CHAPTER XTHE IMPORTANCE OF BIMIt was some few weeks before Emmanuel Oldstein was able to fulfil his good intention of visiting Paradise Court. Sally was the last on his list, and not till June's name-month was half-way through could he come to her.Meanwhile things had been happening. The newspaper crusade was going well, and the two from Fairyland were using their efforts to help it forward.The gnome was becoming influential in Paradise Court. It was in especial his province. June, with her wings and magic, could visit a wide area; but he, with his poor inches and limitations, was necessarily stay-at-home. Partly through accident he began a revolution which was fated to have important effect in the recovery of London. This is how it happened.The old flower-box whence he had taken the mould for their flourishing roof-garden was a faded, decrepit affair; otherwise its meagre quantity of wood would surely, long ago, have been broken and used as fuel. For years it had stood in a dank corner, barren and forgotten. Then, in a fit of prankishness, Bim carried down a violet, the only one gathered in the Mansion House posy, and planted it. June had given it power of life; with the tenacity of its kind it had struggled, flourished and come to bloom.It was the gnome's treasure. He was proud of its being, and looked after it in a spoilt parental way, exaggerating its few qualities, blessedly blind to its defects.For some days it bluely blushed unseen; and then came into a prominence which half pleased, half frightened it.Poll Skinner cast her husband-blacked eyes upon it."Lor' lummy!" she cried, "a voilet!"She looked at the flower and thereupon fell in a dream. A violet in Paradise Court! For the first time for years she was out of the ugly present, away from the base life about her.Memories of old days, clean days, lived again. She saw herself as she was, before sin, want and selfishness had claimed and kept her. As she was! As she was! She remembered her father's cottage, with its garden of pinks and wallflowers. She remembered a wood near an ivied church; and was once again a girl, hunting for primroses, bluebells and violets. She remembered her white pinafore and her cleverness at weaving daisy-chains. How clean in all ways was that maiden life! And now---- Paradise Court! Drink and the devil had taken their toll! God!Poll found tears in her eyes when she woke to the present. She wiped her face with grimy hands and left traces."Blimey, 'ere's old Poll drunk again!" said one of the knights of the place, a hulking fellow who called himself a dock-labourer, but whose idle hands were almost rooted to his pockets. "What yer starin' at, Poll?"Poll indicated the flower. He saw it and stretched forth a hand."There ain't much to blub about in that!""Leave it be, Mike!" she cried, fearing his destructiveness. "Leave it be! It's a voilet!""A what? Let's 'ave a look! Who are ye shovin'? I want to look at it." She resisted him. "I'll wipe yer eyes if ye don't!"He pushed forward with all his strength, intending, in sheer debasing mischief, to grab and crush the flower; but Poll struggled like a cat-woman to prevent him. He lost temper and struck her in the face. She, shrieking and shrill, tore his forehead with her nails, and tried to bite him. Her hair came loose. There was blood on her cheek. The animal emerged from Man.The tumult of shuffling feet and foul speech brought others of the Court to doorways and windows. Women, who knew nothing of the cause of the combat, added their voices to Poll's in vigorous denunciation of Mike. The men--brave fellows!--looked on and grinned. One slunk away from the scene of the encounter; that was Skinner, Poll's natural protector and supposed husband. He went into the public-house and ordered beer.The battle ended when Mike had accomplished his purpose and grasped the flower. He threw it on the pavement and ground it with his boot. Then he went away leisurely to enjoy refreshment after victory. His thirst had found an excuse. Poll's fury lapsed into noisy tears. She entered her one room, threw a rusty flat-iron on the floor, and nagged at the children.Bim had watched this commotion from the parapet above. He sprawled on the cement-work, peeped at the tangle of heads below, and felt thoroughly frightened. Deeply did he regret that June was not there. She would have fought on the side of Poll and the violet, and given them victory. Had only her wand been left behind he could and would have intervened effectively. But nothing could be done. When he saw brutality win, he went moodily back to the fairies' garden, and pondered on ugly things.The blues drove him into a brown study. He decided the affair should not end there. He uprooted a lingering primrose, and crept down with it. He carefully grubbed the mould in the box to freshen its jadedness, and planted the yellow flower--the fairies' oriflamme.Back to the parapet he clambered to wait and watch.Hours passed by. Nothing happened that day to reward his patience. The people of Paradise Court are not observant. The primrose lived and shone without appreciation until the morrow, when June magically drew attention to it. Some children first caught sight of it and curiously poked at it with sticks. It was a new wonder to them.Poll saw the group about the box, and came to look. The wrath of yesterday was requickened within her. The children in their wisdom edged away from the virago, who carried the box to the sill outside her window, dumped it down; and then, in a voice of challenge, screamed out:"'Ere's a primrose come! If anybody touches this, by Gawd, I'll murder 'im!"Mike, having won his battle yesterday, was quite good-tempered to-day. He sauntered up to look at the flower and laughed."I won't touch it, Poll. You can 'ave yer measly primrose," and went off for another drink.Poll hesitated, then followed him: their feud was drowned in beer.The primrose lived for a week, and held a sort of continuous reception. Bim was as proud as a peacock about it. He got stiff-neck staring over the parapet, straining to hear the compliments and praise. Everybody in the Court paid it a daily visit and undue tributes. The children could hardly be induced to keep their hands from it. Their fingers itched to pluck; but Poll Skinner was a power to be feared. She kept sober in order to be the better sentinel.Mike suddenly shifted the interest of Paradise Court to his abode by bringing home three flowerpots containing hyacinths--how he obtained them had better not be asked. As at the same time the primrose happened to fade, and its plant had no promise of buds, Poll felt chagrin. The balance of her world was shifted. Mike held the hub of the hemisphere.She drank herself silly with gin, and beat her children frightfully; but the return of sober sanity brought new ideas. Poll rose to the occasion. She sent her "old man" to a distant churchyard to steal some good new mould; and then bought--actually bought--from the publican's wife, a rose-plant warranted to flower.Poll bore it home triumphantly, while Paradise Court smiled.Mike's hyacinths--in comparison with Poll's aristocratic plant--had now to take a second place, very far-behind, in the public interest. And it was no good making reprisals. Neither his wits nor his wealth would enable him to do better than Poll. Moreover, the fashion of flowers was spreading. Three other residents in the colony had put up rough window-boxes, with green things in them; and the children, keen to follow their elders, found tins, jam-pots, pickle-jars, and planted within them anything they could get; grass, if nothing of the flower kind was available.Bim felt a third of an inch taller; he trod with an airier tread, now that his influence over Paradise Court had become so manifest. He laboured with Salvationist ardour to help the people; supplementing and moderating their energies, and encouraged the flowers to live. For hours he would sit in blest invisibility by one or other of the plants, enjoying the admiring remarks addressed to them, sharing the general satisfaction.Families came to talk of weedy green things as if they were spreading chestnut-trees; while those members of the community who, having gone "hopping," had actual experience of wild life and woodland facts were regarded as travellers and oracles. Living up to their opportunities, they told vegetable counterparts of certain fish stories. Bim's blessed interference certainly caused some white stealth and a multitude of tarradiddles.Nor was the indirect influence of the gnome yet at an end.'Arry Bailey was the instrument of the next progressive step. He had some nasturtiums and was ambitious of getting them to climb in festoons round his window. He used nails, string, language and glue. At last he succeeded. For a time his nasturtiums were the rage. Their blazing colours and rapid growth made them popular. But Bailey, in whom the æsthetic sense must have been recovering after years of hibernation, felt that something was lacking. He smoked three ounces of shag and scratched his chin for hours on end before it dawned on him what it was.Then he said "By gum"--that was all he said--and proceeded to surprise the Court by cleaning his window. One of the panes was badly cracked, the mark of some midnight fracas; so--more surprising still--he measured the gap, bought glass and putty, and entertained a Sunday crowd of chaffing, envious lookers-on by mending it himself, making a clumsy good business of it.Bailey's act of reformation occasioned criticism and imitation--action is mostly imitation in Paradise Court. Before a further seven days had dawned and darkened not a window on any floor in the Court but was washed and polished. In cases where there was no money for mending, new paper--preferably illustrated--was put in broken places, window-sills and doorsteps were whitened.The inhabitants began to feel proud, to give themselves airs, to wash their necks.Curtains of all shapes and colours appeared, rooms became tidied: homes tolerable. Men stayed indoors to smoke their pipes and gossip, going less frequently to the public-house. Not that the improvement was so rapid as to seem violent. Paradise Court was, is, and will be till the trump, a home of conservatism. Its motion is that of a glacier. Yet it does move, and did. Though drunkenness and slovenliness, with brutalities of words and of fighting, were still over-frequent, there was real improvement, and a quiet growth of self-respect, which, after the lapse of months, had borne remarkable fruit. Bravo, Bim!The gnome extended his efforts further afield, and was constantly dropping flowers before children in the alleys and other drearinesses of London, in order that they might be picked up, taken home, appreciated, loved, and wanted.June, learning from him, was glad to follow his example. She scattered love-bringing blooms and blossoms--gathered without permission from the parks--wherever there were brown plain walls and ugliness. She wanted the fairies to come back to their ancient rights and rule; but felt they certainly would not stay where flowers were forgotten.She longed--longed desperately--for the return of the elves to their ancient dominion over the town.One night a company from Elfland made grand appeal to her. It was a full hour and more after midnight, and absolutely dark. No moon shone on the scene, no stars shed brightness from the sky.Bim was sprawling on the roof-gutter lost in dreams. His head rested on a sparrow's deserted nest. June was in her bower, too weary for visions, even too weary for sleep. She was tired at heart, thoroughly, utterly tired! Her only comfort came from the flowers beaming about her. She felt the loneliness of London. Fairy memories called and called and called to her. She was weary of burdens. This pilgrimage in the dark city was dreary, heavy, grievous and horrible. But still, she must stay.Her quick ears caught the rustling of many fairy wings in the distance; only one with sympathies sensitive and truly attuned to the wafting could have heard them so far away. She sat and saw elves on the wing. They were haze-shrouded, high in the sky above. Would they penetrate the murky canopy? Had they come in late answer to her appeals, to help with the burden, to share in the task of re-creating beauty in the wilderness?She watched them wheeling in the upper air in distant luminousness, curving, descending. She grasped her wand and followed their progress intently, hoping all things, yearning to be with them again.The flowers about June's bed, the flowers in the court below, lifted glad heads in greeting. They freshened visibly. Bim in his slumbers sighed, and comfortably turned as he slept.The elves alighted on the roofs around. There were thousands of them. Half the folk of the Violet Valley, of the Land of Wild Roses, of other parts of Fairyland, must have been there. They were multitudinous, innumerable, and clustered on rims of chimneys, on angles of houses, on street-lamps and window-sills, making of dull commonplace a remarkable series of pictures. All the while they were singing songs of sweet appeal.June donned her crown, while they hovered and settled, and stood to greet them. Some