5. ITS WALLS WERE AS OF JASPER
IN the long winter evenings, when we had the picture-books out
on the floor, and sprawled together over them with elbows deep in
the hearth-rug, the first business to be gone through was the
process of allotment. All the characters in the pictures had to
be assigned and dealt out among us, according to seniority, as
far as they would go. When once that had been satisfactorily
completed, the story was allowed to proceed; and thereafter, in
addition to the excitement of the plot, one always possessed a
personal interest in some particular member of the cast, whose
successes or rebuffs one took as so much private gain or loss.
For Edward this was satisfactory enough. Claiming his right
of the eldest, he would
annex the hero in the very frontispiece; and for the rest of the
story his career, if chequered at intervals, was sure of heroic
episodes and a glorious close. But his juniors, who had to put
up with characters of a clay more mixed—nay, sometimes with
undiluted villany—were hard put to it on occasion to defend
their other selves (as it was strict etiquette to do) from
ignominy perhaps only too justly merited. Edward was indeed a
hopeless grabber. In the "Buffalo-book," for instance (so named
from the subject of its principal picture, though indeed it dealt
with varied slaughter in every zone), Edward was the stalwart,
bearded figure, with yellow leggings and a powder-horn, who
undauntedly discharged the fatal bullet into the shoulder of the
great bull bison, charging home to within a yard of his muzzle.
To me was allotted the subsidiary character of the friend who had
succeeded in bringing
down a cow; while Harold had to be content to hold Edward's spare
rifle in the background, with evident signs of uneasiness.
Farther on, again, where the magnificent chamois sprang rigid
into mid-air, Edward, crouched dizzily against the precipice-face, was the sportsman from whose weapon a puff of white smoke
was floating away. A bare-kneed guide was all that fell to my
share, while poor Harold had to take the boy with the haversack,
or abandon, for this occasion at least, all Alpine ambitions.
Of course the girls fared badly in this book, and it was not
surprising that they preferred the "Pilgrim's Progress" (for
instance), where women had a fair show, and there was generally
enough of 'em to go round; or a good fairy story, wherein
princesses met with a healthy appreciation. But indeed we were
all best pleased with a picture wherein the characters just
fitted us, in number, sex, and qualifications; and this, to us,
stood for artistic merit.
All the Christmas numbers, in their gilt frames on the
nursery-wall, had been gone through and allotted long ago; and in
these, sooner or later, each one of us got a chance to figure in
some satisfactory and brightly coloured situation. Few of the
other pictures about the house afforded equal facilities. They
were generally wanting in figures, and even when these were
present they lacked dramatic interest. In this picture that I
have to speak about, although the characters had a stupid way of
not doing anything, and apparently not wanting to do anything,
there was at least a sufficiency of them; so in due course they
were allotted, too.
In itself the picture, which—in its ebony and tortoise-shell
frame—hung in a corner of the dining-room, had hitherto
possessed
no special interest for us, and would probably never have been
dealt with at all but for a revolt of the girls against a
succession of books on sport, in which the illustrator seemed to
have forgotten that there were such things as women in the world.
Selina accordingly made for it one rainy morning, and announced
that she was the lady seated in the centre, whose gown of rich,
flowered brocade fell in such straight, severe lines to her feet,
whose cloak of dark blue was held by a jewelled clasp, and whose
long, fair hair was crowned with a diadem of gold and
pearl. Well, we had no objection to that; it seemed fair enough,
especially to Edward, who promptly proceeded to "grab" the
armour-man who stood leaning on his shield at the lady's right
hand. A dainty and delicate armour-man this! And I confess,
though I knew it was all right and fair and orderly, I felt a
slight pang
when he passed out of my reach into Edward's possession. His
armour was just the sort I wanted myself—scalloped and fluted
and shimmering and spotless; and, though he was but a boy by his
beardless face and golden hair, the shattered spear-shaft in his
grasp proclaimed him a genuine fighter and fresh from some such
agreeable work. Yes, I grudged Edward the armour-man, and when
he said I could have the fellow on the other side, I hung back
and said I'd think about it.
