The voice came from the roped-in enclosure in the Square where They had been doing something to London during the day. They are always doing something to London, either taking it away or putting it back, scraping it, painting it, or tarring and feathering it. It was one of Gypsy’s fears that one day They would take it all up at once and put it back in the wrong places; and it was one of Ginger’s hopes that They would.
“Think how ripping it would be,” said Ginger, “if one morning you found the Temple Gardens in the Camden Road.”
“But think how horrible it would be,” urged Gypsy, “if one morning you found the Camden Road in the Temple Gardens.”
“Well, that’s the risk, you see. You couldn’t be sure.”
“Why does one sound all right and the other all wrong?” wondered Ginger.
She wondered about it often after this, and decided that the next time They took up the Camden Road They’d better lose it, and put apple-trees from Nowhere there instead.
But this is a digression.
“Just you leave the moon alone!” cried the wild little voice from the Night Watchman’s box in the Square.
Everybody turned to look. What they saw was a small fierce figure in an old top hat and a long-tailed coat dancing excitedly round and round the roped-in enclosure. In one hand he had a telescope, and in the other a pair of field-glasses, both of which he flourished in the direction of the Balloon Woman.
“You would, would you?” he shrilled. “Come out o’ that, you Mrs. Green.”
“Oh dear, oh dear,” said Ginger. “I’m afraid this is all my fault.” She hurried to the enclosure. “Please do be quiet and tell me why you don’t want me to have the moon.”
“The thoughtlessness of the young!” said the little man, mopping his brow with a blue handkerchief dotted with white stars. “It’s all on account of the likes o’ you that the likes o’ me has to watch the night. A nice mess she’d get into otherwise.”
“I’m so sorry. Come and have a sausage,” coaxed Ginger.
He shook his head. “Can’t,” he said shortly. “What d’you suppose the rope’s here for?”
“To keep us out,” suggested Ginger.
“To keep me in,” said the wild little man. “Set a thief to catch a thief, and one that never knew his place to keep the night in hers. Ah, many and many a time They’ve set me to watch her because They knew I’m up to all her tricks. But They have to coop me in, or I’d be off. On land They put a rope round me; on sea They put me up the mast.”
Ginger beckoned to the others, and they gathered round from the Weatherhouse. Gypsy brought the teapot with him, and the Night Watchman was given a cup across the barrier.
“What do you have to watch the night for?” asked Ginger, putting in five lumps.
“Enough o’ your sugar,” said the little man. “That’s her dodge, too, sending out all her stars when a chap’s got to try to keep his senses steady. Too much stars and sugar goes to the heart. What do I have to watch her for, the jade? A pretty question! So as nothing gets stolen, for one thing.”
Ginger put her face in her hands.
“You may well!” said the Night Watchman. “Many and many a moon has you young folk tried to steal. Sometimes you’re too sharp even for me. But the moon’s not the worst of it. It’s keeping the constellations in order, especially in August when the shooting stars are about. It goes to the heads of the old ones when those young ones gets frisking, and it takes all my time to stop the Horse from kicking the Hunter in the belt, or the Twins from parting company. ‘Move on there!’ I tell them, till I’m hoarse. Comets are disorganizing too, in their way, but we’ve generally time to prepare for them, like the Lord Mayor’s Show. And then the fixed stars want watching; they’re liable to come un-fixed.”
“Why shouldn’t they?” demanded Gypsy. “About time they did.”
“Futurist!” said the Night Watchman. “But of course it isn’t only the stars. There’s plenty else to watch the night for.”
“What?” asked Gypsy.
“Ghosts,” said the Night Watchman. “And fairies.” He checked himself, and handed back his cup abruptly. “There’s all the sounds, too, that can’t be heard by day—such as the dust settling, and the pavement cracking, and the tide turning in the Thames. Ah, the pavement takes a lot of watching, and still you can’t help the cracks coming. Sometimes one big square will split into half-a-dozen little ones before you can say Knife!”
“Would that stop it?” asked Ginger.
“It would stop anything if you said it quick enough,” said the Night Watchman, “but you never do. You may try again and again, and in the end be no better off than the fools who try to say Jack Robinson. And again, the night must be watched for the thoughts that won’t come out in the light. Some of them are too shy. But the boldness of them after dark! They take a lot of managing, for they’re a disorderly crew, bad or good. Then on land you watch the night for its moths and bats, and on sea for its wrecks and its sails. But perhaps the best thing to watch the night for, on sea or land, is morning.”
“Why?” said Gypsy.
“Because then They come and take the rope away,” said the Night Watchman.
Then he went into his box and sat on his stool and put his telescope to his eye and glared at the Pole Star. If the Pole Star had had any idea of side-slipping it abandoned it instantly, and kept as steady as the Rock of Gibraltar.
“Who do you think he is?” asked Ginger.
“Nobody knows,” said the P.A.
“I expect he’s Mr. Maeterlinck,” said Gypsy, “or Mr. Devant. But I don’t care who he is, darling, and one of these days I’ll steal the moon for you under his very nose. Meanwhile have half my balloons.”
He gave her the bluest balloon, and she hung it over her door of the Weatherhouse, and he hung the other over his. And Jeremy and the rest went back home, if they had one, and hung up theirs over their beds, if they had any.
But nearly all the balloons had disappeared by the morning.
Gypsy and Ginger first saw the Groundsel Man in the early morning. It was very early morning indeed. The moon had just gone out, and a good deal of Mother-o’-pearl was left in the sky, and there was a faint glow over Fleet Street. Of course Gypsy and Ginger couldn’t see Fleet Street, but they looked that way for the glow. The streets were quite empty when the Groundsel Man came along, and for this reason alone you couldn’t have helped noticing him. But you would have noticed him even in a crowd. His basket was slung in front of him by a strap over his shoulders, and he limped a little, but his limp, instead of being a drag, only seemed to make his step livelier, so that he came down the pavement on the light jerky hop of a chaffinch hopping down a potato-row after the digger in hope of worms.
