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It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.
When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it? You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. My wife is very good at it—much better, in fact, than I am.
She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she would; but she merely laughs at me. You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose. The sunlight slipped over the polished leaves.
In the grass, white daisies were tremulous. After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch. I want the real reason. You said it was because there was too much of yourself in it. Now, that is childish. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.
The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul. Perhaps you will hardly believe it.
Lord Henry smiled, and leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from the grass and examined it. The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac-blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air.
A grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread a long thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze wings. You know we poor artists have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages. With an evening coat and a white tie, as you told me once, anybody, even a stock-broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized.
Well, after I had been in the room about ten minutes, talking to huge overdressed dowagers and tedious academicians, I suddenly became conscious that some one was looking at me. I turned half-way round and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale.
A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. I did not want any external influence in my life. You know yourself, Harry, how independent I am by nature.
I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Something seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I grew afraid and turned to quit the room.
It was not conscience that made me do so: it was a sort of cowardice. I take no credit to myself for trying to escape. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. However, whatever was my motive—and it may have been pride, for I used to be very proud—I certainly struggled to the door. There, of course, I stumbled against Lady Brandon.
You know her curiously shrill voice? She brought me up to royalties, and people with stars and garters, and elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras and parrot noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I had only met her once before, but she took it into her head to lionize me. I believe some picture of mine had made a great success at the time, at least had been chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the nineteenth-century standard of immortality.
Suddenly I found myself face to face with the young man whose personality had so strangely stirred me. We were quite close, almost touching. Our eyes met again. It was reckless of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him.
Perhaps it was not so reckless, after all. It was simply inevitable. We would have spoken to each other without any introduction. I am sure of that. Dorian told me so afterwards. He, too, felt that we were destined to know each other. I remember her bringing me up to a truculent and red-faced old gentleman covered all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my ear, in a tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to everybody in the room, the most astounding details.
I simply fled. I like to find out people for myself. But Lady Brandon treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods. She either explains them entirely away, or tells one everything about them except what one wants to know.
How could I admire her? But tell me, what did she say about Mr. Dorian Gray? Hallward shook his head. You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one. I make a great difference between people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think it is rather vain. But according to your category I must be merely an acquaintance. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
I quite sympathize with the rage of the English democracy against what they call the vices of the upper orders.
The masses feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and immorality should be their own special property, and that if any one of us makes an ass of himself, he is poaching on their preserves. When poor Southwark got into the divorce court, their indignation was quite magnificent. Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard and tapped the toe of his patent-leather boot with a tasselled ebony cane.
That is the second time you have made that observation. If one puts forward an idea to a true Englishman—always a rash thing to do—he never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong.
The only thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes it oneself. Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. Tell me more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How often do you see him? He is absolutely necessary to me. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also.
What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, sketch from him. Of course, I have done all that. But he is much more to me than a model or a sitter. There is nothing that art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my life.
But in some curious way—I wonder will you understand me? I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before. I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me.
The merely visible presence of this lad—for he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty—his merely visible presence—ah! I wonder can you realize all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek.
The harmony of soul and body—how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void. You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such a huge price but which I would not part with?
It is one of the best things I have ever done. And why is it so? Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me. Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for and always missed. Hallward got up from the seat and walked up and down the garden. After some time he came back. You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him.
He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there. He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.
He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it, and I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes.
My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry—too much of myself! They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.
It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. Tell me, is Dorian Gray very fond of you? The painter considered for a few moments. Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain.
It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man—that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing.
I think you will tire first, all the same. You will bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and seriously think that he has behaved very badly to you. The next time he calls, you will be perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great pity, for it will alter you. What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.
As long as I live, the personality of Dorian Gray will dominate me. You change too often. There was a rustle of chirruping sparrows in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy, and the blue cloud-shadows chased themselves across the grass like swallows. How pleasant it was in the garden!
He pictured to himself with silent amusement the tedious luncheon that he had missed by staying so long with Basil Hallward. Each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives.
The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour. It was charming to have escaped all that! As he thought of his aunt, an idea seemed to strike him. She told me she had discovered a wonderful young man who was going to help her in the East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray.
I am bound to state that she never told me he was good-looking. Women have no appreciation of good looks; at least, good women have not.
She said that he was very earnest and had a beautiful nature. I at once pictured to myself a creature with spectacles and lank hair, horribly freckled, and tramping about on huge feet. I wish I had known it was your friend. The painter turned to his servant, who stood blinking in the sunlight.
Gray to wait, Parker: I shall be in in a few moments. Then he looked at Lord Henry. Your aunt was quite right in what she said of him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many marvellous people in it. Mind, Harry, I trust you. As they entered they saw Dorian Gray. They are perfectly charming. When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint blush coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up.
I have just been telling him what a capital sitter you were, and now you have spoiled everything. You are one of her favourites, and, I am afraid, one of her victims also. We were to have played a duet together—three duets, I believe. I am far too frightened to call. She is quite devoted to you. The audience probably thought it was a duet. When Aunt Agatha sits down to the piano, she makes quite enough noise for two people. Lord Henry looked at him.
Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world.
No wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him. Gray—far too charming. The painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his brushes ready. Would you think it awfully rude of me if I asked you to go away? Besides, I want you to tell me why I should not go in for philanthropy.
It is so tedious a subject that one would have to talk seriously about it. But I certainly shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop. You have often told me that you liked your sitters to have some one to chat to. Hallward bit his lip. Lord Henry took up his hat and gloves. I have promised to meet a man at the Orleans.
Good-bye, Mr. Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon Street. Write to me when you are coming. I should be sorry to miss you. You never open your lips while you are painting, and it is horribly dull standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant.
Ask him to stay. I insist upon it. I beg you to stay. The painter laughed. Sit down again, Harry. He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the single exception of myself. Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais with the air of a young Greek martyr, and made a little moue of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he had rather taken a fancy.
He was so unlike Basil. They made a delightful contrast. And he had such a beautiful voice. As bad as Basil says? All influence is immoral—immoral from the scientific point of view.
He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. The aim of life is self-development. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar.
But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these are the two things that govern us. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us.
The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it.
Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think. For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips and eyes strangely bright. He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at work within him. Yet they seemed to him to have come really from himself. Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us.
Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Was there anything so real as words?
Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood. He understood them now. Life suddenly became fiery-coloured to him. It seemed to him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not known it? With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him. He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.
He felt intensely interested. He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced, and, remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen, a book which had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he wondered whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar experience.
He had merely shot an arrow into the air. Had it hit the mark? How fascinating the lad was! Hallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that had the true refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate comes only from strength. He was unconscious of the silence. The air is stifling here. But you never sat better.
You were perfectly still. And I have caught the effect I wanted—the half-parted lips and the bright look in the eyes. I suppose he has been paying you compliments. It is horribly hot in the studio. Basil, let us have something iced to drink, something with strawberries in it. Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I will tell him what you want. I have got to work up this background, so I will join you later on.
I have never been in better form for painting than I am to-day. This is going to be my masterpiece. It is my masterpiece as it stands. Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had been wine. He came close to him and put his hand upon his shoulder. The lad started and drew back. He was bareheaded, and the leaves had tossed his rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads.
There was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are suddenly awakened. His finely chiselled nostrils quivered, and some hidden nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left them trembling. You are a wonderful creation.
You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know. Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away. He could not help liking the tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. His romantic, olive-coloured face and worn expression interested him. There was something in his low Laburnum Wood For Turning 50 languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His cool, white, flowerlike hands, even, had a curious charm.
They moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own. But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid. Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself? He had known Basil Hallward for months, but the friendship between them had never altered him. And, yet, what was there to be afraid of? He was not a schoolboy or a girl. It was absurd to be frightened. You really must not allow yourself to become sunburnt.
It would be unbecoming. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly.
Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it always be so? You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. You have. And beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.
It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.
You smile? People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible Yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away.
You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful.
Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing A new Hedonism—that is what our century wants.
You might be its visible symbol. With your personality there is nothing you could not do. The world belongs to you for a season The moment I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious of what you really are, of what you really might be.
There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will last—such a little time. The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars.
But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.
There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth! Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment. Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe of the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield.
After a time the bee flew away. He saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian convolvulus. The flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to and fro. Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio and made staccato signs for them to come in. They turned to each other and smiled. The light is quite perfect, and you can bring your drinks.
They rose up and sauntered down the walk together. Two green-and-white butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of the garden a thrush began to sing.
That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too.
The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer. Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair and watched him. The sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the only sound that broke the stillness, except when, now and then, Hallward stepped back to look at his work from a distance.
In the slanting beams that streamed through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden. The heavy scent of the roses seemed to brood over everything. After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, looked for a long time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long time at the picture, biting the end of one of his huge brushes and frowning. Lord Henry came over and examined the picture. It was certainly a wonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well.
Gray, come over and look at yourself. I am awfully obliged to you. Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture and turned towards it.
When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a moment with pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes, as if he had recognized himself for the first time. He stood there motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking to him, but not catching the meaning of his words. The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation.
He had never felt it before. He had listened to them, laughed at them, forgotten them. They had not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description flashed across him.
Yes, there would be a day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his lips and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar his body. He would become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth. As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a knife and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver.
His eyes deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears. He felt as if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart. It is one of the greatest things in modern art. I will give you anything you like to ask for it. I must have it.
I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything!
Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that! Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. You like your art better than your friends. I am no more to you than a green bronze figure. Hardly as much, I dare say. The painter stared in amazement. It was so unlike Dorian to speak like that. What had happened? He seemed quite angry. His face was flushed and his cheeks burning. You will like them always.
How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having.
When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself. Hallward turned pale and caught his hand. I have never had such a friend as you, and I shall never have such another.
You are not jealous of material things, are you? I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly! Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. What is it but canvas and colour?
I will not let it come across our three lives and mar them. Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid face and tear-stained eyes, looked at him as he walked over to the deal painting-table that was set beneath the high curtained window.
What was he doing there? His fingers were straying about among the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something. Yes, it was for the long palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel.
He had found it at last. He was going to rip up the canvas. With a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to Hallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of the studio.
Then you can do what you like with yourself. And so will you, Harry? Or do you object to such simple pleasures? What absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational. I am glad he is not, after all—though I wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture.
You had much better let me have it, Basil. There came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a laden tea-tray and set it down upon a small Japanese table. There was a rattle of cups and saucers and the hissing of a fluted Georgian urn.
Two globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by a page. Dorian Gray went over and poured out the tea. The two men sauntered languidly to the table and examined what was under the covers. I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it would have all the surprise of candour. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.
The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one in the picture? The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say. He always breaks his own. I beg you not to go. The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching them from the tea-table with an amused smile.
Good-bye, Harry. Good-bye, Dorian. Come and see me soon. Come to-morrow. Gray, my hansom is outside, and I can drop you at your own place. Good-bye, Basil. It has been a most interesting afternoon. As the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a sofa, and a look of pain came into his face.
At half-past twelve next day Lord Henry Wotton strolled from Curzon Street over to the Albany to call on his uncle, Lord Fermor, a genial if somewhat rough-mannered old bachelor, whom the outside world called selfish because it derived no particular benefit from him, but who was considered generous by Society as he fed the people who amused him. His father had been our ambassador at Madrid when Isabella was young and Prim unthought of, but had retired from the diplomatic service in a capricious moment of annoyance on not being offered the Embassy at Paris, a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled by reason of his birth, his indolence, the good English of his dispatches, and his inordinate passion for pleasure.
He had two large town houses, but preferred to live in chambers as it was less trouble, and took most of his meals at his club. He paid some attention to the management of his collieries in the Midland counties, excusing himself for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth.
In politics he was a Tory, except when the Tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them for being a pack of Radicals.
He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn. Only England could have produced him, and he always said that the country was going to the dogs. His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices. When Lord Henry entered the room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough shooting-coat, smoking a cheroot and grumbling over The Times. I thought you dandies never got up till two, and were not visible till five.
I want to get something out of you. Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything. It is only people who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, and I never pay mine. Credit is the capital of a younger son, and one lives charmingly upon it. What I want is information: not useful information, of course; useless information. When I was in the Diplomatic, things were much better. But I hear they let them in now by examination.
What can you expect? Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him. Who is he? Or rather, I know who he is. His mother was a Devereux, Lady Margaret Devereux.
