XII
THE SORROWFUL PICTURE
Marian never told anybody, not even Gwendolen, about that strange party of hers under the elm-tree; and the blind painter faithfully promised that he would keep it a secret too. But a fortnight later, when the doctor said that it was quite safe, she introduced him to Gwendolen; and Gwendolen was rather excited, because he was the very man who had painted her favourite picture.
This was a picture, only half finished, that her aunt had bought when Gwendolen was quite little and when she used to play games all by herself in the big house in Bellington Square. One of these games was a queer sort of game, in which she would shut herself up in a room, and imagine herself climbing into the pictures on the wall and having adventures with the people inside them. If the picture had a tower in it, she would climb up the tower and peep down over the other side; or if there were ships in it she would go on board and talk to the sailors down below. But her favourite picture she called the "sorrowful picture," because though she loved it, it made her feel sad.
It was really little more than a sketch, rapidly painted in a few strokes, and Gwendolen's aunt had only bought it because she had been told that the artist was famous. But it was full of sunlight, of a hot, foreign sunlight, through which an old house had stared at the painter, a yellow-walled house with latticed windows and violet shadows under its broken roof. In a crooked pot near the front door a dead palm stretched its withered fingers; and the front door itself was a cave of darkness, with a jutting eave above it like a frowning eyebrow.
But what made it so sorrowful, at any rate to Gwendolen, was a little window up in the right-hand corner—an unlatticed window, as dark as the front door, but with a different sort of darkness. For the darkness of the front door was an angry darkness. When Gwendolen was little, it had made her feel frightened. But the darkness of the window was like a wound. She wanted to kiss it and make it well. After she had played with the other pictures, and climbed the mountains in them, and gone paddling in the streams, she always came to this one and stood on its threshold and wondered why it was so different from the others. She never played with it. It seemed too real. "I believe there's something sad," she said, "that the window wants to tell me."
But she loved it too, better than all the other pictures, because nobody else seemed to understand it; and when her aunt had married Captain Jeremy, and they had left Bellington Square, and most of the other pictures had been sold, her aunt had allowed her to take this one with her and hang it in her bedroom in the old farmhouse. So she was rather excited when Marian introduced her to the blind painter; and when he came to tea with them in the middle of April she took him upstairs and told him all about it, because, of course, he could no longer see it.
But he couldn't remember it, or even where he had painted it, though there was a date on it which showed that it was six years old, because that was a year, he said, in which he was travelling all over the world and making little sketches almost every day. But he didn't laugh at her as her nurse had done, because pictures, he said, were queer things; and nothing was more likely than that there should be something in this one that only Gwendolen could feel.
"You see, a picture," he said, "if you look at it properly, is just like a conversation painted on canvas; and you can see what the artist said to his subject as well as what his subject said to him. Of course, in most pictures, just as in most conversations, all that happened is something like this: 'Good morning,' said the artist, 'fine weather we're having,' and whatever he was painting just nodded its head. That's because he was really thinking about something else—his indigestion or the money that he hoped to make; and nobody ever tells their inmost thoughts to people who talk to them like that. But if he has tried to be a real artist, loving and understanding, and not thinking about himself at all, the hills and the trees, or whatever he was painting, have begun to tell him all about themselves. They've swopped secrets with him just like old friends; and there they are for you to see. Sometimes they have even told him things that he didn't understand himself. But he has painted them so faithfully that other people have; and that's the most wonderful thing that can happen to an artist—better than finding a hundred pounds."
He lit a cigarette.
"And I shouldn't be surprised," he said, "if that little window wasn't giving me a message. Only it was a message that I never understood; and perhaps Gwendolen does."
But Gwendolen shook her head.
"Not very well," she said. "I only know that it makes me feel sad."
And then Gwendolen's aunt came to tell them that tea was ready, and in a couple of minutes they had forgotten all about the picture; and a quarter of an hour later they forgot it still more, for in came Captain Jeremy and Lancelot, the bosun's mate. They were both in high spirits, because they had had an order to put to sea again for Porto Blanco, to fetch a cargo of fruit from the Gulf of Oranges, on the shores of which Porto Blanco was the principal town.
"A matter of three months," said Captain Jeremy, "out and home." He gave Marian a kiss and pulled Gwendolen's pigtail. "You'd better come with us. What do you say, Lancelot? Or do you think they'd bring us bad luck?"
But Lancelot only grinned and made a husky noise—not because he was naturally shy, but because he was always afraid of having tea in the drawing-room, in case he should spill something on the carpet. He would much have preferred, in fact, to have tea in the kitchen with Mrs Robertson, the housekeeper, because he was very fond of Mrs Robertson, and wanted to marry her, and had told her so several times. But Mrs Robertson couldn't make up her mind. Her first husband had been rather a nuisance; and though he had been dead for nine and a half years, she was still a little doubtful about taking a second one. But Marian and Gwendolen couldn't help jumping up and down, and the blind painter said that they ought to go, and Captain Jeremy promised to go round to Peter Street and see what Marian's mother had to say about it.
"But you'll have to talk to her," said Marian, "through the window, because she's still nursing Cuthbert."
