CHAPTER IVCOCKNEYDOMThat night June made her nest among the chimney-pots. There was a broad cleft in the mortar which bound the stack, and a black hammock of thick cobweb swinging as the wind-drift blew upon it. June put the crown for safety underneath her; and, clasping the wand with both her guarding hands, reclined on the cobweb and waited for slumber.Ordinarily sleep comes to fairies as it comes to birds, instantly and absolutely. But now June could not lose herself in its blessed forgetfulness. For a very long time she lay awake, staring at the veiled sky and listening with strained attention to the eternal throb and hum of the moving life around her.Very far away, it seemed--far higher than ever in Fairyland it had appeared--the moon was ghostily journeying. There was now no such expression of interest on the lunar countenance, as there had been on the previous night, but dull wakefulness and watchful indifference. All the elves might have run awry and the flowers have withered, for aught the moon appeared to care.June felt lonely then, especially as not a star was showing, and there were no nightingales. Fairyland seemed millions of miles away. She began to feel strange depression, to fear she had not done well in taking on herself the impossible quest. Just as every Quixote smarts from the despondence of folly, during the cold periods of a divine pilgrimage--so then did she.June was as dismal as London could make her during those hours of involuntary vigil. As she swung in her cobweb, and stared at the starless mirk, she tried hard to impress on herself the need of her service, and the wisdom of that adventure. Owing to much weariness and the gloom, she took a lot of convincing.The life of those mortals was truly a sad business. To think of Sally and her grown companions working continually for the sake of mere existence, enduring a life of want and ugliness, with the fairies nowhere near, was truly very sad! All the more need for her to go on and labour.So it was settled.The thought was so comforting that her wakefulness came to an end. She fell asleep almost at once, and dreamed she was resting in her own home-bower, in the Land of Wild Roses. Happy cobweb!The moon went into the clouds, and the hours marched by.June was awakened by a shrill whistle. A factory called, and the fairy rose.London at dreary dawn! It was more than ever a dismal scene which greeted her on that grey young morning. Her despairing hopes of the previous evening went down, plumb, to zero. She looked at the miles of black roofs and dingy chimneys. What a hideous world it was! Not so great a wonder, after all, that the elves had determinedly deserted it.She preened herself carefully, tested both wings to see they were uninjured, fared on the magic food which fairies can, when necessary, make from dew and the west wind, and then felt ready for a day's activities. Her remedial work was to begin at once. To watch evil, and not to check it, was to invite despair and failure; but to displace bad with good was encouraging, and the fairy's business! June put on the crown and began.Her first duties were with the folk of Paradise Court. She spread wings and was wafted down to the window-ledge. Early as it was, the women and Sally were already labouring with their needles. They were breakfasting while they sewed. Their fare was stale bread, rejected refuse from middle-class tables, and some fearful meat bought--a pound for a penny--from Mother Wolf, a hag in the neighbourhood who made profit by selling offal for human food. How that purveyor of nauseousness escaped the penalties due for so doing is a mystery; but so she did.Bill was still sleeping, another man by his side. The lords of creation had the pile of clothing to themselves for bed, pillow and quilt. The feminine members of the establishment had managed as well as they might do, lying close together to keep each other warm. That was the usual order of things.June entered by the magic way of the window, and tickled Bill's nose with her wand. He sneezed, stretched, got up; his first words were just a little lively language--an ungenial good-morning to his companion in luxury, which effectually roused that gentleman.The men put on their caps--so completing their toilette--yawned, and, without saying a word to the women, went out to look for work. That was their profession--looking for work. They never found it, but ever continued seeking. They breakfasted on beer, bread and grease at the hostelry which gave joy to Paradise Court. The liquid part of their meal lasted till not another copper could be found, borrowed or cadged. Bill's life was a long process of idleness, blessed with beer.In the morning the clothing that was finished had to be taken to the tailoring firm in the City for which it was made. The various garments were arranged in a bundle, tied round with one of the treasured pieces of string, and perched on Sally's narrow shoulder. She clasped it tightly with her thin hands, trying to believe it was a baby to be nursed.June decided to go with Sally, to help her bear the burden. This she managed to do by sitting upon it, using the wonderful wand, and wishing the bundle should seem only a tenth part of its real weight. So it was made to be; but Sally, who had not been encouraged to observe things, or to estimate differences, did not become aware of its lightness. In any case, the burden, even when reduced by June, was full heavy enough for a child of her strength and years. But many another like Sally was bearing a similar burden.Down the stairs and out of Paradise Court went the girl and the fairy; along a dreary, slippery pavement, passing a thousand people, self-interested, self-centred and hurrying, who might laugh, talk, bustle and frown in their individual ways, but who still to June, as to Oberon and all else of the better land, were poor, pitiful shadows, journeying, worrying, moiling for a few thousand days until the extinguisher was put over them.Yellow and blue tramcars went jangling by. June, seeing people get into and out of them, was minded to make one of them stop, so that Sally could ride; but it was better this first time for Sally to go her own gait as usual. Anyhow, June was alert to be helpful, and handled her wand as the infant spendthrift fingers his penny, determined to use it as speedily and extravagantly as possible.Sally toiled along slowly. She kept to the chief road, never daring to relax her hold of the bundle, because of the difficulty of recovering it.She came to a wide crossing--a tramway and omnibus terminus--and passed through a maze of carts and people. June began to feel frightened because of the clamour and crowding, but soon lost her unworthy fears by remembering that these creatures and things--in comparison with herself--were only shadows, permitted to dwell for a little while in the beautiful world which belongs to the fairies, and others of spirit-land. She had more power in her wand and will than they in any or all of their Brobdingnagian faculties.June was profoundly impressed by the wonderful powers of the police. The way the helmeted man of authority stood in the midst of the press and ruled it, appealed to her as nothing had done since she had witnessed Oberon in his majesty commanding the shapes and princes in the Violet Valley. As Sally went slowly by the policemen, June gave each a fairy's blessing. They became thereafter, and are to this day, more than usually polite and attentive to the timid.Sally plodded along steadily. She passed a pump dripping with water. June saw several fat sparrows before it, squabbling over the corn which had fallen from a horse's nosebag. She went to chide them, as fairies do to birds in the country when their manners would bear mending; but these town sparrows, in their Cockney ignorance, never having seen a fairy, or dreamed there was anything in existence more important than themselves and perhaps some thin stray cat, pecked at her disrespectfully. As she paid no attention to their surliness, they took sudden panic and fled in a fright, chattering at one another in fine unanimous complaint.June resumed her perch, but now on Sally's hat. She throned herself on its broken brim, and viewed London with exalted detachment.The squalor was left behind, but to fairy eyes the City was particularly dreary. The buildings withal so heavy, high and ambitious, wore looks of decay, and were stained with grime. The coarseness of the atmosphere, too, was oppressive. What a life! What a place! June could not resist wistfully thinking of that happier world where the flowers are free and soft winds kiss them. She deeply pitied the folk, who, voluntarily or not, were foolishly imprisoned in the stuffy stone-land.Sally turned down a court and threaded a series of alleys, bewildering to a stranger, till she came to an ill-painted door and rang a bell.She lowered her bundle gladly and sat on the step in a state of weakness and exhaustion. The powers within were dilatory or inattentive. She had to wait a good long while before the door was abruptly opened by a lantern-jawed youth, with red bristles on his upper lip, hair plastered with oil, and a paste diamond pin stuck in his yellow necktie. His associates knew him as Ernie Jenkins."Why wasn't you 'ere earlier?" he asked. "You'll 'ave to wait now. Mr. Oldstein's out and I'm busy. You seem to think you can come when you like. But you can't. See? You can leave the goods inside and 'ook it for a time. Now remember, and look alive next week. See? Come back in three-quarters of an hour and get yer money."The door--the back-entrance to Mr. Emmanuel Oldstein's wholesale tailoring emporium--was forthwith shut. Sally, meanwhile, must amuse herself as best she might. Again, with the patience of the starved, she sat on the step to wait, and sufficiently forget herself to think she would like to cry. However, she refrained from tears--the neglected have none to spare--and, as usual, centred her mind on things to eat. Food, food, food--there was her aspect of Eden. The object of her particular desire was again, as always, gravy, "'ot and smelly."June read her thoughts, and went to work to realize them.A school-boy was going by, whistling. He had been excused his lessons for the day and was cheerily hurrying to the Oval to see the year's first cricket-match. A white-paper parcel, spelling lunch, was tucked under his arm.June gazed fixedly at him, waved her wand, and willed him to look at Sally.He did so. The spell was on him. One glance was enough to influence his inexperienced heart--he was not old or wealthy enough to have learned caution in his charity. He could not now have enjoyed his cricket, remembering, as he must do, the pale, starved face of that weary child, and not have helped her.He hid his actions in the shelter of a convenient doorway, opened the packet, took out two sandwiches and a chunk of cake, shoved the rest in his jacket-pocket, and, running shamefacedly by, dropped the provender on Sally's lap. He heard her give a gulp of joy as he went on with singing heart, to be the happiest lad in Kennington.Surrey did better than usual that day.While the child greedily munched and waited, June, grudging the wasting of time, flew skywards to investigate.She was soon above the roofs, and awed by the myriad chimneys. Her attention was caught by the dome of St. Paul's, which gloomed like a round purple cloud, over and above all else. It was, as it is, the crown of London. She had never seen anything like it in Fairyland, and wondered at the patience of men. Truly, they were poor things, transient creatures, and all that; but they have faith in what is material, and manage many things in their few years.Her wings moved rapidly. She sped like a flash of fragrant light over the intervening courts and houses, and quickly came to St. Paul's Churchyard. She passed between the branches of the trees in the railed garden, greeting sparrows and pigeons as she went, and wishing--wishing heartily--she could meet some of those bright-hued, happy-songed friends of hers, who bless the friends and skies of the country. But that could not be. The birds she loved had followed the fairies, leaving prose in feathers behind.She circled slowly right round the big dome, and wondered more than anything else at its crusted dirt--which dated from the Stuarts. She settled on the weather-ruined statue of an apostle--whom it represented being as indistinguishable as Shem in the nursery Noah's Ark--and gazed with wonder and without admiration at the moving, stretching scene--the live panorama--before her. Roofs and steeples and streets--stretching on and on--that was the picture seen by the fairy. It had its wonders, no doubt; but oh, the pity of it, the crowding and the treelessness! What a woeful waste of space!The fairies, amongst their shortcomings, have absolutely no sense of political economy. Had June been told that ground-rent on Ludgate Hill is so many pounds sterling a square inch, she would have been totally unimpressed and possibly bored."Where could the children find room to play?" she said to herself. "And the flowers must all be smothered!"She flew to the open space below, and perched on the statue of Queen Anne, to watch with sorrowing eyes the tired and hurrying people. Poor shadows! In a little while they would be back again in the ground which gave them, their opportunities for kindness and happiness ended; and here they were, thinking only of to-day's gains, rushing after the mirage, losing what mattered.She had grown weary almost to weeping of the sordid scene, and was thinking miserably of its contrast with Fairyland. Oh, why had the elves forsaken London?