Part 2

“Come then,” said the boy, smiling again pleasantly, but paying no heed to Godmother.

Betty turned to her, puzzled and uncertain, but Godmother only laughed.

“Don’t trouble about finding me again. It will be all right. Go with him, and stay as long as you like. You’ll discover it’s not so long as you imagine.”

Thus encouraged, Betty very willingly followed her guide. He was a handsome boy, dressed very much as the Roman nobleman on the bridge had been clothed, except that the cloak he wore over his tunic had a broad purple band round its edge. That, as she afterwards learnt from Godmother, being the usual dress for Roman boys, for it was not till they were grown up, that they wore the tunic without this purple border.

“That is our villa,” he began presently when they came in sight of a long one-storied house surrounded by trees and shrubs. “My father has much land here, and many farms.”

“Will you tell me your name?” asked Betty shyly.

“My name is Lucius.... I will take you first straight through the house,” said the boy. By this time they had reached its entrance, and Betty caught a beautiful vision of rooms divided by pillars, each one opening into the next; of painted ceilings and walls, of coloured stone pavements, of couches with purple silk cushions upon them, and pedestals upon which statues stood. It was only a flashing glimpse she had of all this, and though she saw everything with the greatest distinctness, she was somehow conscious that none of it was actually _real_; that even Lucius was not really alive, even while she saw him as plainly as though he had been flesh and blood. Deep down in her mind, she knew that everything she saw and heard, was what had once existed but was over and done with long, long ago, and was only revived for a moment.

And yet everything _looked_ so real. Just as this sad feeling came to her, she was walking over a pavement made of small coloured stones fitted together to make a pattern. This she knew was called _mosaic_ work, and she noticed the design of it, which was that of a woman seated on the back of some animal in the centre of the pavement.

By the time she had walked through the villa and out of it upon a terrace overlooking the country, Betty had a confused idea of great luxury and beauty, displayed in a very different sort of house from any she had ever seen before.

“Ask me any questions you like,” said Lucius presently. But Betty scarcely knew where to begin.

“This country is called Britain, isn’t it?” she said at last, remembering her history. “And you Roman people conquered it?”

“We did,” answered the boy, smiling. “Long ago. Four hundred years ago.”

“And the British people are not angry about it anymore?”

“No. Why should they be? Everything is peaceful now.”

“But at first there was fighting, I suppose?”

“Long and bitter fighting,” said Lucius. “There is a story, which I believe is true, that when my ancestors first came to Britain, more than three hundred years ago, there was a British Queen who led men to battle against us. She actually took and burnt this town of Londinium—which was then, however, much smaller and less important than it is now.”

“Boadicea!” thought Betty, remembering in a flash the statue on Westminster Bridge.

But Lucius was again speaking. “My own family has been settled here nearly two hundred years. It was my great-grandfather who built this villa, and he was born in Londinium.”

“We call it _London_,” murmured Betty. But Lucius did not seem to hear her. “Then I suppose it was a good thing for the British to be conquered?” she inquired.

The boy laughed. “Without doubt. They were savages when we came, and we’ve taught them everything. From us they’ve learnt how to till the land,”—he nodded towards a field. “Those are British labourers working there now. They’ve learnt how to make roads after our famous Roman plan. You can see one of our roads from this corner of the terrace. And how to build houses and ships, and work in metal and do a thousand other things. Some of them have grown rich, and have been educated, so that they are as good scholars now as we are. Already Londinium is a famous port to which foreign merchants come bringing riches. My father says it will some day be a great city, equal to any city in the world.”

“It _has_ become a great city!” exclaimed Betty to herself, remembering the London she knew. It was sad to think that if she had spoken aloud, the boy would not have understood her, and she hastened to ask another question.

“Are these British people Christians?”

