Part 2

“Of a dancing-hall,” corrected the Pavement Artist, “where they do the Dance of Death to the skeleton rattle of easels and mahlsticks. Vampires sit at the door waiting to suck the red blood from the veins of any living artist who ventures in. Once in he seldom, if ever, gets out again. I thought it wasn’t worth it, and I took to the art of the populace on the pavements.”

“Do the populace like art?” asked Gypsy.

“They like mine,” said the P.A. “I paint their dreams for them.”

“What are their dreams?” asked Ginger.

“Salmon and Switzerland,” said the P.A. His eyes grew hazy. “They are also mine. Have you ever eaten salmon?” He attacked Gypsy abruptly.

“Twice,” said Gypsy, suppressing a hundredth part of the truth out of kindness of heart.

“Ah. So have I--tinned. And have you ever seen Switzerland?”

Ginger nodded. “She’s seen everywhere,” explained Gypsy apologetically.

“So have I--in Oxford Street. It was years and years ago. You sat in a pretend railway carriage for twopence, and the floor rocked, and a man turned a handle to make the sound of wheels, and another one yodelled while a panorama of mountains and waterfalls whirled past the carriage window.” The Pavement Artist’s chin sank on his breast. “But I know,” he whispered, “that it’s not like that really, neither the salmon nor the mountains. They are not even like my pictures of them.”

“What are they like?” asked Ginger, filling his teacup.

“They are like my dreams of them,” said the P.A., “they are like what I feel when I do the pictures. And I only do the best parts. I do middle cuts of Scotch. I know the loch my salmon was caught in, I know the thrill of the angler as he hooks, plays, and lands it, yes, and the thrill of the fish. I have seen it come down in spate----”

“What’s spate?” said Ginger. There were lots of words she didn’t know.

“Sh!” said Gypsy putting his finger on her mouth, for the P.A. was wandering in a world apart.

“Sometimes,” he murmured, “I do it raw, sometimes cooked. When it is raw the blue and silver scales of the skin are more exquisite; but when it is cooked there are thin slices of cucumber with seeds visible in their cool transparent centres. Have you ever felt the beauty of design in the heart of a cucumber?--Once I surrounded the king of fish with a thick layer of mayonnaise.” His nostrils inflated slightly. “And Switzerland!”

“Yes, Switzerland?” repeated Ginger softly. His way of saying it diffused glamour over a country which on the whole had bored her.

“Switzerland! the awful mountains piercing the sapphire with their silver pinnacles--earth’s knives thrust into heaven’s bosom! The cows with their tinkling bells leaping from crag to crag! The crimson sunsets, the purple nights! The still lagoons with their gondolas, the Northern lights, the white palaces----”

“But,” said Ginger.

“Hush!” said Gypsy, taking her on his knee.

“Music over the water ... the siesta at noon ... the click of castanets, the serenata ... the rugged firs be-diamonded with frost, the orange groves in flower ... the Aurora Borealis....” The P.A.’s voice trailed off and his eyes closed.

That night when their friends had gone, Ginger got down the little red pillar-box and looked defiantly at Gypsy. But Gypsy only said, “If you can’t shake it out we’ll prise it open with the fork.”

However, with a good deal of shaking they got out three-and-elevenpence, and that was practically all it contained.

“I’m afraid it won’t quite run to Switzerland,” said Gypsy.

“No,” said Ginger, “but it will to Salmon--Scotch. And I don’t _want_ it to run to Switzerland. It would be simply brutal to send him to Switzerland.”

“Yes, we mustn’t be iconoclasts,” said Gypsy.

“Iconoclasts?” inquired Ginger.

“The antitheses of Cook and Lunn, darling. But salmon--”

“Antitheses?” interpolated Ginger.

“There really isn’t time, darling. Salmon--”

“Then talk in words of one syllable,” said Ginger. “Now what about salmon?”

“Salmon,” said Gypsy, “is safe. It’s only the Canadians who put it in tins that are iconoclasts about salmon. I don’t see how any pavement picture of the very middlest cut could be better than the real thing, do you?”

Ginger agreed that salmon was safe.

But the P.A. didn’t.

When the following night he asked for a sausage, and Ginger shyly offered him a pink slice of Scotch with a coronet of cucumber all the way round, his eyes dilated. But he shook his head.

“My dear,” he said, “do you know what are the two worst things in life?”

“Not salmon and cucumber, surely?” pleaded Ginger.

