The Hamadryad turned them to Jane and Michael, and with a little shiver they saw that his face was smaller and more wizened than anything they had ever seen. They took a step forward, for his curious deep eyes seemed to draw them towards him. Long and narrow they were, with a dark sleepy look in them, and in the middle of that dark sleepiness a wakeful light like a jewel.
“And who, may I ask, are these?” he said in his soft, terrifying voice, looking at the children enquiringly.
“Miss Jane Banks and Master Michael Banks, at your service,” said the Brown Bear gruffly, as though he were half afraid. “Her friends.”
“Ah, her friends. Then they are welcome. My dears, pray be seated.”
Jane and Michael, feeling somehow that they were in the presence of a King – as they had not felt when they met the Lion – with difficulty drew their eyes from that compelling gaze and looked round for something to sit on. The Brown Bear provided this by squatting down himself and offering them each a furry knee.
Jane said, in a whisper: “He talks as though he were a great lord.”
“He is. He’s the lord of our world – the wisest and most terrible of us all,” said the Brown Bear softly and reverently.
The Hamadryad smiled, a long, slow, secret smile, and turned to Mary Poppins.
“Cousin,” he began gently hissing.
“Is she really his cousin?” whispered Michael.
“First cousin once removed – on the mother’s side,” returned the Brown Bear, whispering the information behind his paw. “But, listen now. He’s going to give the Birthday Present.”
“Cousin,” repeated the Hamadryad, “it is long since your Birthday fell on the Full Moon and long since we have been able to celebrate the event as we celebrate it tonight. I have, therefore, had time to give the question of your Birthday Present some consideration. And I have decided” – he paused, and there was no sound in the Snake House but the sound of many creatures all holding their breath – “that I cannot do better than give you one of my own skins.”
“Indeed, cousin, it is too kind of you—” began Mary Poppins, but the Hamadryad held up his hood for silence.
“Not at all. Not at all. You know that I change my skin from time to time and that one more or less means little to me. Am I not—?” he paused and looked round him.
“The Lord of the Jungle,” hissed all the snakes in unison, as though the question and the answer were part of a well-known ceremony.
The Hamadryad nodded. “So,” he said, “what seems good to me will seem so to you. It is a small enough gift, dear Mary, but it may serve for a belt or a pair of shoes, even a hatband – these things always come in useful, you know.”
And with that he began to sway gently from side to side, and it seemed to Jane and Michael as they watched that little waves were running up his body from the tail to the head. Suddenly he gave a long, twisting, corkscrew leap and his golden outer skin lay on the floor, and in its place he was wearing a new coat of shining silver.
“Wait!” said the Hamadryad, as Mary Poppins bent to pick up the skin. “I will write a Greeting upon it.” And he ran his tail very quickly along his thrown skin, deftly bent the golden sheath into a circle, and diving his head through this as though it were a crown, offered it graciously to Mary Poppins. She took it, bowing.
“I just can’t thank you enough—” she began, and paused. She was evidently very pleased, for she kept running the skin backwards and forwards through her fingers and looking at it admiringly.
“Don’t try,” said the Hamadryad. “Hsst!” he went on, and spread out his hood as though he were listening with it. “Do I not hear the signal for the Grand Chain?”
Everybody listened. A bell was ringing and a deep gruff voice could be heard coming nearer and nearer, crying out:
“Grand Chain, Grand Chain! Everybody to the centre for the Grand Chain and Finale. Come along, come along. Stand ready for the Grand Chain!”
“I thought so,” said the Hamadryad, smiling. “You must be off, my dear. They’ll be waiting for you to take your place in the centre. Farewell, till your next Birthday.” And he raised himself as he had done before and lightly saluted Mary Poppins on both cheeks.
“Hurry away!” said the Hamadryad. “I will take care of your young friends.”
Jane and Michael felt the Brown Bear moving under them as they stood up. Past their feet they could feel all the snakes slipping and writhing as they hurried from the Snake House. Mary Poppins bowed towards the Hamadryad very ceremoniously, and without a backward glance at the children went running towards the huge green square in the centre of the Zoo.
