“Whatever, Lord, we tend to Thee,Repaid a thousandfold shall be,Then gladly will we give to Thee,Giver of all!'
“Yes,” he said grimly: “that is the typical stanza. And the very last charity-sermon I heard was infected with it. After giving many good reasons for charity, the preacher wound up with 'and, for all you give, you will be repaid a thousandfold!' Oh the utter meanness of such a motive, to be put before men who do know what self-sacrifice is, who can appreciate generosity and heroism! Talk of Original Sin!” he went on with increasing bitterness. “Can you have a stronger proof of the Original Goodness there must be in this nation, than the fact that Religion has been preached to us, as a commercial speculation, for a century, and that we still believe in a God?”
“It couldn't have gone on so long,” Lady Muriel musingly remarked, “if the Opposition hadn't been practically silenced—put under what the French call la cloture. Surely in any lecture-hall, or in private society, such teaching would soon have been hooted down?”
“I trust so,” said Arthur: “and, though I don't want to see 'brawling in church' legalised, I must say that our preachers enjoy an enormous privilege—which they ill deserve, and which they misuse terribly. We put our man into a pulpit, and we virtually tell him 'Now, you may stand there and talk to us for half-an-hour. We won't interrupt you by so much as a word! You shall have it all your own way!' And what does he give us in return? Shallow twaddle, that, if it were addressed to you over a dinner-table, you would think 'Does the man take me for a fool?'”
The return of Eric from his walk checked the tide of Arthur's eloquence, and, after a few minutes' talk on more conventional topics, we took our leave. Lady Muriel walked with us to the gate. “You have given me much to think about,” she said earnestly, as she gave Arthur her hand. “I'm so glad you came in!” And her words brought a real glow of pleasure into that pale worn face of his.
On the Tuesday, as Arthur did not seem equal to more walking, I took a long stroll by myself, having stipulated that he was not to give the whole day to his books, but was to meet me at the Hall at about tea-time. On my way back, I passed the Station just as the afternoon-train came in sight, and sauntered down the stairs to see it come in. But there was little to gratify my idle curiosity: and, when the train was empty, and the platform clear, I found it was about time to be moving on, if I meant to reach the Hall by five.
As I approached the end of the platform, from which a steep irregular wooden staircase conducted to the upper world, I noticed two passengers, who had evidently arrived by the train, but who, oddly enough, had entirely escaped my notice, though the arrivals had been so few. They were a young woman and a little girl: the former, so far as one could judge by appearances, was a nursemaid, or possibly a nursery-governess, in attendance on the child, whose refined face, even more than her dress, distinguished her as of a higher class than her companion.
The child's face was refined, but it was also a worn and sad one, and told a tale (or so I seemed to read it) of much illness and suffering, sweetly and patiently borne. She had a little crutch to help herself along with: and she was now standing, looking wistfully up the long staircase, and apparently waiting till she could muster courage to begin the toilsome ascent.
There are some things one says in life—as well as things one does—which come automatically, by reflex action, as the physiologists say (meaning, no doubt, action without reflection, just as lucus is said to be derived 'a non lucendo'). Closing one's eyelids, when something seems to be flying into the eye, is one of those actions, and saying “May I carry the little girl up the stairs?” was another. It wasn't that any thought of offering help occurred to me, and that then I spoke: the first intimation I had, of being likely to make that offer, was the sound of my own voice, and the discovery that the offer had been made. The servant paused, doubtfully glancing from her charge to me, and then back again to the child. “Would you like it, dear?” she asked her. But no such doubt appeared to cross the child's mind: she lifted her arms eagerly to be taken up. “Please!” was all she said, while a faint smile flickered on the weary little face. I took her up with scrupulous care, and her little arm was at once clasped trustfully round my neck.
{Image...The lame child}
She was a very light weight—so light, in fact, that the ridiculous idea crossed my mind that it was rather easier going up, with her in my arms, than it would have been without her: and, when we reached the road above, with its cart-ruts and loose stones—all formidable obstacles for a lame child—I found that I had said “I'd better carry her over this rough place,” before I had formed any mental connection between its roughness and my gentle little burden. “Indeed it's troubling you too much, Sir!” the maid exclaimed. “She can walk very well on the flat.” But the arm, that was twined about my neck, clung just an atom more closely at the suggestion, and decided me to say “She's no weight, really. I'll carry her a little further. I'm going your way.”
The nurse raised no further objection: and the next speaker was a ragged little boy, with bare feet, and a broom over his shoulder, who ran across the road, and pretended to sweep the perfectly dry road in front of us. “Give us a 'ap'ny!” the little urchin pleaded, with a broad grin on his dirty face.
“Don't give him a 'ap'ny!” said the little lady in my arms. The words sounded harsh: but the tone was gentleness itself. “He's an idle little boy!” And she laughed a laugh of such silvery sweetness as I had never yet heard from any lips but Sylvie's. To my astonishment, the boy actually joined in the laugh, as if there were some subtle sympathy between them, as he ran away down the road and vanished through a gap in the hedge.