I want you to tell me about his mother. What was she like? Whom did she marry? You have known nearly everybody in your time, so you might have known her. I am very much interested in Mr. Gray at present. I have only just met him. The forgotten room opened out of the kitchen. In the agitation and half darkness the night before its door had been mistaken for a cupboard's.
It was a little square room, and on its table, all nicely set out, was a joint of cold roast beef, with bread, butter, cheese, and a pie. Well, this is the supper we ought to have had last night. And there was a note from Mrs. Her son-in-law has broken his arm, and she had to get home early. She's coming this morning at ten. That was a wonderful breakfast. It is unusual to begin the day with cold apple pie, but the children all said they would rather have it than meat.
The day passed in helping Mother to unpack and arrange things. Six small legs quite ached with running about while their owners carried clothes and crockery and all sorts of things to their proper places. It was not till quite late in the afternoon that Mother said:—. That'll do for to-day. I'll lie down for an hour, so as to be as fresh as a lark by supper-time. Then they all looked at each other.
Each of the three expressive countenances expressed the same thought. That thought was double, and consisted, like the bits of information in the Child's Guide to Knowledge, of a question and an answer. So to the railway they went, and as soon as they started for the railway they saw where the garden had hidden itself. It was right behind the stables, and it had a high wall all round.
It'll keep till to-morrow. Let's get to the railway. The way to the railway was all down hill over smooth, short turf with here and there furze bushes and grey and yellow rocks sticking out like candied peel from the top of a cake. The way ended in a steep run and a wooden fence—and there was the railway with the shining metals and the telegraph wires and posts and signals.
They all climbed on to the top of the fence, and then suddenly there was a rumbling sound that made them look along the line to the right, where the dark mouth of a tunnel opened itself in the face of a rocky cliff; next moment a train had rushed out of the tunnel with a shriek and a snort, and had slid noisily past them.
They felt the rush of its passing, and the pebbles on the line jumped and rattled under it as it went by. Did you feel it fan us with its hot wings? It's the most ripping sport! I am tired of calling Roberta by her name. I don't see why I should. No one else did. Everyone else called her Bobbie, and I don't see why I shouldn't. It's awfully tall, isn't it?
They walked along the edge of the line, and heard the telegraph wires humming over their heads. When you are in the train, it seems such a little way between post and post, and one after another the posts seem to catch up the wires almost more quickly than you can count them.
But when you have to walk, the posts seem few and far between. Never before had any of them been at a station, except for the purpose of catching trains—or perhaps waiting for them—and always with grown-ups in attendance, grown-ups who were not themselves interested in stations, except as places from which they wished to get away. Never before had they passed close enough to a signal-box to be able to notice the wires, and to hear the mysterious 'ping, ping,' followed by the strong, firm clicking of machinery.
The very sleepers on which the rails lay were a delightful path to travel by—just far enough apart to serve as the stepping-stones in a game of foaming torrents hastily organised by Bobbie. Then to arrive at the station, not through the booking office, but in a freebooting sort of way by the sloping end of the platform.
This in itself was joy. Joy, too, it was to peep into the porters' room, where the lamps are, and the Railway almanac on the wall, and one porter half asleep behind a paper. There were a great many crossing lines at the station; some of them just ran into a yard and stopped short, as though they were tired of business and meant to retire for good.
Trucks stood on the rails here, and on one side was a great heap of coal—not a loose heap, such as you see in your coal cellar, but a sort of solid building of coals with large square blocks of coal outside used just as though they were bricks, and built up till the heap looked like the picture of the Cities of the Plain in 'Bible Stories for Infants.
So don't you go off with none in your pockets, young gentleman! This seemed, at the time but a merry jest, and Peter felt at once that the Porter was a friendly sort with no nonsense about him.
But later the words came back to Peter with a new meaning. Have you ever gone into a farmhouse kitchen on a baking day, and seen the great crock of dough set by the fire to rise? If you have, and if you were at that time still young enough to be interested in everything you saw, you will remember that you found yourself quite unable to resist the temptation to poke your finger into the soft round of dough that curved inside the pan like a giant mushroom.
And you will remember that your finger made a dent in the dough, and that slowly, but quite surely, the dent disappeared, and the dough looked quite the same as it did before you touched it. Unless, of course, your hand was extra dirty, in which case, naturally, there would be a little black mark.
Well, it was just like that with the sorrow the children had felt at Father's going away, and at Mother's being so unhappy. It made a deep impression, but the impression did not last long. They soon got used to being without Father, though they did not forget him; and they got used to not going to school, and to seeing very little of Mother, who was now almost all day shut up in her upstairs room writing, writing, writing.
She used to come down at tea-time and read aloud the stories she had written. They were lovely stories. The rocks and hills and valleys and trees, the canal, and above all, the railway, were so new and so perfectly pleasing that the remembrance of the old life in the villa grew to seem almost like a dream.
Mother had told them more than once that they were 'quite poor now,' but this did not seem to be anything but a way of speaking. Grown-up people, even Mothers, often make remarks that don't seem to mean anything in particular, just for the sake of saying something, seemingly.
There was always enough to eat, and they wore the same kind of nice clothes they had always worn. But in June came three wet days; the rain came down, straight as lances, and it was very, very cold.
Nobody could go out, and everybody shivered. They all went up to the door of Mother's room and knocked. We mustn't have fires in June—coal is so dear. If you're cold, go and have a good romp in the attic. That'll warm you. Peter did not answer. He shrugged his shoulders. He was thinking. Thought, however, could not long keep itself from the suitable furnishing of a bandit's lair in the attic.
Peter was the bandit, of course. Bobbie was his lieutenant, his band of trusty robbers, and, in due course, the parent of Phyllis, who was the captured maiden for whom a magnificent ransom—in horse-beans—was unhesitatingly paid. But when Phyllis was going to add jam to her bread and butter, Mother said:—.
We can't afford that sort of reckless luxury nowadays. Phyllis finished the slice of bread and butter in silence, and followed it up by bread and jam. Peter mingled thought and weak tea. But now I shan't tell you anything at all about it—so there!
And it was, indeed, some time before he could be induced to say anything, and when he did it wasn't much. He said:—. All I ask is that if Mother asks where I am, you won't blab.
