Part 10

So you can well imagine that it was not always the greatest fun to wander over the face of that moorland, while this cruel monster, dry as a chip, still as one of the bowlders among the heather, and invisible as Will-o'-the-Wisp by day, lay watching the Bogle Thorn and the Little Green Man's Well, to which some one had to go at least once a day for water. Several times already the Little Green Man had had to fight for his life. But he was a good shot with the little fairy bow-and-arrows--the ones tipped with chips of flint--_you_ know? ("We know!" came from all the children in a breath.) Besides, Father Green Man was so tough when you had him that the Ugly Gray Dwarf thought twice, and even three times, before tackling him. For although he had no heart to pierce, but only a cold, cold stone out of the bottom of a well instead, the heads of the tiny chip arrows came off where they hit him and annoyed him fearfully, wandering about his system and tickling up unexpected organs. So that at long and last he got to know that he had better give the Little Green Man a wide berth.

But when he got married, and children began to patter up and down the dainty little turning staircase of the Bogle Thorn, the Gray Dwarf rubbed his knotted clawy hands together, and grumbled over and over to himself--"Fresh Meat! Fresh Meat!! Fresh Meat!!!" And if he did not laugh, it is certainly reported that he chuckled to himself, like thunder among the hills very far away.

But of all who went about the passages and ups-and-downs of the Bogle Thorn, there was none so reckless as Little Rooty. He was just as rambling, rampageous a boy as any I know! (Here Father looked at us, and Hugh John nodded at Sir Toady, who nodded back, to show that both considered the other as "catching it.") More than once the Little Green Man had even taken a little green switch, and--well, it just happened the same, so there is no use entering into _that_. But, in spite of all, Rooty would go off foraging where he had no business to, and that came quite near to being the end of Little Rooty, who would not "take a telling," and forgot all about the little green switch as soon as he had stopped smarting--where he frequently smarted.

But one dreamy afternoon, when even the bumble-bees fell asleep and only gurgled in the deep fox-glove bells, when his father was lying on the green couch in the parlor, and his mother was telling the others tales about "humans" in a shady green place on the tree-top, Little Rooty slipped away off down-stairs, twenty-five flights to the cellar door where they took in the winter's fuel--that is, fir-cones chopped small, which make the best fires in the world, especially in Green Tree-top Land where fuel is a scarcity, and one has to be careful not to overheat the chimney, because of the insurance people. Well, Little Rooty found the door all right, and after having touched the spring, he went out on the face of the moor. The loch was shining beneath him, but sleepily too. And it looked so warm and bright that Little Rooty forgot all about what he had been told--the Ugly Gray Dwarf, the big black pot swinging on three poles in front of the Grisly Den, with the water just coming to the boil within it. And Rooty ran as hard as ever he could, without ever taking a minute to shut the cellar door. He jumped and shouted, and almost tumbled into Woodhall Loch just as he was, which would have spoiled his clean new suit of gossamer green velvet that his mother had finished that morning, and given him because it was just six months to Christmas, when he got his thicker winter one.

However, he did manage to get them off, and was just getting ready to plunge into the nice cool water, when the stranded log, on which he had been sitting taking off his stockings, sat up in its turn and stretched out a kind of wizened claw that caught Little Rooty by the middle and held him in the air, kicking and screaming. Then two horny warty lids winked up, and two eyes like cold gravy looked at him--oh, so coldly and hatefully! It was the Ugly Gray Dwarf, and he had been lying waiting for Little Rooty all the afternoon. Then Rooty thought of everything his father had told him, and wished it had never felt so hot and stuffy and bumble-bee-y inside the house, and he resolved that if he got off this time, nothing would ever induce him to disobey his parents again. He even wished he was back in the wood-cellar, with his father getting the little green switch down off the shelf. Positively he thought he could have enjoyed it. Of course Rooty was the first little boy who ever felt like that, but he did not have a very long time in which to repent, and, indeed, it mattered very little to the Gray Dwarf whether he did or not. That hideous brute just pinched him all over to see how fat he was, gurgling approbation all the time of Little Rooty's "ribs" and "chines" and "cuts off the joint"--all of which Rooty had always liked very much, but had never before thought of in so intimate a connection with himself.