sparrows, surprised by the unwonted spectacle, woke and began chirping. It was beggarly music, monotonous the word for it: but it served. London, alas! had nothing better and the sparrows did their best. Fairy kindness overlooked the deficiencies.Suddenly there was silence: elves and birds hushed."Welcome, sweet comrades from Fairyland!" said June. "I am glad you have visited me amongst these shadows. Will you stay and help to restore London to Oberon?""Nay, nay," answered a hundred voices, slender and silvern, from here and from there."June, our June!" a sparkling knight then cried to her. "Your going has brought gloom into the elf-countries. Oberon and Titania have been grieved and absent since your flight; all others of us have felt the changes. Come back to us! It is like living in a valley with the sunshine and moonlight always gone; like living in a wood where the flowers for want of blessings and dew are shrivelled. Change this for us, June! Come back, come back!""Come back, come back!" echoed the wide chorus, plaintively, pleadingly.Clocks struck two. A cold wind came from the sea."Sisters and knights from the delightful countries," June answered. "To hear your voices is music to a heart which has hungered for melody. To be with you again and for ever is the dream of these days and nights. O Fairyland, Fairyland! But for me that cannot be, until this world-town of vanity and darkness is a part of Fairyland too. Help us, and work with us. Already Hope shines through the misery. Already we have been rewarded--Bim and I. We have begun well. Laughter and flowers bloom where a few weeks ago they could not. We are going to win. Men have listened to our bidding. Elf-rule is leading them. Their puppet limbs are bending to the light. They are beginning again in the darkest parts to live with beauty and love the fairies. Bear with us: and help them. Before next Mayday comes, I must deliver up this crown. Sweet knights and sister elves, so work with us that Oberon may be ruling over London again."In answer a fairy song went rolling from the assembly, up and up, piercing the cloud overhead, discovering the stars. June rejoiced at the hearing, though still it was an appeal to her--a yearning appeal to her--to be done with her madness, to submit to Oberon, to return. June felt alone.The new song wakened Bim. He sat up suddenly, ears pricked sharply with eager attention. Fairies in London!He clambered amazedly up the slanting roof and knelt by the side of June. She laid hands on his shoulders. The two waited and watched.In twos and threes, reluctantly, the fairies opened wings, and went away. Over the houses they journeyed, a glittering, saddened procession. Higher and higher, and farther and farther they flew. The sound of their chorus gradually diminished till there was silence--the silence of sleep-bound London--again.Gone!June gazed on her garden of flowers. The gnome crawled away sadly, and squatted by the chimney-pot, dangling his feet. He felt a solid piece of melancholy."That was a very nice dream," he said for comfort's sake; and found the words not comforting."Let us be doing things," June counselled.CHAPTER XIA PROSE INTERLUDEOldstein came at last to Paradise Court, and two good things resulted--Sally was taken out of her slave-life and sent to a boarding-school at the expense of her former task-master, and June went to tea with the Archdeacon.Emmanuel had been for six weeks living up to his ideals. It was the hardest of tasks to him, but obstinate doggedness pulled him through. He had come actually to like doing good, and realized the subtle joys which live in generosity. He developed a habit--learned indirectly from the goodly practices of Dr. Johnson--of keeping chocolates and pennies in his pocket, and dropping one or other of them surreptitiously into the laps, pockets, or hands of children. June was proud to smiling-point of this, her least-likely pupil. He was doing the fairies' work so pleasantly.And virtue brought other rewards--as it must do in a properly regulated existence. Emmanuel gave and gave, and still had a golden reservoir of wealth for capital use and enjoyment.At last he felt justified in accepting the Archidiaconal invitation to tea. He paved the way of welcome characteristically by sending an express letter of reminder and explanation, and walked from Paradise Court to where the blue tramcars were running. After riding here and walking there, he arrived at the canonry.June and Bim accompanied him; the fairy on the brim of his glossy hat, the gnome in the bulging breast-pocket. Bim gazed with insatiable curiosity at the passing phantasmagoria of human shadows. What a strange grey comedy it was!The London streets were still a troublesome ghost-world to Bim. He could not overcome an unconquerable prejudice against shadows. They were born of the darkness; he liked things to be moonlit at least.They came to the Archdeacon's garden. Its delicious peacefulness was to June the first thing in Cockneydom reminiscent of elvish glades. Enchantment seemed brooding over it.The ancient trees and young dusty flowers, with the twittering of sparrows--only sparrows--about them, gave new significance to the hum of the distant traffic. It made the medley music. The old-world atmosphere of blessed repose brought solace to both of them. It gave June hope. It made her for the first time thoroughly confident of fulfilling her purpose.Why should not a similar spirit of peace hold governance over every garden and public park in London? Wherever it reigned there would be sanctuaries for tired minds and strained nerves--havens of refuge from uproar and vulgarity. If Oberon's rule returned, anything and everything of the kind was possible; and something was begun.Emmanuel pressed the button of the door-bell; and, having done so, trembled. A funeral-faced footman appeared and ushered him in.The charm of the garden reigned also within the house. A silver-tongued clock sang five. It reminded June of Titania's voice when, once, the fairy-queen had surprised a blue-bell valley with a passing song.June entered with Oldstein. Bim remained in the garden, playing puss-in-the-corner with some sparrows, to their fearful delight.Evidently the footman did not approve his master's guest. There was an unnecessary air of imitation-lordliness in his demeanour, as he marched before Emmanuel. His body seemed mere idiotic backbone. His face wore an expression of patronage. June, indignant at his sublime churlishness, tossed a handful of magic over him, and watched the conceit shrivel. The pillar of salt turned to man. He was never a mere flunkey thereafter, and in course of time became a Sunday-school teacher."Delighted, delighted!" said the Archdeacon, pressing Mr. Oldstein's hand. Had it not been for the fairies the welcome would assuredly have been less cordial; but since the evening of Mayday there had been changes. The ecclesiastic was living up to his creed. He greeted Oldstein warmly, and wondered why he had come.Emmanuel was awed and enchanted. Never had he dreamed that life could be so clean and precious as here he found it. He felt, poor man in the egoism of humble ignorance, a vulgar intruder; and for the first time in his span of existence, realized that his hands were large and his manners out of polish. Somehow the rings he wore made his fingers uglier.Tea was brought in on a silver tray. The food was daintily insufficient. The Archdeacon sipped at a cup and talked long words. Oldstein said "Yeth," mumbled at his slices of butter spread with bread, and heard nothing. He mentally kicked himself for having blundered into that Anglo-celestial place. So it went on for a time.The Archdeacon was bored.The fairy seeing things awry, hastened to put them right. She hovered before the Archdeacon's head--her moving wings made music which only fairies could hear--and touched his lips with her wand. She recognized that he was the man to lead the talking. He became at once more sociable."Do you golf?" he asked."No, but I've thold golf-balls.""Ah, you should play. You should join my new Association which pledges every member to use one club only--preferably the mashie--on a round."Golf remained the subject while the tea lasted. The Archdeacon kept the talk going."So our movement of fairy reform goes ahead admirably," Dr. Pryde exclaimed, coming to the real subject at last, as he rose, stretched, and posed by the mantelpiece. "We are comrades under Oberon's banner--comrades in a growing and victorious army."He admired his rolling periods, and took his box of lozenges from a drawer."Yeth," said the other, who still felt that his feet were all boots."I had a letter from the Lord Mayor this morning. Sir Titus--a wonderful man, wonderful man, truly one of us!--is instituting a new league--Titania's Bodyguard it is called, consisting of all sorts and conditions of old men and maidens, young men and children; to remove the blemishes which uglify--'uglify' is Alice's word, not mine--which uglify London."He ceased his pompous talk to look pomposity. He caught his reflection in a mirror, and improved his deportment."Yeth," again Emmanuel faltered. He wanted to express views, but in that present state of shyness and nervousness his mind seemed mere whirl and pudding."Talking of Alice, we could do with a little more topsyturvydom in real life, could not we?" June smiled. Here was proof that she had him. "I wish Harlequin with his wand would transform some of our business men and Bumbles and give them better sympathies and wits.""'Ear, 'ear!""What is generally wanted--almost before anything else--is the power to get out of the ruck of the commonplace, to look at facts from a new point of view. How blind we are to the obvious! It is possible every day to pass by and not notice a view which, if it were in another country, we should travel for days in discomfort to see. And why?--I ask you why?" He gazed at the ceiling, and waved a graceful hand."Goodneth knowth!"The Archdeacon puckered his brows, and looked down at his interrupter with an expression of gentle remonstrance."The question was rhetorical, Mr. Oldstein," he said, in mild rebuke. "I repeat, Why? Because we are so used to it. A Londoner will see more beauty in a wood in May or June than the man who lives at its edge; but bring the yokel to London, and he will open his mouth with awe at buildings of beauty and history upon which the Cockney will strike the cheaper kind of matches. Familiarity breeds blindness.""Yeth.""It does indeed! The first thing is to teach the uses of the eyes; the next the joys of imagination. Those are indirectly the purposes for which the Lord Mayor's new movement--Titania's Bodyguard--is instituted. What a work we of the Bodyguard--I am its chaplain--what a work we have to do! To get representatives on the Borough Councils pledged to fulfil the gospel of sweetness and light; to insure that no houses designed and built in the future shall be hideous, or contradictions in style to each other--the brown Victorian age of architecture is past; to insist that exteriors be clean, and, where possible, brightly painted; and advertisements artistic; to take measures to abolish smoke and dust and flies; to distribute bulbs and flowering-plants, and give prizes for the best-loved gardens and windows; to encourage the growth of creepers about buildings; to plant trees, and establish fountains in the streets.""Dear, dear! it'll cost a lot!" thought Emmanuel."There is much to be done even at the beginning. Then the next stage. To remove monstrosities in houses, courts, and slums; and generally to undo Mr. Jerry Builder. What a work! All but a few of the statues which frown on our squares and gardens must be chipped into little bits for road-mending. Throughout London, throughout England, there are statues not worth their weight in mud. They are mere blackened bathos--futile memorials to the generally forgotten: tasteless, obstructive, stupid. Down with the bronze gentlemen in mutton-chop whiskers and Roman togas who pose like sorry Pecksniffs.""'Ear, 'ear!" said Mr. Oldstein, who was beginning, at last, to feel at home, though who Pecksniff was, bless you! for his life he didn't know.June had indeed used her wand with effect. Host in his eloquence, and guest in his appreciation, beamed on each other, mutually pleased. The Archdeacon was delighted with his flow of words. The fact that his new elf-induced ideas were fresh to him increased the interest and respectful admiration with which he always heard his own utterances. He actually forgot the lozenges in his excitement; and noted the admiration shining in Oldstein's eyes. He felt a reformer, a builder of progress, a force and a light on the side of the angels. He was pleased with himself.The fairy was satisfied with her work. She fluttered, singing the while, through the open window, to quicken the slumbering joys of the garden. She lingered among the flowers, giving them refreshment and radiance; and hovered about the branches of the trees, studying their conditions, admiring their long patience.She called Bim to her, gave him her wand, sent him out to the world wandering. The sparrows chirped good-night, and went their ways to