Part 2

We had no difficulty in getting out of the house when the time came, simply because this was not the sort of thing that the grown-up people expected us to do, but we found the world strangely altered. The familiar lanes had become rivers of changing shadows, the hedgerows were ambuscades of robbers, the tall trees were affronted giants. Fortunately, we were on very good terms with the moon at the time, so when she made her periodical appearances from behind the scudding clouds she came as a friend. Nevertheless, when my hand accidentally touched my brother’s in the dark it stayed there, and we were glad to walk along hand in hand, a situation which we would have thought deplorable for two fellows of our years by day. It seemed to me that my brother was breathing shortly and noisily as if he were excited, but presently the surprising thought came to me that it might be my own breathing that I heard. As we drew near to Hayward’s Wood the moon retired behind a cloud, and stayed there. This was hardly friendly of her, for the wood was terribly dark, and the noise of our own stumblings made us pause in alarm again and again. When we stood still and listened all the trees seemed to be saying “Hush!”

Somehow we reached the pool at last, and stayed our steps on the bank expectantly. At first we could see nothing but shadows, but, after a while, we discovered that it was full of drowned stars, a little pale as though the water had extinguished some of their fire. And then, as we wondered at this, the moon shone through the branches overhead and lit the wood with a cool and mysterious radiance that reminded me oddly of the transformation scene in our last pantomime. My brother pulled his watch out of his pocket, but his hand shook so that he could hardly tell the time. “Five minutes more,” he whispered hoarsely. I tried to answer him, and found that I could not speak.

And then, as we waited breathlessly, we heard a noise among the undergrowth on the other side of the pool—a noise, it seemed, of footsteps, that grew louder and louder in our excited ears, till it was as if all the armies of the world were tramping through the wood. And then . . . and then . . .

When we stopped to get our breath halfway home we first discovered that neither of us had had presence of mind enough to wish. But we knew that there was no going back. We had had our chance, and missed it. But, even now, I do not doubt that it was a magic pool.

THE STORY-TELLER

HE changed with the seasons, and, like the seasons, was welcome in every mood. In spring he was forlorn and passionate in turn; now fiercely eloquent, now tuneful with those little cheerful songs that seem in terms of human emotion to be the saddest of all. In summer he dreamed in sensuous and unambitious idleness, gladly conscious of the sunshine and warm winds and flower-smells, and using only languorous and gentle words. In autumn, with the dead leaves of the world about his feet, he became strangely hopeful and generous of glad promises of adventure and conquest. It seemed as though he found it easier to triumph when Nature had abdicated her jealous throne. But it was in the winter-time when he came into his own kingdom, and mastered his environment and his passions to make the most joyful songs. Then he would lie at full length on the hearthrug, and we children, sitting in a rapt circle, fantastically lit by the fire, would listen to his stories, and know that they were the authentic wisdom.

It was in vain that the grown-ups warned us against the fascinations of his society, telling us that dreamers came to no good end in a practical world. As well might the townsfolk of Hamelin, in Brunswick, have ordered their children to turn a deaf ear to the tune of the Pied Piper. We had studied life from a practical point of view between our games, and found it unsatisfying; this man brought us something infinitely more desirable. He would come stepping with delicate feet, fearful of trampling on our own tender dreams, and he would tell us the enchanted stories that we had not heard since we were born. He told us the meaning of the stars and the significance of the sun and moon; and, listening to him, we remembered that we had known it all once before in another place. Sometimes even we would remind him of some trivial incident that he had forgotten, and then he would look at us oddly and murmur sadly that he was getting very old. When the stories were over, and all the room was still ringing with beautiful echoes, he would stand erect and ask us fiercely whether we saw any straws in his hair. We would climb up him to look (for he was very tall), and when we told him that we could not find any he would say: “The day you see them there will be no more stories.” We knew what the stories were worth to us, so we were always afraid of looking at his head for fear that we should see the straws and all our gladdest hours should be finished.

His voice was all the music extant, and it was only by recalling it that our young ears could find that there was beauty in fine singing and melodiousness in the chaunt of birds. Yet when his words were eloquent we forgot the voice and the speaker, content to sacrifice our critical individualities to his inspiration till we were no more than dim and silent figures in the background of his tale. It was only in winter-time that he achieved this supreme illusion; perhaps the firelight helped him, and the chill shadows of the world. In the summer his stories had the witchery of dreams; their realism startled us, and yet we knew that they were not real. After listening to them through a hot afternoon we would stretch back into consciousness, as though we had been asleep; his drowsy fancies lulled our personalities, but did not conquer them. The winter magic was of a rarer kind. Then even his silences became significant, for he brought us to so close an intimacy with his mind that his very thoughts seemed like words.