Meanwhile, in the little house of the Bogle Thorn, its walls wainscoted with green silk from a fairy Liberty's, its ceilings done in Grass of Parnassus with sprigs and tassels of larch, the afternoon world slept on. But the Little Green Woman paused in her long drowsy tale-telling to the children in the shady corner of the Roof Garden. She thought she heard a cry, so faint and far away that it might have been the squeak of a field-mouse scuttling away from a weasel among the grass roots.

Then a sudden thought struck her like a knife.

"Where is Rooty? Who saw Rooty last? Toppy, you run and look over the pricklements and see if you see Rooty. I thought I heard him cry."

Toppy ran to the green wall of thorn, and was just in time to see the Gray Dwarf toss poor Little Rooty over his shoulder (or at least the knotted crotch of a tree which served him as a shoulder), and away with him to his Grisly Den on the face of the moorland. Toppy just managed to scream, and then his mother ran and caught him, or it might very well have been all over with Little Toppy. By the time the Little Green Man was wakened off the green sofa, and had understood what they were saying (for the entire family talked at once, as is mostly the case with united families), he ran hastily up to the Roof Garden, and saw the Gray Dwarf, very little and flat on the face of the heath, just like a splotch of mildew. And on his shoulder there was a spot of green, hardly visible, which the father knew at once for his Little Rooty. But he did not scold--at least not then. He went for his fairy bow, made tiny like a catapult--not hurrying, you know, but going so fast that it felt as if the wind was rising all over the house of the Bogle Thorn. The Little Green Man dipped each arrow-point--that is, the flint part of it--into a kind of green stuff like porridge, made from hemlock and the berries of deadly nightshade, with other pleasant and effective things only known to the Little Green People. He took great care not to let any drip about, and looked closely to see if there were any scratches on his hands. For it was quite unusual stuff, and precious. So he did not want to waste any of it. He needed it all for that mildewy spot crawling over the moorland towards the Grisly Cave with the green dot on its shoulder which was his own Rooty.

Perhaps, being exceptionally good children, _you_ are not sorry for naughty Rooty. ("Oh, yes, we are! We are!") But, anyway, his father was sorry for him, though all the time he was promising him the best "hiding" he had ever had in his life when he got him safe back again. ("Bet he never got a whack!" said Sir Toady, who is an authority on the subject.) So, locking the children in and putting the key in his pocket, the Little Green Man and his wife went away over the moorland to look for the Ugly Gray Dwarf. The man did not want the woman to come. But she begged of him, weeping, saying that she would go "human" if she were left (and among the Green People that is a terrible word, and a yet more terrible thing[1]). So in the end the Little Green Man let her come.

[Footnote 1: It is as we say "fey."]

Then she wanted to go direct to the cave, but her husband, who had had a lot of experience, showed her how impossible and foolish that was. For the Gray Dwarf would just lie down behind a big bowlder and wait for them. Then he would stun them with a log or strangle them with his long twisty fingers as they went by.

So instead they went all the way round by John Knox's Pulpit and the Folds Firs, that they might turn the flank of the enemy, and so come at his cave by a way he would never expect. It was a narrow cleft between two rocks up which they had to come--the Little Green Man and his woman. They crawled and crawled, noiseless as earth-worms on a plowed field. All the while the eyes of the Little Green Man shot out small sparkles of fire, though the lids of them were closed so that they showed like slits in a drying plaster wall.

After a long climb they looked over a ridge of many bowlders and much heather--the Little Green Man and his woman close behind him. And at the sight they saw there the wife would have screamed out and run forward. For she was a real woman, you see, though little and green. Only her husband was prepared for her, knowing, after so many years, exactly what she would do. So he first put the palm of his hand across her mouth to keep in the scream, and next gave her the pouch of arrow-heads to hold. Then with a pair of tweezers made of bent wood he lifted the little poisoned flakelets of flint and dropped each into a split in the arrow-head. Then his wife deftly bound each of them about with green cord--for that was _her_ part of the business. She forgot about screaming when she had anything to do.