You know I'm going to do a lone adventure—and some people might think it wrong—I don't. And if Mother asks where I am, say I'm playing at mines.
But don't you let the word pass your lips on pain of torture. Between tea and supper there is an interval even in the most greedily regulated families.
At this time Mother was usually writing, and Mrs. Viney had gone home. Two nights after the dawning of Peter's idea he beckoned the girls mysteriously at the twilight hour.
The Roman Chariot was a very old perambulator that had spent years of retirement in the loft over the coach-house. The children had oiled its works till it glided noiseless as a pneumatic bicycle, and answered to the helm as it had probably done in its best days.
Just above the station many rocks have pushed their heads out through the turf as though they, like the children, were interested in the railway. Peter halted, turned over the brushwood with a well-scarred boot, and said:—. Peter's Mine. We'll take it home in the chariot. Punctuality and despatch. All orders carefully attended to.
Any shaped lump cut to suit regular customers. The chariot was packed full of coal. And when it was packed it had to be unpacked again because it was so heavy that it couldn't be got up the hill by the three children, not even when Peter harnessed himself to the handle with his braces, and firmly grasping his waistband in one hand pulled while the girls pushed behind.
Three journeys had to be made before the coal from Peter's mine was added to the heap of Mother's coal in the cellar. It was a week later that Mrs. Viney remarked to Mother how well this last lot of coal was holding out. The children hugged themselves and each other in complicated wriggles of silent laughter as they listened on the stairs. They had all forgotten by now that there had ever been any doubt in Peter's mind as to whether coal-mining was wrong.
But there came a dreadful night when the Station Master put on a pair of old sand shoes that he had worn at the seaside in his summer holiday, and crept out very quietly to the yard where the Sodom and Gomorrah heap of coal was, with the whitewashed line round it. He crept out there, and he waited like a cat by a mousehole. On the top of the heap something small and dark was scrabbling and rattling furtively among the coal.
The Station Master concealed himself in the shadow of a brake-van that had a little tin chimney and was labelled:—. Then the arm of the Station Master was raised, the hand of the Station Master fell on a collar, and there was Peter firmly held by the jacket, with an old carpenter's bag full of coal in his trembling clutch.
Why, it's a regular gang. Any more of you? It's our fault just as much as Peter's. We helped to carry the coal away—and we knew where he got it. We only pretended we didn't just to humour you. Peter's cup was full. He had mined for coal, he had struck coal, he had been caught, and now he learned that his sisters had 'humoured' him. The Station Master loosed Peter's collar, struck a match and looked at them by its flickering light.
So nicely dressed, too. Tell me now, what made you do such a thing? Haven't you ever been to church or learned your catechism or anything, not to know it's wicked to steal? I was almost sure it wasn't. I thought if I took it from the outside part of the heap, perhaps it would be.
But in the middle I thought I could fairly count it only mining. It'll take thousands of years for you to burn up all that coal and get to the middle parts. Well, Mother said we were too poor to have a fire. I'll look over it this once. But you remember, young gentleman, stealing is stealing, and what's mine isn't yours, whether you call it mining or whether you don't.
Run along home. But the girls were too glad to have Peter between them, safe and free, and on the way to Three Chimneys and not to the Police Station, to mind much what he said. It isn't our fault your secrets are so jolly easy to find out. But the girls were quite sure.
And they were also quite sure that he was quite sure, however little he cared to own it. After the adventure of Peter's Coal-mine, it seemed well to the children to keep away from the station—but they did not, they could not, keep away from the railway. They had lived all their lives in a street where cabs and omnibuses rumbled by at all hours, and the carts of butchers and bakers and candlestick makers I never saw a candlestick-maker's cart; did you?
Here in the deep silence of the sleeping country the only things that went by were the trains. They seemed to be all that was left to link the children to the old life that had once been theirs. Straight down the hill in front of Three Chimneys the daily passage of their six feet began to mark a path across the crisp, short turf.
They began to know the hours when certain trains passed, and they gave names to them. The 9. The The midnight town express, whose shrieking rush they sometimes woke from their dreams to hear, was the Fearsome Fly-by-night. Peter got up once, in chill starshine, and, peeping at it through his curtains, named it on the spot. It was by the Green Dragon that the old gentleman travelled.
He was a very nice-looking old gentleman, and he looked as if he were nice, too, which is not at all the same thing. He had a fresh-coloured, clean-shaven face and white hair, and he wore rather odd-shaped collars and a top-hat that wasn't exactly the same kind as other people's.
Of course the children didn't see all this at first. In fact the first thing they noticed about the old gentleman was his hand. It was one morning as they sat on the fence waiting for the Green Dragon, which was three and a quarter minutes late by Peter's Waterbury watch that he had had given him on his last birthday.
I wonder why Father never writes to us. If it's a magic dragon, it'll understand and take our loves to Father. And if it isn't, three waves aren't much. We shall never miss them. So when the Green Dragon tore shrieking out of the mouth of its dark lair, which was the tunnel, all three children stood on the railing and waved their pocket-handkerchiefs without stopping to think whether they were clean handkerchiefs or the reverse.
They were, as a matter of fact, very much the reverse. And out of a first-class carriage a hand waved back. A quite clean hand. It held a newspaper. It was the old gentleman's hand. After this it became the custom for waves to be exchanged between the children and the 9.
And the children, especially the girls, liked to think that perhaps the old gentleman knew Father, and would meet him 'in business,' wherever that shady retreat might be, and tell him how his three children stood on a rail far away in the green country and waved their love to him every morning, wet or fine. For they were now able to go out in all sorts of weather such as they would never have been allowed to go out in when they lived in their villa house.
This was Aunt Emma's doing, and the children felt more and more that they had not been quite fair to this unattractive aunt, when they found how useful were the long gaiters and waterproof coats that they had laughed at her for buying for them.
Mother, all this time, was very busy with her writing. She used to send off a good many long blue envelopes with stories in them—and large envelopes of different sizes and colours used to come to her.
Sometimes she would sigh when she opened them and say:—. Oh, dear, Oh, dear! Here's a sensible Editor. He's taken my story and this is the proof of it. At first the children thought 'the Proof' meant the letter the sensible Editor had written, but they presently got to know that the proof was long slips of paper with the story printed on them.
