So Peters stood away meekly. But on the whole he did not think it worth while to have himself taken afterwards.
The two copies arrived, and satisfied Elsa. "Though I've known myself look better," she said. One copy was for herself, and the other she destined for a particular friend. Peters had bought a plush frame, supposing that she had intended to give him one copy; well, that did not matter; he could order a third from the photographer. In the meantime he was required to pack up the photograph for the particular friend.
"It would travel safer," he said, "if you packed it between a couple of pieces of card."
Elsa looked thoughtful. "I've got an old bit in my writing-case," she said. "Go and fetch it, Mr Peters."
He hunted through the writing-case, but could not find it.
"Well, I know it's there, anyhow," she retorted. "I kept it, knowing it would come in some day. It's got those prayers on it that you wrote out for me when I was here before."
"Oh, yes, I saw that. I didn't think—"
"Well, never mind, I'll go and get it myself; torn in half, it will just do. It will puzzle my friend, though—he's not one of the praying sort."
Peters was guilty of looking somewhat despondent as he moved away; this made Elsa rather angry. "You needn't look so glum," she said; "you didn't expect me to keep it all my life, and have it buried with me—silly old card—did you?"
"One thing I will say," Mrs Marks observed, after Elsa had gone, "is that she does brighten up a house. And I hope her looks mayn't be a snare to her. She has one young admirer already, and she a mere child! She's promised to come again next year. I hope you'll get on better with her then. You seemed more stand-offish this time—you've no complaint against her?"
"Oh, no! certainly not."
"You're not looking well, Mr Peters. You'll excuse my mentioning it, but you want a doctor."
Peters shook his head slowly, but owned to a touch of something—probably liver. It was Sunday evening, and he had been intending to go to church as usual. But he changed his mind. He did not feel up to it. He sat under the plane tree and thought about Elsa as she used to be before she grew up.
He knew that old tree well now, knew every twist of the branches, every kink of the bark. In an unreasoning way he loved the tree. It had never repulsed him; it had always been there for him.
Mrs Marks was right. Peters did want a doctor. He took to fainting when he was at work at the office. He apologised for it to the senior partner, who had found him unconscious, and promised that it should not occur again. But it did. One morning he was summoned to the senior partner's private room. Grantham and Flynders were both there. They told him that he had been for many years a faithful servant to them, and that now—when he was past work—they wanted to mark their sense of his services. He was not to come to the office any more, but they named a sum which would be paid him by way of pension for the rest of his life. And they advised him to see a doctor.
Peters could not understand it, and it had to be explained to him again. Then he tried to thank them. He felt proud and tremulous. He had been praised—it was years since anybody had praised him. He walked home and told Mrs Marks about it. He was not to work any more. Grantham & Flynders had praised him very highly. And he had a pension. And Mrs Marks congratulated him, and said that he deserved his luck. And finally Peters broke down and wept.
Peters spent most of his days, doing absolutely nothing, stretched on the grass under the plane tree. He had grown rather queer in one or two points. Mrs Marks could not make him believe that the strip of land was to be built over, and that the tree would have to come down. He did not argue about it. He merely said, "They shall not cut that tree down. I shall see about it."
"Now that is silly, Mr Peters. The tree will come down before they begin to build."
"No, it will not," said Peters.
One day, while Peters was lying under the tree, a party of men came and took measurements, and cut lines in the turf, but they did not attempt to touch the tree. Peters chuckled.
But next morning he was awakened by a sound of sawing. A party of labourers had come early, and were at work on the tree, sawing off the heavy lower boughs. Peters leant half out of the window in his night-shirt and shook his fist at them. He was wild with excitement.
"Leave my tree alone!" he screamed.
The men stopped work for a minute. Two of them laughed. One of them shouted up to him:
"Hold your row, you old fool! It ain't your tree."
"It is mine," cried Peters. "I shall come down to you and stop you. I'm coming now." Then he fell back on the bed fainting.
Mrs Marks was much alarmed, and—whether Peters liked it or not—insisted on having a doctor.
When the doctor came downstairs she met him in the passage. "Well, sir?" she said.