"Then that's all the more reason," said Captain Jeremy, "why she'll be glad to let you go."
Then he asked the blind painter if he would like to come as well, but he shook his head and said that he would be unable to, though he had several times visited the Gulf of Oranges, and would much have liked to go there once more. But after a little persuasion Marian's mother said that Marian could go if Gwendolen went; and a week later they were climbing on board the schooner as she lay at anchor in Lullington Bay.
That was the first time that Marian had been aboard her, and everything seemed strange to her, smelling so fresh and salt. But of course Gwendolen knew all about the ship, and soon she was busy taking Marian round. She showed her the big hold, dark and empty, in which they would bring back the cases of fruit, and the cook's galley, and the sailors' bunks, and Captain Jeremy's neat little cabin. And then, just after tea, the anchor was pulled up, and the sails were shaken out, and the wind began to fill them; and presently there were little waves slapping against the bow, and the land was fading into the dusk behind them.
Both of them were sea-sick during the night, and felt rather queer most of the next day. But the day after that they were as hungry as they could be, and were soon on deck talking to the sailors. Most of these were the same sailors that had been to Monkey Island, and so Gwendolen knew them already; and she introduced Marian to them, who very soon felt as if they had been friends of hers all her life. But Lancelot was her favourite, just as he was Gwendolen's, and when he was off duty and smoking his pipe, they would sit on either side of him and listen to his stories as the deck beneath them rose and fell. As for Porto Blanco and the Gulf of Oranges, he had been there more times, he said, than he could remember; and once he had been stranded there for such a long time that he had learned to talk the language as well as any of the inhabitants.
"But it's a queer place," he said, "and they're queer people, sort of half-way between black and white, and the sun's in the bones of them, and half the time they're fighting, and the other half they're snoozing in the shadders." But for the most part, he said, they were kindly people and very indulgent to each other's faults; and the women all went barefooted and smoked cigarettes, and the men sang love-songs together when they weren't quarrelling.
"And up in the hills," said Lancelot, "back of the town, you can see such flowers as you never saw anywhere, and great big oranges hanging off of the trees, and corn-cobs taller than your head. And back of the orange-trees there's great big forests, full of little Injuns with long beards, and nasty yeller snakes, and birds of paradise, and parrots and monkeys and inji-rubber trees," and sometimes he would go on talking till they forgot all about supper-time, and the stars would open above their heads, and far away, perhaps, like a little chain of beads, they would see the port-lights of some great liner.
The wind held so fair that by the end of a month they were nearly four thousand miles from home, and a week later when they came on deck they found the sea dotted with little islands. So lovely were they in their wet colours that they might have been enamelled there during the night, and Marian and Gwendolen almost gasped with joy as the ship slid past them in the early morning. For a long time now the weather had been so hot that awnings had been stretched over the deck; and Marian and Gwendolen wore as little as they could—the thinnest of white jerseys and the shortest of skirts. For nearly three weeks they had worn no shoes or stockings, and their feet and legs were the colour of copper; and for two or three hours in the middle of the day Captain Jeremy had made them go to sleep.
But to-day they were much too excited to stay in their hammocks; and presently, as they hung over the schooner's bow, they could see the horizon beginning to creep closer, and the hill-tops and forests of the mainland. The wind had dropped now, and the sea was like glass, and sometimes the ship scarcely seemed to move, but early in the afternoon they began to see the roofs of the town and the tower of the cathedral and the white-walled quay. Slowly they drew nearer until they could see the people on the shore or lounging in the other ships at anchor in the harbour; and just before sunset they had come to their moorings and were lying securely against the quay.
Down in the cabin, Captain Jeremy was talking business with two of the fruit-merchants—dark-skinned men in white linen suits, smoking pale-coloured long cigars. But Marian and Gwendolen stayed up on deck, watching the night coming down like a shutter, and the lamps beginning to shine in the crooked streets and behind the windows of the houses. Now that it was cooler the people were taking the air, and gaily-dressed women sauntered up and down; and in front of a cafe, where there were a lot of little tables, some men were singing and playing guitars. It was all so strange, it was like being in a theatre, and the air was full of spice-scents and the scent of oranges; and it was hard to believe that they were even in the same world with school and Peter Street and Fairbarrow Down.
But next morning it all seemed more real again, and Captain Jeremy took them round the town; and they had lunch with one of the fruit-merchants in a low-walled house built round a courtyard. After lunch they slept in long armchairs, and when they woke up queer sorts of drinks were brought to them; and then it was time to go back to the ship again and watch the cases of fruit being packed in the hold. After a day or two, when they had learned their way about, Captain Jeremy let them go ashore alone; and by the end of the week they had explored every corner of the town, and even gone for walks along the country roads. Some of these were broad roads leading to other towns, but most of them became mule-tracks after a mile or two; and they seldom went very far up these because of the heat, which was greater then even the inhabitants had ever known.
Day after day, through the still air, the great sun emptied itself into the town; and the streets cracked, and the barometer fell, and Captain Jeremy looked anxiously at the weather; and it was upon the hottest day of all—the day before they were leaving—that Gwendolen suddenly gripped Marian's arm.
