IX
ST UNCUS
It was now November, and even in the country the last of the leaves had fallen from the trees, and the bushy hollows between the roots of the downs were grey with old man's beard. Some people like November, because it is the quietest month of the year—as quiet as somebody tired, who has just fallen asleep—and they love to see the fields lying dark and still, and the empty branches against the sky. But some people hate it, especially people who live in towns, because of its fogs and falling rains, and they turn up their coat-collars, and blow their noses, and call it the worst month of the year.
Doris hated it too, and she hated this particular November more than any other that she could recall, because it had rained and rained and rained, and because her mummy was so ill that she had had to go to hospital. She was also angry with Cuthbert, because she thought that it wasn't fair for him to have taken Edward to see Tod the Gipsy, and never even have offered to take her, although she had asked him to over and over again.
So she hadn't spoken to him for nearly a month, not even after her mummy had been taken to the hospital; and she hated Auntie Kate, who had come to look after the home, because she kept asking her how her little boy-friend was. Auntie Kate had a face like a hen's, with a beaky nose and bobbly eyes, and she always counted people's pieces of bread and butter, and wondered what income their father and mother had. Her husband was a clergyman, so she went to church a lot, on week-days as well as on Sundays; and now she had gone to a bazaar at St Peter's Church, just when Doris had meant to go to tea with Gwendolen.
So Doris was very angry, because she had to stay at home and take care of her five brothers; and the only happy thing that she had to think about was that Mummy would be home next week. But at half-past three on a wet Saturday afternoon next week seems a horribly long way off, and Jimmy and Jocko were being as naughty as ever they knew how. Jimmy was six and Jocko was five, and they were playing water games in the bathroom; and Doris knew that they would be soaking their clothes and making an awful mess, but she didn't care.
"At any rate they're quiet," she thought to herself, "and I don't see why I should fight with them any more," and then she pressed her nose against the front-door glass and looked dismally into the street.
But there was nothing to see except the falling rain, and the dirty brown fronts of the opposite houses, and a strip of mud-coloured sky, and the milkman's cart with its yellow pony. Behind her, in a dark cupboard under the stairs, Teddy and George, the twins, were playing at Hell; and every now and then she could hear a faint clicking sound, as they practised gnashing their teeth. As for Christopher Mark, who was three and a half, she had forgotten all about him; and by now, if it hadn't been for Auntie Kate, she might have been playing in Gwendolen's big barn. Then she thought of Cuthbert again and of his exciting adventure on the top of Cæsar's Camp, and she breathed on the glass, and drew a picture of Cuthbert, making him as ugly as she could.
"I hate him," she thought, "and I hate Auntie Kate, and I hate the twins, and I hate everybody," and then she turned round, and her heart stood still—or at least she felt as if it did—and her cheeks became white. For there was Christopher Mark at the top of the stairs, with a rabbit under one arm and an engine under the other; and she suddenly saw him slip and begin to pitch head-long down, with a sickening thud, thud, thud.
For a moment she was so frightened that she could hardly breathe, but just as she sprang forward an odd thing happened, for he stopped short, almost as if somebody had caught him, and didn't even begin to cry.
"My goodness!" she said, and then she stopped short too, for squatting down on the topmost stair was the strangest little man that she had ever seen, hanging on to Christopher Mark. He was a little man with a bald head and a big mouth and a crooked back; and his right arm was only a stump, with a very long hook at the end of it. His left arm was odd too, almost as crooked as his back, and he had curled it round one of the banisters, while he hooked Christopher Mark up with the other.
"Good afternoon," he said. "I see you have recognized me. That's very clever of you. Most people don't."
Doris was too surprised at first to be able to answer him. But he didn't seem to mind, and went on smiling; while as for Christopher Mark, he climbed upstairs again, just as if the little man hadn't been there.
"I'm afraid I don't recognize you," said Doris at last; "but I'm frightfully obliged to you for saving Christopher Mark."
"Not at all," he said. "That's what I'm for. I'm St Uncus."
Doris frowned a little.
"St Uncus?" she asked.
"Latin for hook," he said. "Excuse me half a moment."
For a flicker of an eyelid he disappeared.
"Just been to China," he said, "to hook another one."
Doris opened her eyes.
"But are you a real saint?" she asked.
The little man flushed.
"Why, of course I am. I'm a patron saint. I'm the patron saint of staircases."
"But I didn't know," said Doris, "that staircases had patron saints."
"They don't," he said. "They have only one."
"I mean," said Doris—"it's frightfully rude, I'm afraid—but I didn't know that they had even one."
He smiled again.
"Very likely not," he said. "Lots of people don't. But they have."
He disappeared once more.
"Baby in Jamaica," he said, "just beginning to fall from the top landing."
Then he stroked his chin and looked at her thoughtfully.
"I suppose you've been left here," he said, "to look after the children."
Doris nodded.
"Well, then, you ought to know," he said, "that there are two things that children love more than anything else. One of them's water and the other's staircases. And they're both a bit dangerous. So they each have a patron saint."
"I see," said Doris. "And who's the patron saint of water?"
"Fellow called Fat Bill," he said. "He's my younger brother."
"That seems a queer name," said Doris, "for a saint."
"Well, he's a queer fellow," said St Uncus, "but we've both been lucky."