rest before another day of struggle, squabble and feasting.Meanwhile, the Archdeacon continued happily in full swing."All forms of stone memorial are futile," he declared, pushing back his hair. "The day must come when they are mere lumber, commemorating foolishness. The builders of the pyramids are now but names. The Pharaohs hoped, by constructing those colossal tombs, to buy themselves eternal glory; but we, remembering the cruelties--the blood and the suffering--which went to their building, think of them only as colossal mementoes of shame."The Archdeacon frowned, shook his head, and felt the artistic call for a significant pause.Oldstein was fired by the reference to the first oppressors of his People. He forgot his awkward shyness, and broke out with vigorous expressions of approbation and agreement. He was not rebuked now. Applause is tolerable even to the elect. The Archdeacon graciously beamed.It was then that June returned to the room, and realizing that the privilege of speech had so far been made a monopoly, threw a spell at Emmanuel.Her will was a law obeyed.The Archdeacon found himself not merely mum, but verbally besieged. He tried to make sorties, to resume the thread of his argument; but until June's spell was worn away, Oldstein's eloquence proved irresistible. His host could only fumble about his desk and pockets searching for the lozenge-box which was on the mantelpiece behind him, and occasionally agree with "Yes.""That wath a great evenin' at the Mansion 'Outh," he declared. "I shall never forget it; and, Mithter Archdeacon, nothing throughout the proceedings imprethed me like your appeal for charity among workerth for the cauth of right. I thaid to mythelf, 'That'th a man'--I thaid--'and thith ith a lethon! If that dignitary of the Church ith brave enough to thay thith, there's 'ope.' I altho thaid to mythelf, 'It ithn't many parsons with the pluck to make such an appeal to people who would most thertainly take 'em at their word.' But you did it, Mithter Pryde! you did it! At my synagogue at all events your words 'ave been acthepted.""Yes?" This tribute to his influence was delightful, flattering. It compensated for the interruption of speech."Yeth! Our pastor went out of 'is way to order some coals from the local churchwarden last week, and expressed the 'ope that before long some prayer said in churches against Turks, Jews and Infidels might be left unthaid!""Ah!"The Archdeacon sat in his chair, and hid his face in his hands, thinking."Make your appeal again, Mithter Pryde; and again and again. It ith, I assure you, very poor fun being the under dog, as we Jews 'ave been for ages! Even nowadays it ith only necessary to be a Jew to know what it ith to be despithed. Not that thome of uth mayn't detherve to be despithed. We 'ave black sheep among us, as you 'ave, and it'th easy to be 'orrid when you're 'ated. I've been 'ated and struck"--there was fire in Oldstein's glance--"and I've 'it back, and taken good care to 'urt. Well, I'm sorry for many things. I wath a 'ard master. I worked 'ard mythelf, and worked others to the uttermost. I took all the shekels that were due to me, and would have taken more if I could 'ave got 'em--yeth, I would. People theemed to expect me to plunder 'em; I did my best not to dithappoint 'em. And why was I so 'ard? Why did I 'ate all Gentiles? Why was my 'eart full of bitter malice to all exthept my own people?""Ah, who knows? who knows?" the Archdeacon said to the ceiling.Oldstein, carried away by the passion of his own words, glared at the questioner."The quethtions were rhetorical, Mithter Pryde," he answered softly. "Why? Becauthe I was fighting the old old battle which my fatherth and their fatherth 'ad to fight since sin made my people subject." He raised his voice. It was as the voice of a prophet. The Archdeacon, listening, wondered, and forgot to notice the slurred words and broken pronunciation which proclaimed this Jew a stranger within the gates. "Yearth ago--in the dayth of the Pharaoh you mentioned--the Curse was fastened upon uth; even now the yoke ith not removed; we are tortured with its barbs and burdened with its misery. We are, even now, regarded by many as rogues and thieves and money-tyrants, but with all our faults as a race we do not detherve it. It ith ath a race we are judged, and ath individualth of a race we are punished. We are regarded as unwashed foreigners, as unclean beasts. The whole tone of religion is in this rethpect againtht its true thelf. In teaching love for all men, it alwayth forgeth the foreign Jew. Mithter Pryde, will you preach and teach and act so that we--the poorest and the 'umblest and the worst of us--may get the tolerance and fair play which is every man's right?"Oldstein had exhausted the spell. He had said his say, had spoken for his people, with warmth and earnestness. His burst of eloquence was done. He was again one of the rank and file of Judaism, conscious of his pride of race, conscious at the same time of an incomprehensible sense of inferiority to this large, clean, pompous, well-intentioned Englishman. Why was it so? Was it because, for years upon years, he and his forebears, though inheriting the responsibilities of agelong aristocracy, had forgotten their inheritance, and been content to cringe before the powerful and wealthy, pleased to pander to their vanity and vices, for the sake of the shekels of trade?There was silence--almost noisy with thought--for more than a minute.June with her wand had stirred deep pools. The insoluble problems of Israel were for awhile alive again. Another stage in the long-drawn opposition of Gentile and Jew was manifested. Can that antagonism ever be ended? Is such a fact to be numbered among human possibilities? Questions, questions!The Archdeacon, touched by Oldstein's earnestness, lost his pomposity, and forgot his poses. He leaned forward; put a hand on his guest's shoulder."I wish we could all of us get hold of the larger charity," he said earnestly. "When I spoke at the Lord Mayor's table, I confess to you I did not quite know all that there was in my words. I gave rein to ideas I had never allowed to have expression, even in my thoughts, before. The fairies--we put it all down to them, don't we?--the fairies must have made me speak as I did. That was a strange night. Reform was in the wine-cups. We built Quixotic dreams, and pledged ourselves to abide by them. Well, I won't repine. I am heartily glad I spoke as I did. You remind me of the obligations which fall upon every responsible religious man. I will try harder to live up to the ideals. Never again will I, by thought or implication, judge or condemn the honest opinions of others; but will believe that all in some measure or degree are pushing forward God's progress. Our differences, at their greatest, are trivial; in much of our work we should unite."They shook hands, confirming the pledge.The clock sang six-thirty."How the time has flown!" cried the Archdeacon, glad to be out of a scene. "Will you excuse me? I must hurry and dress. I dine at eight with the Duchess of Armingham. I was going to say such a great deal to you about cemeteries. But another time! So glad to have seen you. Good-bye!"Oldstein went. Good-bye to him also, so far as this historical work is concerned!June decided to accompany her ecclesiastic to the Duchess's table. She had seen the under side, now for the over side of human life. Sing Hey! for thehaut ton!as a suburban poet would put it.She sailed upstairs to the dressing-room and helped. Never before had razor shaved so smoothly, or valet been so perfect a machine.When the Archdeacon drove westward, he was in the happiest condition of mind. He had become the compleat optimist. Everything was for the best in this best of all possible worlds.The dear fairies!CHAPTER XIIA NIGHT OUTGnomes are notoriously irresponsible; but town-life and a high purpose had brought changes to Bim. He crawled under the dark green gate which bounded the carriage-drive, and strode into the world with something of that air of responsibility which hedges the dignity of a newly-elected alderman.Bim had no illusions as to his present capacity. June's wand made him a power, and he knew it. He was able to control mortals; and confidently promised himself happenings.He wandered through streets and passages, indifferent and ignorant as to where they should lead him, indeterminate as to what he should do. He saw a hansom crawling. This would help as well as anything. Imitating June's action on the night of the banquet, he waved the wand, and by elfin will-power compelled the cabman to rein in his drowsy steed.Bim clambered up the horse's off hind-leg, and ran along the dragging reins to the roof. As soon as he was comfortably installed there, the driver, who took things quite as a matter of course, gave the necessary click with his tongue, and started the many-times great-grandson of Bucephalus and Rozinante.Bim "did" some main streets. He controlled the man, and induced him to drive along the more ambitious ways and where there were shining shops. He watched the coming and going of people, and made up his mind what to do.He was touched to see the streams of poor women and children shopping and errand-running. His sympathy exaggerated their seeming fatigue. They looked to him so weary that he commanded the cabman to invite some of them to accept lifts along the way."Tired, mother?" the driver--good soul!--would say to an old lady, toiling along with her evening burden of parcels. "In yer git!" Or to a child, "Jump in, ducky! I'd like to giveyoua ride. Where do you want to go?"So it went on for an hour. Cabby felt like Christmas.Then the unrewarded horse began to move wearily, and show other signs of having done enough. Bim removed the spell, clambered from his seat on the roof down the back-way of the cab, and left the driver fastening the horse's nose-bag to its business-place."The time of my life," said Jehu enthusiastically to a surly colleague. "I've had a most enjoyable time. Now you 'ave a shot, old chap," and explained in detail his actions and happiness."Eh?" grunted the other, contempt, incredulity, and refusal expressed in the interjection.That was enough for Bim. He smote the churl sharply on the boot. Conversion followed immediately."Well, suppose I do," he said, as he wiped imaginary froth from his lips. "I 'aven't done so badly to-day. I will for an hour--blowed if I won't!--then I'll pass the job on."Bim found himself on the Embankment near Cleopatra's Needle. He took careful hold of the wand, and clambered to the head of the sphinx which gazes eastward. Seated there, he tried to think out a programme of activities, and watched the grey river journeying on slowly, silently; different, so different, from the flood of traffic, the lighted tramcars, hooting automobiles, dashing carriages, with their freights of mortals, which rushed noisily by. Oh, the restlessness of man! The gnome was impressed with the wisdom of the water. It bore seaward, silently, the thoughts of the sphinx, which with wide-opened eyes watched London.It was then that June saw him. She was driving westward in the Archdeacon's brougham, and shone, a little being of light, gladdening the gloom of the carriage. Bim waved the wand triumphantly to her. She threw him smiles. Happy gnome! His earnestness took fire immediately. Then altruism merged with mischief. He threw his plans and programme to the eight winds. He would paint the town a fairy red. Why not run amok?He jumped from the sphinx, plump on to the peaked cap of a passing police inspector, and flooded the official with magic. A sergeant came up and saluted."Good-evening, Baines," said the inspector. "Tell the men to be extra kind to all poor chaps to-night. Tell 'em to have blind eyes for the homeless and hungry. The fairies would wish it. Tell 'em to pass this order on; we must please the fairies."The sergeant stared. This was unprecedented. What was authority coming to?"Right, sir," he answered, and saluted again. "I'll see to it," and did so.The inspector marched on to Scotland Yard, more than usually pleased with himself.Bim happened then to notice a strange creature sprawling at the end of a seat. Curiosity compelled him to spring. He alighted on a lap.Everyone in Fairyland is naturally partial to poetry and in love with love. One of the purposes of the elves is to help the affected and idealize the sentiments of lovers, making them worthy of their privileges. They fulfil this purpose faithfully. When the courses of Cupid run smoothly the elves have been helpful. Unhappy love-affairs are invariably those unblessed by Oberon's people. They keep sharp eyes ready for the hindering of the plans of worldly-wise parents.Bim studied a strange-looking beast. It seemed to consist of a large, much-ribboned hat, several arms, and a sprawl. Lovers! The nose of Her was in His neck. There was an occasional move and tremor, followed by a sounding kiss, one of the kisses that hit. Passers-by were many, but Love cared not a jot for anything--but Love! The curious and contemptuous had a hundred opportunities for cynical judgment; which they used, only to be entirely ignored.Throughout the