“No,” said he. “But not having what you want, and having it.” He put the plate from him. “‘Rather endure those evils’--I can’t argue about it,” he said abruptly, “I only know that if your salmon were one whit more or less delicious than mine, I should never chalk salmon on pavement again. And what would then be left me to do for a living?”

“S’rimps,” said the Rag-and-Bone Man.

“Potboiling!” said the P. A. “Can one dream of shrimps? A sausage, please.”

Artists are so hopelessly unpractical.

This episode in the lives of Gypsy and Ginger ought really to be called _Tales of an Old Adventure_. For that, if they could believe him, was what the Taxi-Man was.

Though I have given precedence to the Pavement Artist, the Taxi-Man was really the first friend the Weatherhouse brought them. It was he who began it all by dropping in at twelve and demanding a sossidge, and it was he who spread their fame and hospitality over all the kerbs and street-corners in the city.

After his second visit he said, “Now I’ve discovered you young people, I’ll make you known. Not that I expect the public to be grateful for it. It never is to us discoverers.”

“Have you always been a discoverer?” asked Ginger.

“Ever since I left Epsom as a boy, missy.”

“How long ago was that?” she asked.

The Taxi-Man pursed up his lips, stroked his beard, and shook his head. He was an ancient and magnificent gentleman, with a beard like old Sindbad’s, eyes as blue as any follower’s of the sea, and a cherry nose.

“I wouldn’t like to tell you, missy. You wouldn’t believe me.”

“She can believe anything out of reason,” said Gypsy proudly.

“That’s exactly what my age is,” said the Taxi-Man, “and we’ll leave it at that. But I don’t mind admitting that I was the First Hansom-Cabman in England, and shall be the Last Taxi-Driver.”

“And what have you discovered besides us?” asked Gypsy.

“London, mister,” said the Taxi-Man.

“Are you really the discoverer of London?” cried Ginger.

“That’s me, missy. A fiery boy I was, all for adventure, and Epsom was too slow for me except on Derby Day. So one fine morning I rode away on the Derby Winner, a beautiful skewbald called Snow-Flame. Out of a circus he’d come, and down the course he went doing the Polka as sweet as though he smelt sawdust. The rest were nowhere. When he got to the Winning Post he jumped clean over it and then laid down and died. Beautiful it was. Even the bookies hadn’t a dry eye between them. But stables was no place for Snow-Flame, nor subbubs for me. We met in a lane next day, me trundling an orange-box on wheels, for I’d been sent wooding, and him frisking his tail and nibbling bread-and-cheese off the hawthorns. He was feeling bucked with himself, d’ye see, because he’d unlatched his stable door with his own nose and jumped a seven-foot wall afterwards. So when we met he first stood on his head, and next came right end up and stood me on mine. After that he put me into the orange-box and backed between the shafts and curled his head under his off foreleg and winked at me. So I hitched him with a rope and off he went; the next thing I knew to remember, we’d discovered London.”

“What was it like then?” asked Ginger.

The Taxi-Man looked at her reflectively. “It were a queer place,” he said. “Golden pavements, as I dessay you’ve heard, till the County Council had them took up at the rate-payers’ expense; and any amount of green men and red lions running about on ’em--oh, any amount. There was a white bear in Hampstead too, in them days.”

“There still is,” said Gypsy.

“Is there now?” said the Taxi-Man; while Ginger exclaimed, “What do _you_ know about it, Gypsy. You might have told me!”

The two men looked steadily at each other, and then they shook their heads.

“Let that be, missy,” said the Taxi-Man; “it’s a man’s job. To get on. There were dragons too, and a giant or so. One by one I cleared ’em out.”

“Oh, but why?” protested Ginger.

“To make London safe to live in, missy.”

“But it _was_ safe,” said Ginger, “for the giants and dragons.”

“Ah, it wouldn’t do for us discoverers to take account of the natives,” said the Taxi-Man. “Once they’re discovered, the natives must go. It’s one of the rules, missy. Them giants and dragons was a danger.”

“To whom?” asked Ginger.

“To the Picadilly Flower-Girls,” said the Taxi-Man, looking like Saint George’s great-grandfather.

“Oh well,” said Ginger grudgingly. “But I must say London doesn’t seem half the place it was.”

“London’s all right,” said the Taxi-Man. “You can’t kill the nature of a place as easy as all that. No, not even by putting white men in the place of green ones, and taxis in the place of hansoms.”

“That must have been a great shock to you,” observed Gypsy.