Doris couldn't help looking at his crooked back, and his deformed left arm, and his right stump.
"Ah, yes," he said; "but you mustn't judge by those. That's the very mistake that I made. You see, I once fell down a staircase myself, two or three years after staircases were invented."
He looked at Doris and nodded his head.
"It was when I was a small boy," he said, "as small as your little brother; and that's why I grew up crooked and deformed. I was very unhappy about it. It was thousands of years ago. But I can still remember how unhappy I was. I used to watch the other children playing games, and when I grew up I watched the men go hunting. And I had to stay at home, and the women despised me; and at last I died, and then I saw how silly I had been."
"Why had you been silly?" asked Doris.
"Well, I'd wasted the whole of my life, you see, thinking about the staircase and how miserable I was; and so when the good Lord God asked me what I wanted to do next, there was hardly anything that I could turn my hand to. But I told you I was lucky, and so I was, for as it happened I had a great idea; and that was to try and save as many children as I could from being as miserable as I had been. Of course, I couldn't expect much of a job, seeing how I'd thrown away all my chances, so I asked the good Lord God if He would allow me to look after the world's staircases."
He disappeared again.
"Been to Port Jacobson," he said. "Well, the good Lord God thought that it was rather a fine idea; and so He laid His hand upon me and gave me a new name; and my new name was St Uncus."
"Shall I have a new name too?" asked Doris.
St Uncus beamed.
"Why, of course," he said. "Everybody has a new name, only it generally depends, to a certain extent, upon what they did with their old ones."
Doris thought for a moment.
"But wouldn't you rather be in Heaven," she said, "than sitting about on these silly old staircases?"
St Uncus laughed.
"But Heaven's not a place, my dear. Heaven's being employed by the good Lord God."
Then he looked at his watch.
"And now I wonder," he said, "if you'd mind doing me a good turn?"
"Oh, I should love to!" said Doris; "but how can I?"
"Well, you see," he said, "the worst of my job is that I can never get a chance of seeing my brother Bill. He's always busy by the edges of ponds and things, and I'm always stuck on somebody's staircase; and I thought perhaps, if you wouldn't mind taking my hook for a bit, I could slip off for a moment and have a talk to him."
Doris felt a little shy.
"But should I be able to use it?" she asked. "And how could I tell whether somebody wanted me?"
"Oh, that'll be all right," he said, "as soon as you catch hold of the hook; and perhaps you won't be wanted at all. The only trouble is when two children are falling at once, and then you have to decide which you'll go for. But that doesn't happen very often, considering how many children there are."
So Doris went upstairs, and he unbuttoned the hook, and when she caught hold of it she felt a strange sort of thrill. She felt like Cuthbert had felt when he went into In-between Land; and indeed that was where she really was. St Uncus had vanished, and she saw Christopher Mark like a little fat ghost, with his soul shining inside him. Then she suddenly heard a cry in a strange foreign language, and she saw a dark-eyed mother at the bottom of some stone steps, and a small round baby, with an olive-coloured skin, tumbling down them one by one. She felt a hot wind, full of the odour of spices, blowing faintly against her cheek; and then she bent forward and hooked up the baby, and saw the look of terror die out of the mother's face.
Never in her life had Doris felt so pleased. She felt as if she could shout and sing with joy. No wonder, she thought, that St Uncus looked so happy. She began to understand what being in Heaven meant. And then she heard a shout, and smelt a smell of herrings, and she saw a man in a blue jersey, and a curly-headed boy, about four years old, pitching head first down a dark staircase. Through a dirty window-pane she could see the mouth of a river, full of fishing-smacks floating side by side; and she saw a woman, with rolled-up sleeves, run out of a kitchen and stand beside the man.
Then she hooked up the boy, and she heard the woman say "Thank God!" and the man say "You little rascal, you!" and then she was back again, and there was St Uncus sitting beside her and rubbing his hands.
"Ever so many thanks," he said. "I haven't seen old Bill for nearly three hundred years. He says he'd like to meet you, but of course it's only now and again that anybody like you is able to see us."
Then he said good-bye to her, and she never saw him again, but she knew that he was there, and once she actually heard him; and that was very late on this same evening, long after everyone had gone to bed. For soon after midnight, when Auntie Kate was dreaming about clergymen and bazaars, and when Teddy and George were dreaming about bears, and Jimmy and Jocko about bathrooms, and when Christopher Mark was dreaming about rabbits, and Doris wasn't dreaming at all—soon after midnight a little red-hot cinder suddenly popped out of the kitchen grate.
It fell on a bit of matting, and burnt its way through to the floor-boards below; and presently a wisp of smoke, with a wicked pungent smell, began to twist upward and flatten against the ceiling. Fuller and fuller grew the kitchen of smoke, and Teddy and George began to dream of camp-fires, but Auntie Kate still dreamt of bazaars and pincushions marked tenpence halfpenny. Teddy and George were sleeping by themselves, and Christopher Mark slept in a little room turning out of Auntie Kate's. These rooms were above the sitting-room in the front of the house, and it was Teddy and George who slept over the kitchen; while Doris herself and Jimmy and Jocko shared a little room under the roof.
