Part 9

Bim became furious. He ran at full speed along the Embankment, viciously poking with his wand every love-lorn pair: and on, through Story's Gate into St. James's Park. As he went he passed scores of strolling lovers. He put his spell on every pair of them.

Through the Green Park he hurried, and across Piccadilly into Hyde Park. Wherever he went he carried magic, and produced its consequences. Love's multitudinous tongues were no longer tied. Thoughts hitherto dumb found glowing speech.

The gnome had run amok with a vengeance.

"Darling, darling, darling, darling!" said one young man in an ecstasy increasing with every syllable.

"Darling, darling, darling!" came the feminine answer, in tones that thrilled.

Then another sweet voice was gently borne upon the westering wind.

"I know where there's the teeniest duck of a saucepan set which will just suit our wee little homey."

The stars twinkled.

"Does-um!" was the masculine answer.

Still the stars twinkled.

"Ted," said Emma, "do you love me, love me?" She had been to a series of popular melodramas, and saw herself languid and rapturous. She asked questions emotionally, with the emphasis that comes with repetition.

"That I do just, old gell!" came the reply.

"And will you, my heart, always love me, love me?"

"S'welp me! old gell, I will!"

"Then another, Ted." There was a noise as of machine guns barking at a blue distance. Emma seemed satisfied.

Bim was pleased. He had not been looking for words in purple, and so was unable to feel disappointed. But as he worked from chair to chair he could not help accumulating the wish that more of the minor poet had been born in the common people. The prose that came was better than a mere bald narrative of time; but, surely, was not worthy of Aphrodite's doves.

Gradually the better came. It was the work of unconscious imitation.

Examples were being quickly followed in many directions. Several cabmen, having earned their day's requirements and a little over, were now using their cabs and still unwearied horses to convey for short distances fares too poor to pay for a ride. Motor-cabs and private cars actually buzzed with philanthropy. Policemen, carrying out and carrying on the inspector's orders, were urgently helping down-at-heel gentlefolk to be as comfortable as out-of-door conditions permitted.

So, too, lovers on that blessed evening, influenced by Bim, began to be worthy of Juliet, and their fellows of the Heaven-kissed company to whom passion has become sanctified, and the possession of love is a joy crowned, a power enthroned, making of its votaries queens and princes---- Ah me, and so on! The series of lovers multitudinous gradually became ashamed of their ungracefulness. They walked now, or sat with some better sense of picturesque propriety. Sprawling and hugging were postponed for the armchairs at home. The parks became tolerable to the married.

Here and there a joyful swain reclined at his lady's feet. The methods of musical comedy were fittingly applied to the prose of life. Ernie Jenkins was one of these recumbent swains. It was his weekly evening with Emily, who sat on a chair under a chestnut-tree steadily absorbing acid-drops. His red hair was stubbly, but he brushed his brow as if it were thick with love-locks.

"Emily! Emily!" he murmured repeatedly. Never had his feeling for her been so romantic as it now seemed. His narrow chest expanded with rapture and contracted with sighs. He knew himself fortunate. Bim had nearly prevailed on him to make the plunge. Though unable to go that length, Ernie mentally vowed to reduce his weekly allowance of bitter beer, the better to provide a nest-egg for furniture--which sounds like a mixed metaphor, but isn't; and if it were, can be put down to the fairies, who may do anything grammatical they please, even to the extent of splitting infinitives, which mortal authors may never do.

Hyde Park grew more and more delightful to Bim during that evening of bliss. He flitted about as if wings were on his feet, and with June's wand helped flowers, birds, grasses and winds to become more fairylike. Those blessed existences behaved as if they realized and enjoyed the change; and, to their credit be it said, no leafy, green space in crowded London had so much in accord with Falkland as the flowers, birds, grasses, winds, in Hyde Park then. Nature is, after all, a jolly good poet.

A new moon made its appearance. It peeped from a cradle of clouds. Venus and Jupiter gleamed underneath it. Other stars in their places shone. That was the first night to gladden London since the Mayday of June's madness; and as for the long, long time before that--oh dear! oh dear!

