Half-Past Bedtime Part 10

She closed her eyes, and they stared through the magnifying gla.s.s, and began to count her right upper eyelashes. She became quite excited as they went on.

"A hundred and three," they said, "a hundred and four, a hundred and five," and then they gave a great shout.

"You're the one," they cried, "you're the very one! You've exactly a hundred and five!"

She opened her eyes again and saw them dancing about.

"Where's the flute?" she asked.

The soldier gave it to her.

"And the moon's full," said the greengrocer, "and it's a quarter to twelve. Perhaps we shall soon find my appet.i.te."

"And my character," said the soldier.

"And my husband," said the stout lady.

"And my temper," said Lancelot.

But the drummers had lost hope, and still stared at the ground.

"Now," said Lancelot, "we'd better go to the market-place. This here little girl will show us the way. And when the clocks have struck twelve we'll sing our song and see what happens."

So they went to the market-place, where the Town Hall was, and where all the tram-lines criss-crossed; and the policeman on duty outside the Bank stared at them sleepily, but didn't say anything. There were also two dustmen with a cart clearing up rubbish and bits of newspaper, and a water-man watering the asphalt, and some postmen outside the Post Office loading a mail-van. Then the deep bell in the old abbey tower began to toll the hour of midnight, and the moon looked down on them with her silver face, and they stood in a row and began their song.

Doris's hands were shaky, as you can imagine, when she lifted the flute to her lips. But when she began to blow, the flute began to play; and oh, the difference it made to the song! For it was now a song with the maddest and sweetest and most beguiling melody that anybody in the world had ever imagined, or ever imagined that anybody could imagine. It began very softly, like a boy whistling, and the cracking of sticks in a deep wood, and then it sounded like birds singing, and water falling, and ripe fruit dropping from trees. Then it grew louder, until it sounded like thunder and sea-waves shattering on the beach; and then it grew softer again, like leaves rustling, and crickets chirping in the gra.s.s.

Before the stout lady had sung half the first verse, Doris could hardly stand still enough to play the flute. She could scarcely believe that it was possible for anybody in the world to feel so happy. She saw the policeman running toward them, and the postmen, and the man from the water-cart; and she saw the windows above the shops in the market-place thrown up, and people looking out. Then came the chorus, like the pealing of great bells, and the policeman and the postmen began to join in, and people in their nightdresses and pyjamas came running out of their front doors, singing at the tops of their voices.

Before the chorus was over there were nearly a hundred people singing and shouting and beating time, and the cymbals were clashing, and the concertina was groaning, and the five drummers were hitting like mad.

But it was the flute, it was Doris's flute, that soared up and up and led the whole music; and when the dance came, it was the magic of Doris's flute that stole into the feet of all who heard it.

Most of them were bare feet, like Doris's own, but some were in slippers and some in boots, and soon they were all whirling and twisting and hopping, as the people that they belonged to danced and sang. The news had spread abroad now, and by the end of the second verse the whole of the market-place was simply crammed, and by the end of the third verse all the streets that led into it were bubbling over with people dancing.

There were the ironworks men dancing with their employers, and Mr Joseph dancing with his girls, and the heads of the cotton-mills dancing in their pyjamas, arm-in-arm with the people that worked for them. And there was the French mistress dancing with the two dustmen, and there was Miss Plum dancing with the chimney-sweep, and there was the policeman trying to dance with everybody, and everybody trying to dance with him.

Then a little man with a carroty moustache pushed through the crowd and caught hold of the stout lady; and she nearly dropped her tambourine, because he was her long-lost husband. As for the greengrocer, he became so hungry that he danced into one of Mr Joseph's shops, and Mr Joseph gave him permission to eat everything that he could see. Funnily enough, too, both Uncle Joe and Captain Jeremy happened to be in town; and when Uncle Joe caught sight of the soldier he was so struck with his honest appearance that he gave him the names of three or four generals who would be only too glad to have him in their armies. It was the same, too, with Lancelot, for when Captain Jeremy spoke to him his face became so gentle that Captain Jeremy resolved at once to give him a job as bosun's mate.

Then the French mistress came and kissed Doris, and then everybody cheered everybody else; and the five drummers shouted with joy, because each of them had found the sense that he had lost. The blind one could see; and the deaf one could hear; and the one that couldn't feel felt somebody squeezing him; and the one that couldn't smell suddenly smelt somebody's tooth powder; and the one that couldn't taste had the biggest surprise of all. For one of Mr Joseph's girls gave him a box of chocolates, and it was the loveliest thing that had ever happened to him; and after that, when she gave him some almond rock, he asked her if she would marry him, and she said that she would.

For a whole hour Doris played her flute, and then it stopped, and everybody looked at everybody else; and everybody else looked so queer and funny that everybody began to shout with laughter. Even the moon laughed, and the end of it was that they all resolved to make up their quarrels, because after what had happened it seemed so silly to go on quarrelling about anything. But what the tune of the song was no one remembered; and next morning when Doris took the flute to school, none of the girls could make it play anything, not even Gwendolen, who had a flute at home.

"_H'shh_," said the man in the moon, Full-faced and white, And I listened, I listened so hard that I heard through the night,

Faint through a crack In the ice of the whiteness, I heard Somebody whisper my name With a magical word.

And the moon and the stars and the sky, And the roofs of the street, Fell in fragments of darkness and silver That danced at my feet.