--when--there was Bim!The gnome was toiling up Ludgate Hill. He seemed to have shrunk and become a very pale red. Weariness and bewilderment had, for the time being, taken the colour out of him. He was awe-struck and terrified by the rolling volume of traffic, which, though it could not possibly have hurt him, seemed very formidable. He looked with round eyes at the lumbering vehicles, and though to him they were really but shadows bearing all manner and shapes of shade, he was bewildered by their multitude and variety.With its shining slope and insistent traffic, he found Ludgate Hill a trying and slippery ordeal.He was repeatedly in straits during that scrambling ascent. The horses could see him; the human beings could not. Time and again a boot threatened him, a skirt swished by him; the wheels of a vehicle often seemed over him; but always he managed--though not without numerous sprawls and tumbles--to avoid contact with the objectionable shadows.He reached the top of the hill and stood panting and triumphant. Suddenly he saw June, a fairy crowning the effigy of the queen who is dead. He squealed with joy and stared in goggle-eyed rapture. Hoo-oo-oo-oo-ray!His happiness received a check.A scavenger boy, running along, crouching, scooping up refuse, scooped up Bim! Before the gnome could say "Robinson" he was up, carried away to a receptacle for dirt, and forthwith tumbled in.He crawled out puffing and disillusioned. He blessed the scavenger boy thoughtfully for his hospitality; squatted bewildered upon the kerb; then, remembering, turned about and lost all woes, aches and weariness in the joy of seeing June."Bim, my brave Bim," she greeted him.He stared open-mouthed, panting and smiling. He had now no words for answer, and needed none.CHAPTER VTOM TIDDLER'S GROUNDBim was almost top-heavy with joy at meeting June just when his hopes had been at their lowest; she was hardly less delighted at seeing him. For not only was the gnome something from Fairyland, a reminder of its dear delights and golden days, and the means of strengthening her strained determinations; but he had come from her own particular corner of the delectable realm, the Land of Wild Roses, and brought to jaded Cockneydom some fragrant home memories.But she must get back to Sally. She flew down to Bim, and held out her wand. he grasped it, and forthwith was up in the air, magically borne along by the hurrying fairy.It was no new thing for Bim to have an aerial journey. One of the favourite games of gnomes--naturally no more able to fly than a pig is capable of "Bo"--is to grab the legs of a pigeon and cause the silly bird to go circling. This was the first time his means of sky-progress had been a fairy. It was an experience strange, terrible and new, to be dragged and wafted over that wilderness of roofs. But it was also exhilarating. He began to sing in his croak of a voice an old elf-song about moonbeams that became icicles. June, listening to him, and watching the scene beneath, vowed and vowed again that she would not rest till London was restored to Fairyland.Bim had no consciousness, as he croaked and dangled there, of the effects of his influence on the fortunes of the dark city: London likewise had no idea of it.Sally was still waiting, though the passing of people on business to and from the Oldstein establishment had required her to move to another doorstep, where she sat and watched for the summons.This seeming neglect on the part of the red young man so irritated June that she flew in hottest haste, head first, through the opening for letters in the door, prepared energetically to remind him.He was sitting on a counter with stacks of clothing about him--how musty it all smelt!--hard at work reading a worn "horrible"--"Sweeney Todd" its hero--and yawning. Atmosphere, rather than weariness, caused the gape, which came to an abrupt close.As June was entering the warehouse from the back way, Max Oldstein, the only son of the "firm," was to be heard descending the stairs opposite. Jenkins was off his perch in an instant, and busily tumbling a bale of clothing from the counter to the floor.June viciously poked with her wand the scraggy nape of his neck to remind him of Sally. Her protest was effectual. He went to the door and shouted:"Come in, Kid!"Sally eagerly entered. She stood on the door-mat trembling."Pay her four and twopenth," said the master, as he put a tick on the paper he held, "and tell 'er that if 'er people don't do the work betterth, they'll be wantin' it."Max turned abruptly, and went to the other end of the shop, where he lighted a cigarette and thoughtfully admired the great gold ring on his large little finger. June, feeling angry because of his blatant unpleasantness, wished him a punishment of pain, which he felt."My corn!" he said, "it'th goin' to rain."Meanwhile Jenkins was addressing Sally."You 'eard what the young guv'nor said? And don't you forget it! There's the oof--count it!--and 'ere's another lot of material. See? Twenty pieces. Now, you can sling your 'ook!"Sally poised the pile of cloth on her shoulder and went. June followed her into the street, made the load as light as good wishes and touch of wand permitted, and instructed Bim, who during her absence had fallen fast asleep in the gutter, to clamber on Sally's hat and go home--"home"--with her, to guard her.Then she returned to see what could be done with Max Oldstein, whose ripe, unusual vulgarity fascinated her.Sally, with Bim sprawling along her hat-brim like invisible red trimming, jogged slowly eastward. The exhausted gnome was soon again in his own little nod-land--sleep pulled so hard at his eyelids--and did not return to this world of the infinite unrealities till Sally was in the bed-workroom at Paradise Court, and the weary women had greedily counted and grumbled over the few coins brought to them.At once they returned to the sewing, and plied desperate needles through the new mass of half-made clothing. So wore away more hours of their unblessed lives.Bim, awakened and sent tumbling by Sally's doffing her hat, crawled into the beer-can, which still was lying where it had rolled when Bill dropped it; curled himself up like a squirrel in its winter fastness, and was asleep again. This shows how over-tired the poor fellow was; Bim was, however, not too weary for dreams, and in the visions of slumber, once more made that fearsome journey from Fairyland which ended with the finding of June. This proves that gnomes can ride nightmares too; a fact for the Psychical Society.Max Oldstein puzzled June. She could not make him out. His interests and actions seemed so purposeless and mean. During that busy morning he was forty unpleasant persons rolled into one. When a customer who spelt prosperity arrived, Max lost himself in oily politenesses. He laughed vigorously at humour hardly there, and smirked and toadied like anouveau richeat a Primrose tea-fight.When there followed a journeyman-tailor who had wasted his opportunity in drink, and was impelled by repentance and family needs to beg pitifully to be taken on again, Max's politeness went like a bang. He snubbed the tailor-man for his ingratitude, and abruptly closed the poor fool's pleadings with a turn of his back.There were so many other starvelings to take that wretch's place.In the course of the morning Max showed himself shrewd, petty, fawning, arrogant, determined, stupid, vulgar, and cruel. Ernie Jenkins, who copied his manner as well as he was able to, lived in mortal terror of him. To Ernie, Max Oldstein was a mean necessity, his bread and butter, his all. To lose that hateful, pitiful employment would be to cut off every one of his private luxuries--his evening glass of bitter, with its opportunity for badinage with a barmaid, the Woodbine cigarettes, the weekly visit to a music-hall, the Sunday walk with Emily. So he went on, like a hundred thousand others of his kind--selling his life for a pittance, swallowing infinite insults, cringing and mean. Poor Ernie! What is to be done with such humans as he?At one o'clock Max hurried to the "Haversack" for a large meal of stout and boiled beef with carrots, and, while eating, read with sniggerings a weekly pink paper, which gave oracular advice on race-horses, interspersed with funny paragraphs about lodgers. Also there was talk, in which barmaids, customers and waiters joined familiarly--of the X street murder, the betting prices, and the divorce case of the day with its pretty details.Then Captain Crowe, whom the folk of his world knew as "Charlie," came in, and Max was pleased to speculate a shilling on a hundred up with him, which the young man lost with a very bad grace, till the Captain, who really had once upon a time held a subaltern's commission in a disbanded battalion, having borrowed half-a-crown from a casual customer, who knew him but indifferently well, restored his opponent's good temper with the gift of a soda and whisky and some flowers of speech, so leading the way to another game of billiards and another defeat for Max.June was awed by all she saw, and puzzled how to win back to Fairyland--this! She sat amongst used tumblers on the mantelpiece, below the marker's board, patiently watching and wondering. What could she do to mend things? How difficult it was! Were human beings worth saving? Was not Oberon in his ruling right, and she wickedly wrong? These creatures--so mean and sordid--were worse than ever they had been painted to her by their most candid critic in Fairyland.Then she remembered Sally, and the sweated women in their evil home, and decided to persevere."Lord, what fools these mortals be!" she said thoughtfully, unconsciously plagiarizing.The whisky ended, and the business of recreation done, Max Oldstein paid his score unwillingly, and returned to headquarters. Ernie met him at the door-step."Guvnor's come. Been waiting an hour," he warned him.Max ran upstairs, two at a time, to see his father, and hastily concocted a detailed account of the business which had detained him. The lie was not required that day. He mentally pigeon-holed it for a later occasion.His senior greeted him with a loud, glad laugh. Max wondered. His father showed him an invitation card with the arms of the City upon it."Max, my boy! Look at that!" cried the old man, clearing his throat. "What d'ye think of Papa now, eh?"He rose, chuckled violently and rattled his golden watch-chain. Max took the card and read it. It was an invitation to dine with the Lord Mayor and some representatives of commercial houses. He felt a twinge of envy, and then of pride."Bravo, Dad!" said the son. They shook hands solemnly. "It'th to-night, too!""Yeth," said Emmanuel, taking the invitation and frowning at it. "Thoth idioth at the potht-offith nearly mitht my thecuring thith 'igh honour. 