Part 5

“Don’t tell me,” said Gypsy quickly. “I and my brothers never discouraged hiccups. I held the Hiccup Gold-Belt with a record of 127. An interval of three minutes brought the break to a close. The last thirty seconds used to be a fearful struggle. It is my brother Albert who holds the Silver Sneezing Cup. If you held it through three successive Epidemics, you kept it. He was passionately devoted to sneezing. When he was nine he made out a list of twenty things he liked best in the world. The First was Sneezing and the Second was Mother. He had no equal, too, in blowing out candles with his nose.”

“You never told me about your brother Albert before,” said Ginger.

“Would it have made any difference?” asked Gypsy, so anxiously that she hastened to reassure him. And whenever Ginger began to reassure Gypsy about anything, or Gypsy Ginger, it was time for their friends to go.

The next night the Piccadilly Flower-Girls came into action. The plan was very simple. Four Girls were told off to every Moonshiner, and two watched at each end of the street in which their protégé was at work. As soon as Lionel appeared in the distance, one would fly to warn--Ginger, or Jeremy, as the case might be, while the other stayed behind to diddle Lionel for exactly one minute. Any policeman can be diddled for that length of time. Then he reverts to type. But Rose in her radiant shawls, shedding damask petals like confetti round Lionel’s bewildered feet: or Lily floating her silver scarf before Lionel’s dazzled eyes, leaving one ivory bloom upon his helmet as she vanished: or Violet in her dusky veil, rising from the purple shadows to murmur music in Lionel’s intoxicated ear: was enough to dissolve the force of habit in any official--for sixty seconds.

Then Rose danced by, or Lily melted into thin air, or Violet sank shyly back into her shades; and Lionel turned the corner and discovered--Ginger, or Jeremy, as the case might be. And either would be seated in the middle of the road on a campstool inside a square of rope.

This was the Night Watchman’s idea. Any man, he said, sitting publicly inside a square of rope, will be taken for granted. Not even a policeman will question his position; the man inside the rope is as Cæsar’s Wife. For one thing, he must have been put there, and when one has already been handled by a higher power, one need not be re-handled by a lesser. It is only when one is obviously handling oneself that Authority smells danger. And nobody, said the Night Watchman ever really thinks that a man could be such a fool as deliberately to put himself inside a rope.

So every Moonshiner now went forth with rope and campstool, and each in turn discovered the wisdom of the Night Watchman. One by one they made Lionel’s acquaintance, and one by one they loved him.

He had to be loved, he was so trustful. For instance, he trusted Ginger. A woman inside the ropes would have aroused any other policeman’s sense of the unusual. Even he, struck by her sex, said when they encountered, “Wot are you doing here?” She answered, “Oh, Women on the Land, you know,” and he believed her at once.

Then there was the case of Jeremy.

The first time he found Jeremy sitting inside his rope, he said, “Wot are you doing here, you’re no night watchman. You’re a street hawker, I seen you last Friday selling paper windmills in Farringdon Street.”

“That wasn’t I,” said Jeremy, “that was my unfortunate brother Albert.”

“Oh, sorry,” said Lionel. “Wot was his misfortune?”

“Besides his name, he got mislaid last Saturday, and hasn’t been seen since,” said Jeremy, and hid his face in his hands.

Lionel went away, delicately leaving his own pocket-handkerchief on Jeremy’s knee, and put an advertisement about Albert in the “Missing” Column of _The People_. A good many Alberts turned up, and every night he brought them along to Jeremy for inspection, but they were all the wrong ones. At last Jeremy got tired of them, and told Lionel that he had had a dream about Albert dying in foreign waters. When he heard this Lionel borrowed his own handkerchief from Jeremy to blow his nose, and next day he laid a Cross of Immortelles on the Albert Memorial. It was all he could do now. There was a pleased paragraph about it in the _Morning Post_.

But Gypsy was a little put out. He told Jeremy that he did think he might have drowned somebody else’s brother; and then he crossed the road and had his brown boots blacked.

Soon Lionel began to make little _Rendezvous_ with the different Moonshiners, noting the times in his engagement book, so that before long they knew exactly where to expect him at each half-hour through the night.