June, peering through a ducal window, realized the improvement, and was delighted with Bim. She knew it was largely his doing--his and the wand's. Her sympathy grew radiant towards him. He was a good gnome, and when they had returned, victorious and forgiven, to the Land of Wild Roses--as she had no doubt they would do eventually--he should be rewarded. Perhaps she would kiss him.

Slowly, but all too speedily, the time went by. The band which for three comfortable hours had been stirring the hearts of hundreds, played the Good-night National Anthem, and put out its lights. Two by two the lovers turned homewards, each couple happily emotional, joying in the enthralment, delightfully subdued. There were more marriages determined upon, more attachments confirmed and made love-affairs during that evening, than ever before--with the possible exception of the last of the supralapsarian days.

The author of this splendid improvement sat, smiling and tired, on a discarded cigarette-box. He joyed in the wide silence and the dewy grass.

The park became more and more still. On every side of it there was the eternal hum of the traffic. Solitary wayfarers passed silently along the walks and faded into the darkness. Now and then the shadow of laughter was heard, occasional cab-calls, one distant bugle sounding the last post, a man's voice giving a hail. Slowly even such sounds as these were lost in the all-engulfing silence; the night was very still.

There was room for fairies here, thought Bim, but no fairies were there. There ought to be rings of them, lightly laughing and dancing; making merriment for the stars. Hyde Park in its loneliness longed for them. They, only, were needed to make it the perfect garden.

The places of the elves had been taken by creatures of a very different clay. An hour or so ago, and the park was thronged with youth, hopeful, happy, confident. The difference now!

In all directions there slept or grumbled on the grass the human waste of our social system; the aged, the ugly, the hopeless, the infirm and unfit; the thriftless, workless, worthless--worn remnants of all manner of miserable humanity. Poor wretches whose days had long been damned! Their backs are weak with burdens. They have not even a hope in their pockets. They have sinned and suffered; have learned the many lessons of bitterness, and been crushed. They have hungered and had to continue hungry; have been wet, cold, and, in their shivering, had no better shelter than some broken penthouse or windy archway; their only friendships have been with members of their own dismal fraternity. Fortunate was Lear! They have touched desire with crime and been compelled to pay the law's and the world's penalties. There is short shrift for such as these, the drift of the cities. Born are they to suffer, to endure; to know only shame; to die.

The gnome resumed his wanderings, and gazed wonderingly at the many sleeping faces. It was the most amazing of all the sights he had seen. The marks of meanness and want were stamped on them. Yes, June was right in her madness. The fairies ought to have prevented this. Tragedy is permissible when it is romantic, but such tragedy of squalor as was lighted by the starshine then was ugly, evil, the first and last of the shames. The gnome came across Lazy Tim, who stretched on an open newspaper, fast asleep, snoring with his mouth wide open.

Tim was a ne'er-do-well. He had not one scruple, hope, ambition, or blessing. His father and mother had been ne'er-do-wells also. Beyond them he had no history. He had never been inside a school, or known what discipline--other than that of the gaol and casual ward--meant. He had never formed a taste for work, but, thanks to sharpened half-wits, had here and there earned many crooked pence. He had been taken on as a farm-hand and a factory-hand times out of counting; but the monotony of the one employment and the prison-like character of the other had always driven him into the free-lance world again. Tim was unmoral and incorrigible. He had known no guidance whatever in his ways. He had an idea that it was wise to dodge any man in uniform, and that was about all.

Experience had, however, taught him many of the tricks of cheap cunning. He could, when in the humour, pitch a yarn about his non-existent wife and children and the bronchitis, which would make a stone moist with sympathy. He had even on one extraordinary occasion obtained sixpence from a local secretary of the Charity Organization Society, and frequently had charmed the generosity of not a few religious ladies with his sighs and aspirations. He would have taken any religion you liked for a course of square meals. Once there was, possibly, good material in Tim; but it had run to seed and been lost. He had not enjoyed one fair chance. He had come into the world inopportunely. The fates were sleeping when he was born. Ever since infancy he had starved, stolen, sinned--if such as he can "sin"--been punished and neglected; and so was wrecked.

