me?"
+
+"Why, of course," said John.
+
+"Don't forget! Don't forget! Don't forget!" And the kindly shadow had
+faded, the voice lingering about the room, mingling with the faint
+silver moonlight, passing out into the wider spaciousness of the rolling
+clouds.
+
+
+III
+
+With the clear light of morning came the confident certainty that it had
+all been the merest dream, and yet that certainty did not sweep the
+affair, as it should have done, from young John's brain and heart. He
+was puzzled, perplexed, disturbed, unhappy. The "twenty-third" was
+approaching with terrible rapidity, and it was essential now that he
+should summon to aid all the forces of manly self-control and
+common-sense. And yet, just at this time, of all others, came that
+disturbing dream, and, in its train, absurd memories and fancies,
+burdened, too, with an urgent prompting of gratitude to some one or
+something. He shook it off, he obstinately rebelled, but he dreaded the
+night, and, with a sigh of relief, hailed the morning that followed a
+dreamless sleep.
+
+Worst of all, he caught himself yielding to thoughts like these: "But he
+was kind to me--awfully decent" (a phrase caught from his elder
+brother). "I remember how He ..." And then he would shake himself. "It
+was only a silly old dream. He wasn't real a bit. I'm not a rotten kid
+now that thinks fairies and all that true."
+
+He was bothered, too, by the affectionate sentiment (still disguised,
+but ever, as the days proceeded, more thinly) of his mother and sisters.
+The girls, May and Clare, adored young John. His elder brother was away
+with a school friend. John, therefore, was left to feminine attention,
+and very tiresome he found it. May and Clare, girls of no imagination,
+saw only the drama that they might extract for themselves out of the
+affair. They knew what school was like, especially at first--John was
+going to be utterly wretched, miserably homesick, bullied, kept in over
+horrible sums and impossible Latin exercises, ill-fed, and trodden upon
+at games. They did not really believe these things--they knew that their
+brother, Tom, had always had a most pleasant time, and John was
+precisely the type of boy who would prosper at school, but they
+indulged, just for this fortnight, their romantic sentiment, never
+alluded in speech to school and its terrors, but by their pitying
+avoidance of the subject filled the atmosphere with their agitation.
+They were working things for John--May, handkerchiefs, and Clare, a
+comforter; their voices were soft and charged with omens, their eyes
+were bright with the drama of the event, as though they had been
+supporting some young Christian relation before his encounter with the
+lions. John hated more and more and more.
+
+But more terrible to him than his sisters was his mother. He was too
+young to understand what his departure meant to her, but he knew that
+there was something real here that needed comforting. He wanted to
+comfort her, and yet hated the atmosphere of emotion that he felt in
+himself as well as in her. They ought to know, he argued, that the least
+little thing would make him break down like an ass and behave as no man
+should, and yet they were doing everything.... Oh, if only Tom were
+here! Then, at any rate, would be brutal common-sense. There were
+special meals for him during this fortnight, and an eager inviting of
+his opinion as to how the days should be spent. On the last night of all
+they were to go to the theatre--a real play this time, none of your
+pantomime!
+
+There was, moreover, all the business of clothes--fine, rich, stiff new
+garments--a new Eton jacket, a round black coat, a shining bowler-hat,
+new boots. He watched this stir with a brave assumption that he had
+been surveying it all his life, but a horrible tight pain in the bottom
+of his throat told him that he was a bravado, almost a liar.
+
+He found himself, now that the "twenty-third" was gaping right there in
+front of him, with its fiery throat wide and flaming, doing the
+strangest thing. He was frightened of the dusk, he would run through the
+passage and up the stairs at breathless speed, he would look for a
+moment at the lamp-lit square with the lights of the opposite houses
+tigers' eyes, and the trees filmy like smoke, then would hastily draw
+the curtains and greet the warm inhabited room with a little gasp of
+reassurance. Strangest of all, he found himself often in the old nursery
+at the top of the house. Very seldom did any one come there now, and it
+had the pathos of a room grown cold and comfortless. Most of the toys
+were put away or given to hospitals, but the rocking-horse with his
+Christmas-tree tail was there, and the doll's-house, and a railway with
+trains and stations.
+
+He was here. He was saying to himself: "Yes, it was just over there, by
+the window, that He came that time. He talked to me there. That other
+time it was when I was down by the doll's-house. He showed me the smoke
+coming up from the chimneys when the sun stuck through, and the moon was
+all red one night, and the stars."