'Ere's the envelope. Look at the thtamp. Pothted a week ago, and I only got it to-day. Put in the wrong letter-box. I've written to the Potht-mathter-General to complain. A 'ot and strong letter I've written. Very nice of the Lord Mayor, ain't it?""'Ow did you get it, Dad?""Lord knowth! I lent one of 'is footmen money. P'raps that 'elped!""'Ave you accepted? You mutht, you know!""Twice; to make sure, I sent two letterth by expreth, from different poth-offithes.""My word, Dad, you are spendin'. That'th what I call extravaganth.""No, my boy, you muthn't look at the pennieth when there'th a twenty-bob dinner in store. That'th policy and busineth too. You can't teach Papa nothin', you can't! Now, 'ow are things?"They talked of clothes, market-prices and details of their trade for a couple of hours, while June listened and wondered. How these mortals did waste their time over the wealth which isn't worth having!She made up her mind to go to the banquet at the Mansion House.When the office-clock chinkled five the elder Oldstein looked at his watch to confirm the news, and hurriedly put away his papers."I mutht be off to dreth," he said to his son. "I'm going' to 'ave a bath."He went, June after him.He drove westward in a slow omnibus. The fairy sat on his knee, and, looking about her, felt disappointed with civilization.At length they stopped by Maida Vale, and the wholesale clothier having ridden his full three-pennyworth, waddled down two streets and arrived at his dwelling. It was one of a row of buildings, mostly boarding-houses, in their dull unornamental dinginess strangely similar to each other. They were Mid-Victorian--the Drab Age!--and looked it from boot-scraper to roof-tree. Oldstein's private residence, like his business house, seemed in dire need of paint. What the household could do was done. What they could not do must be done without."Wathte of good money, my boy;" and then, "Next year, per'aps." And so on, season after season, year after year. Like Alice's to-morrow, the Oldstein next-year never came.The clothier and his family lived at forty-eight. The next house was number fifty. The two front-doors were immediately adjacent, the entrances separated by a row of rusty railings.As he ascended his steps, Emmanuel slyly slipped a folded, printed paper out of his breast-pocket; and leaning over the railings, gently dropped it into the next-door letter-box.The same instant his front-door was opened by Hannah, the ever-indignant, eldest daughter of the house."Those people have been at it again!" she said, and angrily crumpled up and threw down a circular she had just taken out of the letter-box."The thame thort?" her father asked, shutting the door quietly."Yes, of course, this is the ninety-second they've dropped in. It makes me wild! I've made up my mind when the hundredth comes--if it does come--to give Aaron Hyam's youngest tuppence to break their kitchen window.""Don't waste yer money like that; am I a millionaire?" He picked up and smoothed out the circular, and began to read it aloud: "'Thothiety for the Conversion of the Jews; an evenin' meetin' with addretheth.' Oh, put it with the retht, Max will make a spill of it. Leave it to Papa, dear. I've got a better plan for dealing with 'em; I've begun to put it in practice already.""'Ave you, Dad? I'd like to scratch that little nincompoop of a son of theirs. He makes me mad with his soppy smile, and sandy whiskers, and conceited sanctimoniousness. I'd give 'im hymns at the street corner.""A much better plan, my clear. You may as well give me them little billths--all of 'em. They'll be useful. They're poor, ain't they?""They are--as synagogue rats--if the faces of the tradespeople are anything to go by."Hannah was very vicious."Well, then, leave it to me. Every time they invite us to be converted, I invite them to borrow money from me--from Jabez Gordon. They've 'ad fourteen of my circulars already. I gave 'em a fifteenth to-day. That'th the best bait for those birds. Trust Daddy, my dear. They will bite--that sort of body always does. Trutht a hymn-smiter for a quiet gamble; and then----""You will fleece them?" she cried, with fierce exultation. Something of Jephthah's daughter, of Deborah, of Hagar, of the ancient heroines of Israel, lived in her breast."Oh no, Hannah! Fleeth! we never fleeth. I will help them to some very good bithness, that ith all.""That will do!" she said. "They convertus! The fools!""And ith the shirt well aired?" he asked. "I'm nervouth of cold white shirts.""You'll find everything all right, Dad. Your bath-water will soon be ready. Mother's in the drawing-room ironing your dress trousers. Now don't you worry. Just wait while I'm putting your things ready, and listen to a tune on the gramophone. You've plenty of time. The brougham won't be 'ere for a good hour yet."He went into the drawing-room. June fluttered above him. Her brightness was faintly reflected on his dingy bald head. She was strangely curious for a high-minded fairy. The home of want she had seen; now for the home of the master!The sight awed and depressed her. She perched on the chandelier and studied everything closely, while beneath her a gramophone--set going by Becky, the second and last of the daughters--blared a blatant anthem of the streets.The furniture was worthy of the house--Mid-Victorian to the last. A green mirror with gilded frame, a golden eagle perched at the top of it, reflected an untrue version of the objects before it. There was a clumsy clock, with black ornaments to match it on either side; at each end of the mantelpiece was a lustre with spills stuck into it. Photographs of Hebrew celebrities--singers, actresses, and politicians of a certain party complexion--were ranged about shelves and tables. There were albums and unreadable books with cheap, bright covers here and there. Some coloured engravings of sentimental pictures hung against the red wall. A dead musical box, waxen water-lilies in a glass case, and--but enjoyable as it is to take a verbal photograph of a characteristic, respectable British interior, it is unnecessary to do so here. We shall not require to enter that room again.The more June watched the place and its people, the more she wondered. And then, while she waited for Mr. Oldstein to bathe and adorn himself in glistening raiment, she decided on a plan of campaign. In her dreams of prediction, even then, in that centre of hopeless banality, she saw Fairyland exultant where vulgarity gloomed.The crusade was to begin that evening. So let London hope!CHAPTER VIPOST-PRANDIALMr. Oldstein drove to the Mansion House in a hired brougham. Hannah travelled with him, for the sake of the drive. He talked of his father, who had been a publican in Petticoat Lane.June was on the box with the coachman most of the time. She found looking at the passing lights and strange shops more entertaining than the conversation inside, which, indeed, was no better than the ordinary stodge most of us talk.The fairy rested. She still felt the strain of the crowds, the noise, and the atmosphere; but not so severely as she had done during her entrance to London yesterday. She rested her very best.They arrived at Walbrook in good time. Emmanuel had no intention of missing anything. This was a chance to be swallowed whole. The carriage found its place in the gathering queue, and slowly approached the side of the Mansion House where the guests were alighting.June watched a few belated pigeons which had not yet gone to roost. An idea came. Dim would be of use that evening.She charmed one of the birds to her, put her spell upon it, and despatched it at its special speed to Paradise Court. The pigeon flew well; it was to be rewarded.In twenty-five minutes it was back again, with Bim clinging to its feet. June praised the pigeon and touched it, giving it nobler plumage. It was no longer grey and ordinary, but brightly speckled and a pouter. Sudden pride ate up its quieter qualities. It did not wait even the tail-end of a minute, as courtesy required, but was up in the pigeons' dormitory over the architrave, as swaggering and important as Bumble, showing off and strutting before its mate, who woke from domesticated dreams of well-laid eggs to gaze and grumble. She had been quite contented with the lord and master as he was.Bim's sleep had restored him. He was once again his old berry-hued self, and June's as devotedly as ever.Mr. Oldstein had long since entered the Mansion House and been welcomed by the host and Chief Magistrate of the City, Sir Titus Dodds; but not all the guests had yet arrived. The most important--the representatives of the Church, the State and the halfpenny Press--were in fact but then arriving. So June flew and Bim scrambled up the red-covered steps together, and entered the palace of feasting in good time to share the greatest event in Oldstein's life.Bim stared at the stockings of the footmen, awed, and Emmanuel followed his example. He admired and examined the mayoral furniture, appurtenances, ornaments; the busts, pictures and tapestry, appraising their value with eager professional interest. It must have cost a good twenty thousand pound! He determined to remodel his own drawing-room on Mansion House principles, provided he had good luck in Wardour Street.He regretted now that he had not sought civic responsibilities and honours for himself. Dear, dear! Economy is a bad policy when it costs anything. He began to know golden-chained hopes; but the ambition never extinguished the tradesman. He wondered whether he might surreptitiously drop one of his Jabez Gordon circulars on that corner ottoman, and decided not to do so. There were too many risks.He wished that his wife, Hannah, Becky, Max, could have seen him in his glory, waiting amidst that high company, and that they might have watched him shaking hands with the Lord Mayor--his fingers tingled with pleasure still. He must have an appropriate coat-of-arms--something gold and scarlet, with a rampant lion if possible. Social ambitions quickened within his brain. Yes, he would come into public life, if it did not cost too much.So Emmanuel Oldstein went on building his castles--forgetting, forgetting they were based on piles of clothing sewed and made saleable by the needles of sweated women. That aspect of facts did not even for a half-moment occur to him. This was the prevalent fact--that he was a gentleman, enjoying the company of baronets and Common Councillors, received within the hospitable walls of that Zion of commercial probity and prosperity--the Mansion House.The welcome summons came at last, and, the Lord Mayor leading, the guests trooped into the Egyptian room, place of daytime dullness and evening festivities.The banquet was begun.June, who afterwards confessed herself much impressed by the Lord Mayor's robes and diamonds, perched herself on an epergne full of delicious spring flowers. She feasted on their delicate scents and colours, while Bim sprawled lazily on a jelly. Little did the masters of Gog and Magog, feasting there on their soups and meats and sweets, dream that a fairy and a gnome were watching them. June was thinking hard about Sally, and the hunger of the slums.A solid hour was eaten away.The loving-cups were brought in, and distributed to the various tables. Now was the time to act. June gave Bim her wand. In obedience to her command he dipped it deep in the spiced wine of the loving-cups. Never a common drink, it was nigh to nectar now. There was magic in it, and liquid warmth-of-heart, a loving-cup indeed! Every man drank the new ambrosia and passed the cup to his neighbour. So the fairy's influence went round, and the distinguished company of commoners was linked together in a union nobler than any of them knew.The fun was beginning. How likeable seemed their fellow-guests! what a nice bright kindly world it was! They thought this generosity of feeling was their ordinary post-prandial satisfaction, fed upon warm meats and the drinks that are Philistine; but the fairy at the board knew better. Later on, some of the guests realized the difference too, for they are astute--those gentlemen in the City.The toast-master made himself evident. He had a magnificent voice, and a big broad beard, which would get entangled with his watch-chain. Bim could not resist it. He gazed with longing, and then tucked the wand under his elbow, took a flying leap on to the arm of the mayoral chair, ran up to the back of it, and sprang at the beard. There he clung, and hid, peeping out of the brown forest at the concourse of happy gourmands.The loyal toasts were given, cheered and sung. There was conversation and amateur music by Guildhall scholars.The Lord Mayor uprose to propose the toast of the evening, "The Commerce of London." He was a picture of rubicund prosperity, a man of drab and scarlet. He began a pompous speech."My lords and gentlemen, the Lord Mayor and the ancient Corporation of London have often greeted at their hospitable board gatherings similar to this, yet never before, my lords and gentlemen, never before, has any Lord Mayor had the high honour of welcoming to his table a more distinguished gathering of leaders in commerce than that which graces it now."The orator stopped to look at his notes. A rolling round of applause told him he was doing well enough.Emmanuel Oldstein, whose seat was some distance from the speaker, craned forward better to hear. He--a leader in commerce! Good!"Round this table," the Lord Mayor continued, with a sweep of his white fat hand, "are magnates of banking houses, shippers, merchants of all kinds of produce brought from the farthest ends of the earth, heads of railways, representatives of all departments of commercial industry. The prosperity of the United Kingdom--let me say the British Empire--is represented here. It's a happy, a very happy, condition of things."Another pause for note-reading; another roll of hand-clapping and "Hear, hears." Cigars were lighted, wine sipped; the audience was in a particularly sympathetic mood. It is flattering and delightful to be reminded you are rich, and--the wand in the loving-cup had done its work.The fairy who ruled the feast was frankly bored by this display of prose. To her critical ears it was drivel.Some use must be made of this talkative gentleman, round whom the incense of tobacco--how can men make that stifling smoke?