CHAPTER V—MARRIAGE ACCORDING TO HETTY
Next morning I was up early. Spiders’ webs were still crystal with dew in the garden; they had not yet been tattered by the sun lifting up the flowers’ heads. I had no hope that I would see Ruthita, but I wanted to peep across the wall while everyone was in bed and there was no one to observe me.
I had covered half the distance to the apple-tree, when I heard a sound of voices. They came from behind the tool-house. I fisted my hands and listened. A man and woman were conversing, but in such low tones that I could hear nothing that was said. I made sure they were thieves who had heard about my hen, and had come to rob me. I looked back at the windows of our house. All the blinds were lowered; everyone was sleeping. There was no sign of life anywhere, save the hopping of early risen blackbirds between bushes in search of early risen worms. With a quickly beating heart I crouched beside the wall, advancing under cover of a row of sunflowers. Looking out from between their stalks, I discovered a man sitting on a wheelbarrow; a woman was balanced on his knee with her arm about his neck. The woman was Hetty and the man was our gardener.
Hetty was wearing her starched print-dress, ready to begin her morning’s work. She wasn’t a bit scornful or solemn, but was laughing and wriggling and tossing her head. She seemed quite a different person from the stern, moral housemaid, God’s intimate friend, who told me everything that God had thought about me through the day when at night she was putting me to bed. Up to that moment it had never occurred to me that she was pretty, but now her cheeks were flushed and the sun was in her rumpled hair. While I watched, our gardener drew her close and kissed her. She squeaked like a little mouse, and pretended to struggle to free herself.
I never dreamt that grown people ever behaved like that. I hadn’t the faintest notion what she was doing or why she was doing it; but I knew that it was something secret, and silly, and beautiful. I also had the feeling that it was something pleasant and wrong, just like the things I most enjoyed doing, for which I was punished. I wanted to withdraw and tried to; but tripped over the sunflowers and fell.
Hetty and the gardener sprang apart. I knew what was going to happen next; I had caught them being natural—they were going to commence shamming. The gardener became very busy, piling his tools into the barrow. Hetty, talking in her cold and distant manner, said to him, “And don’t forget the lettuce for breakfast, John. Master’s very partic’lar about it.”
I came from my hiding, thrusting my hands deep in my pockets, as though I kept my courage there and was frightened of its dropping out. The gardener’s back was towards me, but he caught sight of me from between his legs. He just stopped like that with his face growing redder, his mouth wide-open, and stared. Hetty didn’t look as pretty as she had been looking, but before she could say anything I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I came to see my fowl—— but I won’t tell.”
“Bless ’is little ’eart,” cried John; “I thought it were ’is Pa, I wuz that scared.”
Hetty knelt down beside me and rocked me to and fro half-hysterically, making me promise again and again that I would never tell.
“Was you doin’ somethin’ wrong?” I asked. “What was you doin’?”
They looked foolishly at one another.
All that day they kept me near them on one pretext or another, afraid to let me get away from them. I had never known them so sensible and obliging; they did all kinds of things for me that they had never done before. After breakfast, while Hetty was dusting, John built me a little fowl-run. In the afternoon, while he was cutting the grass, Hetty sat with me beneath the apple-tree and told me what life meant. She spoke in whispers like a conspirator, and all the time that she was talking, I could hear Ruthita humming just the other side of the wall.
As I understood it, this was what she told me. When you first get here, here being the world, you own nothing; and know nothing. Then, as you grow up, you know something but still own nothing. That’s why you’re ordered about and told not to do all the things that you want most to do. You can only please yourself when nobody’s looking and must obey nearly everyone until you get money. There are several ways of getting it, and the pleasantest is sweet-hearting.
Here I interrupted her to inquire what was sweet-hearting. “Well,” she said, turning her face away and looking dreamily at John, who was pushing the mower across the lawn, “sweet-heartin’s what you saw me and John doin’.”
“Does it always have to be done before breakfast?”
She threw back her head and laughed, swaying backwards and forwards. Then she became solemn and answered, “I ’ave to do it before breakfast ’cause I’m a servant. But I does it of evenin’s on my night out.”
She went on to tell me that sweet-hearting was the first step towards freedom and money. The second step was a honeymoon, which consisted in going away with a person of the other sex for a week to some place where you weren’t known. When you came back to the people who knew you, they said you were married. So marriage was the third and last step. After that you were given a house, and money, and all the things for which you had always yearned. You had other people, who were like you were before you went sweet-hearting, to take your orders, and run your errands, and say “Sir” or “Madam.” Sometimes when you came back from your honeymoon, you found children in the house.
So through that long summer’s afternoon beneath the apple-tree, with the leaves gently stirring and the sound of Ruthita humming across the wall, I gained my first lesson in sexology and domestic economics. It solved a good many problems by which I had been puzzled. For instance, why Uncle Obad had a pony and I hadn’t; why I was sent to bed always at the same hour and my father went only when he chose; why big people could lose their tempers without being wicked, whereas God was always angry when I did it. There was only one thing that I couldn’t understand: why two boys couldn’t go on a honeymoon together, or two girls, and have the same results follow. Except for this, the riddle of society was now solved as far as I was concerned. Marriage seemed a thousand times more wonderful than the magic carpet.
I was tremendously interested in the possibilities of sweet-hearting and promised to help Hetty all I could. In return she declared that, when she was married, she would persuade my father to let her take me out of the garden.