Bim, studying the sleeping face, was stirred with fairy's pity. He knew nothing of Tim's past experience, of the opportunities grudged, denied, and lost; but could see the man was inherently unhappy. That was enough. Poor wretch! Something must be done for him at once. He wished June had been there to prescribe the remedy. But there was no use in fruitless wishing. Such is not Elfland's way.

He marched up Tim's body, and felt the wasted form under his feet. Bones and hunger, that was the story; bones and hunger and rags. He stood by the tangled beard, and with the end of the wand gently stroked the lined and scraggy face. Tired, ugly face! It looked so weak, ay, and so brutal in the night's dark light. Scars were cut into the cheeks and forehead; the nose was debased, and bore the marks of drink and fighting. The hair, in a grey and filthy tangle, streamed from under a broken hat. Here was a man in the prime of life, finally ruined.

Tim would wake presently. What was the use of his waking? Better always to sleep and dream than to live again for the day's despair and a life's long misery.

Bim laid the point of the wand on the sleeping man's forehead, and thought of these things.

Suddenly Tim awoke, stretched, rose, shook himself, burst out into laughing. He took off his hat and looked carefully at it. "A kingly crown!" cried he. He stroked his rags, and was joyful. "Ermine and purple." His hunger was forgotten; his thirst--his only ever-faithful companion--no longer made pleadings. "Feasts in plenty!" he exclaimed, lifting arms delightedly to the stars. "What a palace I have! What a kingdom! Oh, my royal heritage! It is good to be alive--to be king, king, king!"

Tim had found happiness. Never again could he know the evils of bitter reality. Henceforward he was blessed with the illusions. He was "touched." Bim and the wand had wrought the marvel.

Blessed are the poor whom the fairies have touched. Hats off to them, gentlemen! They are far beyond life's miseries. They are kings in their own right--happy kings. We who have the blue and yellow worries, even though we can jingle coins in our pockets, are far less happy than they.

Bim climbed a chestnut-tree, and found slumber in a throstle's nest.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*IN SOCIETY*

As the Archdeacon's carriage rolled westward, June watched the people in the crowded streets, and made some estimate of the task in front of her.

Already she and her squire had done much. They had speeded the efforts of the good folk always at work. They had guided the benevolent and beneficent along the wise ways. They had done much--very much, but it was as nothing in comparison with the need. North, south, east and west, she had flown in her peregrinations, only to find much the same problems, similar squalor, selfishness, ugliness and want--unhappy legacies of past carelessness and misdoings--prevalent in all parts. Slums and indifference abounded wherever she flew. It was the indifference which particularly troubled her. She rested her head on the Archdeacon's watch-pocket and wept.

The prospect before herself and Bim seemed appalling. Only the gnome and she--two, when what really was wanted was an organized army from Elfland of gentle spirits with magic besoms and enchanted swords.

But it was no use sighing for the unavailable. She must go on as well as she could, making the most of her own powers, intentions and Bim.

Armingham House stands in a dull respectable square. Two stone armorial beasts keep guard of its ugly gateway. They are legendary monsters, not wyverns, or griffins, or unicorns, or mock-turtle, but something of a combination of all of these. On the arch of the gate is a broken motto, which means something heroic in very bad French. It originated from a martial medieval incident; nobody remembers what. One of the advantages of long descent is a convenient haziness as to certain events and beginnings.

The Duke of Armingham possessed every one of the characteristics of extreme aristocracy. His blue blood, high nose, arched eyebrows and slender hands could only be improved on by an idealistic portrait-painter. They were the sure marks of class and culture. He had the gentle voice, deliberate manner, and a habit of waving his pince-nez when he was speaking, which mark authority. Throughout his life, whenever he had spoken, others had to be silent; it was therefore unnecessary for his voice to be raised, or his tones to become strident.