+
+He found himself gazing out over the square, over the twisted chimneys,
+that seemed to be laughing at him, over the shining wires and glittering
+roofs, out to the mist that wrapped the city beyond his vision--so vast,
+so huge, so many people--March Square was nothing. He was nothing--John
+Scarlett nothing at all.
+
+Then, with a sigh, he turned back. His Friend, the other night, had been
+real enough. Fairies, ghosts, goblins and dragons--everything was real.
+Everything. It was all terrible, terrible to think of, but, above and
+beyond all else, he must not forget, on the day of his departure, that
+farewell; something disastrous would come upon him were he so
+ungrateful.
+
+And then he would go downstairs again, down to newspapers and fires,
+toast and tea, the large print of Frith's "Railway Station," and the
+coloured supplement of Greiffenhagen's "Idyll," and the tattered numbers
+of the _Windsor_ and the _Strand_ magazines, and, behold, all these
+things were real and all the things in the nursery unreal. Could it be
+that both worlds were real? Even now, at his tender years, that old
+business of connecting the Dream and the Business was at his throat.
+
+"Teal Tea! Tea!" Frantic screams from May. "There's some new jam, and,
+John, mother says she wants you to try on some underclothes afterwards.
+Those others didn't do, she said...."
+
+There came then the disastrous hour--an hour that John was never, in all
+his after-life, to forget. On a wild stormy evening he found himself in
+the nursery. A week remained now--to-day fortnight he would be in
+another world, an alarming, fierce, tremendous world. He looked at the
+rocking-horse with its absurd tail and the patch on its back, that had
+been worn away by its faithful riders, and suddenly he was crying. This
+was a thing that he never did, that he had strenuously, persistently
+refrained from doing all these weeks, but now, in the strangest way, it
+was the conviction that the world into which he was going wouldn't care
+in the least for the doll's-house, and would mock brutally, derisively
+at the rocking-horse, that defeated him. It was even the knowledge
+that, in a very short time, he himself would be mocking.
+
+He sat down on the floor and cried. The door opened; before he could
+resist or make any movement, his mother's arms were about him, his
+mother's cheek against his, and she was whispering: "Oh, my darling, my
+darling!"
+
+The horrible thing then occurred. He was savage, with a wild, fierce,
+protesting rage. His cheeks flamed. His tears were instantly dried. That
+he should have been caught thus! That, when he had been presenting so
+brave and callous a front to the world, at the one weak and shameful
+moment he should have been discovered! He scarcely realised that this
+was his mother, he did not care who it was. It was as though he had been
+delivered into the most horrible and shameful of traps. He pushed her
+from him; he struggled fiercely on his feet. He regarded her with fiery
+eyes.
+
+"It isn't--I wasn't--you oughtn't to have come in. You needn't
+imagine----"
+
+He burst from the room. A shameful, horrible experience.
+
+But it cannot be denied that he was ashamed afterwards. He loved his
+mother, whereas he merely liked the rest of the family. He would not
+hurt her for worlds, and yet, why _must_ she----
+
+And strangely, mysteriously, her attitude was confused in his mind with
+his dreams, and his Friend, and the red moon, and the comic chimneys.
+
+He knew, however, that, during this last week he must be especially nice
+to his mother, and, with an elaborate courtesy and strained attention,
+he did his best.
+
+The last night arrived, and, very smart and excited, they went to the
+theatre. The boxes had been packed, and stood in a shining and
+self-conscious trio in John's bedroom. The new play-box was there, with
+its stolid freshness and the black bands at the corners; inside, there
+was a multitude of riches, and it was, of course, a symbol of absolute
+independence and maturity. John was wearing the new Eton jacket, also a
+new white waistcoat; the parting in his hair was straighter than it had
+ever been before, his ears were pink. The world seemed a confused
+mixture of soap and starch and lights. Piccadilly Circus was a cauldron
+of bubbling colour.
+
+His breath came in little gasps, but his face, with its snub nose and
+large mouth, was grave and composed; up and down his back little shivers
+were running. When the car stopped outside the theatre he gave a little
+gulp. His father, who was, for once, moved by the occasion, said an
+idiotic thing;
+
+"Excited, my son?"
