Part 12

The new-come fairies, during those weeks, went through a severe ordeal. It was a bad business, that dull grind amongst ugly ways and dead ideals, when the birds and the flowers out in Fairyland were calling. June watched them, fearful lest they--on whom so much depended--should falter and return to joys that would welcome them; but they were true; they did not fail.

What a work they did! To describe it were to write volumes! The Lord Mayor's new organization--Titania's Bodyguard--was rapidly getting into being, testing its cog-wheels, preparing to buzz. The fairies helped it with wands and will.

There was everywhere infinite need for elf-work, therefore the effects of that little company seemed by comparison but limited. It was, however, great and real; so great and real and gracious that mayors, aldermen, and councillors, responsible for the welfare of the districts blessed, found their heads swelling. They thought this state of betterment was due to them--the blockheads! June, for reasons, was content they should enjoy what they could of the credit. She was nothing if not politic.

The fairies, giving the lead to the Bodyguard, which went to work with the zeal of idealist youthfulness, made a dead set against unhealthy houses. Jerry the builder began to feel uneasy, and serve him right!

Leaky roofs, sinking walls, warped woodwork, and other results of the jobbery of Jerry, the fairies touched with destructive wands and hastened the decay. The scamping engineer was hoist with his own petard. Ill-built houses, good only at the best for a few uncomfortable years, became at once so outrageously bad, and obviously so dangerous, that Studge, Snodge, Hopkins, and the rest of the gowned brethren on the Borough Council, were compelled for a time to forget prospects of pickings and the interested grinding of axes, in order to insure that Jerry's offensive structures were demolished to be reconstructed promptly with conscience and workman-like bricks and mortar.

"If these shadows must have shells," said June, "let them be worthy and pretty shells!"

That is the spirit in which the fairies approached contracts and quantities. They carried their influence abroad.

Jerry had the grey time of his life. His pocket was suffering so conspicuously that his conscience became pricked and tender. He lay awake o' nights thinking copy-book mottoes. He was haunted by goody-goody ghosts. He wriggled, struggled--surrendered, coming reluctantly to the conclusion that honesty was, after all, the best policy. He acted accordingly. Hopkins, Snodge and Studge, now becoming passionately possessed of civic righteousness, kept eyes upon him, and realized for themselves the blessed compensations of disinterested public service.

The fairies made war on ugliness. They made a dead set against hideousness in all its aspects. Whatever was bad and depressing in public and private buildings went rapidly to decay. Practical men were puzzled. They attempted to solve the mystery by rule of thumb, as usual, and were always at fault. There was more scratching of contractors' heads during those summer and autumn months than had been since the building of Babel.

Men whose whole lives were an experience in joists and concrete, whose favourite field of talk was estimates and specifications, were utterly perplexed at the seemingly unreasonable circumstances which suddenly beset their trade. They asked each other desperate questions, and spread bewilderment. Why was rottenness so soon exposed? Why did that cornice which pleased them, though its adorned ugliness would have infuriated Ruskin, begin to fall away in slabs? They could not answer; but--it was!

A paradox lurked beside every doorway. The curious thing was that whatever was simple and beautiful lasted longer than usual, while the ill-adorned, ugly and drab went speedily to bits.

The fairies' policy was fruitful. Mean streets slowly ceased to deserve their adjective. Slums disappeared--were transformed with wonderful rapidity. With lighter rooms and prettier houses laughter came! Jerry called himself Joseph, wore fancy waistcoats, and felt a patriot. The business of artists boomed.

The extraordinary transformation which splendidly uprose was, in truth, an abiding, complete mystery to purblind practical men--they who measure facts with foot-rules, and look at life through theodolites. They could not understand the true reason why they had to build better. But the fairies knew; aha! the fairies knew.

June's company went about brightening what they approved with invisible paint, and gave cramp and spasms to folk with wilfully low ideals. They enjoyed themselves thoroughly. Bim was indefatigable in his efforts.

