Part 1

Produced by Al Haines.

*MUCH ADO ABOUT SOMETHING*

*BY C. E. LAWRENCE*

AUTHOR OF "PILGRIMAGE," ETC.

LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1909

TO MY FATHER AND MOTHER

*CONTENTS*

CHAPTER

I. DOWN FAIRYLAND WAY II. THE MADNESS OF JUNE III. PARADISE COURT IV. COCKNEYDOM V. TOM TIDDLER'S GROUND VI. POST-PRANDIAL VII. ARCHIDIACONAL FUNCTIONS VIII. MAN AND SUPERMAN IX. THE PROGRESS OF OBERON X. THE IMPORTANCE OF BIM XI. A PROSE INTERLUDE XII. A NIGHT OUT XIII. IN SOCIETY XIV. CONVERTING A DUCHESS XV. LIBERTY HALL XVI. PROGRESS XVII. THE ARISTOCRACY MOVES XVIII. A COMPACT XIX. NEW YEAR'S DAY XX. IN PARLIAMENT XXI. OBERON AT LAST XXII. CROWNED

*CHAPTER I*

*DOWN FAIRYLAND WAY*

Fairyland! Fairyland!

There was to be high revel in Fairyland. From far and wide, from uphill and down dale, from here, there and all about, the little people were to gather in the Violet Valley.

Oberon and Titania were coming, as well as Mab, Puck, Gloriana, Tinkerbell, and innumerable unnamable others of the princes, thrones, dominations, powers of Elfdom.

Pixies, gnomes, kelpies, sprites, brownies, sylphs, every shadow and shape owning allegiance to the Fairy King, would endeavour to be at that congress of the mimic immortals.

It was a red-letter night in the history of the aristocratical democracy: the greatest occasion of the kind since the year One.

To-morrow would be Mayday, and midnight was not just yet.

Nightingales were tuning, preparing. The air was honeyed with the scent of flowers.

A round white moon looked from a shining sky on the Violet Valley. It lingered; travelled tardily across mountains and spaces of leisurely-drifting clouds, waiting with its best dilatoriness, intending to see all that was possible of the approaching revels.

It looked upon and lighted a scene of young-leaved trees, grass of the freshest green, new-come flowers, and sparkling waters. The world which is always beautiful wore its best loveliness then.

That was Fairyland.

Far away northwards there was a lurid, hazy glow in the sky. Red, vast and vague it loomed, obliterating the stars beyond, marking the place where Fairyland was not.

That was the shadow which shone over London.

In the country there was peace--absolute peace; then, mellowed by distance, the chimes of a church clock.

Twelve! The fairy-time had come.

At once a nightingale began its emotional song; and others, scattered on many trees, gradually joined in the throbbing chorus. Every moment their melody grew in joyousness, and, ever spreading, roused nightingales on still more distant trees to join in the anthem of rapture, until every glade in Fairyland was happier for their happiness.

There was some reed-fringed water in the centre of the Violet Valley. It was a pond or lake, according to the charity and imagination of the mortal who looked at it. To the fairies it was a lake, large and estimable enough for their most ambitious purposes.

A bright light appeared in the depths of that water, and slowly uprose till it reached the surface, when the nymph of the pool appeared. She sat, a shining figure, on a water-leaf and waved a glistening wand.

In prompt obedience gnomes appeared. Pell-mell, up they came tumbling, a multi-coloured host, every one with shining face and as full of excitement, activities and the thousand mischiefs as is the moonlit night of shadows. So rapidly they swarmed, elbowing, scrambling, hustling, stumbling, clambering, from hidden holes and grass-shrouded crannies of earth that actually slender paths were worn bare by their hurrying feet. From the branches of trees they dropped, over hillocks of grass they hastened, to prepare for the revels. The gnomes are the democracy of the Elf countries, and, like some of us mortals, are the folk who do the necessary drudging work.