The floor of the kitchen was now blazing fiercely, with the boards crackling in the flames, and Teddy and George began to dream about guns, but still they didn't wake up. They only moved a little uneasily, and it was somebody shouting that finally woke them, just as it was a neighbour banging at the front door that roused Auntie Kate from her dreams.
"Hurry up!" cried the neighbour, "your house is on fire!" and Auntie Kate was so flustered that she quite forgot where she had put her clothes, and rushed downstairs in her nightdress. As for Teddy and George, their room was full of smoke, and they bolted out of it, coughing and spluttering, and met Doris coming down from the attic, pushing Jimmy and Jocko in front of her.
The kitchen door had now swung open, and the flames were darting across the hall; and clouds of smoke were rolling upstairs like a sour and suffocating fog.
"Never mind," said Doris. "Hold your breath, and run downstairs as quick as you can," and soon they were all standing together in the street, while some of the neighbours were running for the fire-engine.
It had stopped raining, but the pavement felt all cold and clammy as they stood upon it with their bare feet, and it seemed funny to be out in the dark with nothing on but their nightgowns. Auntie Kate had fled into an opposite house, because she couldn't bear that so many people should see her; but Teddy and George were rather enjoying themselves, though Jimmy and Jocko had begun to cry. Then Doris looked round, "Where's Christopher Mark?" she cried, and everybody looked at everybody else, and Doris knew that he must be still asleep in his little dressing-room upstairs. She rushed into the house, but the leaping flames had already begun to curl round the banisters; and the lady next door caught hold of her arm and told her that it would be madness to try and rescue him. But Doris shook her off and ran across the hall, and dashed blindly up the burning staircase.
"Oh, St Uncus!" she said, "come and help me; come and help me to save Christopher Mark."
The sound of the flames was like the roar of an engine, and the smoke was thicker than the blackest night. But at the top of the stairs she suddenly heard a whisper, "It's all right, my dear, I'm here."
And then she laughed, and found Christopher Mark fast asleep, hugging his white rabbit; and in another few seconds she was out in the street again, with Christopher Mark safe in her arms.
Some of the people cheered her and patted her on the back, and began to tell her how brave she had been; and she was rather pleased, of course, especially when she thought of Mummy, who would be sure to hear about it in hospital. But she wasn't conceited, because she knew that she had been helped by a little saint with a crooked back, who served God by keeping an eye on all the staircases in the world.
Never a babe in Port of Spain,
Peabody Buildings, Portland Maine,
Limerick, Lima, Boston, York,
Nottingham, Naples, Cairo, Cork,
Milton of Campsie, Moscow, Mull,
Halifax, Hampstead, Hobart, Hull,
Never a baby climbs a stair
But little St Hook is waiting there.
OLD MOTHER HUBBARD
X
OLD MOTHER HUBBARD
Cuthbert was very sorry when he heard about the fire at Doris's house, and when he next saw her in the street, he almost crossed the road to speak to her. But she hadn't spoken to him for so long that he had resolved not to talk to her unless she spoke to him first. Doris and Jimmy and Jocko were now staying with some people called Brown; and Doris's mother and the twins and Christopher Mark were staying with Gwendolen's aunt and Captain Jeremy. It was rather fun staying with the Browns, but on the whole Doris was rather sad, because it would be two months, so the builders said, before they could all be at home together again.
Cuthbert knew about this, because Marian had told him; and that was why he nearly crossed the road. But he decided not to, and he didn't see Doris again until the second day of the holidays. That was the Thursday before Christmas, and it was a grey day and very cold, with a strong wind blowing out of the north-east, and all the houses looking huddled and shrunken. It was early in the afternoon, and he had just been to call for Edward, but Edward had gone out to sit by the railway. He was collecting the numbers on engines, and had already got thirty-seven.
Cuthbert was collecting too, but he was collecting the dates on pennies, so he didn't feel inclined to go and sit with Edward; and it was just as he was wondering what to do that he saw Doris turn the corner. For a moment he thought that he would pretend not to see her, but she was all alone, and it suddenly occurred to him that it would be rather a good idea to take her out to tea at Uncle Joe's.
So he stopped and asked her, and she was very glad, because she had nothing particular to do; and she told him all about St Uncus and the fire and what it was like being nearly burnt to death.
"Let's cut across the fields," she said, "past old Mother Hubbard's. It's jolly cold. I think it's going to snow."
"I hope it is," said Cuthbert. "But it's not so cold as the day on which we found the ice-men."
But it was quite cold enough, with the horses in the fields standing dismally under the naked hedges, and the black north-easter crumbling the ridges of the plough-lands until they looked like pale-coloured powdered chocolate.
"I shall be jolly glad," said Cuthbert, "when we get to Uncle Joe's," and just then they passed Mother Hubbard's—a melancholy house standing by itself, with all its blinds and curtains drawn.
It was always like that, and behind it were some ruined stables, with a tin roof that flapped up and down; and a big yellow dog on a long chain ran out and yelped at them as they passed. This was called Mother Hubbard's house, because it belonged to a Miss Hubbard who lived there all by herself, and who had allowed nobody to enter the door since her father had died fifty years ago.