But he was back in a few moments, having discarded his broom and provided himself, from some mysterious source, with an exquisite bouquet of flowers. “Buy a posy, buy a posy! Only a 'ap'ny!” he chanted, with the melancholy drawl of a professional beggar.
“Don't buy it!” was Her Majesty's edict as she looked down, with a lofty scorn that seemed curiously mixed with tender interest, on the ragged creature at her feet.
But this time I turned rebel, and ignored the royal commands. Such lovely flowers, and of forms so entirely new to me, were not to be abandoned at the bidding of any little maid, however imperious. I bought the bouquet: and the little boy, after popping the halfpenny into his mouth, turned head-over-heels, as if to ascertain whether the human mouth is really adapted to serve as a money-box.
With wonder, that increased every moment, I turned over the flowers, and examined them one by one: there was not a single one among them that I could remember having ever seen before. At last I turned to the nursemaid. “Do these flowers grow wild about here? I never saw—” but the speech died away on my lips. The nursemaid had vanished!
“You can put me down, now, if you like,” Sylvie quietly remarked.
I obeyed in silence, and could only ask myself “Is this a dream?”, on finding Sylvie and Bruno walking one on either side of me, and clinging to my hands with the ready confidence of childhood.
“You're larger than when I saw you last!” I began. “Really I think we ought to be introduced again! There's so much of you that I never met before, you know.”
“Very well!” Sylvie merrily replied. “This is Bruno. It doesn't take long. He's only got one name!”
“There's another name to me!” Bruno protested, with a reproachful look at the Mistress of the Ceremonies. “And it's—' Esquire'!”
“Oh, of course. I forgot,” said Sylvie. “Bruno—Esquire!”
“And did you come here to meet me, my children?” I enquired.
“You know I said we'd come on Tuesday,” Sylvie explained. “Are we the proper size for common children?”
“Quite the right size for children,” I replied, (adding mentally “though not common children, by any means!”) “But what became of the nursemaid?”
“It are gone!” Bruno solemnly replied.
“Then it wasn't solid, like Sylvie and you?”
“No. Oo couldn't touch it, oo know. If oo walked at it, oo'd go right froo!”
“I quite expected you'd find it out, once,” said Sylvie. “Bruno ran it against a telegraph post, by accident. And it went in two halves. But you were looking the other way.”
I felt that I had indeed missed an opportunity: to witness such an event as a nursemaid going 'in two halves' does not occur twice in a life-time!
“When did oo guess it were Sylvie?” Bruno enquired.
{Image...'It went in two halves'}
“I didn't guess it, till it was Sylvie,” I said. “But how did you manage the nursemaid?”
“Bruno managed it,” said Sylvie. “It's called a Phlizz.”
“And how do you make a Phlizz, Bruno?”
“The Professor teached me how,” said Bruno. “First oo takes a lot of air—”
“Oh, Bruno!” Sylvie interposed. “The Professor said you weren't to tell!”
“But who did her voice?” I asked.
“Indeed it's troubling you too much, Sir! She can walk very well on the flat.”
Bruno laughed merrily as I turned hastily from side to side, looking in all directions for the speaker. “That were me!” he gleefully proclaimed, in his own voice.
“She can indeed walk very well on the flat,” I said. “And I think I was the Flat.”
By this time we were near the Hall. “This is where my friends live,” I said. “Will you come in and have some tea with them?”
Bruno gave a little jump of joy: and Sylvie said “Yes, please. You'd like some tea, Bruno, wouldn't you? He hasn't tasted tea,” she explained to me, “since we left Outland.”
“And that weren't good tea!” said Bruno. “It were so welly weak!”
Lady Muriel's smile of welcome could not quite conceal the look of surprise with which she regarded my new companions.
I presented them in due form. “This is Sylvie, Lady Muriel. And this is Bruno.”
“Any surname?” she enquired, her eyes twinkling with fun.
“No,” I said gravely. “No surname.”
She laughed, evidently thinking I said it in fun; and stooped to kiss the children a salute to which Bruno submitted with reluctance: Sylvie returned it with interest.
While she and Arthur (who had arrived before me) supplied the children with tea and cake, I tried to engage the Earl in conversation: but he was restless and distrait, and we made little progress. At last, by a sudden question, he betrayed the cause of his disquiet.
“Would you let me look at those flowers you have in your hand?”
“Willingly!” I said, handing him the bouquet. Botany was, I knew, a favourite study of his: and these flowers were to me so entirely new and mysterious, that I was really curious to see what a botanist would say of them.