They set to labour with willingness. Not often had fairy eyes seen such obvious earnestness to be well done with irksome business. Weeds, which are really weeds, nauseous and mischievous, and not flowers become unpopular, were carefully uprooted and packed away, fuel to feed the fires of brownies' anvils; a broad tract of green was made flawless that fairies might dance there unhindered; glow-worms were coaxed or forcibly carried to places where their blue-white lights would be at once ornamental and useful; dew was scattered broadcast to reflect from myriad points the diamond moonlight; the lamps of the flowers were trimmed and lit, and soon, from all sides, were shedding gentle radiance. Dreams came drifting down from the opal spaces.

While the gnomes worked they whistled--not fairy songs, now; but snatches of lame melodies borrowed from holiday mortals. It was a hotch-potch of sounds, a sizzling blur, not so unpleasing. Gnomes are rather fond of that sort of thing. Their ear for music is, possibly, imperfect.

Presently there was trouble. Bim was a centre of petty uproar.

He was a gnome, very young as they go; and, from top to toe, red as a holly-berry.

While his work-brothers rushed and bustled, Bim was languid. Even Monsieur Chocolat himself could hardly have been less useful. He did his best--little better than nothing; but then he was very tired.

All that day and through the previous night he had been travelling. From the distant Land of Wild Roses he had toiled, following laboriously the course over which a company of fairies had easily flown or danced. They had been hastening to the valley of revels; and he must needs come too, because June was amongst them.

It had been--such a journey! The mere remembrance of the toil caused him to ache through every one of his six inches.

He had started on the previous evening, the instant the moon had peeped above the horizon. The fairy contingent had preceded him some hours earlier. He had only the vaguest notion of the way to take, never having been out of the Land of Wild Roses before.

Three things kept him, more or less, to the right track. He saw now and then solitary fairies on the wing wending their ways towards the place of assembly; more frequently, he passed flowers of sweetness so refreshed that evidently they had been touched by beneficent wands but recently. Thrice owls, hooting, had spared a word of advice and direction to the persevering wanderer.

The moon, which lighted his pathway, had followed her course till lost in the shine of morning. The stars had brightened and quivered and gone. The sun had lived his period of hours; the birds had worked and sung, the flowers and grasses had waved through a long bright April day, and still the determined gnome had laboriously journeyed on, following the flight of the fairy June.

Bim had been several times led astray through his ignorance, but all his wanderings, stumblings and weariness could not dim or lessen his determination. He rested but once, sleeping for a sunny hour in a welcome bedroom of nightshade and nettles in white blossom. At last he came to the turning of his long, long lane.

Now he was in the Violet Valley, and pressed with the others of his below-stairs brethren to the work of preparation: and he could not. He had the full weariness of a new arrival. Those of the gnomes, even those who had journeyed long distances, had been able to rest before labouring. There was no such fortune for Bim. Here he was, and at once he must do his share. A great many gnomes, noticing his languor, ceased work altogether to insist that he did not shirk.

So there was uproar. Five minor tyrants--self-appointed foremen--began to kick him. Bim squealed like a tin whistle; then justice, in the person of the nymph of the pool, intervened.

And thereby hangs this tale.

One word from the water-fairy was enough to release Bim from his persecutors, and to send them hurriedly to work again--till all preparation was ended and the Violet Valley was ready for rejoicing.

"Gnome," said the nymph, "you must be young as spring-time, or you would not have come so far and arrived so late. You are, I see, from the Land of the Wild Rose. So was I. So is June--our June. You shall be favoured. Lie under that dock-leaf; keep still and take rest. You shall see the best of the wonders. Lucky gnome!"

Bim obeyed, creeping to the hiding-place and lying there, resting, his eyes alight, as quietly as a mouse with suspicions.

The gnomes, their business well ended, ran to points of vantage. They clambered along boughs, clung to tree-creepers and shrubbery, like blobs of living fruit. Cross-legged they perched on mounds, whistling, singing, playing impish pranks, chaffing and chiding one another, in all the happiness of easy idleness. They were the jolliest mob in Fairyland that night. There was not a grumble in the whole assembly.

Then the fairies began to arrive.

