CHAPTER II
Ernest Henry
I
Young Ernest Henry Wilberforce, who had only yesterday achieved his second birthday, watched, with a speculative eye, his nurse. He was seated on the floor with his back to the high window that was flaming now with the light of the dying sun; his nurse was by the fire, her head, shadowed huge and fantastic on the wall, nodded and nodded and nodded. Ernest Henry was, in figure, stocky and square, with a head round, hard, and covered with yellow curls; rather light and cold blue eyes and a chin of no mean degree were further possessions. He was wearing a white blouse, a white skirt, white socks and shoes; his legs were fat and bulged above his socks; his cold blue eyes never moved from his nurse's broad back.
He knew that, in a very short time, disturbance would begin. He knew that doors would open and shut, that there would be movement, strange noises, then an attack upon himself, ultimately a removal of him to another place, a stripping off him of his blouse, his skirt, his socks and his shoes, a loathsome and strangely useless application of soap and water—it was only, of course, in later years that he learned the names of those abominable articles—and, finally, finally darkness. All this he felt hovering very close at hand; one nod too many of his nurse's head, and up she would start, off she would go, off he would go.... He watched her and stroked very softly his warm, fat calf.
It was a fine, spacious room that he inhabited. The ceiling—very, very far away—was white and glimmering with shadowy spaces of gold flung by the sun across the breast of it. The wallpaper was dark-red, and there were many coloured pictures of ships and dogs and snowy Christmases, and swans eating from the hands of beautiful little girls, and one garden with roses and peacocks and a tumbling fountain. To Ernest Henry these were simply splashes of colour, and colour, moreover, scarcely so convincing as the bright blue screen by the fire, or the golden brown rug by the door; but he was dimly aware that, as the days passed, so did he find more and more to consider in the shapes and sizes between the deep black frames.... There might, after all, be something in it.
But it was not the pictures that he was now considering.
Before his nurse's descent upon him he was determined that he would walk—not crawl, but walk in his socks and shoes—from his place by the window to the blue screen by the fire. There had been days, and those not so long ago, when so hazardous an Odyssey had seemed the vainest of Blue Moon ambitions; it had once been the only rule of existence to sprawl and roll and sprawl again; but gradually some further force had stirred his limbs. It was a finer thing to be upright; there was a finer view, a more lordly sense of possession could be summoned to one's command. That, then, once decided, upright one must be and upright, with many sudden and alarming collapses, Ernest Henry was.
He had marked out, from the first, the distance from the wall to the blue screen as a very decent distance. There was, half-way, a large rocking-chair that would be either a danger or a deliverance, as Fate should have it. Save for this, it was, right across the brown, rose-strewn carpet, naked country. Truly a perilous business. As he sat there and looked at it, his heart a little misgave him; in this strange, new world into which he had been so roughly hustled, amongst a horde of alarming and painful occurrences, he had discovered nothing so disconcerting as that sudden giving of the knees, that rising of the floor to meet you, the collapse, the pain, and above all the disgrace. Moreover, let him fail now, and it meant, in short,—banishment—banishment and then darkness. There were risks. It was the most perilous thing that, in this new country, he had yet attempted, but attempt it he would.... He was as obstinate as his chin could make him.
With his blue eyes still cautiously upon his nurse's shadow he raised himself very softly, his fat hand pressed against the wall, his mouth tightly closed, and from between his teeth there issued the most distant relation of that sound that the traditional ostler makes when he is cleaning down a horse. His knees quivered, straightened; he was up. Far away in the long, long distance were piled the toys that yesterday's birthday had given him. They did not, as yet, mean anything to him at all. One day, perhaps when he had torn the dolls limb from limb, twisted the railways until they stood end upon end in sheer horror, disembowelled the bears and golliwogs so that they screamed again, he might have some personal feeling for them. At present there they lay in shining impersonal newness, and there for Ernest Henry they might lie for ever.
For an instant, his hand against the wall, he was straight and motionless; then he took his hand away, and his journey began. At the first movement a strange, an amazing glory filled him. From the instant, two years ago, of his first arrival he had been disturbed by an irritating sense of inadequacy; he had been sent, it seemed, into this new and tiresome condition of things without any fitting provisions for his real needs. Demands were always made upon him that were, in the absurd lack of ways and means, impossible of fulfilment. But now, at last, he was using the world as it should be used.... He was fine, he was free, he was absolutely master. His legs might shake, his body lurch from side to side, his breath come in agitating gasps and whistles; the wall was now far behind him, the screen most wonderfully near, the rocking-chair almost within his grasp. Great and mighty is Ernest Henry Wilberforce, dazzling and again dazzling the lighted avenues opening now before him; there is nothing, nothing, from the rendings of the toys to the deliberate defiance of his nurse and all those in authority over him, that he shall not now perform.... With a cry, with a wild wave of the arms, with a sickening foretaste of the bump with which the gay brown carpet would mark him, he was down, the Fates were upon him—the disturbance, the disrobing, the darkness. Nevertheless, even as he was carried, sobbing, into the farther room, there went with him a consciousness that life would never again be quite the dull, purposeless, monotonous thing that it had hitherto been.
II
After a long time he was alone. About him the room, save for the yellow night-light above his head, was dark, humped with shadows, with grey pools of light near the windows, and a golden bar that some lamp beyond the house flung upon the wall. Ernest Henry lay and, now and again, cautiously felt the bump on his forehead; there was butter on the bump, and an interesting confusion and pain and importance round and about it. Ernest Henry's eyes sought the golden bar, and then, lingering there, looked back upon the recent adventure. He had walked; yes, he had walked. This would, indeed, be something to tell his Friend.
His friend, he knew, would be very shortly with him. It was not every night that he came, but always, before his coming, Ernest Henry knew of his approach—knew by the happy sense of comfort that stole softly about him, knew by the dismissal of all those fears and shapes and terrors that, otherwise, so easily beset him. He sucked his thumb now, and felt his bump, and stared at the ceiling and knew that he would come. During the first months after Ernest Henry's arrival on this planet his friend was never absent from him at all, was always there, drawing through his fingers the threads of the old happy life and the new alarming one, mingling them so that the transition from the one to the other might not be too sharp—reassuring, comforting, consoling. Then there had been hours when he had withdrawn himself, and that earlier world had grown a little vaguer, a little more remote, and certain things, certain foods and smells and sounds had taken their place within the circle of realised facts. Then it had come to be that the friend only came at night, came at that moment when the nurse had gone, when the room was dark, and the possible beasts—the first beast, the second beast, and the third beast—began to creep amongst those cool, grey shadows in the hollow of the room. He always came then, was there with his arm about Ernest Henry, his great body, his dark beard, his large, firm hands—all so reassuring that the beasts might do the worst, and nothing could come of it. He brought with him, indeed, so much more than himself—brought a whole world of recollected wonders, of all that other time when Ernest Henry had other things to do, other disciplines, other triumphs, other defeats, and other glories. Of late his memory of the other time had been untrustworthy. Things during the day-time would remind him, but would remind him, nevertheless, with a strange mingling of the world at present about him, so that he was not sure of his visions. But when his friend was with him the memories were real enough, and it was the nurse, the fire, the red wallpaper, the smell of toast, the taste of warm milk, that were faint and shadowy.