Then the Little Green Man peered cautiously from behind a rock, first giving his wife a good push with his foot as a warning--but, of course, you know, kindly.

He found himself looking down into a dell surrounded by many high granite rocks, which made access difficult to the Grisly Cave. The Dwarf was busy about the great black iron pot in which he was getting ready to boil Little Rooty. The Green Man saw his boy stripped of his suit of velvet, and trussed up neck and knee ready for cooking, while every time the Ugly Gray Dwarf approached he gave him a kick in passing to make him more tender, grinning and whetting a carving-knife all the time on a monster "steel" that hung by his side.

So you may believe that in a moment the Green Man had his bow strung taut, and his heart beat as the dull glitter of the arrow-point, from which the green stuff was still dripping, came into line with the hairy throat of the wicked Dwarf.

"_CLIP!_"

That was the smacking sound of the bow-string going back to the straight.

"_IZZ--IK!_"

That was the sound of the little elf arrow, dropping green juice from its willow-leaf-shaped head, every drop of which was death.

The "_IK!_" was when the elf shaft struck the Gray Dwarf and the point broke off in his throat. He said nothing for a moment, but the knife that was in his hand to cut up Little Rooty with clattered on the stones, while he himself fell with a "squelch" like a big heap of wet clothes thrown down on the laundry floor on washing-day morning.

Then they cut Little Rooty's bonds, and took him home on his father's back, his mother carrying the bow and the precious bag of arrow-heads. But instead of the sound beating his father had promised him, they gave Rooty (and all the other children) corn-cake and bramble jam, nut paste, raspberry short-bread, and heather honey made into toffee. They danced on the tree-tops all the night long, and illuminated all the windows of the Bogle Thorn with glow-worms--who, in consideration of the circumstances, gave their services _gratis_. As for the Gray Dwarf, they never bothered any more about him, and I dare say if you care to go up by the Grisly Cave at the end of Deep Dooms Wood on the right, as you turn to the Falls of Drumbledowndreary, you may find his bones unto this day.

* * * * *

The end of the story of the Little Green Man, as Father told it for Fifteen Years, anyway.

XVIII

THE BEAD CURTAIN

Hugh John set about his task of seeing Elizabeth Fortinbras in his own way. He chose his own time--a pleasant blowy afternoon when in all the vale of Edam there was nothing much doing. A sleepy place, Edam, on such a day--the morning calm, the forenoon disturbed only by a rattling red farm cart or two come in to bring meal and take back guano, then the afternoon drowned in the Lethe of a Scottish village in full summer-time. Hugh John looked in at the shop to inquire about the wasps. They had bothered Elizabeth a good deal at first, but Hugh John had devised traps with great ingenuity, though little success, before he thought of a hanging curtain of blue and green beads in the doorway which his father had brought back from Spain. It had lain in the garret ever since, and Hugh John simply appropriated it for the use of Elizabeth Fortinbras.

But Butcher Donnan, returning to a waspless shop, was brought up standing on the threshold--his mouth agape, his eyes stocky in his head, and his hand mutely demanding explanations from "Mary-and-the-Saints."

I think in her heart Elizabeth Fortinbras was a little afraid. Not only had no such article ever been seen in Edam, but it was out of the power of Edam and the Edamites to conceive such a thing as a door made of large blue and green beads, which they had to lift up and let down behind them, with the clashing of castanets before a play-acting booth.

Happily Hugh John was there, sitting calmly in the back kitchen watching Mrs. Donnan making currant short-bread.

"Hugh John!" Elizabeth Fortinbras called out, with, it must be owned, a little trouble in her voice.

"Certainly; come in, Mr. Donnan!" said Hugh John courteously, running to hold the trickling, clicking curtain aside for the ex-butcher to pass. "A little curious till you get used to it, don't you think, Mr. Donnan? But it will stir Edam. It will draw custom, and--what I put it up for--keep out the wasps and bluebottles! Oh, yes, my father brought it from Spain. It is quite an ordinary thing there. Indeed, I got the idea from him."