“He’s just like the little rabbits Jeremy sells,” said Ginger.
“If you could look under his trousers,” said Gypsy, “you’d find that instead of feet he has two spiral springs.”
“It’s quite easy to look under his trousers,” said Ginger, “and he prefers not to wear socks.”
“Another Simple Lifer,” said Gypsy. Most of their friends were.
“But he has got a pretty hat,” said Ginger. “I wish I’d got one like it.”
His hat was the chief reason why you’d have to notice the Groundsel Man in a crowd. It was a straw hat of all sorts of shapes and colours, with no top to the crown and whiskers round the brim. And it was weighed down by a glorious wreath of buttercups. The Groundsel Man’s basket was also half buttercups, as well as groundsel and chickweed, and in one hand he had a short thick thorn-stick, as black and shiny as an old clay pipe, and in the other he carried a great branch of white wild roses like a banner. As he stepped by he said,
“Good morning, sir and ma’am. A fine night it’s been and a finer day ’twill be.”
“Are you telling us that?” said Gypsy doubtfully.
“I am, sir. You’re clever little people,” said the Groundsel Man cheerily, “but it’s not the likes o’ me you can tell about the weather. My kind needs no weatherhouses.”
“Not even in London?” said Ginger, bringing the teapot.
“I don’t live in Lunnon, ma’am. I only passes through. Lunnon’s a cage, she is. But her’ll never ketch me.”
“Where do you live?” asked Ginger, filling a cup for him; and Gypsy offered him his tobacco pouch.
“Thank you, ma’am. Thank you, sir. I lives anywheres that a bird may, ma’am, and after all that’s anywheres there is. In sedges and tree-tops and the flat tops of hills and hedgerows and the faces of clifts.”
“And the sky?” asked Ginger so eagerly that Gypsy surreptitiously tied a string round her ankle to haul her in by if she flew up too suddenly.
“As oft as not,” said the Groundsel Man sipping his cup and crumbling his bread. More than half the crumbs fell to the ground, and he let them lie.
“Why do you come to London at all?” asked Gypsy.
“To open the bird-cages, sir.”
“What sport,” said Gypsy. “Do you ever get caught?”
“Very seldom, sir. I does it after dark. I takes note of my street by day, and by night I sets it free. Sometimes the cage is hung outside the house, and then it’s easy. But other times it stands inside the window, and then I has to force the catch. I’m doing Lunnon street by street. When her’s empty I’ll do Manchester. But so fast as I empty her, her fills up like Philemon’s pitcher.”
“What sort of birds do you let out?” asked Ginger.
“Every sort, ma’am. Canaries and parrots and redpoles and skylarks—yes, ma’am, I’ve known houses as even keeps skylarks in cages. Once I found a Red Cardinal in Bethnal Green. I hopes he flew back to South Ameriky, but if not there’s warm spots in Hampshire.”
“You’ll have a grand time,” said Gypsy, passing him the matches, “the night you do the Zoo.”
The Groundsel Man puffed hard, and disappeared entirely behind a cloud of smoke; out of which he piped shrilly, “Flamingoes!” The cry was like a thin streak of lightning passing through a thunder-cloud.
Ginger asked, “What happens when you do get caught?”
“I sells them a bunch of groundsel for their dickies,” he said. “Oh, that’s all right, ma’am. The birds doesn’t suffer, neither way. And so soon as the basket’s empty, back I goes to fill it up.”
“Back where?” asked Ginger.
“Anywheres,” he said vaguely.
“Do you sell buttercups too?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. Buttercups is my pleasure. Well, so is the groundsel too, mine and the birds’. But this sort of gold can’t be sold for pence to the keepers of cages. They’ll sometimes cage robins, ma’am, robins that’ll come into your house for company like your brother. But what sort of company is one in a cage? Will they play pretty like the Robin of Cold-harbour?”
“A little chap I knows. He goes to church on week-days. First time I seed him he was sitting in the pulpit singing fit to bust, so sweet as any parson.”
Gypsy said doubtfully, “Do parsons?”
“Don’t they, sir? I supposed they did, else why do the folk go? But I never heard one myself. It’s mostly some other bird I’m listening to o’ Sundays, the daws at their games round the chalk-pits, or the plovers swooping on the Downs, or the larks you can’t see for the air in between. But when my Robin’s done his Glory-Glory, down he hops to a pewback, and so hops all down the aisle like a stone on a pond, skipping one pew at each hop. And when he gets to the end he thinks, What can I do next? and he looks at the stained glass windows and Pooh! cries he. And he chooses a clear pane of glass under a Saint, and flies up and sits against it with the sun on his breast as red as a ruby. And there he sings Glory-Glory all over again, and out he flies. Would you cage that bird, ma’am?”
“I wouldn’t cage anything!” said Ginger angrily, “and I’m going to Manchester by the next train.”
Gypsy took another reef in his string.
“Well, it’s time somebody did,” said Ginger.
“Don’t you fret, ma’am,” said the Groundsel Man. “I’ll get there all in good season. Would you like some buttercups?”
“Yes, please,” said Ginger, running for a bowl, which she filled at the fountain.
The Groundsel Man put his buttercups into it carefully, and then with a sort of hop and flutter he was up on the roof of the weatherhouse, perched for a moment on the chimney, where he stuck his branch of wild-rose. The glow from Fleet Street was now so strong that the small white burnet blossoms looked like puffs of golden smoke. Then he gave another flutter and disappeared.
Ginger ran round the corner to catch him, but when she got there she could see nothing but the sparrows quarrelling round the Nelson Column, and the pigeons flying from the spire of St. Martin’s to the Dome of the National Gallery.
GYPSY AND GINGER TAKE THINGS SERIOUSLY
It was after the visit of the Groundsel Man that Gypsy realised that life is not all play.