parks and places of London, similar exhibitions of vulgar bathos, flopping and unashamed, were to be witnessed; every pair of some hundred thousand lovers being splendidly indifferent to all else but their own sufficient selves.Meanwhile, the gnome sat on the lap, and wondered, awed and troubled: listening eagerly, waiting impatiently, for honeyed words of love.Silence brooded. Big Ben struck."Eight o'clock!" said Strephon to Phyllis, and kissed her.The silence brooded again.Bim fled in dismay to the next seat, where another love-bitten couple happened to be sprawling. He witnessed a similar feast of brazen bathos.Stupid silence still gloomed over the rapture. He waited.The great clock chimed again."Quarter-past," said she, and a kiss flew skywards.From seat to seat Bim went; every move was marked by the chimes of the Parliamentary clock. "Half-past." "Quarter-to." "Nine."Such was love's dialogue. O time! O manners! Where are our raptures, our sonnets and rhapsodies?Bim became furious. He ran at full speed along the Embankment, viciously poking with his wand every love-lorn pair: and on, through Story's Gate into St. James's Park. As he went he passed scores of strolling lovers. He put his spell on every pair of them.Through the Green Park he hurried, and across Piccadilly into Hyde Park. Wherever he went he carried magic, and produced its consequences. Love's multitudinous tongues were no longer tied. Thoughts hitherto dumb found glowing speech.The gnome had run amok with a vengeance."Darling, darling, darling, darling!" said one young man in an ecstasy increasing with every syllable."Darling, darling, darling!" came the feminine answer, in tones that thrilled.Then another sweet voice was gently borne upon the westering wind."I know where there's the teeniest duck of a saucepan set which will just suit our wee little homey."The stars twinkled."Does-um!" was the masculine answer.Still the stars twinkled."Ted," said Emma, "do you love me, love me?" She had been to a series of popular melodramas, and saw herself languid and rapturous. She asked questions emotionally, with the emphasis that comes with repetition."That I do just, old gell!" came the reply."And will you, my heart, always love me, love me?""S'welp me! old gell, I will!""Then another, Ted." There was a noise as of machine guns barking at a blue distance. Emma seemed satisfied.Bim was pleased. He had not been looking for words in purple, and so was unable to feel disappointed. But as he worked from chair to chair he could not help accumulating the wish that more of the minor poet had been born in the common people. The prose that came was better than a mere bald narrative of time; but, surely, was not worthy of Aphrodite's doves.Gradually the better came. It was the work of unconscious imitation.Examples were being quickly followed in many directions. Several cabmen, having earned their day's requirements and a little over, were now using their cabs and still unwearied horses to convey for short distances fares too poor to pay for a ride. Motor-cabs and private cars actually buzzed with philanthropy. Policemen, carrying out and carrying on the inspector's orders, were urgently helping down-at-heel gentlefolk to be as comfortable as out-of-door conditions permitted.So, too, lovers on that blessed evening, influenced by Bim, began to be worthy of Juliet, and their fellows of the Heaven-kissed company to whom passion has become sanctified, and the possession of love is a joy crowned, a power enthroned, making of its votaries queens and princes---- Ah me, and so on! The series of lovers multitudinous gradually became ashamed of their ungracefulness. They walked now, or sat with some better sense of picturesque propriety. Sprawling and hugging were postponed for the armchairs at home. The parks became tolerable to the married.Here and there a joyful swain reclined at his lady's feet. The methods of musical comedy were fittingly applied to the prose of life. Ernie Jenkins was one of these recumbent swains. It was his weekly evening with Emily, who sat on a chair under a chestnut-tree steadily absorbing acid-drops. His red hair was stubbly, but he brushed his brow as if it were thick with love-locks."Emily! Emily!" he murmured repeatedly. Never had his feeling for her been so romantic as it now seemed. His narrow chest expanded with rapture and contracted with sighs. He knew himself fortunate. Bim had nearly prevailed on him to make the plunge. Though unable to go that length, Ernie mentally vowed to reduce his weekly allowance of bitter beer, the better to provide a nest-egg for furniture--which sounds like a mixed metaphor, but isn't; and if it were, can be put down to the fairies, who may do anything grammatical they please, even to the extent of splitting infinitives, which mortal authors may never do.Hyde Park grew more and more delightful to Bim during that evening of bliss. He flitted about as if wings were on his feet, and with June's wand helped flowers, birds, grasses and winds to become more fairylike. Those blessed existences behaved as if they realized and enjoyed the change; and, to their credit be it said, no leafy, green space in crowded London had so much in accord with Falkland as the flowers, birds, grasses, winds, in Hyde Park then. Nature is, after all, a jolly good poet.A new moon made its appearance. It peeped from a cradle of clouds. Venus and Jupiter gleamed underneath it. Other stars in their places shone. That was the first night to gladden London since the Mayday of June's madness; and as for the long, long time before that--oh dear! oh dear!June, peering through a ducal window, realized the improvement, and was delighted with Bim. She knew it was largely his doing--his and the wand's. Her sympathy grew radiant towards him. He was a good gnome, and when they had returned, victorious and forgiven, to the Land of Wild Roses--as she had no doubt they would do eventually--he should be rewarded. Perhaps she would kiss him.Slowly, but all too speedily, the time went by. The band which for three comfortable hours had been stirring the hearts of hundreds, played the Good-night National Anthem, and put out its lights. Two by two the lovers turned homewards, each couple happily emotional, joying in the enthralment, delightfully subdued. There were more marriages determined upon, more attachments confirmed and made love-affairs during that evening, than ever before--with the possible exception of the last of the supralapsarian days.The author of this splendid improvement sat, smiling and tired, on a discarded cigarette-box. He joyed in the wide silence and the dewy grass.The park became more and more still. On every side of it there was the eternal hum of the traffic. Solitary wayfarers passed silently along the walks and faded into the darkness. Now and then the shadow of laughter was heard, occasional cab-calls, one distant bugle sounding the last post, a man's voice giving a hail. Slowly even such sounds as these were lost in the all-engulfing silence; the night was very still.There was room for fairies here, thought Bim, but no fairies were there. There ought to be rings of them, lightly laughing and dancing; making merriment for the stars. Hyde Park in its loneliness longed for them. They, only, were needed to make it the perfect garden.The places of the elves had been taken by creatures of a very different clay. An hour or so ago, and the park was thronged with youth, hopeful, happy, confident. The difference now!In all directions there slept or grumbled on the grass the human waste of our social system; the aged, the ugly, the hopeless, the infirm and unfit; the thriftless, workless, worthless--worn remnants of all manner of miserable humanity. Poor wretches whose days had long been damned! Their backs are weak with burdens. They have not even a hope in their pockets. They have sinned and suffered; have learned the many lessons of bitterness, and been crushed. They have hungered and had to continue hungry; have been wet, cold, and, in their shivering, had no better shelter than some broken penthouse or windy archway; their only friendships have been with members of their own dismal fraternity. Fortunate was Lear! They have touched desire with crime and been compelled to pay the law's and the world's penalties. There is short shrift for such as these, the drift of the cities. Born are they to suffer, to endure; to know only shame; to die.The gnome resumed his wanderings, and gazed wonderingly at the many sleeping faces. It was the most amazing of all the sights he had seen. The marks of meanness and want were stamped on them. Yes, June was right in her madness. The fairies ought to have prevented this. Tragedy is permissible when it is romantic, but such tragedy of squalor as was lighted by the starshine then was ugly, evil, the first and last of the shames. The gnome came across Lazy Tim, who stretched on an open newspaper, fast asleep, snoring with his mouth wide open.Tim was a ne'er-do-well. He had not one scruple, hope, ambition, or blessing. His father and mother had been ne'er-do-wells also. Beyond them he had no history. He had never been inside a school, or known what discipline--other than that of the gaol and casual ward--meant. He had never formed a taste for work, but, thanks to sharpened half-wits, had here and there earned many crooked pence. He had been taken on as a farm-hand and a factory-hand times out of counting; but the monotony of the one employment and the prison-like character of the other had always driven him into the free-lance world again. Tim was unmoral and incorrigible. He had known no guidance whatever in his ways. He had an idea that it was wise to dodge any man in uniform, and that was about all.Experience had, however, taught him many of the tricks of cheap cunning. He could, when in the humour, pitch a yarn about his non-existent wife and children and the bronchitis, which would make a stone moist with sympathy. He had even on one extraordinary occasion obtained sixpence from a local secretary of the Charity Organization Society, and frequently had charmed the generosity of not a few religious ladies with his sighs and aspirations. He would have taken any religion you liked for a course of square meals. Once there was, possibly, good material in Tim; but it had run to seed and been lost. He had not enjoyed one fair chance. He had come into the world inopportunely. The fates were sleeping when he was born. Ever since infancy he had starved, stolen, sinned--if such as he can "sin"--been punished and neglected; and so was wrecked.Bim, studying the sleeping face, was stirred with fairy's pity. He knew nothing of Tim's past experience, of the opportunities grudged, denied, and lost; but could see the man was inherently unhappy. That was enough. Poor wretch! Something must be done for him at once. He wished June had been there to prescribe the remedy. But there was no use in fruitless wishing. Such is not Elfland's way.He marched up Tim's body, and felt the wasted form under his feet. Bones and hunger, that was the story; bones and hunger and rags. He stood by the tangled beard, and with the end of the wand gently stroked the lined and scraggy face. Tired, ugly face! It looked so weak, ay, and so brutal in the night's dark light. Scars were cut into the cheeks and forehead; the nose was debased, and bore the marks of drink and fighting. The hair, in a grey and filthy tangle, streamed from under a broken hat. Here was a man in the prime of life, finally ruined.Tim would wake presently. What was the use of his waking? Better always to sleep and dream than to live again for the day's despair and a life's long misery.Bim laid the point of the wand on the sleeping man's forehead, and thought of these things.Suddenly Tim awoke, stretched, rose, shook himself, burst out into laughing. He took off his hat and looked carefully at it. "A kingly crown!" cried he. He stroked his rags, and was joyful. "Ermine and purple." His hunger was forgotten; his thirst--his only ever-faithful companion--no longer made pleadings. "Feasts in plenty!" he exclaimed, lifting arms delightedly to the stars. "What a palace I have! What a kingdom! Oh, my royal heritage! It is good to be alive--to be king, king, king!"Tim had found happiness. Never again could he know the evils of bitter reality. Henceforward he was blessed with the illusions. He was "touched." Bim and the wand had wrought the marvel.Blessed are the poor whom the fairies have touched. Hats off to them, gentlemen! They are far beyond life's miseries. They are kings in their own right--happy kings. We who have the blue and yellow worries, even though we can jingle coins in our pockets, are far less happy than they.Bim climbed a chestnut-tree, and found slumber in a throstle's nest.
CHAPTER X
THE IMPORTANCE OF BIM
It was some few weeks before Emmanuel Oldstein was able to fulfil his good intention of visiting Paradise Court. Sally was the last on his list, and not till June's name-month was half-way through could he come to her.
Meanwhile things had been happening. The newspaper crusade was going well, and the two from Fairyland were using their efforts to help it forward.