"But," said Butcher Donnan, slowly recovering his speech, "I must see your father about the price of it to-morrow--if I am to keep it."

"My father--sell _that_?" said Hugh John, coldly surprised. "He would as soon eat it!"

"But I can't take it from you, young master. It may be a valuable article."

"Take it--who asked you to take it?" demanded Hugh John. "I gave it to Elizabeth Fortinbras myself as a present on the occasion of her adoption, and if you want her as a permanence, I am afraid you must take the bead curtain along with her!"

"What, she has consented?" cried Butcher Donnan, forgetting everything.

But Mrs. Donnan, who was listening, put the short-bread into the oven quickly, and came out. She had begun to learn the tones of Hugh John's voice. She understood at once.

"My daughter!" she cried, and, opening wide her arms, kissed her. Butcher Donnan paused a moment, uncertain, and then, nudging his wife: "I ought to, I know," he said, "but just you do it for me--the first time." So Mrs. Donnan kissed Elizabeth again, and the Butcher wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, as if he had just had something good to drink. Then they looked about for Hugh John to make him share in the family joy, but that young gentleman, guessing ahead something of their intention, had disappeared with his usual thoroughness and absence of fuss. Some recognition from Elizabeth, privately bestowed, he was in no way averse to, the time being dusky and the place far from the haunts of men. But at mid-afternoon, opposite the railway station, and behind a green and blue bead curtain to which Edam had not yet awakened--on the whole, it is small wonder that Hugh John decided upon the better part of valor.

Safe in his cave on the hillside, he wiped his heated brow and congratulated himself on his escape. Perhaps he would not have rejoiced quite so much had he known that Sir Toady, entering at that moment in quest of gratuitous toffee scrapings, found himself at once heir to all the affection which was really his brother's due. Sir Toady accepted such things as they came in his way, much as a cat drinks from stray cream-jugs, but without giving particular thanks for them. His motto, slightly changed from the rhyming proverb, was ever--

"He that will not when he can, He's not at all my sort of man!"

XIX

THE DISCONTENT OF MRS. NIPPER DONNAN

When Mr. Robert Fortinbras heard of his daughter's determination, he declared that he renounced her for ever. But after thinking the matter over, and especially on being reminded by Hugh John that one day she would become heiress of no mean part of the Donnan wealth, he consented to a limited forgiveness, on condition that in the meantime she should do something for her father and mother. But her sister Matilda openly revolted, saying that _she_ always knew Elizabeth meant to shove the housework off on her, and that she did not care if not a dish was ever washed in that house again. Elizabeth reminded her that, far from idling at New Erin Villa, she was on foot from morning till night. Also that nine times out of ten when she came home she found Matilda asleep on the sofa, with a penny novelette flung on the floor beside her. There was a feeling of strain for a moment, but Elizabeth presented her sister with a striped blouse and half-a-dozen stand-up collars, which promptly brought forth the declaration, "Oh, Elizabeth, you mustn't mind what I _say_. It is only mother's nagging that does it, but I do love you!" Which may or may not have had to do with the striped blouse and the half-dozen collars. On the whole, there was a certain feeling of satisfaction in the house of Mr. Robert Fortinbras that Elizabeth was so well provided for, and that in a day of trouble she might even assist the brilliant adventurer with some of the gold of that unimaginative citizen, Mr. Ex-Butcher Donnan.

But Miss Elizabeth Fortinbras, though the best daughter in the world--with only one exception that I know of personally--had no idea of encouraging the busy idleness of her father, or the foolishness of the rest of the family. She had found a business that suited her, and she would in nowise interest herself less in it now that she was, so to speak, the present partner and future heiress in the concern.