"I can do nothing—might have done if I'd been called in years ago. It's the heart. He can't last long. Don't let him be excited, and I'll send you something to give him for these fainting attacks."
Mrs Marks was a hard woman, but she wiped her eyes with her apron. "He's been here so long, you see," she explained.
Peters protested against the doctor. It was a foolish expense, if he was certain to die.
"I've got a little put by—yes, that's true. But it's all to go to Elsa, you see, and I don't want any of it wasted."
The blinds were drawn in order that he might not be excited by seeing the felling of the tree; but he could hear the work going on, though he pressed his thin hands to his ears.
As the sun shone in at his window one morning, and he lay awake in bed, a big, swift shadow swept across the blind, and then came a deafening crash.
Peters half raised himself in bed, one hand on his heart. His voice came in a whisper, "My God!"
He sank quite gently back again on the bed, and did not move.
THE NIGHT OF GLORY
It was half-past six at night when she came down from the workrooms and out into the street. She was an intensely anæmic girl, neatly dressed, thin, tired. Given better health, she would not have been unattractive; given a better way of life, she would have had better health.
A gentleman of forty-five crossed the street towards her, raised his hat, and said, "You're late to-night."
She took absolutely no notice, and slightly quickened in her pace.
"Please do not hurry," he said. "I have so much to say to you." Then she turned round on him and was very furious. If he bothered her any more she would hand him over to the police.
"Pray don't misunderstand me," said the gentleman, plaintively; "I would not insult you or treat you with anything but the greatest respect on any account."
"Then what on earth do you want?" she said rather irritably.
"I will put it as briefly as I can. I happen to be very wealthy. I can enjoy nothing—the day for that has gone past for me. I wish for one night to see somebody else enjoy something. It had to be somebody who did not usually spend money freely; somebody who worked hard; somebody who had refinement and education. I thought, and I still think, that I have found all these things in you. Will you come with me? Dinner, a theatre or a music-hall, a little supper at the Carlton, and then my brougham shall drive you home. You will be rendering me the greatest possible service."
She was a girl that was quite used to taking care of herself. If she had not much confidence in him, she had great confidence in herself. She could, at any rate, test it, and abandon the experiment when it pleased her.
"But," she said, "I have no proper dress for that kind of thing."
"You know what the proper dress would be?"
"Of course I do. It's my business."
"Very well, then, the rest is simple. You will go immediately and get all that you require in that way—dress, gloves, everything. Do not think about money, merely exercise the excellent taste which you show in your present costume. If the dress gives you the least pleasure, I know that it will give me much more. I shall be your debtor."
"It is like a fairy tale," she said.
"My brougham is here, and at your service."
The electric brougham slid noiselessly up to them. They got in.
In the brougham she watched him nervously, sideways. Yes, he was forty-five. His dark hair was grey on the temples; there was a melancholy cruelty in his thin-lipped mouth; but the greenish eyes, strong and searching, were not the eyes of one who had out-lived himself.
"I can't understand," she said. "What do you mean? You can't enjoy anything?"
"Almost that. I am, unfortunately, one who must have novelty. There are many women to whom I have given pretty toys and suppers at the Carlton. That—well, that was another affair. This is quite different. To-night I give for no other motive than to bring enjoyment to you. You see? I shall enjoy it second-hand. Tell me all about the dress."
She laughed. "Oh! you wouldn't understand if I did. I am going to Lambert's. One of the ladies there is a great friend of mine. Lucky that I am stock size, isn't it?"
"Very," said the man, with enthusiasm. He had not the faintest notion what stock size meant.
When the brougham stopped at Lambert's she seemed a little troubled. "Half an hour is the least time I can possibly be," she said. "You won't like waiting."
"Like it? It will be a luxury to me. Nobody has dared to make me wait for twenty years. You shall do it. Your foot is on my neck. Seriously, I have one or two little things to do myself. In the meantime"—he handed her a roll of notes—"get everything you want and pay for it."
She was fully three-quarters of an hour away, but she was a very transfigured maiden when the commissionaire opened the door of the brougham for her. Excitement, or a touch of rouge, had put a little colour into her pale face. Her dark hair was beautiful, and becomingly dressed. For the rest, all was perfect, from that shapely head down to the white satin shoes.