“The time has come,” said Gypsy, with his mouth full of tacks——
He was trying the effect of sausages in festoons round the walls of the Weatherhouse. Something had to be done with the sausages, which accumulated daily in increasing quantities as Gypsy and Ginger accumulated friends. There was no cupboard-room in the Weatherhouse, and Gypsy agreed with William Morris that the Useful is not incompatible with the Decorative.
“The time has come, Ginger,” said Gypsy, “for us to take things seriously.”
“I know it,” said Ginger, picking up an odd length of sausages and beginning to skip to the old tune of
Sugardy Candy,
French
Almond
Rock!
Breadandbutterforyoursupper’sallyourMother’s
GOT!”
“It’s all very well,” said Gypsy, between hammer-strokes, “for us to be light-hearted in our own lives, and even in the comparatively grave matter of earning our living; but as well as that we must remember that the world is full crying of evils——”
“You can’t really skip with sausages,” said Ginger, giving it up.
“Just hand that length over, if you’ve quite done with it,” said Gypsy. “The West Frieze wants completing.”
“I’ll dust them off a bit first,” said Ginger. “What do the evils cry for?”
“Reform,” said Gypsy.
“Then let’s reform them,” said Ginger. “But we needn’t cry along with them, need we?”
“That,” said Gypsy, “would merely be piling Peleus on Ossian.” (I think I mentioned that he had got his education in Cambridge; but his classics were good enough for Ginger, who had never got her education anywhere.) “No,” he said, festooning the final sausage, “it’s no use crying over spilt evils. It’s better to mop them up laughing. How do you like that, darling?”
“The line is beautiful,” said Ginger, putting her head on one side and shutting her eye on the other. “But the colour-scheme is pasty.”
“It improves in the frying-pan,” said Gypsy. “But enough of Aesthetics. Let us return to Sociology. What evil are you going to reform?”
“Twenty seconds,” pleaded Ginger.
He took out his watch.
“Time!” called Gypsy, as Ginger called, “Got mine!”
“Got mine too!” said Gypsy. “What’s yours?”
“Croquet!” cried Ginger.
“Bamboo furniture!” cried Gypsy.
“Why do you want to reform croquet? I rather like croquet, and I play it rather well.”
“The better the worse!” said Ginger fiercely.
“You feel this subject passionately,” said Gypsy thoughtfully.
“Yes, I do.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it,” said Ginger quickly. Then she contradicted herself still more quickly. “Yes, it has, though. However you play croquet has to do with it. The only thing is not to play it at all. Croquet is the root of all the ill-temper there is. If you could once kill the spirit of croquet throughout the world, there’d be no more wars.”
“How will you start?” asked Gypsy.
“With a forceps,” said Ginger promptly. “The strongest forceps owned by the most famous dentist in New York, because American dentists are the best. Then I shall go all over the world in the middle of the night, pulling up all the hoops on all the croquet-lawns I can find.”
“Like so many double-teeth,” said Gypsy.
“And I hope they’ll hurt,” said Ginger vindictively.
“I’m sorry you feel it so bitterly,” said Gypsy, “but I suppose things have to be felt like that before they can be reformed.”
“Don’t you feel bamboo like that?”
Gypsy shuddered. “I had an aunt in Wisbech once,” he said. “She died of a tea-heart.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ginger gently.
“Oh, it didn’t matter,” said Gypsy. “After all she had to die of something, and it’s much better to die of what you like than of what you don’t. Men and women die of tobacco and tea with enthusiasm, where they would only resent death from German Measles or Mexican Gulps.”
“Do people die of Mexican Gulps?” asked Ginger.
“They would if they got it,” said Gypsy, “but they don’t.”
“It sounds like geography,” said Ginger, “and I very nearly died of that when I was a child. So I was inoculated against it, and I don’t even know where Wisbech is.”
“It’s not important,” said Gypsy. “But if you live in Wisbech, and buy enough tea at a certain shop, you can in time furnish your house from attic to basement with gratis bamboo. Why, you couldn’t buy two ounces without a bamboo bonus in the shape of a walking-stick or a curtain-pole; and for a whole pound, of course, you got hatstands and overmantels. After a while there were bamboo hatstands on every landing, and bamboo overmantels under as well as over all the mantelpieces. We were presently obliged to take all our meals at separate little bamboo tables, like the best boarding-houses and the worst tea-shops. Of course, the little tables wore out very quickly, quite often giving way in the joints in the middle of meals, but more and more came along, and we never succeeded in living them down. We sat on bamboo stools while we ate, and there were bamboo waste paper baskets and bookcases, and a bamboo side-board, and I think a bamboo piano. I know there were bamboo beds. Mine broke down every other night, but my aunt was such a confirmed tea-drinker that a new one always appeared next day.” Here Gypsy suddenly stood on his head, kicking his feet in the air, and letting out prolonged wails like a dog made miserable by the moon. Then he got down and sat up again, and Ginger who, as he spoke, had turned paler and paler, held his hands very tight, and they remained silent until they both felt better.
Then Gypsy groaned, “Yet cities could be such beautiful places.”
“Yes,” sighed Ginger, “if it weren’t for the people in the red brick houses having all the almond trees. People who live in the grey stone houses ought to have them. But the first almond trees in London always bloom against red brick.”
“I know,” growled Gypsy, growing wild-eyed again. “And then, the corrugated iron! Oh, galvanize the man who first thought of corrugating iron.”
“There’s a worse evil than corrugated iron,” whispered Ginger. “There are wired flowers. Wired flowers are as dreadful as caged birds. We won’t interfere with the Groundsel Man’s job, but oh, Gypsy! to-night I’m going out to un-wire all the flowers in Piccadilly!” Her eyes shone like the Gemini as she said it.
“Brave child!” said Gypsy. “But before you go, put the flat-irons on the brazier, please.”
“What for?” said Ginger.
“Because,” said Gypsy, “I shall go out and uncorrugate the iron.”