His friend was there, just as always, suddenly sitting there on the bed with his arm round Ernest Henry's body, his dark beard just tickling Ernest Henry's neck, his hand tight about Ernest Henry's hand. They told one another things in the old way without tiresome words and sounds; but, for the benefit of those who are unfortunately too aged to remember that old and pleasant intercourse, one must make use of the English language. Ernest Henry displayed his bump, and explained its origin; and then, even as he did so, was aware that the reality of the bump made the other world just a little less real. He was proud that he had walked and stood up, and had been the master of his circumstance; but just because he had done so he was aware that his friend was a little, a very little farther away to-night than he had ever been before.
"Well, I'm very glad that you're going to stand on your own, because you'll have to. I'm going to leave you now—leave you for longer, far longer than I've ever left you before."
"Leave me?"
"Yes. I shan't always be with you; indeed, later on you won't want me. Then you'll forget me, and at last you won't even believe that I ever existed—until, at the end of it all, I come to take you away. Then it will all come back to you."
"Oh, but that's absurd!" Ernest Henry said confidently. Nevertheless, in his heart he knew that, during the day-time, other things did more and more compel his attention. There were long stretches during the day-time now when he forgot his friend.
"After your second birthday I always leave you more to yourselves. I shall go now for quite a time, and you'll see that when the old feeling comes, and you know that I'm coming back, you'll be quite startled and surprised that you'd got on so well without me. Of course, some of you want me more than others do, and with some of you I stay quite late in life. There are one or two I never leave at all. But you're not like that; you'll get on quite well without me."
"Oh, no, I shan't," said Ernest Henry, and he clung very tightly and was most affectionate. But he suddenly put his fingers to his bump, felt the butter, and his chin shot up with self-satisfaction.
"To-morrow I'll get ever so much farther," he said.
"You'll behave, and not mind the beasts or the creatures?" his friend said. "You must remember that it's not the slightest use to call for me. You're on your own. Think of me, though. Don't forget me altogether. And don't forget all the other world in your new discoveries. Look out of the window sometimes. That will remind you more than anything."
He had kissed him, had put his hand for a moment on Ernest Henry's curls, and was gone. Ernest Henry, his thumb in his mouth, was fast asleep.
III
Suddenly, with a wild, agonising clutch at the heart, he was awake. He was up in bed, his hands, clammy and hot, pressed together, his eyes staring, his mouth dry. The yellow night-light was there, the bars of gold upon the walls, the cool, grey shadows, the white square of the window; but there, surely, also, were the beasts. He knew that they were there—one crouching right away there in the shadow, all black, damp; one crawling, blacker and damper, across the floor; one—yes, beyond question—one, the blackest and cruellest of them all, there beneath the bed. The bed seemed to heave, the room flamed with terror. He thought of his friend; on other nights he had invoked him, and instantly there had been assurance and comfort. Now that was of no avail; his friend would not come. He was utterly alone. Panic drove him; he thought that there, on the farther side of the bed, claws and a black arm appeared. He screamed and screamed and screamed.
The door was flung open, there were lights, his nurse appeared. He was lying down now, his face towards the wall, and only dry, hard little sobs came from him. Her large red hand was upon his shoulder, but brought no comfort with it. Of what use was she against the three beasts? A poor creature.... He was ashamed that he should cry before her. He bit his lip.
"Dreaming, I suppose, sir," she said to some one behind her. Another figure came forward. Some one sat down on the edge of the bed, put his arm round Ernest Henry's body and drew him towards him. For one wild moment Ernest Henry fancied that his friend had, after all, returned. But no. He knew that these were the conditions of this world, not of that other. When he crept close to his friend he was caught up into a soft, rosy comfort, was conscious of nothing except ease and rest. Here there were knobs and hard little buttons, and at first his head was pressed against a cold, slippery surface that hurt. Nevertheless, the pressure was pleasant and comforting. A warm hand stroked his hair. He liked it, jerked his head up, and hit his new friend's chin.
"Oh, damn!" he heard quite clearly. This was a new sound to Ernest Henry; but just now he was interested in sounds, and had learnt lately quite a number. This was a soft, pleasant, easy sound. He liked it.
And so, with it echoing in his head, his curly head against his father's shoulder, the bump glistening in the candle-light, the beasts defeated and derided, he tumbled into sleep.
IV
A pleasant sight at breakfast was Ernest Henry, with his yellow curls gleaming from his bath, his bib tied firmly under his determined chin, his fat fingers clutching a large spoon, his body barricaded into a high chair, his heels swinging and kicking and swinging again. Very fine, too, was the nursery on a sunny morning—the fire crackling, the roses on the brown carpet as lively as though they were real, and the whole place glittering, glowing with size and cleanliness and vigour. In the air was the crackling smell of toast and bacon, in a glass dish was strawberry jam, through the half-open window came all the fun of the Square—the sparrows, the carts, the motor-cars, the bells, and horses.... Oh, a fine morning was fine indeed!
Ernest Henry, deep in the business of conveying securely his bread and milk from the bowl—a beautiful bowl with red robins all round the outside of it—to his mouth, laughed at the three beasts. Let them show themselves here in the sunlight, and they'd see what they'd get. Let them only dare!
He surveyed, with pleased anticipation, the probable progress of his day. He glanced at the pile of toys in the farther corner of the room, and thought to himself that he might, after all, find some diversion there. Yesterday they had seemed disappointing; to-day in the glow of the sun they suggested, adventure. Then he looked towards that stretch of country—that wall-to-screen marathon—and, with an eye upon his nurse, meditated a further attempt. He put down his spoon, and felt his bump. It was better; perchance there would be two bumps by the evening. And then, suddenly, he remembered.... He felt again the terror, saw the lights and his nurse, then that new friend.... He pondered, lifted his spoon, waved it in the air; and then smiling with the happy recovery of a pleasant, friendly sound, repeated half to himself, half to his nurse: "Damn! Damn! Damn!"
That began for him the difficulties of his day. He was hustled, shaken; words, words, words were poured down upon him. He understood that, in some strange, unexpected, bewildering fashion he had done wrong. There was nothing more puzzling in his present surroundings than that amazingly sudden transition from serenity to danger. Here one was, warm with food, bathed in sunlight, with a fine, ripe day in front of one.... Then the mere murmur of a sound, and all was tragedy.
He hated his toys, his nurse, his food, his world; he sat in a corner of the room and glowered.... How was he to know? If, under direct encouragement, he could be induced to say "dada," or "horse," or "twain," he received nothing but applause and, often enough, reward. Yet, let him make use of that pleasant new sound that he had learnt, and he was in disgrace. Upon this day, more than any other in his young life, he ached, he longed for some explanation. Then, sitting there in his corner, there came to him a discovery, the force of which was never, throughout all his later life, to leave him. He had been deserted by his friend. His last link with that other life was broken. He was here, planted in the strangest of strange places, with nothing whatever to help him. He was alone; he must fight for his own hand. He would—from that moment, seated there beneath the window, Ernest Henry Wilberforce challenged the terrors of this world, and found them sawdust—he would say "damn" as often as he pleased. "Damn, damn, damn, damn," he whispered, and marked again, with meditative eye, the space from wall to screen.