They did not diminish his disquiet. On the contrary, he became every moment more excited as he turned them over. “These are all from Central India!” he said, laying aside part of the bouquet. “They are rare, even there: and I have never seen them in any other part of the world. These two are Mexican—This one—” (He rose hastily, and carried it to the window, to examine it in a better light, the flush of excitement mounting to his very forehead) “—is, I am nearly sure—but I have a book of Indian Botany here—” He took a volume from the book-shelves, and turned the leaves with trembling fingers. “Yes! Compare it with this picture! It is the exact duplicate! This is the flower of the Upas-tree, which usually grows only in the depths of forests; and the flower fades so quickly after being plucked, that it is scarcely possible to keep its form or colour even so far as the outskirts of the forest! Yet this is in full bloom! Where did you get these flowers?” he added with breathless eagerness.
I glanced at Sylvie, who, gravely and silently, laid her finger on her lips, then beckoned to Bruno to follow her, and ran out into the garden; and I found myself in the position of a defendant whose two most important witnesses have been suddenly taken away. “Let me give you the flowers!” I stammered out at last, quite 'at my wit's end' as to how to get out of the difficulty. “You know much more about them than I do!”
“I accept them most gratefully! But you have not yet told me—” the Earl was beginning, when we were interrupted, to my great relief, by the arrival of Eric Lindon.
To Arthur, however, the new-comer was, I saw clearly, anything but welcome. His face clouded over: he drew a little back from the circle, and took no further part in the conversation, which was wholly maintained, for some minutes, by Lady Muriel and her lively cousin, who were discussing some new music that had just arrived from London.
“Do just try this one!” he pleaded. “The music looks easy to sing at sight, and the song's quite appropriate to the occasion.”
“Then I suppose it's
'Five o'clock tea!Ever to theeFaithful I'll be,Five o'clock tea!”'
laughed Lady Muriel, as she sat down to the piano, and lightly struck a few random chords.
“Not quite: and yet it is a kind of 'ever to thee faithful I'll be!' It's a pair of hapless lovers: he crosses the briny deep: and she is left lamenting.”
“That is indeed appropriate!” she replied mockingly, as he placed the song before her. “And am I to do the lamenting? And who for, if you please?”
She played the air once or twice through, first in quick, and finally in slow, time; and then gave us the whole song with as much graceful ease as if she had been familiar with it all her life:—
“He stept so lightly to the land,All in his manly pride:He kissed her cheek, he pressed her hand,Yet still she glanced aside.'Too gay he seems,' she darkly dreams,'Too gallant and too gayTo think of me—poor simple me—-When he is far away!''I bring my Love this goodly pearlAcross the seas,' he said:'A gem to deck the dearest girlThat ever sailor wed!'She clasps it tight: her eyes are bright:Her throbbing heart would say'He thought of me—he thought of me—-When he was far away!'The ship has sailed into the West:Her ocean-bird is flown:A dull dead pain is in her breast,And she is weak and lone:Yet there's a smile upon her face,A smile that seems to say'He'll think of me he'll think of me—-When he is far away!'Though waters wide between us glide,Our lives are warm and near:No distance parts two faithful heartsTwo hearts that love so dear:And I will trust my sailor-lad,For ever and a day,To think of me—to think of me—-When he is far away!'”
The look of displeasure, which had begun to come over Arthur's face when the young Captain spoke of Love so lightly, faded away as the song proceeded, and he listened with evident delight. But his face darkened again when Eric demurely remarked “Don't you think 'my soldier-lad' would have fitted the tune just as well!”
“Why, so it would!” Lady Muriel gaily retorted. “Soldiers, sailors, tinkers, tailors, what a lot of words would fit in! I think 'my tinker-lad' sounds best. Don't you?”
To spare my friend further pain, I rose to go, just as the Earl was beginning to repeat his particularly embarrassing question about the flowers.
“You have not yet—'
“Yes, I've had some tea, thank you!” I hastily interrupted him. “And now we really must be going. Good evening, Lady Muriel!” And we made our adieux, and escaped, while the Earl was still absorbed in examining the mysterious bouquet.
Lady Muriel accompanied us to the door. “You couldn't have given my father a more acceptable present!” she said, warmly. “He is so passionately fond of Botany. I'm afraid I know nothing of the theory of it, but I keep his Hortus Siccus in order. I must get some sheets of blotting-paper, and dry these new treasures for him before they fade.
“That won't be no good at all!” said Bruno, who was waiting for us in the garden.
“Why won't it?” said I. “You know I had to give the flowers, to stop questions?”
“Yes, it ca'n't be helped,” said Sylvie: “but they will be sorry when they find them gone!”
“But how will they go?”
“Well, I don't know how. But they will go. The nosegay was only a Phlizz, you know. Bruno made it up.”
These last words were in a whisper, as she evidently did not wish Arthur to hear. But of this there seemed to be little risk: he hardly seemed to notice the children, but paced on, silent and abstracted; and when, at the entrance to the wood, they bid us a hasty farewell and ran off, he seemed to wake out of a day-dream.