"Will this do?" she said eagerly.
"It is superb. You are transformed."
"That's quite true," she said. "I don't seem to myself to be the same kind of person. I don't think the same way. Oh! please, it didn't take nearly all that money. Look, I have got it here somewhere." She fumbled under her cloak.
"Oh! please don't bother," said her companion. "You may want it later for something or other. See what I have been doing to fill in time."
He took from its box an old ivory fan exquisitely painted, and handed it to her.
"That fan," he said, "belonged once to a princess, a daughter of George the Third. She was his favourite daughter, and it was her death which finally dethroned his reason. Take it; you also are a princess to-night."
"I cannot thank you—I cannot even begin to thank you. It is like a most heavenly dream coming true."
"Pray don't speak of thanks. It is I who am indebted to you for being pleased. I have bought another little toy for you as well."
He opened a case, containing a necklace of pearls, a single row. Not of great size, but well matched and graduated.
"I am afraid," he said, "that this has no romantic history. The best I can imagine is that the diver who brought the pearls was snapped in two by a shark."
"The best?" she cried. "That is the worst! That is horrible! Oh! but what a lovely necklace!"
"Then," said the man, "he was not snapped in two by a shark. He amassed great wealth in the pearl fishery business, retired from it, married a wife, had seventeen children, and was very, very happy."
"Seventeen seems a lot," said the girl.
"To-night you have only to command. The poor man had but two. May I put the necklace on for you?"
She hesitated. After all, why be a fool? "Of course, if you like," she said.
He fastened the snap quickly and deftly. "That is the way pearls look best," he said.
She rubbed her eyes.
"Oh! don't do that," said the man.
She laughed. "I was trying to wake up," she said.
"Don't wake up. But as we now know one another so well shall we say what our names are?"
"Well, your lordship," said the girl, a little timidly, "my name is Appleby—Marion Appleby."
"Not 'your lordship'; Lord Alcester, please."
Presently she had recovered from the shock of the introduction, and was eating iced Cantaloup melon. She looked pleased with the world. She tasted everything, and drank a very little champagne.
His lordship dined principally on dry toast and old brandy. He was evidently well known and appreciated in the restaurant.
"Tell me all about yourself," he said to her. "What is your ordinary day like?"
"That is what I'd like to forget just now," she said. "We live in Fulham, and it's a big family. Father's a very highly-educated man and speaks three languages. He is a clerk in a very good position; but still, you see, there are so many of us, and mamma's health isn't good. I am up early every morning seeing to the children, and there is my own work all day, and those workrooms are awful in the summer; then there is the walk back, or sometimes a 'bus if I am very tired, and after that there is always something to do about the house before I go to bed."
"Any holidays?"
"Oh! yes. We have our fortnight at the sea every summer. Father says that is not a luxury but a necessity, and he'd save in almost any way sooner than give that up. I believe he's right, too; you'd hardly know me after a fortnight at Margate, if the weather's been good. I get tanned, but I don't freckle. That's luck, isn't it?"
"It is the luckiest thing in the world. Waiter, I want a box at the Frivolity to-night; see about it, please. If there is no box to be had I will not take stalls, I will go somewhere else. And, Miss Appleby, what do you suppose a day of my life is like?"
"I haven't the least idea."
"It is far harder work than yours, and much duller. Believe me, my child, there is no toil so hard or so absolutely uninteresting as the toil that one goes through in order to enjoy one's self. In August, when I go North for the shooting, I still enjoy a little pleasure—at any rate, the life there is not too actively disgusting. But the London season—and I would far sooner die than miss any London season—is, if I may use the expression, unmitigated hell."
"I think," the girl said, "that I could be happy if I were you."
"Undoubtedly—for six months; not always. This is really the only pleasant evening that I have spent this summer."
"What made you think of it? Why did you choose me?"
