‘Well,’ he said, good-naturedly overlooking the slight rudeness of my query, ‘I live there as much as I live anywhere. About half the year sometimes. I’ve got a sort of a shanty there. You must come and see it some day.’
‘But do you live anywhere else as well?’ I went on, feeling the forbidden tide of questions surging up within me.
‘O yes, all over the place,’ was his vague reply. ‘And I’ve got a diggings somewhere off Piccadilly.’
‘Where’s that?’ I inquired.
‘Where’s what?’ said he. ‘O, Piccadilly! It’s in London.’
‘Have you a large garden?’ I asked; ‘and how many pigs have you got?’
‘I’ve no garden at all,’ he replied sadly, and they don’t allow me to keep pigs, though I’d like to, awfully. It’s very hard.’
‘But what do you do all day, then,’ I cried, ‘and where do you go and play, without any garden, or pigs, or things?’
‘When I want to play,’ he said gravely, ‘I have to go and play in the street; but it’s poor fun, I grant you. There’s a goat, though, not far off, and sometimes I talk to him when I’m feeling lonely; but he’s very proud.’
‘Goats are proud,’ I admitted. ‘There’s one lives near here, and if you say anything to him at all, he hits you in the wind with his head. You know what it feels like when a fellow hits you in the wind?’
‘I do, well,’ he replied, in a tone of proper melancholy, and painted on.
‘And have you been to any other places,’ I began again presently, ‘besides Rome and Piccy-what’s-his-name?’
‘Heaps,’ he said. ‘I’m a sort of Ulysses—seen men and cities, you know. In fact, about the only place I never got to was the Fortunate Island.’
I began to like this man. He answered your questions briefly and to the point, and never tried to be funny. I felt I could be confidential with him.
‘Wouldn’t you like,’ I inquired, ‘to find a city without any people in it at all?’
He looked puzzled. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,’ said he.
‘I mean,’ I went on eagerly, ‘a city where you walk in at the gates, and the shops are all full of beautiful things, and the houses furnished as grand as can be, and there isn’t anybody there whatever! And you go into the shops, and take anything you want—chocolates and magic-lanterns and injirubber balls—and there’s nothing to pay; and you choose your own house and live there and do just as you like, and never go to bed unless you want to!’
The artist laid down his brush. ‘That would be a nice city,’ he said. ‘Better than Rome. You can’t do that sort of thing in Rome—or in Piccadilly either. But I fear it’s one of the places I’ve never been to.’
‘And you’d ask your friends,’ I went on, warming to my subject; ‘only those you really like, of course; and they’d each have a house to themselves—there’d be lots of houses,—and there wouldn’t be any relations at all, unless they promised they’d be pleasant; and if they weren’t they’d have to go.’
‘So you wouldn’t have any relations?’ said the artist. ‘Well, perhaps you’re right. We have tastes in common, I see.’
‘I’d have Harold,’ I said reflectively, ‘and Charlotte. They’d like it awfully. The others are getting too old. O, and Martha—I’d have Martha to cook and wash up and do things. You’d like Martha. She’s ever so much nicer than Aunt Eliza. She’s my idea of a real lady.’
‘Then I’m sure I should like her,’ he replied heartily, ‘and when I come to—what do you call this city of yours? Nephelo—something, did you say?’
‘I—I don’t know,’ I replied timidly. ‘I’m afraid it hasn’t got a name—yet.’
The artist gazed out over the downs. ‘“The poet says, dear city of Cecrops,”’ he said softly to himself, ‘“and wilt not thou say, dear city of Zeus?” That’s from Marcus Aurelius,’ he went on, turning again to his work. ‘You don’t know him, I suppose; you will some day.’
‘Who’s he?’ I inquired.
‘O, just another fellow who lived in Rome,’ he replied, dabbing away.
‘O dear!’ I cried disconsolately. ‘What a lot of people seem to live at Rome, and I’ve never even been there! But I think I’d like my city best.’
‘And so would I,’ he replied with unction. ‘But Marcus Aurelius wouldn’t, you know.’
‘Then we won’t invite him,’ I said; ‘will we?’
‘I won’t if you won’t,’ said he. And that point being settled, we were silent for a while.