+
+With his head high he walked ahead of them, trod on a lady's dress,
+blushed, heard his father say: "Look where you're going, my boy," heard
+May giggle, frowned indignantly, and was conscious of the horrid
+pressure of his collar-stud against his throat; arrived, hot, confused,
+and very proud, in the dark splendour of the box.
+
+The first play of his life, and how magnificent a play it was! It might
+have been a rotten affair with endless conversations--luckily there were
+no discussions at all. All the characters either loved or hated one
+another too deeply to waste time in talk. They were Roundheads and
+Cavaliers, and a splendid hero, who had once been a bad fellow, but was
+now sorry, fought nine Roundheads at once, and was tortured "off" with
+red lights and his lady waiting for results before a sympathetic
+audience.
+
+During the torture scene John's heart stopped entirely, his brow was
+damp, his hand sought his mother's, found it, and held it very hard.
+She, as she felt his hot fingers pressing against hers, began to see the
+stage through a mist of tears. She had behaved very well during the past
+weeks, but the soul that she adored was, to-morrow morning, to be hurled
+out, wildly, helter-skelter, to receive such tarnishing as it might
+please Fate to think good.
+
+"I _can't_ let him go! I _can't_ let him go!"
+
+The curtain came down.
+
+John turned, his eyes wide, his cheeks pale with a pink spot on the
+middle of each.
+
+"I say, pass those chocolates along!" he whispered hoarsely. Then,
+recovering himself a little: "I wonder what they did to him? They _must_
+have done something to his legs, because they were all crooked when he
+came out."
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+HUGH SEYMOUR
+
+
+I
+
+It happened that Hugh Seymour, in the month of December, 1911, found
+himself in the dreamy orchard-bound cathedral city of Polchester.
+Polchester, as all its inhabitants well know, is famous for its
+cathedral, its buns, and its river, the cathedral being one of the
+oldest, the buns being among the sweetest, and the Pol being amongst the
+most beautiful of the cathedrals, buns and rivers of Great Britain.
+
+Seymour had known Polchester since he was five years old, when he first
+lived there with his father and mother, but he had only once during the
+last ten years been able to visit Glebeshire, and then he had been to
+Rafiel, a fishing village on the south coast. He had, therefore, not
+seen Polchester since his childhood, and now it seemed to him to have
+shrivelled from a world of infinite space and mystery into a toy town
+that would be soon packed away in a box and hidden in a cupboard. As he
+walked up and down the cobbled streets he was moved by a great affection
+and sentiment for it. As he climbed the hill to the cathedral, as he
+stood inside the Close with its lawns, its elm trees, its crooked
+cobbled walks, its gardens, its houses with old bow windows and deep
+overhanging doors, he was again a very small boy with soap in his eyes,
+a shining white collar tight about his neck, and his Eton jacket stiff
+and unfriendly. He was walking up the aisle with his mother, his boots
+creaked, the bell's note was dropping, dropping, the fat verger with his
+staff was undoing the cord of their seat, the boys of the choir-school
+were looking at him and he was blushing, he was on his knees and the
+edge of the kneeler was cutting into his trousers, the precentor's
+voice, as remote from things human as the cathedral bell itself, was
+crying, "Dearly beloved brethren." He would stop there and wonder
+whether there could be any connection between that time and this,
+whether those things had really happened to him, whether he might now
+be dreaming and would wake up presently to find that it would be soon
+time to start for the cathedral, that if he and his sisters were good
+they would have a chapter of the "Pillars of the House" read to them
+after tea, with one chocolate each at the end of every two pages. No, he
+was real, March Square was real, Polchester was real, Glebeshire and
+London were real together--nothing died, nothing passed away.
+
+On the second afternoon of his stay he was standing in the Close, bathed
+now in yellow sunlight, when he saw coming towards him a familiar
+figure. One glance was enough to assure him that this was the Rev.
+William Lasher, once Vicar of Clinton St. Mary, now Canon of Polchester
+Cathedral. Mr. Lasher it was, and Mr. Lasher the same as he had ever
+been. He was walking with his old energetic stride, his head up, his
+black overcoat flapping behind him, his eyes sharply investigating in
+and out and all round him. He saw Seymour, but did not recognise him,
+and would have passed on.
+
+"You don't know me?" said Seymour, holding out his hand.
