Part 10

“Bindyliggs,” replied Mary Elizabeth, without a moment’s hesitation, a name which I believe neither of us to have heard before.

“Where is this Lord of Bindyliggs?” the New Boy pressed it.

Mary Elizabeth indicated the woodshed. “At meat,” she added gravely.

“Forward!” the New Boy instantly commanded, and the whole troop disappeared in our shed. We heard wood fall, and the clash of meeting weapons, and the troop reappeared, two by way of the low window.

“Enough!” cried the New Boy, grandly. “We have spared him, but there is not a moment to lose. You must come with us _immediately_. What you got to eat?”

Raptly, we gave them, from under the wistful noses of Irene Helena and the doll without the face and the rest, the entire sliced doughnut, and two more doughnuts, dipped in sugar, which we had been saving so as to have something to look forward to.

“Come with us,” said the New Boy, graciously. “To horse! We may reach the settlement by nightfall--_if_ we escape the Brigands in the Wood. The Black Wood,” he added.

Even then, I recall, I was smitten with wonder that he who had shown so little imagination in that matter of dirt and apples and potatoes should here be teeming with fancy on his own familiar ground. It was years before I understood that there are almost as many varieties of imaginative as of religious experience.

Fascinated, we dropped everything and followed. The way led, it appeared, to the Wells’s barn, a huge, red barn in the block, with doors always invitingly open and chickens pecking about, and doves on a little platform close to the pointed roof.

“Aw, say, you ain’t goin’ to take ’em along, are you?” demanded one knight, below his voice. “They’ll spoil everythin’.”

“You’re _rescuin’_ ’em, you geezer,” the New Boy explained. “You got to have ’em along till you get ’em rescued, ain’t you? Arrest that man!” he added. “Put him in double irons with chains and balls on. And gag him, to make sure.”

And it was done, with hardly a moment’s loss of time.

We went round by the walk--a course to which the arrested one had time to refer in further support of his claim as to our undesirability. But he was drowned in the important topics that were afoot: the new cave to be explored where the Branchetts were putting a cellar under the dining-room, mysterious boxes suspected to contain dynamite being unloaded into the Wells’s cellar, and the Court of the Seven Kings, to which, it seemed, we were being conveyed in the red barn.

“Shall we give ’em the password?” the New Boy asked, _sotto voce_, as we approached the rendezvous. And Mary Elizabeth and I trembled as we realized that he was thinking of sharing the password with us.

“_Naw!_” cried the Arrested One violently. “It’ll be all over town.”

The New Boy drew himself up--he must have been good to look at, for I recall his compact little figure and his pink cheeks.

“Can’t you tell when you’re gagged?” he inquired with majesty. “You’re playin’ like a girl yourself. I can give the password for ’em, though,” he added reasonably. So we all filed in the red barn, to the Court of the Seven Kings, and each boy whispered the password into the first manger, but Mary Elizabeth and I had it whispered for us.

What the Court of the Seven Kings might have held for us we were never to know. At that instant there appeared lumbering down the alley a load of hay. Seated in the midst was a small figure whom we recognized as Stitchy Branchett; and he rose and uttered a roar.

“Come on, fellows!” he said. “We dast ride over to the Glen. I was lookin’ for you. Father said so.” And Stitchy threw himself on his back, and lifted and waved his heels.

Already our liberators were swarming up the hay-rack, which had halted for them. In a twinkling they were sunk in that fragrance, kicking their heels even as their host. Already they had forgotten Mary Elizabeth and me, nor did they give us good-bye.

We two turned and went through the Wells’s yard, back to the street. Almost at once we were again within range of the sounds of Delia, practising interminably on her “At Home.”

“I never rode on a load of hay,” said Mary Elizabeth at length.

Neither had I, though I almost always walked backward to watch one when it passed me.

“What do you _s’pose_ the password was?” said Mary Elizabeth.

It was days before we gave over wondering. And sometimes in later years I have caught myself speculating on that lost word.

“I wonder what we were rescued from,” said Mary Elizabeth when we passed our woodshed door.

We stopped and peered within. No Lord of Bindyliggs, though we had almost expected to see him stretched there, bound and helpless.