Rose and Lily, Lupin and Nemophila, were able to slack off a bit, and resume their dancing round the Piccadilly Cupid, which is the way the Flower-Girls like to spend their nights. All except Violet, who still haunted the purple shadows, and murmured fragments of song which Lionel vainly tried to recapture over breakfast. He would turn up at the _Rendezvous_ with little gifts--a bottle of Asthma Cure for Mrs. Green, or a picture postcard of Mr. Matheson Lang as Shylock for Tonio. How could they help being fond of him?

Every day brought tokens of their affection to the Winchester Mews, N.W. 3; but Lionel never knew who it was that left plumcakes and violets and balloons at his door; or why one morning a floral arch was erected at the narrow entrance to the Mews with GOD BLESS OUR LIONEL done in red and white roses set in smilax.

He only knew that even a London Policeman’s life can become a lovely thing.

12: THE PENNY PIPER

The last days of July had been so hot that the pavements steamed all night with the memory of them. In the early mornings Ginger would wake in a thin haze that was itself like the last thin veil between sleep and consciousness. One Monday morning as she stretched her arms, she half-opened her eyes upon London breathing forth its mists, and half-opened her ears to the lost sounds of bleating sheep. Ginger at once became six years old again.

Every Monday morning when she was six, sheep had shuffled under her window along the misty street. And as soon as the unseen sheep had passed with an unseen dog and an unseen shepherd, an unseen piper had followed with a little tune upon a penny whistle. This was all a part of being six years old, and she never wondered about it then; but whenever she thought of it afterwards she wondered why any piper should play his tune so early in the morning, when even the housemaids were not yet on the doorsteps to throw him pennies. Listening to the sheep go by, she now wondered all this over again. While she was wondering, the last sheep bleated itself into the distance, and at the same instant a penny whistle began piping in the mist. It was the tune she had always, and only heard when she was six.

She lifted herself on one elbow, and saw Gypsy lifting himself on his. They looked at each other, and she saw that he was exactly eight years old.

“Did you ever see him?” asked Ginger in a whisper.

Gypsy shook his head. “Did you?”

Ginger shook hers. “I always longed to.”

“I wonder if there’s any way of catching him?” whispered Gypsy; and reaching stealthily for the pillar-box, he shook out a dozen coppers. Then he picked out the gold ones which were the fine-weather pennies (he himself was always given brown pennies), and span one through the haze in the direction of the tune. They heard it ring on the road, and the tune stopped, and a moment later mended its broken bar. Gypsy sent a second penny not quite so far, and in the pause they heard three soft steps come their way. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth pennies fell shorter still, and the seventh penny was so close that a form stood up like a shadow on the mist. Even then they couldn’t see the Piper very distinctly; but he was tall and thin, and Gypsy said he had the silver hair of a very old man, and Ginger said he had the blue eyes of the youngest babies.

But his gentle voice was neither young nor old as he said kindly, “What am I to do with seven pennies, children?”

“Spend them?” suggested Gypsy.

“That’s so difficult,” said the Piper.

“Spin them?” suggested Ginger.

“Ah, that’s easy,” said the Piper. And he sat down cross-legged a little way off on the pavement, and span one of the seven gold pennies. While it span he sang a song that began and ended with the penny.

“The fountain is dry, The fountain is dry! Let down your rain, Blue sky, blue sky, Or a child’s blue eye Must let its rain To fill his fountain Up again.”

“What a nice song,” said Ginger. “Do spin another.”

So the Piper span the second penny and sang.

“The night will never stay, The night will still go by, Though with a million stars You pin it to the sky, Though you bind it with the blowing wind And buckle it with the moon, The night will slip away Like sorrow or a tune.”

The last note met the plop of the penny on the pavement.

“How do you manage it?” asked Gypsy.

“It manages itself,” said the Piper. “None of my songs lasts longer than the spin of a coin.” He span the third penny so badly that it only made a very little song, like this:

“The tide in the river, The tide in the river, The tide in the river runs deep. I saw a shiver Pass over the river As the tide turned in its sleep.”

“Have you just come up the river?” asked Ginger.

“No,” said the Piper. “I have just come from a chickory field under Graffham. The Sussex chicory is as blue now as it will be, and the raspberries are ripening on the Downs.”

“Don’t!” implored Ginger, sitting up, “How could you bear to come to town?”