The bouquet vanished, as Sylvie had predicted; and when, a day or two afterwards, Arthur and I once more visited the Hall, we found the Earl and his daughter, with the old housekeeper, out in the garden, examining the fastenings of the drawing-room window.
“We are holding an Inquest,” Lady Muriel said, advancing to meet us: “and we admit you, as Accessories before the Fact, to tell us all you know about those flowers.”
“The Accessories before the Fact decline to answer any questions,” I gravely replied. “And they reserve their defence.”
“Well then, turn Queen's Evidence, please! The flowers have disappeared in the night,” she went on, turning to Arthur, “and we are quite sure no one in the house has meddled with them. Somebody must have entered by the window—”
“But the fastenings have not been tampered with,” said the Earl.
“It must have been while you were dining, my Lady,” said the housekeeper.
“That was it,” said the Earl. “The thief must have seen you bring the flowers,” turning to me, “and have noticed that you did not take them away. And he must have known their great value—they are simply priceless!” he exclaimed, in sudden excitement.
“And you never told us how you got them!” said Lady Muriel.
“Some day,” I stammered, “I may be free to tell you. Just now, would you excuse me?”
The Earl looked disappointed, but kindly said “Very well, we will ask no questions.”
{Image...Five o'clock tea}
“But we consider you a very bad Queen's Evidence,” Lady Muriel added playfully, as we entered the arbour. “We pronounce you to be an accomplice: and we sentence you to solitary confinement, and to be fed on bread and butter. Do you take sugar?”
“It is disquieting, certainly,” she resumed, when all 'creature-comforts' had been duly supplied, “to find that the house has been entered by a thief in this out-of-the-way place. If only the flowers had been eatables, one might have suspected a thief of quite another shape—”
“You mean that universal explanation for all mysterious disappearances, 'the cat did it'?” said Arthur.
“Yes,” she replied. “What a convenient thing it would be if all thieves had the same shape! It's so confusing to have some of them quadrupeds and others bipeds!”
“It has occurred to me,” said Arthur, “as a curious problem in Teleology—the Science of Final Causes,” he added, in answer to an enquiring look from Lady Muriel.
“And a Final Cause is—?”
“Well, suppose we say—the last of a series of connected events—each of the series being the cause of the next—for whose sake the first event takes place.”
“But the last event is practically an effect of the first, isn't it? And yet you call it a cause of it!”
Arthur pondered a moment. “The words are rather confusing, I grant you,” he said. “Will this do? The last event is an effect of the first: but the necessity for that event is a cause of the necessity for the first.”
“That seems clear enough,” said Lady Muriel. “Now let us have the problem.”
“It's merely this. What object can we imagine in the arrangement by which each different size (roughly speaking) of living creatures has its special shape? For instance, the human race has one kind of shape—bipeds. Another set, ranging from the lion to the mouse, are quadrupeds. Go down a step or two further, and you come to insects with six legs—hexapods—a beautiful name, is it not? But beauty, in our sense of the word, seems to diminish as we go down: the creature becomes more—I won't say 'ugly' of any of God's creatures—more uncouth. And, when we take the microscope, and go a few steps lower still, we come upon animalculae, terribly uncouth, and with a terrible number of legs!”
“The other alternative,” said the Earl, “would be a diminuendo series of repetitions of the same type. Never mind the monotony of it: let's see how it would work in other ways. Begin with the race of men, and the creatures they require: let us say horses, cattle, sheep, and dogs—we don't exactly require frogs and spiders, do we, Muriel?”
Lady Muriel shuddered perceptibly: it was evidently a painful subject. “We can dispense with them,” she said gravely.
“Well, then we'll have a second race of men, half-a-yard high—”
“—who would have one source of exquisite enjoyment, not possessed by ordinary men!” Arthur interrupted.
“What source?” said the Earl.
“Why, the grandeur of scenery! Surely the grandeur of a mountain, to me, depends on its size, relative to me? Double the height of the mountain, and of course it's twice as grand. Halve my height, and you produce the same effect.”
“Happy, happy, happy Small!” Lady Muriel murmured rapturously. “None but the Short, none but the Short, none but the Short enjoy the Tall!”
“But let me go on,” said the Earl. “We'll have a third race of men, five inches high; a fourth race, an inch high—”
“They couldn't eat common beef and mutton, I'm sure!” Lady Muriel interrupted.
“True, my child, I was forgetting. Each set must have its own cattle and sheep.”
“And its own vegetation,” I added. “What could a cow, an inch high, do with grass that waved far above its head?”
“That is true. We must have a pasture within a pasture, so to speak. The common grass would serve our inch-high cows as a green forest of palms, while round the root of each tall stem would stretch a tiny carpet of microscopic grass. Yes, I think our scheme will work fairly well. And it would be very interesting, coming into contact with the races below us. What sweet little things the inch-high bull-dogs would be! I doubt if even Muriel would run away from one of them!”