“You may leave us,” said the Hamadryad to the Brown Bear who, after bowing humbly, ran off with his cap in his hand to where all the other animals were congregating round Mary Poppins.
“Will you go with me?” said the Hamadryad kindly to Jane and Michael. And without waiting for them to reply he slid between them, and with a movement of his hood directed them to walk one on either side of him.
“It has begun,” he said, hissing with pleasure.
And from the loud cries that were now coming from the Green, the children could guess that he meant the Grand Chain. As they drew nearer they could hear the animals singing and shouting, and presently they saw leopards and lions, beavers camels, bears, cranes, antelopes and many others all forming themselves into a ring round Mary Poppins. Then the animals began to move, wildly crying their Jungle songs, prancing in and out of the ring, and exchanging hand and wing as they went as dancers do in the Grand Chain of the Lancers.
A little piping voice rose high above the rest:
“Oh, Mary, Mary,
She’s my Dearie,
She’s my Dear-i-o!”
And they saw the Penguin come dancing by, waving his short wings and singing lustily. He caught sight of them, bowed to the Hamadryad, and called out:
“I got it – did you hear me singing it? It’s not perfect, of course. ‘Dearie’ does not rhyme exactly with Mary. But it’ll do, it’ll do!” and he skipped off and offered his wing to a leopard.
Jane and Michael watched the dance, the Hamadryad secret and still between them. As their friend the Lion, dancing past, bent down to take the wing of a Brazilian Pheasant in his paw, Jane shyly tried to put her feelings into words.
“I thought, Sir—” she began and stopped, feeling confused, and not sure whether she ought to say it or not.
“Speak, my child!” said the Hamadryad. “You thought?”
“Well – that lions and birds, and tigers and little animals—”
The Hamadryad helped her. “You thought that they were natural enemies, that the lion could not meet a bird without eating it, nor the tiger the hare – eh?”
Jane blushed and nodded.
“Ah – you may be right. It is probable. But not on the Birthday,” said the Hamadryad. “Tonight the small are free from the great and the great protect the small. Even I—” he paused and seemed to be thinking deeply, “even I can meet a Barnacle goose without any thought of dinner – on this occasion. And after all,” he went on, flicking his terrible little forked tongue in and out as he spoke, “it may be that to eat and be eaten are the same thing in the end. My wisdom tells me that this is probably so. We are all made of the same stuff, remember, we of the Jungle, you of the City. The same substance composes us – the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star – we are all one, all moving to the same end. Remember that when you no longer remember me, my child.”
“But how can tree be stone? A bird is not me. Jane is not a tiger,” said Michael stoutly.
“You think not?” said the Hamadryad’s hissing voice. “Look!” and he nodded his head towards the moving mass of creatures before them. Birds and animals were now swaying together, closely encircling Mary Poppins, who was rocking lightly from side to side. Backwards and forwards went the swaying crowd, keeping time together, swinging like the pendulum of a clock. Even the trees
were bending and lifting gently, and the moon seemed to be rocking in the sky as a ship rocks on the sea.
“Bird and beast and stone and star – we are all one, all one—” murmured the Hamadryad, softly folding his hood about him as he himself swayed between the children.
“Child and serpent, star and stone – all one.”
The hissing voice grew softer. The cries of the swaying animals dwindled and became fainter. Jane and Michael, as they listened, felt themselves gently rocking too, or as if they were being rocked. . .
Soft, shaded light fell on their faces.
“Asleep and dreaming – both of them,” said a whispering voice. Was it the voice of the Hamadryad, or their mother’s voice as she tucked them in, on her usual nightly round of the Nursery?
“Good.” Was that the Brown Bear gruffly speaking, or Mr Banks?
Jane and Michael, rocking and swaying, could not tell. . . could not tell. . .