It was not only in the building-world that the fairies did so well. Active as they were in arranging for the demolition and reconstruction of certain districts of London, they also looked after humanity in many other ways.

Here are a few instances of their manifold activities culled from Blue-books on the subject.

Workhouses were made worthier, less frightening, more homely; they became honourable retreats for the aged and unfortunate. Workhouse masters wore coloured shirts, encouraged the old men to play senile games of cricket, called every old woman "Ma'am." ...

School-teachers had the happiest faculty for periodically ignoring the time-table and telling the children unexpected fairy tales at hours officially dedicated to sums. The children came to school eagerly, charmed there by this delightful uncertainty; and then in their homes retold the tales to brothers, sisters, and parents. The school-songs and games became most joyous; elves helped the children to sing and play....

Street-corner speakers grew wondrous gentle to each other. The old uncharity disappeared. Temperance orators tried the effects of geniality, and began to make progress against the enemy. Time-worn political opponents invited each other to share the top of a common tub; and there, while differing, praised each other's tolerance and sincerity....

The front-door to Utopia was opening.

At a bye-election, politicians found themselves scrupulous; canvassers stuck to the truth, took no unfair advantages, left personalities coldly alone. The Buffs, always well-provided, lent their enemy, the Blues, whatever carriages and motor-cars they could spare. Partisans of either side went to chair the rival candidate, and in the friendliest manner possible wished him to lose....

The causes which you, O reader, are opposed to fizzled out.

Roofs of city houses were covered with green plants, and turned into gardens, enabling employes to do their business better because work was punctuated with restful visits to the flowers....

Soap was vigorously used. Cleanliness became a creed and a passion. Morning faces, floors and doorsteps shone. (Five fortunes would not induce me to divulge the name of the favourite soap.)

All British birds in cages were taken into the country and released. Gourmets started a league to prohibit the eating of larks. The woodlands, therefore, rang with happier songs, and Fairyland advanced with seven-league boots....

Bean-feasters devoted evenings to the practising of glees, reviving folk-songs, so that country roads were no longer rendered wretched with the crude strains of music-hall choruses. Delightful concerts were organized for Londoners among the green fields. England once more began to be merry with song....

Vulgarity lost its flavour. Rudeness was cold-shouldered. Jokes which were not nice were not laughed at. They fell flat as recumbent tomb-stones. Humour--the real article--lived again. It was pleasant to hear the persiflage of office-boys, which began to be original. Omnibus drivers and cabmen were sometimes really funny. As for judges, they always joked in the right places....

The elves and the Bodyguard looked to the hoardings, which became more pleasant and effective as the artistic charm of advertisements increased. Colours were chosen which combined harmoniously. Passers-by no longer suffered toothache and heart-spasm because of some militant eyesore. Those pestilent bobbly lights, that reiterate a trade-name at night-time, were torn down by righteous raging mobs, hammered and drowned....

What else the fairies did I need not detail here, for the reader who has come to this page has proved perfectly capable of adding to the series of their good effects. It was all just splendid.

London surely and rapidly recovered itself; and as its appearance and manners progressed towards perfection, more fairies, encouraged by the brightness, came; more pillar-boxes were settled upon; the circle of influence was still wider spread; the march of amelioration went on.

When a hundred fairies had arrived, and forty-three gnomes had followed them--which was not until October, the sere of the year, had arrived--June decided to give a garden-party on the roofs of Paradise Court.

Bim was appointed major-domo, lord high-butler, and general factotum, something like fifteen officials in one. He swelled visibly with proper pride. His energy in making the preparations was so intense--he managed so successfully to be in two places at once--that not a few of his fellow-gnomes thought him blessed with invisible wings. His dignity and importance were unquestionable. He wore the superiority, won through being the first gnome to brave the rigours of London, so openly that his brethren of the democracy became more than a wee bit envious. Perhaps Bim's head had become very slightly swelled.

Meanwhile June was wondering what Oberon was doing.