“Yes, in a way it were. And a greater to Snow-Flame. We’d been reared on romance, d’ye see. We _were_ romance, so to speak. It were all properly defined in those early days. On the one rank the Four-Wheels, on the other the Hansoms. They stood for safety, we for danger. The Growlers for Mrs. Grundy, Us for the Quixotes. Everyone knew what we were then, but who’s to know now? Whether you’re one old lady going to her solicitor’s to make her will, or nine young men on Boatrace Night, you just say ‘Taxi!’ Democracy, that’s what it is, and you can’t stop it.” He emptied his cup into his saucer, and drank it at a draught. “Well,” he said, “I must be taking my fare home.”

“Have you got a fare waiting all this time?” asked Ginger. “What a lot of twopences!”

“This fare don’t pay no tuppences,” said the Taxi-Man. “I takes him a ride round London for nothing, every fine night after working-hours. P’raps you’d like to see him?”

Gypsy and Ginger went with him to the Tube corner, and there was the taxi with the hood thrown back. Doubled up inside, as clever as a jigsaw, sat a very old red-and-white horse.

“There you are, missy,” said the Taxi-Man, “Snow-Flame! the Most Marvellous Trick Horse of This or Any Age. Winner of the Derby in----”

“What year?” asked Gypsy.

“Winner of the Derby,” repeated the Taxi-Man. “We’ll leave it at that.”

“Why do you take him for rides in the taxi?” asked Gypsy.

“Why not?” said the Taxi-Man. “Haven’t we always had our nights, him and me? Didn’t we discover London together, bit by bit, under many a full moon? Ah, missy, the fairy-tales we could tell you of the Castle that Jack Built, and of another one built by an Elephant, and then again of the End of the World, which we run across one night by pure accident in Chelsea. And though times change, shall we have no more London Nights? Taxis be blowed! Watch this.”

He undid the cab door, and Snow-Flame undid himself and got out. Then the Taxi-Man pulled out a concertina and played _The Maiden’s Prayer_, and Snow-Flame waltzed entrancingly all round Trafalgar Square and died at Ginger’s feet. Gypsy swears that after this he turned a somersault and climbed the Nelson Column, but Ginger was weeping as she used to weep at the end of Lord George Sanger’s Circus, so she missed it.

When she wiped her eyes the Taxi-Man and Snow-Flame had gone home.

One night after a very hot day, when the moon was at her roundest, an unusual number of Gypsy and Ginger’s friends turned up at the Weatherhouse, because everybody who was awake in London had come to dip his head in the fountains. What made Trafalgar Square still more crowded was that They had been doing something to it during the day, and had roped off the bit that wasn’t quite done, and left a little man in a box inside it--“Like a Magician in his Magic Circle,” said Gypsy.

“I wonder if he’d let me in to see him do tricks,” mused Ginger.

“It mightn’t be safe, darling. Once inside the Circle----”

“It’s not really a circle, it’s a square,” said Ginger, “and you can always get out of a square because of the cracks in the corners. It’s only rings there’s no getting out off.”

“I shouldn’t risk it, though,” said Gypsy. “And here comes Jeremy and Rags for their sausages.”

Jeremy was the Penny Hawker. He came up with his black hair streaked like dripping seaweed all over his face, and Ginger gave him a towel. When he’d done with it he passed it on to Rags, whose hair was nondescript and tufty, and looked, after its dip, like wet fur. Rags was the Rag-and-Bone Man. He was himself all rags and bones. Ginger used to give him double portions to make him fatter, and she patched his rags with lovely bits of her old frocks, so that his knees and elbows and other places had unexpected moments of bright chintzes, and butcher-blue linen, and emerald green cloth, and orange silk. But he never got any fatter, and the holes kept coming in new places. He walked about all day with a bag and a long stick with a little fork on the end, seeking for treasure-trove in the London streets. At night he would open his bag and show Ginger his findings, about which she was always very excited; it was usually more trove than treasure, but it pleased Rags greatly when she praised his cleverness.

“Fancy being able to spot a black-headed pin in the London dust,” she would say. “What an eye you must have, Rags! And what an almost perfect pin!”

“’T’s nuthin’ much,” he would say modestly. “One day I s’ll find sumpthin’ reely good.”

He was a shy hoarse little man, but he had a secret ambition which he had never told anyone until he met Ginger. His ambition was to find a diamond--a reely big diamond, as big as the Koh-i-Noor. With this object he had devoted himself from boyhood to the London Streets. “An’ it’s _there_, mum!” he insisted eagerly, “I know it’s there, and one day I s’ll find it.” His cheeks, which were usually grey, got pink when he talked of it.

Ginger shared his hope. “What will you do when you’ve found it, Rags?” she asked.