It was early in the morning, before the sun was at its steepest, and they had wandered past the cathedral into the outskirts of the town, where a little track between two high garden walls had tempted them to explore it. It had led them into a sort of garden, untidy and deserted, and on the other side of this there stood a house—a yellow-walled house with latticed windows and violet shadows under its broken roof. Beside the front door stood a crooked pot, and the front door itself was a cave of darkness, and up in the right-hand corner, under the roof, was a little window standing open. Gwendolen found herself shaking all over.
"Why, it's the very house," she said, "of the sorrowful picture."
And so it was, and as they stood looking up at it, it seemed more sorrowful to Gwendolen than ever. For there was the little window almost beseeching her in actual words to go and comfort it; and she even had a feeling that for all these years it had been crying in vain to her across half the world. But there was the front door too, dark with anger, and before they could move a man came out of it. He was a big man with a fat face, and he stood blinking for a moment in the sunshine; and then they saw him frown as he caught sight of them; and he shouted words at them that they didn't understand.
But it was evident that he wanted them to go away, and they saw him touch a knife that he wore in his belt; and so they ran back again up the little track, and there in the street they met Lancelot. He was grinning as usual, and he looked so big and strong that they could almost have hugged him on the spot; but his face grew serious when they told him what had happened, and he stroked his chin and became thoughtful.
"Well, it's a good thing," he said, "that you come away. In this here town you have to be careful. But I'll have a turn round and see if I can find anything out about this here house and the feller as lives in it."
Then he mopped his face and looked at the sky and told them to go back again to the ship; and a couple of hours later he came aboard and beckoned them to talk to him while he smoked his pipe. Everything was ready now for the ship to sail next morning, and most of the other sailors were asleep, and Captain Jeremy had gone to lunch again with the fruit-merchant in the town.
"Well, this here feller," said Lancelot, "seems a queer sort of cove, with a bad name, and he lives all alone; and his wife ran away from him six years ago, taking their only little girl along with her. But there's some folks believe that he went after her and killed her—anyway, she was found dead in the forest—but what happened to Pepita, who was three years old at the time, nobody knows, for she's never been seen."
Then he smoked his pipe for a minute. "But I tell you what," he said. "He's pretty sure to be asleep just now. And if you like I'll go and have a look at the house, and see what there is to it, and come and tell you."
"But I must come too," said Gwendolen. "I really must."
"And so must I," said Marian. "We must both come," and after a while they persuaded him to take them, and they set off again through the town. It was now so hot that it seemed as if the very earth must begin to melt and crumble away; and when they came to the house there were no signs of life—there was only that little window, dark and aching. For a moment they stood listening at the front door, and then they cautiously stepped inside; and there, in a lower room, asleep on the floor, they saw the big man with the fat face. Then they stole upstairs until they came to the little room under the roof to which the window belonged; and then, as they pushed the door open, the tears sprang to their eyes, and Lancelot swore a great oath.
For there they saw, tied to a staple in the wall, a little girl of about nine years old, ragged and scarred, with timid dark eyes and cheeks like a flower that has never seen the sun. Tied across her mouth was a dirty cloth, and when she first saw them she shrank away; but as Gwendolen went up to her with outstretched arms, her eyes widened in sheer astonishment. Then Lancelot stooped and cut the rope that bound her, and pulled away the cloth that was gagging her mouth; and then he jumped round just as the little girl's father came stumbling fiercely into the room.
Gwendolen heard him shouting something and using the word Pepita; and as she clasped the little girl in her arms she knew why it was that all these years the sorrowful picture seemed to have been calling to her. It was because the little girl's pain and longing for freedom had somehow stolen into the painter's brush. Then she saw Lancelot's fist shoot out like a bullet, and Pepita's father tumble to the floor; and then Lancelot shouted to them to hurry away, and picking up Pepita, he ran down the stairs. In less than a minute they were in the little track between the high garden walls; and in a few seconds more they were out in the street, and then a most strange and awful thing happened. For Marian stopped short and pointed with her finger.
"Why, what's the matter," she cried, "with the cathedral tower?"
They all stared at it, and saw it rock to and fro; and then Lancelot swung round toward the open country.
"Run for your lives," he said, and then, as they followed him, they felt the ground beneath them rise and fall. Then they heard a crash, and people shouting, and then all was still again, and they stopped running. Lancelot wiped his forehead.
"Well, now you know," he said, "what an earthquake's like. Lucky it wasn't a worse one."
And there was the cathedral tower still standing on its foundations, but when they looked for Pepita's house it had fallen down like a pack of cards, a fitting grave for Pepita's father. For they heard in the evening that he had been killed; and Pepita afterward told them how he had killed her mother, and how he had kept her for all those years tied to the wall in that dark upper room. As for Captain Jeremy, he was so rejoiced at seeing Marian and Gwendolen safe that he told Lancelot he would have forgiven him if he had brought fifty Pepitas on board. Lancelot was very pleased about that, because, in his heart of hearts, he knew that he ought never to have let them come with him. But, as he told Gwendolen, all was well that ended well, and he hoped that she would allow him to take care of Pepita.