--was being assiduously burned. She flew to his shoulder, hovered for one deliberative moment above his head, and forthwith crowned him with the fairy crown. It shone like a golden drop on the shining bald space--a glorious globule on a barren sphere; but none of the mortals could see it.The Lord Mayor at once threw down his notes. He had gained the confidence of Demosthenes. He smiled, and braced himself for an effort. His pomposity was forgotten; his hesitancy gone.June was making a miracle. The wonders went on. Never before at a Mansion House festival had any such speech been heard as was then to be delivered; but now it was heard--and applauded. June flew back to the epergne to listen. She had reasons for being interested now. Bim, seeing his mistress's activities, crept out of his tangle and returned to sit cross-legged on the table to watch and listen with eyes and mouth at their widest, till the warmth and the smoke took their toll, and he lapsed into sleep."Now, my friends and fellow-citizens, I want to speak to you as man to men. I put a plain question plainly, and you will accept its truth. What is the good of our wealth if it is not well used? How can it bring us true happiness, if it does not bring others happiness too? Would you like to think that your possessions meant want in others?""No!" shouted Emmanuel Oldstein."No!" shouted everyone else."Of course No. You are true men. Princes of Commerce! And yet look facts in the face. Does our wealth bring those others who help us to create it anything like an adequate return for their labours in happiness or kind? It does not!"Men rose from their seats to shout agreement with this utterance.Was this the Tory City or an improved Tower Hill?The toast-master--in his private life a talking Radical, who always voted Conservative--listened with perturbation and amazement. He had not drunk of the loving-cup as had the guests. The speech was not strange to them; they understood, they sympathized, and at intervals punctuated it with rousing cheers. It was the very thing they wanted.Archdeacon Pryde, who all his life had persistently blocked progress with many words of heartfelt sympathy, smiled benediction, and tapped the table, loudly encouraging the Lord Mayor to go on with his revolution. The Lord Mayor went on. Nay, he broke another record, established another precedent for the Mansion House, did what Mr. Pickwick did--stood on his chair that he might be better heard. The toast-master watched and hearkened, deeply grieved."It is just six months since the City did me the honour of electing me Chief Magistrate. I have tried to do my duty. I have tried to serve the City well.""You have, you have!""Half my term of office has ended. The second half begins. During the time remaining I intend to do something to make my year of office more than ever memorable and worthy of the City. I am going to use my opportunity and my wealth to set an example and undo some of the evil that many of us have thoughtlessly done. I depend on the leaders of Commerce to help me. Gentlemen, will you?"He looked around from his chair, the Olympian citadel, and was encouraged to continue. All the guests were listening eagerly. Cigars were going out. The wine in the glasses was forgotten. The speaker's face was the focus of eight hundred eyes."Money is a good thing," he went on. "It is necessary for economic activities and commercial life. In private hands, well used, it yields comfort, freedom, happiness, to countless homes. Never let us despise the goodly things of life!""Hear, hear!" said Archdeacon Pryde."But too much wealth in a few hands is an evil bringing disastrous results. Where is there greater unhappiness than with those multi-millionaires, in America especially, whose mass of possessions grows and grows, increasing their harassing responsibilities and anxieties, haunting them with panic fears of rapid ruin; useless in its vastness, mischievous, greedy? Like a golden horror, this Frankenstein-monster of overgreat wealth brings sleeplessness, madness, death, in its train. There you see money a burden and a curse."Sir Titus paused again; and once more swept the faces of his hearers with a keen glance. The room was as still as a tired church. The toast-master now shared the interest of the guests. June sat on the epergne smiling. Bim noiselessly snored."It is trebly a curse when, its creator dead, it passes to the children. Think of those victims of fortune, and pity them. In the beginning they are glad because they own so much. They plan the enjoyment of an infinity of pleasures, and wonder how they can spend the hoard their fathers have left them. They are victims caught in the toils. The great machine goes on. Still the wheels of its production are moving; the labourers are toiling, aching, and wanting. But the brain which has guided their operations has become cold. The new controllers of the machinery are comparatively effete. The old genius is gone. Hired managers do their best, no doubt; but the master, the head of the enterprise, is dead, and his place cannot be filled.""Hear, hear! Hear, hear! Hear, hear!"Agreement came in a rumble, followed with appeals to hush."There are dislocations in the machinery, labour troubles, angers, strikes. I need not detail to you the consequences of swollen industrial organizations, or the infinite troubles which come to enterprises over-capitalized or run by incompetence. Let me, at present, be content to remind you of the effects upon the fortune-ridden, unfortunate children. The worldly folly of the fathers is visited on them. All their lives they have been preserved from experience. They have not been allowed to learn from contact with the roughnesses of the world. They have been spoiled babes, pampered children, gilded youths; and so grow up to responsibilities which they cannot realize, and are perpetually blind to facts, victims to the rapacity of rascals, puppets of fashion, tools and fools--wasting, extravagant, weak, morally ruined. The greatest evil a man can do is to leave his sons so much money that they need not work. The only occupation left them is play; and so they spend their lives, pitting excitement against ennui. Better far be poor with brains and character than rich with the fortune of Dives and Croesus. Is it not so?""It is!" agreed the Archdeacon, looking down his nose. He had a fine voice, kept in condition with constant lozenges, so that his approval was heard all over the room."Hear, hear!" cried others."The useless children of the over-rich are with rare exceptions prodigal, spendthrift, the gulls of unscrupulous rogues--no curse can be greater than the glaring and manifold inequities which come from undue wealth. I need not further remind you of these facts, for you are thoughtful men and sympathetic. But this counsel I venture to give, and this counsel henceforth I pledge myself to keep. When you have secured your sufficiency for comfort, for legitimate industrial enterprise, and for the proper training and equipment of those dependent on you, don't you think it better, instead of accumulating and still accumulating loads of unrequired wealth, to use the surplus for the communal good, for the improvement of the locality, and the betterment of your neighbours and fellows? I shall do this, I pledge my word to it. To-morrow I go to my office, and will ensure that every one of my employés has a fair wage and a secure prospect, provided he does his duty."Such applause of approval went up, breaking the Lord Mayor's speech, that Bim awoke with a start. He sat up and looked around affrighted; but seeing June sitting among her flowers, laughing, he became the courageous gnome again.He picked up the wand, and went for a stroll down the table, wantonly touching men's hands as he went by, impelling them to clap and thump the louder. He was delighted to be wielding such powers. It was a comedy out of Fairyland, a farce with an effective ending.The Lord Mayor stepped down from his chair and lifted his glass of champagne. His voice took on new seriousness:"My lords and gentlemen, I have not forgotten the toast I am asking you to drink. 'The Commerce of London' is a mighty fact, a tribute to our national energies and honourable name. It is potent; yet its power might be greater than ever for securing human happiness. All that is required is a little more humanity, sympathy, imagination, easy sacrifice on the part of--us! We, the masters, can do great things. Let us manage this. We shall not make our means and wealth appreciably less by securing that those dependent on us have sufficient to live on in decency and comfort; nor shall we lose anything worth the keeping if we resolutely refuse to condescend to such shoddy evils as sweating, jerry-building, wild-cat speculations, and the maintenance of the slums. Let us live well, and avoid dying leaving preposterous fortunes behind us. Let me make a public confession. I own five houses in a street in South London. They are old, ill-built, badly-drained, rack-rented. I know it well, but have never thought of the true facts about them till now. Those houses shall be destroyed; and, in their stead, buildings erected that will provide decent and comfortable homes at a fair rent for the present occupiers. I shall not lose much, if anything, through the improvement; but the happiness I shall in consequence gain will be immeasurable. There will be no skeletons in my cupboard henceforth. My lords and gentlemen, am I to go on this crusade alone? Will you join me in this effort for human good?"Every man in the assembly, including the toast-master, rose in his place and shouted "Yes!""Then may I suggest that each of you takes his menu and writes on it resolutions--no pie-crust promises these, no New Year good intentions, but resolutions to be lived up to and with determination kept? If I fail in my intention, hoot me and stone me at the end of my year of office; but I will not fail! I will not fail!"June flew, and kneeling on the top of the Lord Mayor's head--so round and smooth and shiny--kissed it delightedly. A new inspiration thereupon came to him:"Above the resolutions write--'Let us make London fit for the fairies!' My lords and gentlemen, I give you the toast."They drank it in bumpers.
CHAPTER IV
COCKNEYDOM
That night June made her nest among the chimney-pots. There was a broad cleft in the mortar which bound the stack, and a black hammock of thick cobweb swinging as the wind-drift blew upon it. June put the crown for safety underneath her; and, clasping the wand with both her guarding hands, reclined on the cobweb and waited for slumber.