"An all-merciful Providence that did not desire that I should slit my throat out of sheer boredom made me think of it. I waited, and I saw the rest of your companions pass out from the shop. Not one of them would have suited me. Frankly, they are all a little vulgar, and, which is far worse, a little uninteresting. You, on the other hand, are quite charming. You possess a fascination peculiar to yourself."
"What is it?" the girl asked breathlessly.
"You are very good, and you have a potentiality of being very bad. If you had been very bad, with a potentiality of being very good, you would also have fascinated me. I like potentiality in others, for there is none in myself. I shall never be any better and I could not be any worse, and I don't care two straws either way. Let's talk about something more interesting than myself. What? Oh! the box at the Frivolity. Very well, shall we go, my child, or would you like to change your mind and go to something else?"
It was quite late that night when he put her carefully into his brougham, shook hands with her, refused to hear a word of thanks, and gave the coachman the address in Fulham to which he was to take her.
Five years had done a good deal. They had nearly, but not quite, killed Lord Alcester. This winter night, bent, wizened, wrapped in furs, and leaning heavily on his stick, he crawled slowly along Piccadilly on his way from one club to another.
An ungloved hand touched his arm, and a hoarse woman's voice said, "Half a moment, my lord."
He gave her one quick glance from under his heavy eyebrows. Those eyes were not dead yet.
"It won't do," said Lord Alcester.
The girl laughed bitterly. "I thought you might like to look at your work," she said. "You were the ruin of me five years ago."
"My good woman," said Lord Alcester. "If I stopped in Piccadilly to talk to all the women who think I have been the ruin of them, it would stop the traffic. Let me go, please."
She still clung to his arm. "Just half a moment," she said. "The work-girl whom you gave a pretty dress to, and a string of pearls, and a fan that once belonged to a princess. You remember?"
"Good God!" said Lord Alcester. "Where can we talk?"
She laughed again, the same bitter laugh, and surveyed her reflection in a shop-window.
"Yes," she said, "a box at the Frivolity wouldn't do for me now, would it? Here, I know of a place, if you'll follow me."
"All right," said Lord Alcester. "Walk slowly."
She led him by side-streets into back-streets. The little public-house was very quiet, discreet, sinful and unsavoury. She pushed her way through to a little room behind the bar.
"Now then," she said.
With difficulty Lord Alcester dragged off his heavy fur coat and flung himself down on the crimson velveteen.
"What a godless hole this is," he said. "What are you going to have?"
"Glass of port," she said promptly.
"You haven't taken to spirits yet?"
"I keep that for the mornings. Shall I ring the bell?"
He nodded. The waiter who entered looked curiously from one to another. Lord Alcester had a firm, quiet, impressive manner.
"You will bring me," he said, "a bottle of the best port you have and a small bottle of soda-water. Make up that fire."
"I never said a bottle," said the woman. "Are you going to drink the rest?"
"I am going to drink the soda-water. Don't talk about that. Sit down by the fire. Warm your hands and tell me about yourself."
It was not until she had finished her first glass of port that she began on the subject. "There is no more to say than what I said before," she said. "You were my ruin."
"I remember that night very distinctly. I never made love to you. I never tried to kiss you. I never treated you with any less respect than I would have treated a woman of my own class. What are you talking about? What is all this nonsense?"
"No nonsense at all. How did you think it would be when I got home that night with fifty pounds' worth of new clothes, and my pearl necklace, and a story of a theatre and supper afterwards? Do you think they would believe my word at home? They said they did; I have got a temper, and they daren't say anything else; but they let me see very well that they didn't believe me. I wasn't going to stand it. Next morning at breakfast, when they were all full of the thing, I gave them some straight talking, and then I cleared out."
"Am I responsible for the heat of your temper and the straightness of your talking?"
"You might have guessed how it would be with me. Did you think that after one night of glory like that I was going back to perpetual drudgery? I'd seen life as it might be, and I'd been given a bad name. I'd only got to deserve it."
"How much did you get for the pearl necklace?"
"Three hundred and fifty."
"Then you were swindled."
"I know that, of course. I told them so. What did it matter? It was all gone in a few weeks. I can tell you I made money fly in those days. That's all past. I've lost what little good looks I ever had, haven't I?"