After this, greatly cheered, he bethought him of the Square. Last night his friend had said to him that when he wished to think of him, and go back for a time to the other world, a peep into the Square would assist him. He clambered up on to the window-seat, caught behind him those sounds, "Now, Master Ernest," which he now definitely connected with condemnation and disapproval, shook his curls in defiance, and pressed his nose to the glass. The Square was a dazzling sight. He had not as yet names for any of the things that he saw there, nor, when he went out on his magnificent daily progress in his perambulator did he associate the things that he found immediately around him with the things that he saw from his lofty window; but, with every absorbed gaze they stood more securely before him, and were fixed ever more firmly in his memory.
This was a Square with fine, white, lofty houses, and in the houses were an infinite number of windows, sometimes gay and sometimes glittering. In the middle of the Square was a garden, and in the middle of the garden, very clearly visible from Ernest Henry's window, was a fountain. It was this fountain, always tossing and leaping, that gave Ernest Henry the key to his memories. Gazing at it he had no difficulty at all to find himself back in the old life. Even now, although only two years had passed, it was difficult not to reveal his old experiences by means of terms of his new discoveries. He thought, for instance, of the fountain as a door that led into the country whose citizen he had once been, and that country he saw now in terms of doors and passages and rooms and windows, whereas, in reality, it had been quite otherwise.
But now, perched up there on the window-sill, he felt that if he could only bring the fountain in with him out of the Square into his nursery, he would have the key to both existences. He wanted to understand—to understand what was the relation between his friend who had left last night, why he might say "dada," but mustn't say "damn," why, finally, he was here at all. He did not consciously consider these things; his brain was only very slightly, as yet, concerned in his discoveries; but, like a flowing river, beneath his movements and actions, the interplay of his two existences drove him on through, his adventure.
There were, of course, many other things in the Square besides the fountain. There was, at the farther corner, just out of the Square, but quite visible from Ernest Henry's window, a fruit-shop with coloured fruit piled high on the boards outside the windows. Indeed, that side street, of which one could only catch this glimpse, promised to be most wonderful always; when evening came a golden haze hovered round and about it. In the garden itself there were often many children, and for an hour every afternoon Ernest Henry might be found amongst them. There were two statues in the Square—one of a gentleman in a beard and a frock-coat, the other of a soldier riding very finely upon a restless horse; but Ernest Henry was not, as yet, old enough to realise the meaning and importance of these heroes.
Outside the Square there were many dogs, and even now as he looked down from his window he could see a number of them, black and brown and white.
The trees trembled in a little breeze, the fountain flashed in the sun, somewhere a barrel-organ was playing.... Ernest Henry gave a little sigh, of satisfaction.
He was back! He was back! He was slipping, slipping into distance through the window into the street, under the fountain, its glittering arms had caught him; he was up, the door was before him, he had the key.
"Time for you to put your things on, Master Ernest. And 'ow you've dirtied your knees! There! Look!"
He shook himself, clambered down from the window, gave his nurse what she described as "One of his old, old looks. Might be eighty when he's like that.... They're all like it when they're young."
With a sigh he translated himself back into this new, tiresome existence.
V
But after that morning things were never again quite the same. He gave himself up deliberately to the new life.
With that serious devotion towards anything likely to be of real practical value to him that was, in his later years, never to fail him, he attacked this business of "words." He discovered that if he made certain sounds when certain things were said to him he provoked instant applause. He liked popularity; he liked the rewards that popularity brought him. He acquired a formula that amounted practically to "Wash dat?" And whenever he saw anything new he produced his question. He learnt with amazing rapidity. He was, his nurse repeatedly told his father, "a most remarkable child."
It could not truthfully be said that during these weeks he forgot his friend altogether. There were still the dark hours at night when he longed for him, and once or twice he had cried aloud for him. But slowly that slipped away. He did not look often now at the fountain.
There were times when his friend was almost there. One evening, kneeling on the floor before the fire, arranging shining soldiers in a row, he was aware of something that made him sharply pause and raise his head. He was, for the moment, alone in the room that was glowing and quivering now in the firelight. The faint stir and crackle of the fire, the rich flaming colour that rose and fell against the white ceiling might have been enough to make him wonder. But there was also the scent of a clump of blue hyacinths standing in shadow by the darkened window, and this scent caught him, even as the fountain had caught him, caught him with the stillness, the leaping fire, the twisted sense of romantic splendours that came, like some magician's smoke and flame, up to his very heart and brain. He did not turn his head, but behind him he was sure, there on the golden-brown rug, his friend was standing, watching him with his smiling eyes, his dark beard; he would be ready, at the least movement, to catch him up and hold him. Swiftly, Ernest Henry turned. There was no one there.
But those moments were few now; real people were intervening. He had no mother, and this was doubtless the reason why his nurse darkly addressed him as "Poor Lamb" on many occasions; but he was, of course, at present unaware of his misfortune. He had an aunt, and of this lady he was aware only too vividly. She was long and thin and black, and he would not have disliked her so cordially, perhaps, had he not from the very first been aware of the sharpness of her nose when she kissed him. Her nose hurt him, and so he hated her. But, as he grew, he discovered that this hatred was well-founded. Miss Wilberforce had not a happy way with children; she was nervous when she should have been bold, and secret when she should have been honesty itself. When Ernest Henry was the merest atom in a cradle, he discovered that she was afraid of him; he hated the shiny stuff of her dress. She wore a gold chain that—when you pulled it—snapped and hit your fingers. There were sharp pins at the back of her dress. He hated her; he was not afraid of her, and yet on that critical night when his friend told him of his departure, it was the fear of being left alone with the black cold shiny thing that troubled him most; she bore of all the daylight things the closest resemblance to the three beasts.
There was, of course, his nurse, and a great deal of his time was spent in her company; but she had strangely little connection with his main problem of the relation of this, his present world, to that, his preceding one. She was there to answer questions, to issue commands, to forbid. She had the key to various cupboards—to the cupboard with pretty cups and jam and sugar, to the cupboard with ugly things that tasted horrible, things that he resisted by instinct long before they arrived under his nose. She also had certain sounds, of which she made invariable use on all occasions. One was, "Now, Master Ernest!" Another: "Mind-what-you're-about-now!" And, at his "Wash dat!" always "Oh-bother-the-boy!" She was large and square to look upon, very often pins were in her mouth, and the slippers that she wore within doors often clipclapped upon the carpet. But she was not a person; she had nothing to do with his progress.
The person who had to do with it was, of course, his father. That night when his friend had left him had been, indeed, a crisis, because it was on that night that his father had come to him. It was not that he had not been aware of his father before, but he had been aware of him only as he had been aware of light and heat and food. Now it had become a definite wonder as to whether this new friend had been sent to take the place of the old one. Certainly the new friend had very little to do with all that old life of which the fountain was the door. He belonged, most definitely, to the new one, and everything about him—the delightfully mysterious tick of his gold watch, the solid, firm grasp of his hand, the sure security of his shoulder upon which Ernest Henry now gloriously rode—these things were of this world and none other.
It was a different relationship, this, from any other that Ernest Henry had ever known, but there was no doubt at all about its pleasant flavour. Just as in other days he had watched for his friend's appearance, so now he waited for that evening hour that always brought his father. The door would open, the square, set figure would appear.... Very pleasant, indeed. Meanwhile Ernest Henry was instructed that the right thing to say on his father's appearance was "Dada."
But he knew better. His father's name was really "Damn."