“Don't you think we ought to have a crescendo series, as well?” said Lady Muriel. “Only fancy being a hundred yards high! One could use an elephant as a paper-weight, and a crocodile as a pair of scissors!”
“And would you have races of different sizes communicate with one another?” I enquired. “Would they make war on one another, for instance, or enter into treaties?”
“War we must exclude, I think. When you could crush a whole nation with one blow of your fist, you couldn't conduct war on equal terms. But anything, involving a collision of minds only, would be possible in our ideal world—for of course we must allow mental powers to all, irrespective of size. Perhaps the fairest rule would be that, the smaller the race, the greater should be its intellectual development!”
“Do you mean to say,” said Lady Muriel, “that these manikins of an inch high are to argue with me?”
“Surely, surely!” said the Earl. “An argument doesn't depend for its logical force on the size of the creature that utters it!”
She tossed her head indignantly. “I would not argue with any man less than six inches high!” she cried. “I'd make him work!”
“What at?” said Arthur, listening to all this nonsense with an amused smile.
“Embroidery!” she readily replied. “What lovely embroidery they would do!”
“Yet, if they did it wrong,” I said, “you couldn't argue the question. I don't know why: but I agree that it couldn't be done.”
“The reason is,” said Lady Muriel, “one couldn't sacrifice one's dignity so far.”
“Of course one couldn't!” echoed Arthur. “Any more than one could argue with a potato. It would be altogether—excuse the ancient pun—infra dig.!”
“I doubt it,” said I. “Even a pun doesn't quite convince me.”
“Well, if that is not the reason,” said Lady Muriel, “what reason would you give?”
I tried hard to understand the meaning of this question: but the persistent humming of the bees confused me, and there was a drowsiness in the air that made every thought stop and go to sleep before it had got well thought out: so all I could say was “That must depend on the weight of the potato.”
I felt the remark was not so sensible as I should have liked it to be. But Lady Muriel seemed to take it quite as a matter of course. “In that case—” she began, but suddenly started, and turned away to listen. “Don't you hear him?” she said. “He's crying. We must go to him, somehow.”
And I said to myself “That's very strange.” I quite thought it was Lady Muriel talking to me. “Why, it's Sylvie all the while!” And I made another great effort to say something that should have some meaning in it. “Is it about the potato?”
“I don't know,” said Sylvie. “Hush! I must think. I could go to him, by myself, well enough. But I want you to come too.”
“Let me go with you,” I pleaded. “I can walk as fast as you can, I'm sure.”
Sylvie laughed merrily. “What nonsense!” she cried. “Why, you ca'n't walk a bit! You're lying quite flat on your back! You don't understand these things.”
“I can walk as well as you can,” I repeated. And I tried my best to walk a few steps: but the ground slipped away backwards, quite as fast as I could walk, so that I made no progress at all. Sylvie laughed again.
“There, I told you so! You've no idea how funny you look, moving your feet about in the air, as if you were walking! Wait a bit. I'll ask the Professor what we'd better do.” And she knocked at his study-door.
The door opened, and the Professor looked out. “What's that crying I heard just now?” he asked. “Is it a human animal?”
“It's a boy,” Sylvie said.
“I'm afraid you've been teasing him?”
“No, indeed I haven't!” Sylvie said, very earnestly. “I never tease him!”
“Well, I must ask the Other Professor about it.” He went back into the study, and we heard him whispering “small human animal—says she hasn't been teasing him—the kind that's called Boy—”
“Ask her which Boy,” said a new voice. The Professor came out again.
“Which Boy is it that you haven't been teasing?”
Sylvie looked at me with twinkling eyes. “You dear old thing!” she exclaimed, standing on tiptoe to kiss him, while he gravely stooped to receive the salute. “How you do puzzle me! Why, there are several boys I haven't been teasing!”
The Professor returned to his friend: and this time the voice said “Tell her to bring them here—all of them!”
“I ca'n't, and I won't!” Sylvie exclaimed, the moment he reappeared. “It's Bruno that's crying: and he's my brother: and, please, we both want to go: he ca'n't walk, you know: he's—he's dreaming, you know” (this in a whisper, for fear of hurting my feelings). “Do let's go through the Ivory Door!”
“I'll ask him,” said the Professor, disappearing again. He returned directly. “He says you may. Follow me, and walk on tip-toe.”
The difficulty with me would have been, just then, not to walk on tip-toe. It seemed very hard to reach down far enough to just touch the floor, as Sylvie led me through the study.
The Professor went before us to unlock the Ivory Door. I had just time to glance at the Other Professor, who was sitting reading, with his back to us, before the Professor showed us out through the door, and locked it behind us. Bruno was standing with his hands over his face, crying bitterly.