This fellow had no armour nor weapons, but wore a plain jerkin
with a leather pouch—a mere civilian—and with one hand he
pointed to a wound in his thigh. I didn't care about him, and
when Harold eagerly put in his claim I gave way and let him have
the man. The cause of Harold's anxiety only came out later. It
was the wound he coveted, it seemed. He
wanted to have a big, sore wound of his very own, and go about
and show it to people, and excite their envy or win their
respect. Charlotte was only too pleased to take the child-angel
seated at the lady's feet, grappling with a musical instrument
much too big for her. Charlotte wanted wings badly, and, next to
those, a guitar or a banjo. The angel, besides, wore an amber
necklace, which took her fancy immensely.
This left the picture allotted, with the exception of two or
three more angels, who peeped or perched behind the main figures
with a certain subdued drollery in their faces, as if the thing
had gone on long enough, and it was now time to upset something
or kick up a row of some sort. We knew these good folk to be
saints and angels, because we had been told they were; otherwise
we should never have guessed it. Angels, as we
knew them in our Sunday books, were vapid, colourless,
uninteresting characters, with straight up-and-down sort of
figures, white nightgowns, white wings, and the same straight
yellow hair parted in the middle. They were serious, even
melancholy; and we had no desire to have any traffic with them.
These bright bejewelled little persons, however, piquant of face
and radiant of feather, were evidently hatched from quite a
different egg, and we felt we might have interests in common with
them. Short-nosed, shock
headed, with mouths that went up at the corners and with an
evident disregard for all their fine clothes, they would be the
best of good company, we felt sure, if only we could manage to
get at them. One doubt alone disturbed my mind. In games
requiring agility, those wings of theirs would give them a
tremendous pull. Could they be trusted to play fair? I
asked Selina, who replied scornfully that angels
always played fair. But I went back and
had another look at the brown-faced one peeping over the back of
the lady's chair, and still I had my doubts.
When Edward went off to school a great deal of adjustment and
re-allotment took place, and all the heroes of illustrated
literature were at my call, did I choose to possess them. In
this particular case, however, I made no haste to seize upon the
armour-man. Perhaps it was because I wanted a
fresh saint of my own, not a stale saint
that Edward had been for so long a time. Perhaps it was rather
that, ever since I had elected to be saintless, I had got into
the habit of strolling off into the background, and amusing
myself with what I found there.
A very fascinating background it was, and held a great deal,
though so tiny. Meadow-land came first, set with flowers,
blue and red, like gems. Then a white road ran, with wilful,
uncalled-for loops, up a steep, conical hill, crowned with
towers, bastioned walls, and belfries; and down the road the
little knights came riding, two and two. The hill on one side
descended to water, tranquil, far-reaching, and blue; and a very
curly ship lay at anchor, with one mast having an odd sort of
crow's-nest at the top of it.
There was plenty to do in this pleasant land. The annoying
thing about it was, one could never penetrate beyond a certain
point. I might wander up that road as often as I liked, I was
bound to be brought up at the gateway, the funny galleried, top-heavy gateway, of the little walled town. Inside, doubtless,
there were high jinks going on; but the password was denied to
me. I could get on board a boat and row up as far as the curly
ship, but around the headland I
might not go. On the other side, of a surety, the shipping lay
thick. The merchants walked on the quay, and the sailors sang as
they swung out the corded bales. But as for me, I must stay down
in the meadow, and imagine it all as best I could.
Once I broached the subject to Charlotte, and found, to my
surprise, that she had had the same joys and encountered the same
disappointments in this delectable country. She, too, had walked
up that road and flattened her nose against that portcullis; and
she pointed out something that I had overlooked—to wit, that if
you rowed off in a boat to the curly ship, and got hold of a
rope, and clambered aboard of her, and swarmed up the mast, and
got into the crow's-nest, you could just see over the headland,
and take in at your ease the life and bustle of the port. She
proceeded to describe all
the fun that was going on there, at such length and with so much
particularity that I looked at her suspiciously. "Why, you talk
as if you'd been in that crow's-nest yourself!" I said.