VI
The days and weeks passed. There had been no sign of his friend.... Then the crisis came.
That old wall-to-screen marathon had been achieved, and so contemptuously banished. There was now the great business of marching without aid from one end of the room to the other. This was a long business, and always hitherto somewhere about the middle of it Ernest Henry had sat down suddenly, pretending, even to himself, that his shoe hurt, or that he was bored with the game, and would prefer some other.
There came, then, a beautiful spring evening. The long low evening sun flooded the room, and somewhere a bell was calling Christian people to their prayers, and somewhere else the old man with the harp, who always came round the Square once every week, was making beautiful music.
Ernest Henry's father had taken the nurse's place for an hour, and was reading a Globe with absorbed attention by the window; Mr. Wilberforce, senior, was one of London's most famous barristers, and the Globe on this particular afternoon had a great deal to say about this able man's cleverness. Ernest Henry watched his father, watched the light, heard the bell and the harp, felt that the hour was ripe for his attempt.
He started, and, even as he did so, was aware that, after he had succeeded in this great adventure, things—that is, life—would never be quite the same again. He knew by now every stage of the first half of his journey. The first instalment was defined by that picture of the garden and the roses and the peacocks; the second by the beginning of the square brown nursery table; and here there was always a swift and very testing temptation to cling, with a sticky hand, to the hard and shining corner. The third division was the end of the nursery table where one was again tempted to give the corner a final clutch before passing forth into the void. After this there was nothing, no rest, no possible harbour until the end.
Off Ernest Henry started. He could see his father, there in the long distance, busied with his paper; he could see the nursery table, with bright-blue and red reels of cotton that nurse had left there; he could see a discarded railway engine that lay gaping there half-way across, ready to catch and trip him if he were not careful. His eyes were like saucers, the hissing noise came from between his teeth, his forehead frowned. He passed the peacock, he flung contemptuously aside the proffered corner of the table; he passed, as an Atlantic liner passes the Eddystone, the table's other end; he was on the last stretch.
Then suddenly he paused. He lifted his head, caught with his eye a pink, round cloud that sailed against the evening blue beyond the window, heard the harpist, heard his father turn and exclaim, as he saw him.
He knew, as he stood there, that at last the moment had come. His friend had returned.
All the room was buzzing with it. The dolls fell in a neglected heap, the train on the carpet, the fire behind the fender, the reels of cotton that were on the table—they all knew it.
His friend had returned.
His impulse was, there and then, to sit down.
His friend was whispering: "Come along!... Come along!... Come along!" He knew that, on his surrender, his father would make sounds like, "Well, old man, tired, eh? Bed, I suggest." He knew that bed would follow. Then darkness, then his friend.
For an instant there was fierce battle between the old forces and the new. Then, with his eyes upon his father, resuming that hiss that is proper only to ostlers, he continued his march.
He reached the wall. He caught his father's leg. He was raised on to his father's lap, was kissed, was for a moment triumphant; then suddenly burst into tears.
"Why, old man, what's the matter?"
But Ernest Henry could not explain. Had he but known it he had, in that rejection of his friend, completed the first stage of his "Pilgrimage from this world to the next."
CHAPTER III
Angelina
I
Angelina Braid, on the morning of her third birthday, woke very early. It would be too much to say that she knew it was her birthday, but she awoke, excited. She looked at the glimmering room, heard the sparrows beyond her windows, heard the snoring of her nurse in the large bed opposite her own, and lay very still, with her heart thumping like anything. She made no noise, however, because it was not her way to make a noise. Angelina Braid was the quietest little girl in all the Square. "You'd never meet one nigher a mouse in a week of Sundays," said her nurse, who was a "gay one" and liked life.
It was not, however, entirely Angelina's fault that she took life quietly; in 21 March Square, it was exceedingly difficult to do anything else. Angelina's parents were in India, and she was not conscious, very acutely, of their existence. Every morning and evening she prayed, "God bless mother and father in India," but then she was not very acutely conscious of God either, and so her mind was apt to wander during her prayers.
She lived with her two aunts—Miss Emmy Braid and Miss Violet Braid—in the smallest house in the Square. So slim was No. 21, and so ruthlessly squeezed between the opulent No. 20 and the stout ruddy-faced No. 22, that it made one quite breathless to look at it; it was exactly as though an old maid, driven by suffragette wildness, had been arrested by two of the finest possible policemen, and carried off into custody. Very little of any kind of wildness was there about the Misses Braid. They were slim, neat women, whose rather yellow faces had the flat, squashed look of lawn grass after a garden roller has passed over it. They believed in God according to the Reverend Stephen Hunt, of St. Matthew-in-the-Crescent—the church round the corner—but in no other kind of God whatever. They were not rich, and they were not poor; they went once a week—Fridays—to visit the poor of St. Matthew's, and found the poor of St. Matthew's on the whole unappreciative of their efforts, but that made their task the nobler. Their house was dark and musty, and filled with little articles left them by their grand-parents, their parents, and other defunct relations. They had no friendly feeling towards one another, but missed one another when they were separated. They were, both of them, as strong as horses, but very hypochondriacal, and Dr. Armstrong of Mulberry Place made a very pleasant little income out of them.
I have mentioned them at length, because they had a great deal to do with Angelina's quiet behaviour. No. 21 was not a house that welcomed a child's ringing laughter. But, in any case, the Misses Braid were not fond of children, but only took Angelina because they had a soft spot in their dry hearts for their brother Jim, and in any case it would have been difficult to say no.
Their attitude to children was that they could not understand why they did not instantly see things as they, their elders, saw them; but then, on the other hand, if an especially bright child did take a grown-up point of view about anything that was considered "forward" and "conceited," so that it was really very difficult for Angelina.
"It's a pity Jim's got such a dull child," Miss Violet would say. "You never would have expected it."
"What I like about a child," said Miss Emmy, "is a little cheerfulness and natural spirit—not all this moping."
Angelina was not, on the whole, popular.... The aunts had very little idea of making a house cheerful for a child. The room allotted to Angelina as a nursery was at the top of the house, and had once been a servant's bedroom. It possessed two rather grimy windows, a faded brown wallpaper, an old green carpet, and some very stiff, hard chairs. On one wall was a large map of the world, and on the other an old print of Romans sacking Jerusalem, a picture which frightened Angelina every night of her life, when the dark came and the lamp illuminated the writhing limbs, the falling bodies, the tottering walls. From the windows the Square was visible, and at the windows Angelina spent a great deal of her time, but her present nurse—nurses succeeded one another with startling frequency—objected to what she called "window-gazing." "Makes a child dreamy," she said; "lowers her spirits."
Angelina was, naturally, a dreamy child, and no amount of nurses could prevent her being one. She was dreamy because her loneliness forced her to be so, and if her dreams were the most real part of her day to her that was surely the faults of her aunts. But she was not at all a quick child; although to-day was her third birthday she could not talk very well, could not pronounce her r's, and lisped in what her trail of nurses told her was a ridiculous fashion for so big a girl. But, then, she was not really a big girl; her figure was short and stumpy, her features plain and pale with the pallor of her first Indian year. Her eyes were large and black and rather fine.
