Here and Hereafter Part 27

You're not to look until I've done it." She wrote the name as neatly as she could with a long new pencil, beautifully pointed. "Now you can look," she said.

"It isn't anything at all. It's only three old rings."

"Yes, but they're magic rings."

"Pooh! They can't do anything."

"Can't they?" said Netta with immense indifference, as she replaced the lid. She sat on the table, swinging her slim legs, and hummed provokingly.

"I _know_ they can't do anything," Jimmy repeated.

Netta looked away from him, up at the flies circling on the white ceiling. Her eyes grew big and meditative. She continued humming.

"Well," said Jimmy, desperately, "what _can_ they do?"

"Every night when you're in bed and asleep, and when everybody else is in bed and asleep, they can come out of the temple and run about. They run up walls and along the roofs of houses. And they can fly, too. They fly just like--like flies."

"I don't believe it. You're being a liar, and you know where liars go to. You ought to be punished."

"I'm not being a liar. I might be a make-believer, perhaps, but I shan't say if I am. n.o.body knows where those rings came from. Papa himself doesn't know."

"I shall go and ask him this minute myself." Jimmy walked firmly to the door, paused, and added, "And lying is the same as make-believing."

He found his father, and asked him if he knew where those rings that Netta had came from.

"No," said his father, "I told her I didn't."

Jimmy was disappointed. "Lying and make-believing are the same thing, aren't they?" he said.

"Not at all the same thing." This was yet another disappointment. Later in the day Jimmy went to Netta and said that she really ought to give him one of those rings as he was her brother. She refused. He then asked if he might look inside the temple at them again. Once more he was refused.

"It is not a good thing," said Netta, gravely, "to look at them too much in one day."

"It seems as if I couldn't do anything or have anything, or play at anything," said Jimmy, gloomily. Netta, being tender-hearted, relented, and allowed him to look once more.

Netta had girl-friends of her own age. They were Dorothy, and Cecilia Vane, and Rose Heritage. Netta told them about the magic rings, and they were all deeply impressed.

A ritual sprang up. Netta was the priestess and Rose Heritage was the under-priestess. It became necessary always to wave a green leaf slowly over the temple before opening it. Every morning the magic rings were taken out and placed for a few minutes in a basin of pure water. Then they were dried and put back again in the temple. Dorothy Vane, who read deeply, suggested amulets, and they were made at once. Each girl wore round her neck a gold thread--it had come off a box of crackers--and to the thread was attached a small square of white cardboard, on which three circles had been drawn. Netta and Rose had amulets on which the circles were drawn in red chalk. Dorothy and Cecilia had to be content with black ink. But it was understood that after a certain time Dorothy would be raised to the position of under-priestess, and then she also would have the red-chalk privilege. The amulets were to be worn under the dress, and to be shown to no one. The secrecy observed was tremendous. n.o.body was to know anything. When engaged with the magic rings, Christian names were forbidden. Netta was addressed as the priestess and Rose as the under-priestess; Dorothy was called One and Cecilia Two. Of course, Two was the least honourable position. It had been a.s.signed to Cecilia because, owing to her sweet and gentle disposition, she consented to take it--which none of the other three would have done. Jimmy was by unanimous vote left out of it altogether.

They would ask him if he would not go and play in the garden, like a kind boy, because they had some private secrets to talk about; and if he came suddenly into the room where they were they hid things hurriedly and talked ostentatiously about the weather. This maddened Jimmy.

Sometimes he said that he knew all about it, and at other times pointed out to Netta that the claims of their relationship required that she should tell him all about it, and at other times that he did not want to know. Occasionally he threatened to throw the temple and the magic rings (he called them "old curtain-rings," but that was only his offensiveness) into the duck-pond. He did not do it. The devotees were four in number, and he was only one, and foolhardiness is not courage.

"Anyhow," he said, "if you weren't doing wrong, you'd let me into it, and so you're certain to be punished. I have got secrets of my own and mine are not wrong, but I shan't say anything about them." But he prevailed nothing.

The legends about the magic rings grew rapidly in number and in strength. Their origin was now accounted for. They had been hoops belonging to the fairies, and they had undergone trundling so willingly and beautifully that the fairies had set them free and given them magical powers. This aetiological myth was, like the rest, given out by big-eyed Netta, the make-believer, and received with wonderment and satisfaction by her followers. The magic rings always lived a day on ahead; what is merely Monday to us was Tuesday to them. Reports of their nocturnal wanderings were received from time to time. They frequently went to the moon. They could fly like flies, it will be remembered. Once they went to the Star of Dolls. This star is inhabited by dolls only, and they can talk. A penny exercise book was procured (the generous and sweet-tempered Cecilia defraying the total expense), and in it the myths were written out, together with certain rules to be observed. It was called the "Volume of the Magic Rings," and the under-priestess had charge of it just as the priestess had charge of the temple. Letters pa.s.sed freely between the four girls. I give the one which was the beginning of the end:

"DEAREST PRIESTESS,--When you bring the temple with you to tea on their Thursday wich is our Wensday, mind to bring two handkercheeves, and one of them must be clean. This is important. I have something to show you. I hope you tell Jimy nothing.--Your loving

"UNDER-PRIESTESS."