From here and there, like musical snowflakes, they fell, flying down from the skies. They sparkled like gems, their wands were pointed with brilliance, their wings shone with iridescence, their garments were spangled gossamer. As each elf-knight alighted, he folded his wings and marched, with lance or slender sword upraised, to an appointed place, and stood there attentive, waiting, while in myriad gnome-voices the heroes were acclaimed. As every gentle fairy came to earth, she tripped or lightly flew over the dancing-ground and sat or reclined among the flowers. The Violet Valley was thronged with a thousand pictures of loveliness and enchantment.

All the while the gathering proceeded they and the fairies were singing a world-old fairy-song. The bells of Elfland musically jangled.

Bim and the stars were delighted. So was the moon. Fairy horns and trumpets pealed: a fanfare of welcome rang with echoes over the higher-land grasses. For here are the royalties!

A procession worth seeing slowly approached and passed. The pride and panoply of mortal pageantry is tinsel and crudeness in comparison with what the fairies can do.

Leading came a bodyguard of gnomes, looking quaint and important in their warlike furniture. Their round faces, wearing expressions of tremendous seriousness, their goggle-eyes, and legs, some spindle, others bandy as half-way hoops, gave a sort of pantomime poetry to the proceedings.

"Shiar-shiar-shiar!" shouted their commander in his best militarese.

They halted, turned inwards in two long lines, stepped backwards, leaving a generous space between, and shuffled into comparative exactness of places. They were ranged in companies, according to colour, the pride of position belonging to the sky-blue and grass-green companies.

Following came the flower of fairy chivalry. Knights, whose duty it is to control and imprison the dragons which long ages ago terrified and destroyed humanity, passed along, proudly cheered. Down into fiery depths of earth these happy warriors go, and there, with infinite courage, flashing swords and magic spears, do battle with and awe the flame-breathing furies, preventing their escape to earth, where they would wreak mischief, work havoc, and destroy. Fortunate for us--if only we knew it--that we have the fairies to rid us of these monsters and keep them in restraint. Banish the elves from our imaginings and many hidden horrors would rise again. The old forgotten terrors and a million uglinesses which ever threaten us would resume their evil reigns. Banish the elves, indeed!

There were knights tried by all manners of adventure, thousand-year-old young heroes whose efforts always help in the battle of right against wrong. They are the joyous chevaliers. The fairies are bright, as their services have been beneficent. The best of the warriors are as dazzling as sunlight at noontide; and as the knights marched in inverse order to their prowess and worth, the most meritorious and honourable last, the procession became brighter and brighter as it progressed, till only elf-eyes could have endured its absolute brilliancy. It was as a rippling river of light, travelling through fields of melody.

Bim, to whom all this was a magnificent dream, trembled with excitement and awe. He had heard tales of majestic doings, told by gnomes who had made adventures and seen; but nothing before had sounded so fine as the mere shadow of this. He lay in his burrow, snug; and repeatedly pinched his leg to remind himself of his wonderful good luck.

He saw the knights group themselves in a wide semicircle round a double-throne, gem-built and golden, made by moonbeams and magic out of a nest of wild-growth. Jack o' Lantern, Will o' the Wisp, and their shivering green company kept guard about it.

Goblins gathered on a poplar-tree.

Then after an interval came perfection at its best, sweetness in all its qualities, loveliness beyond adjectives--the fairies who watch the flowers in their building, and tend them that they may give generously of their treasures in scent, colour and brightness; who teach birds music and win from them their finest songs; who carry day-dreams to those who require them--they only bring some of the dreams of night; who help Santa Claus during his Christmas mission; who put hopes in the hearts of the weary. They flew slowly, on fluttering wings, just over the grass: the beads of dew beneath glistening sharply, a thousand thousand points, reflections. Last of that chapter of the marvellous procession came one whom the lookers-on acclaimed with ardour--the heroine of that silver night.

"June! June! June!"

In her honour all this rejoicing was made. The great event of that calendar night was to be the crowning of June.

Then with new trumpetings came Oberon and Titania, the most puissant of kings and queens; whose realms and governance extend from the depths beneath, where the brownies in their fire-shops labour and create, to the high-built hidden palaces of the clouds. All castles in the air are in the kingdom of Oberon. Remember that! The royalties of Fairyland are royal indeed.