You may remember the Season, not so very long ago, when Londoners used to wake up every morning wondering Well Really What Next. A good many surprising and beautiful things happened during those brief weeks, and they were all due to the nocturnal efforts of Gypsy, Ginger, and their friends.
At first Ginger stuck to her pet reform of Unwiring Flowers, and Gypsy to his of Uncorrugating Iron. Not a night passed without some suburb having all its roses unmuzzled. Not a night passed without the roof of some Army Hut or Tennis-Club Pavilion being straightened out by Gypsy’s flat-iron. The process, of course, exactly doubled the length of the roof, so that yards used to jut out at either end. The Tennis-Players were considerably annoyed; and in the Army, Fatigue Duty resolved itself into sitting on the roof with a pair of curling-tongs, and crinkling the roofs back to their normal proportions. The soldiers who had been hair-dressers were the best at it, and some really beautiful work in Marcel Waving was put in by the experts for the Y.M.C.A. The Army minded it less than the Sportsmen, for they might just as well corrugate the iron on the roof as pick up the Woodbine stumps on the floor. But Gypsy was practically the death of local sport that summer, all the club-time being occupied in doing up what he had undone overnight. He gave some trouble, too, to Noncomformists and Sheltered Cabmen.
But Gypsy didn’t really want to stop sport. He liked sport. He himself could put such a twist on a serve that it would come back and hit his partner of its own accord; and in the cricket-field he never hit anything under Boundaries and Catches at Cover. His Innings consisted of exactly one of each. At the beginning of his Club Season the Scorer always made out his analysis in advance to save trouble:
| Average | ||
| GYPSY | . . . . . | 4 |
it would run. If everyone had played Gypsy’s sort of cricket there would have been no need to talk of brightening the game. His cricket was as bright and as brief as a lucifer. It favoured the two-hour match. So he was really sorry to make the Houndsditch Hatters’ Second Eleven spend all their practice time in crinkling the pavilion roof. Also it vexed him to work on the system of Penelope’s Web. Presently he took to clipping the ends off the roofs after they were straightened. This checkmated the Cricketers and Tennis-Players, because when they attempted to re-corrugate the roof there wasn’t enough of it left over to keep out the weather. So they had to send for some more.
During the days of waiting Gypsy turned the time to account, and ironed out all the Cabmen’s Shelters on the No. 11 Bus route. But somebody else was now beginning to make good use of his efforts. An Unknown Quantity was also mysteriously at work under the moon.
One night, as Ginger was going home bent nearly double under a great load of rusty wires after a busy hour among the lilies of Sloane Square, she met Gypsy, flat-iron in hand, staring at one of his flattened rooms like a man in a trance.
“What are you looking at?” asked Ginger.
“That!” said Gypsy, pointing upward.
She shifted her faggot and gazed at the roof, which bore this legend in luminous white paint:
THERE IS NO TRUTH IN THE RUMOUR THAT
THIS UGLY IF UTILITARIAN ROOF IS TO
BE REPLACED WITH A BEAUTIFUL THATCH
“Why did you do that?” asked Ginger.
“I didn’t,” said Gypsy.
“Who did, then?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Gypsy.
It was only the beginning. Soon his other roofs began to be adorned with similar statements. A shelter in Kensington inquired:
WHO HAS BEEN CIRCULATING THE FICTION
THAT OLD WEATHER-STAINED TILES ARE
THE LATEST FASHION FOR CABMEN?
THEY ARE NOT!
And a Canteen in Putney asserted:
THE REPORT IS ABSOLUTELY UNFOUNDED
THAT BEFORE LONG THIS UNPREPOSSESSING
HUT WILL RESEMBLE THE LOG-CABINS OF
THE EARLY SETTLERS
These suggestions, and others equally attractive, were gradually being negatived on iron roofs in every quarter of London.
If Gypsy and Ginger were mysteries to the Cricket-Clubs and Flower-sellers, the unknown Luminous Painter was a mystery to them. But at last they discovered him.
They had taken half an hour off one night to look at the pattern of the moon on the river, and they found him standing in the middle of Westminster Bridge. He was very tall and lean, and wore a tight frock-coat that was quite a good green. It had once been rather a poor black. His soft felt hat was also green, and even he did not know what its first colour was. When they caught sight of him he was engaged in removing the hat from his head with an exquisite gesture, and bowing right and left with an unexampled grace. But for themselves there was nobody else on the bridge, yet he performed his courtly salute again and again, north and south, east and west. His deportment was as expressive as it was beautiful; it expressed deference without humility, airiness without impudence, and it paid a compliment not only to the recipient, but to the executor, of the bow.
“What are you doing?” cried Ginger, advancing with an involuntary curtsey.
The individual almost swept the ground with his hat.
“Madam,” he said, sweetly, “I am Bowing to the Circumstances.”
“What Circumstances?” inquired Ginger.
“My own Circumstances, madam. They require it of me frequently. They require it, alas! of many people. But it is one of the Lost Accomplishments of the age. One of the many. These things were once done with a grace——!”
He dusted and replaced his hat. “They stand saluted!” he said.
“I don’t believe that Circumstances which require bowing to ought to be saluted,” objected Ginger. “Why do you bow to them?”
“In acknowledgment, dear madam,” said the shabby gentleman, “that I am not what I was.”
“What were you?” asked Ginger.
“A Professor, madam.”
“And what are you?” asked Gypsy.
“At the moment, sir, I am Contradictor of Rumours.”
“You contradict them on my roofs!” cried Gypsy.
“I have that honour, sir,” said the ex-Professor.
GYPSY AND GINGER’S FRIENDS
“It was you,” said Gypsy, “who contradicted the rumour that the Kilburn Tennis-club was to re-roof itself in Horsham Slate?”
“The most beautiful of all roofings, sir. Yes, it was I.”
“It was you,” said Gypsy, “who refuted the suggestion that the Noncomformist Chapels should return to Ancient Greece——”
“In the matter of architecture, sir. That also was I.”
