CHAPTER IX

A PERFECT PIRATICAL PLAYROOM

Stuart began: “We shan’t care to be disturbed, so we’d better build under water. That stretch of river between Cliveden and Cookham would make quite a good ceiling. Nor will we take it on a repairing lease, but leave the Thames Conservancy responsible for damages.”

Merle at this juncture wanted to know how he saw the Thames Conservancy; in her eyes, it wore very bright blue with lots of gilt buttons, and was always sitting round a table.

“One person?” asked Peter curiously.

“Yes. One wide person that could be stretched all round the table and be joined with a button when it met itself.”

Stuart reminded them that, so far, the room consisted of a ceiling floating on a vacuum, and that if they dawdled so long over Thames Conservancies, they’d never get the walls up before dinner.

“It’s my dinner-hour now,” said Peter, thinking herself a British workman. And Merle remarked that putting up walls was a tough job, and she hadn’t got the right tools, and must fetch her mate.

“We can’t tell yet just how big the Room will need to be, so I vote for elastic-sided walls.”

“Like boots,” Peter murmured. Then roused herself to ask for the height of the Room.

Stuart looked worried, and confessed that he could never gauge heights without the assistance of a giraffe: “Not high heights.”

“A giraffe?”

“I was once told that a giraffe measures twenty-five feet. So in my mind’s eye I always pile giraffe upon giraffe, until I get what I want. One giraffe, added to another ... and another....”

“There, there then, my beautiful,” Peter assured him soothingly, for the multiplicity of giraffe had caused a wild look to creep into his eyes; “you shall have a giraffe in the Room, of course you shall. Anyhow, Merle will want a domestic animal to cuddle on her lap. A giraffe will do nicely, besides being useful for measuring purposes.”

“We can tell the time by it, as well,” Stuart announced in eager defence of his pet. “The tide of the ceiling rises and falls about an inch every six hours; and when it falls, the animal’s head will be wet, and so he’ll always have a cold in his nose, and borrow all our handkerchiefs, and not return them. He says he can’t help it; people don’t realize what a struggle it is to keep one’s head below water.”

“But he’ll want a companion of some sort,” remarked Merle. And because she secretly hoped for a canary, she proposed a tortoise.

“What about a gift-horse? There’s something mysterious about a gift-horse, because nobody may look it in the mouth. No, not even a dentist.”

“But we will!” Stuart cried, in defiance of copy-book precept; “we’ll keep things in its mouth, for the sake of looking at them there; cigarette-cards and photograph albums.”

... A little wind flapped aside the blind, giving a momentary glimpse of sea-lapped rocks and battlements: a castle of enchantment aglow in the ebbing light. Merle immediately decided to have it transported to the Room, for her special use and benefit. Not to be outdone, Stuart and Peter ordered each a castle of like design and pattern; he stipulating, however, for a border of Norfolk Broads in lieu of the Atlantic. And because his manner was wont to become suddenly absent and remote whenever he chanced to speak of his Sailing Paradise, they quickly granted him his desire, and changed the subject, lest he should elude them altogether.

Indeed, Peter was in a terrible tangle; for she had discovered that inside her castle was a room--_the_ Room, in fact; and this Room in its turn held a castle, the same castle--which held another Room, containing a castle, which----

“Look here,” said Stuart firmly, recalling his mind from halyard and jib, “this must be attended to at once. It’s only a recurring decimal, and if we quickly put in the dot to stop the leakage, there’s no need that it should ever recur.”

Peter demanded carelessly: “Know anything about plumbing?”

Stuart scratched his head. And the girls looked mournfully one at the other.

“Now I ask you, what is the use of a male in the house?” and: “If it were a _real_ man, of course----”

“Damn it!” he exploded. “If you’d wanted to marry a plumber, both of you, you might have mentioned it before the ceremony.” And he added sarcastically: “I daresay St. Quentin knows a lot about plumbing.”

“Or Baldwin,” suggested Merle, who had recently met Mr. Carr at a dinner-party, and derived from him a quantity of pure happiness.

Stuart recovered his good-humour in the joy of a fresh idea: “We’ll run St. Quentin and Baldwin together, and keep the essence in a sentry-box in the Room, for the performing of odd jobs. And we’ll call him--” here a rapid hunt for suitable nomenclature, “we’ll call him Squeith.”

“Combination of St. Quentin and Keith,” commented Peter. “Very good if Baldwin’s name happened to be Keith, but as it isn’t----”

“I’m not going to be put off by a little thing like that. Squeith has got personality. Squeith pleases me. And Squeith shall immediately be set to work on that recurring decimal.”