"Quite," said Lord Alcester, mercilessly. "You drink, you see," he added.
The girl put down her glass and fumbled desperately for a dirty little handkerchief with her face screwed awry. She dabbed at her eyes and shook with sobs.
"Stop that," said Lord Alcester. "You are making the devil of a row. Look here, come to business."
"I might have been good," she moaned. "If I had never met you I might have been good."
Lord Alcester was writing something on one of his visiting-cards. He stepped over to her and touched her on the shoulder. "Can you read that address?" he said.
"Yes," she said between her sobs. "Lincoln's Inn Fields. Solicitors, I suppose?"
"Quite so," said Lord Alcester, as he struggled back into his coat again. "They'll give you a pound a week as long as you live. Call for it on Saturday mornings. I could also give you plenty of good advice, but I won't. Are you coming?"
She glanced at the decanter by her side. "Not quite yet," she said. "I think I'll just—"
"Oh! I see," said Lord Alcester, contemptuously. "Good-night, then."
Out in the street he stopped the first hansom that he saw. The man had often driven him before.
"What will you take," he said to the man, "to drive this cab to eternal smash? Drive it, for instance, down the Duke of York's steps?"
The cabman smiled patiently. "Which club did you say, my lord?" Lord Alcester gave the address of his club and got into the cab.
AN IDYLL OF THE SEA
The repellent mid-day meal grew to its untidy close in a frowsy boarding-house in one of the less-pleasing back streets of Sefton-on-Sea. Mr Sigismund Porter had eaten so remarkably little that he might almost have won an approving smile from the hawk-eyed proprietress. As a rule, Mr Porter was a young man who liked value for his money, but to-day there was something on his mind, a gloomy resolution which destroyed his appetite.
"I am going," he said to himself, "to put my cards down on the table. I am going to own up, and to act on the square, and to be chucked for doing it, and to leave this blighted place to-morrow."
In his small bedroom at the very top of the house he arrayed himself with his usual scrupulous care. He wore a pair of the yellowest boots in Sefton-on-Sea, waistcoat and trousers of grey flannel, a dark blue smoking-jacket of the reach-me-down or Edgware Road order, and a straw hat adorned with the bewitching colours of the Advance Guard Cycling Club. His necktie was of the palest saffron, saving for such stains as it had acquired by natural wear and tear. He surveyed himself in the looking-glass and was satisfied.
Considering that he was really rather a nice-looking young man, he was a pretty bad sight. He had dark, wavy hair, and a girl had once said that he had the most pathetic eyes in Brixton. He lived at Brixton, and so did the girl. That was now merely an incident in the dead past.
He selected one of those cigarettes the principal characteristic of which is that you get an amazing amount of them for threepence. He shut the case with a snap—a real silver case which gave him pleasure—and so he went forth jauntily. He was going to his doom, of course, and he knew that he was going to his doom. But as his way to his doom lay along the sea-front, it was as well for the present to keep up appearances. From the sea-front he reached the pier, cast down his penny at the turnstiles, and walked up to the further end of it to a secluded seat behind the little pavilion where they let the entertainments loose. There he waited, leaning forward with his rather weak chin on the handle of his walking-stick. For a moment the wicked thought flashed across him that there was no necessity for him to put his cards down on the table, that he might as well have played the game out to the end. He cast the temptation from him. He would lose the girl, of course, but there was the very devil in it. He would rather lose her fairly than leave her with the glittering but untrue portrait of himself that she must now possess.
He looked up and saw the girl herself walking towards him.
"Walks like a queen," he said to himself. "Walks as if she'd bought the whole place, and could pay for it—and she gets thirty bob a week from a Dover Street milliner. You couldn't hardly believe it." Then he arose and lifted his absurd hat.
The girl shook hands with him frankly. She was simply and quietly dressed, but perhaps her profession gave her advantages there.
"Good afternoon, Mr Porter," she said. "You are getting splendid weather for your last day here." She was a pretty girl with enigmatical eyes, and her voice was softer and pleasanter than the voice of Mr Sigismund Porter.
"Yes," said Mr Porter, gloomily, "the weather's a bit of all right, I suppose, if the weather were everything."