That evening I crept over the wall and found Ruthita waiting. She was a slim dainty little figure, clad in a short white dress. She had great gray eyes, and long black hair and lashes. Her voice was soft and caressing, like the twittering of a bird in the ivy when one wakens on a summer morning. I told her in hurried whispers what I had discovered. It was all news to her. She slipped her hand into mine while I spoke and nestled closer.
“Little boy,” she whispered when I had ended, “you are funny! You come climbing over the garden-wall and you tell me everything.”
An old man came out of the house and began to pace up and down the walks. His head was bent forward on his chest and he had a big red scar on his forehead. A cloak hung loosely from his shoulders. He carried a stick in his hand on which he leant heavily. Ruthita said he was her grandfather. Soon he began to call for her, and she had to go to him.
Little by little I learnt her story. Her grandfather was a French general. He had fought in the Franco-Prussian War until the Fall of the Empire and Proclamation of the Republic. Shortly after the flight of the Empress Eugénie he had come to England in disgust. His son, Ruthita’s father, had stayed behind and been cut to pieces in the Siege of Paris. Ruthita’s mother was an Englishwoman. She had never recovered from the shock of her husband’s death. It was her light that I saw burning in the bedroom window of evenings. They were almost poor now and lived in great seclusion. The grandfather had dropped his rank and was known as plain Monsieur Favart. So Ruthita was even a closer prisoner than myself.
What did we talk about in those first stolen hours of’ childish friendship? I asked her once when we were grown up, but she could not tell me. Perhaps we did not say much. We felt together—felt the mystery of the enchanted unseen world. Why, the pigeons strutting on the housetops had seen more than we had; and they were not half as old as we were! They spread their wings, soared up into the clouds, and vanished. We told one another stories of where they went; but long before the stories were ended Monsieur Favart would come searching for Ruthita or the voice of Hetty would ring through the dusk, calling me to bed. Then I would lie awake and imagine myself a pigeon, and finish the story to myself.
The great beauty of our meetings was that they were undiscovered. It was always I who went to Ruthita—she was nothing of a climber, and the red bricks and green moss would have left tell-tale marks upon her dress. We had a nest of straw behind the currant bushes. Here, with backs against the hard wall and fingers digging in the cool damp earth, we would sit and wonder, talking in whispers, of all the mysteries that lay before us. Ruthita had vague memories of Paris, of soldiers marching and the beating of drums. Sometimes she would sing French songs to me, of which she would translate the meaning between each verse. My contribution to our little store of knowledge was limited to what I have written in these few chapters.
I don’t know at what stage in the proceedings our great idea occurred. It must have been in the early autumn, for the evenings were drawing in and often it was chilly. I had been talking about Hetty, when suddenly I exclaimed, “Why can’t we do that?”
“Do what?” she questioned.
“Get married!”
Then I reminded her of the extreme simplicity of marriage as explained by our housemaid. All we had to do was to slip out of the garden for a few days, and then come back. We should find a house ready for us. Perhaps I should have a pony like Uncle Obad, and, instead of dolls, Ruthita would have real babies. It was the real babies that caught her fancy. Because of her mother, she needed a little persuading. “What will she do wivout me?”
“And what would she do if you’d never been borned?” I said.
Ruthita had five shillings in her money-box. I had only a shilling; for the white hen, in spite of pepper, had failed to lay any eggs. Six shillings seemed to us a fortune—ample to provide for the honeymoon of two small children.
The gate from Monsieur Favart’s garden was never locked: that was evidently our easiest way out.
CHAPTER VI—THE YONDER LAND
What did we hope to find that autumn morning when we slipped through that narrow door, forsaking the walls? It was all a guess to us—what lay beyond; but we knew that it must be something splendid. Of one thing we were quite certain: that at the end of a few days we should have grown tall; we should return to Pope Lane a man and woman. The little house would be there waiting, magically built in our hours of absence. Perhaps work had been begun already upon the babies that Ruthita wanted.
For the first time I had kissed her that morning, awkwardly and shyly, feeling that somehow it was proper. At any rate, Hetty and our gardener always kissed when they got the chance and no one was looking.
Monsieur Favart’s door swung to behind us. We ran as quickly as our legs would carry us. The fear of pursuit was upon us. Pinned to the pillow of each of our empty beds was a sheet of paper on which was scrawled, “Gon to git Maried.”
When at last we halted for breath, we seemed to have covered many miles of our journey. We were standing in a long, quaint street. On one side flowed a river, railed in so we couldn’t get near it. On the other side stood an irregular row of substantial houses, for the most part creeper-covered. No faces appeared in the houses’ windows. No one passed up or down the street. It was as yet too early. It seemed that the world was empty, and that we and the birds were its only tenants. We turned to the right, half-walking, half-running. I held Ruthita’s hand tightly; the feel of it gave me courage.
We must have made a queer pair in the mellow autumn sunlight. Ruthita wore a white dress with a red cloak flung over it. On her head was a yellow straw poke-bonnet, which made her face look strangely small. She had on black shoes, fastened by a single strap, and black and white socks which, when she ran, kept dropping.
We had no idea of direction, but just hurried on with a vague idea that we must keep moving forward.
Presently we came across a drover, driving a flock of bewildered, tired sheep. He was a lame man. He had an inflamed red face and one of his eyes was out. When he wanted to make his flock move faster, he jabbed viciously at their tails with a pointed stick and started hopping from side to side, barking like a dog. He passed right by us, saying nothing, waving a red flag in his left hand with which he would sometimes mop his forehead. We followed. We followed him through streets of shops all shuttered; we followed him up a broad-paved hill; we followed him down a winding lane to a bridge across a river, beyond which lay marshes. Then he turned and called to us.
“Little master, where be you goin’ and why be you followin’?”