It was perceived that even while they chattered, Room and castle had already recurred seven times, ending on a Room. And Peter said she would sleep in the last Room but one--the fifth, to be exact,--before the dot was put in.

“And then Squeith can take the animals for a run,” quoth thoughtful little Merle, who remembered that giraffes and gift-horses require a certain amount of exercise. “He can put them on a leash if he likes.”

Stuart grumbled: “He’s sure to come home without them. Or they’ll come home without him. Yes, it’s no good frowning at me, Merle,--I _will_ bully Squeith. You’d better have your Balm-for-Wounded-Feelings factory moved into the Room; ‘Nothing but the Best Balm supplied. Beware of Counterfeit. We only use British Bull’s-grease and Home-grown Sympathy.’ I’ll write your advertisements.”

Whereat Peter exclaimed jealously that if Merle had a factory, she would have trains; she must have trains, instantly--“just as if I could ever live in a Room without trains. An Outer Circle line running the whole way round, close under the walls; with real tunnels and signal-boxes. And you can advertise your Balm inside the darkest tunnel, where it won’t disturb the landscape. My railway shall start from Euston, of course----”

--“And end at Euston,” Merle reminded her, laughing, “if it’s a Circle railway.”

“Quite right. The lines shall be laid for the purpose of taking passengers from Euston to Euston. I’ve always longed for just such a gloriously unpractical service of trains.”

And here Stuart interposed with the offer of his almost forgotten _Wagon-lit_, the tame red _Wagon-lit_ with trustful brown eyes, hitherto kept in the back garden among the washing.

“Want a present too,” Merle pleaded.

He gave her a clothes-line, so that she could be perpetually wringing out her soul, and hanging it up to dry. In return for which piece of impertinence, she presented him with a nice easy rack, which he could work himself, like a barrel-organ, by turning a handle; and thus practise for half an hour every morning after breakfast, the self-torture he so affected.

“He shall have an obstacle race as well,” put in Peter lavishly; “running just inside my Outer Circle radius. With hurdles and barriers and sacks and barbed wire. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Stuart darling?”

“We should have to provide a barber to barb the wire. One can’t buy it barbed.”

“Very well; I don’t mind a few shops. Just a barber and--and a post-office, because of bull’s-eyes----”

“Stamps?” enquired Stuart anxiously.

“No. _Only_ bull’s-eyes. Why do you think I wanted a post-office?”

Merle thought that a Moonshade Shop might be useful: “It looks as if the moonshine in the Room were likely to be strong, and Peter and I must think of our complexions. Moonshades and paralunes.” And she imagined them pretty filmy things, woven of dyed spider-webs, with opalescent handles and spikes.

Then they added to the row, a Railway Shop, which, combining butcher and baker and fishmonger in one, provided those peculiar comestibles to be met with at station-buffets and in dining-cars alone. In particular, there existed the notorious Railway-fish, white and sticky, of which large numbers should swim in a sunken tank in the Railway Shop, till such time as required for consumption.

Then, as if one shop bred another, it was discovered that these wary fish could not be caught save with a bent pin on a piece of string; thus involving the erection of a Bent-pin Shop.

“Because in the usual farthing-change packets, they only give you straight pins,” said Peter, knitting her brows; “and straight pins aren’t a bit of good for Railway-fish.”

“What about a pub. or two?” Stuart proposed carelessly.

Merle scented danger: “No, dear.”

“Just one,” he pleaded; “a nice little public-house bearing the sign: Private. There’s the ‘Cat and Adage,’ been lying about since the evening we first met, Peter.”

“Oh, if it comes to that,” she bragged, “I’ve got plenty of pubs myself: The ‘Benison,’ for instance, inspired by A. C. Benson’s life of Tennyson. That would be non-alcoholic, of course; with a permanent impression in the window, of birds dark against a peaceful sunset.”

Stuart approved of the ‘Benison.’ “I like its nice rich ripe blessing-of-the-Archbishop-of-Canterbury flavour. And Squeith can patronize it for his morning glass of milk-and-soda. I’ve thought of another one----”

“_No_, Stuart!” Merle threw into her voice all the pent-up anguish of an inebriate’s wife.

Stuart and Peter looked rebellious.

“I’m not going to have my nice tidy Room littered up with pubs.” Merle declared passionately. “You must keep them in the conservatory or the lumber-closet. I shall have quite enough dusting on my hands, as it is, what with three castles----”

“One of them recurring,” put in Peter.