On this morning she lay in bed, and knew that she was excited because her friend had come the night before and told her that to-day would be an important day. Angelina clung, with a desperate tenacity, to her memories of everything that happened to her before her arrival on this unpleasant planet. Those memories now were growing faint, and they came to her only in flashes, in sudden twists and turns of the scene, as though she were surrounded by curtains and, every now and then, was allowed a peep through. Her friend had been with her continually at first, and, whilst he had been there, the old life had been real and visible enough; but on her second birthday he had told her that it was right now that she should manage by herself. Since then, he had come when she least expected him; sometimes when she had needed him very badly he had not appeared.... She never knew. At any rate, he had said that to-day would be important.... She lay in bed, listening to her nurse's snores, and waited.
II
At breakfast she knew that it was her birthday. There were presents from her aunts—a picture-book and a box of pencils—there was also a mysterious parcel. Angelina could not remember that she had ever had a parcel before, and the excitement of this one must be prolonged. She would not open it, but gazed at it, with her spoon in the air and her mouth wide open.
"Come, Miss Angelina—what a name to give the poor lamb!—get on with your breakfast now, or you'll never have done. Why not open the pretty parcel?"
"No. Do you think it is a twain?"
"Say train—not twain."
"Train."
"No, of course not; not a thing that shape."
"Oh! Do you think it's a bear?"
"Maybe—maybe. Come now, get on with your bread and butter."
"Don't want any more."
"Get down from your chair, then. Say your grace now."
"Thank God nice bweakfast, Amen."
"That's right! Now open it, then."
"No, not now."
"Drat the child! Well, wipe your face, then."
Angelina carried her parcel to the window, and then, after gazing at it for a long time, at last opened it. Her eyes grew wider and wider, her chubby fingers trembled. Nurse undid the wrappings of paper, slowly folded up the sheets, then produced, all naked and unashamed, a large rag doll.
"There! There's a pretty thing for you, Miss 'Lina."
She had her hand about the doll's head, and held her there, suspended.
"Give her me! Give her me!" Angelina rescued her, and, with eyes flaming, the doll laid lengthways in her arms, tottered off to the other corner of the room.
"Well, there's gratitude," said the nurse, "and never asking so much as who it's from."
But nurse, aunts, all the troubles and disappointments of this world had vanished from Angelina's heart and soul. She had seen, at that first glimpse that her nurse had so rudely given her, that here at last, after long, long waiting, was the blessing that she had so desired. She had had other dolls—quite a number of them. Even now Lizzie (without an eye) and Rachel (rather fine in bridesmaid's attire) were leaning their disconsolate backs against the boarding beneath the window seat. There had been, besides Rachel and Lizzie, two Annies, a Mary, a May, a Blackamoor, a Jap, a Sailor, and a Baby in a Bath. They were now as though they had never been; Angelina knew with absolute certainty of soul, with that blending of will and desire, passion, self-sacrifice and absence of humour that must inevitably accompany true love that here was her Fate.
"It's been sent you by your kind Uncle Teny," said nurse. "You'll have to write a nice letter and thank him."
But Angelina knew better. She—a name had not yet been chosen—had been sent to her by her friend.... He had promised her last night that this should be a day of days.
Her aunts, appearing to receive thanks where thanks were due, darkened the doorway.
"Good-morning, mum. Good-morning, mum. Now, Miss 'Lina, thank your kind aunties for their beautiful presents."
She stood up, clutching the doll.
"T'ank you, Auntie Vi'let; t'ank you, Auntie Em'ly—your lovely pwesents."
"That's right, Angelina. I hope you'll use them sensibly. What's that she's holding, nurse?"
"It's a doll Mr. Edward's sent her, mum."
"What a hideous creature! Edward might have chosen something—— Time for her to go out, nurse, I think—now, while the sun's warm."
But she did not hear. She did not know that they had gone. She sat there in a dreamy ecstasy rocking the red-cheeked creature in her arms, seeing, with her black eyes, visions and the beauty of a thousand worlds.
III
The name Rose was given to her. Rose had been kept, as a name, until some one worthy should arrive.... "Wosie Bwaid," a very good name. Her nakedness was clothed first in Rachel's bridesmaid's attire—alas! poor Rachel!—but the lace and finery did not suit those flaming red cheeks and beady black eyes. Rose was, there could be no question, a daughter of the soil; good red blood ran through her stout veins. Tess of the countryside, your laughing, chaffing, arms-akimbo dairymaid; no poor white product of the over-civilised cities. Angelina felt that the satin and lace were wrong; she tore them off, searched in the heaped-up cupboard for poor neglected Annie No. 1, found her, tore from her her red woollen skirt and white blouse, stretched them about Rose's portly body.
"T'ank God for nice Wose, Amen," she said, but she meant, not God, but her friend. He, her friend, had never sent her anything before, and now that Rose had come straight from him, she must have a great deal to tell her about him. Nothing puzzled her more than the distressing fact that she wondered sometimes whether her friend was ever really coming again, whether any of the wonderful things that were happening on every side of her wouldn't suddenly one fine morning vanish altogether, and leave her to a dreary world of nurse, bread and milk, and the Romans sacking Jerusalem. She didn't, of course, put it like that; all that it meant to her was that stupid people and tiresome things were always interfering between herself and real fun. Now it was time to go out, now to go to bed, now to eat, now to be taken downstairs into that horrid room where she couldn't move because things would tumble off the tables so ... all this prevented her own life when she would sit and try, and try, and remember what it was all like once, and wonder why when once things had been so beautiful they were so ugly and disappointing now.
Now Rose had come, and she could talk to Rose about it. "What she sees in that ugly old doll!" said the nurse to the housemaid. "You can take my word, Mary, she'll sit in that window looking down at the gardens, nursing that rag and just say nothing. It fair gives you the creeps ... left too much to herself, the poor child is. As for those old women downstairs, if I 'ad my way—but there! Living's living, and bread and butter's bread and butter!"
But, of course, Angelina's heart was bursting with affection, and there had been, until Rose's arrival, no one upon whom she might bestow it. Rose might seem to the ordinary observer somewhat unresponsive. She sat there, whether it were tea-time, dressing-time, bed-time, always staring in front of her, her mouth closed, her arms, bow-shaped, standing stiffly away from her side, taking, it might seem, but little interest in her mistress's confidences. Did one give her tea she only dribbled at the lip; did one place upon her head a straw hat with red ribbon torn from poor May—once a reigning favourite—she made no effort to keep it upon her head. Jewels and gold could rouse no appreciation from her; she was sunk in a lethargy that her rose-red cheeks most shamefully belied.
But Angelina had the key to her. Angelina understood that confiding silence, appreciated that tactful discretion, adored that complete submission to her will. It was true that her friend had only come once to her now within the space of many, many weeks, but he had sent her Rose. "He's coming soon, Wose—weally soon—to tell us stowies. Bu-ootiful ones."
She sat, gazing down into the Square, and her dreams were longer and longer and longer.
IV
Miss Emily Braid was a softer creature than her sister, and she had, somewhere in her heart, some sort of affection for her niece. She made, now and then, little buccaneering raids upon the nursery, with the intention of arriving at some intimate terms with that strange animal. But she had no gift of ease with children; her attempts at friendliness were viewed by Angelina with the gravest suspicion and won no return. This annoyed Miss Emily, and because she was conscious that she herself was in reality to blame, she attacked Angelina all the more fiercely. "This brooding must be stopped," she said. "Really, it's most unhealthy."