To the country, I told him, to find the forest. I wanted to show Ruthita the unwalled garden through which my uncle had led me.
The man screwed up his one eye, and gazed upon us shrewdly. “You be wery small to be goin’ to the forest. But so be you’re travellin’ along my route you might as well ’elp an old feller.”
We made our bargain with him. We would help him with his sheep, if he would guide us to the forest. We ran beside him across the short, crisp grass, imitating his cries to prevent the sheep from scattering. He told us that he had driven them from Epping up to London, but that times were cruel bad and the farmer who employed him had been unable to sell them. “It’s cruel ’ard on a man o’ my years,” he kept saying, “cruel ’ard.”
When I asked him what was cruel hard, he shook his head as though language failed to express his wrongs: “The world in gineral.”
There was one of the sheep whose leg was broken. It kept lagging behind the rest, which made the man jab at it furiously. Ruthita’s eyes filled with tears of indignation when she saw it. She stamped her little foot and insisted that he should not do it. The man pushed back his battered hat and scratched his forehead, staring at her. He seemed embarrassed and tried to excuse himself. “Humans is humans, miss, and sheep is sheep. It makes an old chap, made in Gawd’s h’image, kind o’ bitter to ’ave to spend his days a-scampering after a crowd o’ silly quadrupeds. But if yer don’t like it, I won’t do it.”
The river wound round about us. Sometimes it would leave us, but always it came flowing after us, in great circles as though lonely and eager for our company. On its banks stood occasional taverns, gaily painted, with wooden tables set before them. The grass about them was trodden bare, showing that they were often populous; but now they were deserted. Big barges lay sleepily at anchor, basking in the sun.
The drover commenced speaking again. “I’m an old soldier, I am. I lost me eye and got lamed in the wars; and now they makes game o’ my h’infirmities and calls me——”
The name they called him was evidently too dreadful. He sighed heavily.
“Poor man,” said Ruthita, slipping her hand into his horny palm. “What do they call you?”
“Old-Dot-and-Carry-One, ’cause o’ the way I walks. It’s woundin’. It ’urts me feelin’s, after the way I’ve served me country.”
We seated ourselves by the muddy river-bank, while the sheep grazed and rested. Far in the distance trees broke the level of the sky-line, so I knew that we were going in the right direction and our guide was to be trusted. Dot-and-Carry-One produced a loaf of bread from his pocket and, dividing it into three pieces, shared it with us.
Little by little he gave us his confidence, telling us of the world as he knew it. “It’s a place o’ wimen and war. To the h’eye wot’s prejoodiced there’s nothin’ else in it. But your h’eye ain’t prejoodiced, and don’t yer never let it git so, young miss and master. I’ve seen lots. I wuz in the Crimea and I wuz in h’India, but I never yet seen the country where a man can’t be ’appy if he wants. There’s music, an’ there’s nature, an’ there’s marriage. Now music for h’instance.”
He produced from his ragged coat a penny whistle and trilled out a tune upon it. While he played he looked as merry a fellow as one could hope to meet in a day’s march. The sheep stopped cropping to gaze at us. We clapped our hands and asked him to go on.
He shook his head and replaced his pipe. “Then there’s nature. Just now I wuz complainin’. But supposin’ I do drive sheep back and forth, how many men wuz up in Lun’non to see the sunrise this mornin’? I never miss it, ’ceptin’ when I’m drunk. I knows the seasons o’ the bloomin’ flowers, Gawd bless ’em, and can h’imitate the birds’ songs and call ’em to me. That’s somethin’. An’ if I don’t sleep in a stuffy bed, which would be better, for me rheumatics, I can count the stars and have the grass for coverin’. And then there’s marriage——”
He paused. His eye became moist and his face gentle. “I ’ad a little nipper and a girl once.”
That was all. We wanted to ask him questions about marriage, but he pulled his hat down over his eyes and lay back, refusing to answer.
Ruthita and I guarded the sheep and kept them from straying, while he slept. We made chains out of flowers, and, taking off our shoes and socks, paddled in the water. Then Ruthita grew tired and, leaning against my shoulder, persuaded me to tell her the story of where we were going. Before the tale was ended, her eyes were closed and her lips were parted. My arms began to ache terribly; I wondered whether it was with holding her or because I was growing. I hoped it was because I was growing.
Dot-and-Carry-One woke up. He looked at the sun. “Time we wuz h’orf,” he remarked shortly.
We had not gone far along the river-bank when we came to a tavern on our side of the water. Ruthita said that she was thirsty, so we entered. The drover spread himself out on a bench and, soliciting my invitation, called for “a pint of strong.” Good beer, he said, never hurt any man if taken in moderation.
We must have sat for the best part of the morning, watching him toss off pot after pot while we gritted our feet on the sanded floor. For each pot he thanked us, taking off his battered hat to Ruthita and blowing away the froth from the top in our honor. He explained to all and sundry that we wuz his little nipper and girl wot he had losht. He losht us years ago, so long he could hardly remember. The tavern-girl entered into a discussion with him, saying that we could not be more than nine and that he was at least seventy. He became angry, demanding whether a man of seventy hadn’t lived long enough to know his own children, and what bloody indifference it made to her, anyway.
It occurred to me that it might be just possible that he really was Ruthita’s father. I had no idea what dying meant. I had been told that the dead were not really dead—only gone. So I thought that death might mean not being with your friends in the garden. I half expected to find my mother in the forest, just as I had hoped to bring her back on the magic carpet. So when Dot-and-Carry-One was so positive, I asked him if he had heard of the Siege of Paris. He was in a mood when he had heard of everything, been everywhere, and had had every important person for a friend. Of course he had heard of the Siege of Paris; if it hadn’t been for him, to-day there wouldn’t be any Paris. When I told him of General Favart, he wept copiously and called for another pot.