+
+"I beg your pardon, I----" said Canon Lasher.
+
+"Seymour--Hugh Seymour--whom you were once kind enough to look after at
+Clinton St. Mary."
+
+"Why! Fancy! Indeed. My dear boy. My dear boy!" Mr. Lasher was immensely
+cordial in exactly his old, healthy, direct manner. He insisted that
+Seymour should come with him and drink a cup of tea. Mrs. Lasher would
+be delighted. They had often wondered.... Only the other day Mrs. Lasher
+was saying.... "And you're one of our novelists, I hear," said Canon
+Lasher in exactly the tone that he would have used had Seymour taken to
+tight-rope walking at the Halls.
+
+"Oh, no!" said Seymour, laughing, "that's another man of my name. I'm at
+the Bar."
+
+"Ah," said the Canon, greatly relieved, "that's good! That's good! Very
+good indeed!"
+
+Mrs. Lasher was, of course, immensely surprised. "Why! Fancy! And it was
+only yesterday! Whoever would have expected! I never was more
+astonished! And tea just ready! How fortunate! Just fancy you meeting
+the Canon!"
+
+The Canon seemed, to Seymour, greatly mellowed by comfort and
+prosperity; there was even the possibility of corpulence in the not
+distant future. He was, indeed, a proper Canon.
+
+"And who," said Seymour, "has Clinton St. Mary now?"
+
+"One of the Trenchards," said Mr. Lasher. "As you know, a very famous
+old Glebeshire family. There are some younger cousins of the Garth
+Trenchards, I believe. You know of the Trenchards of Garth? No? Ah, very
+delightful people. You should know them. Yes, Jim Trenchard, the man at
+Clinton, is a few years senior to myself. He was priest when I was
+deacon in--let me see--dear me, how the years fly--in--'pon my word, how
+time goes!"
+
+All of which gave Seymour to understand that the Rev. James Trenchard
+was a failure in life, although a good enough fellow. Then it was that
+suddenly, in the heart of that warm and cosy drawing-room, Hugh Seymour
+was, sharply, as though by a douche of cold water, awakened to the fact
+that he must see Clinton St. Mary again. It appeared to him, now, with
+its lanes, its hedges, the village green, the moor, the Borhaze Road,
+the pirates, yes, and the Scarecrow. It came there, across the Canon's
+sumptuous Turkey carpet, and demanded his presence.
+
+"I must go," Seymour said, getting up and speaking in a strange,
+bewildered voice as though he were just awakening from a dream. He left
+them, at last, promising to come and see them again.
+
+He heard the Canon's voice in his ears: "Always a knife and fork, my
+boy ... any time if you let us know." He stepped down into the little
+lighted streets, into the town with its cosy security and some scent,
+even then in the heart of winter, perhaps, from the fruit of its many
+orchards. The moon, once again an orange feather in the sky, reminded
+him of those early days that seemed now to be streaming in upon him from
+every side.
+
+Early next morning he caught the ten o'clock train to Clinton.
+
+
+II
+
+"Why," in the train he continued to say to himself, "have I let all
+these years pass without returning? Why have I never returned?... Why
+have I never returned?"
+
+The slow, sleepy train (the London express never stops at Clinton)
+jerked through the deep valleys, heavy with woods, golden brown at their
+heart, the low hills carrying, on their horizons, white drifting clouds
+that flung long grey shadows. Seymour felt suddenly as though he could
+never return to London again exactly as he had returned to it before.
+"That period of my life is over, quite over.... Some one is taking me
+down here now--I know that I am being compelled to go. But I want to go.
+I am happier than I have ever been in my life before."
+
+Often, in Glebeshire, December days are warm and mellow like the early
+days of September. It so was now; the country was wrapped in with happy
+content, birds rose and hung, like telegraph wires, beyond the windows.
+On a slanting brown field gulls from the sea, white and shining, were
+hovering, wheeling, sinking into the soil. And yet, as he went, he was
+not leaving March Square behind, but rather taking it with him. He was
+taking the children too--Bim, Angelina, John, even Sarah (against her
+will), and it was not her who was in charge of the party. He felt as
+though, the railway carriages were full and he ought to say continually,
+"Now, Bim, be quiet. Sit still and look at the picture-book I gave you.
+Sarah, I shall leave you at the next station if you aren't careful," and
+that she replied, giving him one of her dark sarcastic looks, "I don't
+care if you do. I know how to get home all right without your help."