Charlotte answered nothing, but pursed her mouth up and nodded
violently for some minutes; and I could get nothing more out of
her. I felt rather hurt. Evidently she had managed, somehow or
other, to get up into that crow's-nest. Charlotte had got ahead
of me on this occasion.
It was necessary, no doubt, that grown-up people should dress
themselves up and go forth to pay calls. I don't mean that we
saw any sense in the practice. It would have been so much more
reasonable to stay at home in your old clothes and play. But we
recognized that these folk had to do many unaccountable things,
and after all it was their life, and
not ours, and we were not in a position to criticise.
Besides, they had many habits more objectionable than this one,
which to us generally meant a free and untrammelled afternoon,
wherein to play the devil in our own way. The case was
different, however, when the press-gang was abroad, when prayers
and excuses were alike disregarded, and we were forced into the
service, like native levies impelled toward the foe less by the
inherent righteousness of the cause than by the indisputable
rifles of their white allies. This was unpardonable and
altogether detestable. Still, the thing happened, now and again;
and when it did, there was no arguing about it. The order was
for the front, and we just had to shut up and march.
Selina, to be sure, had a sneaking fondness for dressing up
and paying calls, though she pretended to dislike it, just to
keep on the soft side of public opinion.
So I thought it extremely mean in her to have the earache on that
particular afternoon when Aunt Eliza ordered the pony-carriage
and went on the war-path. I was ordered also, in the same breath
as the pony-carriage; and, as we eventually trundled off, it
seemed to me that the utter waste of that afternoon, for which I
had planned so much, could never be made up nor atoned for in all
the tremendous stretch of years that still lay before me.
The house that we were bound for on this occasion was a "big
house;" a generic title applied by us to the class of residence
that had a long carriage-drive through rhododendrons; and a
portico propped by fluted pillars; and a grave butler who bolted
back swing-doors, and came down steps, and pretended to have
entirely forgotten his familiar intercourse with you at less
serious moments; and a big hall,
where no boots or shoes or upper garments were allowed to lie
about frankly and easily, as with us; and where, finally, people
were apt to sit about dressed up as if they were going on to a
party.
The lady who received us was effusive to Aunt Eliza and
hollowly gracious to me. In ten seconds they had their heads
together and were hard at it talking
clothes. I was left high and dry on a
straight-backed chair, longing to kick the legs of it, yet not
daring. For a time I was content to stare; there was lots to
stare at, high and low and around. Then the inevitable fidgets
came on, and scratching one's legs mitigated slightly, but did
not entirely disperse them. My two warders were still deep in
clothes; I slipped off my chair and edged cautiously around the
room, exploring, examining, recording.
Many strange, fine things lay along my
route—pictures and gimcracks on the walls, trinkets and globular
old watches and snuff-boxes on the tables; and I took good care
to finger everything within reach thoroughly and conscientiously.
Some articles, in addition, I smelt. At last in my orbit I
happened on an open door, half concealed by the folds of a
curtain. I glanced carefully around. They were still deep in
clothes, both talking together, and I slipped through.
This was altogether a more sensible sort of room that I had
got into; for the walls were honestly upholstered with books,
though these for the most part glimmered provokingly through the
glass doors of their tall cases. I read their titles longingly,
breathing on every accessible pane of glass, for I dared not
attempt to open the doors, with the enemy encamped so near. In
the window, though, on a high sort of desk, there lay, all by
itself, a most
promising-looking book, gorgeously bound. I raised the leaves by
one corner, and like scent from a pot-pourri jar there floated
out a brief vision of blues and reds, telling of pictures, and
pictures all highly coloured! Here was the right sort of thing
at last, and my afternoon would not be entirely wasted. I
inclined an ear to the door by which I had entered. Like the
brimming tide of a full-fed river the grand, eternal,
inexhaustible clothes-problem bubbled and eddied and surged
along. It seemed safe enough. I slid the book off its desk with
some difficulty, for it was very fine and large, and staggered
with it to the hearthrug—the only fit and proper place for books
of quality, such as this.
They were excellent hearthrugs in that house; soft and wide,
with the thickest of pile, and one's knees sank into them most
comfortably. When I got the book open there was a difficulty at
first in making the
great stiff pages lie down. Most fortunately the coal-scuttle
was actually at my elbow, and it was easy to find a flat bit of
coal to lay on the refractory page. Really, it was just as if
everything had been arranged for me. This was not such a bad
sort of house after all.