The tavern-girl told him that that must be his last, and he said that it was cruel ’ard the way an old soldier were persecooted. When we had paid for his drinks, we discovered that we had only three shillings and eightpence left of our little stock of money. The tavern-girl said we were poor h’innercent lambs and she should set the police on him. The drover told her that spring, not autumn, was the lambing season.
All through the long and drowsy afternoon we wandered on. Dot-and-Carry-One seemed in no great hurry to reach his destination. Beer had had a transfiguring effect upon him. He lurched along jauntily, his hat cocked sideways on his head, winking with his one good eye at any girls we met in our path. His cares and sense of injustice were forgotten. He told us tales of his wars, painting tremendous and bloody scenes of carnage. He slew whole armies that afternoon, and at the end of each battle he was left alone, wounded but dauntless, with the dead ’uns piled high about him. He went into grisly details of the manner of their dying, and stopped now and then to show us with his stick the different ways in which you could kill a man with a sword. Cockney lovers on the river gaped after us, resting on their oars. They saw nothing but an intoxicated old ruffian in charge of a flock of sheep and two small children. But we were in hero-land, and Dot-and-Carry-One was our giant-killer.
When Ruthita got tired, he hoisted her on to his shoulders, where she rode straddling his neck, with her hands clasped about his forehead. The forest, like a green silent army, with its flags unfurled marched nearer. The sun sank lower behind us; our long lean shadows ran on before us till they lay across the backs of the sheep.
We left the marshes and entered on a white dusty road. Carriages and coaches and wagons kept passing, which made the sheep bewildered. They kept turning this way and that, bleating pitifully. Ruthita had to walk again, while Dot-and-Carry-One barked and waved his stick to keep the flock from scattering. The night came on and we were hungry. At last Ruthita’s legs gave out and she sat down by the roadside crying, saying that she was frightened and could go no further. Then Dot-and-Carry-One drove his flock into the forest, and borrowed a shilling from me and left us, promising to go and buy food with it.
The sheep lay down about the roots of the trees, and we pillowed our heads against their woolly backs. The silence became intense; the last of the twilight vanished. I was glad when Ruthita put her arms round my neck, for I too was nervous though I would not own it. We waited for the drover to return, and in waiting slept.
I woke with a start. The moon was shining; long paths of silver had been hewn between the trees. The fleece of the kneeling sheep was sparkling and dewy. Far down one of the paths I could see a limping figure approaching. He was shouting and singing and stabbing at his shadow. As he came nearer I could distinctly see that he held a bottle in his hand. Something warned me. I roused Ruthita, telling her to make no sound. We ran till we were breathless and the shouting could be no more heard.
Trees grew wider apart where we had halted. Far away a flare of light shone up; as we watched we saw that people passed before it. Hand-in-hand we advanced. Something groaned quite near us. We commenced to run, but, looking back, saw that it was only a tethered donkey. We came to the outskirts of the crowd. We wanted company badly. Burrowing under arms and legs we made our way to the front. A great linen sheet was stretched between two trees. Set up on iron rings before it was a line of cocoanuts. On either side flaring naphtha-lamps were burning. About thirty yards away from the sheet a woman was serving out wooden balls. Between the sheet and the cocoanuts a man was darting up and down, dodging the balls as they were thrown and returning them. The man and woman were calling out together, “Two shies a penny. Two shies a penny. Every ball ’its a cocoanut. Down she goes. ’Ere you are, sir. Two for the children and one for the missis. Walk up. Walk up. Two shies a penny.”
Whether a cocoanut went down or stayed up, they continued to assert in a hoarse, cracked monotone that it had fallen. Their faces were dripping with perspiration. The man returned the balls and the woman served them out again mechanically. The throwers took off their coats and hurled furiously, to the accompaniment of the shrill staccato chatter of the crowd.
Ruthita and I stood blinking in the semi-darkness, our eyes dazzled by the lamps. Suddenly I called out, and pushing my way between the throwers, commenced running up the pitch. The man behind the cocoanuts, realizing that the balls had ceased coming, stopped dodging and looked up to see what was the matter. Just then an impatient thrower hurled a ball which went whizzing over me, missed the cocoanuts, and hit the man on the head, splitting his eyebrow. I was terribly afraid that he would topple over and lie still, like Dot-and-Carry-One had told me men did in battle. Instead of that, when I came within reach of him he clutched me angrily by the shoulder, asking me what the devil I meant. The blood, creeping down his face in a slow trickle, made him look twice as fierce as when I had first met him with my Uncle Obad by the gipsy campfire. He drew me near to one of the lamps, smearing his forehead with the back of his hand. He recognized me.
“Oh, it’s you, you young cuss, is it?”
Just then the fortune-telling girl came up, whom I had seen before with the baby on her back. She was carrying Ruthita.
“Here, Lilith,” he said, speaking gruffly, “take ’im to your tent.”
Then he commenced again, “Two shies a penny. Two shies a penny. Every ball ’its a cocoanut. Down she goes,” etc.
I was glad to creep into the cool darkness, clinging close to Lilith’s skirt. I was a little boy now, with scarcely a desire to be a husband. When I looked across my shoulder the game was in full swing. The woman was serving out the balls; the crowd was paying its pennies; the man was dodging up and down before the sheet, avoiding the balls and returning them. I heaved a sigh of relief; then he had not succumbed—he was not yet a dead’un.