{Image...'What's the matter, darling?'}
“What's the matter, darling?” said Sylvie, with her arms round his neck.
“Hurted mine self welly much!” sobbed the poor little fellow.
“I'm so sorry, darling! How ever did you manage to hurt yourself so?”
“Course I managed it!” said Bruno, laughing through his tears. “Doos oo think nobody else but oo ca'n't manage things?”
Matters were looking distinctly brighter, now Bruno had begun to argue. “Come, let's hear all about it!” I said.
“My foot took it into its head to slip—” Bruno began.
“A foot hasn't got a head!” Sylvie put in, but all in vain.
“I slipted down the bank. And I tripted over a stone. And the stone hurted my foot! And I trod on a Bee. And the Bee stinged my finger!” Poor Bruno sobbed again. The complete list of woes was too much for his feelings. “And it knewed I didn't mean to trod on it!” he added, as the climax.
“That Bee should be ashamed of itself!” I said severely, and Sylvie hugged and kissed the wounded hero till all tears were dried.
“My finger's quite unstung now!” said Bruno. “Why doos there be stones? Mister Sir, doos oo know?”
“They're good for something,” I said: “even if we don't know what. What's the good of dandelions, now?”
“Dindledums?” said Bruno. “Oh, they're ever so pretty! And stones aren't pretty, one bit. Would oo like some dindledums, Mister Sir?”
“Bruno!” Sylvie murmured reproachfully. “You mustn't say 'Mister' and 'Sir,' both at once! Remember what I told you!”
“You telled me I were to say Mister' when I spoked about him, and I were to say 'Sir' when I spoked to him!”
“Well, you're not doing both, you know.”
“Ah, but I is doing bofe, Miss Praticular!” Bruno exclaimed triumphantly. “I wishted to speak about the Gemplun—and I wishted to speak to the Gemplun. So a course I said 'Mister Sir'!”
“That's all right, Bruno,” I said.
“Course it's all right!” said Bruno. “Sylvie just knows nuffin at all!”
“There never was an impertinenter boy!” said Sylvie, frowning till her bright eyes were nearly invisible.
“And there never was an ignoranter girl!” retorted Bruno. “Come along and pick some dindledums. That's all she's fit for!” he added in a very loud whisper to me.
“But why do you say 'Dindledums,' Bruno? Dandelions is the right word.”
“It's because he jumps about so,” Sylvie said, laughing.
“Yes, that's it,” Bruno assented. “Sylvie tells me the words, and then, when I jump about, they get shooken up in my head—till they're all froth!”
I expressed myself as perfectly satisfied with this explanation. “But aren't you going to pick me any dindledums, after all?”
“Course we will!” cried Bruno. “Come along, Sylvie!” And the happy children raced away, bounding over the turf with the fleetness and grace of young antelopes.
“Then you didn't find your way back to Outland?” I said to the Professor.
“Oh yes, I did!” he replied, “We never got to Queer Street; but I found another way. I've been backwards and forwards several times since then. I had to be present at the Election, you know, as the author of the new Money-act. The Emperor was so kind as to wish that I should have the credit of it. 'Let come what come may,' (I remember the very words of the Imperial Speech) 'if it should turn out that the Warden is alive, you will bear witness that the change in the coinage is the Professor's doing, not mine!' I never was so glorified in my life, before!” Tears trickled down his cheeks at the recollection, which apparently was not wholly a pleasant one.
“Is the Warden supposed to be dead?”
“Well, it's supposed so: but, mind you, I don't believe it! The evidence is very weak—mere hear-say. A wandering Jester, with a Dancing-Bear (they found their way into the Palace, one day) has been telling people he comes from Fairyland, and that the Warden died there. I wanted the Vice-Warden to question him, but, most unluckily, he and my Lady were always out walking when the Jester came round. Yes, the Warden's supposed to be dead!” And more tears trickled down the old man's cheeks.
“But what is the new Money-Act?”
The Professor brightened up again. “The Emperor started the thing,” he said. “He wanted to make everybody in Outland twice as rich as he was before just to make the new Government popular. Only there wasn't nearly enough money in the Treasury to do it. So I suggested that he might do it by doubling the value of every coin and bank-note in Outland. It's the simplest thing possible. I wonder nobody ever thought of it before! And you never saw such universal joy. The shops are full from morning to night. Everybody's buying everything!”
“And how was the glorifying done?”
A sudden gloom overcast the Professor's jolly face. “They did it as I went home after the Election,” he mournfully replied. “It was kindly meant but I didn't like it! They waved flags all round me till I was nearly blind: and they rang bells till I was nearly deaf: and they strewed the road so thick with flowers that I lost my way!” And the poor old man sighed deeply.
“How far is it to Outland?” I asked, to change the subject.