He had been a proud old general with a bad temper; and some people said that he had driven Miss Hubbard mad, but other people said that she was only queer, and hated everybody except her dog. Occasionally she could be seen peering round one of the blinds, or feeding her dog in the ruined stables; and once a week she went into the town with a big bag to do her shopping. The shop-people said that she was very polite, and so did the postman, who sometimes took her a letter. But she always kept her own counsel, and nobody could ever make her talk. Why she lived like that, nobody knew. Some people said that it was because she was so poor, and because her father had made her promise never to let people know how poor she was. But other people said that she was really rather rich, and that she must have had some great trouble. She was very old—nearly eighty—although her eyes were clear and so were her cheeks; but there were still a few people who remembered her as a girl galloping on horseback over the fields.
"Silly old thing," said Doris, as they left her house behind them. "I shouldn't be surprised if she was a witch."
But Cuthbert said that there weren't any such things, and perhaps she had killed somebody and had a guilty conscience.
Then they crossed a road, and climbed over a stile, and skirted a great field pricked with tiny wheat-blades; and then they slipped down a rather steep bank into a sheltered lane still wet with mud. They had already forgotten old Mother Hubbard, and the next moment they forgot her still more; for just then there came clattering down the lane a young man on horseback, splashed to his eyes. His bowler hat was crammed down on his head, and he shouted at them as he galloped by. "Which way have they gone?" he cried, but he never stopped for an answer, and soon there came some more riders, both men and women. They had evidently come down the lane to avoid a big ploughed field that lay between high hedges on the other side of it, for Cuthbert and Doris presently saw them turn sharply to the right into a grass meadow where it was easier to gallop.
"It's the hunt," said Doris. "Let's run after them," so they turned and ran down the lane, and saw the riders, one by one, jumping over a gate on the far side of the meadow. Then they crossed the meadow and scrambled over the gate just in time to see the last of the horsemen disappearing over another hedge a couple of hundred yards away.
"We shall never catch them," said Cuthbert, but just then they heard a horn blowing. "It's the fox," cried Doris. "They've seen the fox," and half a minute later, from a little rise in the ground, they saw the whole hunt streaming away from them.
They were so hot now that they had forgotten all about the wind and the grey clouds gathering over the downs, and their only thought was to be up among the horses and their jolly, red-cheeked riders. So they ran down the rise and across another road and over some more fields and past a wood, until they came at last to a stream, running rather sluggishly between some pollarded willows. On one of these there was a man standing, and he waved his hand to them as they came up.
"They're coming back," he said. "Keep along the stream, and I'll lay a dollar you'll see some fun."
It was now nearly four, and the light was beginning to fade, and they were ever so far from Uncle Joe's; but they pushed their way through the tangled grass until they came to a plank across the stream. This led them out beside a hazel copse, and just as they were wondering which way to go they heard the horn again, not very far away, and the clear, deep calling of the hounds. Something cold fell on Cuthbert's cheek.
"Hullo!" he said, "it's beginning to snow." And then a burly man on a big grey mare came crashing through the undergrowth on the other side of the stream. He gave a shout, and they jumped aside as his horse rose to clear the water; but the next moment he was sprawling on the ground in front of them, with his scarlet coat about his ears.
They heard him swear, but as he picked himself up and helped his horse out of the stream he began to laugh, and soon he was in the saddle again and vanishing into the dusk. For a minute or two they waited, but nobody else came. An old cock pheasant rattled out of the hazel copse. The horn blew once more, and then all was still. Their breath stood like smoke upon the air.
Then Doris suddenly stooped and picked up a coin that had been half trampled into the bank.
"Hullo!" she said, "he's dropped a penny. You'd better add the date of it to your collection."
Cuthbert took it from her, but the penny was an old one, and the date was difficult to see. The snow began to fall upon them in heavy flakes. Cuthbert took out his handkerchief and polished the coin. And then an odd thing happened, for suddenly, as he polished, the stream and the hazel copse seemed to fade away; and it was another girl—a grown-up girl—who had just given him the penny.
"A penny for your thoughts," she said, and Cuthbert knew that she wasn't speaking to him, but to somebody else; and the thoughts that came into his head weren't his own, but a grown-up man's. He knew that they were somebody else's thoughts, because he was thinking his own thoughts too; and the other person's thoughts were of two kinds—the weak thoughts that he decided to tell the girl, and the strong thoughts that went into the penny.
The thoughts that he told the girl were that, when he got to South America, he was going to spend his spare time studying the birds there. He was going to write a book about them, and perhaps, when he had written his book, he would get a job looking after a museum. But his strong thoughts, that he didn't tell her, were "I love you and want to marry you; but I mustn't tell you that, because I'm only a carpenter, and you're a lady, and ever so far above me."
"What's the matter?" said Doris.
Cuthbert gave her the penny.
"It's a queer sort of penny," he said. "Catch hold of it."
Doris took it.
"I don't see anything queer in it," she said. So Cuthbert polished it once more. This time he polished it harder, so that when he gave it to Doris again it was quite warm from the polishing; and Doris seemed to be standing in a strange sort of room, full of old-fashioned furniture and heavy ornaments. The same girl said, "A penny for your thoughts," and the same thoughts came to her as had come to Cuthbert. The day drew in. It was almost dark now, and the snow was glistening on their shoulders.
"I know what's happened," she said. "His real thoughts were so strong that they all went into the penny."
Cuthbert nodded.
