The Garden of the Plynck Part 3

"Avrillia? I should say so. Everybody knows Avrillia. At least I know her to speak to. As to what goes on inside of her, I can't say.

She's queer. She writes poetry, you know."

"But she's nice?" asked Sara anxiously.

"Oh, she's pleasant-spoken," said Schlorge, "and pretty. Some like her, and some don't. The Plynck, here," he spoke respectfully, though dissentingly, "thinks the sun rises and sets in her. For myself, I like folks of a more sensible turn."

"Even fairies?" asked Sara, half inclined to protest.

For the first time Schlorge was almost rude to her. "Well, do you take me for a human? And I can do something besides write poetry on rose-leaves." He replaced the forceps in his hair with obvious professional pride--and, of course, when he put them in in that way, they stayed.

But Sara echoed delightedly, "On rose-leaves?"

"Well, go and see her, then," said Schlorge, ungraciously. Then, relenting a little, "Come on, I'll take you--if you're stuck on verse-writing females."

He took Sara by the hand, and of course his hand was kinder than his voice. To Sara's joy they struck into the curliest of the little paths, which slipped suddenly through a half-hidden arch in the hawthorn hedge, and then skipped confidingly right up to Avrillia's door.

Avrillia's house was right on the Verge, but the Verge was quite wide at this point, and very lovely. It was more like a beach than anything else; and the sands, of course, like those of most beaches, were of gold; but instead of being bare, like most beaches, it was sprinkled quite thickly with lovely clumps of fog-bushes, which were of a different color every hour of the day and every day of the year; and the sh.e.l.ls had stems and leaves, and were prettier even than most sh.e.l.ls. And Avrillia's house had sails, instead of curtains. Still, it was not a boat, because it had star-vines climbing all over the terrace (the flowers were of all colors, except square, and only opened in the evening) and it had the marble balcony, with the box-trees in urns. For, without knowing it, it was Avrillia's balcony that Sara had seen from the stump.

"Well, there's Pirlaps," said Schlorge, lifting his shoe politely and turning back toward the Dimplesmithy. "He'll tell you where to find Avrillia."

Sara was left looking at a middle-aged fairy-gentleman with a little pointed beard, who was sitting on a sort of stool or box before an easel, hard at work. He had on white tennis-flannels, and an odd but becoming sort of cap. Usually Sara was very shy of strangers; but this gentleman looked so pleasant that she had almost made up her mind to speak to him when she saw Schlorge running wildly back up the path.

"Where's a stump?" he panted. "I forgot--where's a stump?"

He spoke so loudly that the gentleman in tennis-flannels heard him and looked around. "Oh, it's you, Schlorge," he said. "Why, there isn't any stump here, you know--but you may use my step, if you like."

He had lovely manners, even with a plain dimplesmith like Schlorge; and he rose as he spoke, with his palette in his hand, and made a pleasant gesture to indicate that Schlorge was quite welcome to it.

But Schlorge looked at it doubtfully; and, indeed, Sara saw that it was of chocolate, and rather soft where the gentleman had been sitting on it. "I don't want to soil my soul," mumbled Schlorge, standing on one foot and looking down at the sole of the other, very much agitated and embarra.s.sed.

"That's true," said the gentleman politely; "I never stand on it." At that Sara could not help showing that she noticed the large black spot left by the chocolate on the seat of his trousers. He saw her look at it, and spoke to her kindly.

"That's all right, little girl," he said. "Avrillia will have me change them in a minute."

Then he noticed Schlorge's dreadful impatience for something to stand on, and rang a little bell in his left ear.

Immediately a small servant, also of chocolate, came tumbling out of the house. He was the most attractive-looking person you can imagine.

His eyes and teeth were exactly like the filling in a chocolate cream, and how his eyes rolled and his teeth twinkled! But it was the inside of his mouth that fascinated Sara most. It was of the lovely, violent red of certain jelly-beans she had known, and she caught the most tantalizing, cavernous glimpses whenever he grinned.

"Ya.s.suh," said his master, "go at once and get a piece of plain white satin for Mr. Schlorge to stand on. You'll find a bolt in the tool-box."

Ya.s.suh scrambled off down the path. (He was very bow-legged, because his mother had allowed him to go out in the sun too much, when he was a baby, and, being of chocolate, his legs had softened into that shape.) Almost immediately he came rolling back with the white satin, which he spread on the box.