Gwendolen wasn't quite sure at first, but when they arrived home her aunt and Mrs Robertson thought it a good idea. For Mrs Robertson had made up her mind to marry Lancelot, and Pepita was just the little girl, she said, that she had always wanted.
We're going the way that Drake went,
We shall see what Drake's men saw,
A coppery curly cobra-snake,
And a scarlet-cloaked macaw.
For we're going the way that Drake went,
We're taking the jungle trail,
And we'll bring you a dark-eyed damsel home,
And a cock with a golden tail.
THE MOON-BOY'S FRIEND
XIII
THE MOON-BOY'S FRIEND
It was about a week after Marian and Gwendolen had arrived home from Porto Blanco that Uncle Joe suddenly asked Cuthbert and Doris to spend a fortnight with him at Redington-on-Sea. It was not the sort of town that Uncle Joe liked, because it was full of big houses and glittering hotels; and most of the people in it wore expensive clothes, and it had a long pier, with a theatre at the end. But he always went there in the first week of August, when Mr Parker took his annual holiday, so that he could visit an old friend of his, who had lodgings on the Marine Parade.
This old friend was called Colonel Stookley, and he had lost both his legs as the result of wounds; and Uncle Joe generally took rooms next door and played chess with him every evening. He had been very brave, but was now rather wheezy, besides having something wrong with his liver; and as he had lost most of his friends he was always glad to see Uncle Joe. Generally Uncle Joe went to see him alone, so that he could be with him most of the day; but this year he thought that Cuthbert needed a change, and he asked Doris, because Marian had just had a voyage. At first they were afraid that they would have to take their best clothes, but Uncle Joe said that he didn't mind. So long as they brushed their teeth every day they could wear what they liked, he said, and they could paddle and swim as much as they pleased.
So they met Uncle Joe at the station at eleven o'clock on the 3rd of August, and a couple of hours later they were having lunch with him in the big dining-car of the express. Through the windows, as they rocked along, trying their best not to spill their soup, they could see the harvesters at work in the fields, and ribbons of flowers as they crashed through the little stations; and a couple of hours after that, where some hills had broken apart, Doris was the first of them to see a stitch of blue; and by half-past four they were talking to the landlady of number 70 Marine Parade.
This was next door to where Colonel Stookley lodged, and the landlady's name was Mrs Bodkin; and she gave Doris a kiss, and said that she was tall for her age and that Cuthbert's cheeks would soon have some roses in them. Then she showed them their bedrooms, which were at the top of the house, looking out to sea over the esplanade; and they found that they could talk to each other out of the windows and watch the people in the gardens below.
These were very trim gardens, like the garden in Bellington Square, separated by railings from the flagged esplanade; and beyond the esplanade there were terraces of pebbles, crumbling into a stretch of hard, wet sand.
As it was tea-time there were not many people about; but by six o'clock there were people everywhere—people in the gardens, listening to the band, and looking sideways at each other's clothes; people on the esplanade, sauntering up and down, and saying how-do-you-do to their friends; people on the pier staring through telescopes, and people on the beach reading magazines, and people on the sands building castles or paddling with their children on the fringe of the sea. The tide was so low that nobody was bathing, and weed-capped rocks stood out of the water; and after they had paddled a little Doris suggested that they should go and listen to the pierrots.
This was the hour—just before the children's bedtime, and before the grown-up people went home to dinner—when the pierrots and beach-entertainers were all at their busiest, trying to earn money. Upon a wooden platform, with three chairs and a piano, two men and two girls were singing and dancing; and a hundred yards away from them, on a similar sort of stand, there were three banjo-players with blackened faces. But there were such crowds round each of these platforms that Cuthbert and Doris couldn't get near them; and there was a conjurer, a little farther on, who seemed to be even more popular. They watched him for a minute or two, and saw the people raining pennies on him, but they were too far away to be able to see his tricks; and then they saw a clown, farther along still, turning somersaults on the sand.
There were a few children round him, some of them with nurses, but the people on the esplanade were taking very little notice of him; and by the time that Cuthbert and Doris reached him, he had stopped somersaulting and was wiping his forehead. Standing near him, dressed like a gipsy, was a woman, who was evidently his wife, and sitting on the sand was a queer-looking boy about fourteen who seemed to be their son. The clown was dressed in a baggy sort of smock, tied round his ankles with pink ribbon, and his face was white, with a crimson diamond painted on the middle of each cheek. His lips had been coloured to make them seem smiling, and he wore a wig of carroty hair, but his eyes were tired, and underneath his wig they could see some of his own hair, which was quite grey.
Then his wife brought a little box round, but none of the children seemed to have any pennies, and the two or three grown-up people who had been watching the performance turned aside without giving anything. Cuthbert and Doris heard one of them say that it was a rotten show and not worth a farthing; and then the old clown began to sing a song about a cheese that climbed out of the window. Some of the nurses laughed a little, but the children didn't understand it, and Cuthbert and Doris thought it rather stupid, but the woman had noticed them and brought them the box, and they each put a penny in it, though they didn't much want to. Then the old clown and his wife pretended to have a quarrel, and she kept knocking him down with an umbrella; but what interested them most was the queer-looking boy, who kept laughing to himself and playing with his fingers. Once or twice he got up and went straying among the audience, and they could see his mother watching him rather anxiously; and presently he came and talked to them and told them that he was a moon-boy and that his name was Albert Hezekiah.