Ordinarily sleep comes to fairies as it comes to birds, instantly and absolutely. But now June could not lose herself in its blessed forgetfulness. For a very long time she lay awake, staring at the veiled sky and listening with strained attention to the eternal throb and hum of the moving life around her.
Very far away, it seemed--far higher than ever in Fairyland it had appeared--the moon was ghostily journeying. There was now no such expression of interest on the lunar countenance, as there had been on the previous night, but dull wakefulness and watchful indifference. All the elves might have run awry and the flowers have withered, for aught the moon appeared to care.
June felt lonely then, especially as not a star was showing, and there were no nightingales. Fairyland seemed millions of miles away. She began to feel strange depression, to fear she had not done well in taking on herself the impossible quest. Just as every Quixote smarts from the despondence of folly, during the cold periods of a divine pilgrimage--so then did she.
June was as dismal as London could make her during those hours of involuntary vigil. As she swung in her cobweb, and stared at the starless mirk, she tried hard to impress on herself the need of her service, and the wisdom of that adventure. Owing to much weariness and the gloom, she took a lot of convincing.
The life of those mortals was truly a sad business. To think of Sally and her grown companions working continually for the sake of mere existence, enduring a life of want and ugliness, with the fairies nowhere near, was truly very sad! All the more need for her to go on and labour.
So it was settled.
The thought was so comforting that her wakefulness came to an end. She fell asleep almost at once, and dreamed she was resting in her own home-bower, in the Land of Wild Roses. Happy cobweb!
The moon went into the clouds, and the hours marched by.
June was awakened by a shrill whistle. A factory called, and the fairy rose.
London at dreary dawn! It was more than ever a dismal scene which greeted her on that grey young morning. Her despairing hopes of the previous evening went down, plumb, to zero. She looked at the miles of black roofs and dingy chimneys. What a hideous world it was! Not so great a wonder, after all, that the elves had determinedly deserted it.
She preened herself carefully, tested both wings to see they were uninjured, fared on the magic food which fairies can, when necessary, make from dew and the west wind, and then felt ready for a day's activities. Her remedial work was to begin at once. To watch evil, and not to check it, was to invite despair and failure; but to displace bad with good was encouraging, and the fairy's business! June put on the crown and began.
Her first duties were with the folk of Paradise Court. She spread wings and was wafted down to the window-ledge. Early as it was, the women and Sally were already labouring with their needles. They were breakfasting while they sewed. Their fare was stale bread, rejected refuse from middle-class tables, and some fearful meat bought--a pound for a penny--from Mother Wolf, a hag in the neighbourhood who made profit by selling offal for human food. How that purveyor of nauseousness escaped the penalties due for so doing is a mystery; but so she did.
Bill was still sleeping, another man by his side. The lords of creation had the pile of clothing to themselves for bed, pillow and quilt. The feminine members of the establishment had managed as well as they might do, lying close together to keep each other warm. That was the usual order of things.
June entered by the magic way of the window, and tickled Bill's nose with her wand. He sneezed, stretched, got up; his first words were just a little lively language--an ungenial good-morning to his companion in luxury, which effectually roused that gentleman.
The men put on their caps--so completing their toilette--yawned, and, without saying a word to the women, went out to look for work. That was their profession--looking for work. They never found it, but ever continued seeking. They breakfasted on beer, bread and grease at the hostelry which gave joy to Paradise Court. The liquid part of their meal lasted till not another copper could be found, borrowed or cadged. Bill's life was a long process of idleness, blessed with beer.
In the morning the clothing that was finished had to be taken to the tailoring firm in the City for which it was made. The various garments were arranged in a bundle, tied round with one of the treasured pieces of string, and perched on Sally's narrow shoulder. She clasped it tightly with her thin hands, trying to believe it was a baby to be nursed.
June decided to go with Sally, to help her bear the burden. This she managed to do by sitting upon it, using the wonderful wand, and wishing the bundle should seem only a tenth part of its real weight. So it was made to be; but Sally, who had not been encouraged to observe things, or to estimate differences, did not become aware of its lightness. In any case, the burden, even when reduced by June, was full heavy enough for a child of her strength and years. But many another like Sally was bearing a similar burden.
Down the stairs and out of Paradise Court went the girl and the fairy; along a dreary, slippery pavement, passing a thousand people, self-interested, self-centred and hurrying, who might laugh, talk, bustle and frown in their individual ways, but who still to June, as to Oberon and all else of the better land, were poor, pitiful shadows, journeying, worrying, moiling for a few thousand days until the extinguisher was put over them.
Yellow and blue tramcars went jangling by. June, seeing people get into and out of them, was minded to make one of them stop, so that Sally could ride; but it was better this first time for Sally to go her own gait as usual. Anyhow, June was alert to be helpful, and handled her wand as the infant spendthrift fingers his penny, determined to use it as speedily and extravagantly as possible.
Sally toiled along slowly. She kept to the chief road, never daring to relax her hold of the bundle, because of the difficulty of recovering it.
She came to a wide crossing--a tramway and omnibus terminus--and passed through a maze of carts and people. June began to feel frightened because of the clamour and crowding, but soon lost her unworthy fears by remembering that these creatures and things--in comparison with herself--were only shadows, permitted to dwell for a little while in the beautiful world which belongs to the fairies, and others of spirit-land. She had more power in her wand and will than they in any or all of their Brobdingnagian faculties.
June was profoundly impressed by the wonderful powers of the police. The way the helmeted man of authority stood in the midst of the press and ruled it, appealed to her as nothing had done since she had witnessed Oberon in his majesty commanding the shapes and princes in the Violet Valley. As Sally went slowly by the policemen, June gave each a fairy's blessing. They became thereafter, and are to this day, more than usually polite and attentive to the timid.
Sally plodded along steadily. She passed a pump dripping with water. June saw several fat sparrows before it, squabbling over the corn which had fallen from a horse's nosebag. She went to chide them, as fairies do to birds in the country when their manners would bear mending; but these town sparrows, in their Cockney ignorance, never having seen a fairy, or dreamed there was anything in existence more important than themselves and perhaps some thin stray cat, pecked at her disrespectfully. As she paid no attention to their surliness, they took sudden panic and fled in a fright, chattering at one another in fine unanimous complaint.
June resumed her perch, but now on Sally's hat. She throned herself on its broken brim, and viewed London with exalted detachment.
The squalor was left behind, but to fairy eyes the City was particularly dreary. The buildings withal so heavy, high and ambitious, wore looks of decay, and were stained with grime. The coarseness of the atmosphere, too, was oppressive. What a life! What a place! June could not resist wistfully thinking of that happier world where the flowers are free and soft winds kiss them. She deeply pitied the folk, who, voluntarily or not, were foolishly imprisoned in the stuffy stone-land.
Sally turned down a court and threaded a series of alleys, bewildering to a stranger, till she came to an ill-painted door and rang a bell.
She lowered her bundle gladly and sat on the step in a state of weakness and exhaustion. The powers within were dilatory or inattentive. She had to wait a good long while before the door was abruptly opened by a lantern-jawed youth, with red bristles on his upper lip, hair plastered with oil, and a paste diamond pin stuck in his yellow necktie. His associates knew him as Ernie Jenkins.
"Why wasn't you 'ere earlier?" he asked. "You'll 'ave to wait now. Mr. Oldstein's out and I'm busy. You seem to think you can come when you like. But you can't. See? You can leave the goods inside and 'ook it for a time. Now remember, and look alive next week. See? Come back in three-quarters of an hour and get yer money."
The door--the back-entrance to Mr. Emmanuel Oldstein's wholesale tailoring emporium--was forthwith shut. Sally, meanwhile, must amuse herself as best she might. Again, with the patience of the starved, she sat on the step to wait, and sufficiently forget herself to think she would like to cry. However, she refrained from tears--the neglected have none to spare--and, as usual, centred her mind on things to eat. Food, food, food--there was her aspect of Eden. The object of her particular desire was again, as always, gravy, "'ot and smelly."
June read her thoughts, and went to work to realize them.
A school-boy was going by, whistling. He had been excused his lessons for the day and was cheerily hurrying to the Oval to see the year's first cricket-match. A white-paper parcel, spelling lunch, was tucked under his arm.
June gazed fixedly at him, waved her wand, and willed him to look at Sally.
He did so. The spell was on him. One glance was enough to influence his inexperienced heart--he was not old or wealthy enough to have learned caution in his charity. He could not now have enjoyed his cricket, remembering, as he must do, the pale, starved face of that weary child, and not have helped her.
He hid his actions in the shelter of a convenient doorway, opened the packet, took out two sandwiches and a chunk of cake, shoved the rest in his jacket-pocket, and, running shamefacedly by, dropped the provender on Sally's lap. He heard her give a gulp of joy as he went on with singing heart, to be the happiest lad in Kennington.
Surrey did better than usual that day.
While the child greedily munched and waited, June, grudging the wasting of time, flew skywards to investigate.
She was soon above the roofs, and awed by the myriad chimneys. Her attention was caught by the dome of St. Paul's, which gloomed like a round purple cloud, over and above all else. It was, as it is, the crown of London. She had never seen anything like it in Fairyland, and wondered at the patience of men. Truly, they were poor things, transient creatures, and all that; but they have faith in what is material, and manage many things in their few years.
Her wings moved rapidly. She sped like a flash of fragrant light over the intervening courts and houses, and quickly came to St. Paul's Churchyard. She passed between the branches of the trees in the railed garden, greeting sparrows and pigeons as she went, and wishing--wishing heartily--she could meet some of those bright-hued, happy-songed friends of hers, who bless the friends and skies of the country. But that could not be. The birds she loved had followed the fairies, leaving prose in feathers behind.
She circled slowly right round the big dome, and wondered more than anything else at its crusted dirt--which dated from the Stuarts. She settled on the weather-ruined statue of an apostle--whom it represented being as indistinguishable as Shem in the nursery Noah's Ark--and gazed with wonder and without admiration at the moving, stretching scene--the live panorama--before her. Roofs and steeples and streets--stretching on and on--that was the picture seen by the fairy. It had its wonders, no doubt; but oh, the pity of it, the crowding and the treelessness! What a woeful waste of space!