‘Do you know,’ he said presently, ‘I’ve met one or two fellows from time to time, who have been to a city like yours—perhaps it was the same one. They won’t talk much about it—only broken hints, now and then; but they’ve been there sure enough. They don’t seem to care about anything in particular—and everything’s the same to them, rough or smooth; and sooner or later they slip off and disappear; and you never see them again. Gone back, I suppose.’
‘Of course,’ said I. ‘Don’t see what they ever came away for; I wouldn’t. To be told you’ve broken things when you haven’t, and stopped having tea with the servants in the kitchen, and not allowed to have a dog to sleep with you. But I’ve known people, too, who’ve gone there.’
The artist stared, but without incivility.
‘Well, there’s Lancelot,’ I went on. ‘The book says he died, but it never seemed to read right, somehow. He just went away, like Arthur. And Crusoe, when he got tired of wearing clothes and being respectable. And all the nice men in the stories who don’t marry the Princess, ’cos only one man ever gets married in a book, you know. They’ll be there!’
‘And the men who never come off,’ he said, ‘who try like the rest, but get knocked out, or somehow miss—or break down or get bowled over in the melée—and get no Princess, nor even a second-class kingdom—some of them’ll be there, I hope?’
‘Yes, if you like,’ I replied, not quite understanding him; ‘if they’re friends of yours, we’ll ask ’em, of course.’
‘What a time we shall have!’ said the artist reflectively; ‘and how shocked old Marcus Aurelius will be!’
The shadows had lengthened uncannily, a tide of golden haze was flooding the grey-green surface of the downs, and the artist began to put his traps together, preparatory to a move. I felt very low: we would have to part, it seemed, just as we were getting on so well together. Then he stood up, and he was very straight and tall, and the sunset was in his hair and beard as he stood there, high over me. He took my hand like an equal. ‘I’ve enjoyed our conversation very much,’ he said. ‘That was an interesting subject you started, and we haven’t half exhausted it. We shall meet again, I hope?’
‘Of course we shall,’ I replied, surprised that there should be any doubt about it.
‘In Rome perhaps?’ said he.
‘Yes, in Rome,’ I answered; ‘or Piccy-the-other-place, or somewhere.’
‘Or else,’ said he, ‘in that other city—when we’ve found the way there. And I’ll look out for you, and you’ll sing out as soon as you see me. And we’ll go down the street arm-in-arm, and into all the shops, and then I’ll choose my house, and you’ll choose your house, and we’ll live there like princes and good fellows.’
‘O, but you’ll stay in my house, won’t you?’ I cried; ‘I wouldn’t ask everybody; but I’ll ask you.’
He affected to consider a moment; then ‘Right!’ he said: ‘I believe you mean it, and I will come and stay with you. I won’t go to anybody else, if they ask me ever so much. And I’ll stay quite a long time, too, and I won’t be any trouble.’
Upon this compact we parted, and I went down-heartedly from the man who understood me, back to the house where I never could do anything right. How was it that everything seemed natural and sensible to him, which thes
e uncles, vicars, and other grown-up men took for the merest tomfoolery? Well, he would explain this, and many another thing, when we met again. The Knights’ Road! How it always brought consolation! Was he possibly one of those vanished knights I had been looking for so long? Perhaps he would be in armour next time—why not? He would look well in armour, I thought. And I would take care to get there first, and see the sunlight flash and play on his helmet and shield, as he rode up the High Street of the Golden City.
Meantime, there only remained the finding it. An easy matter.