“It was you,” continued Gypsy, “who denied the unfounded report that the tops of the Whitechapel Shelters were to be converted into Hanging-Gardens.”
“Myself, sir, and no other.”
“Who said there were to be Hanging-Gardens in Whitechapel?” asked Gypsy.
“Nobody, sir.”
“Then why do you say there are not to be?”
“Well, it’s true, sir, isn’t it?”
“It’s so true,” said Gypsy, “that why waste paint on it?”
“Because,” said the ex-Professor, “no truth can resist persistent denial for ever. That is—yes, I fear I am getting mixed. But have you not observed how the newspapers will frequently force a statement on you, or at least lodge a suspicion in you, by contradicting some rumour of which you’ve never heard until they say it isn’t true? The affirmation was negative, the denial is positive. When they’ve denied it long enough, day after day, in every column from the Leaders to the Book Reviews, it becomes an unshakeable fact. I am at present devoting my life to establishing rumours by denying them. Once public opinion swallows them, the rest is automatic. I have energetically denied the rumour, for instance, of a Red Noah’s Ark in Bermondsey. It would cheer Bermondsey greatly. And before long I really hope to see in Whitechapel those Hanging Gardens, which, as I have repeatedly stated, are not for one instant under consideration by anybody.”
“What a tophole idea!” said Gypsy.
“The credit is not all mine, sir,” said the ex-Professor. “Let us give the newspapers their due. Contradicting the Rumour is one of the more modern accomplishments, and smacks of modern manners; in other days we should have preferred Dallying with the Notion, but we cannot look for the old-world polish in the newspaper of to-day. If it has not the culture of the Eighteenth Century, it does not lack dexterity; and in the art of Forcing the Statement it is as deft as a conjuror with a pack of cards. Yet—a vulgar art!” The ex-Professor sighed. “I never taught it myself.”
“What did you teach?” asked Ginger curiously.
“A hundred activities and accomplishments which are now treated in the most perfunctory fashion, madam. Have you ever, may I ask, Risen to the Occasion?”
“Never,” said Ginger.
“I’ve tried to,” said Gypsy. “It seldom came off.”
“And why? You had never studied it, sir. It is an acquired art which in theory should be taught in the schoolroom, in practice in the gymnasium. How,” he continued with fire, “without our Text-books and Classes can we perfect ourselves in the arts which make life replete with finesse? How many of us are conversant with the most graceful way of Receiving an Impression? For the most part we Receive our Impressions anyhow, at haphazard. We should Receive them as we would our guests. Again which of us can really felicitously Rejoice in the Name of—Alfred, or Ernest, or Harriet, as the case may be? The human being does not live who cannot be said to Rejoice in some such Name. But does he? Does he, in fact, know how? Of course he does not; he was never taught how. It took me years of toil before I could Rejoice in the Name of Valentine. My first attempts were gauche. But I succeeded at last.”
“We Rejoice in our Names,” said Ginger, and told him them.
His eye brightened. “Who would not Rejoice in such Names? There is a tongue in the cheek of either of them. But I take it they are not Baptismal?”
“Does that affect the question?” asked Gypsy.
“To a certain extent (and let us not be callous—some Questions are so easily Affected, although others, of sterner calibre, have to be Begged),” said the ex-Professor. “No, it is chiefly in the Names bestowed on us by M or N, that we are said to Rejoice. It can often only be done with an effort.
“What we need,” said the ex-Professor ardently, “is expert guidance on all those subtleties which we are asked to do by intuition: as though one could Jazz, or Throw the Discobolus, by intuition! Repeatedly the Social Code requires you to Contain Yourself, a thing possibly to be achieved by a stern suppressive course of Somebody’s System, but whose? What branch of physical training will develop in us the muscular fitness needed in Exercising the Prerogative and Adhering to the Principle? What Polytechnic offers us a course of instruction in Drawing the Comparison, Creating the Precedent, Improving the Hour, Making Good? Who will educate us in the fine shades of those more negative accomplishments, Ignoring the Facts, Withdrawing the Confidence, and Leaving Well Alone? And It! there’s so much to be done with It! A three years’ course might be devoted alone to Turning It Over, Letting It Slide, Cutting It Fine, Making the Best of It, Overdoing It, Chancing It, Chucking It....
“I look forward to the day when these things shall be the staple subjects of our Board Schools, Intellectually and Athletically; when, after a concentrated hour spent in class Accounting for Tastes or Changing the Opinion, the children shall troop jollily across the asphalte playground Leaping at Conclusions, Dodging the Question, and Casting the Doubt. Here a group of merry girls are Going to Extremes, yonder a band of breathless boys are Stopping at Nothing. Further off the School Glutton is greedily Eating his Words or Chewing the Cud of Thought, while the School Miser is bent on Doing It for Two Pins and Profiting by the Example. In a secluded corner, alas! the School Bully will frequently be found Twisting a Meaning, Stifling an Oath, or Strangling a Conviction, for boys will be boys, and Human Nature does not change. And perhaps it never will until an accomplishment common to half mankind has been eliminated, and we cease to be born past-masters and mistresses in Believing the Worst.”
“Don’t be downhearted,” said Ginger optimistically; “there’s always the other half of mankind, you know.”
“I am indebted to you, dear madam,” said the ex-Professor, “for reminding me of it.”
“Used you really to teach all these things?” asked Gypsy.
“For a short while only. I endeavoured to interest the Board of Education, but forty years later the War came along too soon. Instantly all the Boards in England became exclusively composed of Recruiting-Sergeants, to whom but one of my arts appealed—that of Calling up the Old Reminiscence. It was my ruin.”
He sighed; then hastily bowed right and left once more, and rose up smiling.
“We waste time,” he said. “We might have been Contradicting Rumours this hour gone by. Believe me, the roofs of corrugated London shall yet be beautified.”