The fairies, amongst their shortcomings, have absolutely no sense of political economy. Had June been told that ground-rent on Ludgate Hill is so many pounds sterling a square inch, she would have been totally unimpressed and possibly bored.
"Where could the children find room to play?" she said to herself. "And the flowers must all be smothered!"
She flew to the open space below, and perched on the statue of Queen Anne, to watch with sorrowing eyes the tired and hurrying people. Poor shadows! In a little while they would be back again in the ground which gave them, their opportunities for kindness and happiness ended; and here they were, thinking only of to-day's gains, rushing after the mirage, losing what mattered.
She had grown weary almost to weeping of the sordid scene, and was thinking miserably of its contrast with Fairyland. Oh, why had the elves forsaken London?--when--there was Bim!
The gnome was toiling up Ludgate Hill. He seemed to have shrunk and become a very pale red. Weariness and bewilderment had, for the time being, taken the colour out of him. He was awe-struck and terrified by the rolling volume of traffic, which, though it could not possibly have hurt him, seemed very formidable. He looked with round eyes at the lumbering vehicles, and though to him they were really but shadows bearing all manner and shapes of shade, he was bewildered by their multitude and variety.
With its shining slope and insistent traffic, he found Ludgate Hill a trying and slippery ordeal.
He was repeatedly in straits during that scrambling ascent. The horses could see him; the human beings could not. Time and again a boot threatened him, a skirt swished by him; the wheels of a vehicle often seemed over him; but always he managed--though not without numerous sprawls and tumbles--to avoid contact with the objectionable shadows.
He reached the top of the hill and stood panting and triumphant. Suddenly he saw June, a fairy crowning the effigy of the queen who is dead. He squealed with joy and stared in goggle-eyed rapture. Hoo-oo-oo-oo-ray!
His happiness received a check.
A scavenger boy, running along, crouching, scooping up refuse, scooped up Bim! Before the gnome could say "Robinson" he was up, carried away to a receptacle for dirt, and forthwith tumbled in.
He crawled out puffing and disillusioned. He blessed the scavenger boy thoughtfully for his hospitality; squatted bewildered upon the kerb; then, remembering, turned about and lost all woes, aches and weariness in the joy of seeing June.
"Bim, my brave Bim," she greeted him.
He stared open-mouthed, panting and smiling. He had now no words for answer, and needed none.
CHAPTER V
TOM TIDDLER'S GROUND
Bim was almost top-heavy with joy at meeting June just when his hopes had been at their lowest; she was hardly less delighted at seeing him. For not only was the gnome something from Fairyland, a reminder of its dear delights and golden days, and the means of strengthening her strained determinations; but he had come from her own particular corner of the delectable realm, the Land of Wild Roses, and brought to jaded Cockneydom some fragrant home memories.
But she must get back to Sally. She flew down to Bim, and held out her wand. he grasped it, and forthwith was up in the air, magically borne along by the hurrying fairy.
It was no new thing for Bim to have an aerial journey. One of the favourite games of gnomes--naturally no more able to fly than a pig is capable of "Bo"--is to grab the legs of a pigeon and cause the silly bird to go circling. This was the first time his means of sky-progress had been a fairy. It was an experience strange, terrible and new, to be dragged and wafted over that wilderness of roofs. But it was also exhilarating. He began to sing in his croak of a voice an old elf-song about moonbeams that became icicles. June, listening to him, and watching the scene beneath, vowed and vowed again that she would not rest till London was restored to Fairyland.
Bim had no consciousness, as he croaked and dangled there, of the effects of his influence on the fortunes of the dark city: London likewise had no idea of it.
Sally was still waiting, though the passing of people on business to and from the Oldstein establishment had required her to move to another doorstep, where she sat and watched for the summons.
This seeming neglect on the part of the red young man so irritated June that she flew in hottest haste, head first, through the opening for letters in the door, prepared energetically to remind him.
He was sitting on a counter with stacks of clothing about him--how musty it all smelt!--hard at work reading a worn "horrible"--"Sweeney Todd" its hero--and yawning. Atmosphere, rather than weariness, caused the gape, which came to an abrupt close.
As June was entering the warehouse from the back way, Max Oldstein, the only son of the "firm," was to be heard descending the stairs opposite. Jenkins was off his perch in an instant, and busily tumbling a bale of clothing from the counter to the floor.
June viciously poked with her wand the scraggy nape of his neck to remind him of Sally. Her protest was effectual. He went to the door and shouted:
"Come in, Kid!"
Sally eagerly entered. She stood on the door-mat trembling.
"Pay her four and twopenth," said the master, as he put a tick on the paper he held, "and tell 'er that if 'er people don't do the work betterth, they'll be wantin' it."
Max turned abruptly, and went to the other end of the shop, where he lighted a cigarette and thoughtfully admired the great gold ring on his large little finger. June, feeling angry because of his blatant unpleasantness, wished him a punishment of pain, which he felt.
"My corn!" he said, "it'th goin' to rain."
Meanwhile Jenkins was addressing Sally.
"You 'eard what the young guv'nor said? And don't you forget it! There's the oof--count it!--and 'ere's another lot of material. See? Twenty pieces. Now, you can sling your 'ook!"
Sally poised the pile of cloth on her shoulder and went. June followed her into the street, made the load as light as good wishes and touch of wand permitted, and instructed Bim, who during her absence had fallen fast asleep in the gutter, to clamber on Sally's hat and go home--"home"--with her, to guard her.
Then she returned to see what could be done with Max Oldstein, whose ripe, unusual vulgarity fascinated her.
Sally, with Bim sprawling along her hat-brim like invisible red trimming, jogged slowly eastward. The exhausted gnome was soon again in his own little nod-land--sleep pulled so hard at his eyelids--and did not return to this world of the infinite unrealities till Sally was in the bed-workroom at Paradise Court, and the weary women had greedily counted and grumbled over the few coins brought to them.
At once they returned to the sewing, and plied desperate needles through the new mass of half-made clothing. So wore away more hours of their unblessed lives.
Bim, awakened and sent tumbling by Sally's doffing her hat, crawled into the beer-can, which still was lying where it had rolled when Bill dropped it; curled himself up like a squirrel in its winter fastness, and was asleep again. This shows how over-tired the poor fellow was; Bim was, however, not too weary for dreams, and in the visions of slumber, once more made that fearsome journey from Fairyland which ended with the finding of June. This proves that gnomes can ride nightmares too; a fact for the Psychical Society.
Max Oldstein puzzled June. She could not make him out. His interests and actions seemed so purposeless and mean. During that busy morning he was forty unpleasant persons rolled into one. When a customer who spelt prosperity arrived, Max lost himself in oily politenesses. He laughed vigorously at humour hardly there, and smirked and toadied like anouveau richeat a Primrose tea-fight.
When there followed a journeyman-tailor who had wasted his opportunity in drink, and was impelled by repentance and family needs to beg pitifully to be taken on again, Max's politeness went like a bang. He snubbed the tailor-man for his ingratitude, and abruptly closed the poor fool's pleadings with a turn of his back.
There were so many other starvelings to take that wretch's place.
In the course of the morning Max showed himself shrewd, petty, fawning, arrogant, determined, stupid, vulgar, and cruel. Ernie Jenkins, who copied his manner as well as he was able to, lived in mortal terror of him. To Ernie, Max Oldstein was a mean necessity, his bread and butter, his all. To lose that hateful, pitiful employment would be to cut off every one of his private luxuries--his evening glass of bitter, with its opportunity for badinage with a barmaid, the Woodbine cigarettes, the weekly visit to a music-hall, the Sunday walk with Emily. So he went on, like a hundred thousand others of his kind--selling his life for a pittance, swallowing infinite insults, cringing and mean. Poor Ernie! What is to be done with such humans as he?
At one o'clock Max hurried to the "Haversack" for a large meal of stout and boiled beef with carrots, and, while eating, read with sniggerings a weekly pink paper, which gave oracular advice on race-horses, interspersed with funny paragraphs about lodgers. Also there was talk, in which barmaids, customers and waiters joined familiarly--of the X street murder, the betting prices, and the divorce case of the day with its pretty details.
Then Captain Crowe, whom the folk of his world knew as "Charlie," came in, and Max was pleased to speculate a shilling on a hundred up with him, which the young man lost with a very bad grace, till the Captain, who really had once upon a time held a subaltern's commission in a disbanded battalion, having borrowed half-a-crown from a casual customer, who knew him but indifferently well, restored his opponent's good temper with the gift of a soda and whisky and some flowers of speech, so leading the way to another game of billiards and another defeat for Max.
June was awed by all she saw, and puzzled how to win back to Fairyland--this! She sat amongst used tumblers on the mantelpiece, below the marker's board, patiently watching and wondering. What could she do to mend things? How difficult it was! Were human beings worth saving? Was not Oberon in his ruling right, and she wickedly wrong? These creatures--so mean and sordid--were worse than ever they had been painted to her by their most candid critic in Fairyland.
Then she remembered Sally, and the sweated women in their evil home, and decided to persevere.
"Lord, what fools these mortals be!" she said thoughtfully, unconsciously plagiarizing.
The whisky ended, and the business of recreation done, Max Oldstein paid his score unwillingly, and returned to headquarters. Ernie met him at the door-step.
"Guvnor's come. Been waiting an hour," he warned him.
Max ran upstairs, two at a time, to see his father, and hastily concocted a detailed account of the business which had detained him. The lie was not required that day. He mentally pigeon-holed it for a later occasion.
His senior greeted him with a loud, glad laugh. Max wondered. His father showed him an invitation card with the arms of the City upon it.
"Max, my boy! Look at that!" cried the old man, clearing his throat. "What d'ye think of Papa now, eh?"
He rose, chuckled violently and rattled his golden watch-chain. Max took the card and read it. It was an invitation to dine with the Lord Mayor and some representatives of commercial houses. He felt a twinge of envy, and then of pride.
"Bravo, Dad!" said the son. They shook hands solemnly. "It'th to-night, too!"
"Yeth," said Emmanuel, taking the invitation and frowning at it. "Thoth idioth at the potht-offith nearly mitht my thecuring thith 'igh honour. 'Ere's the envelope. Look at the thtamp. Pothted a week ago, and I only got it to-day. Put in the wrong letter-box. I've written to the Potht-mathter-General to complain. A 'ot and strong letter I've written. Very nice of the Lord Mayor, ain't it?"