CHAPTER VII—THE OPEN WORLD
That night in the tent I slept soundly, with the fortuneteller’s arm about me and my head nearly touching Ruthita’s across her breast. The soft rise and fall of her bosom made me dream of my mother.
Glimmerings of the early autumn sunrise crept in through holes in the canvas. I raised myself cautiously and gazed at the woman who had cared for me. I call her a woman, for she seemed to me a woman then; she was about seventeen—little more than a girl. Her face was gentle and passionate; her jet black hair streamed down in a torrent across her tawny throat and breast. She smiled in her sleep and murmured to herself; the arm which clasped Ruthita kept twitching, as though to draw her nearer. While I watched, her eyes opened; she said nothing, but lay smiling up at me. Presently she put her free arm about my neck, and drew me down so my cheek rested against hers. She turned her head and I saw that, though she looked happy, there were tears on her long dark lashes. Her lips moved and I knew what she wanted. Putting my arms about her, I kissed her good-morning.
Rousing Ruthita, she raised the flap of the tent and we slipped out. Mists were drifting across the woodland, pink and golden where the sunrise caught them, but lavender in the shadows. It was a quiet fairy world, like the face of a sleeping woman, which was pale with dew upon the forehead and copper and bronze with the streaming hair of faded foliage. Outside the door the grass was blackened in a circle where a gipsy fire had burnt. The yellow caravan stood near. In and out the bracken rabbits were hopping, nibbling at the cool green turf. The gipsy’s lurcher watched them, crouched with his nose between his paws, waiting his opportunity to steal closer. Lilith set about gathering brushwood for the fire and we helped her.
“Ruthie, am I taller?”
She eyed me judicially and shook her curls. “No. But p’raps we shall grow tall quite suddenly, when the honeymoon is ended.”
I was beginning to have my doubts of that, so I changed the subject. “Lilith has a baby. She carries it on her back.”
“Where does she keep it now?” asked Ruthita. “It wasn’t on her back last night in the tent.” Then she commenced to hop about like an eager, excited little bird. “I shall ask her. I shall ask her, Dante, and she’ll let me hold it.”
But when we ran to Lilith her back was straight and unbulgy. And when we asked her where she kept the baby, she dropped the bundle of sticks she was carrying and sank to her knees, with her hands pressed against her breast. She swayed to and fro, with her eyes closed, muttering in a strange language. Then she bent forward, kissing the ground and chanting words which sounded like, “Coroon! Coroon! Oh, dearie, come back. Come back!”
We heard the door of the caravan open. Lilith sprang to her feet and picked up her sticks as though ashamed of what she had been doing. The fierce man stood on the caravan steps. He strode across the grass to Lilith and laid his hand on her shoulder with a rough gesture which was almost kindly. “The wind blows, sister,” he said, “and it sinks behind the moon. The flowers grow, sister, and they fall beneath the earth. Where they have gone there is rest.”
He passed on, whistling to his lurcher. The gaudily dressed woman came out; while he was gone, the fire was kindled and breakfast was prepared.
During breakfast a great discussion arose in their strange language. When it was ended, Lilith took us with her into the tent. She closed the flap carefully and began to undress us. While she was doing it she explained matters. She told us that the man was too busy just now with the cocoanut-shies to spare time to go and fetch my uncle to us. In a few days he would go, but meanwhile we must stay with them in camp. She said that they were good gipsies, but no one would believe it if they saw us with them. They would have to make us like gipsy children so no one would suspect. So she daubed our bodies all over a light brown color, and she stained my hair because it was flaxen. Then she gave us ragged clothes, without shoes or stockings, and dug a hole in the ground and hid ours. She was curious to know what had brought us to the forest; but we would not tell. We had the child’s feeling that telling a grown-up would break the spell—we should never be married then, the little house would never be built, and none of the other pleasant things would happen. We should have to go back to the garden again and live always within walls.
Those days spent in our first dash for freedom stand out in my memory as among the happiest. I ate of the forbidden fruit of romance and reaped no penalties. Ruthita cried at times for her mother; but I had only to remind her of the babies she would have, and her courage returned.
The smell of the camp-fire is in my nostrils as I write; I can feel again the cool nakedness of unpaved woodlands beneath my feet and open skies above my head. I see Ruthita unsubdued and bare-legged, plunging shoulder-high into golden bracken, shouting with natural gladness, followed by the gipsy boys and girls. We tasted life in its fullness for the first time, she and I, on that fantastic honeymoon of ours. We felt in our bones and flesh the simple ecstasy of being alive—the wide, sweet cleanness of the open world. And remembering, I wonder now, as I wondered then, why men have toiled to learn everything except to be happy, and have labored with so much heaviness to build cities when the tent and the camp-fire might be theirs.
Books, schoolmasters, and universities have taught me much since then. They have spattered the windows of my soul with knowledge to prevent my looking out. Luckily I discovered what they were doing and stopped the rascals. But I knew more things that were essentially godlike before they commenced their work. The major part of what they taught me was a weariness to the flesh in the learning, and a burden to the brain when learnt. Of how many days of shouting and sunshine they robbed me with their mistaken kindness. Of what worth is a Euclid problem at forty, when compared with the memory of a childhood’s day of flowers, and meadows, and happiness?
For twenty years my father sat prisoner at a desk, unbeautifully and doggedly driving his pen across countless pages that he might be able to buy me wisdom. With all his years of sacrifice and my years of laborious study, he gave me nothing which was half so valuable as that which a boy of nine stole for himself in his ignorance in the forest. There I learnt that the sound of wind in trees is the finest music in the world; that the power to feel in one’s own body the wholesome beauties of nature is more rewarding than wealth; that to know how to abandon oneself to the simple kindness of living people is a wiser knowledge than all the elaborate and codified wisdom of the dead.