+
+He wished that he hadn't brought her, and yet he couldn't help himself.
+They all had to come. Then, as he looked about the empty carriage, he
+laughed at himself. Only a fat farmer reading _The Glebeshire Times_.
+
+"Marnin', sir," said the farmer. "Warm Christmas we'll be havin', I
+reckon. Yes, indeed. I see the Bishop's dying--poor old soul too."
+
+When they arrived at Clinton he caught himself turning round as though
+to collect his charges; he thought that the farmer looked at him
+curiously.
+
+"Coming back again has turned my wits.... Now, Angelina, hurry up, can't
+wait all day." He stopped then abruptly, to pull himself together. "Look
+here, you're alone, and if you think you're not, you're mad. Remember
+that you're at the Bar and not even a novelist, so that you have no
+excuse."
+
+The little platform--usually swept by all the winds of the sea, but now
+as warm as a toasted bun--flooded him with memory. It was a platform
+especially connected with school, with departure and return--departures
+when money in one's pocket and cake in one's play-box did not compensate
+for the hot pain in one's throat and the cold marble feeling of one's
+legs; but when every feeling of every sort was swallowed by the great
+overwhelming desire that the train would go so that one need not any
+longer be agonised by the efforts of replying to Mr. Lasher's continued
+last words: "Well, good-bye, my boy. A good time, both at work and
+play"--the train was off.
+
+"Ticket, please, sir!" said the long-legged young man at the little
+wooden gate. Seymour plunged down into the deep, high-hedged lane that
+even now, in winter, seemed to cover him with a fragrant odour of green
+leaves, of flowers, of wet soil, of sea spray. He was now so conscious
+of his company that the knowledge of it could not be avoided. It seemed
+to him that he heard them chattering together, knew that behind his
+back Sarah was trying to whisper horrid things in Bim's ear, and that he
+was laughing at her, which made her furious.
+
+"I must have eaten something," he thought. "It's the strangest feeling
+I've ever had. I just won't take any notice of them. I'll go on as
+though they weren't there." But the strangest thing of all was that he
+felt as though he himself were being taken. He had the most comfortable
+feeling that there was no need for him to give any thought or any kind
+of trouble. "You just leave it all to me," some one said to him. "I've
+made all the arrangements."
+
+The lane was hot, and the midday winter sun covered the paths with pools
+and splashes of colour. He came out on to the common and saw the
+village, the long straggling street with the white-washed cottages and
+the hideous grey-slate roofs; the church tower, rising out of the elms,
+and the pond, running to the common's edge, its water chequered with the
+reflection of the white clouds above it.
+
+The main street of Clinton is not a lovely street; the inland villages
+and towns of Glebeshire are, unless you love them, amongst the ugliest
+things in England, but every step caught at Seymour's heart.
+
+There was Mr. Roscoe's shop which was also the post-office, and in its
+window was the same collection of liquorice sticks, saffron buns, reels
+of cotton, a coloured picture of the royal family, views of Trezent
+Head, Borhaze Beach, St. Arthe Church, cotton blouses made apparently
+for dolls, so minute were they, three books, "Ben Hur," "The Wide, Wide
+World," and "St. Elmo," two bottles of sweets, some eau-de-Cologne, and
+a large white card with bone buttons on it. So moving was this
+collection to Seymour that he stared at the window as though he were in
+a trance.
+
+The arrangement of the articles was exactly the same as it had been in
+the earlier days--the royal family in the middle, supported by the jars
+of sweets; the three books, very dusty and faded, in the very front; and
+the bootlaces and liquorice sticks all mixed together as though Mr.
+Roscoe had forgotten which was which.
+
+"Look here, Bim," he said aloud, "I've left you up--I really am going
+off my head!" he thought. He hurried away. "If I _am_ mad I'm awfully
+happy," he said.
+
+
+III
+
+The white vicarage gate closed behind him with precisely the
+old-remembered sound--the whiz, the sudden startled pause, the satisfied
+click. Seymour stood on the sun-bathed lawn, glittering now like green
+glass, and stared at the house. Its square front of faded red brick
+preserved a tranquil silence; the only sound in the place was the
+movement of some birds, his old friend the robin perhaps in the laurel
+bushes behind him.