The gnome was becoming influential in Paradise Court. It was in especial his province. June, with her wings and magic, could visit a wide area; but he, with his poor inches and limitations, was necessarily stay-at-home. Partly through accident he began a revolution which was fated to have important effect in the recovery of London. This is how it happened.
The old flower-box whence he had taken the mould for their flourishing roof-garden was a faded, decrepit affair; otherwise its meagre quantity of wood would surely, long ago, have been broken and used as fuel. For years it had stood in a dank corner, barren and forgotten. Then, in a fit of prankishness, Bim carried down a violet, the only one gathered in the Mansion House posy, and planted it. June had given it power of life; with the tenacity of its kind it had struggled, flourished and come to bloom.
It was the gnome's treasure. He was proud of its being, and looked after it in a spoilt parental way, exaggerating its few qualities, blessedly blind to its defects.
For some days it bluely blushed unseen; and then came into a prominence which half pleased, half frightened it.
Poll Skinner cast her husband-blacked eyes upon it.
"Lor' lummy!" she cried, "a voilet!"
She looked at the flower and thereupon fell in a dream. A violet in Paradise Court! For the first time for years she was out of the ugly present, away from the base life about her.
Memories of old days, clean days, lived again. She saw herself as she was, before sin, want and selfishness had claimed and kept her. As she was! As she was! She remembered her father's cottage, with its garden of pinks and wallflowers. She remembered a wood near an ivied church; and was once again a girl, hunting for primroses, bluebells and violets. She remembered her white pinafore and her cleverness at weaving daisy-chains. How clean in all ways was that maiden life! And now---- Paradise Court! Drink and the devil had taken their toll! God!
Poll found tears in her eyes when she woke to the present. She wiped her face with grimy hands and left traces.
"Blimey, 'ere's old Poll drunk again!" said one of the knights of the place, a hulking fellow who called himself a dock-labourer, but whose idle hands were almost rooted to his pockets. "What yer starin' at, Poll?"
Poll indicated the flower. He saw it and stretched forth a hand.
"There ain't much to blub about in that!"
"Leave it be, Mike!" she cried, fearing his destructiveness. "Leave it be! It's a voilet!"
"A what? Let's 'ave a look! Who are ye shovin'? I want to look at it." She resisted him. "I'll wipe yer eyes if ye don't!"
He pushed forward with all his strength, intending, in sheer debasing mischief, to grab and crush the flower; but Poll struggled like a cat-woman to prevent him. He lost temper and struck her in the face. She, shrieking and shrill, tore his forehead with her nails, and tried to bite him. Her hair came loose. There was blood on her cheek. The animal emerged from Man.
The tumult of shuffling feet and foul speech brought others of the Court to doorways and windows. Women, who knew nothing of the cause of the combat, added their voices to Poll's in vigorous denunciation of Mike. The men--brave fellows!--looked on and grinned. One slunk away from the scene of the encounter; that was Skinner, Poll's natural protector and supposed husband. He went into the public-house and ordered beer.
The battle ended when Mike had accomplished his purpose and grasped the flower. He threw it on the pavement and ground it with his boot. Then he went away leisurely to enjoy refreshment after victory. His thirst had found an excuse. Poll's fury lapsed into noisy tears. She entered her one room, threw a rusty flat-iron on the floor, and nagged at the children.
Bim had watched this commotion from the parapet above. He sprawled on the cement-work, peeped at the tangle of heads below, and felt thoroughly frightened. Deeply did he regret that June was not there. She would have fought on the side of Poll and the violet, and given them victory. Had only her wand been left behind he could and would have intervened effectively. But nothing could be done. When he saw brutality win, he went moodily back to the fairies' garden, and pondered on ugly things.
The blues drove him into a brown study. He decided the affair should not end there. He uprooted a lingering primrose, and crept down with it. He carefully grubbed the mould in the box to freshen its jadedness, and planted the yellow flower--the fairies' oriflamme.
Back to the parapet he clambered to wait and watch.
Hours passed by. Nothing happened that day to reward his patience. The people of Paradise Court are not observant. The primrose lived and shone without appreciation until the morrow, when June magically drew attention to it. Some children first caught sight of it and curiously poked at it with sticks. It was a new wonder to them.
Poll saw the group about the box, and came to look. The wrath of yesterday was requickened within her. The children in their wisdom edged away from the virago, who carried the box to the sill outside her window, dumped it down; and then, in a voice of challenge, screamed out:
"'Ere's a primrose come! If anybody touches this, by Gawd, I'll murder 'im!"
Mike, having won his battle yesterday, was quite good-tempered to-day. He sauntered up to look at the flower and laughed.
"I won't touch it, Poll. You can 'ave yer measly primrose," and went off for another drink.
Poll hesitated, then followed him: their feud was drowned in beer.
The primrose lived for a week, and held a sort of continuous reception. Bim was as proud as a peacock about it. He got stiff-neck staring over the parapet, straining to hear the compliments and praise. Everybody in the Court paid it a daily visit and undue tributes. The children could hardly be induced to keep their hands from it. Their fingers itched to pluck; but Poll Skinner was a power to be feared. She kept sober in order to be the better sentinel.
Mike suddenly shifted the interest of Paradise Court to his abode by bringing home three flowerpots containing hyacinths--how he obtained them had better not be asked. As at the same time the primrose happened to fade, and its plant had no promise of buds, Poll felt chagrin. The balance of her world was shifted. Mike held the hub of the hemisphere.
She drank herself silly with gin, and beat her children frightfully; but the return of sober sanity brought new ideas. Poll rose to the occasion. She sent her "old man" to a distant churchyard to steal some good new mould; and then bought--actually bought--from the publican's wife, a rose-plant warranted to flower.
Poll bore it home triumphantly, while Paradise Court smiled.
Mike's hyacinths--in comparison with Poll's aristocratic plant--had now to take a second place, very far-behind, in the public interest. And it was no good making reprisals. Neither his wits nor his wealth would enable him to do better than Poll. Moreover, the fashion of flowers was spreading. Three other residents in the colony had put up rough window-boxes, with green things in them; and the children, keen to follow their elders, found tins, jam-pots, pickle-jars, and planted within them anything they could get; grass, if nothing of the flower kind was available.
Bim felt a third of an inch taller; he trod with an airier tread, now that his influence over Paradise Court had become so manifest. He laboured with Salvationist ardour to help the people; supplementing and moderating their energies, and encouraged the flowers to live. For hours he would sit in blest invisibility by one or other of the plants, enjoying the admiring remarks addressed to them, sharing the general satisfaction.
Families came to talk of weedy green things as if they were spreading chestnut-trees; while those members of the community who, having gone "hopping," had actual experience of wild life and woodland facts were regarded as travellers and oracles. Living up to their opportunities, they told vegetable counterparts of certain fish stories. Bim's blessed interference certainly caused some white stealth and a multitude of tarradiddles.
Nor was the indirect influence of the gnome yet at an end.
'Arry Bailey was the instrument of the next progressive step. He had some nasturtiums and was ambitious of getting them to climb in festoons round his window. He used nails, string, language and glue. At last he succeeded. For a time his nasturtiums were the rage. Their blazing colours and rapid growth made them popular. But Bailey, in whom the æsthetic sense must have been recovering after years of hibernation, felt that something was lacking. He smoked three ounces of shag and scratched his chin for hours on end before it dawned on him what it was.
Then he said "By gum"--that was all he said--and proceeded to surprise the Court by cleaning his window. One of the panes was badly cracked, the mark of some midnight fracas; so--more surprising still--he measured the gap, bought glass and putty, and entertained a Sunday crowd of chaffing, envious lookers-on by mending it himself, making a clumsy good business of it.
Bailey's act of reformation occasioned criticism and imitation--action is mostly imitation in Paradise Court. Before a further seven days had dawned and darkened not a window on any floor in the Court but was washed and polished. In cases where there was no money for mending, new paper--preferably illustrated--was put in broken places, window-sills and doorsteps were whitened.
The inhabitants began to feel proud, to give themselves airs, to wash their necks.
Curtains of all shapes and colours appeared, rooms became tidied: homes tolerable. Men stayed indoors to smoke their pipes and gossip, going less frequently to the public-house. Not that the improvement was so rapid as to seem violent. Paradise Court was, is, and will be till the trump, a home of conservatism. Its motion is that of a glacier. Yet it does move, and did. Though drunkenness and slovenliness, with brutalities of words and of fighting, were still over-frequent, there was real improvement, and a quiet growth of self-respect, which, after the lapse of months, had borne remarkable fruit. Bravo, Bim!
The gnome extended his efforts further afield, and was constantly dropping flowers before children in the alleys and other drearinesses of London, in order that they might be picked up, taken home, appreciated, loved, and wanted.
June, learning from him, was glad to follow his example. She scattered love-bringing blooms and blossoms--gathered without permission from the parks--wherever there were brown plain walls and ugliness. She wanted the fairies to come back to their ancient rights and rule; but felt they certainly would not stay where flowers were forgotten.
She longed--longed desperately--for the return of the elves to their ancient dominion over the town.
One night a company from Elfland made grand appeal to her. It was a full hour and more after midnight, and absolutely dark. No moon shone on the scene, no stars shed brightness from the sky.
Bim was sprawling on the roof-gutter lost in dreams. His head rested on a sparrow's deserted nest. June was in her bower, too weary for visions, even too weary for sleep. She was tired at heart, thoroughly, utterly tired! Her only comfort came from the flowers beaming about her. She felt the loneliness of London. Fairy memories called and called and called to her. She was weary of burdens. This pilgrimage in the dark city was dreary, heavy, grievous and horrible. But still, she must stay.
Her quick ears caught the rustling of many fairy wings in the distance; only one with sympathies sensitive and truly attuned to the wafting could have heard them so far away. She sat and saw elves on the wing. They were haze-shrouded, high in the sky above. Would they penetrate the murky canopy? Had they come in late answer to her appeals, to help with the burden, to share in the task of re-creating beauty in the wilderness?
She watched them wheeling in the upper air in distant luminousness, curving, descending. She grasped her wand and followed their progress intently, hoping all things, yearning to be with them again.
The flowers about June's bed, the flowers in the court below, lifted glad heads in greeting. They freshened visibly. Bim in his slumbers sighed, and comfortably turned as he slept.
The elves alighted on the roofs around. There were thousands of them. Half the folk of the Violet Valley, of the Land of Wild Roses, of other parts of Fairyland, must have been there. They were multitudinous, innumerable, and clustered on rims of chimneys, on angles of houses, on street-lamps and window-sills, making of dull commonplace a remarkable series of pictures. All the while they were singing songs of sweet appeal.
June donned her crown, while they hovered and settled, and stood to greet them. Some sparrows, surprised by the unwonted spectacle, woke and began chirping. It was beggarly music, monotonous the word for it: but it served. London, alas! had nothing better and the sparrows did their best. Fairy kindness overlooked the deficiencies.
Suddenly there was silence: elves and birds hushed.
"Welcome, sweet comrades from Fairyland!" said June. "I am glad you have visited me amongst these shadows. Will you stay and help to restore London to Oberon?"