“About five days' march. But one must go back—occasionally. You see, as Court-Professor, I have to be always in attendance on Prince Uggug. The Empress would be very angry if I left him, even for an hour.”
“But surely, every time you come here, you are absent ten days, at least?”
“Oh, more than that!” the Professor exclaimed. “A fortnight, sometimes. But of course I keep a memorandum of the exact time when I started, so that I can put the Court-time back to the very moment!” “Excuse me,” I said. “I don't understand.”
Silently the Professor drew front his pocket a square gold watch, with six or eight hands, and held it out for my inspection. “This,” he began, “is an Outlandish Watch—”
“So I should have thought.”
“—which has the peculiar property that, instead of its going with the time, the time goes with it. I trust you understand me now?”
“Hardly,” I said.
“Permit me to explain. So long as it is let alone, it takes its own course. Time has no effect upon it.”
“I have known such watches,” I remarked.
“It goes, of course, at the usual rate. Only the time has to go with it. Hence, if I move the hands, I change the time. To move them forwards, in advance of the true time, is impossible: but I can move them as much as a month backwards—-that is the limit. And then you have the events all over again—with any alterations experience may suggest.”
“What a blessing such a watch would be,” I thought, “in real life! To be able to unsay some heedless word—to undo some reckless deed! Might I see the thing done?”
“With pleasure!” said the good natured Professor. “When I move this hand back to here,” pointing out the place, “History goes back fifteen minutes!”
Trembling with excitement, I watched him push the hand round as he described.
“Hurted mine self welly much!”
Shrilly and suddenly the words rang in my ears, and, more startled than I cared to show, I turned to look for the speaker.
Yes! There was Bruno, standing with the tears running down his cheeks, just as I had seen him a quarter of an hour ago; and there was Sylvie with her arms round his neck!
I had not the heart to make the dear little fellow go through his troubles a second time, so hastily begged the Professor to push the hands round into their former position. In a moment Sylvie and Bruno were gone again, and I could just see them in the far distance, picking 'dindledums.'
“Wonderful, indeed!” I exclaimed.
“It has another property, yet more wonderful,” said the Professor. “You see this little peg? That is called the 'Reversal Peg.' If you push it in, the events of the next hour happen in the reverse order. Do not try it now. I will lend you the Watch for a few days, and you can amuse yourself with experiments.”
“Thank you very much!” I said as he gave me the Watch. “I'll take the greatest care of it—why, here are the children again!”
“We could only but find six dindledums,” said Bruno, putting them into my hands, “'cause Sylvie said it were time to go back. And here's a big blackberry for ooself! We couldn't only find but two!”
“Thank you: it's very nice,” I said. “And I suppose you ate the other, Bruno?”
“No, I didn't,” Bruno said, carelessly. “Aren't they pretty dindledums, Mister Sir?”
“Yes, very: but what makes you limp so, my child?”
“Mine foot's come hurted again!” Bruno mournfully replied. And he sat down on the ground, and began nursing it.
The Professor held his head between his hands—an attitude that I knew indicated distraction of mind. “Better rest a minute,” he said. “It may be better then—or it may be worse. If only I had some of my medicines here! I'm Court-Physician, you know,” he added, aside to me.
“Shall I go and get you some blackberries, darling?” Sylvie whispered, with her arms round his neck; and she kissed away a tear that was trickling down his cheek.
Bruno brightened up in a moment. “That are a good plan!” he exclaimed. “I thinks my foot would come quite unhurted, if I eated a blackberry—two or three blackberries—six or seven blackberries—”
Sylvie got up hastily. “I'd better go,” she said, aside to me, “before he gets into the double figures!”
“Let me come and help you,” I said. “I can reach higher up than you can.”
“Yes, please,” said Sylvie, putting her hand into mine: and we walked off together.
“Bruno loves blackberries,” she said, as we paced slowly along by a tall hedge, “that looked a promising place for them, and it was so sweet of him to make me eat the only one!”
“Oh, it was you that ate it, then? Bruno didn't seem to like to tell me about it.”
“No; I saw that,” said Sylvie. “He's always afraid of being praised. But he made me eat it, really! I would much rather he—oh, what's that?” And she clung to my hand, half-frightened, as we came in sight of a hare, lying on its side with legs stretched out just in the entrance to the wood.
“It's a hare, my child. Perhaps it's asleep.”
“No, it isn't asleep,” Sylvie said, timidly going nearer to look at it: “it's eyes are open. Is it—is it—her voice dropped to an awestruck whisper, is it dead, do you think?”
“Yes, it's quite dead,” I said, after stooping to examine it. “Poor thing! I think it's been hunted to death. I know the harriers were out yesterday. But they haven't touched it. Perhaps they caught sight of another, and left it to die of fright and exhaustion.”
“Hunted to death?” Sylvie repeated to herself, very slowly and sadly. “I thought hunting was a thing they played at like a game. Bruno and I hunt snails: but we never hurt them when we catch them!”