It is idle to expect a child to believe that every grown-up person was a child once upon a time, for it is not credible that they could have forgotten so much. But this man was a child both in feeling and in understanding. He knew the incidents that perplexed us in those nursery legends that have become classics, and sometimes it was his pleasure to tell them to us again, having regard to our wakeful sympathies. He was the friend of all the poor, lost creatures of romance—the giants whose humiliating lot it was to be defeated by any stripling lad, the dragons whose flaming strength was a derision when opposed to virtue in armour. He shared our pity for Antæus and Caliban and Goliath of Gath, and even treated sorcerers and wicked kings with reasonable humanity. Somehow, though we felt that it was wicked, we could not help being sorry for people when they were punished very severely. The very ease with which giants could be outwitted suggested that the great simple fellows might prove amiable enough if they were kindly treated, while it was always possible that dragons might turn out to be bewitched princes, if only the beautiful princesses would kiss them instead of sending heroes to kill them unfairly, without giving them an opportunity of explaining their motives. Our story-teller understood our scruples and sympathised with them, and in his versions every one had a chance, whether they were heroes or no. Even the best children are sometimes cruel, but they are never half so pitiless as the writers of fairy-stories.

But better than any fairy-stories were the stories that he told us of our own lives, which under his touch became the wonderful adventures which they really were. He showed us that it was marvellous to get out of bed in the morning, and marvellous to get into bed at night. He made us realise the imaginative value of common things, and the fun that could be derived even from the performance of duties, by aid of a little make-believe. The grown-up folk would probably have derided his system, but he made us tolerate our lessons, and endure the pangs of toothache with some degree of fortitude. He had a short way with the ugly bogies with which thoughtless nurses and chance echoes from the horrors columns of newspapers had peopled the shadows of our life. We were no longer afraid of the dark when he had told us how friendly it could be to the distressed. Hitherto we had vainly sought to find the colours and sounds of romance in life, and, failing, had been tempted to sum up the whole business as tedious. After he had shown us how to do it, it was easy to see that life itself was a story as romantic as we cared to make it. Our daily official walks became gallant expeditions, and we approached arithmetic with a flaming sword.

Can any childhood ever have known a greater wizard than this? And yet since that state does not endure for ever, it must surely have happened to us to seek for straws in his towering head once too often, had not death taken our kindly enchanter from our company, and thus spared us the bitter discovery that the one man who reconciled us to life was considered rather more than eccentric by an obtuse world. It is true that we noticed that the grown-up people were apt to treat him sometimes as if he were one of us, but we felt that he merited this distinction, and did not find it strange. Nor did we wonder that he should tell stories aloud to himself lacking a wider audience, for we knew that if we had the power we should tell such stories to ourselves all day long. We did not only fail to realise that he was mad; we knew that he was the only reasonable creature of adult years who ever came near us. He understood us and paid us the supreme compliment of allowing us to understand him. The world called him fantastic for actions that convinced us that he was wise, and, thanks to a fate that seemed at the time insensately cruel, the spell was never broken.

ADMIRALS ALL

WHEN the Christmas holidays are over, and pantomimes and parties are cleared away, there is usually a marked revival in a sport that has languished during those exciting weeks. A child who wished to play at boats, when the air was full of the smell of tangerine oranges and the glamour of the footlights, would not be tolerated in any decent schoolroom. But with the reappearance of lessons there comes a sudden demand for walnut-shells and sealing-wax, and bath-night, a thing undesirable while the house is noisy with new tunes, becomes the cause of rivalry and passionate argument.

So at least it fell in the days when childhood was more than the kernel of an article. The first symptom of the new movement was an eager interest in dessert. We would entreat the Olympians to forego nut-crackers and to use our new Christmas pocket-knives for the purpose of opening their walnuts, and we would regard the results with a keen and professional eye. Were they destined to be clippers, yachts notable in history, or mere utilitarian tubs to be laden with tipsy tin-soldiers and sunk ignominiously by brass cannon? We were all naval experts and our judgments were not often wrong. But even if a walnut-shell had the right racing lines, there remained the delicate operation of stepping the mast. The “blob” of sealing-wax had to be dropped in exactly the right place, and the whittled safety-match that served for a mast must be truly perpendicular or the craft would be lopsided. The paper sail was as large as safety would permit.

There followed regattas in a basin filled to the brim with water. The yachts raced from one side to the other, and some one, assumed neutral, blew with a level breath across the flood to supply the necessary wind. The reward of victory was a little coloured flag that was gummed to the sail of the successful boat. On a memorable day my _Swallow_ beat a hitherto undefeated champion in my eldest brother’s _Irene_, a result the more astonishing that Irene’s owner was himself filling the rôle of Æolus. I am glad to think it was Irene that was flung out of the window.