+
+Although the sun was so warm there was in the air a foreshadowing of a
+frosty night; and some Christmas roses, smiling at him from the flower
+beds to right and left of the hall door, seemed to him that they
+remembered him; but, indeed, the whole house seemed to tell him that.
+There it waited for him, so silent, laid ready for his acceptance under
+the blue sky and with no breath of wind stirring. So beautiful was the
+silence, that he made a movement with his hand as though to tell his
+companion to be quiet. He felt that they were crowded in an interested,
+amused group behind him waiting to see what he would do. Then a little
+bell rang somewhere in the house, a voice cried "Martha!"
+
+He moved forward and pulled the wire of the bell; there was a wheezy
+jangle, a pause, and then a sharp irritated sound far away in the heart
+of the house, as though he had hit it in the wind and it protested. An
+old woman, very neat (she was certainly a Glebeshire woman), told him
+that Mr. Trenchard was at home. She took him through the dark passages
+into the study that he knew so well, and said that Mr. Trenchard would
+be with him in a moment.
+
+It was the same study, and yet how different! Many of the old pieces of
+furniture were there--the deep, worn leather arm-chair in which Mr.
+Lasher had been sitting when he had his famous discussion with Mr.
+Pidgen, the same bookshelves, the same tiles in the fireplace with Bible
+pictures painted on them, the same huge black coal-scuttle, the same
+long, dark writing-table. But instead of the old order and discipline
+there was now a confusion that gave the room the air of a waste-paper
+basket. Books were piled, up and down, in the shelves, they dribbled on
+to the floor and lay in little trickling streams across the carpet; old
+bundles of papers, yellow with age, tied with string and faded blue
+tape, were in heaps upon the window-sill, and in tumbling cascades in
+the very middle of the floor; the writing-table itself was so hopelessly
+littered with books, sermon papers, old letters and new letters, bottles
+of ink, bottles of glue, three huge volumes of a Bible Concordance,
+photographs, and sticks of sealing-wax, that the man who could be happy
+amid such confusion must surely be a kindly and benevolent creature. How
+orderly had been Mr. Lasher's table, with all the pens in rows, and
+little sharp drawers that clicked, marked A, B, and C, to put papers
+into.
+
+Mr. Trenchard entered.
+
+He was what the room had prophesied--fat, red-faced, bald, extremely
+untidy, with stains on his coat and tobacco on his coat, that was
+turning a little green, and chalk on his trousers. His eyes shone with
+pleased friendliness, but there was a little pucker in his forehead, as
+though his life had not always been pleasant. He rubbed his nose, as he
+talked, with the back of his hand, and made sudden little darts at the
+chalk on his trousers, as though he would brush it off. He had the face
+of an innocent baby, and when he spoke he looked at his companion with
+exactly the gaze of trusting confidence that a child bestows upon its
+elders.
+
+"I hope you will forgive me," said Seymour, smiling; "I've come, too, at
+such an awkward time, but the truth is I simply couldn't help myself. I
+ought, besides, to catch the four o'clock train back to Polchester."
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Trenchard, smiling, rubbing his hands together,
+and altogether in the dark as to what his visitor might be wanting.
+
+"Ah, but I haven't explained; how stupid of me! My name is Seymour. I
+was here during several years, as a small boy, with Canon Lasher--in my
+holidays, you know. It's years ago, and I've never been back. I was at
+Polchester this morning and suddenly felt that I must come over. I
+wondered whether you'd be so good as to let me look a little at the
+house and garden."
+
+There was nothing that Mr. Trenchard would like better. How was Canon
+Lasher? Well? Good. They met sometimes at meetings at Polchester. Canon
+Lasher, Mr. Trenchard believed, liked it better at Polchester than at
+Clinton. Honestly, it would break Mr. Trenchard's heart if _he_ had to
+leave the place. But there was no danger of that now. Would Mr.
+Seymour--his wife would be delighted--would he stay to luncheon?
+
+"Why, that is too kind of you," said Seymour, hesitating, "but there are
+so many of us, such a lot--I mean," he said hurriedly, at Mr.
+Trenchard's innocent stare of surprise, "that it's too hard on Mrs.
+Trenchard, with so little notice."
+
+He broke off confusedly.
+
+"We shall only be too delighted," said Mr. Trenchard. "And if you have
+friends ..."