It was quite impossible for her to believe that a child of three could really be interested by golden sunsets, the colours of the fountain that was in the centre of the gardens, the soft, grey haze that clothed the houses on a spring evening; and when, therefore, she saw Angelina gazing at these things, she decided that the child was morbid. Any interest, however, that Angelina may have taken in her aunts before Rose's arrival was now reduced to less than nothing at all.
"That doll that Edward gave the child," said Miss Emily to her sister, "is having a very bad effect on her. Makes her more moody than ever."
"Such a hideous thing!" said Miss Violet. "Well, I shall take it away if I see much more of this nonsense."
It was lucky for Rose meanwhile that she was of a healthy constitution. The meals, the dressing and undressing, the perpetual demands upon her undivided attention, the sudden rousings from her sleep, the swift rockings back into slumber again, the appeals for response, the abuses for indifference, these things would have slain within a week one of her more feeble sisters. But Rose was made of stern stuff, and her rosy cheeks were as rosy, the brightness of her eyes was undimmed. We may believe—and surely many harder demands are made upon our faith—that there did arise a very special relationship between these two. The whole of Angelina's heart was now devoted to Rose's service, Rose's was not devoted to Angelina?... And always Angelina wondered when her friend would return, watched for him in the dusk, awoke in the early mornings and listened for him, searched the Square with its trees and its fountain for his presence.
"Wosie, when did he say he'd come next?" But Rose could not tell. There were times when Rose's impenetrability was, to put it at its mildest, aggravating.
Meanwhile, the situation with Aunt Emily grew serious. Angelina was aware that Aunt Emily disliked Rose, and her mouth now shut very tightly and her eyes glared defiance when she thought of this, but her difference with her aunt went more deeply than this. She had known for a long, long time that both her aunts would stop her "dreaming" if they could. Did she tell them about her friend, about the kind of pictures of which the fountain reminded her, about the vivid, lively memories that the tree with the pink flowers—the almond tree—in the corner of the gardens—you could just see it from the nursery window—called to her mind; she knew that she would be punished—put in the corner, or even sent to bed. She did not think these things out consecutively in her mind, but she knew that the dark room downstairs, the dark passages, the stillness and silence of it all frightened her, and that it was always out of these things that her aunts rose.
At night when she lay in bed with Rosie clasped tightly to her, she whispered endlessly about the gardens, the fountain, the barrel organs, the dogs, the other children in the Square—she had names of her own for all these things—and him, who belonged, of course, to the world outside.... Then her whisper would sink, and she would warn Rose about the rooms downstairs, the dining-room with the black chairs, the soft carpet, and the stuffed birds in glass cases—for these things, too, she had names. Here was the hand of death and destruction, the land of crooked stairs, sudden dark doors, mysterious bells and drippings of water—out of all this her aunts came....
Unfortunately it was just at this moment that Miss Emily Braid decided that it was time to take her niece in hand. "The child's three, Violet, and very backward for her age. Why, Mrs. Mancaster's little girl, who's just Angelina's age, can talk fluently, and is beginning with her letters. We don't want Jim to be disappointed in the child when he comes home next year." It would be difficult to determine how much of this was true; Miss Emily was aggravated and, although she would never have confessed to so trivial a matter, the perpetual worship of Rose—"the ugliest thing you ever saw"—was irritating her. The days followed, then, when Angelina was constantly in her aunt's company, and to neither of them was this companionship pleasant.
"You must ask me questions, child. How are you ever going to learn to talk properly if you don't ask me questions?"
"Yes, auntie."
"What's that over there?"
"Twee."
"Say tree, not twee."
"Tree."
"Now look at me. Put that wretched doll down.... Now.... That's right. Now tell me what you've been doing this morning."
"We had bweakfast—nurse said I—(long pause for breath)—was dood girl; Auntie Vi'let came; I dwew with my pencil."
"Say 'drew,' not 'dwew.'"
"Drew."
All this was very exhausting to Aunt Emily. She was no nearer the child's heart.... Angelina maintained an impenetrable reserve. Old maids have much time amongst the unsatisfied and sterile monotonies of their life—this is only true of some old maids; there are very delightful ones—to devote to fancies and microscopic imitations. It was astonishing now how largely in Miss Emily Braid's life loomed the figure of Rose, the rag doll.
"If it weren't for that wretched doll, I believe one could get some sense out of the child."
"I think it's a mistake, nurse, to let Miss Angelina play with that doll so much."
"Well, mum, it'd be difficult to take it from her now. She's that wrapped in it." ... And so she was.... Rose stood to Angelina for so much more than Rose.
"Oh, Wosie, when will he come again.... P'r'aps never. And I'm forgetting. I can't remember at all about the funny water and the twee with the flowers, and all of it. Wosie, you 'member—Whisper." And Rose offered in her own mysterious, taciturn way the desired comfort.
And then, of course, the crisis arrived. I am sorry about this part of the story. Of all the invasions of Aunt Emily, perhaps none were more strongly resented by Angelina than the appropriation of the afternoon hour in the gardens. Nurse had been an admirable escort because, as a lady of voracious appetite for life with, at the moment, but slender opportunities for satisfying it, she was occupied alertly with the possible vision of any male person driven by a similar desire. Her eye wandered; the hand to which Angelina clung was an abstract, imperceptive hand—Angelina and Rose were free to pursue their own train of fancy—the garden was at their service. But with Aunt Emily how different! Aunt Emily pursued relentlessly her educational tactics. Her thin, damp, black glove gripped Angelina's hand; her eyes (they had a "peering" effect, as though they were always searching for something beyond their actual vision) wandered aimlessly about the garden, looking for educational subjects. And so up and down the paths they went, Angelina trotting, with Rose clasped to her breast, walking just a little faster than she conveniently could.
Miss Emily disliked the gardens, and would have greatly preferred that nurse should have been in charge, but this consciousness of trial inflamed her sense of merit. There came a lovely spring afternoon; the almond tree was in full blossom; a cloud of pink against the green hedge, clumps of daffodils rippled with little shudders of delight, even the statues of "Sir Benjamin Bundle" and "General Sir Robinson Cleaver" seemed to unbend a little from their stiff angularity. There were many babies and nurses, and children laughing and crying and shouting, and a sky of mild forget-me-not blue smiled protectingly upon them. Angelina's eyes were fixed upon the fountain, which flashed and sparkled in the air with a happy freedom that seemed to catch all the life of the garden within its heart. Angelina felt how immensely she and Rose might have enjoyed all this had they been alone. Her eyes gazed longingly at the almond tree; she wished that she might go off on a voyage of discovery for, on this day of all days, did its shadow seem to hold some pressing, intimate invitation. "I shall get back—I shall get back.... He'll come and take me; I'll remember all the old things," she thought. She and Rose—what a time they might have if only—— She glanced up at her aunt.
"Look at that nice little boy, Angelina," Aunt Emily said. "See how good——" But at that very instant that same playful breeze that had been ruffling the daffodils, and sending shimmers through the fountain decided that now was the moment to catch Miss Emily's black hat at one corner, prove to her that the pin that should have fastened it to her hair was loose, and swing the whole affair to one side. Up went her hands; she gave a little cry of dismay.