They were accompanied by an escort of princes and princesses, of knights, elves, and gnomes; until the procession ended.

Oberon and his queen sat on the double throne. He raised his sceptre in signal; the revels began. Many of the fairies who had been waiting, thereupon ran to the dancing-green, and on wings and feet as light and graceful as moonbeams on flowing water, danced. It was a vision of loveliness, the perfect poetry of music and motion. And so it went on and on, a kind of dream and of worship, till every one of the fairies had sung and danced her share.

All the while there was the singing of elf-songs, to an accompaniment of nightingale voices, and joyous feasting on honeyed nectar and cates, the produce of fairy kitchens.

The moon drifted along, jealous of the passing clouds which occasionally veiled her view, watching, and, from her loneliness, rejoicing with the fairies in their joy.

Till Oberon arose. The birds ceased their songs. An owl hooted five times. Bim, forgetting caution, came boldly out of his hiding-place, the better to watch. The king raised an opal cup and gave the word:

"June!"

Every voice in Fairyland echoed him. The woods repeated the name:

"June! June! June!"

*CHAPTER II*

*THE MADNESS OF JUNE*

Throughout the revels June was sitting but three hand's-breadth distance from Bim, so that he--who is our chief authority for these pages of history--better than anyone else could see, hear, and know all that happened in Fairyland on that very, very young May morning.

June had been sitting there smiling, enjoying herself supremely. It was hard for her to believe that this banquet of sheer delight was entirely to her honour. Even Oberon, Titania, and those others whose names are as immortal as the passing pages of the books of humankind can make them, were there in a new relation--her subjects for the time being.

The crowning was the only event which remained undone: it was the culmination of the revels, and would not happen until the cock which crows in the last of the morning darkness had duly squawked and shrilled.

Every year in Elfland the fairy credited with the greatest number of kind doings, as entered in the Golden Book of Bosh, wears the magic crown which the spirits of Merlin, Prospero, and Michael Scott met to make and charge with their mystic powers on a howling night of eclipse. Five-and-twenty sheeted spectres had watched its making and guarded the crown when made. It had been transported to the valley wherein Dante met Virgil, to Ariel's Island, to the Hill of Tara, to that Valley of Shadow in which Christian fought Apollyon--who was Abaddon, to the altar in the Chapel of Arthur's Palace at Camelot, to the Never-Never-Never Land; and in each of those places had rested for a year and a day, gathering the mystical, magical powers of the place.

Now by unanimous acclaim, June was again the chosen favourite. For the second time in succession she had won the crown--a circumstance unique! Never before in the long annals of Fairyland--in comparison with which any mere national history is but the record of a few stained and noisy days--had such a circumstance been. That was why there was so great a gathering; why all the notables--and Bim--were there!

The crown which, with its changing colours, sparkled with brightness better than sunshine had been placed on a cushion before the throne. During the revels, chosen knights--proud sentinels--stood guard over it; the brightest eyes of Elfdom watched it then. June watched it too.

But there was something which, even in that hour of magic and of triumph, troubled and perplexed her, and drew away her attention from the revels. It was as a shadow of sorrow overhanging the happiness; the only blur on a condition of perfect contentment and peace.

Where she sat, facing Oberon and Titania, she also faced that vague and lurid glow which showed where Fairyland was not. It was strange and weirdly troublesome to her. There was no such dismal shadow over any part of the Land of Wild Roses, and never before during her previous visits to the Violet Valley had she seen that brooding glare. But now its ugly glory oppressed her. Again and again it won her eyes from the happiness, and filled her heart with a growing burden of pain.

The owl had hooted. "June! June! June!" had come the king's, and then the universal, cry.

Chanticleer gave the note for the crowning.

The king rose, took the crown from the chief of the knights attending, and raised it that all of Fairyland might see. The singing and the laughter died away, and were hushed to a tremendous silence.

June flew towards Oberon, but suddenly stopped, and gave a cry of pain.

There was wild excitement at this. It belied experience, was an unkind precedent, made the long night's harmony suddenly crooked and awry. What ailed June that she should act so? The fairies with all their wisdom were impotent to read the mystery.