His fashions were those of the early seventies. Until that period he had out-dandified the dandies and been glorious in the forefront of his time. Then his style stayed still. Any more recent order of dress than that which Louis Napoleon affected was out of date, he declared. He was, in these later days, a dear old thing, kind and as perfectly happy as a duke can be. He bore the disadvantages of his wealth and position with wonderful lightheartedness, and was able by taking thought to avoid being envious of his inferiors. He feared nothing except lightning, mud in Piccadilly, and his Duchess on a Court day.

His wife was even more assuredly an exalted being. Rumour said that in her young days she had been a nursery governess; but those who ought to be authoritative on the subject declared that rumour lied. Anyhow, the gilt and scarlet books which tell the tales of the titled, gave her a colonel for father, so that her blood was likely to be something blue. In her gowns and graces she certainly looked every inch a Duchess, and there were many inches.

Her influence in the world was worthy of her station. She had eyes which commanded, and could make presumption feel like a doormat on a rainy day. She never forgot her coronet and was not genial; indeed, she looked on mankind through diminishing lorgnettes, and saw it small. She was one of the two hundred and twenty-three ladies, all the world over, who know they are Supermen.

When June and the Archdeacon arrived at Armingham House, the fairy had not quite recovered from the dumps. She had for a little while lost confidence in herself, and felt no longer militant. She clung to the Archdeacon, and was borne by him up the white and blue stairway between footmen with heads of silver. The scene where the guests were welcomed was magnificent. The servants in their yellow livery, the ladies with their jewels, the sparkle, the laughter, and the flowers, made splendid circumstance.

The picture, beautiful though it might be to mortal eyes, could not win June from her state of weary self-consciousness. She listened to the talk, and watched the movement listlessly. It was all the matter of dream. In comparison with the wealth and royalty of Fairyland, it was mere shadow, noise, nonsense and tinsel!

She was certainly feeling unappreciative and depressed.

The Archdeacon passed through the business of greetings, and fell into talk with Lord Geoffrey Season, the Duke of Armingham's third and youngest son.

Lord Geoffrey was a golden youth of twenty-seven. Since his sixth birthday he had been destined for Parliament. There was a county constituency waiting for him to accept its suffrages at the next General Election; while family influence and the way he wore his clothes made it certain he would be entrusted with office early. Up to the present he had done little more than always the proper thing. He had the statesman-like quality of never being original, could express the obvious with an air of profundity, and gave promise of not making any mistakes, which, after all, is somewhat less than the heaven-sent destiny. He was moreover--at present--something of a prig.

June awakened from her lethargy to take an interest in him. She liked his wavy hair and china blue eyes, but still her energy was sleeping. She would keep her eyes on Geoffrey. She saw in him possibilities.

Watching the guests, idly studying their brightness of mind, and evident bodily content, noting the luxury of the surroundings, she, perforce, must come to the building of comparisons and contrasts. Different this from the squalid misery she had witnessed and endured since her entry into London! It was not Paradise Court alone which formed the great contrast, but slums innumerable in all parts of the Metropolis; and, linked with them, those dun habitations of struggling respectability, the hundred thousand ugly houses in dull inglorious streets, occupied by drudges, who, day after day, through the years, toil in shops and offices, selling their God-given lives for a little dross, a little patronage, and some spells of conventional happiness.

(This is the Fairies' judgment.)

After those years of little-profitable labour--away from Nature, away from the large reality--and after the faithful practising of ritual, according to the gospel of Mrs. Grundy, the poor things become brothers and sisters to the vegetables and die. So drift their lives away!

And here--at the very other extreme--was this great ducal casket of luxury and laughter, giving welcome to a limited select circle of people who need, if so they willed, do nothing but be happy and enjoy themselves. Heigho! paradoxes a hundredfold abide in the shadows by every street corner.

June remembered the phantoms of Paradise Court, and, in a different manner from the Pharaoh whom Moses chided, hardened her heart. Oberon, or no Oberon, the fairies should come back to London town! For the sake of the so-called rich, as well as for the sake of the very poor, they must re-create Elfdom within the seven square miles, and carry their blessed influence through Suburbia. If this could not be before she must yield up the crown, then it must be after. In any case, it must be. That was certain, flat, absolute. London should be reclaimed.