Apart from these classic contests there were secret trials and naval reviews in private waters, and that intimate kind of navigation that took place in one’s bath. This last was spiced with an agreeable element of risk, for a rash movement would send the whole fleet to the bottom of the sea; but at the same time in no other way could an admiral have the elements so much under his control. Like Neptune, he could raise a storm at will, and when the ships had battled gallantly against terrible waves and icebergs of patent soap, a pair of pink feet would rise above the surface of the ocean, and the Fortunate Islands would greet the tired eyes of the mariners. It is a fine thing to sail about the world, but it is very good to be at home.

Later on, as the weather grew warmer, we indulged in more adventurous, and let it be admitted, more enjoyable, sport. Walnut boats and paper junks ballasted with shot might be well enough for the cold months or wet afternoons, but when the summer called us out to play, our ambitious hearts desired weightier craft than these. Then the yachts that uncles had given us, which had been cruising peacefully on the playroom floor during the indoor weeks, were brought out and considered in their new aspect. There was always something at once thrilling and disappointing about these stately ships. The height of their masts, the intricacy of their rigging, and the little lines that marked the planks of their deck, filled us with pride, and made us seek the nearest pond with quick, elated steps. But these things might be as well admired indoors, and somehow these boats never sailed as well on any wakeful pond as they did on the waters of our dreams. There they were for ever tossing on the crests of enormous waves, and all night long their great masts went crashing by the board; but on Pickhurst Pond they behaved with a staid monotony, and while we and the boats of our hands had as many moods as the spring, these official craft were content to perform their business of sailing with the conscientious precision of grown-up persons.

There was more to be said for the modest sort of boat you would buy for sixpence or a shilling. They had a useless mast and sail (the boat capsized if you set it), seats that were annoying but easily removed, and sometimes, as a crowning piece of Philistinism, oars! We would have scorned to give a moment’s consideration to a rowing boat at any time. We wanted only craft that were fit to cruise with equal adroitness on boundless oceans and unhealthy tropic rivers, and, lacking a hold, where should we keep the rum and the pieces of eight? But if you threw away everything but the bare hull, and painted that black, you had a very sound basis for sensible boat-building. A tin railway carriage would make a cabin, a wooden brick the quarter-deck, and if you could find some lead for the keel you might give the vessel a real mast with which to strike the southern stars.

But, after all, the best boats were the boats we built entirely ourselves. Our favourite materials were corks, empty match-boxes, and such wood as lies within the scope of a pocket-knife, and we would drive tintacks into the craft until it looked like a nursery cake, crowned with burnt currants. The resulting ships varied as to shape and size, but could be trusted to conduct themselves in the water with a charming eccentricity. Sometimes they seemed to skim the waves like birds, sometimes the water leaped through them with a laugh, and they sank down to join the minnows and the pebbles at the bottom of the stream. In the latter case the owner would lie flat on the bank with a sharp stone pressing into his chest, and feel for the lost craft in the cold, slippery waters; for the rest of the morning his shirt-sleeve would cling damply to his skin, while the assembled experts considered the failure and made acute suggestions.

The stream—we called it a river—on which we sailed these ships passed in its cheerful course through an iron pipe, and sometimes a vessel that had disappeared merrily under the dark arch would be seen no more of our eyes, though we waited at the other end of the passage perilous until our bodies grew chill in our sailor suits, and the mists came rolling up from the water-meadows. It was easy to crouch down by the mouth of the pipe, and hear the water lap-lapping in the dark against the echoing sides of the tunnel, but our ears could tell us nothing, and as we went home we would speculate in whispers as to the fate of the missing vessel. Had it foundered on some treacherous rock, or was there some mysterious outlet unknown to man, through which it had escaped us? Even while we spoke it might be nodding on merrily towards the night and the stars, through a new, strange country that no one could find in daylight fashion.

In truth, there was no game like this, appealing alike to mind and body, and fraught with surprises and enchanting side-issues of play. We might launch our vessel at dawn for Babylon, and night would find it dreaming by some South Sea isle, or lying a shattered wreck on the coast of Brazil.

Doubtless to the grown-up observer, who had seen the great sea dotted with little ships, our gutter mishaps and adventures on puddles were of small importance. But as becomes the children of an island race, we played this game with a strange earnestness, and though our boats were small, we knew that they were large enough for little boys to go roaming in through the long day. And that was all that mattered.