It was now nearly seven, and the tide was coming in, and there was nobody left to watch the old clown, so his wife stopped hitting him with the umbrella and helped him on with a shabby blue overcoat. Then they emptied the pennies out of the box, and the old clown counted them in the palm of his hand.
"Ten and a half," he said, "not much of a catch, old lady," and then they looked round for Albert Hezekiah.
He was still talking to Cuthbert and Doris, and the old clown and his wife came up to them. The woman spoke to Doris.
"Don't you be frightened," she said, and the old clown tapped his forehead.
"He's a little bit touched," he said, "that's all, my dear. But he's a good lad and he's quite harmless."
Then they said good-night, and the moon-boy shook hands with them and told them that he liked them, because they had nice faces; and two or three times during the next few days they saw him playing about near his father and mother. Then one day they saw him alone, and he told them that his father was ill in bed, and that his mother had sent for the doctor, and that they had no money to pay the rent with. It seemed rather funny to think of a clown being ill, but Doris and Cuthbert each gave him sixpence, and he ran off singing, and they didn't see him again till the last day of their holiday.
This was a bright hot day, and they had bathed in the morning, and then Mrs Bodkin had cut them some sandwiches, and they had had their lunch on the top of Capstan Beacon, which was a high hill about five miles away. Then they had walked inland and had tea at a little village; and it was toward dusk, just as they were reaching the town, that they saw the moon-boy in the middle of a group of boys on a piece of waste land near the gas-works. He was waving his arms and looking rather bewildered, and the other boys were mocking him and singing a sort of song, "Loony, loony, moon-boy; loony, loony, loo"; and when they came nearer they saw that he was crying, and that one of the bigger boys was throwing stones at him.
Doris was so angry that she could hardly speak, but she caught hold of the boy who was throwing stones, and when he tried to hit her she slapped his face and told him that he was the biggest coward that she had ever seen. Then he tried to hit her again, but Cuthbert jumped in front of her, and after a minute or two Cuthbert knocked him down; and then the other boys ran away, after throwing stones at them and calling them names.
"Little beasts," said Doris, "look what they've done," and Cuthbert saw that they had cut the moon-boy's cheek. So Doris took out her handkerchief and stopped the bleeding, and then they both took the moon-boy home. He was so excited at first that he lost the way, but at last he stopped in front of a little house; and in a back room they found the old clown, sitting up in bed and trying to shave himself. His wife was at the fireplace, frying some fish; and when they heard what had happened to their son, they shook hands with Cuthbert and Doris and thanked them over and over again.
"Luck's against us, you see," said the old clown. "We're getting past work, and the people won't laugh at us. And this here boy of ours is all that we have, and there's nobody else to look after him."
"Excepting one," said the moon-boy, and the old clown began to laugh.
"That's one of his crazes," he said. "He says that he has a friend who comes and talks to him once a week."
"Out of the sea," said the boy. "He comes out of the sea. I never see him except by the sea."
"Nor there either," said his mother, "if the truth was known." But when Cuthbert and Doris said good-bye the moon-boy followed them into the street and began speaking to them in a whisper.
"I tell you what," he said. "If you'll meet me to-night at ten o'clock just by the lighthouse I'll show him to you, if you'll promise not to laugh. Because if you laugh, he won't come."
For a moment they hesitated because they were pretty sure that Uncle Joe wouldn't allow it; but then they decided that they needn't ask him, as he would be sure to be playing chess with Colonel Stookley. So they promised to be there, though they thought it very likely that the moon-boy wouldn't come; and just before ten they were on the little path that led from the town toward the lighthouse.
This was about a mile from the end of the esplanade, under a great cliff called Gannet Head, and at low tide it was possible to reach the lighthouse by climbing over some fifty yards of rocks. But the tide was high to-night, and the little path that slanted down across the face of the cliff came to an end upon a slab of rock not more than a foot above the water. There was no moon, but the stars were so bright that the air was full of a sort of sparkle; and the sea was so still that the water beneath them hardly seemed to rise and fall. Clup, clup it went, with a lazy sort of sticky sound, like a piece of gum-paper flapping against a post, and then slowly becoming unstuck again before doing it all once more.
At first they could see nobody, but as they stood looking about them they heard a soft whistle a little farther on; and there was the moon-boy, with his arms round his knees, squatting on another ledge of rock. This was broader and flatter than the one at the bottom of the path, and a little higher above the water; and Cuthbert and Doris were soon sitting beside him and wondering what was going to happen.
"Where's your friend?" asked Cuthbert.
The moon-boy touched his lips.
"H'shh," he said. "He'll be here in a minute. He was here half an hour ago, and I told him all about you."
"But where's he gone?" said Doris.
"I don't know," he said. "He might be anywhere. He spends his life pulling children out of the water. But nobody ever sees him except me."
Doris suddenly felt her heart beginning to beat quicker.