“And why should it stop there?” cried Ginger with enthusiasm. “Once we begin to Contradict Rumours, there’s simply no limit to what we can deny. When the Freedom of the Flowers is fully established I shall take this up with you. Why, in time we might reform all London!”
Ginger was as good as her word. And as her word was always good enough for Gypsy, he added his efforts to hers in Contradicting Rumours with all his might. One by one they enlisted their friends in the scheme, at first directing their efforts, but soon leaving them to their own devices. Except Rags, who followed Ginger about like a little dog. The wires from the released roses had all been given to Rags, who swore he had a use for them; and he evidently had, for he got a brand-new pair of second-hand boots on the strength of them. So he had no compunction in letting him tramp the streets with her at night.
Her first idea was to do something for the Orphans. As she said shuddering to the little man, “Those hats, Rags!”
So one morning London awoke to find placards to this effect on every Orphan Asylum in and round the town:
WE CANNOT IMAGINE WHENCE THE FABRICATION AROSE THAT ORPHANS ARE TO WEAR LIBERTY HATS THIS SUMMER
This idea was presented daily to London just at the moment when she had begun to digest the possibility of a substitute for Corrugated Iron. Indeed, some rather beautiful timbered roofs were already under way in Hackney, and Turnham Green was discussing the relative merits of thatch versus tiles. Whitechapel too had cottoned to the notion of Hanging Gardens. The Cabmen’s Shelters were becoming positive bowers, as the ex-Professor reported with great satisfaction at the Weatherhouse, where everybody assembled regularly at daybreak to discuss the next night’s plan of action.
Ginger was overjoyed. “What a delightful sight it must be,” she said, “to see the Cabmen hanging in the Gardens, as they drink their gingerbeer.”
“And dream of Babylon,” added Gypsy.
“Quite so,” said the Taxi-Man.
The scheme succeeded from the first. Ginger and Rags had not much trouble with the Orphans. They had not even to wait for Public Opinion; the Orphan Asylums themselves soon saw no reason why the above Fabrication should remain one.
On the day the Orphans began to troop through London in graceful hats with coloured scarves and happy faces, the Public was confronted everywhere with this announcement (Gypsy’s):
NO! IT IS NOT TRUE THAT THE MEMBERS OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE ARE GIVING A BEANFEAST TO ALL THE POOR CHILDREN IN BETHNAL GREEN
This took more doing. But nine days of incessant repudiation got on the Members’ nerves. They began to find it difficult to look strangers in the eye. They began to observe how studiously their friends refrained from references to Bethnal Green in their presence. They began to feel that they were shabby fellows. And hang it all! why wasn’t it true that they were giving a Beanfeast to the Children of Bethnal Green? why shouldn’t they give a Beanfeast if they wanted to?
In the end Bethnal Green got such a Beanfeast as it had never dreamed of in all its young life.
After this the surprises came fast and thick. Under the obstinate influence of contradiction, the owners of almond and pink may trees in red-brick houses transferred these voluntarily to the front gardens of dwellers in white or grey stone houses. The aesthetic advantage would not be visible till next spring, but London was beginning to be endowed with a sense of vision.
There were also immediate reforms in the front gardens, whose beds defied at last the rigid and time-dishonoured conscription of marguerite, geranium, and lobelia. It was the dawn of a floral era wilder, more exquisite, and much more experimental.
And Society ceased to wear Humming-birds in its Hats—this was perhaps Ginger’s greatest triumph. It was a stiff battle. After heavy nights of repudiation she would come back to the Weatherhouse such a rag, that even her devoted little follower couldn’t have sold her at a penny a pound. But she won at last. She had two strong posters on the subject; one denying strenuously that feathers were old-fashioned, the other ridiculing the suggestion that a strip of gaily-embroidered house flannel, frayed and fringed, was Millinery’s Dernier Cri. It attracted the attention of LOUISE, who immediately exhibited a model on these lines in her windows. The Duchesses fell to it, and the Humming-Birds were saved.
As I said, Gypsy and Ginger allowed their friends to follow their own fancies.
WHAT MISINFORMED PERSON HAS BEEN
SPREADING THE REPORT THAT SHRIMPS AND
LOBSTERS ARE TO CHANGE PRICES
EVERY OTHER DAY
ran Rags’ best effort (Ginger helped him with the spelling).
A FALSE WHISPER HAS GOT ABROAD THAT THE
BENCHES AS WELL AS THE WICKET-KEEPERS IN
LORD’S CRICKET GROUND ARE TO BE
PADDED THIS SEASON
(This was the Taxi-Man’s.)
WE HAVE IT ON THE VERY BEST AUTHORITY
THAT OLIVE AND MYRTLE TREES WILL
NOT BE PLANTED FROM END TO END
OF THE CITY ROAD
(Tonio.)
THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT SKY-ROCKETS ARE TO BE
LET OFF EVERY SATURDAY NIGHT ON STREATHAM
COMMON CAN OBVIOUSLY ONLY BE REGARDED
AS A PRACTICAL JOKE
(The Balloon Woman.)
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?
(asked the Pavement Artist—)
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FABULOUS ASSERTION
THAT THE LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA WILL
PERFORM DURING THE LUNCHEON HOUR AT
SAM ISAAC’S FISH-SHOPS?
One after another these seeds bore fruit—and as many other seeds, all bearing on the comfort or the gaiety of the Metropolis.
It was the Punch-and-Judy Man who, affected by the weariness of the City Clerks waiting an hour in queue to book their tickets in the Tubes, induced Madame Clara Butt, Sir Harry Lauder, and Mdlle. Adeline Genée, to attend the principal stations at going-home time, and relieve the tedium with song and dance. It only wanted suggesting to these kind-hearted artists that nobody expected such a thing of them. They responded at once.
It was a still greater surprise when Sir Joseph Lyons, after Jeremy’s emphatic assertion to the contrary, opened a Free-Penny-Bun-Shop on the Embankment for children under twelve with an income of less than Twopence a Week.