“I follow the sheep,” said the Piper, and span the fourth penny. While it turned he sang:

“As I was going through No Man’s Land I saw an old man counting sand, I saw a woman sauntering by With wings on her head that could not fly, After that I saw a child Who from birth had never smiled. These riddles are hard to understand, They could only happen in No Man’s Land.”

“Have all those riddles got answers?” asked Ginger.

“I think so,” said the Piper, “but they’re harder to find in the city than in the country. They grow best in the grass, like men and flowers. The grass is mown now, and Sussex smells hay and hears corn.”

He twisted his fifth penny, and sang while it hummed:

“If I had a lady I’d give her pretty things, Cowslip balls and daisy chains And green grass rings. I’d cut a fork of hazel To find hidden wells, And turn about we’d crack the nuts And sail the nut-shells. We’d love at first sight, And marry on the spot, I and the lady That I haven’t got.”

“Gypsy!” cried Ginger. “I can’t bear it any longer. Let’s go and live in a hut in a wood.”

“If you want a nice hut,” said the Piper, “I know where there is one on the banks of a Southdown river, with martins under the thatch.”

“But the Blacksmith’s Son lives in it,” wailed Ginger, “with Lizzie Hooker.”

“It was empty,” said the Piper, “when I saw it last.”

“How long ago was that?” asked Gypsy hopefully.

“A hundred and sixty years, I think,” said the Piper, “so I ought to be moving on, children.”

Before he rose he span his sixth penny, and while it twirled he moved away and sang as he went:

“I can pipe a song for that, And a song for this; You may pay me with an old straw hat, A crust or a kiss. I haven’t any use for pounds And little use for pence, While I whistle bits of rounds Sitting on a fence. You’ll learn them in a minute, And forget them in a day, And remember them in fifty years When I come your way.”

His voice died with the penny. And very far away they heard him once more pipe his Monday tune.

“Oh dear,” said Ginger restlessly, “I wish he’d told us what _that_ tune was about. But I’m determined to remember every one of his other songs to-morrow morning.” (As a matter of fact she forgot them all, like the dreams we determine to remember in the middle of the night.)

“There’s one of the songs he forgot himself,” and Gypsy, picking up the seventh penny and spinning it. And while it span the distant piping seemed to turn to singing, but it was now such a long way off that I am not sure if Gypsy and Ginger got the words right.

“Oh, did you hear the sheep go by Upon a Monday morning? Did you hear the sheep go by Without a sign of warning? Did you hear the sheep go by?

They bleated through the London mist With plaintive sounds and muffled, They bleated through the London mist, They shuffled and they scuffled Bleating through the London mist.

They came from meadows fresh and green Which they had cropped together, They came from meadows fresh and green And they were going whither? They came from meadows fresh and green.”

When Ginger said she couldn’t bear it any more, she meant it. She had lived in London well over two months now, and that was longer than she had ever lived anywhere else in her life. She had a terror of falling into grooves and never being able to climb out again. Besides, August was upon them, and London in August is no place for anybody. So Ginger said to Gypsy,

“We must be off.”

“How?” asked Gypsy.

“By the first train from the nearest station,” said Ginger positively.

Gypsy looked at the Trafalgar Tube and said, “Shall we go to the Elephant and Castle, or to Edgeware Road?”

Ginger shed three tears and said, “If I don’t smell hay and hear corn to-day, I shall die.”

Gypsy shook the pillar-box gravely. He shook it to the extent of fivepence halfpenny.

“How did the halfpenny get in?” he said sternly. “Has somebody been cheating?”

“No,” said Ginger, “that was given me last Sunday by a poor child under twelve. What’s the matter with you? Children under twelve are half-price for everything, aren’t they?”

“Did you say a poor child?” asked Gypsy.

“Yes,” said Ginger. “I gave it sixpence change. It was so extremely under twelve, you see. It said it would come again to ask the weather next Sunday and bring its cousins.”

“Well, it’s going to be disappointed,” said Gypsy. “Though how we’re to take tickets to hay and corn on fivepence halfpenny, I don’t quite know. We shall have to walk; unless we stay over to-morrow and put in a really hard day’s work and earn our fares. What do you say to that?”