“Oh yes!” said Lucius. “Ever since _we_ became Christians ourselves, you know. Of course when my ancestors first came here, they themselves were pagans. They worshipped gods and goddesses like Apollo and Venus. But that’s a hundred years ago. Now Londinium is a Christian city, and we’re teaching the British to be Christians also. It’s rather difficult though, because a great many of them cling to their old gods. Still, most of them at least _call_ themselves Christians.”

“Do you like living in this country—in Britain?” asked Betty after a moment.

“Oh yes. It’s my home. I was born here. But I should like to go to Rome—the city from which my great-grandfather came when he settled here, and built this villa. Perhaps I shall, some day,” he went on dreamily. “My father often says we may have to go back to our own land. There are troubles there. The barbarians are growing stronger and stronger, and some day Rome will need all the fighting men she can get to defend her.”

“But the British will have no one to defend _them_ if you go,” objected Betty.

Lucius shrugged his shoulders. “No, poor things. Their state will be very desperate if enemies come to invade them when _we_ are gone....”

Betty scarcely listened to the end of his sentence, for she had made a discovery which interested her too much. On his third finger Lucius wore the very ring which not long ago had been in her own hand! But before she could exclaim, Betty found herself standing once more upon London Bridge, with her Godmother beside her, and strangely enough Godmother was repeating almost the very words the boy had just uttered!

“Poor things! They little know what a terrible time is before their children’s children!”

“You mean the British? When the Romans have gone?” said Betty, who by this time was beginning to accept all the strange things that were happening without much surprise.

“Yes. In a few years that villa you have just seen, and all the other beautiful Roman houses, will have dropped into decay. There will be no one left in London except perhaps a handful of British slaves, and most of _them_ will have to flee to that forest over there, to escape from the murderous people who will overrun this island....”

The people were still passing to and fro upon London Bridge, as Betty gazed about her. The sunlight was still sparkling on the river, and from the fortress came the sound of the tramping feet of the soldiers.

“There’s a little boat just putting off,” said Godmother. “The man in it is going to fish higher up the river. We’ll step in with him. It’s a great advantage to be invisible!” she added, smiling, as they hurried down to the bank.

It was strange nevertheless to be seated opposite a shaggy-haired, bare-legged fisherman, who took no notice of them, but as the boat glided on, Betty was soon so interested in the scenery they were passing that she almost forgot the silent man who was rowing them. Very soon they had passed all the gardens and orchards on the banks, and now on either side there was nothing but a waste of water with here and there a low reed-covered island just showing above its level.

“We are now passing under Westminster Bridge,” observed Godmother presently. “On our left is St. Thomas’s Hospital and Lambeth Palace, and on our right the Houses of Parliament, with Westminster Abbey behind it.”

Betty stared. She thought Godmother must be joking.

“Perfectly true,” the old lady assured her in answer to her smile. “On that island just above the water on the right, in another six hundred years, Westminster Abbey will rise.”

Betty heard the gurgling of the water as it washed between the reeds and bulrushes of the island, and as she thought of the beautiful Cathedral under whose shadow her godmother’s house stood, it seemed a miracle that such a change could have taken place.

“Human beings _are_ rather wonderful, aren’t they?” remarked Godmother, smiling, as though she read her thoughts. “They drain wet land and make it useful for growing food, or for buildings. They bore tunnels through solid rocks. They build bridges over rivers, and do a thousand things to alter the world for their own convenience. Who could have imagined that this great London of ours, the largest city in the world, could have grown up from _this_?” Godmother waved her hand towards the swamps and streams, east, west and south of where they sat rocking in the boat beside the swampy island.

“Just think of it!” she exclaimed after a moment’s silence. “This marsh, and that forest to the north, and all the open land as far as we can see in every direction, is now covered with streets and shops, with churches and schools and railway stations, and is the dwelling-place of millions of people.”

“It’s almost as wonderful as this magic way of seeing it as it _used_ to be!” declared Betty. “Tell me again how far back in the Past we are?”

“All this is one thousand five hundred years ago,” said Godmother softly.