"But the weather is quite a good deal, isn't it?" said the girl, cheerfully. "You wouldn't enjoy your run on your motor-car up to the Lakes if it came on wet."
"There ain't going to be any run," said the young man.
"What? But what about your friends—Colonel Raynes and Lord Daybrooke? You can't disappoint them."
"I shan't," he said bitterly. "They won't be disappointed, because they don't exist. I haven't got any colonels and lords amongst my friends. It was all lies and brag. For that matter, I haven't got any friends except one girl, and she's just going to give me the chuck for taking her in."
"I see," said the girl, thoughtfully. "Would you mind very much if we left this disgusting, vulgar little pier and walked along by the sands? They begin to make music of sorts here directly, and it will be quieter out of the crowd."
The thought flashed into his mind that it was hardly worth while to pay a penny for the pier and leave it at the end of five minutes, for his mind was perforce economical. But money questions at the moment seemed too sordid.
"All right," he said. "Considering the way I've carried on—I may say the rotten way I've carried on—it's pretty decent of you to hear the story out. I suppose I could kick up some sort of an excuse."
"Perhaps I could find the excuses for you," said the girl, as they went down together on to the beach. "You are not really stopping at the Grand, then?"
"No, I'm not. I've been stopping at the cheapest and muckiest boarding-house in the place, and in a mortal funk all the time lest you should see me going in and out. Well, that's all over, at any rate. You know the worst now. The way it started was that I wanted to impress you a bit. I wanted to make myself out one of the lucky ones. I wanted to seem a superior class to you altogether. And that's the damned funny thing about it, if you'll excuse my swearing. All the time that I was bragging about motor-cars, and you were talking about the stuffy workrooms, you were the superior class to me, and I was the dirt under your feet. Looking back on it, I can't think how I came to make such a fool of myself. Your superior, indeed! Why, even on the outside facts I'm not that, for I only make twenty-eight bob to your thirty, and I haven't got your chance of a rise."
"I think I see how it all happened," said the girl. "It was all very natural. I was sorry you told me those fibs, but I was not half as sorry then as I am glad now when you've taken them back again."
"Hold on," said the man. "I mean, just half a moment, if you don't mind. You said you were sorry when I began blowing about my position and all that. You knew, then?"
"Yes," said the girl. "I knew all the time. And all the time I was rather thinking that you wouldn't go on with it."
The young man stared at her hard. "You beat me altogether," he said. "I can't make head or tail of it. Of course, you've had opportunities of picking up style in your work, and there's no manner of doubt that you've got it. Well, I've known other girls who worked at a milliner's who have done the same. What beats me is that you've got that way of thinking. That's where they slip up. They say it all right, but what they say is all wrong. It's the same here, for the matter of that," he added gloomily.
"Now I want to talk to you," said the girl. "We are out of the crowd here. Let's sit down. I've got to apologise to you too, you know. I've told you lies, too. I never worked for a milliner in my life. I've got a motor-car and more money than I want, and I am stopping at the very hotel where you said you were."
"I take it," said the young man, quietly, "that this is about the last straw. If you'll permit one question, miss, that being the case, why on earth did you ever let me speak to you?"
"We will both be honest now," said the girl. "I saw you several times, and always alone. You did not seem to be having a particularly happy holiday. I saw that you wanted to talk to me. The book that I left on the seat gave you your chance, but I did not leave my book there on purpose. I had not even made up my mind at the moment when you brought it to me what I would do. When you began to talk, I saw that right at the back of all the talk you were quite a good young man. You always treated me properly and with respect."
"The man's not been born yet who would dare do anything else."
The girl laughed. "Well, I was inclined to like you. I don't value what you call the outside facts so very, very much. I rather like doing something unconventional, if it is not actually wrong. I thought it would please you if I let you meet me sometimes."
"That's rather a mild way of putting it."
"It pleased me too. At the back of everything that was wrong in you there were such lots and lots of good. I don't want you to look on it as simply an idle experiment on my part. Perhaps there was a slight shade of that in it, and I am rather ashamed of it. But it was chiefly that I wanted you to have a rather happier time here."