What were we rescued from? _We should never know._

We rounded the corner by the side yard. There sat our staring dolls, drawn up about the tea-table, static all. As I looked at them I was seized and possessed by an unreasoning fury. And I laid hold on Irene Helena, and had her by the heels, and with all my strength I pounded her head against the trunk of the catalpa tree.

Mary Elizabeth understood--when did she not understand?

“Which one can I--which one can I?” she cried excitedly.

“All of ’em!” I shouted, and one after another we picked up the Eleven by their skirts, and we threw them far and wide in the grass, and the penny dolls we hurled into the potato patch.

Then Mary Elizabeth looked at me aghast.

“Your dolls!” she said.

“I don’t care!” I cried savagely. “I’ll never play ’em again. I hate ’em!” And I turned to Mary Elizabeth with new eyes. “Let’s go down town after supper,” I whispered.

“I could,” she said, “but you won’t be let.”

“I won’t ask,” I said. “I’ll go. When you get done, come on over.”

I scorned to gather up the dolls. They were in the angle below the parlour windows, and no one saw them. As soon as supper was finished, I went to my room and put on my best shoes, which I was not allowed to wear for everyday. Then I tipped my birthday silver dollar out of my bank and tied it in the corner of my handkerchief. Down in the garden I waited for Mary Elizabeth.

It was hardly dusk when she came. We had seen nothing of Delia, and we guessed that she was to stay in the house for the rest of the day as penance for having, without doubt, played “At Home” too badly.

“You better not do it,” Mary Elizabeth whispered. “They might....”

“Come on,” I said only.

“Let’s try a June grass,” she begged. “If the seeds all come off in my teeth, we’ll go. But if they don’t--”

“Come on,” said I, “I’m not going to monkey with signs any more.”

We climbed the back fence, partly so that the chain, weighted with a pail of stones, might not creak, and partly because to do so seemed more fitting to the business in hand. We ran crouching, thereby arousing the attention of old Mr. Branchett, who was training a Virginia creeper along his back fence.

“Hello, hello,” said he. “Pretty good runners for girls, seems to me.”

Neither of us replied. Our souls were suddenly sickened at this sort of dealing.

Wisconsin Street was a blaze of light. The ’buses were on their way from the “depots” to the hotels--nobody knew who might be in those ’buses. They were the nexus between us and the unguessed world. Strangers were on the streets. Everything was in motion. Before Morrison’s grocery they were burning rubbish, some boys from the other end of town were running unconcernedly through the flames, and the smell of the smoke set us tingling. At the corner a man was pasting a circus bill--we stopped a moment to look down the throat of the hippopotamus. Away up the street a band struck up, and we took hold of hands again, and ran.

We crossed the big square by the City Bank, under the hissing arc lamp. By the post-office a crowd of men and boys was standing, and between the files young women whom we knew, wearing ribbons and feathers, were passing in and out of the office and laughing. Bard’s jewellery store was brilliant--it looked lighter than any other store with its window of dazzling cut glass and its wonderful wall of clocks whose pendulums never kept pace. In a saloon a piano was playing--we glanced in with a kind of joyous fear at the green screen beyond the door. We saw Alma Fremont, whose father kept a grocery store, standing in the store door with a stick of pink candy thrust in a lemon, and we thought on the joy of having a father who was a grocer. We longed to stare in the barber-shop window, and looked away. But our instinctive destination was the place before the Opera House, where the band was playing. We reached it, and stood packed in the crowd, close to the blare of the music, and shivered with delight.

“If only the fire-engine would come,” Mary Elizabeth breathed in my ear.

But in a little while the guffaws, the jostling, the proximity of dirty coats, the odour of stale tobacco must have disturbed us, because gradually we edged a little away, and stood on the edge of the crowd, against an iron rail outside a billiard room. The band ceased, and went up into the hall. We had a distinct impulse to do the next thing. What was there to do next? What was it that the boys did when they went down town evenings? What else did they do while we were tidying our play-houses for the night? For here we were, longing for play, if only we could think what to do.

I felt a hand beneath my chin, lifting my face. There, in the press, stood my Father. Over his arm he carried my black jacket with the Bedford cord.