The fisherman had tied up his boat to a stake driven into the shore of the island, where later the great Cathedral of Westminster was to stand. The sun was setting, the water was a sheet of gold and crimson, and above the island a flight of birds rose suddenly with shrill cries.... The next second they stood in the white-panelled parlour.

“Oh!” cried Betty, rubbing her eyes. She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “_Why!_” she stammered, “it was three o’clock the last time I saw it, and it’s still three. It must have stopped!”

Godmother shook her head. “It hasn’t stopped. Time is almost as magic a thing as——”

“As all we’ve seen,” put in Betty eagerly. “Oh, Godmother, it has been wonderful! But no one will ever believe it.”

“Don’t try to make them,” replied Godmother. “You’ll find it quite easy not to,” she added with her queer little smile. Then as the bell rang, “Here comes your maid to fetch you.”

“Oh, but this isn’t the end of the magic? You’ll let me come again? You’ll let me see how London goes on?” Betty implored.

“To-morrow I’m going to take you to a Museum,” returned the old lady. “I don’t think you’ll find it dull,” she said comfortingly, as Betty’s face fell. “I shall fetch you at three o’clock, and mind you don’t keep me waiting.”

A FAIRY TALE MUSEUM

Punctually at three o’clock next day, Godmother’s pretty little car pulled up at the door of Betty’s home in Chelsea, and a few minutes later she was driving away with her.

“Well!” began Godmother, as she observed a curious expression upon the face of her godchild, “did you try explaining to people all you saw yesterday?”

“Why, Godmother, till I caught sight of you just now, I’d forgotten all about it!” exclaimed Betty, breathless with surprise. “I mean I’d forgotten all the magic part about the ring and actually going back to _see_ London as it was when the Romans were here,” she explained. “I kept wondering why I had a picture in my mind of London as it looked then. I simply couldn’t think how it was I knew, and I’ve only just remembered.”

“I told you that it wouldn’t be difficult to keep the secret,” returned Godmother, laughing.

“Oh, it’s a lovely secret!” Betty exclaimed. “Where are we going now?”

“I’m taking you to a Museum. But as you will see, it is, in its own way, a sort of fairy-tale place. A beautiful house, called Lancaster House, close to St. James’s Palace, has been turned into a kind of treasure-palace, containing all sorts of things that have to do with London from the very earliest times up to the present day. It is called _The London Museum_, and _you_ ought to find it even more fascinating than it appears to most other people.”

“I generally hate Museums,” said Betty frankly. “But then I’ve never been to one with you before.”

“You won’t hate this one,” was Godmother’s reply. They were driving down St. James’s Street now, and in a few moments the car stopped before a stately-looking house quite near to the old Palace of St. James.

“Now,” said Godmother, as they went up the steps, “the way to see Museums is to look at a very little at a time, so, though this place is full of interesting things, I’m only going to show you one or two of them. First of all, we go downstairs into the basement.”

Betty followed her to the left of an entrance hall from which a grand staircase rose, into a corridor whose windows gave her a glimpse of a pretty green garden; then down a flight of steps into a big hall below. The floor of this had been hollowed out to look rather like a swimming-bath, but instead of water, the hollow was filled up by the skeleton of a great wooden boat. It was black with age, broken and battered, but the pieces had been carefully fitted together, so that one might at least guess how it looked more than a thousand years ago, when it was new. “It’s a Roman galley!” cried Betty, who had recently seen one, not ancient and decayed, but actually floating upon the Thames. In her excitement she scarcely knew whether to look first at the ancient boat, or at the picture which filled the end wall just above it, and showed a galley rowed by Roman soldiers.

“I see! I see!” she cried eagerly. “That’s how the man who painted that picture imagined it looked when it was new, ages ago? He hasn’t imagined it badly, has he, Godmother? The boat is just passing the fortress, and it’s very much like the one we really went up, isn’t it? And he’s made the river clear, with grassy banks, just as it was. And the soldiers are quite good too. They _did_ look like that! Oh! Godmother, how did they find this boat?”