"'Ow did you get it, Dad?"
"Lord knowth! I lent one of 'is footmen money. P'raps that 'elped!"
"'Ave you accepted? You mutht, you know!"
"Twice; to make sure, I sent two letterth by expreth, from different poth-offithes."
"My word, Dad, you are spendin'. That'th what I call extravaganth."
"No, my boy, you muthn't look at the pennieth when there'th a twenty-bob dinner in store. That'th policy and busineth too. You can't teach Papa nothin', you can't! Now, 'ow are things?"
They talked of clothes, market-prices and details of their trade for a couple of hours, while June listened and wondered. How these mortals did waste their time over the wealth which isn't worth having!
She made up her mind to go to the banquet at the Mansion House.
When the office-clock chinkled five the elder Oldstein looked at his watch to confirm the news, and hurriedly put away his papers.
"I mutht be off to dreth," he said to his son. "I'm going' to 'ave a bath."
He went, June after him.
He drove westward in a slow omnibus. The fairy sat on his knee, and, looking about her, felt disappointed with civilization.
At length they stopped by Maida Vale, and the wholesale clothier having ridden his full three-pennyworth, waddled down two streets and arrived at his dwelling. It was one of a row of buildings, mostly boarding-houses, in their dull unornamental dinginess strangely similar to each other. They were Mid-Victorian--the Drab Age!--and looked it from boot-scraper to roof-tree. Oldstein's private residence, like his business house, seemed in dire need of paint. What the household could do was done. What they could not do must be done without.
"Wathte of good money, my boy;" and then, "Next year, per'aps." And so on, season after season, year after year. Like Alice's to-morrow, the Oldstein next-year never came.
The clothier and his family lived at forty-eight. The next house was number fifty. The two front-doors were immediately adjacent, the entrances separated by a row of rusty railings.
As he ascended his steps, Emmanuel slyly slipped a folded, printed paper out of his breast-pocket; and leaning over the railings, gently dropped it into the next-door letter-box.
The same instant his front-door was opened by Hannah, the ever-indignant, eldest daughter of the house.
"Those people have been at it again!" she said, and angrily crumpled up and threw down a circular she had just taken out of the letter-box.
"The thame thort?" her father asked, shutting the door quietly.
"Yes, of course, this is the ninety-second they've dropped in. It makes me wild! I've made up my mind when the hundredth comes--if it does come--to give Aaron Hyam's youngest tuppence to break their kitchen window."
"Don't waste yer money like that; am I a millionaire?" He picked up and smoothed out the circular, and began to read it aloud: "'Thothiety for the Conversion of the Jews; an evenin' meetin' with addretheth.' Oh, put it with the retht, Max will make a spill of it. Leave it to Papa, dear. I've got a better plan for dealing with 'em; I've begun to put it in practice already."
"'Ave you, Dad? I'd like to scratch that little nincompoop of a son of theirs. He makes me mad with his soppy smile, and sandy whiskers, and conceited sanctimoniousness. I'd give 'im hymns at the street corner."
"A much better plan, my clear. You may as well give me them little billths--all of 'em. They'll be useful. They're poor, ain't they?"
"They are--as synagogue rats--if the faces of the tradespeople are anything to go by."
Hannah was very vicious.
"Well, then, leave it to me. Every time they invite us to be converted, I invite them to borrow money from me--from Jabez Gordon. They've 'ad fourteen of my circulars already. I gave 'em a fifteenth to-day. That'th the best bait for those birds. Trust Daddy, my dear. They will bite--that sort of body always does. Trutht a hymn-smiter for a quiet gamble; and then----"
"You will fleece them?" she cried, with fierce exultation. Something of Jephthah's daughter, of Deborah, of Hagar, of the ancient heroines of Israel, lived in her breast.
"Oh no, Hannah! Fleeth! we never fleeth. I will help them to some very good bithness, that ith all."
"That will do!" she said. "They convertus! The fools!"
"And ith the shirt well aired?" he asked. "I'm nervouth of cold white shirts."
"You'll find everything all right, Dad. Your bath-water will soon be ready. Mother's in the drawing-room ironing your dress trousers. Now don't you worry. Just wait while I'm putting your things ready, and listen to a tune on the gramophone. You've plenty of time. The brougham won't be 'ere for a good hour yet."
He went into the drawing-room. June fluttered above him. Her brightness was faintly reflected on his dingy bald head. She was strangely curious for a high-minded fairy. The home of want she had seen; now for the home of the master!
The sight awed and depressed her. She perched on the chandelier and studied everything closely, while beneath her a gramophone--set going by Becky, the second and last of the daughters--blared a blatant anthem of the streets.
The furniture was worthy of the house--Mid-Victorian to the last. A green mirror with gilded frame, a golden eagle perched at the top of it, reflected an untrue version of the objects before it. There was a clumsy clock, with black ornaments to match it on either side; at each end of the mantelpiece was a lustre with spills stuck into it. Photographs of Hebrew celebrities--singers, actresses, and politicians of a certain party complexion--were ranged about shelves and tables. There were albums and unreadable books with cheap, bright covers here and there. Some coloured engravings of sentimental pictures hung against the red wall. A dead musical box, waxen water-lilies in a glass case, and--but enjoyable as it is to take a verbal photograph of a characteristic, respectable British interior, it is unnecessary to do so here. We shall not require to enter that room again.
The more June watched the place and its people, the more she wondered. And then, while she waited for Mr. Oldstein to bathe and adorn himself in glistening raiment, she decided on a plan of campaign. In her dreams of prediction, even then, in that centre of hopeless banality, she saw Fairyland exultant where vulgarity gloomed.
The crusade was to begin that evening. So let London hope!
CHAPTER VI
POST-PRANDIAL
Mr. Oldstein drove to the Mansion House in a hired brougham. Hannah travelled with him, for the sake of the drive. He talked of his father, who had been a publican in Petticoat Lane.
June was on the box with the coachman most of the time. She found looking at the passing lights and strange shops more entertaining than the conversation inside, which, indeed, was no better than the ordinary stodge most of us talk.
The fairy rested. She still felt the strain of the crowds, the noise, and the atmosphere; but not so severely as she had done during her entrance to London yesterday. She rested her very best.
They arrived at Walbrook in good time. Emmanuel had no intention of missing anything. This was a chance to be swallowed whole. The carriage found its place in the gathering queue, and slowly approached the side of the Mansion House where the guests were alighting.
June watched a few belated pigeons which had not yet gone to roost. An idea came. Dim would be of use that evening.
She charmed one of the birds to her, put her spell upon it, and despatched it at its special speed to Paradise Court. The pigeon flew well; it was to be rewarded.
In twenty-five minutes it was back again, with Bim clinging to its feet. June praised the pigeon and touched it, giving it nobler plumage. It was no longer grey and ordinary, but brightly speckled and a pouter. Sudden pride ate up its quieter qualities. It did not wait even the tail-end of a minute, as courtesy required, but was up in the pigeons' dormitory over the architrave, as swaggering and important as Bumble, showing off and strutting before its mate, who woke from domesticated dreams of well-laid eggs to gaze and grumble. She had been quite contented with the lord and master as he was.
Bim's sleep had restored him. He was once again his old berry-hued self, and June's as devotedly as ever.
Mr. Oldstein had long since entered the Mansion House and been welcomed by the host and Chief Magistrate of the City, Sir Titus Dodds; but not all the guests had yet arrived. The most important--the representatives of the Church, the State and the halfpenny Press--were in fact but then arriving. So June flew and Bim scrambled up the red-covered steps together, and entered the palace of feasting in good time to share the greatest event in Oldstein's life.
Bim stared at the stockings of the footmen, awed, and Emmanuel followed his example. He admired and examined the mayoral furniture, appurtenances, ornaments; the busts, pictures and tapestry, appraising their value with eager professional interest. It must have cost a good twenty thousand pound! He determined to remodel his own drawing-room on Mansion House principles, provided he had good luck in Wardour Street.
He regretted now that he had not sought civic responsibilities and honours for himself. Dear, dear! Economy is a bad policy when it costs anything. He began to know golden-chained hopes; but the ambition never extinguished the tradesman. He wondered whether he might surreptitiously drop one of his Jabez Gordon circulars on that corner ottoman, and decided not to do so. There were too many risks.
He wished that his wife, Hannah, Becky, Max, could have seen him in his glory, waiting amidst that high company, and that they might have watched him shaking hands with the Lord Mayor--his fingers tingled with pleasure still. He must have an appropriate coat-of-arms--something gold and scarlet, with a rampant lion if possible. Social ambitions quickened within his brain. Yes, he would come into public life, if it did not cost too much.
So Emmanuel Oldstein went on building his castles--forgetting, forgetting they were based on piles of clothing sewed and made saleable by the needles of sweated women. That aspect of facts did not even for a half-moment occur to him. This was the prevalent fact--that he was a gentleman, enjoying the company of baronets and Common Councillors, received within the hospitable walls of that Zion of commercial probity and prosperity--the Mansion House.
The welcome summons came at last, and, the Lord Mayor leading, the guests trooped into the Egyptian room, place of daytime dullness and evening festivities.
The banquet was begun.
June, who afterwards confessed herself much impressed by the Lord Mayor's robes and diamonds, perched herself on an epergne full of delicious spring flowers. She feasted on their delicate scents and colours, while Bim sprawled lazily on a jelly. Little did the masters of Gog and Magog, feasting there on their soups and meats and sweets, dream that a fairy and a gnome were watching them. June was thinking hard about Sally, and the hunger of the slums.
A solid hour was eaten away.
The loving-cups were brought in, and distributed to the various tables. Now was the time to act. June gave Bim her wand. In obedience to her command he dipped it deep in the spiced wine of the loving-cups. Never a common drink, it was nigh to nectar now. There was magic in it, and liquid warmth-of-heart, a loving-cup indeed! Every man drank the new ambrosia and passed the cup to his neighbour. So the fairy's influence went round, and the distinguished company of commoners was linked together in a union nobler than any of them knew.
The fun was beginning. How likeable seemed their fellow-guests! what a nice bright kindly world it was! They thought this generosity of feeling was their ordinary post-prandial satisfaction, fed upon warm meats and the drinks that are Philistine; but the fairy at the board knew better. Later on, some of the guests realized the difference too, for they are astute--those gentlemen in the City.