"That's what I thought," he said. "And when you rub the penny they all come out."
"Did you notice the girl's dress?" asked Doris, "and the way her hair was done, and the blue china dog on the mantelpiece?"
Cuthbert shook his head.
"Let's have another go," he said, and he rubbed the penny again as hard as he could.
This time he noticed the room, with its queer high-backed piano, and a picture of people hunting hanging on the wall, and the blue china dog, and the girl's dress, and the curious way in which she had done her hair. It was pulled back from her forehead into a smooth sort of bundle behind her head; and her dress was all in terraces, like a wedding-cake, or a theatre turned upside down.
"It must have been a good long time," said Cuthbert, "since she gave him the penny. Do you think he was the man who fell off the horse?"
"Oh, he couldn't have been," said Doris. "He was much too young; and besides I'm sure that he was never a carpenter."
She shivered a little.
"We ought to be getting home," she said, but Cuthbert lingered for a moment, looking at the penny.
"I expect hundreds of people," he said, "have had it in their pockets and never known what was inside it."
"I daresay," said Doris, "but I know I'm jolly hungry, and we must be miles away from anywhere."
Nor were they quite sure where anywhere was, but they crossed the plank again and started for home, with the snow driving past their ears and piling up in front of their feet. Grey-capped hedges loomed up before them, rising unexpectedly out of the darkness; and so thick lay the snow that they were never able to tell whether the next field was a ploughed one. But they passed the tree—or they thought that they did—on which the man had been standing; and they crossed the road—or they thought that they did—that they had crossed after running down the rise. But the hours went by, and they felt emptier and emptier, and several times they stumbled into snow-filled ditches; and the snow roared past them in angry whiteness, and melted upon their necks and trickled down their backs.
Longingly they thought then of Uncle Joe's and of plates of hot muffins before the fire, and even more longingly of supper at home, with bowls of steaming bread and milk. But every field seemed endlesser than the last, and the snow grew deeper and ever more deep; and the night closed down upon them like a lid, and their feet felt heavier than ten-pound weights.
"I believe we're lost," said Cuthbert, but Doris didn't seem to hear, and so they toiled on with sinking hearts, and then at last, just as they were almost spent, they suddenly knocked their knees against a little gate. It was the sort of gate that leads into a garden path; and though they could see no sign of this, or even of a light, they pushed it open with a great effort, and went plunging into the snow beyond.
Sometimes people have been frozen close to a house, but in a little while they saw a great dark shadow; and then to their joy they found themselves in front of a door, with a gleam of light shining through the letter-box. For a long time they knocked, but nobody came; and several times they shouted through the letter-box. But still nobody came, and then from behind the house they heard the barking of a dog.
Doris gripped Cuthbert's arm.
"It's old Mother Hubbard's," she said. "That's her dog. I know it's bark."
"Then we'll never get in," said Cuthbert, but just as he said that they heard footsteps coming down the hall.
"Who's there?" said a voice. It had an odd sort of creak in it, like the creak of a drawer that is seldom opened. Cuthbert told her; and then, after a long pause, the door moved a little on its hinges. An eddy of snow whirled in in front of them, and the door swung back an inch or two more.
"You'd better come inside," said Miss Hubbard, and they went into the hall, her first guests for fifty years. She stood looking at them over a flickering candle. Her eyes were frostier than the wind outside. The air of the house smelt like a tomb. They could hear the ticking of several clocks.
"You'd better come into the scullery," she said, "and shake the snow off," and she led them in silence to the back of the house, where she left them alone for nearly twenty minutes before she came back to ask them in to tea.
"It's in the drawing-room," she said, "and I hope you won't talk. I'm very strong and I have a big dog."
So they followed her into the drawing-room, and then a second, and even more wonderful, thing happened. Cuthbert stopped short, and so did Doris, and old Miss Hubbard switched round and stared at them.
"What's the matter?" she asked. "What are you gaping at?"
"Why, it's the penny room!" said Cuthbert; and so it was. For there was the queer high-backed piano; and there was the picture of people hunting; and there were the old-fashioned heavy ornaments.
"But where's the dog," said Doris, "the blue china dog that used to stand on the mantelpiece?"
Old Miss Hubbard had turned quite white.
"The blue china dog?" she asked. "What do you know about that? It was broken thirty years ago."
"But it's the same room," said Cuthbert, "and there was a girl in it, and she gave a man a penny for his thoughts."
Old Miss Hubbard began to tremble. She sat down heavily, and her eyes looked frightened.
"But how do you know?" she asked. "You're only children; and that was more than fifty years ago."
Cuthbert felt in his pocket and pulled out the penny.
"This is the penny," he said, "that the girl gave him. We've just found it, quite by accident. And he didn't tell her all of his thoughts. He only told her some of them. The rest are in here, and we made them come out."
He began to polish it again with his handkerchief; and then he gave it to her, and they stood watching her. For about five minutes she sat quite still; and then she looked up, and her voice had changed a little.
"If I tell you a story," she said, "will you let me keep it?"
Cuthbert looked at Doris, and Doris nodded her head.
"Why, of course," said Cuthbert. "We should be very pleased."
So while they were having tea she told them that long ago a girl had lived in that house, and that she fell in love with a young man, who was a carpenter by trade. But he was also a naturalist, and especially fond of birds, and he wanted to discover all sorts of things about them; and one day he told the girl that he was just going away to work on a railway in South America. Then he hesitated, as if he wanted to tell her something else, and she gave him a penny for his thoughts; and then he left the house, and was drowned at sea, and the girl never knew whether he had loved her or not.
"It was very silly of him," said Miss Hubbard, "not to have told her. But perhaps the girl was sillier still. For she was so sad that she wasted her whole life; and now it seems that he loved her after all."
Then she went to the window and pulled up the blind. The storm had died down, and it had stopped snowing. Brighter than eyes at a Christmas party, the stars in their thousands shone in the sky. Cuthbert and Doris said that they must be going; and old Miss Hubbard took them to the front door.
"You must come and see me again," she said. "Come as often as you like; and perhaps next time you'll bring some of your friends."
"But she never told us," said Cuthbert, "who the girl was."
"Why, you silly," said Doris, "it was Miss Hubbard herself."
Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
To fetch her poor dog a bone,
But this Mother Hubbard in her heart's cupboard
Lives in the dark alone.
Sorrow's grey dust on the chandelier
Never a sun-ray sees,
Never a finger stirs the blind,
Nor the harpsichord's yellow keys.
Dumb is the clock with the china face,
The carpet moulds on the floor;
Oh, won't you come down to her house with me
And open Miss Hubbard's door?
MARIAN'S PARTY
XI
MARIAN'S PARTY
For a whole month after Cuthbert and Doris had had tea with old Miss Hubbard the snow lay white upon the ground, and the ice grew thick over the ponds. Day after day during the Christmas holidays the children went skating or tobogganing; and Cuthbert and Doris learnt to waltz on skates, and even Marian learnt to cut threes. And then the frost broke, and it rained all through February, and then came March with its blustering winds. Sometimes it was an east wind, drying the wet fields or powdering them over with tiny snowflakes; and sometimes it was a west wind, shouting in the tree-tops, with its arms full of sunshine and golden clouds; and the week before Marian's birthday, which was on the 27th, was the windiest week of all, chasing people's hats across the tram-lines, and blowing the chimney-smoke down into their sitting-rooms.
Marian always had a party on her birthday, and this year it was going to be a specially nice one. Twelve of her friends were coming, and so was Uncle Joe, and so were Captain Jeremy and Gwendolen's aunt. So was Mr Parker, who lived with Uncle Joe, and so was Lancelot, the bosun's mate; and the most wonderful thing of all, so was old Miss Hubbard.
It had been Cuthbert's idea to ask Miss Hubbard, and she had promised to come on one condition—that she might be allowed to bring the birthday-cake and the nine candles to stick into it. For Marian was going to be nine, and it was nearly two years since she had met Mr Jugg; and she sometimes wondered—it seemed so long ago—if she had ever seen him at all. Cuthbert used to tease her by pretending that she hadn't, and that Mr Jugg was only a dream, just as he used to tease her by telling her that the 27th of March was a silly sort of day on which to have a birthday. That was because his own birthday came in April, so that it was always in the holidays; but Uncle Joe, who knew a lot about birthdays, used to take Marian's side. March was the soldier's month, he said, full of bugles, and one of the best months to be born in; while, as for Cuthbert, anyone could tell by listening to him that he had come in April with all the other cuckoos.
So Marian was naturally rather excited; and then, on the very morning of her birthday, Cuthbert woke up with a strawberry-coloured tongue and a chest as red as a cooked lobster. That was just the sort of thing, Marian thought, that Cuthbert would do, although she knew that she ought to feel sorry for him; and then the doctor came and said that he had scarlet fever, and that was the end of Marian's party. For Mummy had to put on an overall and begin to nurse Cuthbert, and a big sheet was hung across the bedroom door, and Mummy had to sprinkle it with carbolic acid, and of course Marian wasn't allowed to go to school. But she could go for walks, said the doctor, as long as she went by herself and didn't go near anybody, or travel in trams and things; and so she spent the morning in taking notes to her friends, telling them that there wasn't to be a party after all. As for Uncle Joe, Mummy sent him a message by a carrier who passed near his house. "And the first thing in the afternoon," she said to Marian, "you must slip across the fields to old Miss Hubbard's."
Now a little girl whose only brother has just been silly enough to get scarlet fever is one of the loneliest people in the world; and that was just how Marian felt. Even her mummy tried to keep away from her, because she was nursing Cuthbert, who was so infectious; and she had had strict orders when she arrived at Mother Hubbard's not to go inside her house.
"Everybody's happy," said Marian, "except me," as she saw the people laughing in the country roads, and the horses biting at each other's manes, and the birds circling together in the soft air. For, as if Somebody had known that it was going to be her birthday and waved a wand during the night, the wind had dropped and the clouds vanished, and the air was full of a thousand scents. There were earth-scents, warm and wet, and hedge-scents of primroses and growing weeds, and the scents of small animals, and cow-scents and lamb-scents, and tree-scents of bark and cracking buds. Invisibly they rose and spread and mingled, like children flocking upstairs in their party frocks; and the sun beamed down on them like some gay old admiral who had just spied summer on the horizon.