“Here’s a notice that will tell you. It was dug up, you see, a few years ago—in 1910, to be precise—when men were at work on a road in Lambeth.”

“Under a _road_?” echoed Betty. “But how did it get there?”

“Have you forgotten already what you saw yesterday? Don’t you remember that the Thames then spread out all over what is now Lambeth as well as over Westminster on the opposite bank? This boat was found in what _then_ was the bed of the river, and is now land covered with buildings.”

“Yes, I understand. Oh, Godmother, do you think it could be the very galley we saw? Perhaps it is!”

Godmother smiled. “I’m afraid not. It is thought that this galley was sunk a hundred years or so earlier than the one we saw when we stood on the first London Bridge. But it must have been very like it.”

Betty looked up again at the picture. “It shows a piece of the wall that went round London,” she said, gazing at it with interest. “And in the background there is the great forest. Oh, I think the painter has imagined it very well.”

“Considering that he hadn’t our magic advantage I think he _has_,” agreed Godmother.

Betty was silent a moment, looking down thoughtfully at the remains of the poor battered galley which once sailed so proudly on London’s river, filled with soldiers, their armour and helmets glittering in the sunshine of long ago. There were other things in this basement hall that looked interesting, but Godmother would not let her stay to examine them.

“We will go upstairs now,” she said. So up the narrow staircase they went, into the corridor again, and thence to a room with _Roman London_ painted over the door.

No sooner had Betty entered it than she gave a little cry and stood staring at the end wall, where a sort of picture in mosaic work was hanging, filling up its whole space.

“That was in the villa that belonged to Lucius!” she exclaimed. “I remember it quite well. It was the pavement of one of the rooms. There’s the lady riding on that funny animal’s back with the border round her, just as I saw it. Oh, Godmother! Just fancy its being here after all these years and years.”

“It _is_ wonderful,” said Godmother. “How many of the thousands of people who every day hurry along the streets near London Bridge either know or remember that deep down under their feet lies a buried Roman city? Every now and then a fragment of it, like this one, is dug up. But there must be much, much more hidden far beneath houses and shops and roads where trams and omnibuses roll and rattle. By the way,” she added, “if you want to see the _actual_ piece of pavement that was in the villa ‘that belonged to Lucius’ we shall have to go to the British Museum. This one is only a copy of it.”

“I shall go one day,” Betty answered. “I should like to see the _very_ pavement I walked on. I’m luckier than any of the children in London,” she added with a little chuckle of delight.

“Now look at some of the things in these cases,” advised Godmother. “You will find them just as interesting.”

Betty obediently examined the contents of one of the glass boxes the room contained, and soon found occasion for a fresh excitement. On a label beside a collection of battered coins, she read: _Found in the river bed near the present London Bridge._ Instantly a scene rose in her mind of a little fair-haired girl crying and looking down through the chinks of a wooden bridge into the shining water.

“Oh, Godmother, perhaps one of them is the very coin that poor little girl dropped when her mother was so angry with her?” she cried.

“Perhaps,” said Godmother. “She dropped it one thousand five hundred years ago, and that’s about the date of this group of coins.”

“How do people know that?”

“By the inscriptions on them, we discover which emperor was ruling in Rome, and in that way we are often able to fix the date at which the money was in use.”

In another moment Betty had discovered other things in the cases which took her thoughts back to the “magic” experience. These were ornamental pins for the hair, combs, and other toilet articles which must once have been pretty and shining, but were dull and rusty now from long burial in the earth. She thought of the glimpse she had had of a bedroom (perhaps belonging to the mother of Lucius), in which such things as these were lying on a marble table. In fact, everything she saw in the cases reminded her of Roman London, with its beautiful villas and gardens, now buried and almost as forgotten as though they had never existed. And she sighed.

“It’s very sad to think of,” she said.

“Yes,” answered Godmother in an understanding voice. “But the life of London still goes on, even though it’s a different life, and Roman London is forgotten.” They were standing by the window of the room, and beyond the garden upon which it looked, in the road outside St. James’s Park, people were walking, children running, and taxicabs and motor-cars swept past in a constant stream.