We roamed the countryside with Lilith by day, listening to her telling fortunes. By night we slept in her arms in the tent. Only one thing was forbidden us—to speak with strangers. But there was one man who recognized us in spite of that. It was on the first morning. We were sitting by the side of the road with the fierce man; he was showing us how to make a snare for a rabbit. We were so interested that we did not notice a flock of sheep approaching until they were quite close. Then I looked up and caught the eye of old Dot-and-Carry One burning in his head, glaring out at us as if it would fly from its socket. He would have spoken had he dared, but just then the fierce man saw him. He sank his chin upon his breast and, for all that he was “a human, made in Gawd’s h’image,” limped away into the distance in a cloud of dust, as meekly sheepish as any of the sheep he followed.
Ruthita spent a lot of her time in searching for Lilith’s baby. She wanted so badly to hold it. We felt quite certain that she had hidden it somewhere, as she had our clothes. Even if it was a dead’un, it was absurd to suppose that a person so clever as to tell fortunes should not know where it might be found. We determined to watch her. We thought that if her baby was really dead and she went to it by stealth, then by following her we should be able to find my mother and, perhaps, Ruthita’s father. Ruthita had already abandoned the dread that Dot-and-Carry-One had had anything to do with her entrance into the world.
Naphtha-lamps were extinguished. The crowd of merrymakers had departed. I was roused by Lilith stirring. Very gently she eased her arm from under me. I kept my eyes tightly shut and feigned that I was undisturbed. Cautiously she pulled aside the flap of the tent and stole out. I rose to my feet when she had gone. Ruthita was sleeping soundly, her small face cushioned in her hand. Without waking her I followed.
Near to the caravan the camp-fire smoldered, making a splash of red like a pool of blood in the blackness. As I watched, it was momentarily blotted out by a moving shadow. The lurcher shook himself and growled. Lilith’s voice reached me, telling him to lie down. A bank of cloud lay across the moon, but I knew the way she went by the rustle of the fallen leaves, turning beneath her tread. I followed her down the glades of the forest, peering after her, glancing behind me at the slightest sound, timid lest I might lose her, timid lest I might lose myself, stealing on tiptoe into the unknown with sobbing, stifled breath. The ground began to descend into a hollow at the bottom of which a pond lay black and sullen. A tall beech stood at its edge, spreading out its branches and leaning across it as if to hide it. The leaves beneath her footsteps ceased to stir.
When I could no longer hear her, a horrible, choking sense of solitude took hold of me. What if she had entered into the tree and should never return? Without her, how should I find my way back? I crept as near the pond as I dared, and crouched among the dead leaves, trembling. The water began to splash. “Someone,” I thought, “is rising out of it.” Little waves, washing in the rushes, caused the brittle reeds to shake and shiver, whispering in terror among themselves. A low sing-song muttering commenced. It came from the middle of the pond. I tried to stop breathing. It seemed quite possible that the baby was hidden there.
The bank of cloud trailed across the sky. The yellow harvest moon dipped, broad and smiling, into the latticework of boughs which roofed the dell.
In the middle of the pond, knee-deep, Lilith stood. She had cast aside her Romany rags and rose from the water tall and splendid. Her tawny body was a gold statue glistening beneath the moon. Her night-black hair fell sheer from her shoulders like a silken shadow. She was bending forward, peering eagerly beneath the water’s surface, whispering hurried love-words. Of all that she said I could only catch the words, “Coroon. Coroon. Come back, little dearest. Come back.” She laughed gladly and held out her arms, as though there drifted up towards her that which she sought. I could see nothing, for her back was towards me. Still lower she bent till her lips kissed the water’s surface; plunging her arms in elbow-deep, she seemed to support the thing which she saw there.
“Lilith, oh Lilith!” I cried.
She started and turned. I feared she was going to be angry. “Show me my Mama,” I whispered.
She put her finger to her lips, and beckoned, and nodded.
Hastily I undressed, tossing my rags beside hers. I waded out to where she was standing. The night air was chilly. She gave me her hand and drew me to her. Placing me before her, so that I could gaze into the pond like a mirror, she chanted over and over a low, wild tune. She peered above my shoulders. At first I could see only my own reflection and hers. Then, as she sang, the water moved, the inky blackness reddened; I forgot everything, the cold, Lilith, my terror, and lived only in that which was coming.
In the bottom of the pool, infinitely distant, a picture grew. It came so near that I thought it would touch me; I became a part of it. I saw my mother. She was seated by a fire in an unlighted room. A little boy lay in her lap with his arms about her. She glanced up at me smiling faintly, gazing into my eyes directly. For a moment I saw her distinctly, and caught again the fragrance of violets that clung about her. The water rippled and the vision died away in smoke and cloud. Lilith gathered me to her cold wet breast and carried me to the shore and dressed me. Without knowing why, I knew that this was a happening that I must not tell.
We returned to camp. Woods were stirring. Shadows were thinning. Dawn was breaking. The coldness in the air became intense. We threw branches on the fire and blew the smoldering embers, till sparks began to fly and twigs to crackle. Lilith sat with me in her arms, and hushed and mothered me. I was not ashamed; for five years I had wanted just that. I was glad that she understood. Ruthita could not see me; nobody but the dawn would ever know. So I fell asleep and went back to the fragrance of violets, the fire, and the cosy darkened room.
CHAPTER VIII—RECAPTURED
R uthita and I were terribly puzzled about that baby. We couldn’t make out how it had found its way into the world. We supposed that God had made a mistake in sending it to Lilith, and that was why He had taken it back.
Our difficulty rose from the fact that Lilith did not appear ever to have been married. The fierce man was not her husband. So far as we could discover from the gipsy children she had never had a husband. Then she couldn’t have had a honeymoon: and, if she had never had a honeymoon, she oughtn’t to have had a baby. Our ideas on the question of birth were utterly disorganized. There was only one explanation—that we had been misinformed by Hetty and people could have babies by themselves. The effect of this conjecture on Ruthita was revolutionizing: it made our honeymoon unnecessary and me entirely dispensable. She had only been persuaded to elope for the sake of exchanging dolls for babies, and now it appeared she could have them and her mother as well. I had no argument left with which to combat her desire to return. There was only one way of arriving at the truth on the subject, and that was by inquiring of Lilith. Neither of us would have done this for worlds after the way she had cried when we found that her back was no longer bulgy.
The days grew shorter and the forest became bare. We could see long distances now between the tree-trunks; it was as though the branches had fisted their hands. Holiday-seekers came to the cocoanut-shies less and less. The fierce man, whom we learnt to call G’liath, had hardly any bruises on his face and hands; he dodged the balls easily. The few chance throwers had no crowd to make them reckless; they shied singly now and not in showers. The gaudily dressed woman lost her hoarseness. She no longer had to shout night and morning, “Two shies a penny. Two shies a penny. Every ball ’its a cocoanut. Down she goes,” etc. Why should she? There was no one to get excited—nobody to pay her pennies. Instead she sat by the fire, weaving wicker-baskets, watching the pearl-colored smoke go up in whiffs and eddies. Though she seldom said anything, she had taken a fancy to Ruthita and would spread for her a corner of her skirt that she might sit beside her while she worked.
Every day as Ruthita became more sure that she could have a baby all by herself, she wanted to go home more badly. One evening the gaudy woman found her crying. She told G’liath that next morning he must harness in his little moke and go for Mr. Spreckles. I did not hear her tell him, but Lilith told me when she came to lie down beside me in the tent.
That night she held me closer. I could feel her heart thumping. She roused me continually in the darkness to ask me needless questions. Whether I would ever forget her. “No.” Whether I would like to see her again. “Yes.” Whether I would like to become a gipsy. “Wouldn’t I!”
She was silent for so long that I began to drowse. I awoke with the tightening of her arms about me. When I lifted my face to hers, she commenced to kiss me passionately. “You shall. You shall,” she said. “I’ll make a gipsy of you, so you’ll always remember and never be content with their closed-in world. They’ll take you from me to-morrow, but your heart will never be theirs.”
I didn’t understand, but at dawn she showed me. Frost lay on the ground. Every little blade of grass was stiff and sword-like. It was as though the hair of the world had turned white from shock and was standing on end.
She led me away through the tall stark forest to a glade so secret that no one could observe us. At first I thought she was escaping with me, carrying me off to her gipsy-land. But she made me kneel down beside her. As the sun wheeled above the cold horizon she snatched a little knife from beneath her dress, and pricked her wrist and mine so that they bled. She held her hand beneath our wrists, catching the blood in her palm so it mingled. Then she let it drip through her fingers, making scarlet stains on the frosted turf.
As it fell she spoke to the grass and the trees and the air, telling them that I was hers and, because our blood was mingled, was one of them. “Whenever he hears your voice,” she said, “it will speak to him of me. If he goes where you do not grow, oh grass, then the trees shall call him back. If he goes where you do not grow, oh trees, then the wind shall tell him. His hand shall be as ours, against the works of men. When he hears your voice, oh grass, or your voice, oh trees, or your voice, oh winds, he shall turn his face from walls and come back. Though he leaves us he shall always hear us calling, for he is ours!”
And it seemed to me when her voice had ceased that I heard the grass nodding its head. From the dawn came a breath of wind, sweeping through the trees, stooping their leafless branches as though they gave assent.
That morning for the first time we had breakfast in the caravan. After breakfast Lilith and I went out together, hand-in-hand. G’liath was harnessing in his donkey. We watched him drive down the road and vanish. I did not want to go back and he knew it; he looked ashamed of himself. The country was bitter and cheerless; it had an atmosphere of parting—everything was withered. Birds huddled close on branches with ruffled feathers. Fields were harsh and cracked.
“Little brother,” Lilith said, “one day you will be a man. Until then they will keep you prisoner and try to make you forget all the things which you and I have learnt. They will tell you that the trees have no voices: that it is only the wind that stirs them. They will tell you that rivers are only water flowing. But remember that out in the open they are all waiting for you, and that the other people who have no bodies are there.”
I thought of the picture I had seen in the pool and knew what she meant.
Towards evening we returned to the camp. The melancholy autumn twilight lay about us; in the heart of it the fire burnt red. We sat round it in silence, watching the hard white road through the trees and listening for G’liath coming back. “Ruthita,” I whispered, “do you think we shall find the little house?”
She shook her head doubtfully, as if she scarcely cared. She was thinking of the lighted room, perhaps, and the long white bed, where her mother was eagerly awaiting her.
Coming up the road we heard a sharp tap-a-tap. Dancing in and out the tree-trunks we saw the golden eyes of carriage-lamps. The dog-cart and Dollie came into sight and halted; my Uncle Obad jumped out. He had come alone to fetch us; I was glad of that. I could explain things to him so much more easily than to my father, and he was sure to understand. Catching sight of me by the fire, he ran forward and lifted me up in his arms. All he could say was, “Well, well, well!” His face was beaming; every little wrinkle in his face was trembling. He hugged me so tightly that he took away my breath. I didn’t get a chance to speak until he had set me down. Then I said, “Uncle Obad, this is Ruthita.”