“I s’ll take you to the Pit of the Lyceum, mum,” said Rags, getting pinker.

“Oh!” said Ginger, overwhelmed.

Meanwhile he often made her a little present from his treasure-bag, such as a hairpin, or an empty matchbox. And she would thank him and say how useful the matchbox would be to keep the hairpin in, seeing how short her hair was.

Jeremy was on the whole a better-dressed man than Rags. This is to say, he was more orthodox. He had all the finishing touches which go to make the Perfect Nut. If he had not always a hat, he had always a hat-guard; though he sometimes lacked boots, he did not lack boot-buttons; and he was frequently without a collar but never without a stud. It was said of him in the Weatherhouse, not that he was exquisitely dressed, but that he was exquisitely appointed. He was able to be so because of his profession. His hawker’s tray was nearly as interesting to Ginger as Rag’s bag. One day it would be one thing, one day another.

“How do you decide?” asked Ginger. “I don’t believe I _could_ make up my mind, Jeremy, between Jumping Rabbits and Dying Pigs.”

“Lord bless you, Ginger,” said the Penny Hawker, sticking his penny monocle in his eye (he was the only one who addressed her by her name, but he did it with the manners of Bond Street) “nobody chooses in Hawker’s Hall.”

“Hawker’s Hall?” inquired Gypsy. “I’ve heard of Fishmonger’s Hall.”

“No connection,” said Jeremy. “I don’t understand the Fish Trade myself, though I once had a friend in Whelks. In Hawker’s Hall we all meet at daybreak and draw lots for the trays. It’s the only way. There’d be too much jealousy otherwise. And the element of chance lends a zest to each day. Even if you’ve had the bad fortune to draw matches from Monday to Friday, you never know but what Saturday may bring you the little men who take their hats off.”

“Oh, I _love_ them!” cried Ginger clasping her hands.

“You shall have one,” said Jeremy, “the next time I draw them. I haven’t had them this month, but luck must turn some time or other. It’s like gambling--the next deal may always bring you four aces. Here’s Tonio.”

Tonio was Chestnuts in winter and Hokey-Pokey in summer. He was Hokey-Pokey now. He always brought glamour into Trafalgar Square, no matter what the night. In winter he sang of the Italian Chestnut trees, in summer he carolled Neapolitan boat-songs over the splashing water. On the clear warm night of a full moon, such, as this, Tonio was a poet and irresistible. He was gallant, too, and generally had a lady with him. To-night it was the Strawberry Girl, and he was telling her how singularly her eyes reminded him of the stars overhead. “Wot things you do think of,” said the Strawberry Girl. A small procession trailed after them, to ask Ginger what the night was like.

“It’s the hottest night of the season,” said Ginger, free of charge. “Hokey-Pokey all round, please, Tonio.”

Gypsy promptly fetched the pillar-box. The pound which would burst it was always being pulled down like this, like the telegraph wires trying to climb out of sight of the railway-carriage window.

Tonio served Hokey-Pokey all round. Rags had never had any before. It gave his bones a frightful shock, and he had to take quick gulps of hot tea between cold gulps of hokey-pokey.

“Regard ze moon,” said Tonio, sticking a wafer in Ginger’s portion. “Ees she not beautiful, laika pineapple ice?”

“Like a yeller dimond,” gasped Rags, between agony and ecstasy.

The Taxi-Man closed an eye and said, “More like the bottom of a pewter tankard seen through Four-Ale.”

“Or a new penny,” said Jeremy.

“Like the very best thing a penny can buy,” cried Ginger, “like a penny balloon. Oh, don’t I wish I could buy the moon for a penny!”

“Why not, child?” said the Balloon Woman, coming round the corner.

The Balloon Woman was very large and round, but she was equally buoyant. Her roundnesses seemed less due to fat than air. Her puffed cheeks looked as though you might buy them for a penny apiece, if red was the colour you wanted. This was the first time Gypsy and Ginger had met her, but the others seemed to know her well. Just now she had only a few balloons tied to her apron-string, and under her arm she carried a great bowl of water which she had dipped out of the nearest fountain.

Setting it down she repeated, “Why shouldn’t you buy the moon for a penny, child? Anything can be bought for a penny, God bless me. Ask Jeremy.”

“Quite true, Mrs. Green,” said Jeremy. “A penny, as all children know, is the most complete form of wealth there is. There is no need it cannot compass and satisfy.”