That October night was an occasion to be well-remembered by fairy and by man, though man remained blind to its doings, albeit benefiting by its effects. The moon, which since the affair of the Violet Valley had disguised her interest in the rebellion of June, shone openly, and looked with all her seas. That London night was alive with vivid beauty, every angle and chimney-pot of those decaying hideous houses being beneficently illumined by her beams.

The roof-world was no longer a black and grey wilderness. Elfin wands, gnome labours, and many ingenuities had covered it with tiny lights and fairy flowers, making it a piece with the dream-world.

June--hostess and heroine--wore her lustrous crown. There were songs, dances, and much great joy. Gnomes, sitting in rows on chimney rims and along the edges of stacks, sang and applauded. Only one well-known song in the anthology of Elfdom was not heard during that night of revel--the triumph song, the chant reserved for the May-day crowning.

Mankind was still blind to these celebrations. It really seemed as if men must be trying to see with their noses. Such wonderful things were happening just under their very eyes which they could not see, and in their purblindness would not imagine. It is a heart-breaking business, the open-eyed blindness of men.

Later on, of course, they had better than glimmerings--but sufficient for this chapter is what we have said.

One old woman, and one old woman alone, had glimpses of that revel. She was Irish.

Bridget Malone had oftentimes, in her young days, seen fairies round an empty hearth in Connaught; but when she came to London, forty years before, she had forgotten the precious faculty, and lost the power of seeing the unseen. This sight of triumphant elves restored the gift.

Bridget woke out of sleep. Her bed was on the floor, but her bones were accustomed to hardness, so that not want of warmth or any Sybarite troubles caused her to wake.

She saw a strange light reflected on the tattered wall opposite the window. She breathed a prayer to Mary, and looked for the supernatural, for this was not moon-rays or sunshine, but something of both blended and idealized; something of the light which never was on sea or land.

Bridget, in her half-asleep wisdom, guessed it was the little people. Her thoughts flew back in a flash to the days of childhood. She thoughtfully thanked her stars, and felt religious.

She had it in mind to wake her daughter and three grandchildren, all sleeping in the same room, that they might share her good fortune, but refrained. If it were the fairies, they might not be pleased. She remembered the jealous secrecy reputed of the little people in the old country, who could not bear their meetings to be overlooked. So Irish!

Bridget, therefore, saw those revels alone. She crept on her knees to the window and watched, resting her chin on the sill. It was so good a sight that she did not know she had cramp, and quite forgot the rheumatism from which she had made her family suffer for the last five years. She was lost in a rapture.

"'Twas a soight to make ould eyes shparkle," she related afterwards. "On the tip-top of that chimney-pot was a little rhound man for all the worruld like a shwollen dumplin', but as rid as holly-berries. That was a turr'ble important little gintleman. He looked like the settin' sun full o' twinkles; and the way he would come down and bless the others, rhound lumps like hisself, as if he was cock o' the dancin', was a wonder! And there, on a t'rone, made out of all sorts of fer-rns and flowers, was a leddy-queen fairy. She had a cr-rown on her head that would buy Ireland's ransom; it shparkled and it shone, like the sun, moon and shtars all togither, whan glancin' on a lake in Connaught. Her face was a pictur' of kindness. Her eyes and her mouf were smilin' like blessin's. I'd have made her a cake for luck if I'd known how to get it to her, and I didn't want to frighten them away, the darlin's, a-leppin' and a-rompin' so prettily. So I put my daughter's petticoat round me and kept on lookin'. There were hunderds and hunderds of fairies. They danced like anyt'ing; and waved about and looked so beautiful--it was a pictur'! Hev ye iver heard nightingales in an Irish wood? Hev ye iver seen moonbeams on an Irish river? No! Dear, what can I say to ye? Well, you've seen mother's love in a woman's face, so you'll get some ghost of a notion of the music and the poethry, and the ma'nifishence of that dancin'. The light which came from the little people--it all came from them, with a little moonlight t'rown in--was br-right as fire on Tara.... And ye don't belave it? ... Ah, ye makes a mishtake, young gintleman! If they weren't fairies that I saw, and if I didn't see them, there's no hope for you nor for me nayther, for as thrue as Cuchulain killed his son they were there--as thrue as thruth they were there. I saw thim with these ould eyes.... See them? Of course I did! 'Twas plain as ugliness, only 'twas beautiful as light could make it. They kept on, they kept on, I tell ye, till afther the sun was up, and the lasht I saw of thim was the fairy with the cr-rown on shmilin' and shmilin'!"