"Why, I believe I know him!" she said. "Is he a saint?"
The moon-boy nodded.
"Yes, he's a patron saint," he said. "He's the patron saint of water."
"Then I do know him," said Doris. "At least, I've heard of him, and I've met his brother, St Uncus."
"This one's St William," said the moon-boy, "but he's generally known as Fat Bill."
And then they heard a pant, and there, sitting beside them, was an enormous man with a red face. Like his brother, he was nearly bald, but he was about seven times as large, and he had blue eyes and a double chin, and there was a big landing-net in his right hand.
"Good evening," he said, "pleased to meet you. I've heard about the girl of you from my brother Uncus. And the boy of you I saw last year, pulling a little nipper out of a stream."
Cuthbert blushed.
"That was young Liz," he said, "Beardy Ned's kid, but it was quite easy."
"Maybe it was," said Fat Bill, "but, as it happened, you really helped to save two nippers. You see, there was a kid, just at the same moment, fell into a lagoon off Hotoneeta."
"What's Hotoneeta?" asked Cuthbert.
"Bit of an island," he said, "a hundred miles south of the equator."
He cleared his throat.
"Well, I couldn't save 'em both, because I was pulling a boy out of Lake Windermere; and I was just going for Liz when I saw that you were after her, so that I was able to land Blossom-blossom just in time."
"Was that her name?" asked Doris.
Fat Bill nodded.
"That's the English of it," he said. "But her people are savages."
Then he disappeared for a moment, and there was nothing but the starlight and the clup, clup of the water; and it was while he was gone that there came into Doris's mind a wild but just possible idea. She turned to Cuthbert.
"I tell you what," she said. "Why shouldn't he take us to Hotoneeta? I expect he could somehow, if he really wanted to; and you did help to save Blossom-blossom."
Cuthbert considered.
"Well, of course he might," he said, and then Fat Bill was sitting beside them again.
"Just been to Ohio," he said, "to a place called Columbus—kid fell into a lake there—nobody by."
He laid down his landing-net and rubbed his hands.
"It's a hard life," he said, "being a saint."
But he looked so comfortable, sitting on the rock, with his fat thighs spread out beneath him, that Doris was almost sure that he wouldn't mind, and so she asked him if he would take them. He stroked his chin for a moment and looked at her thoughtfully.
"Well, of course I could," he said, "though it would be rather irregular. But Albert Hezekiah here would have to look after my landing-net, because I've only got two hands."
So they all three of them looked at the moon-boy, and he promised to take care of the landing-net; and then Fat Bill held out his hands, and Cuthbert and Doris each took one of them. The moment they did so they were, of course, in In-between Land, because that was where Fat Bill and his brother lived; and the rocks looked ghostly, just like dream-rocks, and they could see the moon-boy's soul, like a tiny flame. But the next moment they were alone on a shore of the whitest sand that they had ever seen, and the dawn was coming up over an enormous sea, stiller than stillness and breathlessly blue. At their feet lay a shallow lagoon—or at least it looked shallow—trembling with colour; and strange-petalled weeds swung to and fro in it, and the silver-scaled fishes slid between them.
It was so hot that they wanted to throw their clothes away, and the jungle behind them was full of odours—sleepy odours, like the odours of a medicine-chest—and nodding, red-lipped flowers. Leading from the shore, between the walls of the jungle, was a narrow path of grass and sand; and standing in the middle of it, still as an idol, was a little dark-brown naked girl. Fat Bill had gone, but they knew that it was Blossom-blossom, and then she gave a yell and fled from sight; and Cuthbert and Doris couldn't help laughing as they began to explore the rim of the lagoon.
But a minute or two later, as they were kneeling on the shore and peering down into that wonderful water, something happened that made them think of Blossom-blossom in rather a different sort of way. For just as Doris had made up her mind to take off her shoes and stockings, they heard a little sound, and the next moment a spear was quivering in the sand between them. They sprang to their feet just in time to avoid another one and to see a man crouching at the edge of the jungle; and then they were snatched up, and there they were on the rock again, with Gannet Head towering above them. The moon-boy was laughing, but Fat Bill looked serious.
"Narrow squeak," he said. "That was Blossom-blossom's father. I thought he was asleep in his hut."
Then he shook hands with them and said good-bye, and they climbed up the path again and went home to bed; and when Uncle Joe came up to look at them, they confessed to him what they had been doing. He was rather angry, of course, but he didn't laugh at them, and as for Fat Bill, he said that he had heard of him; and as for the old clown, he promised to see what he could do for him before they left the town next morning.
"But don't you think it was rough," said Cuthbert, "after I had helped to save Blossom-blossom, to have her father throwing spears at me?"
But that was just the sort of thing, said Uncle Joe, that saviours had to be prepared for.
The candle's finger shakes.
My story's done.
"No more," says Father Time, "or shall we say
Just one?"
THE CHRISTMAS TREE
XIV
THE CHRISTMAS TREE
The worst of discovering anybody like Fat Bill at the very beginning of the summer holidays is that it makes the rest of the holidays seem a little dull; and that was just what Cuthbert and Doris felt. So they were really rather glad when the winter term at school began; and so were Gwendolen and Marian, who hadn't been to school since the spring.