A REPERTORY THEATRE

LIKE most great movements in art, it had but a modest beginning. On a memorable day one of my brothers was looking in the window of a little toy-shop when he discovered some of those fascinating sheets of characters to which Stevenson has devoted a charming essay. He happened to have money in his pocket (it was indeed a memorable day), and he brought home his treasure-trove with the air of a capitalist who has made a wise investment. Schoolroom society approved his enterprise with enthusiasm. We knew nothing about “The Woodman’s Hut,” the play to which the characters in question belonged; it was enough for us that these figures of men and women were clearly messengers from the Land of Romance, and their mysterious attitudes only added to the interest with which we regarded them. We got out our paint-boxes, and, as unconsciously we were all Post-Impressionists, we soon made them more mysterious still.

It will be remembered that Stevenson remained satisfied with this, which might be regarded as the costumier’s work of the model theatre, but we were more ambitious. Our first theatre was a small packing-case without any sides, and in this our characters, mounted on cardboard and supplied with firewood supports, were quite contented to display their red legs and green bodies. Our scenery was indicated rather than drawn on brown paper with coloured chalks, and would, I think, have pleased Mr. Gordon Craig. Two Christmas-tree candles served for footlights, and, though we had no book of the words, we made them up as we went along, and did very well. It was strange how great a measure of illusion we achieved, although we ourselves moved the puppets and spoke their lines. The candles threw queer shadows across our faces, and it seemed as though deeper voices than ours echoed in the room. We were always being astonished by the eerie products of our own imagination when we were merely trying to amuse ourselves; and the effect of our dramatic efforts was quite remote from anything that we had intended. I understand that older dramatists sometimes experience the same phenomenon.

Our activities could not long escape the criticism of the grown-up people; but rather to our surprise, for candles were quite illicit playthings, they contented themselves with a general caution as to the perils of fire, and a particular injunction concerning the dropping of candle-grease on the tablecloth. So we played with our theatre till Christmas, by which time the members of our stock company were more than a little battered and weary at the knees. Then there came a surprise. Included in the number of our presents were a little theatre with a real curtain that went up and down, and materials for three complete productions. This time we had not only the characters, but the books of words and scenery as well, and we prepared to do things on an unprecedented scale. As a result, after extraordinary labour in the scenic and costume departments, we were able to produce, on three successive nights, “Paul Clifford,” “The Corsican Brothers,” and “The Miller and his Men.” The repertory theatre was fairly under way.

First-nights were really thrilling in those days. The dignified deportment of our actors, as yet unspoiled by success, roused the audience to enthusiasm, and we did not weary of admiring simple stage effects that would have moved us to scornful laughter in after-days. Yet even in these early productions there lurked the seeds of artistic disruption. Already our appreciation of the gallant bearing of Paul Clifford passed all reasonable bounds, and threatened to develop into that hero-worship that proves fatal to the talents of any actor. Already we had an unwholesome craving for excessive realism in the staging of plays, and we made use of the ingenuity of our elders to drive Grindoff’s sinister windmill in the first act of “The Miller and his Men.” It might be said that our theatre, _quâ_ repertory theatre, was doomed from the start.

Nevertheless, at least two seasons of good work were accomplished before our morbid imitation of Nature and the illimitable egotism of Paul Clifford finally succeeded in driving art from the stage. During that period we produced about fifteen new plays, and gave a large number of one-night revivals. Our repertory ranged from “Hamlet” to “Dick Whittington,” and I think one pleased us as much as the other. This would have been more remarkable if Paul Clifford had not played the title-part in both plays. We had soon come to prefer him to any other of the heroes, and in consequence, whatever the play might be, he was bound to be there in his riding-boots and handsome yellow satin coat. This would have been well enough if he had been willing to keep his place, but he soon became as ubiquitous as an actor-manager. Owing to the number of rôles that he was called upon to fill, we had his pasteboard presentment in a hundred different attitudes, and on one occasion when a stage-crowd was required it was entirely composed of Paul Cliffords, and even then there were rows of forlorn Paul Cliffords in the wings for whom there was no room on the stage. This was the beginning of the end. We suffered from the worst excesses of the star system; we began to be discontented when Paul was not on the stage, and we were prepared to boo if that dashing highwayman was not permitted to bluster across the most subtle dramas.

About this time we deserted the old theatre that had been the scene of so many triumphs for a larger and far more elaborate one. We had long had gas footlights, but now our system of lighting was intricate enough to suit Mr. Arthur Collins. Indeed, when, years afterwards, I was allowed to explore the stage of Drury Lane, I found nothing to surprise me, save, perhaps, the electric switchboard, with its pretty display of diminutive electric lights. Our scenic sensations were only surpassed by those of Mr. Bruce Smith. When we played a dramatisation of “Hard Cash,” the scuttled vessel sank in a sea of real water. The fountains in our Garden of Enchantment flung scented torrents into their moss-clad basins; and when we sought to reproduce a burning house we succeeded in setting the theatre on fire.