“I had such a strange dream last night,” said Jane, as she sprinkled sugar over her porridge at breakfast. “I dreamt we were at the Zoo and it was Mary Poppins’ birthday, and instead of animals in the cages there were human beings, and all the animals were outside—”
“Why, that’s my dream. I dreamt that, too,” said Michael, looking very surprised.
“We can’t both have dreamt the same thing,” said Jane. “Are you sure? Do you remember the Lion who curled his mane and the Seal who wanted us to—”
“Dive for orange peel?” said Michael. “Of course I do! And the babies inside the cage, and the Penguin who couldn’t find a rhyme, and the Hamadryad—”
“Then it couldn’t have been a dream at all,” said Jane emphatically. “It must have been true. And if it was—” She looked curiously at Mary Poppins, who was boiling the milk.
“Mary Poppins,” she said, “could Michael and I have dreamed the same dream?”
“You and your dreams!” said Mary Poppins, sniffing. “Eat your porridge, please, or you will have no buttered toast.”
But Jane would not be put off. She had to know.
“Mary Poppins,” she said, looking very hard at her, “were you at the Zoo last night?”
Mary Poppins’ eyes popped.
“At the Zoo? In the middle of the night? Me? A quiet orderly person who knows that early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise?”
“But were you?” Jane persisted.
“I have all I need of zoos in this nursery, thank you,” said Mary Poppins uppishly. “Hyenas, orang-utans, all of you. Sit up straight, and no more nonsense.”
Jane poured out her milk.
“Then it must have been a dream,” she said, “after all.”
But Michael was staring, open-mouthed, at Mary Poppins, who was now making toast at the fire.
“Jane,” he said in a shrill whisper, “Jane, look!” He pointed, and Jane, too, saw what he was looking at.
Round her waist Mary Poppins was wearing a belt made of golden scaly snakeskin, and on it was written in curving, snaky writing:
“A Present From the Zoo.”
Chapter Eleven
CHRISTMAS SHOPPING
“I SMELL SNOW,” said Jane, as they got out of the Bus.
“I smell Christmas trees,” said Michael.
“I smell fried fish,” said Mary Poppins.
And then there was no time to smell anything else, for the Bus had stopped outside the Largest Shop in the World, and they were all going into it to do their Christmas shopping.
“May we look at the windows first?” said Michael, hopping excitedly on one leg.
“I don’t mind,” said Mary Poppins with surprising mildness. Not that Jane and Michael were really very surprised, for they knew that the thing Mary Poppins liked doing best of all was looking in shop windows. They knew, too, that while they saw toys and books and holly-boughs and plum cakes Mary Poppins saw nothing but herself reflected there.
“Look, aeroplanes!” said Michael, as they stopped before a window in which toy aeroplanes were careering through the air on wires.
“And look there!” said Jane. “Two tiny black babies in one cradle – are they chocolate, do you think, or china?”
“Just look at you!” said Mary Poppins to herself, particularly noticing how nice her new gloves with the fur tops looked. They were the first pair she had ever had, and she thought she would never grow tired of looking at them in the shop windows with her hands inside them. And having examined the reflection of the gloves she went carefully over her whole person – coat, hat, scarf and shoes, with herself inside – and she thought that, on the whole, she had never seen anybody looking quite so smart and distinguished.
But the winter afternoons, she knew, were short, and they had to be home by tea time. So with a sigh she wrenched herself away from her glorious reflection.
“Now we will go in,” she said, and annoyed Jane and Michael very much by lingering at the Haberdashery counter and taking great trouble over the choice of a reel of black cotton.
“The Toy Department,” Michael reminded her, “is in that direction.”
“I know, thank you. Don’t point,” she said, and paid her bill with aggravating slowness.
But at last they found themselves alongside Father Christmas, who went to the greatest trouble in helping them choose their presents.
“That will do nicely for Daddy,” said Michael, selecting a clockwork train with special signals. “I will take care of it for him when he goes to the City.”