“But you have first to get your penny,” said the Pavement Artist, “which often doesn’t happen once in twenty-four hours. And when you’ve got it, your difficulties have merely begun. You might not only know what penn’orth you want, but where it is to be got, and how to get there. You might decide to spend it on a peacock’s feather, which can very likely be bought for a penny in Peru. But of what use is that to you in Pimlico?”

“You confine yourself to London, P.A.,” said Jeremy. “London’s brimming over with penn’orths.”

“Even in London,” said the P.A. dreamily, “you have to spot your man. If only it were all trades to all men the job would be easy. But if you’re hungry and want a penny bun, it’s no use applying to the ’bus conductor; and if you’ve a lust for travel and want a penny ride, it’s no use asking the flower-girl; and if you’re a nature-lover and need a bunch of violets, it’s no use looking for the evening newsboy; and if you’re a reader with a passion for fairy-tales, why go to the post-office?--and if you want to speed a letter of life or death to the golden West, the rosy South, the dim blue East, or the wild grey North----”

“Drat you and your ifs!” scolded Mrs. Green. “I’ve no patience with you Artists. I deal in facts I do, and balloons is facts till they bust.”

The Punch and Judy man added scornfully, “Too many Ifs was the undoing of Hamlet. When it come to the point he couldn’t even do a penny murder.”

“I had a mother once,” said Ginger hurriedly, for she felt a certain amount of feeling in the air, “who wanted to celebrate my Elder Sister’s Twenty-first birthday by coming to the tea-party as Hamlet at four o’clock in the afternoon. My Mother was very impulsive. I had to spend all my young life in suppressing her impulses.”

Gypsy looked at his wife with renewed interest, and a very little incredulity. “I wish I’d known your Mother,” he said. “Why shouldn’t she be Hamlet at four o’clock in the afternoon on your sister’s twenty-first birthday if she wanted to be?”

“Because I was being Hamlet myself,” said Ginger, “that’s why. And two of anything’s silly. At least, it is if it’s Hamlet.”

“It isn’t,” said Gypsy, “if it’s chocolate eclairs.”

“Yes, it is,” said Ginger. “Anything less than six chocolate eclairs is _very_ silly. Will you have a sausage?” she asked Mrs. Green.

“Not me, child. I shall want all my breath,” said Mrs. Green, emptying a little packet into her bowl and stirring it with a stick until the liquid became glutinous and frothy. Then she pulled a pipe out of her apron pocket.

“Bubbles!” cried Ginger dancing up and down. “You’re going to blow bubbles!”

“God bless the child, no!” said Mrs. Green. “Balloons.”

“Are balloons blown too?” asked Ginger.

“How else did you suppose they was made?” asked Mrs. Green.

“I never did suppose,” said Ginger meekly. “I’ve always taken balloons for granted until something happened, and they weren’t there to be taken for anything.”

Mrs. Green put the bowl of the pipe in the liquid, and the stem of it in her mouth, and puffed. In a moment a flame-coloured balloon had risen like the sun out of the sea. Everybody clapped. Before she took it off the pipe Mrs. Green secured it with a string, and added it to the bundle on her apron. Then she blew a purple one like a plum, then a peach-coloured one, then half-a-dozen pale green ones, like a cluster of grapes. It was prettier than fireworks, and more wonderful than Indian Mangoes that bloom in thirty seconds and die in fifty-nine.

“What a lovely life you have!” breathed Ginger. “I wish I were a balloon girl.”

“There’s no rest in it,” said Mrs. Green. “It’s like cooking and housework--has to be done all over again next day. The children are that demanding and that destructive. You can’t make these things to last like the pawnbroker’s balls or the Dome of Saint Paul’s.”

“What lungs Sir Christopher Wren must have had,” said Gypsy.

“And Mr. Attenborough,” said Ginger.

“Ah,” said Mrs. Green. “But it’s come and go with balloons.”

“I know,” sighed the Pavement Artist. “They come and they go like our dreams.”

“They don’t do nothing of the sort,” said Mrs. Green. “They come and they go like our dinners. But while they’re there, there they are. Dreams don’t neither come _nor_ go. I’ve no patience with dreamers.--What’s yours, Tonio?” She had a great stock now, and was nearly at the bottom of the bowl.

“An orange, eef the Signora pleases,” said the Hokey-Pokey Man, “to reminda me my native land.”

Mrs. Green blew him an orange balloon and said as she gave it to him, “There’s all the orange-groves of Italy in that, Tonio. You, Rags?”

“A dimond one,” said Rags, and she blew him a white balloon as clear as glass. “What’s inside there,” she told Rags, “would make an African Millionaire take to Abyssinian Pearls in sheer despair.”