Chapter 3

THE BEAUTIFUL PICTURE.

And so the house slipped back again to its gravity and silence, and the child played about in the shrubberies and sat in the apple-tree gazing wistfully up the dusty high-road. And deep down in his heart the hope still lingered that his father would appear one day. Spring turned into summer, and Bobby spent most of his days out of doors. One afternoon his nurse took him to a farm. She was great friends with the farmer's wife, and Bobby loved a visit there, for he was allowed to wander about round the farm and watch the farm hands in their various occupations. This afternoon he crossed a field to see a young colt. He was laughing heartily as he watched its frisky antics, when from the lane that was on one side of the field, a big black retriever appeared, barking furiously.

Bobby was not accustomed to dogs. 'The House' kept none, and with his heart in his mouth he turned and fled. The retriever pursued him, evidently showing by his gambols that he wanted to play. Somehow or other Nobbles slipped from his grasp as he ran, and in an instant the dog had seized hold of him and, bounding over the hedge, carried him away in his mouth.

This awful tragedy brought Bobby to his senses. He was panic-stricken no more, but scrambled as fast as he could into the lane. He was the pursuer now; the big black dog was trotting slowly up the road, and he trotted as hard as he could go after him.

It was of no use to call after the robber. Once Bobby did so, but the dog only turned his head to look at him, and then began to trot faster than ever. Bobby's short legs did not make rapid progress. Soon he began to feel dreadfully tired. Up the lane, out on the highroad, up another side road, and finally through some big iron gates towards an old red-brick house that stood in the midst of bright flowerbeds and green lawns. The big dog led his pursuer deliberately on, and Bobby, heated and footsore, had no thought but to follow.

There was a lady sitting at tea under some shady trees upon the lawn. The retriever made his way straight to her, and dropped the stick at her feet. Bobby came shyly forward, and the lady looked at him in surprise. She was dressed in deep mourning, and had a very sad face, and, though she looked young, her hair was as white as snow.

'Who are you, little boy; and what do you want?'

'I'm Bobby, and that dog took away Nobbles. I've runned after him 'bout twenty miles!'

He picked up his beloved stick, kissed the ugly little smiling face, then produced a very small handkerchief from his pocket and began wiping Nobbles all over very carefully.

The lady looked at him with a puzzled smile.

'You look hot and tired,' she said; 'sit down, and I will give you some strawberries and cream.'

Bobby's eyes brightened. He sat down on the grass and looked up at the lady.

'Is that dog yours?' he asked.

'Yes; his name is Lucky. That's a funny name, isn't it? It was very naughty of him to run away with your stick. I must punish him by not giving him any cake.'

She shook her head at Lucky, who was sitting up on his haunches with his tongue hanging out, watching his mistress with beseeching brown eyes.

Bobby looked at him severely.

'He is a robber! Poor Nobbles must have thought he was being taken off by a lion. I expec' he was dre'ffully frightened. You see, Nobbles isn't just a stick at all.'

'What is he? I see he has a wonderful head!'

'Yes; he's Nobbles.' He paused, then added impressively: 'He's my 'ticylar friend; we always live together. He understands all I say, but he can't speak.'

'I see.'

The lady smiled upon him very pleasantly, then she handed him a delicious plate of strawberries, and Bobby set to work at once. He thought he had never tasted anything so nice, and in the middle of it he looked up a little anxiously.

'Poor Nobbles can't eat at all. It's such a pity. He doesn't grumble, but when I have anyfing _very_ nice he looks in his eyes as if he could cry; only he doesn't, for he never leaves off smiling.'

'He's a splendid little friend to have,' the lady said cheerfully. 'I wonder where you live?'

'In the House, with nurse and grandmother.' He heaved a sigh. 'We shall have to go back soon.'

'I suppose you know the way; but you're a very little boy to be out alone.'

'I had to run after Lucky; Nurse was at Mrs. Tikes'.'

'Tikes' Farm? That is some way from here.'

'Is it twenty miles?'

'No, but it is nearly two. I expect your nurse will wonder where you are.'

'I expec' she will; but I likes being here. Are you a proper grown-up person?'

'How do you mean?'

Bobby frowned; he couldn't always put his thoughts into words.

'You talk so nice to me; I can't talk to grown-up people, acept Master Mortimer. At least I can say "Yes" and "No" to them. That's what children should talk, grandmother says.'

'I'm so glad you think I talk nice to you. I can't talk to grown-up people either. I live alone here--so alone now--so alone!'

She sighed, and fell into such deep thought that Bobby wondered if she would ever speak to him again. At last he ventured:

'I've got a father coming for me one day.'

'Have you really? Tell me about him.'

So Bobby told her of his never-fading hope, and she listened and smiled, and then ordered her pony-trap round, and tucking Bobby in beside her, drove him along the road by which he had come. They very soon met Nurse toiling along, with a heated, anxious face, and Bobby began to feel rather ashamed of himself. But the lady seemed to put matters straight at once with her soft voice and pleasant smile. And then she stooped and kissed the small boy by her side.