But Marian was still unhappy and disappointed, and when she had given her message to old Miss Hubbard she wandered across the fields, not very much caring where she went or what might happen to her. That was how she was feeling when she came at last to a small wood, called the Pirate's Wood because it was shaped rather like a ship, with a lot of masts in it, easy to climb. It was Cuthbert who had christened this wood, because he had climbed higher than the others—almost to the top of the tallest tree. But Doris had climbed nearly as high, and they both laughed at Marian, because she would only climb half-way up. It occurred to her this afternoon, however, that she would climb higher than either of them; and she didn't care, she said, if she fell from the top.
So she swung herself up on to the lowest branch of the big elm-tree near the middle of the wood; and presently she saw above her the fork between two boughs that Cuthbert had christened the crow's-nest. Level with her nose, cut in the bark of the trunk, was a big D, standing for Doris, so that already she had climbed as high as Doris had climbed, and was able to look out over the other trees. But now she had come to the hardest part of the climb, for in order to reach the crow's-nest she would have to swarm up a piece of the elm-trunk from which there were no branches sticking out to help her. There were only roughnesses in the bark, into which she would have to dig her fingers, and first of all she had to pull up her skirt and tuck it down inside her knickers. For a moment or two she began to be frightened. But then she told herself that she didn't care; and soon she had swarmed high enough to reach one of the forking boughs, and had swung herself up into the crow's-nest.
She was now as high as Cuthbert had climbed, and rippling away below her she could see the fields and farm-lands stretching into the distance. Two or three miles to her right lay the spires and chimneys and crinkled roof-tops of the town, and two or three miles to her left, golden in the sunlight, the hills lay strung along the sky. Then she saw yet another fork between two slender boughs, just about a foot above her head, and in a minute or two she had climbed higher even than Cuthbert had done, and was safely perched in the top of the tree. If only the others had been there she could have sighted imaginary ships for them sooner than any of them had done before; and then she remembered again how sad and lonely she was, and that nothing really mattered after all.
So she stuffed her handkerchief into a crack in the tree just to prove that she had really climbed there; and it was just then that she saw a young man swinging across the fields toward the wood. He was wearing an old shooting-jacket and grey flannel trousers; and he was singing a song, of which she couldn't hear the words. She saw him climb a gate—rather cautiously, she thought; she had expected from his general air that he would vault it; and then he disappeared under the trees just as she began to climb down.
But climbing down anything is often more difficult than climbing up, as Marian found; and half-way down she suddenly discovered that she had somehow worked herself to the wrong side of the tree. Below her were two or three branches that she thought would bear her, but there were long gaps yawning between them; and the main trunk was growing broader and broader, so that she could no longer span it with her arms. Once a piece of bark broke in her fingers, and she slithered down a yard or more and nearly fell; and she could feel her heart jumping against her ribs, as she stood with both feet on a bending bough. Then she heard the young man singing again in a cheerful voice, and she thought of shouting to him, but she felt too shy; and then she began to lower herself very carefully until she touched the branch below her with the tips of her toes.
The young man stopped singing.
"Steady on," he cried. "You're touching a rotten branch."
Marian pulled herself up again.
"But it's the only one there is," she said. "I can't reach any other."
She heard him whistle.
"Hold on," he said. "I'm trying to find you—half a tick."
He came to the bottom of the tree and looked up.
"Where are you now?" he asked. Marian thought it a silly question.
"Why, just here," she said.
"Well, why don't you come down," he asked, "the same way that you got up?"
"I don't know," she said. "I wish I could. But I've got wrong somehow. I'm stuck."
She saw him touching the elm-trunk with his hands, running his fingers lightly and quickly over it. Then he swung himself up on to the lowest bough, and soon he was near enough to touch her hand.
"Now catch hold," he said, "and jump toward me. Don't be frightened. I'm as firm as a rock."
Marian jumped, and he caught and steadied her.
"Now you're all right," he said. "You'd better go down first."
In another moment or two he was on the ground beside her, looking down at her with a smile. He was about six feet high, she thought, with queer-looking eyes and curly brown hair and a skin like a gipsy's.
"Well, what are you doing here," he asked, "climbing all alone?"
Marian told him about her party, and how she had had to put it off. "And it'll be seven or eight weeks," she said, "before Cuthbert's well again, so that I shan't have one at all."
"Yes, I see," he said. "That's jolly bad luck. What about having some tea with me?"
Marian looked at him a little doubtfully.
"But where do you live?" she asked. "Do you live near here?"
"Well, just at present," he said, "I'm staying with Lord Barrington. But I have a flask in my pocket full of hot tea, and I stole some cakes before I came out."
So they sat down together between the roots of the elm-tree, and the sun poured down upon them, almost as if it had been summer.
"But why did you come here," said Marian—"to this wood I mean?"
"Oh, just by accident," he said, "if there's any such thing."
Marian looked him up and down again. She wondered what he was. Perhaps it was rude, but she ventured to ask him.
"Well, I used to be a painter," he said, "once upon a time. I was rather a successful one. So I saved a little money."
"But you're quite young," she said. "Why aren't you one now?"
"Because I had a disappointment," he said, "just like you have had."
Marian began to like him.
"Was it a bad one?" she asked.
"Pretty bad," he said. "I became blind."
For a moment Marian was so surprised that she couldn't say anything at all; and then she felt such a pig that she didn't want to say anything. For what was a silly little disappointment like hers beside so dreadful a thing as becoming blind? But he looked so contented and was humming so cheerfully as he counted out the cakes and began to divide them that her curiosity got the better of her, and she spoke to him once more.
"But how did you know," she asked, "that I was up the tree?"
"Quite simple," he said. "I heard you."
"And how could you tell that that was a rotten branch?"
"Because I heard the sound of it when your toes touched it."
Marian was silent for a moment.
"You must have awfully good hearing," she said. "But I suppose you've practised rather a lot."
"Well, a good deal," he admitted. "You see, I was in the middle of Asia when I first lost my sight. I was camping out, and painting pictures, and shooting an occasional buck for my breakfast and dinner. Then a gun went off while somebody was cleaning it, and the next moment I was blind; and for a couple of months there was only one thing I wanted, and that was to die as soon as I could."
He poured out some tea for her and dropped a lump of sugar into it.
"And then one day," he said, "there came a man to see me, and he told me that I oughtn't to be discouraged. He was an old priest of some queer sort of religion that the people of those parts believed in; and he was sorry for me, and took me to stay with him in a little temple up in the mountains. I never knew his name, we were just father and son to each other, and I suppose that most people would have called him a heathen. But he had lived all his life up among the mountains, studying nature and praying to God. Well, I stayed with him for more than a year, and he used to talk to me about the things he knew. I was a bad pupil, I'm afraid, but he was infinitely patient; and after a time I began to learn a little. 'You are blind, my son,' he used to tell me, 'but only a little less blind than other people. And you have ears that are still almost deaf. Why not stay with me and learn to hear?' I told him that I could hear, but he only smiled—it's a lovely thing to hear people smile—and then he began to teach me, just as he would have taught a child, the ABC of hearing."
He finished his cake and filled his pipe.
"Did you know," he went on, "that everything has a sound, just as it has a shape and colour of its own? Well, it has; and presently I seemed to be living in a strange new world, all full of music. Of course it wasn't really new. It was the same old world. Only, like most people, I had been almost deaf to it; and when I first heard it, up in that little temple, I nearly went mad with joy. Day after day and night after night I went out by myself and listened, and gradually I began to distinguish the separate sounds of things, like the notes of instruments in an orchestra."
He stopped for a moment.
"Just behind us, for instance, there's a clump of anemones singing next to some primroses."
Marian turned and saw them, just as he had said.
"Oh, I wish," she cried, "that I could hear them too."
The painter smiled.
"Wait for a moment," he said. "Well, then once more I began to grow miserable. For I was an artist, you see, and every artist wants to make other people see what he sees. That was why I had painted my pictures. But how could I make people hear what I heard? So I told the old priest about it, and he said that, if I were a real artist, the power would come back to me somehow. 'Wait a little,' he said, 'Stay a little longer. You've hardly begun yet to hear for yourself.'"
He paused again and lit his pipe.
"And at last it came to me," he said. "Hold my hand."
Marian slipped her hand into his.
"Now close your eyes," he told her, "and listen."
For a moment she could hear nothing but a ploughman shouting to his horses and the tap-tapping of a woodpecker; but slowly as she listened sounds began to come to her, as of a hidden band far in the distance. Presently they drew nearer, and at first they were confused, like hundreds of people gently humming through closed lips; but at last she began to recognize different notes, like tiny drums and flutes and fifes. All the time, too, close at hand, there was a faint persistent ringing of bells; and these were the anemones swaying on their stems; and the little trumpet-sounds came from the primroses. Then there was a rough sort of scraping sound; and that was a mole, he said, burrowing in the earth two or three yards away. And there was a sound like a chant on one full note from a big field of grass just in front of the wood. Those were the distincter notes; but there was a continuous sharp undertone, like millions of finger-tips tapping on stretched parchment; and those were the buds opening all along the hedges and upon the leaf-twigs up above them. But deeper than all, deeper and softer than the softest organ, there was a great sound; and that was the sap, he told her, rising like a flood in all things living for miles around them.
Then she opened her eyes and dropped his hand, and it was as if she had suddenly become almost deaf. She lifted her fingers and put them in her ears.
"It's as if they were stopped up," she said. "Hold my hand again."
But he turned and smiled at her.
"Are you still unhappy?" he asked.
Marian shook her head.
"No, not now," she answered.
"That's right," he said. "The world's much too good a place for a little girl like you to be unhappy in."
Then he held her hand again, and as the sounds of the world came back to her there happened the oddest thing of all. For now there came other sounds, clearer and nearer, lighter than breath and closer than her heart. They said "Marian" to her, "Marian, Marian"; and the strange thing was that she seemed to remember them—just as if their names were on the tip of her tongue, like the names of old friends, stupidly forgotten.
"That's what they are," he said. "They're the voices of the friends that we left behind us when we were born. Whenever we go back, and whenever we have a birthday, they come flocking down to greet us."
He stood up and stretched himself, and Marian rose to her feet.
"So you've had a party," he said, "after all."
Could we, down the road to school,
Run but with undeafened ears,
Then what joy in this sweet spring
Just to hear the gardens sing,
Scilla with her drooping bells
Playing her enchanted peal,
Primrose with his golden throat
Shouting his triumphant note.