"I believe all that," said Mr Porter, "and I did have a happier time here. But think how I've got to pay for it afterwards. There's the contempt you must have felt for me—that's a nice sort of thing to have in your mind when you can't sleep at night! By God!" he burst out with sudden ferocity, "you lied worse than I did. You did more harm."
"Now you talk like a man," she said. "But you're mistaken on one point. There was never any contempt. All the time I was thinking that in your circumstances I should probably have been sorely tempted to do exactly as you did. Think of that when you can't sleep."
"That isn't everything," said the young man, jabbing holes in the sand with his stick.
"Isn't it?" said the girl. "What's the rest?"
"Thanks," said the young man, bitterly, "but I'm not going to make a fool of myself again. You go and become what you pretended to be. Come to me as a thirty-bob-a-week girl, working for a milliner, then I'll tell you the rest fast enough. Now I'm going to say 'Good-bye' to you."
"I think I see," said the girl. "That could never have been in any circumstances. But because I want you to know that I'm a friend to you, good-bye." She held out both her hands to him. "And remember this." Then she put her face up to his and kissed him.
In a moment she was gone.
The young man remained standing there. "And," he said to himself, "one ought to go straight up to heaven in a chariot of golden fire."
THE MAGIC RINGS
Part I.—Netta, the Make-Believer
Netta's father one day picked her up, swung her into the air, and put her down on the top of the high Italian cabinet in the hall. "There, you little slut," he said, "what does the world look like from up there?"
"Quite different; you wouldn't know it. The pictures look so queer—upside down; and the staircase isn't the same—or anything. Can't you come up too?"
"No; I'm afraid."
"Did you know there were two—no, three—big rings up here on the top of the cabinet? You can't see them from down below. May I bring them down?"
"If you like."
They were three disused wooden curtain rings, very dusty.
"How did they get there?" asked Netta.
"That," said her father, "is one of the things that I do not know; ask somebody else."
So she asked her mother, her governess, her nurse, and all the servants. They also did not know. They supposed that somebody must have put them there some time. Netta went back to her father and obtained permission to have those rings for her own. She carried them out into the garden into a secluded place under a weeping ash. There she examined the rings very carefully, and thought about the mystery which surrounded them. When she took them upstairs she showed them to her nurse.
"These are the magic rings," she said.
"Are they, indeed, now?" said the nurse, used to being interested, fictitiously, but at the shortest notice, in anything childish.
On the next day Netta felt the need of a temple. The romance of the rings was growing rapidly. Invested with a mysterious origin and properties not yet fully defined, but vaguely magical, they required to be enshrined in a temple. For one night they had put up with the shelter of the toy-cupboard. But in view of their character they were now to have a place apart. Netta went to her father and asked him if he had an empty box that he could spare.
"Would a cardboard box do?"
"Yes. It ought to be pure white, though."
The pure white cardboard box was found and given to her. This became the temple. Netta placed the three magic rings in it, and called her brother, who was a year older than she, and at that time rather a pious little prig.
"Would you like to see what's in that box, Jimmy?"
"It's a temple, and I don't think I shall let you. I certainly shan't let everybody."
"You ought to let me see, because I'm your brother."
"Well, first of all I must write your name inside the lid. Everyone who is allowed to see into the temple is going to be written down there. You're not to look until I've done it." She wrote the name as neatly as she could with a long new pencil, beautifully pointed. "Now you can look," she said.
"It isn't anything at all. It's only three old rings."
"Yes, but they're magic rings."
"Pooh! They can't do anything."
"Can't they?" said Netta with immense indifference, as she replaced the lid. She sat on the table, swinging her slim legs, and hummed provokingly.
"I know they can't do anything," Jimmy repeated.
Netta looked away from him, up at the flies circling on the white ceiling. Her eyes grew big and meditative. She continued humming.
"Well," said Jimmy, desperately, "what can they do?"
"Every night when you're in bed and asleep, and when everybody else is in bed and asleep, they can come out of the temple and run about. They run up walls and along the roofs of houses. And they can fly, too. They fly just like—like flies."