“Yes, and two Eustons and the giraffe and a Norfolk Broad and a sentry-box and I don’t know what else. Whatever I shall do on Thursdays----”

“Thursdays?”

“Thursdays?”

“The day the Room gets turned out,” Merle enlightened their double ignorance.

“Oh!”

“It seems rather a shame that Merle should be bothered with all that,” Stuart mused thoughtfully. “What about having a property Womanly-Woman to see to the dusting?”

Peter assented rather reluctantly; she was quite sure that the Womanly-woman would make her wear gloves. “Oh well! if she became at all obstreperous, we could always break her up, and re-form her as something else. An Ancient Retainer, say; or a Rabbit. These Plasticine figures are awfully useful.”

“There’d be a bit of Womanly-Woman over from a Rabbit; enough to make a tea-spoon, or a halo, or any domestic trifle of that description.”

“Then are we to have no real human people in the Room, except just ourselves?” Merle queried. “No--children?”

Stuart shook his head. “No children. Only childishness.” For he recognized, deep down in his heart, that real children would stigmatize the Room and all it contained, as “silly rot.” And demand bricks and Noah’s Arks and Tiddley-winks. And somehow the knowledge hurt; because he knew with what fatal ease he too could slide outside and say the same: “Silly rot--silly rot----” “It isn’t! Rot, if you like--not _silly_ rot!”... but even now he was slipping.... “It isn’t! it isn’t--Peter....”

Peter guessed what was happening: “No, of course it isn’t,” quickly. And to divert him, contributed to the Room a sailing-boat, a rustic sailing-boat, stationary, and overgrown with ivy and clematis. And from the stern should depend a tiny toy sailing-boat, price sixpence halfpenny, which they could really sail on a piece of string. “And we’ll name it the ‘Strike-me-pink,’” cried Peter fiercely.

“And paint it green,” added Stuart, feeling better. And then, in opposition, he offered a nautical summer-house, with decks, and ropes, and a burgee fluttering bravely from the mainmast.

The Room might by now be considered almost complete in its furnishings. With a Heaven-born inspiration, Merle placed in its exact centre a small bamboo table, rather rickety, on which reposed a vase of flowers.

“Don’t you think,” Peter demanded doubtfully, “that it looks a wee bit out of place among all those castles and animals and things?”

“Not at all;” Merle was inclined to be huffy. “Merely the feminine touch about the home;” and she considered the possibility of draping Euston with an antimacassar.

* * * * *

... Bit by bit, as the red ball of the sun quenched its fires in the chill Atlantic, so the dingy little number nine bedroom of the Ocean Hotel, grew darker and darker still. At last nothing could be descried save the grey outlines of the tin basin; a glimmer across the cracked looking-glass; on and around the bed, three figures, dimly sprawling.

* * * * *

But in their own Playroom, the trio disport themselves as lords and emperors. Boundless space is theirs; time without limit; while facts they prick and shrivel like toy-balloons.

Peter, astride of the engine which draws her _wagon-lit_, is whizzing round and round the Outer Circle, all the signals in her favour, that naught shall arrest her triumphant speed.

Merle, discovering that Stuart has, after all, succeeded in importing his private public-house, enters through its swing-doors, nothing loth to demand a strawberry-ice-cream soda. The while Stuart dangles his legs from the notched parapet of his castle; and noting Squeith in the act of hailing the bell-buoy who sells the morning muffins, impishly frustrates all such traffic by a sudden alteration of the time to half-past five p.m.

“Tea is on the table,” he chants, a super-leprechaun; “and Squeith has missed the muffin-man again! Poor Squeith! for him _always_ the muffin that is stale; for him it is always yesterday.”

“And for us?” cries Peter, making a trumpet of her hands, as she travels past at sixty miles an hour. And just catches his shouted reply, wind-borne: “For us it is always to-morrow!”

“But it can’t be to-morrow without a to-day, can it?” argues Merle, returning refreshed from the ‘Benison.’

“Why, yes; it can be the-day-after-to-morrow from yesterday!”

* * * * *

... The housemaid tapped, and entered with the hot water.

“Shall I light the gas, Miss?”

“Yes, please;” Peter’s voice seemed to come from very far away.

While the housemaid hunted for the matches, a figure rose nonchalantly from the floor, and stole out into the passage. So that the flare of light revealed merely two sleepy-eyed girls lying across the bed.