But soon June made it plain. She pointed her wand at the glow beyond, and cried:

"Evil! Evil!"

Every gnome, elf, fairy--all--turned to look at the vague red light over the far-away city. Oberon and Titania alone did not move, but gazed at June, solemnity in their eyes. They knew.

"June," said the king to her, "that light is the shame of Fairyland. No one of our glad company can live beneath it. It is the land of unhappy ghosts, where the shadows called men make and endure infinite ugliness, shame and pain. Slowly the fairies who would have loved and helped them have been driven away."

"I must go there," June said.

"No, no!" cried Titania, hurriedly stepping down from her throne, and clasping the fairy's shoulder, holding her wings.

"We can't spare you, June," said the king. The hearkening elves sang agreement with him. "It is all quite hopeless. Time was when the fairies ruled in London and the other great towns, and were believed in, welcomed, appreciated. In those days England was called 'Merrie,' and deserved the joyous name. Then things began to change. Men became less in sympathy with the beautiful and the unseen; their faith in us dwindled. They wanted more than they should have done the dross called riches; and in following and finding wealth lost much of their welfare. It was a sad experience for fairies, who one by one deserted the wilderness of streets and went to their work in the country. The condition of the towns grew worse and worse. Then came that age of material progress, the Mid-Victorian Period----"

"You should have seen their wall-paper, my dear!" Titania interposed.

"And in despair the last of the fairies went!"

June sighed.

"Is it hopeless?" she asked.

"Hopeless, hopeless!" declared the king solemnly. "Only Death can do away with that wilderness--Death and his cousin Decay. More than that, the men there would not be helped by us if we would. They are vain. They have no love for the fairies. They like their grime and their grubbing. They hoard their dross and tinsel, and are greedy about it. That world of stone and shadow beneath the red haze is marked with doom. Let it alone, June, as we have done and are doing. Fairyland is large enough, and can spare to mortals those blotted areas."

June hid her face in her hands and shed fairy tears. Tears on that night of triumph! A flower, close by, in sympathy quivered and put out its lamp. Titania felt her royal firmness oozing out of her wings.

"Let her go, Oberon! Why should not fairies go even to the wilderness if they can help there?"

"I cannot spare them," he answered.

"We should spare them," the queen asserted. June raised her head to listen.

"Titania?" said Oberon, in surprise.

"The fairies ought not to have left London to ugliness," the queen exclaimed; "besides--is it so ugly as you in your eloquence make out?"

"Titania?"

"Even if the fairies have deserted London--and shame to us for it--many men and women, strengthened and inspired by us, have been doing fairy-work there. I am not so sure that London is so hopeless!"

"Titania?"

"May not June go?" the queen then asked.

"I said 'No!'" Oberon declared with loud authority.

"You are as obstinate as ever," Titania observed impatiently. "Since you played your trick on me with that oaf--that clown--that donkey's head; and foolishly I gave way to your tricks and pleading, you have been----"

"Silence, Titania! You are my own dearest queen; but I am your king and the king of Fairyland. I forbid June to go."

There was an end of the suggestion.

Applause, loud and long, greeted the royal pronouncement. The elves did not wish their favourite to go. They feared for her. Titania, realizing that the last word was said, for the time being--what a model for some!--returned to her place by Oberon's side, and June roused her drooping happiness.

"Now, fairies," cried the king, "the triumph song!"

They sang. All sang, proudly, proudly! How it rose, swelled, rolled in a volume of musical delight, over the tree-tops, waking any birds that foolishly might have been sleeping, compelling them by its power, joy and confidence to share the grand chorus.

Only June, of all the bright multitude on which the moon then looked, was silent; only she, though sharing in the pride and happiness--how could she have done otherwise?--stood, seemingly unemotional, there. She was thinking, thinking, thinking of the great dim wilderness, whose crowded wretchedness, referred to by the king, called for the gifts and presence of the fairies, and could not enjoy them!

"Oh, sad city," whispered she to herself, while her comrades were singing the triumph song. "Oh, pitiful shadows, foolishly imprisoned there!"