"Nay, nay," answered a hundred voices, slender and silvern, from here and from there.
"June, our June!" a sparkling knight then cried to her. "Your going has brought gloom into the elf-countries. Oberon and Titania have been grieved and absent since your flight; all others of us have felt the changes. Come back to us! It is like living in a valley with the sunshine and moonlight always gone; like living in a wood where the flowers for want of blessings and dew are shrivelled. Change this for us, June! Come back, come back!"
"Come back, come back!" echoed the wide chorus, plaintively, pleadingly.
Clocks struck two. A cold wind came from the sea.
"Sisters and knights from the delightful countries," June answered. "To hear your voices is music to a heart which has hungered for melody. To be with you again and for ever is the dream of these days and nights. O Fairyland, Fairyland! But for me that cannot be, until this world-town of vanity and darkness is a part of Fairyland too. Help us, and work with us. Already Hope shines through the misery. Already we have been rewarded--Bim and I. We have begun well. Laughter and flowers bloom where a few weeks ago they could not. We are going to win. Men have listened to our bidding. Elf-rule is leading them. Their puppet limbs are bending to the light. They are beginning again in the darkest parts to live with beauty and love the fairies. Bear with us: and help them. Before next Mayday comes, I must deliver up this crown. Sweet knights and sister elves, so work with us that Oberon may be ruling over London again."
In answer a fairy song went rolling from the assembly, up and up, piercing the cloud overhead, discovering the stars. June rejoiced at the hearing, though still it was an appeal to her--a yearning appeal to her--to be done with her madness, to submit to Oberon, to return. June felt alone.
The new song wakened Bim. He sat up suddenly, ears pricked sharply with eager attention. Fairies in London!
He clambered amazedly up the slanting roof and knelt by the side of June. She laid hands on his shoulders. The two waited and watched.
In twos and threes, reluctantly, the fairies opened wings, and went away. Over the houses they journeyed, a glittering, saddened procession. Higher and higher, and farther and farther they flew. The sound of their chorus gradually diminished till there was silence--the silence of sleep-bound London--again.
Gone!
June gazed on her garden of flowers. The gnome crawled away sadly, and squatted by the chimney-pot, dangling his feet. He felt a solid piece of melancholy.
"That was a very nice dream," he said for comfort's sake; and found the words not comforting.
"Let us be doing things," June counselled.
CHAPTER XI
A PROSE INTERLUDE
Oldstein came at last to Paradise Court, and two good things resulted--Sally was taken out of her slave-life and sent to a boarding-school at the expense of her former task-master, and June went to tea with the Archdeacon.
Emmanuel had been for six weeks living up to his ideals. It was the hardest of tasks to him, but obstinate doggedness pulled him through. He had come actually to like doing good, and realized the subtle joys which live in generosity. He developed a habit--learned indirectly from the goodly practices of Dr. Johnson--of keeping chocolates and pennies in his pocket, and dropping one or other of them surreptitiously into the laps, pockets, or hands of children. June was proud to smiling-point of this, her least-likely pupil. He was doing the fairies' work so pleasantly.
And virtue brought other rewards--as it must do in a properly regulated existence. Emmanuel gave and gave, and still had a golden reservoir of wealth for capital use and enjoyment.
At last he felt justified in accepting the Archidiaconal invitation to tea. He paved the way of welcome characteristically by sending an express letter of reminder and explanation, and walked from Paradise Court to where the blue tramcars were running. After riding here and walking there, he arrived at the canonry.
June and Bim accompanied him; the fairy on the brim of his glossy hat, the gnome in the bulging breast-pocket. Bim gazed with insatiable curiosity at the passing phantasmagoria of human shadows. What a strange grey comedy it was!
The London streets were still a troublesome ghost-world to Bim. He could not overcome an unconquerable prejudice against shadows. They were born of the darkness; he liked things to be moonlit at least.
They came to the Archdeacon's garden. Its delicious peacefulness was to June the first thing in Cockneydom reminiscent of elvish glades. Enchantment seemed brooding over it.
The ancient trees and young dusty flowers, with the twittering of sparrows--only sparrows--about them, gave new significance to the hum of the distant traffic. It made the medley music. The old-world atmosphere of blessed repose brought solace to both of them. It gave June hope. It made her for the first time thoroughly confident of fulfilling her purpose.
Why should not a similar spirit of peace hold governance over every garden and public park in London? Wherever it reigned there would be sanctuaries for tired minds and strained nerves--havens of refuge from uproar and vulgarity. If Oberon's rule returned, anything and everything of the kind was possible; and something was begun.
Emmanuel pressed the button of the door-bell; and, having done so, trembled. A funeral-faced footman appeared and ushered him in.
The charm of the garden reigned also within the house. A silver-tongued clock sang five. It reminded June of Titania's voice when, once, the fairy-queen had surprised a blue-bell valley with a passing song.
June entered with Oldstein. Bim remained in the garden, playing puss-in-the-corner with some sparrows, to their fearful delight.
Evidently the footman did not approve his master's guest. There was an unnecessary air of imitation-lordliness in his demeanour, as he marched before Emmanuel. His body seemed mere idiotic backbone. His face wore an expression of patronage. June, indignant at his sublime churlishness, tossed a handful of magic over him, and watched the conceit shrivel. The pillar of salt turned to man. He was never a mere flunkey thereafter, and in course of time became a Sunday-school teacher.
"Delighted, delighted!" said the Archdeacon, pressing Mr. Oldstein's hand. Had it not been for the fairies the welcome would assuredly have been less cordial; but since the evening of Mayday there had been changes. The ecclesiastic was living up to his creed. He greeted Oldstein warmly, and wondered why he had come.
Emmanuel was awed and enchanted. Never had he dreamed that life could be so clean and precious as here he found it. He felt, poor man in the egoism of humble ignorance, a vulgar intruder; and for the first time in his span of existence, realized that his hands were large and his manners out of polish. Somehow the rings he wore made his fingers uglier.
Tea was brought in on a silver tray. The food was daintily insufficient. The Archdeacon sipped at a cup and talked long words. Oldstein said "Yeth," mumbled at his slices of butter spread with bread, and heard nothing. He mentally kicked himself for having blundered into that Anglo-celestial place. So it went on for a time.
The Archdeacon was bored.
The fairy seeing things awry, hastened to put them right. She hovered before the Archdeacon's head--her moving wings made music which only fairies could hear--and touched his lips with her wand. She recognized that he was the man to lead the talking. He became at once more sociable.
"Do you golf?" he asked.
"No, but I've thold golf-balls."
"Ah, you should play. You should join my new Association which pledges every member to use one club only--preferably the mashie--on a round."
Golf remained the subject while the tea lasted. The Archdeacon kept the talk going.
"So our movement of fairy reform goes ahead admirably," Dr. Pryde exclaimed, coming to the real subject at last, as he rose, stretched, and posed by the mantelpiece. "We are comrades under Oberon's banner--comrades in a growing and victorious army."
He admired his rolling periods, and took his box of lozenges from a drawer.
"Yeth," said the other, who still felt that his feet were all boots.
"I had a letter from the Lord Mayor this morning. Sir Titus--a wonderful man, wonderful man, truly one of us!--is instituting a new league--Titania's Bodyguard it is called, consisting of all sorts and conditions of old men and maidens, young men and children; to remove the blemishes which uglify--'uglify' is Alice's word, not mine--which uglify London."
He ceased his pompous talk to look pomposity. He caught his reflection in a mirror, and improved his deportment.
"Yeth," again Emmanuel faltered. He wanted to express views, but in that present state of shyness and nervousness his mind seemed mere whirl and pudding.
"Talking of Alice, we could do with a little more topsyturvydom in real life, could not we?" June smiled. Here was proof that she had him. "I wish Harlequin with his wand would transform some of our business men and Bumbles and give them better sympathies and wits."
"'Ear, 'ear!"
"What is generally wanted--almost before anything else--is the power to get out of the ruck of the commonplace, to look at facts from a new point of view. How blind we are to the obvious! It is possible every day to pass by and not notice a view which, if it were in another country, we should travel for days in discomfort to see. And why?--I ask you why?" He gazed at the ceiling, and waved a graceful hand.
"Goodneth knowth!"
The Archdeacon puckered his brows, and looked down at his interrupter with an expression of gentle remonstrance.
"The question was rhetorical, Mr. Oldstein," he said, in mild rebuke. "I repeat, Why? Because we are so used to it. A Londoner will see more beauty in a wood in May or June than the man who lives at its edge; but bring the yokel to London, and he will open his mouth with awe at buildings of beauty and history upon which the Cockney will strike the cheaper kind of matches. Familiarity breeds blindness."
"Yeth."
"It does indeed! The first thing is to teach the uses of the eyes; the next the joys of imagination. Those are indirectly the purposes for which the Lord Mayor's new movement--Titania's Bodyguard--is instituted. What a work we of the Bodyguard--I am its chaplain--what a work we have to do! To get representatives on the Borough Councils pledged to fulfil the gospel of sweetness and light; to insure that no houses designed and built in the future shall be hideous, or contradictions in style to each other--the brown Victorian age of architecture is past; to insist that exteriors be clean, and, where possible, brightly painted; and advertisements artistic; to take measures to abolish smoke and dust and flies; to distribute bulbs and flowering-plants, and give prizes for the best-loved gardens and windows; to encourage the growth of creepers about buildings; to plant trees, and establish fountains in the streets."
"Dear, dear! it'll cost a lot!" thought Emmanuel.
"There is much to be done even at the beginning. Then the next stage. To remove monstrosities in houses, courts, and slums; and generally to undo Mr. Jerry Builder. What a work! All but a few of the statues which frown on our squares and gardens must be chipped into little bits for road-mending. Throughout London, throughout England, there are statues not worth their weight in mud. They are mere blackened bathos--futile memorials to the generally forgotten: tasteless, obstructive, stupid. Down with the bronze gentlemen in mutton-chop whiskers and Roman togas who pose like sorry Pecksniffs."
"'Ear, 'ear!" said Mr. Oldstein, who was beginning, at last, to feel at home, though who Pecksniff was, bless you! for his life he didn't know.
June had indeed used her wand with effect. Host in his eloquence, and guest in his appreciation, beamed on each other, mutually pleased. The Archdeacon was delighted with his flow of words. The fact that his new elf-induced ideas were fresh to him increased the interest and respectful admiration with which he always heard his own utterances. He actually forgot the lozenges in his excitement; and noted the admiration shining in Oldstein's eyes. He felt a reformer, a builder of progress, a force and a light on the side of the angels. He was pleased with himself.
The fairy was satisfied with her work. She fluttered, singing the while, through the open window, to quicken the slumbering joys of the garden. She lingered among the flowers, giving them refreshment and radiance; and hovered about the branches of the trees, studying their conditions, admiring their long patience.
She called Bim to her, gave him her wand, sent him out to the world wandering. The sparrows chirped good-night, and went their ways to rest before another day of struggle, squabble and feasting.
Meanwhile, the Archdeacon continued happily in full swing.