So much for the testimony of Bridget Malone. Strangely enough--although the newspapers, thanks chiefly to the Venerable Archdeacon Pryde and Sir Titus Dods, now in the last month of his mayoralty, had made Oberon popular, and it was a beautiful commonplace to have faith in the fairies--no one treated Bridget's story with proper respect or even with simple common sense. Paradise Court--her own country--was packed with disbelievers, and--is it not always so?

Indirectly, however, her story had one good effect. It set others telling and inventing fairy-tales--spreading a fine fashion. So June, seeing that result, forgave the incredulity. The imagination of the people was awake.

Yes, Bridget had told the truth. The fairy with the crown was "shmilin' and shmilin'." The last moment of the revel brought June its crowning happiness, a great unexpected cause for joy.

As Bridget has told us, daylight was abroad, and the sun had risen, before the fairy dancing ended.

A white cloud--or it may have been a gulp of white smoke from an awakening workshop chimney--came sailing in the direction of the roof-garden. June watched it, wondering; it seemed charged with mystery.

As it passed overhead, she realized its burden. The magic of the crown gave her power to pierce its secret.

Hidden in the little white cloud was Oberon flying. He had come in disguise to spy out the land; had seen, had passed on his way.

Thus there was a fine full-stop to the revels.

Some notes of interrogation were added by June--"Would Oberon come to resume his reign? Where might Titania be? Was Fairyland at last on the way?"

Not yet. Not just yet!

*CHAPTER XVII*

*THE ARISTOCRACY MOVES*

As soon as the campaign of the pillar-boxes had well begun, and fairy progress was rapidly marching, June settled down to the siege and taming of her Grace of Armingham. That was a difficult fortress to reduce! For weeks the fairy was baffled.

The Duchess, as we know, had many great qualities, which need no advertisement here. Her main defect, which does matter, was a sublime indifference to certain most important sub-lunar things. She had at this time no sympathy, imagination, or gift of genial make-believe; there was nothing for the fairy to fasten to. It was much like trying to grow orchids in a vacuum.

June did not repeat her prankish experiment of the night of the party. Now and then the Duchess of her own accord thought a pun--habit had begun to pale the lurid hideousness of the thing--and actually came to regard herself as possessing some sense of humour--in this case a hopeful sign. June was merciful and not unwise. Never again was the Duchess urged by any invisible spirit of mischief to the brink of a breach of decorum.

The fairy was tactfully careful to do nothing to lessen her Grace's self-respect. The prize must be won with all flags flying. A discredited victim would mean no worthy--and possibly no permanent--victory. So the best order of diplomacy was required. June wove her spells, and brought magic to bear. These influences had some effect from the beginning; but it was to be a very lethargic conversion. For a time the Duchess gave no signs of submission.

The Duke was more malleable. June found it easy to influence him. He became quite a champion of fairydom over the dinner-table; and, when the men were left to their cigars, toasted Titania daily, in the good old-fashioned manner, with an apt quotation from the classics.

Nor did his enthusiasm and efforts finish there. Twice before the session ended he drove down to the House of Lords to move a resolution which would lead England elfwards; but, alas! on both occasions the warmth of the Gilded Chamber and the influence of ministerial explanations sent him to sleep. He awoke each time to find the Woolsack untenanted; the House adjourned; the opportunity gone.

The fairies took the will for the deed; and, after all, in those still unregenerate days, it came to much the same thing.

It was Geoffrey from whom Elfland came to hope most. He was young, capable of enthusiasm, and was already, though only in a shadowy way, on the side of the fairies.