THE SECRET DRAWER
It must surely have served as a boudoir for the ladies of old time, this little used, rarely entered chamber where the neglected old bureau stood. There was something very feminine in the faint hues of its faded brocades, in the rose and blue of such bits of china as yet remained, and in the delicate old-world fragrance of pot-pourri from the great bowl,—blue and white, with funny holes in its cover,—that stood on the bureau’s flat top. Modern aunts disdained this out-of-the-way, backwater, upstairs room, preferring to do their accounts and grapple with their correspondence in some central position more in the whirl of things, whence one eye could be kept on the carriage-drive, while the other was alert for malingering servants and marauding children. Those aunts of a former generation—I sometimes felt—would have suited our habits better. But even by us children, to whom few places were private or reserved, the room was visited but rarely. To be sure, there was nothing particular in it that we coveted or required. Only a few spindle-legged, gilt-backed chairs,—an old harp on which, so the legend ran, Aunt Eliza herself used once to play, in years remote, unchronicled; a corner-cupboard with a few pieces of china; and the old bureau. But one other thing the room possessed, peculiar to itself; a certain sense of privacy—a power of making the intruder feel that he was intruding—perhaps even a faculty of hinting that some one might have been sitting on those chairs, writing at the bureau, or fingering the china, just a second before one entered. No such violent word as ‘haunted’ could possibly apply to this pleasant old-fashioned chamber, which indeed we all rather liked; but there was no doubt it was reserved and stand-offish, keeping itself to itself.
Uncle Thomas was the first to draw my attention to the possibilities of the old bureau. He was pottering about the house one afternoon, having ordered me to keep at his heels for company—he was a man who hated to be left one minute alone,—when his eye fell on it. ‘H’m! Sheraton!’ he remarked. (He had a smattering of most things, this uncle, especially the vocabularies.) Then he let down the flap, and examined the empty pigeon-holes and dusty panelling. ‘Fine bit of inlay,’ he went on: ‘good work, all of it. I know the sort. There’s a secret drawer in there somewhere.’ Then as I breathlessly drew near, he suddenly exclaimed: ‘By Jove, I do want to smoke!’ And, wheeling round, he abruptly fled for the garden, leaving me with the cup dashed from my lips. What a strange thing, I mused, was this smoking, that takes a man suddenly, be he in the court, the camp, or the grove, grips him like an Afreet, and whirls him off to do its imperious behests! Would it be even so with myself, I wondered, in those unknown grown-up years to come?
But I had no time to waste in vain speculations. My whole being was still vibrating to those magic syllables ‘secret drawer’; and that particular chord had been touched that never fails to thrill responsive to such words as cave, trap-door, sliding-panel, bullion, ingots, or Spanish dollars. For, besides its own special bliss, who ever heard of a secret drawer with nothing in it? And O I did want money so badly! I mentally ran over the list of demands which were pressing me the most imperiously.
First, there was the pipe I wanted to give George Jannaway. George, who was Martha’s young man, was a shepherd, and a great ally of mine; and the last fair he was at, when he bought his sweetheart fairings, as a right-minded shepherd should, he had purchased a lovely snake expressly for me; one of the wooden sort, with joints, waggling deliciously in the hand; with yellow spots on a green ground, sticky and strong-smelling, as a fresh-painted snake ought to be; and with a red-flannel tongue pasted cunningly into its jaws. I loved it much, and took it to bed with me every night, till what time its spinal cord was loosed and it fell apart, and went the way of all mortal joys. I thought it very nice of George to think of me at the fair, and that’s why I wanted to give him a pipe. When the young year was chill and lambing-time was on, George inhabited a little wooden house on wheels, far out on the wintry downs, and saw no faces but such as were sheepish and woolly and mute; and when he and Martha were married, she was going to carry his dinner out to him every day, two miles; and after it, perhaps he would smoke my pipe. It seemed an idyllic sort of existence, for both the parties concerned; but a pipe of quality, a pipe fitted to be part of a life such as this, could not be procured (so Martha informed me) for a smaller sum than eighteenpence. And meantime—!
Then there was the fourpence I owed Edward; not that he was bothering me for it, but I knew he was in need of it himself, to pay back Selina, who wanted it to make up a sum of two shillings, to buy Harold an ironclad for his approaching birthday,—H.M.S. Majestic, now lying uselessly careened in the toyshop window, just when her country had such sore need of her.
And then there was that boy in the village who had caught a young squirrel, and I had never yet possessed one, and he wanted a shilling for it, but I knew that for ninepence in cash—but what was the good of these sorry threadbare reflections? I had wants enough to exhaust any possible find of bullion, even if it amounted to half a sovereign. My only hope now lay in the magic drawer, and here I was, standing and letting the precious minutes slip by! Whether ‘findings’ of this sort could, morally speaking, be considered ‘keepings,’ was a point that did not occur to me.