One day Peter was going down to the village to get buns to celebrate the sensibleness of the Editor of the Children's Globe, when he met the Station Master. Peter felt very uncomfortable, for he had now had time to think over the affair of the coal-mine.
So he looked down, and said Nothing. And he did not like the feeling which thinking this gave him. And then before he knew what he was going to do he ran after the Station Master, who stopped when he heard Peter's hasty boots crunching the road, and coming up with him very breathless and with his ears now quite magenta-coloured, he said:—.
Let bygones be bygones. And where were you off to in such a hurry? You give us a look in at the Station whenever you feel so inclined. And as to coals, it's a word that—well—oh, no, we never mention it, eh? Next day when they had sent the threefold wave of greeting to Father by the Green Dragon, and the old gentleman had waved back as usual, Peter proudly led the way to the station.
Phyllis did up her bootlace and went on in silence, but her shoulders shook, and presently a fat tear fell off her nose and splashed on the metal of the railway line. Bobbie saw it. Don't you think you'd better both unsay everything since the wave, and let honour be satisfied?
Here, use my hankie, Phil, for goodness' sake, if you've lost yours as usual. I wonder what you do with them. But you're very ungrateful. It's quite right what it says in the poetry book about sharper than a serpent it is to have a toothless child—but it means ungrateful when it says toothless. Miss Lowe told me so. Now will you come on? They reached the station and spent a joyous two hours with the Porter. He told them many things that they had not known before—as, for instance, that the things that hook carriages together are called couplings, and that the pipes like great serpents that hang over the couplings are meant to stop the train with.
After that the train was never again 'It' to the children. There was an old lady once—someone kidded her on it was a refreshment-room bell, and she used it improper, not being in danger of her life, though hungry, and when the train stopped and the guard came along expecting to find someone weltering in their last moments, she says, 'Oh, please, Mister, I'll take a glass of stout and a bath bun,' she says.
And the train was seven minutes behind her time as it was. The Station Master came out once or twice from that sacred inner temple behind the place where the hole is that they sell you tickets through, and was most jolly with them all.
He gave them each an orange, and promised to take them up into the signal-box one of these days, when he wasn't so busy. Several trains went through the station, and Peter noticed for the first time that engines have numbers on them, like cabs. Peter felt that he could take down numbers, too, even if he was not the son of a wholesale stationer. As he did not happen to have a green leather note-book with silver corners, the Porter gave him a yellow envelope and on it he noted:—.
That night at tea he asked Mother if she had a green leather note-book with silver corners. She had not; but when she heard what he wanted it for she gave him a little black one.
I'm so glad you like the railway. Only, please, you mustn't walk on the line. What should I do if you got hurt? Bobbie made signs to Laburnum Wood For Turning Position her to stop, but Phyllis never did see signs, no matter how plain they might be. Then she was quiet again, and Bobbie kicked Phyllis hard under the table, because Bobbie understood a little bit the thoughts that were making Mother so quiet—the thoughts of the time when Mother was a little girl and was all the world to HER mother.
It seems so easy and natural to run to Mother when one is in trouble. Bobbie understood a little how people do not leave off running to their mothers when they are in trouble even when they are grown up, and she thought she knew a little what it must be to be sad, and have no mother to run to any more. Only let me be sure you do know which way the trains come—and don't walk on the line near the tunnel or near corners.
But she remembered about when she was a little girl herself, and she did say it—and neither her own children nor you nor any other children in the world could ever understand exactly what it cost her to do it. Only some few of you, like Bobbie, may understand a very little bit. It was the very next day that Mother had to stay in bed because her head ached so.
Her hands were burning hot, and she would not eat anything, and her throat was very sore. There's a lot of catchy complaints a-going about just now. My sister's eldest—she took a chill and it went to her inside, two years ago come Christmas, and she's never been the same gell since.
Mother wouldn't at first, but in the evening she felt so much worse that Peter was sent to the house in the village that had three laburnum trees by the gate, and on the gate a brass plate with W.
Forrest, M. He talked to Peter on the way back. He seemed a most charming and sensible man, interested in railways, and rabbits, and really important things.
Keep up a good fire. Have some strong beef tea made ready to give her as soon as the fever goes down. She can have grapes now, and beef essence—and soda-water and milk, and you'd better get in a bottle of brandy.
The best brandy. Cheap brandy is worse than poison. When Bobbie showed Mother the list he had written, Mother laughed.
It WAS a laugh, Bobbie decided, though it was rather odd and feeble. Tell Mrs. Viney to boil two pounds of scrag-end of the neck for your dinners to-morrow, and I can have some of the broth. Yes, I should like some more water now, love. And will you get a basin and sponge my hands? Roberta obeyed.
When she had done everything she could to make Mother less uncomfortable, she went down to the others. Her cheeks were very red, her lips set tight, and her eyes almost as bright as Mother's.
I've got the shilling for the mutton. People have lived on less on desert islands many a time. And Mrs. Viney was sent to the village to get as much brandy and soda-water and beef tea as she could buy for a shilling. They did think. And presently they talked. And later, when Bobbie had gone up to sit with Mother in case she wanted anything, the other two were very busy with scissors and a white sheet, and a paint brush, and the pot of Brunswick black that Mrs.
Viney used for grates and fenders. They did not manage to do what they wished, exactly, with the first sheet, so they took another out of the linen cupboard. It did not occur to them that they were spoiling good sheets which cost good money. They only knew that they were making a good—but what they were making comes later. Bobbie's bed had been moved into Mother's room, and several times in the night she got up to mend the fire, and to give her mother milk and soda-water.
Mother talked to herself a good deal, but it did not seem to mean anything. In the early morning Bobbie heard her name and jumped out of bed and ran to Mother's bedside. When you are used to ten hours of solid sleep, to get up three or four times in your sleep-time makes you feel as though you had been up all night. Bobbie felt quite stupid and her eyes were sore and stiff, but she tidied the room, and arranged everything neatly before the Doctor came.
And there's some beef stewing in the oven for beef tea. We can't afford to have the head-nurse ill. When the 9. But this morning there were not three.
There was only one. And that was Peter. Peter was not on the railings either, as usual. He was standing in front of them in an attitude like that of a show-man showing off the animals in a menagerie, or of the kind clergyman when he points with a wand at the 'Scenes from Palestine,' when there is a magic-lantern and he is explaining it.