The beginnings of the thing were gay borders—scrolls and
strap-work and diapered backgrounds, a maze of colour, with small
misshapen figures clambering cheerily up and down everywhere.
But first I eagerly scanned what text there was in the middle, in
order to get a hint of what it was all about. Of course I was
not going to waste any time in reading. A clue, a sign-board, a
finger-post was all I required. To my dismay and disgust it was
all in a stupid foreign language! Really, the perversity of some
people made one at times almost despair of the whole race.
However, the pictures remained;
pictures never lied, never shuffled nor evaded; and as for the
story, I could invent it myself.
Over the page I went, shifting the bit of coal to a new
position; and, as the scheme of the picture disengaged itself
from out the medley of colour that met my delighted eyes, first
there was a warm sense of familiarity, then a dawning
recognition, and then—O then! along with blissful certainty came
the imperious need to clasp my stomach with both hands, in order
to repress the shout of rapture that struggled to escape—it was
my own little city!
I knew it well enough, I recognized it at once, though I had
never been quite so near it before. Here was the familiar
gateway, to the left that strange, slender tower with its grim,
square head shot far above the walls; to the right, outside the
town, the hill—as of old—broke steeply
down to the sea. But to-day everything was bigger and fresher
and clearer, the walls seemed newly hewn, gay carpets were hung
out over them, fair ladies and long-haired children peeped and
crowded on the battlements. Better still, the portcullis was
up—I could even catch a glimpse of the sunlit square within—and
a dainty company was trooping through the gate on horseback, two
and two. Their horses, in trappings that swept the ground, were
gay as themselves; and
they were the
gayest crew, for dress and bearing, I had ever yet beheld. It
could mean nothing else but a wedding, I thought, this holiday
attire, this festal and solemn entry; and, wedding or whatever it
was, I meant to be there. This time I would not be balked by any
grim portcullis; this time I would slip in with the rest of the
crowd, find out just what my little town was like, within those
exasperating
walls that had so long confronted me, and, moreover, have my
share of the fun that was evidently going on inside. Confident,
yet breathless with expectation, I turned the page.
Joy! At last I was in it, at last I was on the right side of
those provoking walls; and, needless to say, I looked about me
with much curiosity. A public place, clearly, though not such as
I was used to. The houses at the back stood on a sort of
colonnade, beneath which the people jostled and crowded. The
upper stories were all painted with wonderful pictures. Above
the straight line of the roofs the deep blue of a cloudless sky
stretched from side to side. Lords and ladies thronged the
foreground, while on a dais in the centre a gallant gentleman,
just alighted off his horse, stooped to the fingers of a girl as
bravely dressed out as Selina's lady between the saints; and
round about stood venerable personages, robed in the most
variegated clothing. There were boys, too, in plenty, with tiny
red caps on their thick hair; and their shirts had bunched up and
worked out at the waist, just as my own did so often, after
chasing anybody; and each boy of them wore an odd pair of
stockings, one blue and the other red. This system of attire
went straight to my heart. I had tried the same thing so often,
and had met with so much discouragement; and here, at last, was
my justification, painted deliberately in a grown-up book! I
looked about for my saint-friends—the armour man and the other
fellow—but they were not to be seen. Evidently they were unable
to get off duty, even for a wedding, and still stood on guard in
that green meadow down below. I was disappointed, too, that not
an angel was visible. One or two of them, surely, could easily
have
been spared for an hour, to run up and see the show; and they
would have been thoroughly at home here, in the midst of all the
colour and the movement and the fun.
But it was time to get on, for clearly the interest was only
just beginning. Over went the next page, and there we were, the
whole crowd of us, assembled in a noble church. It was not easy
to make out exactly what was going on; but in the throng I was
delighted to recognize my angels at last, happy and very much at
home. They had managed to get leave off, evidently, and must
have run up the hill and scampered breathlessly through the gate;
and perhaps they cried a little when they found the square empty,
and thought the fun must be all over. Two of them had got hold
of a great wax candle apiece, as much as they could stagger
under, and were tittering sideways at each
other as the grease ran bountifully over their clothes. A third
had strolled in among the company, and was chatting to a young
gentleman, with whom she appeared to be on the best of terms.