He held out his hand to her gravely. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Dante Cardover,” he said. Then, because she was such a little girl and her face looked so thin and wistful, he took her in his arms and hugged her as well.
Suddenly the gaudy woman remembered that we were still clothed in our gipsy rags. She wanted to take us into the caravan and dress us, but Uncle Obad wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted on carrying us off to Pope Lane just as we were.
It was night when he said, “Dollie is rested; we must be going.” When we rose to our feet to say good-by, Lilith was not there. He lifted us into the dog-cart and wrapped rugs about our shoulders to make us cozy. Then he jumped in beside us and we had our last look at the camp. The gaudy woman was standing up by the fire with her children huddled about her skirts. I could see the gleam of her ear-rings shaking, the lighted window of the caravan in the background, and the lurcher sneaking in and out the shadows. G’liath and his donkey travelled slowly; they had not returned when we left. Uncle Obad cracked his whip; we started forward across the turf and were soon bowling between the dim skeletons of trees down the hard road homeward.
Ruthita crept closer to me. She may have been cold and she may have been lonely, but I think she was just feeling how flat things were now our great adventure was over. She had feared it while it lasted; now, womanlike, she was wishing that it was not quite ended. Every now and then she drew her fingers across my face—a little love-trick she had. She leant her head against my shoulder and was soon sleeping soundly.
“Old chap, why did you do it?”
I looked up at my uncle; I could not see his face because of the darkness. His voice was very solemn and kindly.
“We couldn’t see anything in the garden,” I said; “we wanted to find where the pigeons went.”
“But why did you take the little girl?”
I hesitated about telling. It might spoil what was left of the magic; I still had a faint hope that by the time we reached Pope Lane I might have grown into a man. And then, in telling, I might do Hetty a damage. Instead of answering, I asked him a question.
“When you’re married, you get everything you want, don’t you?”
“That depends on what you call everything, Dante.”
“Well, money, and a house, and a pony, and babies.”
“Not always.”
He spoke softly. Then I knew I oughtn’t to have mentioned babies, because, like Lilith, he hadn’t any.
“It wasn’t I who wanted the babies,” I explained hurriedly; “that was Ruthie. She wanted them instead of dolls to play with. I wanted to be allowed to go in and out, like the children with the magic carpet.”
He knew at once what I meant. “You didn’t want to have grown people always bothering, telling you to do this and not to do that, and locking doors behind you? You wanted always to be free and jolly, like you and I are together? And you thought that you could be like that if you were married?”
He slowed Dollie down to a walk.
“Little man, you’ve been trying to get just what everyone’s reaching after. When you’re a boy you say, ‘I’ll have it when I’m a man.’ When you’re a man you say, ‘I’ll have it when I’m married.’ You’ve been searching for perpetual happiness. You’ll never have it in this world, Dante. And don’t you see why you’ll never have it? You hurt other people in trying to get it. Your father and Ruthita’s mother, all of us have been very anxious. I’ve often been tempted to run away myself because I’m not much use to anybody. But that would mean leaving someone I love; so I’ve had to stop on and face it out. You ran away to enjoy yourself, and other people were sorry. Other people always have to be sorry when a fellow does that.”
He shook the reins over Dollie and she commenced to trot again. Presently he said, half-speaking to himself, “There’s a better word than happiness, and that’s duty. If a chap does his duty the best he can, he makes other folk happy. Then he finds his own happiness by accident, within himself. I’m a queer one to be talking—I’m not awfully successful. I’ve run away a little. But you must do better. And if you can’t bear things, just imagine. What’s the difference between the things you really have and the things you pretend? Imagination is the magic carpet; you can pretend yourself anything and anywhere. If you’ve learnt that secret, they can lock all the doors—it won’t matter. I can’t put it plainer; there are things that it isn’t right for you to understand—this business about marriage. You’ll know when you’re a man. Now promise that you’ll never run away again.”
I promised.
When we got to Pope Lane it must have been very late. I suppose I fell asleep on the journey, for I remember nothing more until the light flashed in my eyes and my father was bending over me. Ruthita wasn’t there; she had been left already at her mother’s house. My father had me in his arms. He was standing in the hall. The door was wide open and my uncle was going down the steps, calling “Good-night” as he went. Behind me I could see Hetty peering over the banisters in a gray flannel nightdress—her night-dresses were all of gray flannel. When my father turned, she scuttled away like a frightened rabbit.
He carried me into his study—just as I was, clad in my gipsy rags—and closed the door behind him with a slam. His lamp on the table was turned low. The floor was littered with books and papers. A fire in the hearth was burning brightly. He drew up an easy-chair to the blaze and sat down, still holding me to him. I was always timid with my father, especially when we were alone together. This time I was very conscious of wrong-doing. I waited to hear him say something; but he remained silent, staring into the fire. The lamp flickered lower and lower, and went out.
“Father, I—I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Then I saw that he was crying. His tears splashed down. His face had lost that stem look. I was shaken by his sobs as he held me.
“Little son. My little son,” he whispered.
The room grew fainter. The pictures on the walls became shadowy. My eyes opened and closed. When I awoke the gray light of morning was stealing in at the window. The fire had fallen away in ashes. The air was chilly. My father was sitting in the easy-chair, his head sunk forward—but his arms were still about me.