“Oh yes,” said Ginger, “and then we can give a party to-night and say good-bye to everybody.”

So they settled down to put in a really hard day’s work. The day helped them a lot. It was a sultry, many-minded day; it did a variety of things with heavy heatwaves to begin with, and then it muttered in the distance, and shed a few big drops, and slacked off for a bit; then it rolled up a lot of dark blue clouds, and then a lot of black ones. Mr. Morley came over from his hotel to say that it was so dark in the Reading Room that the visitors couldn’t read, and he wanted Gypsy’s advice about turning on the electric light. Gypsy, half in and half out of his door, looked at the sky and said:

“I think you’d better turn it on.”

Mr. Morley thanked him, and tipped him half-a-crown (they do it handsomely at Morley’s).

“Can I have it in pennies?” asked Gypsy.

“Certainly,” said Mr. Morley. He counted thirty pennies into Gypsy’s hand, and crossed the road.

Then quite suddenly a blue cloud hit a black one, and Gypsy leapt out of his door as far as he could go, and the hail came down like peas and rattled in a box by the theatre-men. So Gypsy called “Hi! hi!” very loudly, and Mr. Morley, who had just got under the portico, came out and crossed the road again.

“Yes?” said Mr. Morley.

“I _know_ you’d better turn it on,” said Gypsy.

“Thank you very much,” said Mr. Morley, and gave Gypsy five shillings.

“Can I have it in pennies?” shouted Gypsy. (He had to shout because of the thunder.)

“Certainly,” shouted Mr. Morley, turning up his coat-collar a little too late, because ribbons of rain were already running down his neck from the guttering round his top hat. It took him a long time to count sixty pennies into Gypsy’s hands, which got very full; then Mr. Morley wasn’t certain he’d given him enough, and thought they’d better count them again to make sure. So they did, holding the pennies in their mouths or under their armpits, or between their knees, as they got them counted; and then Gypsy lifted his arm by mistake, to wipe the rain out of his eyes, and dropped a shillingsworth. They rolled and splashed about Trafalgar Square, which could now be paddled in. Gypsy wasn’t allowed to leave his post, so Mr. Morley knelt down on his beautifully-pressed trousers, and crawled about the Square, finding the shilling one by one. It took him some time, because he could hardly see for the water tumbling off his beautifully-ironed silk hat, and for the lightning making him start and say “Oh!” just as he was about to pick a penny up. But at last he brought them all back to Gypsy.

“So sorry to have troubled you,” said Gypsy.

“Not at all,” said Mr. Morley, because the Morley Hotel manners are faultless. Then he went back to the Hotel, and changed his boots, and turned on the light in the Reading-Room. And then the sun came out.

So he had to cross the Square again, and he found Ginger outside the Weatherhouse looking as nice as mixed ice-cream in a lovely summer smock.

“What delightful weather,” said Ginger. “Why have you got the Hotel lights on?”

“Would you turn them out if you were I?” asked Mr. Morley, for his grammar was as faultless as his manners.

“I would indeed,” said Ginger sunnily; “seldom have I seen so blue a sky.”

Mr. Morley tipped her handsomely (the information apart, her smile was worth it), lifted his hat to her, and fled.

“How fast he’s going,” said Gypsy, from the very back of the Weatherhouse. “What did he give you, darling?”

“A half-sovereign!” gasped Ginger. “A real old-fashioned half-sovereign!”

“No wonder he’s running,” said Gypsy. “But we must get it changed somehow.”

“Oh, must we?” pleaded Ginger.

“Think of the Pillar-Box,” said Ginger firmly. So they bought an evening newspaper which they didn’t want, and told the Evening Newsboy to let the children know there’d be a party in the Square during the small hours. Then they put the pennies in the Pillar-Box. They had had several other customers that day, and the Pound was nearly reached.

At ten minutes to seven an old lady in a black bonnet and corkscrew curls stepped up to ask the weather.

“Set fair, madam,” said Ginger.

“How much will that be?” said the old lady.

“One penny, madam,” said Ginger.

The old lady paid her penny. She was the Weatherhouse’s last customer. When they posted her penny the Pillar-Box burst.

“Hurrah!” } { Gypsy. } cried { “Hurrah!” } { Ginger.