+
+"No, no," said Seymour, "I'm quite alone."
+
+When, afterwards, he was introduced to Mrs. Trenchard in the
+drawing-room, he liked her at once. She was a little woman, very neat,
+with grey hair brushed back from her forehead. She was like some fresh,
+mild-coloured fruit, and an old-fashioned dress of rather faded green
+silk, and a large locket that she wore gave her a settled, tranquil air
+as though she had always been the same, and would continue so for many
+years. She had a high, fresh colour, a beautiful complexion and her
+hands had the delicacy of fragile egg-shell china. She was cheerful and
+friendly, but was, nevertheless, a sad woman; her eyes were dark and her
+voice was a little forced as though she had accustomed herself to be in
+good spirits. The love between herself and her husband was very pleasant
+to see.
+
+Like all simple people, they immediately trusted Seymour with their
+confidence. During luncheon they told him many things, of Rasselas,
+where Mr. Trenchard had been a curate, at their joy at getting the
+Clinton living, and of their happiness at being there, of the kindness
+of the people, of the beauty of the country, of their neighbours, of
+their relations, the George Trenchards, at Garth of Glebeshire
+generally, and what it meant to be a Trenchard.
+
+"There've been Trenchards in Glebeshire," said the Vicar, greatly
+excited, "since the beginning of time. If Adam and Eve were here, and
+Glebeshire was the Garden of Eden, as I daresay it was, why, then Adam
+was a Trenchard."
+
+Afterwards when they were smoking in the confused study, Seymour learnt
+why Mrs. Trenchard was a sad woman.
+
+"We've had one trial, under God's grace," said Mr. Trenchard. "There
+was a boy and a girl--Francis and Jessamy. They died, both, in a bad
+epidemic of typhoid here, five years ago. Francis was five, Jessamy
+four. 'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.' It was hard losing
+both of them. They got ill together and died on the same day."
+
+He puffed furiously at his pipe. "Mrs. Trenchard keeps the nursery just
+the same as it used to be. She'll show it to you, I daresay."
+
+Later, when Mrs. Trenchard took him over the house, his sight of the
+nursery was more moving to him than any of his old memories. She
+unlocked the door with a sharp turn of the wrist and showed him the wide
+sun-lit room, still with fresh curtains, with a wall-paper of robins and
+cherries, with the toys--dolls, soldiers, a big dolls'-house, a
+rocking-horse, boxes of bricks.
+
+"Our two children, who died five years ago," she said in her quiet, calm
+voice, "this was their room. These were their things. I haven't been
+able to change it as yet. Mr. Lasher," she said, smiling up at him, "had
+no children, and you were too old for a nursery, I suppose."
+
+It was then, as he stood in the doorway, bathed in a shaft of sunlight,
+that he was again, with absolute physical consciousness, aware of the
+children's presence. He could tell that they were pressing behind him,
+staring past him into the room, he could almost hear their whispered
+exclamations of delight.
+
+He turned to Mrs. Trenchard as though she must have perceived that he
+was not alone. But she had noticed nothing; with another sharp turn of
+the wrist she had locked the door.
+
+
+IV
+
+To-morrow was Christmas Eve: he had promised to spend Christmas with
+friends in Somerset. Now he went to the little village post-office and
+telegraphed that he was detained; he felt at that moment as though he
+would never like to leave Clinton again.
+
+The inn, the "Hearty Cow," was kept by people who were new to
+him--"foreigners, from up-country." The fat landlord complained to
+Seymour of the slowness of the Clinton people, that they never could be
+induced to see things to their own proper advantage. "A dead-alive
+place _I_ call it," he said; "but still, mind you," he added, "it's got
+a sort of a 'old on one."
+
+From the diamond-paned windows of his bedroom next morning he surveyed a
+glorious day, the very sky seemed to glitter with frost, and when his
+window was opened he could hear quite plainly the bell on Trezent Rock,
+so crystal was the air. He walked that morning for miles; he covered all
+his old ground, picking up memories as though he were building a
+pleasure-house. Here was his dream, there was disappointment, here that
+flaming discovery, there this sudden terror--nothing had changed for
+him, the Moor, St. Arthe Church, St. Dreot Woods, the high white gates
+and mysterious hidden park of Portcullis House--all were as though it
+had been yesterday that he had last seen them. Polchester had dwindled
+before his giant growth. Here the moor, the woods, the roads had grown,
+and it was he that had shrunken.