“Mother thought you might be cold,” he said.

I put on the jacket, and he took Mary Elizabeth and me by the hand, and we walked slowly back down Wisconsin Street.

“We will see Mary Elizabeth safely home first,” my Father said, and we accompanied her to the New Family’s door.

Once in our house, it was I who proposed going to bed, and the suggestion met with no opposition. Upstairs, I slipped the screen from my window and leaned out in the dusk. The night, warm, fragrant, significant, was inviting me to belong to it, was asking me, even as bright day had asked me, what it had in common with the stuffiness and dulness of forever watching others do things. Something hard touched my hand. It was my birthday dollar. It had not occurred to me to spend it.

I saw my Father stroll back down the street, lighting a cigar. Below stairs I could hear my Mother helping to put away the supper dishes. A dozen boys raced through the alley, just on their way down town. So long as they came home at a stated hour at night, and turned up at table with their hands clean, who asked them where they had been? “Where have you been?” they said to me, the moment I entered the house--and to Delia and Calista and Margaret Amelia and Betty. We had often talked about it. And none of us had even ridden on a load of hay. We had a vague expectation that it would be different when we grew up. A sickening thought came to me: _Would it be different, or was this to be forever?_

I ran blindly down the stairs where my Mother was helping to put away the supper dishes--in the magic of the night, helping to put away the supper dishes.

“Mother!” I cried, “Mother! Who made it so much harder to be a girl?”

She turned and looked at me, her face startled, and touched me--I remember how gently she touched me.

“Before you die,” she said, “it will be easier.”

I thought then that she meant that I would grow used to it. Now I know that she meant what I meant when I woke that night, and remembered my dolls lying out in the grass and the dew, and was not sorry, but glad: Glad that the time was almost come--for real playthings.

XII

BIT-BIT

At the Rodmans’, who lived in a huge house on a hill, some of the rooms had inscriptions in them--or what I should have called mottoes--cunningly lettered and set about. Some of these were in Margaret Amelia’s and Betty’s room, above the mirror, the bed, the window; and there was one downstairs on a panel above the telephone. The girls said that they had an aunt who had written them “on purpose,” an aunt who had had stories in print. In my heart I doubted the part about the printed stories, and so did Mary Elizabeth, but we loved Margaret Amelia and Betty too well to let this stand between us. Also, we were caught by the inscriptions. They were these:

FOR A CRADLE[A]

I cannot tell you who I am Nor what I’m going to be. You who are wise and know your ways Tell me.

[A] Copyright, 1908, by Harper & Brothers.

FOR THE MIRROR

Look in the deep of me. What are we going to do? If I am I, as I am, who in the world are you?

FOR AN IVORY COMB

Use me and think of spirit, and spirit yet to be. This is the jest: Could soul touch soul if it were not for me?

FOR THE DOLL’S HOUSE

Girl-doll would be a little lamp And shine like something new. Boy-doll would be a telephone And have the world speak through. The Poet-doll would like to be A tocsin with a tongue To other little dolls like bells Most sensitively rung. The Baby-doll would be a flower, The Dinah-doll a star, And all--how ignominious! Are only what they are.

WHERE THE BOUGHS TOUCH THE WINDOW

We lap on the indoor shore--the waves of the leaf mere, We try to tell you as well as we can: We wonder what you hear?

FOR ANOTHER WINDOW

I see the stones, I see the stars, I know not what they be. They always say things to themselves And now and then to me. But when I try to look between Big stones and little stars, I almost know ... but what I know Flies through the window-bars.

And downstairs, on the Telephone:

I, the absurdity, Proving what cannot be. Come, when you talk with me Does it become you well To doubt a miracle?

We did not understand all of them, but we liked them. And I am sure now that the inscriptions were partly responsible for the fact that in a little time, with Mary Elizabeth and me to give them encouragement, everything, indoors and out, had something to say to us. These things we did not confide to the others, not even to Margaret Amelia and Betty who, when we stood still to spell out the inscriptions, waited a respectful length of time and then plucked at our aprons and said: “Come on till we show you something,” which was usually merely a crass excuse to get us away.