“Sweet angel!” I thought. “How am I to get the idea of Sport into your innocent mind?” And as we stood, hand-in-hand, looking down at the dead hare, I tried to put the thing into such words as she could understand. “You know what fierce wild-beasts lions and tigers are?” Sylvie nodded. “Well, in some countries men have to kill them, to save their own lives, you know.”
“Yes,” said Sylvie: “if one tried to kill me, Bruno would kill it if he could.”
“Well, and so the men—the hunters—get to enjoy it, you know: the running, and the fighting, and the shouting, and the danger.”
“Yes,” said Sylvie. “Bruno likes danger.”
“Well, but, in this country, there aren't any lions and tigers, loose: so they hunt other creatures, you see.” I hoped, but in vain, that this would satisfy her, and that she would ask no more questions.
“They hunt foxes,” Sylvie said, thoughtfully. “And I think they kill them, too. Foxes are very fierce. I daresay men don't love them. Are hares fierce?”
“No,” I said. “A hare is a sweet, gentle, timid animal—almost as gentle as a lamb.”
“But, if men love hares, why—why—” her voice quivered, and her sweet eyes were brimming over with tears.
“I'm afraid they don't love them, dear child.”
“All children love them,” Sylvie said. “All ladies love them.”
“I'm afraid even ladies go to hunt them, sometimes.”
Sylvie shuddered. “Oh, no, not ladies!” she earnestly pleaded. “Not Lady Muriel!”
“No, she never does, I'm sure—but this is too sad a sight for you, dear. Let's try and find some—”
But Sylvie was not satisfied yet. In a hushed, solemn tone, with bowed head and clasped hands, she put her final question. “Does GOD love hares?”
“Yes!” I said. “I'm sure He does! He loves every living thing. Even sinful men. How much more the animals, that cannot sin!”
“I don't know what 'sin' means,” said Sylvie. And I didn't try to explain it.
“Come, my child,” I said, trying to lead her away. “Wish good-bye to the poor hare, and come and look for blackberries.”
“Good-bye, poor hare!” Sylvie obediently repeated, looking over her shoulder at it as we turned away. And then, all in a moment, her self-command gave way. Pulling her hand out of mine, she ran back to where the dead hare was lying, and flung herself down at its side in such an agony of grief as I could hardly have believed possible in so young a child.
“Oh, my darling, my darling!” she moaned, over and over again. “And God meant your life to be so beautiful!”
Sometimes, but always keeping her face hidden on the ground, she would reach out one little hand, to stroke the poor dead thing, and then once more bury her face in her hands, and sob as if her heart would break. {Image...The dead hare}
I was afraid she would really make herself ill: still I thought it best to let her weep away the first sharp agony of grief: and, after a few minutes, the sobbing gradually ceased, and Sylvie rose to her feet, and looked calmly at me, though tears were still streaming down her cheeks.
I did not dare to speak again, just yet; but simply held out my hand to her, that we might quit the melancholy spot.
Yes, I'll come now, she said. Very reverently she kneeled down, and kissed the dead hare; then rose and gave me her hand, and we moved on in silence.
A child's sorrow is violent but short; and it was almost in her usual voice that she said after a minute “Oh stop stop! Here are some lovely blackberries!”
We filled our hands with fruit and returned in all haste to where the Professor and Bruno were seated on a bank awaiting our return.
Just before we came within hearing-distance Sylvie checked me. “Please don't tell Bruno about the hare!” she said.
Very well, my child. But why not?
Tears again glittered in those sweet eyes and she turned her head away so that I could scarcely hear her reply. “He's—he's very fond of gentle creatures you know. And he'd—he'd be so sorry! I don't want him to be made sorry.”
And your agony of sorrow is to count for nothing, then, sweet unselfish child! I thought to myself. But no more was said till we had reached our friends; and Bruno was far too much engrossed, in the feast we had brought him, to take any notice of Sylvie's unusually grave manner.
“I'm afraid it's getting rather late, Professor?” I said.
“Yes, indeed,” said the Professor. “I must take you all through the Ivory Door again. You've stayed your full time.”
“Mightn't we stay a little longer!” pleaded Sylvie.
“Just one minute!” added Bruno.
But the Professor was unyielding. “It's a great privilege, coming through at all,” he said. “We must go now.” And we followed him obediently to the Ivory Door, which he threw open, and signed to me to go through first.
“You're coming too, aren't you?” I said to Sylvie.
“Yes,” she said: “but you won't see us after you've gone through.”
“But suppose I wait for you outside?” I asked, as I stepped through the doorway.
“In that case,” said Sylvie, “I think the potato would be quite justified in asking your weight. I can quite imagine a really superior kidney-potato declining to argue with any one under fifteen stone!”
With a great effort I recovered the thread of my thoughts. “We lapse very quickly into nonsense!” I said.