The theatre crowd that evening found the Weatherhouse shutters up, and a placard outside saying:

THESE PREMISES ARE CLOSED. GYPSY AND GINGER ARE RETIRING FROM BUSINESS.

People who have only seen London on Coronation Day, or Lord Mayor’s Show Day, or on the day when the Ambassador of Calamiane is given the Freedom of the City, do not really know of what she is capable in the way of festival. All these occasions are foreseen and dress-rehearsed. The costume is provided in advance, and it is trusted that the spirit, as well as the body, may inhabit it on the day. But when the time comes it is usually about some business of its own; for in spite of the newspapers the spirit is not the body’s house-dog. It doesn’t come when it’s whistled for. Its breed is tameless.

But when it springs out of its wilds it does in an hour what Committees cannot do in six months. Only those who saw Trafalgar Square on the night of Gypsy and Ginger’s party know what the spirit of London can do in an hour.

The Evening Newsboy spread the rumour of the party with the swiftness and ubiquity of evening news. He had the newsboy’s art of subdividing a single rumour into a flight of swallows. Before midnight every slum in the city knew there was to be a party amongst the fountains of Trafalgar Square.

Gypsy and Ginger sat on the floor of the Weatherhouse making staircases of their two-hundred-and-forty pennies, and consulted how to spend them to the best advantage. They had quite forgotten their intention of spending them on railway tickets to Sussex.

“Which do you think the children would like best?” asked Gypsy. “Presents or supper?”

“Presents _and_ supper,” said Ginger.

“It won’t run to both, darling. The guests will come in their thousands.”

“But think of a whole pound.”

“I know, but all the same,” said Gypsy. He was really the practical one of the two. “If we decided on presents, a lot could be done with beads and marbles.”

“If they had supper, we could give them farthing buns,” said Ginger. “For a pound you can get a thousand farthing buns, more or less, I’m never sure which. But if there are thousands of children--.”

“What about a Conjuror?” suggested Gypsy. “You ought to be able to buy quite a good Conjuror for a pound?”

“No,” said Ginger, “we can be our own conjurors. And I want the children to have something that will really go round without giving out, and I’ve thought of what it is.”

“Well?” said Gypsy.

“Sherbert,” said Ginger. “Packets and packets of it. In the fountains.”

“In one fountain,” said Gypsy, catching on with enthusiasm, “and lemonade crystals in the other.”

They went out to spend their pound. While they were absent, the Piccadilly Flower-Girls came and got to work. In a few minutes the Square was a garden of roses. Roses red and white, yellow and pink, garlanded the stone balustrades opposite the National Gallery and wreathed the basins of the fountains; arches of roses bloomed up the steps; the Weatherhouse was smothered in Crimson Ramblers; Dorothy Perkins climbed from the foot of the Nelson Column to the top of Nelson’s head, the base was mounded deep in moss, and every lion crouched in a temple of standards. Their work was barely accomplished when Mrs. Green arrived buried in balloons. They were gas balloons of every colour, and each was anchored with a fairy lamp, so that when she let them go they hung in chains and patterns of light fifteen feet in air. The other Moonlighters were now appearing in full force. The Punch-and-Judy Man set up his theatre between the fountains, Tonio’s striped and painted Hokey-Pokey booth was established in one corner, the Strawberry Girl had her great fruit-baskets in another. Jeremy, with an assortment of his brightest wares, turned the Weatherhouse into a Penny Toyshop. The Organ-Man and his barrel-organ took the middle of the Square, where there was plenty of room for dancing. The Muffin-and-Crumpet Man walked round and round and round ringing his bell. They told him that for once he was out of season, but the Night Watchman said that the moon was blue to-night, so that anything could happen for once.

By the time Gypsy and Ginger returned, laden with packets of Sherbert and Lemonade Powder, the party was ready.

“Oh!” cried Ginger.

She dropped her parcels and dashed from attraction to attraction; flew one of Jeremy’s windmills round the Square, tasted a strawberry, ate half a hokey-pokey, rang the muffin-bell in Toby’s ear, stuck a rose in her smock, and seizing Gypsy’s hands danced him three times round the barrel-organ.

Then they all turned their attention to the fountains, and just as the sherbert got really fizzing the Evening Newsboy appeared with the children.