“I think I will get this for Mother,” said Jane, pushing a small doll’s perambulator which, she felt sure, her Mother had always wanted. “Perhaps she will lend it to me sometimes.”
After that, Michael chose a packet of hairpins for each of the Twins and a Meccano set for his Mother, a mechanical beetle for Robertson Ay, a pair of spectacles for Ellen, whose eyesight was perfectly good, and some bootlaces for Mrs Brill who always wore slippers.
Jane, after some hesitation, eventually decided that a white dickey would be just the thing for Mr Banks, and she bought Robinson Crusoe for the Twins to read when they grew up.
“Until they are old enough, I can read it myself,” she said. “I am sure they will lend it to me.”
Mary Poppins then had a great argument with Father Christmas over a cake of soap.
“Why not Lifebuoy?” said Father Christmas, trying to be helpful and looking anxiously at Mary Poppins, for she was being rather snappy.
“I prefer Vinolia,” she said haughtily, and she bought a cake of that.
“My goodness,” she said, smoothing the fur on her right-hand glove. “I wouldn’t half like a cup of tea!”
“Would you quarter like it, though?” asked Michael.
“There is no call for you to be funny,” said Mary Poppins, in such a voice that Michael felt that, indeed, there wasn’t.
“And it is time to go home.”
There! She had said the very words they had been hoping she wouldn’t say. That was so like Mary Poppins.
“Just five minutes longer,” pleaded Jane.
“Ah do, Mary Poppins! You look so nice in your new gloves,” said Michael wilily.
But Mary Poppins, though she appreciated the remark, was not taken in by it.
“No,” she said, and closed her mouth with a snap and stalked towards the doorway.
“Oh, dear!” said Michael to himself, as he followed her, staggering under the weight of his parcels. “If only she would say ‘Yes’ for once!”
But Mary Poppins hurried on and they had to go with her. Behind them Father Christmas was waving his hand, and the Fairy Queen on the Christmas tree and all the other dolls were smiling sadly and saying, “Take me home, somebody!” and the aeroplanes were all beating their wings and saying in bird-like voices, “Let me fly! Ah, do let me fly!”
Jane and Michael hurried away, closing their ears to those enchanting voices, and feeling that the time in the Toy Department had been unreasonably and cruelly short.<
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And then, just as they came towards the shop entrance, the adventure happened.
They were just about to spin the glass door and go out, when they saw coming towards it from the pavement the running, flickering figure of a child.
“Look!” said Jane and Michael both together.
“My gracious, goodness, glory me!” exclaimed Mary Poppins, and stood still.
And well she might, for the child had practically no clothes on, only a light wispy strip of blue stuff that looked as though she had torn it from the sky to wrap round her naked body.
It was evident that she did not know much about spinning doors, for she went round and round inside it, pushing it so that it should spin faster and laughing as it caught her and sent her whirling round and round. Then suddenly, with a quick little movement she freed herself, sprang away from it and landed inside the shop.
She paused on tiptoe, turning her head this way and that, as though she were looking for someone. Then, with a start of pleasure, she caught sight of Jane and Michael and Mary Poppins as they stood, half-hidden behind an enormous fir tree, and ran towards them joyously.
“Ah, there you are! Thank you for waiting. I’m afraid I’m a little late,” said the child, stretching out her bright arms to Jane and Michael. “Now,” she cocked her head on one side, “aren’t you glad to see me? Say yes, say yes!”
“Yes,” said Jane smiling, for nobody, she felt, could help being glad to see anyone so bright and happy. “But who are you?” she enquired curiously.
“What is your name?” said Michael, gazing at her.
“Who am I? What is my name? Don’t say you don’t know me? Oh, surely, surely—” The child seemed very surprised and a little disappointed. She turned suddenly to Mary Poppins and pointed her finger.
“She knows me. Don’t you? I’m sure you know me!”
There was a curious look on Mary Poppins’ face. Jane and Michael could see blue fires in her eyes as though they reflected the blue of the child’s dress and her brightness.