The Archdeacon's table-partner was Mrs. Billie Thyme, a small pink, flaxen lady, whose over-rich elderly husband financed her fads, and in consequence gave her ample opportunity to shine in the personal paragraphs of evening newspapers. Mrs. Billie was not the least bit _blasee_, although even she was sighing for new excitements to conquer.

She was always in an infinite vein of flutter and chatter. Most exalted personages were glad to talk nonsense with her; at bazaars and garden-parties her skirt-dancing drew the crowd. She was a prime favourite of the Duchess, and kept the dinner-circle well entertained with tinkling talk.

It was she who began on the fairies. They were seldom left out of the conversation of these times. June was still dreamily inert, throned on a large silver salt-cellar, watching and indifferently wondering, not yet vividly interested enough to use these puppets for the march-forward of her ideas.

"And what are we to think of this fairy craze?" Mrs. Thyme asked of the company generally.

There was no immediate response. The Archdeacon left the question for someone else to answer. In Society he tried habitually to sit on the fence.

"A nine-day' wonder!" said Lord Geoffrey. "Mere nonsense, as ping-pong and diabolo were."

"A folly to-day; forgotten to-morrow; and afterwards a sad reflection"--this from a novelist of the moment--"democracy is a baby which quickly breaks its toys."

"It has already lasted nearby nine weeks," answered the Duke quietly. "It is strange; I don't understand it. That Mansion-House fellow, the Lord Mayor, began it. The movement seems spreading. Most movements do spread nowadays. We didn't do that sort of thing in the seventies."

"Indeed, no," agreed the Duchess, in her best commanding-officer voice. "When I was a 'gairl,' belief in the fairies lingered amongst the Irish and nowhere else. Those Board Schools and Trade Unions have caused this nonsense, I'm sure."

"There is one encouraging fact, Duchess!" cried the novelist, of course an egoist, who called himself Douglas le Dare, though his patronymic was Barlow, and his father had christened him William. "It is that in our literature--the test of our minds--we keep to sane life and the plain truth. Fairy tales are not written nowadays; such originality is futility. We weave our romances round every-day life, we adorn dull truth, and what's the result? I sold fifty thousand copies of my last book."

"Did you really?" said Mrs. Thyme, opening her blue eyes to their widest. "I think I will write!"

"Ha!" he said, as he shook back his iron-grey locks--his hair was an advertisement--"you should write, but deal with facts--facts--the fairies--pah!--they are merely a sort of mental fungi. The public wants prose. Always please the public! That is the root of literary success."

June was alive now. Her wings quivered with indignation. The crown on her head blazed with elf-light. She was angry, angry. But she made no movement, only sat upright on the salt-box, keenly attentive to what those clay creatures would say.

"If you do start author, Katie," said the Duke to Mrs. Thyme, "you must cultivate an eccentricity or two, mustn't she, Mr. le Dare?"

"Oh, I don't know, Duke!"

"Oh, must I?" she exclaimed, eagerness alight in her eyes. "Do tell me an eccentricity or two!"

"Sorry I can't, Mrs. Thyme. All my spare time is occupied with thinking out my own eccentricities, what few I indulge in. No; what you really require is to be earnestly business-like, and to see well after the advertisement of your books."

Then a bearded Baronet, who wore a sparkling monocle, and thought it humorous to be interfering, joined in.

"Talkin' of fairies and the Lord Mayor," he said, "weren't you mixed up in that little business at the Mansion House, Mr. Archdeacon? Eh? What?"

Eyes turned to the person addressed, who, finding his theories not promising to be popular in that company, was willing to remain silent while the tide of depreciation flowed. All his life he had been on the side of the cheers. June looked at him. She was eager to see how he endured the test. If he failed and proved faithless, the power of Fairyland would be lessened thereby, for faith is the strength-giver. She did nothing to influence him. Though, in her indignation, magic emanated from her personality, it was not to affect him.