“When the Romans lived here, all this”—she waved her hand towards the Park and the busy road—“was a dreary swamp, impossible for human existence. Now you see it the home and pleasure-ground of thousands of people whose turn it is to enjoy the sunshine, the blue sky, and all the pleasant things the Romans and the British who lived side by side in this London of ours, enjoyed long ago.”

“This _may_ be a Museum, but it’s an awfully nice one,” declared Betty, as she and Godmother walked back towards the corridor. “It wouldn’t be dull, even _without_ the magic. But that makes it a hundred times more fascinating, of course. Can’t we look at some other things?”

“The only other thing I’m going to show you to-day, is a certain picture,” returned Godmother. “But before we look at it, I must explain a little, or you won’t understand it.”

They found a seat in the corridor, and she began at once.

“You will remember that when we saw London yesterday, on our magic journey into the Past, I told you we were very near the end of the Romans’ stay in Britain. Soon afterwards they had to go back to fight against enemies in their own land, and you know what happened when the British were left unprotected?”

“Enemies came to fight against _them_.”

“And who were those enemies?”

“The Jutes and the Angles and the Saxons,” replied Betty, who was quite good at history.

“Yes, those names are all right; but the chief thing to remember about them is that they were _our_ forefathers, and that before long they were known as _the English people_. This island, once called Britain, became _England_, and the original inhabitants—those British among whom the Romans lived—though they were not entirely driven out of the country, were hunted as far west as they could go, and received a different name.”

“I remember!” cried Betty, nodding. “They are called the Welsh now, and they live in Wales.”

“Well, for the future, in thinking about London, let us leave them there, remembering that though nowadays we scarcely know Welsh from our own countrymen, they are _not_ our countrymen. They are of a different race, the descendants of the British, and though nearly all of them now talk in English, their _native_ language is quite different from ours. It is really the old _British_ language. Now, for goodness’ sake, get that clearly into your mind, and never let me hear you muddle up the British with the English, in the annoying way of most children!” concluded Godmother in her sharpest voice.

“I won’t. I promise,” Betty said, laughing, for she was getting quite used to Godmother, and was no longer afraid of her.

“Very well, then. Now you’re ready to look at the picture. Come along.”

Betty followed her down a corridor till she stopped before one of several pictures hung in a line. It represented a group of wild-looking men standing beneath the walls of a city which Betty at once saw was meant to represent the London or Londinium of the Romans.

“You must imagine that the scene shown by this picture, is about a hundred years after the Romans had gone,” said Godmother. “Those great strong men looking up at London Wall are our forefathers, the English. Awful things have been happening for the past hundred years; terrible fighting between these invaders and the British, who by now are being everywhere defeated and driven farther and farther west. The Englishmen in the picture, have come suddenly into sight of a walled city that looks dangerous to approach. They are hesitating. One of them is blowing his horn to see whether any defenders will appear upon the battlements. No answer comes to the loud blast, and the warriors will presently rush at that gate, batter it down and enter. To their amazement they will find within, beautiful houses such as they have never seen or imagined. But all of them are empty and dropping into decay. They will see the ruined gardens and orchards of buildings the use of which they can’t even guess. For many, many years London has lain deserted, because on account of the fighting in the country all round, no food could reach it, and all its people have fled. Wondering and afraid, believing, no doubt, all these decaying remains of luxury to be some magic device of demons, those rough warriors will hurry away from the silent city, leaving it to fall into still deeper ruin.”

“Poor London!” said Betty. “But how did it ever wake up again?”

“It had to wait till the worst of the fighting was over before it was occupied again—this time by a different race—the _English_ race. Then London once more came to life. But by this time probably nearly the whole of the _Roman_ buildings had disappeared, and become buried under the first rough _English_ houses where the new race of men lived who once more made the city into a thriving port.”

“And these English people forgot all about the Romans, I suppose?”