"All forms of stone memorial are futile," he declared, pushing back his hair. "The day must come when they are mere lumber, commemorating foolishness. The builders of the pyramids are now but names. The Pharaohs hoped, by constructing those colossal tombs, to buy themselves eternal glory; but we, remembering the cruelties--the blood and the suffering--which went to their building, think of them only as colossal mementoes of shame."
The Archdeacon frowned, shook his head, and felt the artistic call for a significant pause.
Oldstein was fired by the reference to the first oppressors of his People. He forgot his awkward shyness, and broke out with vigorous expressions of approbation and agreement. He was not rebuked now. Applause is tolerable even to the elect. The Archdeacon graciously beamed.
It was then that June returned to the room, and realizing that the privilege of speech had so far been made a monopoly, threw a spell at Emmanuel.
Her will was a law obeyed.
The Archdeacon found himself not merely mum, but verbally besieged. He tried to make sorties, to resume the thread of his argument; but until June's spell was worn away, Oldstein's eloquence proved irresistible. His host could only fumble about his desk and pockets searching for the lozenge-box which was on the mantelpiece behind him, and occasionally agree with "Yes."
"That wath a great evenin' at the Mansion 'Outh," he declared. "I shall never forget it; and, Mithter Archdeacon, nothing throughout the proceedings imprethed me like your appeal for charity among workerth for the cauth of right. I thaid to mythelf, 'That'th a man'--I thaid--'and thith ith a lethon! If that dignitary of the Church ith brave enough to thay thith, there's 'ope.' I altho thaid to mythelf, 'It ithn't many parsons with the pluck to make such an appeal to people who would most thertainly take 'em at their word.' But you did it, Mithter Pryde! you did it! At my synagogue at all events your words 'ave been acthepted."
"Yes?" This tribute to his influence was delightful, flattering. It compensated for the interruption of speech.
"Yeth! Our pastor went out of 'is way to order some coals from the local churchwarden last week, and expressed the 'ope that before long some prayer said in churches against Turks, Jews and Infidels might be left unthaid!"
"Ah!"
The Archdeacon sat in his chair, and hid his face in his hands, thinking.
"Make your appeal again, Mithter Pryde; and again and again. It ith, I assure you, very poor fun being the under dog, as we Jews 'ave been for ages! Even nowadays it ith only necessary to be a Jew to know what it ith to be despithed. Not that thome of uth mayn't detherve to be despithed. We 'ave black sheep among us, as you 'ave, and it'th easy to be 'orrid when you're 'ated. I've been 'ated and struck"--there was fire in Oldstein's glance--"and I've 'it back, and taken good care to 'urt. Well, I'm sorry for many things. I wath a 'ard master. I worked 'ard mythelf, and worked others to the uttermost. I took all the shekels that were due to me, and would have taken more if I could 'ave got 'em--yeth, I would. People theemed to expect me to plunder 'em; I did my best not to dithappoint 'em. And why was I so 'ard? Why did I 'ate all Gentiles? Why was my 'eart full of bitter malice to all exthept my own people?"
"Ah, who knows? who knows?" the Archdeacon said to the ceiling.
Oldstein, carried away by the passion of his own words, glared at the questioner.
"The quethtions were rhetorical, Mithter Pryde," he answered softly. "Why? Becauthe I was fighting the old old battle which my fatherth and their fatherth 'ad to fight since sin made my people subject." He raised his voice. It was as the voice of a prophet. The Archdeacon, listening, wondered, and forgot to notice the slurred words and broken pronunciation which proclaimed this Jew a stranger within the gates. "Yearth ago--in the dayth of the Pharaoh you mentioned--the Curse was fastened upon uth; even now the yoke ith not removed; we are tortured with its barbs and burdened with its misery. We are, even now, regarded by many as rogues and thieves and money-tyrants, but with all our faults as a race we do not detherve it. It ith ath a race we are judged, and ath individualth of a race we are punished. We are regarded as unwashed foreigners, as unclean beasts. The whole tone of religion is in this rethpect againtht its true thelf. In teaching love for all men, it alwayth forgeth the foreign Jew. Mithter Pryde, will you preach and teach and act so that we--the poorest and the 'umblest and the worst of us--may get the tolerance and fair play which is every man's right?"
Oldstein had exhausted the spell. He had said his say, had spoken for his people, with warmth and earnestness. His burst of eloquence was done. He was again one of the rank and file of Judaism, conscious of his pride of race, conscious at the same time of an incomprehensible sense of inferiority to this large, clean, pompous, well-intentioned Englishman. Why was it so? Was it because, for years upon years, he and his forebears, though inheriting the responsibilities of agelong aristocracy, had forgotten their inheritance, and been content to cringe before the powerful and wealthy, pleased to pander to their vanity and vices, for the sake of the shekels of trade?
There was silence--almost noisy with thought--for more than a minute.
June with her wand had stirred deep pools. The insoluble problems of Israel were for awhile alive again. Another stage in the long-drawn opposition of Gentile and Jew was manifested. Can that antagonism ever be ended? Is such a fact to be numbered among human possibilities? Questions, questions!
The Archdeacon, touched by Oldstein's earnestness, lost his pomposity, and forgot his poses. He leaned forward; put a hand on his guest's shoulder.
"I wish we could all of us get hold of the larger charity," he said earnestly. "When I spoke at the Lord Mayor's table, I confess to you I did not quite know all that there was in my words. I gave rein to ideas I had never allowed to have expression, even in my thoughts, before. The fairies--we put it all down to them, don't we?--the fairies must have made me speak as I did. That was a strange night. Reform was in the wine-cups. We built Quixotic dreams, and pledged ourselves to abide by them. Well, I won't repine. I am heartily glad I spoke as I did. You remind me of the obligations which fall upon every responsible religious man. I will try harder to live up to the ideals. Never again will I, by thought or implication, judge or condemn the honest opinions of others; but will believe that all in some measure or degree are pushing forward God's progress. Our differences, at their greatest, are trivial; in much of our work we should unite."
They shook hands, confirming the pledge.
The clock sang six-thirty.
"How the time has flown!" cried the Archdeacon, glad to be out of a scene. "Will you excuse me? I must hurry and dress. I dine at eight with the Duchess of Armingham. I was going to say such a great deal to you about cemeteries. But another time! So glad to have seen you. Good-bye!"
Oldstein went. Good-bye to him also, so far as this historical work is concerned!
June decided to accompany her ecclesiastic to the Duchess's table. She had seen the under side, now for the over side of human life. Sing Hey! for thehaut ton!as a suburban poet would put it.
She sailed upstairs to the dressing-room and helped. Never before had razor shaved so smoothly, or valet been so perfect a machine.
When the Archdeacon drove westward, he was in the happiest condition of mind. He had become the compleat optimist. Everything was for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
The dear fairies!
CHAPTER XII
A NIGHT OUT
Gnomes are notoriously irresponsible; but town-life and a high purpose had brought changes to Bim. He crawled under the dark green gate which bounded the carriage-drive, and strode into the world with something of that air of responsibility which hedges the dignity of a newly-elected alderman.
Bim had no illusions as to his present capacity. June's wand made him a power, and he knew it. He was able to control mortals; and confidently promised himself happenings.
He wandered through streets and passages, indifferent and ignorant as to where they should lead him, indeterminate as to what he should do. He saw a hansom crawling. This would help as well as anything. Imitating June's action on the night of the banquet, he waved the wand, and by elfin will-power compelled the cabman to rein in his drowsy steed.
Bim clambered up the horse's off hind-leg, and ran along the dragging reins to the roof. As soon as he was comfortably installed there, the driver, who took things quite as a matter of course, gave the necessary click with his tongue, and started the many-times great-grandson of Bucephalus and Rozinante.
Bim "did" some main streets. He controlled the man, and induced him to drive along the more ambitious ways and where there were shining shops. He watched the coming and going of people, and made up his mind what to do.
He was touched to see the streams of poor women and children shopping and errand-running. His sympathy exaggerated their seeming fatigue. They looked to him so weary that he commanded the cabman to invite some of them to accept lifts along the way.
"Tired, mother?" the driver--good soul!--would say to an old lady, toiling along with her evening burden of parcels. "In yer git!" Or to a child, "Jump in, ducky! I'd like to giveyoua ride. Where do you want to go?"
So it went on for an hour. Cabby felt like Christmas.
Then the unrewarded horse began to move wearily, and show other signs of having done enough. Bim removed the spell, clambered from his seat on the roof down the back-way of the cab, and left the driver fastening the horse's nose-bag to its business-place.
"The time of my life," said Jehu enthusiastically to a surly colleague. "I've had a most enjoyable time. Now you 'ave a shot, old chap," and explained in detail his actions and happiness.
"Eh?" grunted the other, contempt, incredulity, and refusal expressed in the interjection.
That was enough for Bim. He smote the churl sharply on the boot. Conversion followed immediately.
"Well, suppose I do," he said, as he wiped imaginary froth from his lips. "I 'aven't done so badly to-day. I will for an hour--blowed if I won't!--then I'll pass the job on."
Bim found himself on the Embankment near Cleopatra's Needle. He took careful hold of the wand, and clambered to the head of the sphinx which gazes eastward. Seated there, he tried to think out a programme of activities, and watched the grey river journeying on slowly, silently; different, so different, from the flood of traffic, the lighted tramcars, hooting automobiles, dashing carriages, with their freights of mortals, which rushed noisily by. Oh, the restlessness of man! The gnome was impressed with the wisdom of the water. It bore seaward, silently, the thoughts of the sphinx, which with wide-opened eyes watched London.
It was then that June saw him. She was driving westward in the Archdeacon's brougham, and shone, a little being of light, gladdening the gloom of the carriage. Bim waved the wand triumphantly to her. She threw him smiles. Happy gnome! His earnestness took fire immediately. Then altruism merged with mischief. He threw his plans and programme to the eight winds. He would paint the town a fairy red. Why not run amok?
He jumped from the sphinx, plump on to the peaked cap of a passing police inspector, and flooded the official with magic. A sergeant came up and saluted.
"Good-evening, Baines," said the inspector. "Tell the men to be extra kind to all poor chaps to-night. Tell 'em to have blind eyes for the homeless and hungry. The fairies would wish it. Tell 'em to pass this order on; we must please the fairies."
The sergeant stared. This was unprecedented. What was authority coming to?
"Right, sir," he answered, and saluted again. "I'll see to it," and did so.
The inspector marched on to Scotland Yard, more than usually pleased with himself.
Bim happened then to notice a strange creature sprawling at the end of a seat. Curiosity compelled him to spring. He alighted on a lap.
Everyone in Fairyland is naturally partial to poetry and in love with love. One of the purposes of the elves is to help the affected and idealize the sentiments of lovers, making them worthy of their privileges. They fulfil this purpose faithfully. When the courses of Cupid run smoothly the elves have been helpful. Unhappy love-affairs are invariably those unblessed by Oberon's people. They keep sharp eyes ready for the hindering of the plans of worldly-wise parents.
Bim studied a strange-looking beast. It seemed to consist of a large, much-ribboned hat, several arms, and a sprawl. Lovers! The nose of Her was in His neck. There was an occasional move and tremor, followed by a sounding kiss, one of the kisses that hit. Passers-by were many, but Love cared not a jot for anything--but Love! The curious and contemptuous had a hundred opportunities for cynical judgment; which they used, only to be entirely ignored.