Decidedly, this was the right breed of angel for us. None of
your sick-bed or night nursery business for them!
Well, no doubt they were now being married, He and She, just
as always happened. And then, of course, they were going to live
happily ever after; and that was the
part I wanted to get to. Story-books were so stupid, always
stopping at the point where they became really nice; but this
picture-story was only in its first chapters, and at last I was
to have a chance of knowing how
people lived happily ever after. We would all go home together,
He and She, and the angels, and I; and the armour-man would be
invited to come and stay. And then the story would really
begin, at the point where those other ones always left off. I
turned the page, and found myself free of the dim and splendid
church and once more in the open country.
This was all right; this was just as it should be. The sky
was a fleckless blue, the flags danced in the breeze, and our
merry bridal party, with jest and laughter, jogged down to the
water-side. I was through the town by this time, and out on the
other side of the hill, where I had always wanted to be; and,
sure enough, there was the harbour, all thick with curly ships.
Most of them were piled high with wedding-presents—bales of
silk, and gold and silver plate, and comfortable-looking bags
suggesting bullion; and the gayest ship of all lay close up to
the carpeted landing-stage. Already the bride was stepping
daintily down the gangway, her ladies following primly, one by
one; a few minutes more and we should all be
aboard, the hawsers would splash in the water, the sails would
fill and strain. From the deck I should see the little walled
town recede and sink and grow dim, while every plunge of our bows
brought us nearer to the happy island—it was an island we were
bound for, I knew well! Already I could see the island-people
waving hands on the crowded quay, whence the little houses ran up
the hill to the castle, crowning all with its towers and
battlements. Once more we should ride together, a merry
procession, clattering up the steep street and through the grim
gateway; and then we should have arrived, then we should all dine
together, then we should have reached home! And then—
Ow! Ow! Ow!
Bitter it is to stumble out of an opalescent dream into the
cold daylight; cruel to lose in a second a sea-voyage, an island,
and a castle that was to be practically your
own; but cruellest and bitterest of all to know, in addition to
your loss, that the fingers of an angry aunt have you tight by
the scruff of your neck. My beautiful book was gone too—
ravished from my grasp by the dressy lady, who joined in the
outburst of denunciation as heartily as if she had been a
relative—and naught was left me but to blubber dismally,
awakened of a sudden to the harshness of real things and the
unnumbered hostilities of the actual world. I cared little for
their reproaches, their abuse; but I sorrowed heartily for my
lost ship, my vanished island, my uneaten dinner, and for the
knowledge that, if I wanted any angels to play with, I must
henceforth put up with the anæmic, night-gowned nonentities
that hovered over the bed of the Sunday-school child in the pages
of the
Sabbath Improver.
I was led ignominiously out of the house, in a pulpy, watery
state, while the butler
handled his swing doors with a stony, impassive countenance,
intended for the deception of the very elect, though it did not
deceive me. I knew well enough that next time he was off duty,
and strolled around our way, we should meet in our kitchen as man
to man, and I would punch him and ask him riddles, and he would
teach me tricks with corks and bits of string. So his
unsympathetic manner did not add to my depression.
I maintained a diplomatic blubber long after we had been
packed into our pony-carriage and the lodge-gate had clicked
behind us, because it served as a sort of armour-plating against
heckling and argument and abuse, and I was thinking hard and
wanted to be let alone. And the thoughts that I was thinking
were two.
First I thought, "I've got ahead of Charlotte
this time!"
And next I thought, "When I've grown
up big, and have money of my own, and a full-sized walking-stick,
I will set out early one morning, and never stop till I get to
that little walled town." There ought to be no real difficulty
in the task. It only meant asking here and asking there, and
people were very obliging, and I could describe every stick and
stone of it.
As for the island which I had never even seen, that was not so
easy. Yet I felt confident that somehow, at some time, sooner or
later, I was destined to arrive.
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