It was an important term, too, for they were all moved up; and Marian had to buy her first hockey-stick; and Doris and Gwendolen began to learn Latin; and Cuthbert's homework became really unbearable. But he managed to survive, and they were all so busy that the term was over almost before it had begun; and here was Christmas close at hand again, and everybody rushing about buying presents.
As for Cuthbert and Marian, they had so much to do in the three or four days before Christmas that they were half afraid they would never be able to do it, because on Christmas Eve they were going to have a party. It was to be rather a special party, because neither Cuthbert nor Marian had been able that year to have a birthday party; and all the people that they had invited had sent replies saying that they were coming.
Old Miss Hubbard was coming, and so was Uncle Joe, and Mr Parker was coming with him; and Doris's mummy was coming with Doris and her five brothers; and Beardy Ned was bringing little Liz. Then there was Gwendolen, of course, who was coming too, with her aunt and Captain Jeremy; and Lancelot and Mrs Robertson were bringing Pepita; and Percy the gamekeeper's son was bringing Agnes. Just at the last minute, too, they had a letter from the blind painter saying that he was bringing Lord Barrington. And Mr and Mrs Williams were coming, and so was Mummy's nurney, and so was Edward Goldsmith.
"Goodness knows," said Mummy, "where we shall put them all. I hope they won't mind sitting on the floor."
But Cuthbert and Marian said that it would be all right, and that they would have the Christmas tree in the hall.
"Then we can have the doors open," said Cuthbert, "and people can sit on the stairs; and Marian and I will make the paper festoons."
So Mummy and Mummy's nurney and the cook spent hours and hours making cakes and pastries; and just as it seemed as if they would never be ready, they suddenly found that there was nothing to do except to keep a lookout for old Jacob Parsley, who came every year selling Christmas trees.
That was on the morning of the 23rd of December, with a fine rain falling outside; and as they sat at the window both Cuthbert and Marian felt a little stale and out of temper. In spite of all the excitements of the term and the preparations for the party, it suddenly seemed to them a very long time since they had had a real proper adventure.
"I shouldn't be surprised," said Marian, "if we never have another."
"Perhaps we shan't," said Cuthbert, "but it'll be an awful bore," and then, at that very moment, they heard a familiar voice; and there was Jacob Parsley in the street below.
Where he came from nobody knew; but every year on the 23rd of December he limped into the town with his old white horse and a ramshackle cart full of Christmas trees. There they were, year after year, shining and crisp and neatly potted; and people used to say that he had dug them up at night from rich men's plantations in other parts of the country. As for himself, he was a red-faced old man, with a stubbly grey beard and a scar on his chin, and a pair of bright eyes that used to work separately, so that nobody could tell which he was looking with.
"Ker-rismus trees," he would shout, "all in per-hots. All in per-hots, Ker-rismus-trees," and whenever he sold one he would spit in the road, and wish the buyer the compliments of the season. Also, if there were any change he would generally try to keep it, to buy some cough mixture, he would explain, for his bronchial tubes; and most people let him, because they were afraid that he would slue one of his eyes round and pierce their hearts with a reproachful glance.
But to-day for the first time his cart seemed empty, though he was still shouting; and when they ran downstairs and opened the front door they saw that he had only one tree left. It was a queer little tree with silvery-grey leaves; and that was the reason, he said, why nobody had bought it. All the others he had sold at once—almost as soon as he had entered the town.
"Wish I'd 'ad more," he said, "but this here tree, it ain't folk's notion of a Ker-rismus tree. Not but what it ain't a good tree, though it's a little 'un, and the feller I bought it off a queer sort of feller."
He stood looking at it, or as nearly looking at it as he ever seemed to look at anything; and then he coughed for rather a long time and hit himself on the chest and wished them a happy Christmas.
"It's this here rain," he said. "It gets into the bronchial tubes. Five shillings—that's all I'll ask you for it. And it's a good tree. You can take my word for it. And them as buys it won't regret it."
Cuthbert and Marian touched its leaves. Just behind them stood their guardian angels. Even more intently than Cuthbert and Marian they bent their gaze on the little tree.
"But what kind of a tree is it?" asked Cuthbert.
Jacob spat in the road.
"Well, they tell me," he said, "as it's a olive. And they tell me as it's the seedling of the great-great-grandson of the first Ker-rismus tree of all."
He spat in the road again.
"Aye, of the very tree," he said, "as held Love's Innocence atween two thieves."
"I like the leaves of it," said Marian. "It's got wonderful leaves."
The two angels drew a little closer. The old horse began to shake his blinkers. So they bought the tree and carried it indoors.
Round the pot they bound some scarlet paper, and round the paper they twined a wreath of holly; and they placed the tree on a little table near the foot of the stairs in the front hall.
Said Cuthbert's angel, "This is a queer go."
Marian's angel smiled as he lit his evening pipe.
"And they were just grumbling," he said, "because they never had any adventures. What do you suppose will happen when the guests have assembled?"
But Cuthbert's angel shook his head.