He had thoroughly awakened to facts, and begun to take life very seriously. He went at his problems with a will. He immersed himself in Political Economy and the study of social problems, and sat at the feet of the Professors. He went for miles tramping through mean streets, studying conditions and people. He marched along country roads and noticed the empty and wasted fields, weed-choked streams, and infinite other opportunities for national well-being lost.

Frequently Bim went with him. For his own rest and comfort the gnome furnished Geoffrey's Homburg hat with a fairy hammock and gossamer sleeping-suit. His lordship became a walking bedroom, entertaining for hours, just over his brainpan, a distant cousin of Puck.

Geoffrey became eager to do something, to create something, to make life richer for his having lived. He thought of many possible occupations, chiefly mechanical; he felt he ought in his circumstance to do something quite contrary to his rule, something grimy and disagreeable. It ended--after some loose-ends of effort--by his remaining satisfied to prepare for Parliament. So he continued to absorb fustily-immortal works on the sciences of wealth and government, and practised the writing of pithy pamphlets and the delivery of orations--addressing "Mr. Speaker" and mighty demonstrations in the solitude of his bedroom.

In November the seat he was destined to, became vacant. The writ for an election could not be issued till after Parliament had reassembled in February; so, meanwhile, he must wait, and woo the suffrages of his future constituents.

He went to Armingham Castle, canvassed and took tea with several and sundry, kissed babies, opened bazaars, delivered a series of addresses of a pleasant Buff colour. The fairies were not with him then; they left that particular campaign alone. The burgesses he was to represent liked him well enough. They regarded him as a nice, handsome, earnest youth, whose speeches might well have contained more personalities and fewer figures, but who was safe and his cheques generous. He would do, was the burden of general opinion.

The fairies knew well that he would--when he was wanted.

Life drifted on, till signs of the approach of Christmas began to appear. June saw, in the window of the public-house by Paradise Court, a bill which advertised Peace, Goodwill, and a Goose-club. That set her thinking. She put on her crown and considered.

She sent out a trumpeter and called a fairy-conference. Every elf came from his pillar-box to sit on her roof and consult.

Three more recruits from Fairyland appeared at the assembly. The stars heard the ring of their welcome.

A plan of campaign was decided upon. The elves became still busier. They spent more time perched on human heads, stimulating good thoughts during those Advent weeks, than ever before. Men and women began to think of Christmas as Dickens did--but without the hot brandy.

The great occasion was approaching. The Clerk of the Weather took it into his official head to send something seasonable. It became cold and bracing; roofs, walls, and the roads--so long as the traffic would let them--were elegantly robed with snow. Ordinarily that snap of cold would have roused a wail and a grumble; but not this year--thanks to June and Company. The seasonable weather was taken as a further excuse for human kindness. The wail was not heard because the want, its cause, was removed. As for the grumble, there was so much good-nature in the improved world that to grumble was impossible, except for old soldiers who had made a habit of it.

There was to be no hunger in England during that Christmastide; and for the poor who tramp, none but actual marchers in the wooden-leg brigade were to be without a pair of comfortable sound boots.

Such facts as these prove better than any mere words of pen with what reality the purposes and ideals of the fairies had been accepted. And--this to satisfy rigid economists and the mighty individualist--it was all done by voluntary subscriptions. There!

Houses and streets were decorated as they should be. There were archways of flags; but paper flowers were properly tabooed. No fairy could tolerate that kind of drivel. Lamp-posts were wreathed with holly; bunches of mistletoe hung at street-corners. Kissing became popular again. Old maids, whose hearts had been starved for years and years, grew gracious and watched for bearded policemen.

Every window and window-sill was decked with laurel and moss. Chinese lanterns were hung over gates and under porches. Lighted lamps with coloured shades shone through uncurtained windows, so that when night fell every street and roadway became an illuminated avenue. Next-door neighbours, who for years had taken obvious pains to be mutually indifferent, exchanged greetings of good cheer, and admired each other's decorations.