'I should like you to come and see me very often,' she said. 'I used to know your grandmother long ago, before I went out to India. Do you think,' she added, turning to Nurse, 'that he would be allowed to come to me?'

'I'm sure,' said Nurse, hesitating, 'that if you were to invite him----'

'Then I invite you, Bobby, at once to come to tea with me the day after to-morrow. I will write a note to your grandmother.'

Bobby's eyes shone with delight

'Me and Nobbles never go to tea with anybody,' he said. 'Do you think grandmother will say "yes"?'

'I hope she will.'

She nodded at him brightly, then drove off; and Nurse looked after her with a curious interest upon her face.

'That's the rich young widow, Lady Isobel, I've heard talk about. She shuts herself up, and won't go out nowheres.'

'Oh, no!' corrected Bobby. 'She wasn't shut up; I sawed her in the garden.'

'She's had a deal of trouble,' Nurse went on, more to herself than to Bobby. 'Her husband and only child and favrit sister were all drowned sudden in a boat out in them foreign rivers, and she come home, and found her old father dyin'; and she haven't got a relation left, and it have turned her head, and no wonder!'

'When peoples die,' said Bobby thoughtfully, 'they go away and never come back; don't they, Nurse? Jane says they're put under ground in the churchyard, but you told me the angels take them up to God.'

'Don't bother your little head about such things,' said Nurse hastily. 'And don't you be a naughty boy and run away from me again. I feel as if I shall never get cool. I'm regular done up, and 'twas only a chance I took the right road; but one of the farm hands saw you runnin' along.'

The next day was Sunday. Bobby never went to church in the morning, but very often his nurse took him in the afternoon. And Sunday morning was his opportunity to slip through the green baize door and wander over the house, for his grandmother and uncle and aunt always went to church, and the house was empty. Nurse did not mind his doing it, as long as he did not get into mischief. This morning he wandered into the dining-room; the family portraits on the walls always attracted him. Jenkins, the butler, was arranging the table for lunch, and eyed him morosely as he appeared.

'Now then, this ain't your nursery, you know,' was his greeting.

Bobby was so accustomed to this speech that he paid no attention to it. He sauntered round the room with Nobbles in his hand, and his eyes were riveted on the stern and gloomy faces looking out of their frames.

'Mr. Jenkins,' he said very politely, 'will your picture be put up there when you're dead?'

'Law, no!' said Jenkins testily. 'What a silly child you be! Tis only grandees can have their picters taken.'

'Has my father had his picture taken?'

'More'n I can say. He don't belong to this house. Your mother's picter were taken, and the mistress keeps it locked up. She were wonderful fond of Miss Vera.'

Bobby was not half so interested in his dead mother as in his living father.

'I don't belong to the House,' he murmured to himself. 'Father has got a big house somewheres where he'll take me when he comes home, and everything in that house will belong to me and father--all mine own!'

He reflected for a minute with shining complacency upon this idea. Then he looked up at the pictures again.

'I'm so glad they're all dead. I shouldn't like to see them going up and down stairs. I'm sure they'd scold me!'

'Don't you be abusin' your elders, Master Bobby; and liking them dead be not a right state o' mind at all.'

'But dead people are very happy in heaven. Nurse says so. Wouldn't you like to be dead, Mr. Jenkins?'

Jenkins put down the glass he was polishing, and pointed sternly to the door.

'Now you go off, Master Bobby, and don't you be asking imperent questions.'

Bobby trotted off. There was no love lost between him and Jenkins. He peeped into the drawing-room, then found his way to the library, and here he wandered about for some considerable time. The plaster busts were always a puzzle to him. Why had they no eyes? Were they born blind? Why had they no bodies? Had their heads been cut off? These and many other questions he would ask Nobbles, who could only grin at him by way of reply.

Then he began to pull out some books in the bookcase. He could not read very well himself, though he spent half an hour with Nurse every morning over a reading-book. But he loved pictures, and he knew there were books with pictures in them. Once he had found a wonderful book here. It was bound in brown leather, and had filigree brass corners and clasps studded with blue turquoises. He had opened it and found pictures on every page, and the front page was illuminated in the most brilliant colours. His Aunt Anna had come into the room and taken it from him.

'That is a most valuable old Italian Bible,' she said. 'You are too little to be trusted with it. You must wait till you grow bigger.'

Now as he caught sight of it he said to Nobbles very gravely:

'I'm grown bigger now, Nobbles. We'll look at it. That was years ago when Aunt Anna said that.'