Throughout the parks and places of London, similar exhibitions of vulgar bathos, flopping and unashamed, were to be witnessed; every pair of some hundred thousand lovers being splendidly indifferent to all else but their own sufficient selves.
Meanwhile, the gnome sat on the lap, and wondered, awed and troubled: listening eagerly, waiting impatiently, for honeyed words of love.
Silence brooded. Big Ben struck.
"Eight o'clock!" said Strephon to Phyllis, and kissed her.
The silence brooded again.
Bim fled in dismay to the next seat, where another love-bitten couple happened to be sprawling. He witnessed a similar feast of brazen bathos.
Stupid silence still gloomed over the rapture. He waited.
The great clock chimed again.
"Quarter-past," said she, and a kiss flew skywards.
From seat to seat Bim went; every move was marked by the chimes of the Parliamentary clock. "Half-past." "Quarter-to." "Nine."
Such was love's dialogue. O time! O manners! Where are our raptures, our sonnets and rhapsodies?
Bim became furious. He ran at full speed along the Embankment, viciously poking with his wand every love-lorn pair: and on, through Story's Gate into St. James's Park. As he went he passed scores of strolling lovers. He put his spell on every pair of them.
Through the Green Park he hurried, and across Piccadilly into Hyde Park. Wherever he went he carried magic, and produced its consequences. Love's multitudinous tongues were no longer tied. Thoughts hitherto dumb found glowing speech.
The gnome had run amok with a vengeance.
"Darling, darling, darling, darling!" said one young man in an ecstasy increasing with every syllable.
"Darling, darling, darling!" came the feminine answer, in tones that thrilled.
Then another sweet voice was gently borne upon the westering wind.
"I know where there's the teeniest duck of a saucepan set which will just suit our wee little homey."
The stars twinkled.
"Does-um!" was the masculine answer.
Still the stars twinkled.
"Ted," said Emma, "do you love me, love me?" She had been to a series of popular melodramas, and saw herself languid and rapturous. She asked questions emotionally, with the emphasis that comes with repetition.
"That I do just, old gell!" came the reply.
"And will you, my heart, always love me, love me?"
"S'welp me! old gell, I will!"
"Then another, Ted." There was a noise as of machine guns barking at a blue distance. Emma seemed satisfied.
Bim was pleased. He had not been looking for words in purple, and so was unable to feel disappointed. But as he worked from chair to chair he could not help accumulating the wish that more of the minor poet had been born in the common people. The prose that came was better than a mere bald narrative of time; but, surely, was not worthy of Aphrodite's doves.
Gradually the better came. It was the work of unconscious imitation.
Examples were being quickly followed in many directions. Several cabmen, having earned their day's requirements and a little over, were now using their cabs and still unwearied horses to convey for short distances fares too poor to pay for a ride. Motor-cabs and private cars actually buzzed with philanthropy. Policemen, carrying out and carrying on the inspector's orders, were urgently helping down-at-heel gentlefolk to be as comfortable as out-of-door conditions permitted.
So, too, lovers on that blessed evening, influenced by Bim, began to be worthy of Juliet, and their fellows of the Heaven-kissed company to whom passion has become sanctified, and the possession of love is a joy crowned, a power enthroned, making of its votaries queens and princes---- Ah me, and so on! The series of lovers multitudinous gradually became ashamed of their ungracefulness. They walked now, or sat with some better sense of picturesque propriety. Sprawling and hugging were postponed for the armchairs at home. The parks became tolerable to the married.
Here and there a joyful swain reclined at his lady's feet. The methods of musical comedy were fittingly applied to the prose of life. Ernie Jenkins was one of these recumbent swains. It was his weekly evening with Emily, who sat on a chair under a chestnut-tree steadily absorbing acid-drops. His red hair was stubbly, but he brushed his brow as if it were thick with love-locks.
"Emily! Emily!" he murmured repeatedly. Never had his feeling for her been so romantic as it now seemed. His narrow chest expanded with rapture and contracted with sighs. He knew himself fortunate. Bim had nearly prevailed on him to make the plunge. Though unable to go that length, Ernie mentally vowed to reduce his weekly allowance of bitter beer, the better to provide a nest-egg for furniture--which sounds like a mixed metaphor, but isn't; and if it were, can be put down to the fairies, who may do anything grammatical they please, even to the extent of splitting infinitives, which mortal authors may never do.
Hyde Park grew more and more delightful to Bim during that evening of bliss. He flitted about as if wings were on his feet, and with June's wand helped flowers, birds, grasses and winds to become more fairylike. Those blessed existences behaved as if they realized and enjoyed the change; and, to their credit be it said, no leafy, green space in crowded London had so much in accord with Falkland as the flowers, birds, grasses, winds, in Hyde Park then. Nature is, after all, a jolly good poet.
A new moon made its appearance. It peeped from a cradle of clouds. Venus and Jupiter gleamed underneath it. Other stars in their places shone. That was the first night to gladden London since the Mayday of June's madness; and as for the long, long time before that--oh dear! oh dear!
June, peering through a ducal window, realized the improvement, and was delighted with Bim. She knew it was largely his doing--his and the wand's. Her sympathy grew radiant towards him. He was a good gnome, and when they had returned, victorious and forgiven, to the Land of Wild Roses--as she had no doubt they would do eventually--he should be rewarded. Perhaps she would kiss him.
Slowly, but all too speedily, the time went by. The band which for three comfortable hours had been stirring the hearts of hundreds, played the Good-night National Anthem, and put out its lights. Two by two the lovers turned homewards, each couple happily emotional, joying in the enthralment, delightfully subdued. There were more marriages determined upon, more attachments confirmed and made love-affairs during that evening, than ever before--with the possible exception of the last of the supralapsarian days.
The author of this splendid improvement sat, smiling and tired, on a discarded cigarette-box. He joyed in the wide silence and the dewy grass.
The park became more and more still. On every side of it there was the eternal hum of the traffic. Solitary wayfarers passed silently along the walks and faded into the darkness. Now and then the shadow of laughter was heard, occasional cab-calls, one distant bugle sounding the last post, a man's voice giving a hail. Slowly even such sounds as these were lost in the all-engulfing silence; the night was very still.
There was room for fairies here, thought Bim, but no fairies were there. There ought to be rings of them, lightly laughing and dancing; making merriment for the stars. Hyde Park in its loneliness longed for them. They, only, were needed to make it the perfect garden.
The places of the elves had been taken by creatures of a very different clay. An hour or so ago, and the park was thronged with youth, hopeful, happy, confident. The difference now!
In all directions there slept or grumbled on the grass the human waste of our social system; the aged, the ugly, the hopeless, the infirm and unfit; the thriftless, workless, worthless--worn remnants of all manner of miserable humanity. Poor wretches whose days had long been damned! Their backs are weak with burdens. They have not even a hope in their pockets. They have sinned and suffered; have learned the many lessons of bitterness, and been crushed. They have hungered and had to continue hungry; have been wet, cold, and, in their shivering, had no better shelter than some broken penthouse or windy archway; their only friendships have been with members of their own dismal fraternity. Fortunate was Lear! They have touched desire with crime and been compelled to pay the law's and the world's penalties. There is short shrift for such as these, the drift of the cities. Born are they to suffer, to endure; to know only shame; to die.
The gnome resumed his wanderings, and gazed wonderingly at the many sleeping faces. It was the most amazing of all the sights he had seen. The marks of meanness and want were stamped on them. Yes, June was right in her madness. The fairies ought to have prevented this. Tragedy is permissible when it is romantic, but such tragedy of squalor as was lighted by the starshine then was ugly, evil, the first and last of the shames. The gnome came across Lazy Tim, who stretched on an open newspaper, fast asleep, snoring with his mouth wide open.
Tim was a ne'er-do-well. He had not one scruple, hope, ambition, or blessing. His father and mother had been ne'er-do-wells also. Beyond them he had no history. He had never been inside a school, or known what discipline--other than that of the gaol and casual ward--meant. He had never formed a taste for work, but, thanks to sharpened half-wits, had here and there earned many crooked pence. He had been taken on as a farm-hand and a factory-hand times out of counting; but the monotony of the one employment and the prison-like character of the other had always driven him into the free-lance world again. Tim was unmoral and incorrigible. He had known no guidance whatever in his ways. He had an idea that it was wise to dodge any man in uniform, and that was about all.
Experience had, however, taught him many of the tricks of cheap cunning. He could, when in the humour, pitch a yarn about his non-existent wife and children and the bronchitis, which would make a stone moist with sympathy. He had even on one extraordinary occasion obtained sixpence from a local secretary of the Charity Organization Society, and frequently had charmed the generosity of not a few religious ladies with his sighs and aspirations. He would have taken any religion you liked for a course of square meals. Once there was, possibly, good material in Tim; but it had run to seed and been lost. He had not enjoyed one fair chance. He had come into the world inopportunely. The fates were sleeping when he was born. Ever since infancy he had starved, stolen, sinned--if such as he can "sin"--been punished and neglected; and so was wrecked.
Bim, studying the sleeping face, was stirred with fairy's pity. He knew nothing of Tim's past experience, of the opportunities grudged, denied, and lost; but could see the man was inherently unhappy. That was enough. Poor wretch! Something must be done for him at once. He wished June had been there to prescribe the remedy. But there was no use in fruitless wishing. Such is not Elfland's way.
He marched up Tim's body, and felt the wasted form under his feet. Bones and hunger, that was the story; bones and hunger and rags. He stood by the tangled beard, and with the end of the wand gently stroked the lined and scraggy face. Tired, ugly face! It looked so weak, ay, and so brutal in the night's dark light. Scars were cut into the cheeks and forehead; the nose was debased, and bore the marks of drink and fighting. The hair, in a grey and filthy tangle, streamed from under a broken hat. Here was a man in the prime of life, finally ruined.
Tim would wake presently. What was the use of his waking? Better always to sleep and dream than to live again for the day's despair and a life's long misery.
Bim laid the point of the wand on the sleeping man's forehead, and thought of these things.
Suddenly Tim awoke, stretched, rose, shook himself, burst out into laughing. He took off his hat and looked carefully at it. "A kingly crown!" cried he. He stroked his rags, and was joyful. "Ermine and purple." His hunger was forgotten; his thirst--his only ever-faithful companion--no longer made pleadings. "Feasts in plenty!" he exclaimed, lifting arms delightedly to the stars. "What a palace I have! What a kingdom! Oh, my royal heritage! It is good to be alive--to be king, king, king!"
Tim had found happiness. Never again could he know the evils of bitter reality. Henceforward he was blessed with the illusions. He was "touched." Bim and the wand had wrought the marvel.
Blessed are the poor whom the fairies have touched. Hats off to them, gentlemen! They are far beyond life's miseries. They are kings in their own right--happy kings. We who have the blue and yellow worries, even though we can jingle coins in our pockets, are far less happy than they.
Bim climbed a chestnut-tree, and found slumber in a throstle's nest.