Peter was pointing, too. And what he was pointing at was a large white sheet nailed against the fence. On the sheet there were thick black letters more than a foot long. Some of them had run a little, because of Phyllis having put the Brunswick black on too eagerly, but the words were quite easy to read. And this what the old gentleman and several other people in the train read in the large black letters on the white sheet:—. A good many people did look out at the station and were disappointed, for they saw nothing unusual.
The old gentleman looked out, too, and at first he too saw nothing more unusual than the gravelled platform and the sunshine and the wallflowers and forget-me-nots in the station borders. It was only just as the train was beginning to puff and pull itself together to start again that he saw Phyllis.
She was quite out of breath with running. My bootlaces would keep coming down and I fell over them twice. Here, take it. Mother is ill and the doctor says to give her the things at the end of the letter, but she says she can't aford it, and to get mutton for us and she will have the broth.
We do not know anybody here but you, because Father is away and we do not know the address. Father will pay you, or if he has lost all his money, or anything, Peter will pay you when he is a man. We promise it on our honer. Say it is for Peter that was sorry about the coals and he will know all right.
The old gentleman read it through once, and his eyebrows went up. He read it twice and smiled a little. When he had read it thrice, he put it in his pocket and went on reading The Times. At about six that evening there was a knock at the back door. The three children rushed to open it, and there stood the friendly Porter, who had told them so many interesting things about railways.
He dumped down a big hamper on the kitchen flags. I only wanted to say I was sorry your Mamma wasn't so well, and to ask how she finds herself this evening—and I've fetched her along a bit of sweetbrier, very sweet to smell it is.
Then the children undid the hamper. First there was straw, and then there were fine shavings, and then came all the things they had asked for, and plenty of them, and then a good many things they had not asked for; among others peaches and port wine and two chickens, a cardboard box of big red roses with long stalks, and a tall thin green bottle of lavender water, and three smaller fatter bottles of eau-de-Cologne.
There was a letter, too. Your mother will want to know where they came from. Tell her they were sent by a friend who heard she was ill. When she is well again you must tell her all about it, of course. And if she says you ought not to have asked for the things, tell her that I say you were quite right, and that I hope she will forgive me for taking the liberty of allowing myself a very great pleasure.
Oh, just look at the roses! I must take them up to her. What was left of the second sheet and the Brunswick black came in very nicely to make a banner bearing the legend. The old gentleman saw it, and waved a cheerful response from the train. And when this had been done the children saw that now was the time when they must tell Mother what they had done when she was ill. And it did not seem nearly so easy as they had thought it would be.
But it had to be done. And it was done. Mother was extremely angry. She was seldom angry, and now she was angrier than they had ever known her. This was horrible. But it was much worse when she suddenly began to cry. Crying is catching, I believe, like measles and whooping-cough. At any rate, everyone at once found itself taking part in a crying-party.
You mustn't go telling everyone about our affairs—it's not right. And you must never, never, never ask strangers to give you things. Now always remember that—won't you? They all hugged her and rubbed their damp cheeks against hers and promised that they would. It's YOU I don't approve of, my darlings, not the old gentleman. He was as kind as ever he could be.
And you can give the letter to the Station Master to give him—and we won't say any more about it. You catch any other grown-up saying they were sorry they had been angry. She looks so beautiful when she's really downright furious. Then the Station Master retired to that sacred inner temple behind the little window where the tickets are sold, and the children went down to the Porters' room and talked to the Porter.
They learned several interesting things from him—among others that his name was Perks, that he was married and had three children, that the lamps in front of engines are called head-lights and the ones at the back tail-lights. It was on this day that the children first noticed that all engines are not alike.
No more alike nor what you an' me are. That little 'un without a tender as went by just now all on her own, that was a tank, that was—she's off to do some shunting t'other side o' Maidbridge. That's as it might be you, Miss. Then there's goods engines, great, strong things with three wheels each side—joined with rods to strengthen 'em—as it might be me.
Then there's main-line engines as it might be this 'ere young gentleman when he grows up and wins all the races at 'is school—so he will.
The main-line engine she's built for speed as well as power. That's one to the 9. The children agreed as they went home to dinner that the Porter was most delightful company. Next day was Roberta's birthday. In the afternoon she was politely but firmly requested to get out of the way and keep there till tea-time.
And Roberta went out into the garden all alone. She tried to be grateful, but she felt she would much rather have helped in whatever it was than have to spend her birthday afternoon by herself, no matter how glorious the surprise might be. Now that she was alone, she had time to think, and one of the things she thought of most was what mother had said in one of those feverish nights when her hands were so hot and her eyes so bright.
She walked round and round the garden among the rose-bushes that hadn't any roses yet, only buds, and the lilac bushes and syringas and American currants, and the more she thought of the doctor's bill, the less she liked the thought of it. And presently she made up her mind.
She went out through the side door of the garden and climbed up the steep field to where the road runs along by the canal. She walked along until she came to the bridge that crosses the canal and leads to the village, and here she waited.
It was very pleasant in the sunshine to lean one's elbows on the warm stone of the bridge and look down at the blue water of the canal. Bobbie had never seen any other canal, except the Regent's Canal, and the water of that is not at all a pretty colour. And she had never seen any river at all except the Thames, which also would be all the better if its face was washed.
Perhaps the children would have loved the canal as much as the railway, but for two things. One was that they had found the railway FIRST—on that first, wonderful morning when the house and the country and the moors and rocks and great hills were all new to them. They had not found the canal till some days later. The other reason was that everyone on the railway had been kind to them—the Station Master, the Porter, and the old gentleman who waved.
And the people on the canal were anything but kind. The people on the canal were, of course, the bargees, who steered the slow barges up and down, or walked beside the old horses that trampled up the mud of the towing-path, and strained at the long tow-ropes. Indeed, he did not even think of saying it till some time later.
Then another day when the children thought they would like to fish in the canal, a boy in a barge threw lumps of coal at them, and one of these hit Phyllis on the back of the neck.
She was just stooping down to tie up her bootlace—and though the coal hardly hurt at all it made her not care very much about going on fishing.
On the bridge, however, Roberta felt quite safe, because she could look down on the canal, and if any boy showed signs of meaning to throw coal, she could duck behind the parapet.