It was a heavy book to lift. He dragged a footstool close to the bookcase, then placed the Bible very carefully upon it, and sat down on the carpet in front of it prepared to enjoy himself. First he fingered the little blue stones in true childish fashion, then he laid his cheek on the soft leather binding, and told Nobbles it smelt just sweet. And then with the greatest reverence he opened the clasps and began to look at the pictures. They were wonderful! But some of them rather frightened him. The angels with their big wings he loved, but there was an awful picture of the ark floating over stormy waves through torrents of rain, and drowning people holding up their arms to be taken in; and there was one of a boy being tied to a heap of stones and his old father, with knife uplifted, just going to kill him.

Bobby did not like the look of that at all; and then noticing that, scattered through the book, were a few very beautifully painted pictures, he turned over the pages to find them first. At last he came to one at the very end of the volume that arrested his attention and held him spellbound.

It was shining with gold and glory, and was the picture of two golden gates guarded by white angels with glittering golden wings. Inside the gates was a broad golden road lined with avenues of fruit-laden trees, and crowds of white-robed people and children were walking along it, some dancing and singing, some playing harps and blowing trumpets, some resting under the trees, but nearly all making their way to a big tree laden with golden fruit that stood on the edge of a flowing river. In the distance was a beautiful golden city, which seemed to be sending its rays of light right up to this tree and surrounding it. Every face was smiling, every person seemed entrancingly happy, and all of them were dressed in white, and nearly all wore golden crowns on their heads.

Bobby drew a long breath.

'It's Fairyland!' he whispered to Nobbles. 'Oh, I wish me and you could walk straight in and be there! I would love to pick those golden apples, and to blow those trumpets, and to play about with the children by the water.'

He gazed with wistful longing in his eyes; then from the inside of the gates his glance tell upon a dark corner outside in the picture. And this was the angel shutting out a little group of people who were begging to be let in. They were dressed in filthy rags, their faces were wretched, and several were weeping bitterly. No light from the golden city seemed to fall upon them, and Bobby noticed, through the darkness that seemed all round them, that their feet were close to the edge of a precipice.

As he looked at them the tears came into his eyes; and when he heard Nurse's voice call to him he started violently. He could hardly believe he was in the library, and was going up to his sunny nursery. He had been in the picture for such a long time, and so very far away.

Very carefully he put the Bible back in its place and ran out of the room.

'Nurse,' he said a little later, as he was eating his dinner in the nursery, 'do you know a story in the Bible about some big lovely gates, and angels, and a street all gold, and trees with gold apples, and lovely flowers, and everybody smiling, and then, outside the gates, some poor, unhappy crying people being shut out in the dark and rain? It's rather near the end of the book.'

'Oh, I expect it's a picture of heaven,' said Nurse, 'and the wicked people being shut out.'

'But,' said Bobby, with anxious eyes, 'are many bodies shut outside of heaven? Can't they never get in?'

'Now, eat your dinner and don't talk so much! There are no wicked people in heaven. It is only good little boys who go there.'

An awful fear clutched at Bobby's heart, but he could not put it into words. He had taken it for granted that everybody who died went straight to heaven. The picture of those weeping men and women outside the gates, and the sad stern face of the angel who was shutting them out, haunted him. He was very quiet indeed; and when Nurse took him off to church a little later, he never spoke a word. They walked along the high-road for a short distance, then turned up a lane with high banks and hedges, and at last came to the little country church, with some shady elms and beeches casting cool shadows across the sunny churchyard. It was a children's service, and the Sunday-school children were filing in before them. Bobby followed his nurse up to his grandmother's pew. It was very near the pulpit, and when sitting down Bobby could not see over the top of it. He was not very fond of church. It was a long time to sit still, and Nurse would not let him talk to Nobbles. In fact she had threatened more than once to leave Nobbles behind when they went to church if he persisted in playing with him.

To-day Bobby was pleased by hearing one of his hymns sung that he knew by heart, and when the clergyman began to talk in the pulpit of this very hymn he could not help listening.

There's a Friend for little children Above the bright blue sky,'

said the clergyman. 'Now I am going to talk to you about seven things you have above the sky. Will you say them after me? A Friend, a rest, a home, a crown, a song, a robe, and a harp with palms of victory.' Bobby's attention was fixed for a time as the clergyman spoke of these one by one. He described heaven with all its glories, and Bobby nodded his head as he listened.

'Me and you have seen it, Nobbles,' he whispered. 'We sawed it in the picsher.'

When the robe and harp were described Bobby drew a long breath of delight. It seemed all so certain that he was going to be inside the gates one day. He went into dreams after that, and then started in his seat as he heard the very solemn closing words of the sermon: 'So remember, dear children, you must have your white robe on _before_ you enter those golden gates, or they will close upon you, and you will be left outside.'

Poor Bobby thought and thought of these words as he trotted home with Nurse; but he felt that if he asked for them to be explained Nurse would only tell him to be quiet.

When he was in bed that night he confided his fears to Nobbles.

'Me and you may be shut outside, like those peoples, if we don't have those white gowns. How can I get one, Nobbles, dear? I wonder if my father would give me one! And I wonder if you can buy them, and wheres they comes from!'

Tired out with such conjectures, he fell asleep.