The other girls had received similar instructions. Cecilia had been told to bring her musical-box as well. They all met in Rose's schoolroom, and at first she did not explain her instructions fully.

"I've got a splendid thing," she said. "First of all, when I say 'Go,'

you must all run after me at once, bringing the things with you, and then when we get there I'll tell you the rest."

Rose's governess was with them at tea, but afterwards she made ready to go out into the garden, suggesting that they should come too.

"May we wait a little and then come?" asked Rose. "We want to play in the house first."

"Very well," said Miss Stagg. "Don't get into any mischief."

The moment she had gone Rose said "Go!" In single file, with Rose leading, they ran down a long pa.s.sage and into the spare bedroom at the end of it.

"Now, then," said Rose, "first of all, we tie clean white handkerchiefs on our heads." It was done. "Now, come and look."

In the spare room there was a very large toilet-table. It was hung all round with pink chintz with thin white muslin over it. When you got under the table the world was shut out by these curtains, and the light came through them in a holy, pink, subdued glow. It was a charming and secluded spot, and here Miss Rose had placed all ready two small coloured candles and a box of matches, and the lid of a box piled high with rose petals, and the green leaf essential to the opening of the temple. All agreed that it really was as splendid as she had said. A conference was held, and the ritual decided. The candles were lighted, and placed one on each side of the temple. The green leaf was waved, the temple opened, and the magic rings taken out. At this point the musical-box was to begin to play. The Priestess had a.s.signed the turning of the musical-box to Two, because, after all, it was her own musical-box, and she had so few privileges. So Two was radiant. The magic rings were to be covered over with the rose petals, left there until the music ceased, and then replaced in the temple. Then everybody was to say, "O magic rings!" three times, and the candles were to be extinguished. The programme was never concluded, because, in the middle of it, Rose's governess, Miss Stagg, came and caught them.

It was Miss Stagg's opinion that they were very naughty, wicked, irreverent children, and that they ran a risk of burning the house down.

The first accusation was untrue, but the latter had something in it.

The four children wandered out into the garden, a dejected group.

Cecilia was the only one who had actually cried though, and they had all comforted her as well as they could.

"I do hate Miss Stagg," said Rose. "This is the end of the magic rings."

Netta, the make-believer, rose to the occasion with a new myth.

"The magic rings have been insulted. They do not like that. I don't like being insulted myself, and if it had been _my_ governess I should have answered back. Well, I know what the magic rings will do now."

"What?"--breathlessly, from all.

"They will go away. To-night I shall put them in their temple in their usual place. But to-morrow all of you come in the morning after lessons, and you'll see--they'll be gone! They will go right away by themselves, perhaps to the moon and perhaps to the Star of Dolls."

Miss Stagg thought it her duty to inform Mrs Heritage, who heard the story gravely, and thanked her, but repeated it brilliantly, amid a good deal of merriment, to the make-believer's father, when she dined at his house that night.

"Ah!" he said, "I must manage a mysterious disappearance for those rings."

When next morning Netta and her companions opened the temple the rings were not there, but in their place was a slip of paper, on which the word "Good-bye" was written. Not one of the four was more astonished than Netta herself. "It's really happened. I wasn't _sure_ it would, you know."

"I shall tell Miss Stagg," said Rose, triumphantly.

"I wonder if we really were wicked," said Cecilia, with a troubled look in her angel-eyes. "I didn't mean to be."

They never solved the mystery; gradually they forgot it.

PART II.--FURTHER OFF FROM HEAVEN

Forty years pa.s.sed, and but two of the people of this story were left alive--Rose Heritage and Netta. Rose Heritage had become Lady Mallard, lived in a big house in the country, and had a grown-up family. Netta lived alone in a small house in West Kensington. The two never corresponded, and heard nothing of each other now. The friendship had never been violently broken off. It had perished from time and separation, as friendships will.

Of the others, Cecilia was the first to die. As a child her nurses had said that she was too good to live. As a girl of eighteen she seemed too beautiful to live. It was a beauty so spiritual, so unearthly, that to see it was to feel that it was claimed elsewhere. Netta's father had died with the complaint on his lips that physical pain had so far destroyed his sense of humour that he got no more pleasure out of leading articles. Jimmy had gone into the army, spent his own share of his father's property and most of Netta's, and finally redeemed by a gallant death a life that had been remarkably extravagant and bad.