London was becoming a really beautiful place to live in.
But while the General Public grew daily more responsive to the nocturnal suggestions of Gypsy, Ginger, and their friends, the Authorities began to take alarm. Reforms were occurring at a pace which made them giddy. And London was acquiring a taste for Initiative which bothered them. Initiative was their feudal prerogative. They had given it a good run for its money in 1066, and now, like an old blind petted house-dog, kept it tenderly on the Westminster hearthrug, and gave it soft sops for its aged gums. Yet somehow this summer it had escaped and run amok: they heard it barking like a young pup, and saw it wag its tail in every street. And wherever it went London voluntarily arrayed herself in Couleur de Rose. The Authorities had always preferred her in the stronger tone of Red Tape. They had been saying to her for so many years, “Red is your Colour, dear,” that she nearly believed it, and they did quite.
So they sent to Scotland Yard for a Policeman, and gave him a Roving Commission. Policemen are generally born to their Beat; it is extremely difficult to disattach any of these men from his walk in life, and, in the older Constabulary families, where the Beat is entailed, it is impossible. But now and again a Younger Son is born for whom it is awkward to provide. One of these was hanging around the Yard that summer, and it was he who was told off to perambulate London at his own free will, and discover the conspiracy that was turning sacred institutions topsy-turvy. At head-quarters the conspirators were registered as The Moonshiners.
Lionel was enchanted with his job.
It was Gypsy who was the first to scent a public danger at large in lamplit London. The Regular Policeman is not the public danger you might suppose. He goes like a metronome, and you have only to time his beat. Between his two appearances practically anything can be done. But the Roving Constable is another question altogether. At any moment he may take you by surprise, like a rainbow in April.
He took Gypsy by surprise outside a baker’s shop in Kentish Town, opposite a Bus-stop. That night Gypsy was making a round of the Bus-stops, denying a rumour that Moving Staircases were being contemplated by the Omnibus Companies to Save the Conductresses’ Feet. Gypsy had just let the Regular Policeman go by, and was about to paint his sign in peacock blues and greens on the baker’s window, when Lionel tapped him on the shoulder.
“Wot are you doing here?” said Lionel. It is the first question given under the heading “Burglars” in the Policeman’s Guide to Conversation.
Gypsy was used to taking situations in at glances. He instantly saw that the whole fabric of the Moonshiners was threatened, and he answered with great presence of mind,
“I am trying to steal a plum cake.”
“Wot for?” said Lionel.
“Because I could do with it,” said Gypsy engagingly. And it was true. Gypsy never paused to consider his interior without discovering that he could do with plum cake.
“’Ow were you thinking of stealing it?” asked Lionel.
“I was going to try to smash the window,” said Gypsy.
“I’m serprised at you,” said Lionel sternly. “Think of the row you’d ’ave made, and everybody tired out wanting their night’s rest.”
“I should have tried to smash it quietly,” said Gypsy.
“I’m serprised at you,” said Lionel still more sternly. “You might ’ave cut your pore ’and.”
He put his own hand in his pocket and gave Gypsy sixpence. “Now don’t you go making no more disturbances,” he said. “There’s a coffee stall up the street, second on the left. Move on.”
“Robert,” said Gypsy warmly, “where do you live?”
“Winchester Mews, N.W. 3,” said Lionel, “and my name’s Lionel. Move on.”
“It’s no name for the Beaten Track,” said Gypsy thoughtfully.
“I don’t follow no Beaten Track,” said Lionel. “All London’s my Beat, and the Moonshiners is my mark. And as sure as my name’s wot it is, one of these fine nights I’ll run ’em to earth.”
“Wouldn’t it be better,” said Gypsy, looking at the moon, “to run them to heaven?”
“Wot do you take me for?” asked Lionel with dignity. “A member of the Air-Force? Move on.”
Gypsy moved on, drank his coffee and ate his slab of cake in Lionel’s name, and hurried back to do his sign. But instead of saying “The Conductresses’ Feet” it now said,
THE CONDUCTRESSES’ POOR FEET
This human note (due entirely to Lionel) touched the General Omnibus Co.’s heart, and it convened a Board-Meeting on the spot. But long before that Gypsy had hastened home and conveyed the tidings to his fellow-conspirators. He was always a little excitable in telling a tale, and he swore that as Lionel left him he threw behind him on the pavement the shadow, not of a man, but of Scotland Yard, which by some trick of the moon with a cloud changed to the shadow of a Handley-Page, and finally spread itself to the semblance of a flying angel.
Mrs. Green said, “You and your fancies, nonsense!”
But the Night Watchman said, “Of course. A human being can throw any shadow he pleases, or doesn’t please. If you want to know a man, look at his shadow by moonlight.”
Everybody began at once to look at everybody else’s shadow, and to hide his own; and for a little while the shadows flickered over Trafalgar Square like flowers in the wind, and birds on the wing, and swimming fish. Just as you thought you had a man he would slip his shadow into that of Nelson, or a Lion, or a Church, or a Hotel, or the National Gallery, and you lost him. Shadow Hide-and-Seek became rather a favourite pastime round the Weatherhouse after this.
But to-night the Taxi-Man soon called them to order.
“Enough of shadows,” he commanded. “We’re up against a danger, and it’s got to be tackled. If our work’s to go on, Lionel must be diddled.”
“But who’s to diddle him?” asked Ginger.
“The Picadilly Flower-Girls,” said the Taxi-Man.
GYPSY AND GINGER’S FRIENDS
11. The Piccadilly Flower Girls
The Piccadilly Flower-Girls were fascinating people with fragrant names like Lily, Rose and Violet. It was these damsels, or their grand-mothers, whom the Taxi-Man declared he had delivered from dragons during the Discovery of London. They would, he said, do anything for him.
“Out of sheer gratitude?” asked Ginger.