"I don't believe it. You're being a liar, and you know where liars go to. You ought to be punished."
"I'm not being a liar. I might be a make-believer, perhaps, but I shan't say if I am. Nobody knows where those rings came from. Papa himself doesn't know."
"I shall go and ask him this minute myself." Jimmy walked firmly to the door, paused, and added, "And lying is the same as make-believing."
He found his father, and asked him if he knew where those rings that Netta had came from.
"No," said his father, "I told her I didn't."
Jimmy was disappointed. "Lying and make-believing are the same thing, aren't they?" he said.
"Not at all the same thing." This was yet another disappointment. Later in the day Jimmy went to Netta and said that she really ought to give him one of those rings as he was her brother. She refused. He then asked if he might look inside the temple at them again. Once more he was refused.
"It is not a good thing," said Netta, gravely, "to look at them too much in one day."
"It seems as if I couldn't do anything or have anything, or play at anything," said Jimmy, gloomily. Netta, being tender-hearted, relented, and allowed him to look once more.
Netta had girl-friends of her own age. They were Dorothy, and Cecilia Vane, and Rose Heritage. Netta told them about the magic rings, and they were all deeply impressed.
A ritual sprang up. Netta was the priestess and Rose Heritage was the under-priestess. It became necessary always to wave a green leaf slowly over the temple before opening it. Every morning the magic rings were taken out and placed for a few minutes in a basin of pure water. Then they were dried and put back again in the temple. Dorothy Vane, who read deeply, suggested amulets, and they were made at once. Each girl wore round her neck a gold thread—it had come off a box of crackers—and to the thread was attached a small square of white cardboard, on which three circles had been drawn. Netta and Rose had amulets on which the circles were drawn in red chalk. Dorothy and Cecilia had to be content with black ink. But it was understood that after a certain time Dorothy would be raised to the position of under-priestess, and then she also would have the red-chalk privilege. The amulets were to be worn under the dress, and to be shown to no one. The secrecy observed was tremendous. Nobody was to know anything. When engaged with the magic rings, Christian names were forbidden. Netta was addressed as the priestess and Rose as the under-priestess; Dorothy was called One and Cecilia Two. Of course, Two was the least honourable position. It had been assigned to Cecilia because, owing to her sweet and gentle disposition, she consented to take it—which none of the other three would have done. Jimmy was by unanimous vote left out of it altogether. They would ask him if he would not go and play in the garden, like a kind boy, because they had some private secrets to talk about; and if he came suddenly into the room where they were they hid things hurriedly and talked ostentatiously about the weather. This maddened Jimmy. Sometimes he said that he knew all about it, and at other times pointed out to Netta that the claims of their relationship required that she should tell him all about it, and at other times that he did not want to know. Occasionally he threatened to throw the temple and the magic rings (he called them "old curtain-rings," but that was only his offensiveness) into the duck-pond. He did not do it. The devotees were four in number, and he was only one, and foolhardiness is not courage. "Anyhow," he said, "if you weren't doing wrong, you'd let me into it, and so you're certain to be punished. I have got secrets of my own and mine are not wrong, but I shan't say anything about them." But he prevailed nothing.
The legends about the magic rings grew rapidly in number and in strength. Their origin was now accounted for. They had been hoops belonging to the fairies, and they had undergone trundling so willingly and beautifully that the fairies had set them free and given them magical powers. This aetiological myth was, like the rest, given out by big-eyed Netta, the make-believer, and received with wonderment and satisfaction by her followers. The magic rings always lived a day on ahead; what is merely Monday to us was Tuesday to them. Reports of their nocturnal wanderings were received from time to time. They frequently went to the moon. They could fly like flies, it will be remembered. Once they went to the Star of Dolls. This star is inhabited by dolls only, and they can talk. A penny exercise book was procured (the generous and sweet-tempered Cecilia defraying the total expense), and in it the myths were written out, together with certain rules to be observed. It was called the "Volume of the Magic Rings," and the under-priestess had charge of it just as the priestess had charge of the temple. Letters passed freely between the four girls. I give the one which was the beginning of the end: