Part 3

Ordinarily sleep comes to fairies as it comes to birds, instantly and absolutely. But now June could not lose herself in its blessed forgetfulness. For a very long time she lay awake, staring at the veiled sky and listening with strained attention to the eternal throb and hum of the moving life around her.

Very far away, it seemed--far higher than ever in Fairyland it had appeared--the moon was ghostily journeying. There was now no such expression of interest on the lunar countenance, as there had been on the previous night, but dull wakefulness and watchful indifference. All the elves might have run awry and the flowers have withered, for aught the moon appeared to care.

June felt lonely then, especially as not a star was showing, and there were no nightingales. Fairyland seemed millions of miles away. She began to feel strange depression, to fear she had not done well in taking on herself the impossible quest. Just as every Quixote smarts from the despondence of folly, during the cold periods of a divine pilgrimage--so then did she.

June was as dismal as London could make her during those hours of involuntary vigil. As she swung in her cobweb, and stared at the starless mirk, she tried hard to impress on herself the need of her service, and the wisdom of that adventure. Owing to much weariness and the gloom, she took a lot of convincing.

The life of those mortals was truly a sad business. To think of Sally and her grown companions working continually for the sake of mere existence, enduring a life of want and ugliness, with the fairies nowhere near, was truly very sad! All the more need for her to go on and labour.

So it was settled.

The thought was so comforting that her wakefulness came to an end. She fell asleep almost at once, and dreamed she was resting in her own home-bower, in the Land of Wild Roses. Happy cobweb!

The moon went into the clouds, and the hours marched by.

June was awakened by a shrill whistle. A factory called, and the fairy rose.

London at dreary dawn! It was more than ever a dismal scene which greeted her on that grey young morning. Her despairing hopes of the previous evening went down, plumb, to zero. She looked at the miles of black roofs and dingy chimneys. What a hideous world it was! Not so great a wonder, after all, that the elves had determinedly deserted it.

She preened herself carefully, tested both wings to see they were uninjured, fared on the magic food which fairies can, when necessary, make from dew and the west wind, and then felt ready for a day's activities. Her remedial work was to begin at once. To watch evil, and not to check it, was to invite despair and failure; but to displace bad with good was encouraging, and the fairy's business! June put on the crown and began.

Her first duties were with the folk of Paradise Court. She spread wings and was wafted down to the window-ledge. Early as it was, the women and Sally were already labouring with their needles. They were breakfasting while they sewed. Their fare was stale bread, rejected refuse from middle-class tables, and some fearful meat bought--a pound for a penny--from Mother Wolf, a hag in the neighbourhood who made profit by selling offal for human food. How that purveyor of nauseousness escaped the penalties due for so doing is a mystery; but so she did.

Bill was still sleeping, another man by his side. The lords of creation had the pile of clothing to themselves for bed, pillow and quilt. The feminine members of the establishment had managed as well as they might do, lying close together to keep each other warm. That was the usual order of things.

June entered by the magic way of the window, and tickled Bill's nose with her wand. He sneezed, stretched, got up; his first words were just a little lively language--an ungenial good-morning to his companion in luxury, which effectually roused that gentleman.

The men put on their caps--so completing their toilette--yawned, and, without saying a word to the women, went out to look for work. That was their profession--looking for work. They never found it, but ever continued seeking. They breakfasted on beer, bread and grease at the hostelry which gave joy to Paradise Court. The liquid part of their meal lasted till not another copper could be found, borrowed or cadged. Bill's life was a long process of idleness, blessed with beer.

In the morning the clothing that was finished had to be taken to the tailoring firm in the City for which it was made. The various garments were arranged in a bundle, tied round with one of the treasured pieces of string, and perched on Sally's narrow shoulder. She clasped it tightly with her thin hands, trying to believe it was a baby to be nursed.

June decided to go with Sally, to help her bear the burden. This she managed to do by sitting upon it, using the wonderful wand, and wishing the bundle should seem only a tenth part of its real weight. So it was made to be; but Sally, who had not been encouraged to observe things, or to estimate differences, did not become aware of its lightness. In any case, the burden, even when reduced by June, was full heavy enough for a child of her strength and years. But many another like Sally was bearing a similar burden.

Down the stairs and out of Paradise Court went the girl and the fairy; along a dreary, slippery pavement, passing a thousand people, self-interested, self-centred and hurrying, who might laugh, talk, bustle and frown in their individual ways, but who still to June, as to Oberon and all else of the better land, were poor, pitiful shadows, journeying, worrying, moiling for a few thousand days until the extinguisher was put over them.

Yellow and blue tramcars went jangling by. June, seeing people get into and out of them, was minded to make one of them stop, so that Sally could ride; but it was better this first time for Sally to go her own gait as usual. Anyhow, June was alert to be helpful, and handled her wand as the infant spendthrift fingers his penny, determined to use it as speedily and extravagantly as possible.

Sally toiled along slowly. She kept to the chief road, never daring to relax her hold of the bundle, because of the difficulty of recovering it.

She came to a wide crossing--a tramway and omnibus terminus--and passed through a maze of carts and people. June began to feel frightened because of the clamour and crowding, but soon lost her unworthy fears by remembering that these creatures and things--in comparison with herself--were only shadows, permitted to dwell for a little while in the beautiful world which belongs to the fairies, and others of spirit-land. She had more power in her wand and will than they in any or all of their Brobdingnagian faculties.

June was profoundly impressed by the wonderful powers of the police. The way the helmeted man of authority stood in the midst of the press and ruled it, appealed to her as nothing had done since she had witnessed Oberon in his majesty commanding the shapes and princes in the Violet Valley. As Sally went slowly by the policemen, June gave each a fairy's blessing. They became thereafter, and are to this day, more than usually polite and attentive to the timid.

Sally plodded along steadily. She passed a pump dripping with water. June saw several fat sparrows before it, squabbling over the corn which had fallen from a horse's nosebag. She went to chide them, as fairies do to birds in the country when their manners would bear mending; but these town sparrows, in their Cockney ignorance, never having seen a fairy, or dreamed there was anything in existence more important than themselves and perhaps some thin stray cat, pecked at her disrespectfully. As she paid no attention to their surliness, they took sudden panic and fled in a fright, chattering at one another in fine unanimous complaint.

June resumed her perch, but now on Sally's hat. She throned herself on its broken brim, and viewed London with exalted detachment.

The squalor was left behind, but to fairy eyes the City was particularly dreary. The buildings withal so heavy, high and ambitious, wore looks of decay, and were stained with grime. The coarseness of the atmosphere, too, was oppressive. What a life! What a place! June could not resist wistfully thinking of that happier world where the flowers are free and soft winds kiss them. She deeply pitied the folk, who, voluntarily or not, were foolishly imprisoned in the stuffy stone-land.

Sally turned down a court and threaded a series of alleys, bewildering to a stranger, till she came to an ill-painted door and rang a bell.

She lowered her bundle gladly and sat on the step in a state of weakness and exhaustion. The powers within were dilatory or inattentive. She had to wait a good long while before the door was abruptly opened by a lantern-jawed youth, with red bristles on his upper lip, hair plastered with oil, and a paste diamond pin stuck in his yellow necktie. His associates knew him as Ernie Jenkins.

"Why wasn't you 'ere earlier?" he asked. "You'll 'ave to wait now. Mr. Oldstein's out and I'm busy. You seem to think you can come when you like. But you can't. See? You can leave the goods inside and 'ook it for a time. Now remember, and look alive next week. See? Come back in three-quarters of an hour and get yer money."

The door--the back-entrance to Mr. Emmanuel Oldstein's wholesale tailoring emporium--was forthwith shut. Sally, meanwhile, must amuse herself as best she might. Again, with the patience of the starved, she sat on the step to wait, and sufficiently forget herself to think she would like to cry. However, she refrained from tears--the neglected have none to spare--and, as usual, centred her mind on things to eat. Food, food, food--there was her aspect of Eden. The object of her particular desire was again, as always, gravy, "'ot and smelly."

June read her thoughts, and went to work to realize them.

A school-boy was going by, whistling. He had been excused his lessons for the day and was cheerily hurrying to the Oval to see the year's first cricket-match. A white-paper parcel, spelling lunch, was tucked under his arm.

June gazed fixedly at him, waved her wand, and willed him to look at Sally.

He did so. The spell was on him. One glance was enough to influence his inexperienced heart--he was not old or wealthy enough to have learned caution in his charity. He could not now have enjoyed his cricket, remembering, as he must do, the pale, starved face of that weary child, and not have helped her.

He hid his actions in the shelter of a convenient doorway, opened the packet, took out two sandwiches and a chunk of cake, shoved the rest in his jacket-pocket, and, running shamefacedly by, dropped the provender on Sally's lap. He heard her give a gulp of joy as he went on with singing heart, to be the happiest lad in Kennington.

Surrey did better than usual that day.

While the child greedily munched and waited, June, grudging the wasting of time, flew skywards to investigate.

She was soon above the roofs, and awed by the myriad chimneys. Her attention was caught by the dome of St. Paul's, which gloomed like a round purple cloud, over and above all else. It was, as it is, the crown of London. She had never seen anything like it in Fairyland, and wondered at the patience of men. Truly, they were poor things, transient creatures, and all that; but they have faith in what is material, and manage many things in their few years.

Her wings moved rapidly. She sped like a flash of fragrant light over the intervening courts and houses, and quickly came to St. Paul's Churchyard. She passed between the branches of the trees in the railed garden, greeting sparrows and pigeons as she went, and wishing--wishing heartily--she could meet some of those bright-hued, happy-songed friends of hers, who bless the friends and skies of the country. But that could not be. The birds she loved had followed the fairies, leaving prose in feathers behind.

She circled slowly right round the big dome, and wondered more than anything else at its crusted dirt--which dated from the Stuarts. She settled on the weather-ruined statue of an apostle--whom it represented being as indistinguishable as Shem in the nursery Noah's Ark--and gazed with wonder and without admiration at the moving, stretching scene--the live panorama--before her. Roofs and steeples and streets--stretching on and on--that was the picture seen by the fairy. It had its wonders, no doubt; but oh, the pity of it, the crowding and the treelessness! What a woeful waste of space!

The fairies, amongst their shortcomings, have absolutely no sense of political economy. Had June been told that ground-rent on Ludgate Hill is so many pounds sterling a square inch, she would have been totally unimpressed and possibly bored.

"Where could the children find room to play?" she said to herself. "And the flowers must all be smothered!"

She flew to the open space below, and perched on the statue of Queen Anne, to watch with sorrowing eyes the tired and hurrying people. Poor shadows! In a little while they would be back again in the ground which gave them, their opportunities for kindness and happiness ended; and here they were, thinking only of to-day's gains, rushing after the mirage, losing what mattered.

She had grown weary almost to weeping of the sordid scene, and was thinking miserably of its contrast with Fairyland. Oh, why had the elves forsaken London?--when--there was Bim!

The gnome was toiling up Ludgate Hill. He seemed to have shrunk and become a very pale red. Weariness and bewilderment had, for the time being, taken the colour out of him. He was awe-struck and terrified by the rolling volume of traffic, which, though it could not possibly have hurt him, seemed very formidable. He looked with round eyes at the lumbering vehicles, and though to him they were really but shadows bearing all manner and shapes of shade, he was bewildered by their multitude and variety.

With its shining slope and insistent traffic, he found Ludgate Hill a trying and slippery ordeal.

He was repeatedly in straits during that scrambling ascent. The horses could see him; the human beings could not. Time and again a boot threatened him, a skirt swished by him; the wheels of a vehicle often seemed over him; but always he managed--though not without numerous sprawls and tumbles--to avoid contact with the objectionable shadows.

He reached the top of the hill and stood panting and triumphant. Suddenly he saw June, a fairy crowning the effigy of the queen who is dead. He squealed with joy and stared in goggle-eyed rapture. Hoo-oo-oo-oo-ray!

His happiness received a check.

A scavenger boy, running along, crouching, scooping up refuse, scooped up Bim! Before the gnome could say "Robinson" he was up, carried away to a receptacle for dirt, and forthwith tumbled in.

He crawled out puffing and disillusioned. He blessed the scavenger boy thoughtfully for his hospitality; squatted bewildered upon the kerb; then, remembering, turned about and lost all woes, aches and weariness in the joy of seeing June.

"Bim, my brave Bim," she greeted him.

He stared open-mouthed, panting and smiling. He had now no words for answer, and needed none.

*CHAPTER V*

*TOM TIDDLER'S GROUND*

Bim was almost top-heavy with joy at meeting June just when his hopes had been at their lowest; she was hardly less delighted at seeing him. For not only was the gnome something from Fairyland, a reminder of its dear delights and golden days, and the means of strengthening her strained determinations; but he had come from her own particular corner of the delectable realm, the Land of Wild Roses, and brought to jaded Cockneydom some fragrant home memories.

But she must get back to Sally. She flew down to Bim, and held out her wand. he grasped it, and forthwith was up in the air, magically borne along by the hurrying fairy.

It was no new thing for Bim to have an aerial journey. One of the favourite games of gnomes--naturally no more able to fly than a pig is capable of "Bo"--is to grab the legs of a pigeon and cause the silly bird to go circling. This was the first time his means of sky-progress had been a fairy. It was an experience strange, terrible and new, to be dragged and wafted over that wilderness of roofs. But it was also exhilarating. He began to sing in his croak of a voice an old elf-song about moonbeams that became icicles. June, listening to him, and watching the scene beneath, vowed and vowed again that she would not rest till London was restored to Fairyland.

Bim had no consciousness, as he croaked and dangled there, of the effects of his influence on the fortunes of the dark city: London likewise had no idea of it.

Sally was still waiting, though the passing of people on business to and from the Oldstein establishment had required her to move to another doorstep, where she sat and watched for the summons.

This seeming neglect on the part of the red young man so irritated June that she flew in hottest haste, head first, through the opening for letters in the door, prepared energetically to remind him.

He was sitting on a counter with stacks of clothing about him--how musty it all smelt!--hard at work reading a worn "horrible"--"Sweeney Todd" its hero--and yawning. Atmosphere, rather than weariness, caused the gape, which came to an abrupt close.

As June was entering the warehouse from the back way, Max Oldstein, the only son of the "firm," was to be heard descending the stairs opposite. Jenkins was off his perch in an instant, and busily tumbling a bale of clothing from the counter to the floor.

June viciously poked with her wand the scraggy nape of his neck to remind him of Sally. Her protest was effectual. He went to the door and shouted:

"Come in, Kid!"

Sally eagerly entered. She stood on the door-mat trembling.

"Pay her four and twopenth," said the master, as he put a tick on the paper he held, "and tell 'er that if 'er people don't do the work betterth, they'll be wantin' it."

Max turned abruptly, and went to the other end of the shop, where he lighted a cigarette and thoughtfully admired the great gold ring on his large little finger. June, feeling angry because of his blatant unpleasantness, wished him a punishment of pain, which he felt.

"My corn!" he said, "it'th goin' to rain."

Meanwhile Jenkins was addressing Sally.

"You 'eard what the young guv'nor said? And don't you forget it! There's the oof--count it!--and 'ere's another lot of material. See? Twenty pieces. Now, you can sling your 'ook!"

Sally poised the pile of cloth on her shoulder and went. June followed her into the street, made the load as light as good wishes and touch of wand permitted, and instructed Bim, who during her absence had fallen fast asleep in the gutter, to clamber on Sally's hat and go home--"home"--with her, to guard her.

Then she returned to see what could be done with Max Oldstein, whose ripe, unusual vulgarity fascinated her.