Instantly, then, Angelina was determined. She did not suppose that her freedom would be for long, nor did she hope to have time to reach the almond tree; but her small, stumpy legs started off down the path almost before she was aware of it. She started, and Rose bumped against her as she ran. She heard behind her cries; she saw in front of her the almond tree, and then coming swiftly towards her a small boy with a hoop.... She stopped, hesitated, and then fell. The golden afternoon, with all its scents and sounds, passed on above her head. She was conscious that a hand was on her shoulder, she was lifted and shaken. Tears trickling down the side of her nose were checked by little points of gravel. She was aware that the little boy with the hoop had stopped and said something. Above her, very large and grim, was her aunt. Some bird on a tree was making a noise like the drawing of a cork. (She had heard her nurse once draw one.) In her heart was utter misery. The gravel hurt her face, the almond tree was farther away than ever; she was captured more completely than she had ever been before.
"Oh, you naughty little girl—you naughty girl," she heard her aunt say; and then, after her, the bird like a cork. She stood there, her mouth tightly shut, the marks of tears drying to muddy lines on her face.
She was dragged off. Aunt Emily was furious at the child's silence; Aunt Emily was also aware that she must have looked what she would call "a pretty figure of fun" with her hat askew, her hair blown "anyway," and a small child of three escaping from her charge as fast as she could go.
Angelina was dragged across the street, in through the squeezed front door, over the dark stairs, up into the nursery. Miss Violet's voice was heard calling, "Is that you, Emily? Tea's been waiting some time."
It was nurse's afternoon out, and the nursery was grimly empty; but through the open, window came the evening sounds of the happy Square. Miss Emily placed Angelina in the middle of the room. "Now say you're sorry, you wicked child!" she exclaimed breathlessly.
"Sowwy," came slowly from Angelina. Then she looked down at her doll.
"Leave that doll alone. Speak as though you were sorry."
"I'm velly sowwy."
"What made you run away like that?" Angelina said nothing. "Come, now! Didn't you know it was very wicked?"
"Yes."
"Well, why did you do it, then?"
"Don't know."
"Don't say 'don't know' like that. You must have had some reason. Don't look at the doll like that. Put the doll down." But this Angelina would not do. She clung to Rose with a ferocious tenacity. I do not think that one must blame Miss Emily for her exasperation. That doll had had a large place in her mind for many weeks. It were as though she, Miss Emily Braid, had been personally, before the world, defied by a rag doll. Her temper, whose control had never been her strongest quality, at the vision of the dirty, obstinate child before her, at the thought of the dancing, mocking gardens behind her, flamed into sudden, trembling rage.
She stepped forward, snatched Rose from Angelina's arms, crossed the room and had pushed the doll, with a fierce, energetic action, as though there was no possible time to be lost, into the fire. She snatched the poker, and with trembling hands pressed the doll down. There was a great flare of flame; Rose lifted one stolid arm to the gods for vengeance, then a stout leg in a last writhing agony. Only then, when it was all concluded, did Aunt Emily hear behind her the little half-strangled cry which made her turn. The child was standing, motionless, with so old, so desperate a gaze of despair that it was something indecent for any human being to watch.
V
Nurse came in from her afternoon. She had heard nothing of the recent catastrophe, and, as she saw Angelina sitting quietly in front of the fire she thought that she had had her tea, and was now "dreaming" as she so often did. Once, however, as she was busy in another part of the room, she caught half the face in the light of the fire. To any one of a more perceptive nature that glimpse must have seemed one of the most tragic things in the world. But this was a woman of "a sensible, hearty" nature; moreover, her "afternoon" had left her with happy reminiscences of her own charms and their effect on the opposite sex.
She had, however, her moment.... She had left the room to fetch something. Returning she noticed that the dusk had fallen, and was about to switch on the light when, in the rise and fall of the firelight, something that she saw made her pause. She stood motionless by the door.
Angelina had turned in her chair; her eyes were gazing, with rapt attention, toward the purple dusk by the window. She was listening. Nurse, as she had often assured her friends, "was not cursed with imagination," but now fear held her so that she could not stir nor move save that her hand trembled against the wall paper. The chatter of the fire, the shouts of some boys in the Square, the ringing of the bell of St. Matthew's for evensong, all these things came into the room. Angelina, still listening, at last smiled; then, with a little sigh, sat back in her chair.
"Heavens! Miss 'Lina! What were you doing there? How you frightened me!" Angelina left her chair, and went across to the window. "Auntie Emily," she said, "put Wosie into the fire, she did. But Wosie's saved.... He's just come and told me."
"Lord, Miss 'Lina, how you talk!" The room was right again now just as, a moment before, it had been wrong. She switched on the electric light, and, in the sudden blaze, caught the last flicker in the child's eyes of some vision, caught, held, now surrendered.
"'Tis company she's wanting, poor lamb," she thought, "all this being alone.... Fair gives one the creeps."
She heard with relief the opening of the door. Miss Emily came in, hesitated a moment, then walked over to her niece. In her hands she carried a beautiful doll with flaxen hair, long white robes, and the assured confidence of one who is spotless and knows it.
"There, Angelina," she said. "I oughtn't to have burnt your doll. I'm sorry. Here's a beautiful new one."
Angelina took the spotless one; then with a little thrust of her hand she pushed the half-open window wider apart. Very deliberately she dropped the doll (at whose beauty she had not glanced) out, away, down into the Square.
The doll, white in the dusk, tossed and whirled, and spun finally, a white speck far below, and struck the pavement.
Then Angelina turned, and with a little sigh of satisfaction looked at her aunt.
CHAPTER IV
Bim Rochester
I
This is the story of Bim Rochester's first Odyssey. It is a story that has Bim himself for the only proof of its veracity, but he has never, by a shadow of a word, faltered in his account of it, and has remained so unamazed at some of the strange aspects in it that it seems almost an impertinence that we ourselves should show any wonder. Benjamin (Bim) Rochester was probably the happiest little boy in March Square, and he was happy in spite of quite a number of disadvantages.
A word about the Rochester family is here necessary. They inhabited the largest house in March Square—the large grey one at the corner by Lent Street—and yet it could not be said to be large enough for them. Mrs. Rochester was a black-haired woman with flaming cheeks and a most untidy appearance. Her mother had been a Spaniard, and her father an English artist, and she was very much the child of both of them. Her hair was always coming down, her dress unfastened, her shoes untied, her boots unbuttoned. She rushed through life with an amazing shattering vigour, bearing children, flinging them into an already overcrowded nursery, rushing out to parties, filling the house with crowds of friends, acquaintances, strangers, laughing, chattering, singing, never out of temper, never serious, never, for a moment, to be depended on. Her husband, a grave, ball-faced man, spent most of his days in the City and at his club, but was fond of his wife, and admired what he called her "energy." "My wife's splendid," he would say to his friends, "knows the whole of London, I believe. The people we have in our house!" He would watch, sometimes, the strange, noisy parties, and then would retire to bridge at his club with a little sigh of pride.