So Mary Elizabeth and I discovered, by comparing notes, that at night our Clothes on the chair by the bed would say: “We are so tired. Don’t look at us--we feel so limp.”

And the Night would say: “What a long time the Day had you, and how he made you work. Now rest and forget and stop being you, till morning.”

Sleep would say: “Here I come. Let me in your brain and I will pull your eyes shut, like little blinds.”

And in the morning the Stairs would say: “Come! We are all here, stooping, ready for you to step down on our shoulders.”

Breakfast would say: “Now I’m going to be you--now I’m going to be you! And I have to be cross or nice, just as you are.”

Every fire that warmed us, every tree that shaded us, every path that we took, all these “answered back” and were familiars. Everything spoke to us, save only one. And this one thing was Work. Our playthings in the cupboard would talk to us all day long _until_ the moment that we were told to put them in order, and then instantly they all fell into silence. Pulling weeds in the four o’clock bed, straightening books, tidying the outdoor play-house--it was always the same. Whatever we worked at kept silent.

It was on a June morning, when the outdoors was so busy and beautiful that it was like a golden bee buried in a golden rose, that I finally refused outright to pick up a brown sunhat and some other things in the middle of the floor. Everything outdoors and in was smiling and calling, and to do a task was like going to bed, so far as the joy of the day was concerned. This I could not explain, but I said that I would not do the task, and this was high treason.

Sitting in a straight-backed chair all alone for half an hour thereafter--the usual capital punishment--was like cutting off the head of the beautiful Hour that I had meant to have. And I tried to think it out. Why, in an otherwise wonderful world, did Work have to come and spoil everything?

I do not recall that I came to any conclusion. How could I, at a time that was still teaching the Hebraic doctrine that work is a curse, instead of the new gospel--always dimly divined by children before our teaching has corrupted them,--that being busy is being alive, and that all work may be play if only we are shown how to pick out the kind that is play to us, and that doing nothing is a kind of death.

And while I sat there alone on that straight-backed chair, I wish that I, as I am now, might have called in Mary Elizabeth, whom I could see drearily polishing the New Family’s lamp-chimneys, and that I might have told the story of Bit-bit.

* * * * *

Bit-bit, the smallest thing in the world, sat on the slipperiest edge of the highest mountain in the farthest land, weaving a little garment of sweet-grass. Then out of the valley a great Deev arose and leaned his elbows on the highest mountain and said what he thought--which is always a dangerous business.

“Bit-bit,” said the Deev, “how dare you make up my sweet-grass so disgustin’ extravagant?”

(It is almost impossible for a Deev to say his _ing’s_.)

“Deevy dear,” said Bit-bit, without looking up from his work, “I have to make a garment to help clothe the world. Don’t wrinkle up my plan. And _don’t_ put your elbows on the table.”

“About my elbows,” said the Deev, “you are perfectly right, though Deevs always do that with their elbows. But as to that garment,” he added, “I’d like to know why you have to help clothe the world?”

“Deevy dear,” said Bit-bit, still not looking up from his work, “I have to do so, because it’s this kind of a world. _Please_ don’t wrinkle up things.”

“I,” said the Deev, plainly, “will now show you what kind of a world this really is. And I rather think I’ll destroy you with a great destruction.”

Then the Deev took the highest mountain and he tied its streams and cataracts together to make a harness, and he named the mountain new, and he drove it all up and down the earth. And he cried behind it:

“Ho, Rhumbthumberland, steed of the clouds, trample the world into trifles and plough it up for play. Bit-bit is being taught his lesson.”

From dawn he did this until the sky forgot pink and remembered only blue and until the sun grew so hot that it took even the sky’s attention, and the Deev himself was ready to drop. And then he pulled on the reins and Rhumbthumberland, steed of the clouds, stopped trampling and let the Deev lean his elbows on his back. And there, right between the Deev’s elbows, sat Bit-bit, weaving his garment of sweet-grass.

“Thunders of spring,” cried the Deev, “aren’t you destroyed with a great destruction?”

But Bit-bit never looked up, he was so busy.

“Has anything happened?” he asked politely, however, not wishing to seem indifferent to the Deev’s agitation--though secretly, in his little head, he hated having people plunge at him with their eyebrows up and expect him to act surprised too. When they did that, it always made him savage-calm.