The wheels were the wheels of the Doctor's dogcart, and in the cart, of course, was the Doctor. Roberta climbed in and the brown horse was made to turn round—which it did not like at all, for it was looking forward to its tea—I mean its oats. But you aren't everyone, are you? Viney told me that her doctoring only cost her twopence a week because she belonged to a Club.
I've been in her house and I know. And then she told me about the Club, and I thought I'd ask you—and—oh, I don't want Mother to be worried! Can't we be in the Club, too, the same as Mrs. The Doctor was silent. He was rather poor himself, and he had been pleased at getting a new family to attend.
So I think his feelings at that minute were rather mixed. How could I be? You're a very sensible little woman. Now look here, don't you worry. I'll make it all right with your Mother, even if I have to make a special brand-new Club all for her.
Look here, this is where the Aqueduct begins. The road rose to a bridge over the canal. To the left was a steep rocky cliff with trees and shrubs growing in the cracks of the rock.
And the canal here left off running along the top of the hill and started to run on a bridge of its own—a great bridge with tall arches that went right across the valley. The Romans were dead nuts on aqueducts. It's a splendid piece of engineering. And making fortifications is another. Well, we must be turning back.
And, remember, you aren't to worry about doctor's bills or you'll be ill yourself, and then I'll send you in a bill as long as the aqueduct. When Bobbie had parted from the Doctor at the top of the field that ran down from the road to Three Chimneys, she could not feel that she had done wrong.
She knew that Mother would perhaps think differently. But Bobbie felt that for once she was the one who was right, and she scrambled down the rocky slope with a really happy feeling. Phyllis and Peter met her at the back door. They were unnaturally clean and neat, and Phyllis had a red bow in her hair.
There was only just time for Bobbie to make herself tidy and tie up her hair with a blue bow before a little bell rang.
Now you wait till the bell rings again and then you may come into the dining-room. Directly she opened the door she found herself, as it seemed, in a new world of light and flowers and singing.
Mother and Peter and Phyllis were standing in a row at the end of the table. The shutters were shut and there were twelve candles on the table, one for each of Roberta's years. The table was covered with a sort of pattern of flowers, and at Roberta's place was a thick wreath of forget-me-nots and several most interesting little packages.
And Mother and Phyllis and Peter were singing—to the first part of the tune of St. Patrick's Day. Roberta knew that Mother had written the words on purpose for her birthday. It was a little way of Mother's on birthdays. It had begun on Bobbie's fourth birthday when Phyllis was a baby.
Bobbie remembered learning the verses to say to Father 'for a surprise. The four-year-old verse had been:—. Bobbie felt exactly as though she were going to cry—you know that odd feeling in the bridge of your nose and the pricking in your eyelids? But before she had time to begin they were all kissing and hugging her.
They were very nice presents. There was a green and red needle-book that Phyllis had made herself in secret moments. There was a darling little silver brooch of Mother's shaped like a buttercup, which Bobbie had known and loved for years, but which she had never, never thought would come to be her very own. There was also a pair of blue glass vases from Mrs.
Roberta had seen and admired them in the village shop. And there were three birthday cards with pretty pictures and wishes. There was a cake on the table covered with white sugar, with 'Dear Bobbie' on it in pink sweets, and there were buns and jam; but the nicest thing was that the big table was almost covered with flowers—wallflowers were laid all round the tea-tray—there was a ring of forget-me-nots round each plate.
The cake had a wreath of white lilac round it, and in the middle was something that looked like a pattern all done with single blooms of lilac or wallflower or laburnum.
The laburnum is the train, and there are the signal-boxes, and the road up to here—and those fat red daisies are us three waving to the old gentleman—that's him, the pansy in the laburnum train. Peter invented it all, and we got all the flowers from the station. We thought you'd like it better. Its tender had been lined with fresh white paper, and was full of sweets.
Only the sweets. Bobbie couldn't help her face changing a little—not so much because she was disappointed at not getting the engine, as because she had thought it so very noble of Peter, and now she felt she had been silly to think it.
Also she felt she must have seemed greedy to expect the engine as well as the sweets. So her face changed. Peter saw it. I'll let you go halves if you like. Well, the broken half shall be my half of the engine, and I'll get it mended and give it back to Peter for his birthday. It was a delightful birthday. After tea Mother played games with them—any game they liked—and of course their first choice was blindman's-buff, in the course of which Bobbie's forget-me-not wreath twisted itself crookedly over one of her ears and stayed there.
Then, when it was near bed-time and time to calm down, Mother had a lovely new story to read to them. And Mother said no, she wouldn't—she would only just write to Father and then go to bed. But when Bobbie crept down later to bring up her presents—for she felt she really could not be separated from them all night—Mother was not writing, but leaning her head on her arms and her arms on the table.
The very next morning Bobbie began to watch her opportunity to get Peter's engine mended secretly. And the opportunity came the very next afternoon. Mother went by train to the nearest town to do shopping. When she went there, she always went to the Post-office.
Perhaps to post her letters to Father, for she never gave them to the children or Mrs. Viney to post, and she never went to the village herself. Peter and Phyllis went with her. Bobbie wanted an excuse not to go, but try as she would she couldn't think of a good one. And just when she felt that all was lost, her frock caught on a big nail by the kitchen door and there was a great criss-cross tear all along the front of the skirt.
I assure you this was really an accident. So the others pitied her and went without her, for there was no time for her to change, because they were rather late already and had to hurry to the station to catch the train. When they had gone, Bobbie put on her everyday frock, and went down to the railway. She did not go into the station, but she went along the line to the end of the platform where the engine is when the down train is alongside the platform—the place where there are a water tank and a long, limp, leather hose, like an elephant's trunk.
She hid behind a bush on the other side of the railway. She had the toy engine done up in brown paper, and she waited patiently with it under her arm. Then when the next train came in and stopped, Bobbie went across the metals of the up-line and stood beside the engine. She had never been so close to an engine before.
It looked much larger and harder than she had expected, and it made her feel very small indeed, and, somehow, very soft—as if she could very, very easily be hurt rather badly. The engine-driver and fireman did not see her. They were leaning out on the other side, telling the Porter a tale about a dog and a leg of mutton.