And we danced, and we danced, and we danced, And oh! tired was I When, full-faced and white, the cold moon Shone again in the sky.

THE IMAGINARY BOY

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Haunted Wood]

VII

THE IMAGINARY BOY

Soon after Doris's adventure with the flute, Marian and Gwendolen made a most solemn vow. Marian p.r.i.c.ked her finger with a needle and made a tiny drop of blood come, and then she rubbed it into the palm of Gwendolen's hand and promised to be faithful to her for ever. Then Gwendolen p.r.i.c.ked her own finger and rubbed it into the palm of Marian's hand, and took her dying oath that Marian should always be her greatest friend. Then they washed their hands under the nursery tap and cleaned the needle and put it back in the workbox, and Marian was very pleased, and so was Gwendolen, and when they told Cuthbert he said that he didn't mind much.

Marian was pleased, because she knew that Gwendolen would ask her to tea pretty often at the old farmhouse; and Gwendolen was pleased, because that was the first time that she had ever had a greatest friend; and Cuthbert didn't mind much, because he had gone to a new school, where there was a boy called Edward Goldsmith, who was wonderfully strong, and could dive into the water backward from the top diving-board at the town baths. He was going to be a barrister like Mr Jenkins, who took the plate round at St Peter's Church, and after that he was going to be Lord Chief Justice, like the great Lord Barrington at Fairbarrow Park.

Gwendolen's aunt was pleased too, and so was Captain Jeremy when Gwendolen told him, and so were her father and mother, who were climbing the Himalaya Mountains and writing a book called _Two Above the Snowline_. But Gwendolen didn't know, of course, about her father and mother being glad till she got a letter from them; and by then she had become quite used to having Marian for her greatest friend.

This letter came during the first week of the holidays, while Marian was staying for a few days with Gwendolen. Both Gwendolen's aunt and Captain Jeremy were away on a short voyage, and Marian and Gwendolen had the house to themselves, except for Mrs Robertson, the cook, Amy and Agnes, the two maids, and Percy, the boot-and-garden boy.

Percy was the boy that used to open the door when Gwendolen's aunt lived in Bellington Square, and his father was a gamekeeper, called Mr Williams, who worked for Lord Barrington at Fairbarrow Park. Percy was sixteen, and was going to marry Agnes as soon as he had saved enough money, and though he was rather proud, Marian and Gwendolen liked him, but not so much as they liked his father.

They liked Mr Williams, because he knew all about rabbits, and used to take them through places marked PRIVATE; and they liked Mrs Williams, because she gave them peppermints and never minded how many questions they asked. Mr Williams was tall, with a grey moustache, and his clothes smelt of tobacco, and he wore gaiters; and Mrs Williams was short, and her arms smelt of soap, and she was always popping upstairs to change her ap.r.o.n. They lived in a little cottage near the Park gates, and they had six children besides Percy, but Mr Williams was nearly always out, setting traps or counting the young partridges.

Fairbarrow Park was about three miles round, and was half-way to Fairbarrow Down; and in the middle of it was Lord Barrington's house, with its thirty bedrooms and all its gardens. There was an Italian garden and a Dutch garden and a rose-garden and a water-garden; and there were lawns as smooth as a ballroom floor, over which the peac.o.c.ks cried and strutted. But besides all these, and the Park in which they nestled, most of the country round belonged to Lord Barrington; and it was in the woods and fields which he let to different farmers that the pheasants and partridges made their homes.

When they had finished reading Gwendolen's letter, which came just after their middle-day dinner, Marian and Gwendolen thought that they would go and see Mr Williams, and watch the young partridges that he was bringing up by hand. So they set off, and presently they found him just at the farther edge of Lord Barrington's estate, where there was a little wood climbing up the side of Fairbarrow Down. There was a sort of gra.s.sy hollow near the wood, and here Mr Williams had placed half a dozen hen-coops; and in front of these he had built a little mound, made of lumps of turf dug from the Down. In among these lumps of turf there were thousands of ants and several ants' nests full of eggs; and a score of young partridges were scrambling over them, finding their afternoon meal.

Usually Mr Williams was glad to see the girls, and to let them play with the young partridges, but this afternoon he only nodded to them and went on smoking in silence. They were a little surprised, because it was such a lovely afternoon, with the sky bluer than any ocean, and the fields all glittering with the leaves of the root crops, or hidden away under the golden wheat. Here and there the reapers were already at work cutting the first of the oats and barley, and about a mile away they could see the chimneys of the great house shining in groups between the tree-tops.

The only dark spot was the thick and tangled pinewood, known as the Haunted Wood, into which Lord Barrington never allowed anybody besides himself to go. It was inside the Park, and round two sides of it ran the Park wall, with sharp iron spikes on the top; and round the other two sides there was a barbed-wire fence, with a small gate in it, heavily padlocked. For twenty years it had never been touched. When a tree fell over, it lay where it had fallen; between the trunks of the trees there had grown a jungle of undergrowth; and only Lord Barrington had the key of the gate.

Mr Williams was still sitting down, staring moodily in front of him, when Marian asked him what was the matter, and was he angry with them for coming?

"No, no, it's not that," he said, "but I've just got the push. His lordship has given me a month's notice. I'm got to quit and find a new job, after forty-two years here, man and boy."

Marian and Gwendolen stared at him in astonishment.

"Why, whatever have you been doing?" Gwendolen asked.

He took his pipe from his mouth and pointed to the Haunted Wood.