The toast-master made himself evident. He had a magnificent voice, and a big broad beard, which would get entangled with his watch-chain. Bim could not resist it. He gazed with longing, and then tucked the wand under his elbow, took a flying leap on to the arm of the mayoral chair, ran up to the back of it, and sprang at the beard. There he clung, and hid, peeping out of the brown forest at the concourse of happy gourmands.
The loyal toasts were given, cheered and sung. There was conversation and amateur music by Guildhall scholars.
The Lord Mayor uprose to propose the toast of the evening, "The Commerce of London." He was a picture of rubicund prosperity, a man of drab and scarlet. He began a pompous speech.
"My lords and gentlemen, the Lord Mayor and the ancient Corporation of London have often greeted at their hospitable board gatherings similar to this, yet never before, my lords and gentlemen, never before, has any Lord Mayor had the high honour of welcoming to his table a more distinguished gathering of leaders in commerce than that which graces it now."
The orator stopped to look at his notes. A rolling round of applause told him he was doing well enough.
Emmanuel Oldstein, whose seat was some distance from the speaker, craned forward better to hear. He--a leader in commerce! Good!
"Round this table," the Lord Mayor continued, with a sweep of his white fat hand, "are magnates of banking houses, shippers, merchants of all kinds of produce brought from the farthest ends of the earth, heads of railways, representatives of all departments of commercial industry. The prosperity of the United Kingdom--let me say the British Empire--is represented here. It's a happy, a very happy, condition of things."
Another pause for note-reading; another roll of hand-clapping and "Hear, hears." Cigars were lighted, wine sipped; the audience was in a particularly sympathetic mood. It is flattering and delightful to be reminded you are rich, and--the wand in the loving-cup had done its work.
The fairy who ruled the feast was frankly bored by this display of prose. To her critical ears it was drivel.
Some use must be made of this talkative gentleman, round whom the incense of tobacco--how can men make that stifling smoke?--was being assiduously burned. She flew to his shoulder, hovered for one deliberative moment above his head, and forthwith crowned him with the fairy crown. It shone like a golden drop on the shining bald space--a glorious globule on a barren sphere; but none of the mortals could see it.
The Lord Mayor at once threw down his notes. He had gained the confidence of Demosthenes. He smiled, and braced himself for an effort. His pomposity was forgotten; his hesitancy gone.
June was making a miracle. The wonders went on. Never before at a Mansion House festival had any such speech been heard as was then to be delivered; but now it was heard--and applauded. June flew back to the epergne to listen. She had reasons for being interested now. Bim, seeing his mistress's activities, crept out of his tangle and returned to sit cross-legged on the table to watch and listen with eyes and mouth at their widest, till the warmth and the smoke took their toll, and he lapsed into sleep.
"Now, my friends and fellow-citizens, I want to speak to you as man to men. I put a plain question plainly, and you will accept its truth. What is the good of our wealth if it is not well used? How can it bring us true happiness, if it does not bring others happiness too? Would you like to think that your possessions meant want in others?"
"No!" shouted Emmanuel Oldstein.
"No!" shouted everyone else.
"Of course No. You are true men. Princes of Commerce! And yet look facts in the face. Does our wealth bring those others who help us to create it anything like an adequate return for their labours in happiness or kind? It does not!"
Men rose from their seats to shout agreement with this utterance.
Was this the Tory City or an improved Tower Hill?
The toast-master--in his private life a talking Radical, who always voted Conservative--listened with perturbation and amazement. He had not drunk of the loving-cup as had the guests. The speech was not strange to them; they understood, they sympathized, and at intervals punctuated it with rousing cheers. It was the very thing they wanted.
Archdeacon Pryde, who all his life had persistently blocked progress with many words of heartfelt sympathy, smiled benediction, and tapped the table, loudly encouraging the Lord Mayor to go on with his revolution. The Lord Mayor went on. Nay, he broke another record, established another precedent for the Mansion House, did what Mr. Pickwick did--stood on his chair that he might be better heard. The toast-master watched and hearkened, deeply grieved.
"It is just six months since the City did me the honour of electing me Chief Magistrate. I have tried to do my duty. I have tried to serve the City well."
"You have, you have!"
"Half my term of office has ended. The second half begins. During the time remaining I intend to do something to make my year of office more than ever memorable and worthy of the City. I am going to use my opportunity and my wealth to set an example and undo some of the evil that many of us have thoughtlessly done. I depend on the leaders of Commerce to help me. Gentlemen, will you?"
He looked around from his chair, the Olympian citadel, and was encouraged to continue. All the guests were listening eagerly. Cigars were going out. The wine in the glasses was forgotten. The speaker's face was the focus of eight hundred eyes.
"Money is a good thing," he went on. "It is necessary for economic activities and commercial life. In private hands, well used, it yields comfort, freedom, happiness, to countless homes. Never let us despise the goodly things of life!"
"Hear, hear!" said Archdeacon Pryde.
"But too much wealth in a few hands is an evil bringing disastrous results. Where is there greater unhappiness than with those multi-millionaires, in America especially, whose mass of possessions grows and grows, increasing their harassing responsibilities and anxieties, haunting them with panic fears of rapid ruin; useless in its vastness, mischievous, greedy? Like a golden horror, this Frankenstein-monster of overgreat wealth brings sleeplessness, madness, death, in its train. There you see money a burden and a curse."
Sir Titus paused again; and once more swept the faces of his hearers with a keen glance. The room was as still as a tired church. The toast-master now shared the interest of the guests. June sat on the epergne smiling. Bim noiselessly snored.
"It is trebly a curse when, its creator dead, it passes to the children. Think of those victims of fortune, and pity them. In the beginning they are glad because they own so much. They plan the enjoyment of an infinity of pleasures, and wonder how they can spend the hoard their fathers have left them. They are victims caught in the toils. The great machine goes on. Still the wheels of its production are moving; the labourers are toiling, aching, and wanting. But the brain which has guided their operations has become cold. The new controllers of the machinery are comparatively effete. The old genius is gone. Hired managers do their best, no doubt; but the master, the head of the enterprise, is dead, and his place cannot be filled."
"Hear, hear! Hear, hear! Hear, hear!"
Agreement came in a rumble, followed with appeals to hush.
"There are dislocations in the machinery, labour troubles, angers, strikes. I need not detail to you the consequences of swollen industrial organizations, or the infinite troubles which come to enterprises over-capitalized or run by incompetence. Let me, at present, be content to remind you of the effects upon the fortune-ridden, unfortunate children. The worldly folly of the fathers is visited on them. All their lives they have been preserved from experience. They have not been allowed to learn from contact with the roughnesses of the world. They have been spoiled babes, pampered children, gilded youths; and so grow up to responsibilities which they cannot realize, and are perpetually blind to facts, victims to the rapacity of rascals, puppets of fashion, tools and fools--wasting, extravagant, weak, morally ruined. The greatest evil a man can do is to leave his sons so much money that they need not work. The only occupation left them is play; and so they spend their lives, pitting excitement against ennui. Better far be poor with brains and character than rich with the fortune of Dives and Croesus. Is it not so?"
"It is!" agreed the Archdeacon, looking down his nose. He had a fine voice, kept in condition with constant lozenges, so that his approval was heard all over the room.
"Hear, hear!" cried others.
"The useless children of the over-rich are with rare exceptions prodigal, spendthrift, the gulls of unscrupulous rogues--no curse can be greater than the glaring and manifold inequities which come from undue wealth. I need not further remind you of these facts, for you are thoughtful men and sympathetic. But this counsel I venture to give, and this counsel henceforth I pledge myself to keep. When you have secured your sufficiency for comfort, for legitimate industrial enterprise, and for the proper training and equipment of those dependent on you, don't you think it better, instead of accumulating and still accumulating loads of unrequired wealth, to use the surplus for the communal good, for the improvement of the locality, and the betterment of your neighbours and fellows? I shall do this, I pledge my word to it. To-morrow I go to my office, and will ensure that every one of my employés has a fair wage and a secure prospect, provided he does his duty."
Such applause of approval went up, breaking the Lord Mayor's speech, that Bim awoke with a start. He sat up and looked around affrighted; but seeing June sitting among her flowers, laughing, he became the courageous gnome again.
He picked up the wand, and went for a stroll down the table, wantonly touching men's hands as he went by, impelling them to clap and thump the louder. He was delighted to be wielding such powers. It was a comedy out of Fairyland, a farce with an effective ending.
The Lord Mayor stepped down from his chair and lifted his glass of champagne. His voice took on new seriousness:
"My lords and gentlemen, I have not forgotten the toast I am asking you to drink. 'The Commerce of London' is a mighty fact, a tribute to our national energies and honourable name. It is potent; yet its power might be greater than ever for securing human happiness. All that is required is a little more humanity, sympathy, imagination, easy sacrifice on the part of--us! We, the masters, can do great things. Let us manage this. We shall not make our means and wealth appreciably less by securing that those dependent on us have sufficient to live on in decency and comfort; nor shall we lose anything worth the keeping if we resolutely refuse to condescend to such shoddy evils as sweating, jerry-building, wild-cat speculations, and the maintenance of the slums. Let us live well, and avoid dying leaving preposterous fortunes behind us. Let me make a public confession. I own five houses in a street in South London. They are old, ill-built, badly-drained, rack-rented. I know it well, but have never thought of the true facts about them till now. Those houses shall be destroyed; and, in their stead, buildings erected that will provide decent and comfortable homes at a fair rent for the present occupiers. I shall not lose much, if anything, through the improvement; but the happiness I shall in consequence gain will be immeasurable. There will be no skeletons in my cupboard henceforth. My lords and gentlemen, am I to go on this crusade alone? Will you join me in this effort for human good?"
Every man in the assembly, including the toast-master, rose in his place and shouted "Yes!"
"Then may I suggest that each of you takes his menu and writes on it resolutions--no pie-crust promises these, no New Year good intentions, but resolutions to be lived up to and with determination kept? If I fail in my intention, hoot me and stone me at the end of my year of office; but I will not fail! I will not fail!"
June flew, and kneeling on the top of the Lord Mayor's head--so round and smooth and shiny--kissed it delightedly. A new inspiration thereupon came to him:
"Above the resolutions write--'Let us make London fit for the fairies!' My lords and gentlemen, I give you the toast."
They drank it in bumpers.