All this time Schlorge had been in an agony of impatience. Almost stepping on Ya.s.suh in his eagerness, he jumped upon the box, and, arranging his hands as before, shouted loudly, "Pirlaps, this is Sara, a little girl! Sara, this is Pirlaps, Avrillia's step-husband!" Then he sprang down and went running down the path again, shouting excitedly, "See you again, Sara! See you again!"

"Well, Sara," said the pleasant fairy-gentleman, taking her hand, "how are you? Did you come to see Avrillia?"

"Yes, sir," said Sara, looking up at him from under her lashes and thinking she had never see a shaving-person, except her own father, so delightful.

"I think you'll find her on her balcony," said Pirlaps, kindly. "I just heard a poem drop over the Verge. Here, Ya.s.suh," he said, "take this little girl to your mistress."

Sara followed Ya.s.suh along the path of silver gravel that led around the house, and then up a little outside staircase of marble to the balcony; and there, on the third step from the top, she paused.

Has any mortal but Sara ever seen Avrillia? Certainly there never was another fairy so wan and wild and beautiful. When Sara caught sight of her she was leaning over the marble bal.u.s.trade, looking down into Nothing, and one hand was still stretched out as if it had just let something fall. She seemed to be still watching its descent. Her body, as she leaned, was like a reed, and her hair was pale-gold and cloudy.

But all that was nothing beside Avrillia's eyes.

For she turned around after a while and saw Sara, and smiled at her without surprise, though she looked absent-minded and wistful.

"It didn't stick," she said.

"What didn't?" asked Sara. Her words may not sound very polite; but if you could have heard the awe and wonder in her little voice you would have pardoned her.

"The poem," said Avrillia. What was it her voice was like?

Sheep-bells? Sheep-bells, that was it. Sheep-bells across an English down--at twilight! Sara had never seen more than three sheep in her life; and those three didn't wear bells; and she had never heard of a down. And yet, Avrillia's voice sounded to Sara exactly as I have said.

Moreover, it drew Sara softly to her side. Her dress smelled like isthagaria; and it was very soft to touch. For Sara touched it as confidingly as she would her own mother's.

At that Avrillia seemed to remember her. Sara saw at once that Avrillia never remembered anybody very long at a time. She was kind, and her smile was entrancingly sweet; but her mind always seemed to be on something else. Probably on her poetry, Sara decided.

Now, however, she remembered Sara, and asked, "Would you like to look over?"

"What's down there?" Sara could not help asking.

"Nothing. Would you like to see it?"

Sara drew nearer the bal.u.s.trade, full of awe, and uncertain whether she wished to look or not. But presently curiosity got the better of her, and she leaned over the bal.u.s.trade and looked down into Nothing.

It was very gray.

"Do you throw your poems down there?" she asked of Avrillia, in inexpressible wonder.

"Of course," said Avrillia. "I write them on rose-leaves, you know--"

"Oh, yes!" breathed Sara. She still thought she had never heard of anything that sounded lovelier than poems written on rose-leaves.

"Petals, I mean, of course," continued Avrillia, "all colors, but especially blue. And then I drop them over, and some day one of them may stick on the bottom--"

"But there isn't any bottom," said Sara, lifting eyes like black pansies for wonder.

"No, there's no real bottom," conceded Avrillia, patiently, "but there's an imaginary bottom. One might stick on that, you know. And then, with that to build to, if I drop them in very fast, I may be able to fill it up--"

"But there aren't any sides to it, either!" objected Sara, even more wonderingly.

Avrillia betrayed a faint exasperation (it showed a little around the edges, like a green petticoat under a black dress). "Oh, these literal people!" she said, half to herself. Then she continued, still more patiently, "Isn't it just as easy to imagine sides as a bottom? Well, as I was saying, if I write them fast enough to fill it up--I mean if one should stick, of course--somebody a hundred years from now may come along and notice one of my poems; and then I shall be Immortal."

And at that a lovely smile crossed Avrillia's face.

Sara stood a long time, thinking. She couldn't help loving Avrillia, although she knew that Avrillia was not nearly so fond of her as the Plynck, or Schlorge, or even the Teacup. Yet she would have loved Avrillia, even if she had not been kind to her at all.

Now she attracted her attention again by timidly touching her dress.

"It--it seems a waste," she murmured. I think probably she was thinking of the rose-petals rather than of the poems. All those lovely "rose-leaves"! And she had never seen even one blue one. But Avrillia was thinking of the poems.

"That's the regular way to do about Poetry," she said, with a pretty little air of authority. "First, you write it, and then you drop it over the Verge into Nothing. But it must be very good--otherwise, it isn't worth while to spend your time on it." But just then the thermometer went off.