"That's hard to tell," he said. "There's no precedent. Not since the Great Day has a tree of that line ever been used as a children's Christmas tree."
The rain had stopped by then and the moon was shining, and soon after midnight the thermometer fell. A hoar frost crept over the roof-tops. The sun's rim rose out of a well of vapour. At eleven o'clock Cuthbert went to play football, and Marian and Doris went to see Gwendolen.
The sun had climbed free by then, but the wind was in the north, and as the day went on the frost deepened. During the afternoon the children went to some friends' houses to borrow chairs for the party. When they came back Mummy was stooping over the Christmas-tree, fixing candles to its slender twigs. In her eyes there was a curious look. Cuthbert kissed her and asked her what was the matter.
"Nothing," said Mummy, "but wouldn't it be wonderful if what Jacob said about this tree were true?"
Marian bent her lips to one of the leaves.
"I believe it is," she said. "It makes me feel funny."
Old Mother Hubbard was the first guest to come, and she brought a hamper with her full of presents. Some of them were new, but some of them were trinkets that she had kept ever since she was a girl.
"And now I want to give them away," she said, "because for fifty years I have never known what giving was like."
Soon after that came Uncle Joe, driving in his little pony-cart with Mr Parker; and Mr Parker took the pony-cart to the stables at the end of the street. Uncle Joe was wearing an overcoat, with poacher's pockets in its lining; and the pockets were bulging with middling-sized parcels to be placed on the floor round the Christmas tree. Then came Captain Jeremy and Gwendolen and Gwendolen's aunt, with the frosty air still in their faces; and Lancelot and Mrs Robertson brought Pepita, well wrapped up and a little shy.
Then a great car hummed down the street bringing Lord Barrington and the blind painter, with Mr and Mrs Williams in their Sunday clothes, and a big round cheese that they had brought for a present. Percy, their son, and his sweetheart Agnes were the next to knock at the front door; and they had hardly stepped inside before Doris and her mummy arrived with the five boys. Then came Edward, looking very smart, with a hot-house flower in his button-hole; and the last to appear was Beardy Ned, as shabby as usual, with Liz on his shoulder.
Most of the others were having tea by now round the dining-room table, or in the drawing-room, or sitting on the stairs, or standing in the hall, or leaning against the banisters. And there, in the middle of them, still unlit and waiting till the feasting should be over, stood the little olive tree, hushed and inconspicuous, with the scarlet paper round its pot.
Mr Parker came back from the stables.
"Rough weather," he said, "in the Baltic. That's a rum-looking tree you've got for a Christmas tree," and the blind painter heard him and turned round.
"Where is it?" he asked. "Will you take me to it?" And Marian led him to the little table. He bent his head for a moment, and there crept into his eyes the same odd look that Marian had seen in Mummy's.
Said Cuthbert's angel, "He's beginning to hear something. What do you suppose will happen when they have lit the candles?"
But Marian's angel shook his head.
"The others will hear nothing," he said. "But will they see?"
Said Doris's angel, "Can they see and live?"
"Look," said Gwendolen's angel. "They're lighting the candles." And it was just at that moment that a young man, shabbier even than Beardy Ned, turned into Peter Street. But for his presence the street was empty. Doris's angel was the first to see him. He lifted his head and spoke a Name, and slowly the others filed out after him. Down the front steps and along the pavement they made a lane of angels. But the door was shut, and deep in their hearts was the dreadful fear that it mightn't be opened.
Then Uncle Joe struck another match and lit the last candle on the tree, and Marian's daddy picked up one of the parcels and turned it over to find the name on it. Smiling in her chair, old Miss Hubbard envied the luckier women who had had children. Half in shadow, between Marian and Gwendolen, stood Lord Barrington with his hawk-like face. There came a knock at the front door. Cuthbert, who was nearest to it, turned and opened it. He saw a young man in shabby clothes, and there was no beauty in him that he should desire him. He stood there smiling in the outside darkness.
"May I come in?" he asked, and Cuthbert changed his mind. Everything beautiful that he had ever seen shone into his heart from the young man's eyes.
"Yes, rather," said Cuthbert. "We're having a party."
His eyes sought his mother's.
"Mummy, here's somebody else."
Everybody turned round as the young man entered. The candles on the olive tree shed their light upon him. All but the blind painter looked into his eyes. Each saw the thing in them that he wanted most. Marian and Gwendolen and Cuthbert and Doris, not wanting anything in particular, only saw vaguely all that they hoped to be when they should have become grown-up men and women. So did Edward and so did Pepita; but Christopher Mark saw a celestial rabbit; and Percy and Agnes, holding each other's hand, saw the darlingest of babies. What Beardy Ned saw you can guess, and what Lord Barrington saw was Truth; and the blind painter heard the angels singing the song that explains every other song.
Then the young man stooped for a moment over the little olive-tree.
"Make them happy," he said, and then he was gone; and though nobody saw them, of course, the guardian angels came and stood again in their accustomed places. Marian turned impulsively to Lord Barrington.
"Oh, who was he?" she said. "Tell me his name."
Lord Barrington kissed her.
"The loveliest present," he said, "that ever hung upon a tree."