Meanwhile, upstairs in the nursery there were children of all ages, and two nurses did their best to grapple with them. The nurses came and went, and always, after the first day or two, the new nurse would give in to the conditions, and would lead, at first with amusement and a rather excited sense of adventure, afterwards with a growing feeling of dirt and discomfort, a tangled and helter-skelter existence. Some of the children were now at school, but Lucy, a girl ten years of age, was a supercilious child who rebelled against the conditions of her life, but was too idle and superior to attempt any alteration of them. After her there were Roger, Dorothy, and Robert. Then came Bim, four years of age a fortnight ago, and, last of all, Timothy, an infant of nine months. With the exception of Lucy and Bim they were exceedingly noisy children. Lucy should have passed her days in the schoolroom under the care of Miss Agg, a melancholy and hope-abandoned spinster, and, during lesson hours, there indeed she was. But in the schoolroom she had no one to impress with her amazing wisdom and dignity. "Poor mummy," as she always thought of her mother, was quite unaware of her habits or movements, and Miss Agg was unable to restrain either the one or the other, so Lucy spent most of her time in the nursery, where she sat, calm and collected, in the midst of confusion that could have "given old Babel points and won easy." She was reverenced by all the younger children for her sedate security, but by none of them so surely and so magnificently as Bim. Bim, because he was quieter than the other children, claimed for his opinions and movements the stronger interest.
His nurses called him "deep," "although for a deep child I must say he's 'appy."
Both his depth and his happiness were at Lucy's complete disposal. The people who saw him in the Square called him "a jolly little boy," and, indeed, his appearance of gravity was undermined by the curl of his upper lip and a dimple in the middle of his left cheek, so that he seemed to be always at the crisis of a prolonged chuckle. One very rarely heard him laugh out loud, and his sturdy, rather fat body was carried rather gravely, and he walked contemplatively as though he were thinking something out. He would look at you, too, very earnestly when you spoke to him, and would wait a little before he answered you, and then would speak slowly as though he were choosing his words with care. And yet he was, in spite of these things, really a "jolly little boy." His "jolliness" was there in point of view, in the astounding interest he found in anything and everything, in his refusal to be upset by any sort of thing whatever.
But his really unusual quality was his mixture of stolid English matter-of-fact with an absolutely unbridled imagination. He would pursue, day by day, week after week, games, invented games of his own, that owed nothing, either for their inception or their execution, to any one else. They had their origin for the most part in stray sentences that he had overheard from his elders, but they also arose from his own private and personal experiences—experiences which were as real to him as going to the dentist or going to the pantomime were to his brothers and sisters. There was, for instance, a gentleman of whom he always spoke of as Mr. Jack. This friend no one had ever seen, but Bim quoted him frequently. He did not, apparently, see him very often now, but at one time when he had been quite a baby Mr. Jack had been always there. Bim explained, to any one who cared to listen, that Mr. Jack belonged to all the Other Time which he was now in very serious danger of forgetting, and when, at that point, he was asked with condescending indulgence, "I suppose you mean fairies, dear!" he always shook his head scornfully and said he meant nothing of the kind, Mr. Jack was as real as mother, and, indeed, a great deal "realer," because Mrs. Rochester was, in the course of her energetic career, able to devote only "whirlwind" visits to her "dear, darling" children.
When the afternoon was spent in the gardens in the middle of the Square, Bim would detach himself from his family and would be found absorbed in some business of his own which he generally described as "waiting for Mr. Jack."
"Not the sort of child," said Miss Agg, who had strong views about children being educated according to practical and common-sense ideas, "not the sort of child that one would expect nonsense from." It may be quite safely asserted that never, in her very earliest years, had Miss Agg been guilty of any nonsense of the sort.
But it was not Miss Agg's contempt for his experiences that worried Bim. He always regarded that lady with an amused indifference. "She bothers so," he said once to Lucy. "Do you think she's happy with us, Lucy?"
"P'r'aps. I'm sure it doesn't matter."
"I suppose she'd go away if she wasn't," he concluded, and thought no more about her.
No, the real grief in his heart was that Lucy, the adored, the wonderful Lucy, treated his assertions with contempt.
"But, Bim, don't be such a silly baby. You know you can't have seen him. Nurse was there and a lot of us, and we didn't."
"I did though."
"But, Bim——"
"Can't help it. He used to come lots and lots."
"You are a silly! You're getting too old now——"
"I'm not a silly!"
"Yes, you are."
"I'm not!"
"Oh, well, of course, if you're going to be a naughty baby."
Bim was nearer tears on these occasions than on any other in all his mortal life. His adoration of Lucy was the foundation-stone of his existence, and she accepted it with a lofty assumption of indifference; but very sharply would she have missed it had it been taken from her, and in long after years she was to look back upon that love of his and wonder that she could have accepted it so lightly; Bim found in her gravity and assurance all that he demanded of his elders. Lucy was never at a loss for an answer to any question, and Bim believed all that she told him.
"Where's China, Lucy?"
"Oh, don't bother, Bim."
"No, but where is it?"
"What a nuisance you are! It's near Africa."
"Where Uncle Alfred is?"
"Yes, just there."
"But is Uncle Alfred in—China?"
"No, silly, of course not."
"Well, then——"
"I didn't say China was in Africa. I said it was near."
"Oh! I see. Uncle Alfred could just go in the train?"
"Yes, of course."
"Oh! I see. P'r'aps he will."
But, for the most part, Bim, realising that Lucy "didn't want to be bothered," pursued his life alone. Through all the turmoil and disorder of that tempestuous nursery he gravely went his way, at one moment fighting lions and tigers, at another being nurse on her afternoon out (this was a truly astonishing adventure composed of scraps flung to him from nurse's conversational table and including many incidents that were far indeed from any nurse's experience), or again, he would be his mother giving a party, and, in the course of this, a great deal of food would be eaten, his favourite dishes, treacle pudding and cottage pie, being always included.
With the exception of his enthusiasm for Lucy he was no sentimentalist. He hated being kissed, he did not care very greatly for Roger and Dorothy and Robert, and regarded them as nothing but nuisances when they interfered with his games or compelled him to join in theirs.
And now this is the story of his Odyssey.
II
It happened on a wet April afternoon. The morning had been fine, a golden morning with the scent in the air of the showers that had fallen during the night. Then, suddenly, after midday, the rain came down, splashing on to the shining pavements as it fell, beating on to the windows and then running, in little lines, on to the ledges and falling from there in slow, heavy drops. The sky was black, the statues in the garden dejected, the almond tree beaten, all the little paths running with water, and on the garden seats the rain danced like a live thing.
The children—Lucy, Roger, Dorothy, Robert, Bim, and Timothy—were, of course, in the nursery. The nurse was toasting her toes on the fender and enjoying immensely that story by Mrs. Henry Wood, entitled "The Shadow of Ashlydyat." It is entirely impossible to present any adequate idea of the confusion and bizarrerie of that nursery. One must think of the most confused aspect of human life that one has ever known—say, a Suffrage attack upon the Houses of Parliament, or a Channel steamer on a Thursday morning, and then of the next most confused aspect. Then one must place them together and confess defeat. Mrs. Rochester was not, as I have said, very frequently to be found in her children's nursery, but she managed, nevertheless, to pervade the house, from cellar to garret, with her spirit. Toys were everywhere—dolls and trains and soldiers, bricks and puzzles and animals, cardboard boxes, articles of feminine attire, a zinc bath, two cats, a cage with white mice, a pile of books resting in a dazzling pyramid on the very edge of the table, two glass jars containing minute fish of the new variety, and a bowl with goldfish. There were many other things, forgotten by me.