The room was very still as I approached the bureau; possessed, it seemed to be, by a sort of hush of expectation. The faint odour of orris-root that floated forth as I let down the flap, seemed to identify itself with the yellows and browns of the old wood, till hue and scent were of one quality and interchangeable. Even so, ere this, the pot-pourri had mixed itself with the tints of the old brocade, and brocade and pot-pourri had long been one. With expectant fingers I explored the empty pigeon-holes and sounded the depths of the softly-sliding drawers. No books that I knew of gave any general recipe for a quest like this; but the glory, should I succeed unaided, would be all the greater.
To him who is destined to arrive, the fates never fail to afford, on the way, their small encouragements. In less than two minutes, I had come across a rusty button-hook. This was truly magnificent. In the nursery there existed, indeed, a general button-hook, common to either sex; but none of us possessed a private and special button-hook, to lend or to refuse as suited the high humour of the moment. I pocketed the treasure carefully, and proceeded. At the back of another drawer, three old foreign stamps told me I was surely on the highroad to fortune.
Following on these bracing incentives, came a dull blank period of unrewarded search. In vain I removed all the drawers and felt over every inch of the smooth surfaces, from front to back. Never a knob, spring or projection met the thrilling finger-tips; unyielding the old bureau stood, stoutly guarding its secret, if secret it really had. I began to grow weary and disheartened. This was not the first time that Uncle Thomas had proved shallow, uninformed, a guide into blind alleys where the echoes mocked you. Was it any good persisting longer? Was anything any good whatever? In my mind I began to review past disappointments, and life seemed one long record of failure and of non-arrival. Disillusioned and depressed, I left my work and went to the window. The light was ebbing from the room, and seemed outside to be collecting itself on the horizon for its concentrated effort of sunset. Far down the garden, Uncle Thomas was holding Edward in the air reversed, and smacking him. Edward, gurgling hysterically, was striking blind fists in the direction where he judged his uncle’s stomach should rightly be; the contents of his pockets—a motley show—
were strewing the lawn. Somehow, though I had been put through a similar performance myself an hour or two ago, it all seemed very far away and cut off from me.
Westwards the clouds were massing themselves in a low violet bank; below them, to north and south, as far round as eye could reach, a narrow streak of gold ran out and stretched away, straight along the horizon. Somewhere very far off, a horn was blowing, clear and thin; it sounded like the golden streak grown audible, while the gold seemed the visible sound. It pricked my ebbing courage, this blended strain of music and colour. I turned for a last effort; and Fortune thereupon, as if half-ashamed of the unworthy game she had been playing with me, relented, opening her clenched fist. Hardly had I put my hand once more to the obdurate wood, when with a sort of small sigh, almost a sob—as it were—of relief, the secret drawer sprang open.
I drew it out and carried it to the window, to examine it in the failing light. Too hopeless had I gradually grown, in my dispiriting search, to expect very much; and yet at a glance I saw that my basket of glass lay in shivers at my feet. No ingots nor dollars were here, to crown me the little Monte Cristo of a week. Outside, the distant horn had ceased its gnat-song, the gold was paling to primrose, and everything was lonely and still. Within, my confident little castles were tumbling down like so many card-houses, leaving me stripped of estate, both real and personal, and dominated by the depressing reaction.
And yet,—as I looked again at the small collection that lay within that drawer of disillusions, some warmth crept back to my heart as I recognised that a kindred spirit to my own had been at the making of it. Two tarnished gilt buttons—naval, apparently—a portrait of a monarch unknown to me, cut from some antique print and deftly coloured by hand in just my own bold style of brush-work—some foreign copper coins, thicker and clumsier of make than those I hoarded myself—and a list of birds’-eggs, with names of the places where they had been found. Also, a ferret’s muzzle, and a twist of tarry string, still faintly aromatic! It was a real boy’s hoard, then, that I had happened upon. He too had found out the secret drawer, this happy-starred young person; and here he had stowed away his treasures, one by one, and had cherished them secretly awhile, and then—what? Well, one would never know now the reason why these priceless possessions still lay here unreclaimed; but across the void stretch of years I seemed to touch hands a moment with my little comrade of seasons—how many seasons?—long since dead.