Sally, with Bim sprawling along her hat-brim like invisible red trimming, jogged slowly eastward. The exhausted gnome was soon again in his own little nod-land--sleep pulled so hard at his eyelids--and did not return to this world of the infinite unrealities till Sally was in the bed-workroom at Paradise Court, and the weary women had greedily counted and grumbled over the few coins brought to them.

At once they returned to the sewing, and plied desperate needles through the new mass of half-made clothing. So wore away more hours of their unblessed lives.

Bim, awakened and sent tumbling by Sally's doffing her hat, crawled into the beer-can, which still was lying where it had rolled when Bill dropped it; curled himself up like a squirrel in its winter fastness, and was asleep again. This shows how over-tired the poor fellow was; Bim was, however, not too weary for dreams, and in the visions of slumber, once more made that fearsome journey from Fairyland which ended with the finding of June. This proves that gnomes can ride nightmares too; a fact for the Psychical Society.

Max Oldstein puzzled June. She could not make him out. His interests and actions seemed so purposeless and mean. During that busy morning he was forty unpleasant persons rolled into one. When a customer who spelt prosperity arrived, Max lost himself in oily politenesses. He laughed vigorously at humour hardly there, and smirked and toadied like a _nouveau riche_ at a Primrose tea-fight.

When there followed a journeyman-tailor who had wasted his opportunity in drink, and was impelled by repentance and family needs to beg pitifully to be taken on again, Max's politeness went like a bang. He snubbed the tailor-man for his ingratitude, and abruptly closed the poor fool's pleadings with a turn of his back.

There were so many other starvelings to take that wretch's place.

In the course of the morning Max showed himself shrewd, petty, fawning, arrogant, determined, stupid, vulgar, and cruel. Ernie Jenkins, who copied his manner as well as he was able to, lived in mortal terror of him. To Ernie, Max Oldstein was a mean necessity, his bread and butter, his all. To lose that hateful, pitiful employment would be to cut off every one of his private luxuries--his evening glass of bitter, with its opportunity for badinage with a barmaid, the Woodbine cigarettes, the weekly visit to a music-hall, the Sunday walk with Emily. So he went on, like a hundred thousand others of his kind--selling his life for a pittance, swallowing infinite insults, cringing and mean. Poor Ernie! What is to be done with such humans as he?

At one o'clock Max hurried to the "Haversack" for a large meal of stout and boiled beef with carrots, and, while eating, read with sniggerings a weekly pink paper, which gave oracular advice on race-horses, interspersed with funny paragraphs about lodgers. Also there was talk, in which barmaids, customers and waiters joined familiarly--of the X street murder, the betting prices, and the divorce case of the day with its pretty details.

Then Captain Crowe, whom the folk of his world knew as "Charlie," came in, and Max was pleased to speculate a shilling on a hundred up with him, which the young man lost with a very bad grace, till the Captain, who really had once upon a time held a subaltern's commission in a disbanded battalion, having borrowed half-a-crown from a casual customer, who knew him but indifferently well, restored his opponent's good temper with the gift of a soda and whisky and some flowers of speech, so leading the way to another game of billiards and another defeat for Max.

June was awed by all she saw, and puzzled how to win back to Fairyland--this! She sat amongst used tumblers on the mantelpiece, below the marker's board, patiently watching and wondering. What could she do to mend things? How difficult it was! Were human beings worth saving? Was not Oberon in his ruling right, and she wickedly wrong? These creatures--so mean and sordid--were worse than ever they had been painted to her by their most candid critic in Fairyland.

Then she remembered Sally, and the sweated women in their evil home, and decided to persevere.

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!" she said thoughtfully, unconsciously plagiarizing.

The whisky ended, and the business of recreation done, Max Oldstein paid his score unwillingly, and returned to headquarters. Ernie met him at the door-step.

"Guvnor's come. Been waiting an hour," he warned him.

Max ran upstairs, two at a time, to see his father, and hastily concocted a detailed account of the business which had detained him. The lie was not required that day. He mentally pigeon-holed it for a later occasion.

His senior greeted him with a loud, glad laugh. Max wondered. His father showed him an invitation card with the arms of the City upon it.