There was but one person discontented, Mrs. Nipper Donnan. She was jealous of the white-curtained cottage, the trim garden, which began to blossom where she had hung out her clothes. Chiefly, however, she hated Elizabeth Fortinbras and "that Hugh John Picton Smith," who, strangely enough, was her abhorrence--though it was not his habit to ignore any one, but only to pass on his way with a grave bow.

Hugh John was an uncomfortable person to quarrel with. His great bodily strength and long practice in the art of boxing rendered him a man of peace whose very presence made for reconciliation. In the neighborhood of Edam he was President Roosevelt's "moral policeman with a big stick." Even at home he held over the head of an offender a baton of honor and "the right thing to do."

At school, it is to be feared that his discipline was sterner. There he argued but seldom. He was the centurion who said, "Do this!" and the other fellow did it. But then, it was a good thing to do, and the head master generally considered him as his best ally.

He was father's constant companion on his walks, and to hear them debate in that precious half-hour in the dining-room after dinner was to escape suddenly from the smallness of the world about, and find oneself on the high Alps of thought where the sun shone early and late, where the winds blew clean and cold, and thought was free exceedingly. Neither counted anything as to be accepted merely because they had been told it upon authority. They searched and compared, the man and the boy, Hugh John's finely analytic mind steadied and gripped by the elder experience. Their talk was not the talk of father and son, but rather of two seekers--Hugh John declaiming high, direct, often fierce, while through the smoke of a contemplative cigarette father went on smiling gently, now waving a hand in gentle deprecation, dropping a word of moderation here, qualifying a statement there--the son holding strictly for law and justice, of the firmest and most inexorable, the father dropping counsels of mercy and that understanding which is the forgiveness of God, being, as always, a Tolerant of the Tolerants.

I know that those who have read the two books called after Sir Toady Lion may fail a little to recognize my elder brother. But nevertheless this is the same who in his time wept because as a little child with a wooden sword he had been saluted by the Scots Grays, the same also who fought the "smoutchies"; and if I have said nothing about a certain notable Cissy Carter, it is only because, though I know, in the meantime I have promised not to tell.

It will easily be understood that with such an adversary Mrs. Nipper Donnan, ex-kitchen-maid at Erin Villa, stood little chance. Hugh John listened patiently and gravely, his head slightly bent in the pensive and contemplative way which was then his principal charm. He heard that he had interfered where he had no business, that Mrs. Nipper Donnan knew that he had always hated her husband, that, while as good as engaged to Colonel Carter's daughter, he was walking the lanes with Elizabeth Fortinbras--yes, and plotting and planning to get a fortune for her--a fortune which would make beggars of her husband and herself, and strip an only son of his inheritance.

To the angry woman Hugh John made no reply. He only kept silence, with that gentle irony which is his present manner with those who grow quarrelsome--that is, if they are not of his own sex and (approximately) age.

He only called Nipper--and by a series of questions ascertained from him that he knew how Hugh John had been the means of obtaining better terms for him than he had ever hoped for, since his marriage had so offended his father. Hugh John Picton Smith could speak no lie. He, Nipper Donnan, would uphold this against all comers. Even in the days of the smoutchies and the prison vault at the old Castle in the Edam Water he had known it. Even his very enemies had known it, and had taken Hugh John's word before the sworn oath of any one of themselves. He would take it now, and as to his wife, if she said another word--out of the shop she should go! She did go, slamming the door behind her. Nipper stepped across and shot a bar with a jarring sound heard all over the house. Then from behind the counter he thrust forth a hand, hard and massive, towards Hugh John, who took it in his strong grip. They looked at each other in the face, eye to eye. There was a slight shrug of Nipper's shoulders and a toss of his head in the direction of the barred door, which said that a man could not be responsible for his womankind, but as for themselves, had they not fought far too often and too fairly ever to go behind backs to do each other an injury?

XX

TREACHERY!

To-day Hugh John let me see a letter which he had received from Cissy Carter in Paris. As no one will see my diary, and also because there is nothing very private in the letter, I have jotted down as much as I can remember in my locked book. It was written from number twenty of the Avenue d'Argenson, and the date was the day before yesterday. It began without any greetings (as was their custom).