+
+At last he stood on the sand-dunes that bounded the moor and looked down
+upon the marbled sand, blue and gold after the retreating tide. The
+faint lisp and curdle of the sea sang to him. A row of sea-gulls, one
+and then another quivering in the light, stood at the water's edge; the
+stiff grass that pushed its way fiercely from the sand of the dunes was
+white with hoar-frost, and the moon, silver now, and sharply curved,
+came climbing behind the hill.
+
+He turned back and went home. He had promised to have tea at the
+Vicarage, and he found Mrs. Trenchard putting holly over the pictures in
+the little dark square hall. She looked as though she had always been
+there, and as though, in some curious way, the holly, with its bright
+red berries, especially belonged to her.
+
+She asked him to help her, and Seymour thought that he must have known
+her all his life. She had a tranquil, restful air, but, now and then,
+hummed a little tune. She was very tidy as she moved about, picking up
+little scraps of holly. A row of pins shone in her green dress. After a
+while they went upstairs and hung holly in the passages.
+
+Seymour had turned his back to her and was balanced on a little ladder,
+when he heard her utter a sharp little cry.
+
+"The nursery door's open," she said. He turned, and saw very clearly,
+against the half-light, her startled eyes. Her hands were pressed
+against her dress and holly had fallen at her feet. He saw, too, that
+the nursery door was ajar.
+
+"I locked it myself, yesterday; you saw me."
+
+She gasped as though she had been running, and he saw that her face was
+white.
+
+He moved forward quickly and pushed open the door. The room itself was
+lightened by the gleam from the passage and also by the moonlight that
+came dimly through the window. The shadow of some great tree was flung
+upon the floor. He saw, at once, that the room was changed. The
+rocking-horse that had been yesterday against the wall had now been
+dragged far across the floor. The white front of the dolls'-house had
+swung open and the furniture was disturbed as though some child had been
+interrupted in his play. Four large dolls sat solemnly round a dolls'
+tea-table, and a dolls' tea service was arranged in front of them. In
+the very centre of the room a fine castle of bricks had been rising, a
+perfect Tower of Babel in its frustrated ambition.
+
+The shadow of the great tree shook and quivered above these things.
+
+Seymour saw Mrs. Trenchard's face, he heard her whisper:
+
+"Who is it? What is it?"
+
+Then she fell upon her knees near the tower of bricks. She gazed at
+them, stared round the rest of the room, then looked up at him, saying
+very quietly:
+
+"I knew that they would come back one day. I always waited. It must have
+been they. Only Francis ever built the bricks like that, with the red
+ones in the middle. He always said they _must_ be...."
+
+She broke off and then, with her hands pressed to her face, cried, so
+softly and so gently that she made scarcely any sound.
+
+Seymour left her.
+
+
+V
+
+He passed through the house without any one seeing him, crossed the
+common, and went up to his bedroom at the inn. He sat down before his
+window with his back to the room. He flung the rattling panes wide.
+
+The room looked out across on to the moor, and he could see, in the
+moonlight, the faint thread of the beginning of the Borhaze Road. To
+the left of this there was some sharp point of light, some cottage
+perhaps. It flashed at him as though it were trying to attract his
+attention. The night was so magical, the world so wonderful, so without
+bound or limit, that he was prepared now to wait, passively, for his
+experience. That point of light was where the Scarecrow used to be, just
+where the brown fields rise up against the horizon. In all his walks
+to-day he had deliberately avoided that direction. The Scarecrow would
+not be there now; he had always in his heart fancied it there, and he
+would not change that picture that he had of it. But now the light
+flashed at him. As he stared at it he knew that to-day he had completed
+that adventure that had begun for him many years ago, on that Christmas
+Eve when he had met Mr. Pidgen.
+
+They were whispering in his ear, "We've had a lovely day. It was the
+most beautiful nursery.... Two other children came too. They wore
+_their_ things...."
+
+"What, after all," said his Friend's voice, "does it mean but that if
+you love enough we are with you everywhere--for ever?"
+
+And then the children's voices again:
+
+"She thought they'd come back, but they'd never gone away--really, you
+know."
+
+He gazed once more at the point of light, and then turned round and
+faced the dark room....
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Scarecrow, by Hugh Walpole
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