“The world is trampled into trifles and ploughed up for play,” said the exasperated Deev, “_that’s_ what’s happened. How dare you pay no attention?”

“Deevy dear,” said Bit-bit, still not looking up from his task, “I have to work, whether it’s this kind of a world or not. I _wish_ you wouldn’t wrinkle up things.”

Then the Deev’s will ran round and round in his own head like a fly trying to escape from a dark hole--that is the way of the will of all Deevs--and pretty soon his will got out and went buzzle-buzzle-buzzle, which is no proper sound for anybody’s will to make. And when it did that, the Deev went off and got a river, and he climbed up on top of Rhumbthumberland and he swung the river about his head like a ribbon and then let it fall from the heights like a lady’s scarf, and then he held down one end with his great boot and the other end he emptied into the horizon. From the time of the heat of the sun he did this until the shadows were set free from the west and lengthened over the land, shaking their long hair, and then he lifted his foot and let the river slip and it trailed off into the horizon and flowed each way.

“_Now_ then!” said the Deev, disgustingly pompous.

But when he looked down, there, sitting on his own great foot, high and dry and pleasant, was Bit-bit, weaving his garment of sweet-grass and saying:

“Deevy dear, a river washed me up here and I was so busy I didn’t have time to get down.”

The Deev stood still, thinking, and his thoughts flew in and out like birds, but always they seemed to fly against window-panes in the air, through which there was no passing. And the Deev said, in his head:

“Is there nothing in this created cosmos that will stop this little scrap from working to clothe the world? Or must I play Deev in earnest?”

And that was what he finally decided to do. So he said things to his arms, and his arms hardened into stuff like steel, and spread out like mighty wings. And with these the Deev began to beat the air. And he beat it and beat it until it frothed. It frothed like white-of-egg and like cream and like the mid-waters of torrents, frothed a mighty froth, such as I supposed could never be. And when the froth was stiff enough to stand alone, the Deev took his steel-wing arm for a ladle, and he began to spread the froth upon the earth. And he spread and spread until the whole earth was like an enormous chocolate cake, thick with white frosting--one layer, two layers, three layers, disgustingly extravagant, so that the little Deevs, if there had been any, would never have got the dish scraped. Only there wasn’t any dish, so they needn’t have minded.

And when he had it all spread on, the Deev stood up and dropped his steel arms down--and even they were tired at the elbow, like any true, egg-beating arm--and he looked down at the great cake he had made. And there, on the top of the frosting, which was already beginning to harden, was sitting Bit-bit, weaving his garment of sweet-grass and talking about the weather:

“I think there is going to be a storm,” said Bit-bit, “the air around here has been so disgustingly hard to breathe.”

Then, very absently, the Deev let the steel out of his arms and made them get over being wings, and, in a place so deep in his own head that nothing had ever been thought there before, he _thought_:

“There is more to this than I ever knew there is to anything.”

So he leaned over, all knee-deep in the frosting as he was, and he said:

“Bit-bit, say a great truth and a real answer: What is the reason that my little ways don’t bother you? Or kill you? Or keep you from making your garment of sweet-grass?”

“Why,” said Bit-bit, in surprise, but never looking up from his work, “Deevy dear, that’s easy. I’m much, much, _much_ too busy.”

“Scrap of a thing,” said the Deev, “too busy to mind cataracts and an earth trampled to trifles and then frosted with all the air there is?”

“Too busy,” assented Bit-bit, snapping off his thread. “And now I _do_ hope you are not going to wrinkle up things any more.”

“No,” said the Deev, with decision, “I ain’t.” (Deevs are always ungrammatical when you take them by surprise.) And he added very shrewdly, for he was a keen Deev and if he saw that he could learn, he was willing to learn, which is three parts of all wisdom: “Little scrap, teach me to do a witchcraft. Teach me to work.”

At that Bit-bit laid down his task in a minute.

“What do you want to make?” he asked.

The Deev thought for a moment.

“I want to make a palace and a garden and a moat for _me_,” said he. “I’m tired campin’ around in the air.”