It seemed to her that the only way would be to climb on to the engine and pull at their coats. The step was high, but she got her knee on it, and clambered into the cab; she stumbled and fell on hands and knees on the base of the great heap of coals that led up to the square opening in the tender. The engine was not above the weaknesses of its fellows; it was making a great deal more noise than there was the slightest need for.
And just as Roberta fell on the coals, the engine-driver, who had turned without seeing her, started the engine, and when Bobbie had picked herself up, the train was moving—not fast, but much too fast for her to get off. All sorts of dreadful thoughts came to her all together in one horrible flash. There were such things as express trains that went on, she supposed, for hundreds of miles without stopping. Suppose this should be one of them?
How would she get home again? She had no money to pay for the return journey. There was something in her throat that made it impossible for her to speak. She tried twice. The men had their backs to her. They were doing something to things that looked like taps. Suddenly she put out her hand and caught hold of the nearest sleeve.
The man turned with a start, and he and Roberta stood for a minute looking at each other in silence. Then the silence was broken by them both. The other man said he was blooming well blest—or something like it—but though naturally surprised they were not exactly unkind. She did stop, as soon as she could. One thing that helped her was the thought that Peter would give almost his ears to be in her place—on a real engine—really going.
The children had often wondered whether any engine-driver could be found noble enough to take them for a ride on an engine—and now there she was. She dried her eyes and sniffed earnestly. What do you mean by it, eh? Oh, don't be cross—oh, please don't! It ain't every day a little gell tumbles into our coal bunker outer the sky, is it, Bill?
What did you DO it for—eh? Bobbie found that she had not quite stopped crying. It ain't so bad as all that 'ere, I'll be bound. Her feet and legs felt the scorch of the engine fire, but her shoulders felt the wild chill rush of the air. The engine lurched and shook and rattled, and as they shot under a bridge the engine seemed to shout in her ears.
But the engine-driver took the little engine and looked at it—and the fireman ceased for an instant to shovel coal, and looked, too. You don't really—do you? I'm not a confidence trick like in the newspapers—really, I'm not.
An' about this engine—Jim—ain't you got ne'er a pal as can use a soldering iron? Seems to me that's about all the little bounder wants doing to it. That's what they call the Power of Science in the newspapers. He showed her two little dials, like clock faces, and told her how one showed how much steam was going, and the other showed if the brake was working properly.
By the time she had seen him shut off steam with a big shining steel handle, Bobbie knew more about the inside working of an engine than she had ever thought there was to know, and Jim had promised that his second cousin's wife's brother should solder the toy engine, or Jim would know the reason why.
Besides all the knowledge she had gained Bobbie felt that she and Bill and Jim were now friends for life, and that they had wholly and forever forgiven her for stumbling uninvited among the sacred coals of their tender. At Stacklepoole Junction she parted from them with warm expressions of mutual regard.
They handed her over to the guard of a returning train—a friend of theirs—and she had the joy of knowing what guards do in their secret fastnesses, and understood how, when you pull the communication cord in railway carriages, a wheel goes round under the guard's nose and a loud bell rings in his ears.
She asked the guard why his van smelt so fishy, and learned that he had to carry a lot of fish every day, and that the wetness in the hollows of the corrugated floor had all drained out of boxes full of plaice and cod and mackerel and soles and smelts. Bobbie got home in time for tea, and she felt as though her mind would burst with all that had been put into it since she parted from the others.
How she blessed the nail that had torn her frock! But she would not tell a word of her adventures till the day appointed, when she mysteriously led them to the station at the hour of the 3.
Jim's second cousin's wife's brother had not been unworthy of the sacred trust reposed in him. The toy engine was, literally, as good as new. And as the three children went home up the hill, Peter hugging the engine, now quite its own self again, Bobbie told, with joyous leaps of the heart, the story of how she had been an Engine-burglar.
It was one day when Mother had gone to Maidbridge. She had gone alone, but the children were to go to the station to meet her. And, loving the station as they did, it was only natural that they should be there a good hour before there was any chance of Mother's train arriving, even if the train were punctual, which was most unlikely.
No doubt they would have been just as early, even if it had been a fine day, and all the delights of woods and fields and rocks and rivers had been open to them.
But it happened to be a very wet day and, for July, very cold. And the rain stung sharply, so that the way to the station was finished at a run. Then the rain fell faster and harder, and beat slantwise against the windows of the booking office and of the chill place that had General Waiting Room on its door.
They decided to wait on the up side, for the down platform looked very wet indeed, and the rain was driving right into the little bleak shelter where down-passengers have to wait for their trains. The hour would be full of incident and of interest, for there would be two up trains and one down to look at before the one that should bring Mother back.
They went into the desert spot labelled General Waiting Room, and the time passed pleasantly enough in a game of advertisements. You know the game, of course? It is something like dumb Crambo. The players take it in turns to go out, and then come back and look as like some advertisement as they can, and the others have to guess what advertisement it is meant to be.
Bobbie came in and sat down under Mother's umbrella and made a sharp face, and everyone knew she was the fox who sits under the umbrella in the advertisement. Phyllis tried to make a Magic Carpet of Mother's waterproof, but it would not stand out stiff and raft-like as a Magic Carpet should, and nobody could guess it. Everyone thought Peter was carrying things a little too far when he blacked his face all over with coal-dust and struck a spidery attitude and said he was the blot that advertises somebody's Blue Black Writing Fluid.
It was Phyllis's turn again, and she was trying to look like the Sphinx that advertises What's-his-name's Personally Conducted Tours up the Nile when the sharp ting of the signal announced the up train. The children rushed out to see it pass. On its engine were the particular driver and fireman who were now numbered among the children's dearest friends.
Courtesies passed between them. Jim asked after the toy engine, and Bobbie pressed on his acceptance a moist, greasy package of toffee that she had made herself. Charmed by this attention, the engine-driver consented to consider her request that some day he would take Peter for a ride on the engine. And sure enough, off the train went. The children watched the tail-lights of the train till it disappeared round the curve of the line, and then turned to go back to the dusty freedom of the General Waiting Room and the joys of the advertisement game.
They expected to see just one or two people, the end of the procession of passengers who had given up their tickets and gone away. Instead, the platform round the door of the station had a dark blot round it, and the dark blot was a crowd of people.
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