“Not a bit of it,” said the Taxi-Man. “Out of sheer joy. And if Lionel can resist ’em, he’s not the Roving Policeman I take him to be.”
“Lionel mustn’t be hurt,” said Gypsy. “I love Lionel, and if the pillar-box runs to it I’m going to leave a Buszard Cake on his Winchester Mews doorstep to-morrow. It will be a plum cake with almond icing, and I shall have it frosted an inch thick, with pink sugar doves, and LIONEL done on it in silver balls, like bits of quicksilver on the carpet when you break the puzzle by accident.”
“I used to break it on purpose,” said Ginger. “Mother always said I mustn’t eat them.”
“Good gracious, I should think not!” said Gypsy.
“I mean the silver balls,” said Ginger. “I don’t know why, but I was never allowed to eat the silver balls till I was ten years old.”
“She was afraid of you choking,” said Mrs. Green.
“I knows a perfickly wunnerful cure for hiccups,” mentioned Rags.
“Don’t tell me,” said Gypsy quickly. “I and my brothers never discouraged hiccups. I held the Hiccup Gold-Belt with a record of 127. An interval of three minutes brought the break to a close. The last thirty seconds used to be a fearful struggle. It is my brother Albert who holds the Silver Sneezing Cup. If you held it through three successive Epidemics, you kept it. He was passionately devoted to sneezing. When he was nine he made out a list of twenty things he liked best in the world. The First was Sneezing and the Second was Mother. He had no equal, too, in blowing out candles with his nose.”
“You never told me about your brother Albert before,” said Ginger.
“Would it have made any difference?” asked Gypsy, so anxiously that she hastened to reassure him. And whenever Ginger began to reassure Gypsy about anything, or Gypsy Ginger, it was time for their friends to go.
The next night the Piccadilly Flower-Girls came into action. The plan was very simple. Four Girls were told off to every Moonshiner, and two watched at each end of the street in which their protégé was at work. As soon as Lionel appeared in the distance, one would fly to warn—Ginger, or Jeremy, as the case might be, while the other stayed behind to diddle Lionel for exactly one minute. Any policeman can be diddled for that length of time. Then he reverts to type. But Rose in her radiant shawls, shedding damask petals like confetti round Lionel’s bewildered feet: or Lily floating her silver scarf before Lionel’s dazzled eyes, leaving one ivory bloom upon his helmet as she vanished: or Violet in her dusky veil, rising from the purple shadows to murmur music in Lionel’s intoxicated ear: was enough to dissolve the force of habit in any official—for sixty seconds.
Then Rose danced by, or Lily melted into thin air, or Violet sank shyly back into her shades; and Lionel turned the corner and discovered—Ginger, or Jeremy, as the case might be. And either would be seated in the middle of the road on a campstool inside a square of rope.
This was the Night Watchman’s idea. Any man, he said, sitting publicly inside a square of rope, will be taken for granted. Not even a policeman will question his position; the man inside the rope is as Cæsar’s Wife. For one thing, he must have been put there, and when one has already been handled by a higher power, one need not be re-handled by a lesser. It is only when one is obviously handling oneself that Authority smells danger. And nobody, said the Night Watchman ever really thinks that a man could be such a fool as deliberately to put himself inside a rope.
So every Moonshiner now went forth with rope and campstool, and each in turn discovered the wisdom of the Night Watchman. One by one they made Lionel’s acquaintance, and one by one they loved him.
He had to be loved, he was so trustful. For instance, he trusted Ginger. A woman inside the ropes would have aroused any other policeman’s sense of the unusual. Even he, struck by her sex, said when they encountered, “Wot are you doing here?” She answered, “Oh, Women on the Land, you know,” and he believed her at once.
Then there was the case of Jeremy.
The first time he found Jeremy sitting inside his rope, he said, “Wot are you doing here, you’re no night watchman. You’re a street hawker, I seen you last Friday selling paper windmills in Farringdon Street.”
“That wasn’t I,” said Jeremy, “that was my unfortunate brother Albert.”
“Oh, sorry,” said Lionel. “Wot was his misfortune?”
“Besides his name, he got mislaid last Saturday, and hasn’t been seen since,” said Jeremy, and hid his face in his hands.
Lionel went away, delicately leaving his own pocket-handkerchief on Jeremy’s knee, and put an advertisement about Albert in the “Missing” Column of The People. A good many Alberts turned up, and every night he brought them along to Jeremy for inspection, but they were all the wrong ones. At last Jeremy got tired of them, and told Lionel that he had had a dream about Albert dying in foreign waters. When he heard this Lionel borrowed his own handkerchief from Jeremy to blow his nose, and next day he laid a Cross of Immortelles on the Albert Memorial. It was all he could do now. There was a pleased paragraph about it in the Morning Post.
But Gypsy was a little put out. He told Jeremy that he did think he might have drowned somebody else’s brother; and then he crossed the road and had his brown boots blacked.
Soon Lionel began to make little Rendezvous with the different Moonshiners, noting the times in his engagement book, so that before long they knew exactly where to expect him at each half-hour through the night.
Rose and Lily, Lupin and Nemophila, were able to slack off a bit, and resume their dancing round the Piccadilly Cupid, which is the way the Flower-Girls like to spend their nights. All except Violet, who still haunted the purple shadows, and murmured fragments of song which Lionel vainly tried to recapture over breakfast. He would turn up at the Rendezvous with little gifts—a bottle of Asthma Cure for Mrs. Green, or a picture postcard of Mr. Matheson Lang as Shylock for Tonio. How could they help being fond of him?
Every day brought tokens of their affection to the Winchester Mews, N.W. 3; but Lionel never knew who it was that left plumcakes and violets and balloons at his door; or why one morning a floral arch was erected at the narrow entrance to the Mews with GOD BLESS OUR LIONEL done in red and white roses set in smilax.
He only knew that even a London Policeman’s life can become a lovely thing.