The Garden of the Plynck Part 6

"Well," said Pirlaps, at last, glancing at the small clinical thermometer he carried, "we'll just have time to take a look at the Strained Relations, and then I must get back and help Avrillia vanish the children."

He led Sara to a distant corner of the uncommon that was fenced off from the rest by a high wire netting. It looked rather like the high nets about a tennis-court, except that it was made of silver wire, with a mesh as fine as a milk-strainer. Inside the wire, in a sort of little private park, she could see a number of very haughty-looking persons moving about.

"Don't speak to them," said Pirlaps, as they drew near. "They're entirely too sn.o.bbish to be spoken to."

Sara approached in awe, and they stood gazing at the pale, supercilious-looking creatures, who returned their gaze through monocles, lorgnettes, and other contemptuous media.

"You see," explained Pirlaps, "n.o.body speaks to them. Every time they go in or out, they pa.s.s through the strainer, and that strains out all of their red corpuscles and leaves only the blue. That's why they are so superior and exclusive. Of course, too, it makes them very thin, and gives them that sheer, transparent look." And, indeed, Sara noticed that she could see quite through one of the thinnest ones, who wore a very high-necked dress b.u.t.toned in the back.

Pirlaps was now growing anxious to be at home, so after saying good-by to the important personages on the Posts of Honor, they started back.

As they drew near, they saw Avrillia in the rose-garden near the balcony, looking very lovely as she moved among the flowers.

"Ah," said Pirlaps, "she's already vanished them. She's gathering rose-leaves for tomorrow's poems."

As he spoke, Avrillia, looking up, waved a blue rose to them, and disappeared within the house. In a moment she reappeared, wearing the sweetest smile Sara had ever seen.

Pirlaps looked greatly pleased and touched. And no wonder; for Avrillia was coming out to meet him, bringing him his step with her own hands.

Chapter IV The Invaders

When Sara dropped the curtains behind her the next morning she paused in horror, with her hand poised above the dimple-holder. What had happened to her lovely Garden in the night?

It looked exactly as her own little garden was accustomed to look three days after a hard freeze. Blighted--that was the word: it was blighted. The leaves hung limp and brown from the trees; the blue plush gra.s.s, and even the blue bark of the Gugollaph-tree, had turned a most sickly green. The water was frozen in the pool; and, imprisoned below it, she could see the Echo of the Plynck, perfectly stiff, and looking as if she were in some sort of awful trance. The Plynck, on the other hand, drooped on her accustomed branch like the leaves on the trees, as if she hardly had strength to hold her loosened plumes together. The Snimmy's wife sat on her own toadstool, rigid and angry-looking, with her tail wound tightly around the base, and with the half-hemmed doork.n.o.b forgotten in her lap; the Snimmy lay watchfully at the door of the prose-bush, with his long, debilitating nose on his paws, shivering terribly; and the Snoodle looked as if somebody had put salt on his mother. And the poor, timid Teacup looked like a gentle, fat little old lady who has just been shot out of a volcano.

Avrillia and Pirlaps were standing together in the little arch, looking with pa.s.sionate and indignant eyes upon the general distress and havoc, and especially upon the insolent creatures who had caused it. For Sara saw, after a few minutes of bewilderment, that the beautiful place with its gentle inhabitants had been overrun in the night by a horde of Fractions.

For there they sat, grouped insolently around the fountain, drinking tears out of mugs of enormous sighs, and hammering with their fists upon the peculiarly disagreeable-looking tables at which they sat.

These tables were of various sizes, but they were all very ponderous and slippery-looking; and observing them closely, Sara saw that her instinctive aversion was well founded--for they were multiplication tables. The Two-Times table was nearest to her, being placed just to the left of the dimple-holder; and they increased regularly in size up to the Twelve-Times table, at which the officers were sitting.

The whole crowd of invaders were disgustingly haughty and self-important--worse even than the Strained Relations, Sara thought; but the officers were the worst of all. From the Least Common Multiple up to the Greatest Common Divisor, from the thin, poker-like Quotient with the fierce white moustache to the enormous, puffy Multiplicand, Sara thought they were the most pompous lot she had ever seen. However, since they were officers and units, she could imagine that they might have some excuse; but what possible excuse could there be for conceit in the Fractions, every one of whom had something missing about him?

Some of them, of course, lacked only an ear or a little finger; but numbers of them had only one leg or one arm, and many of them were much worse off! Why, at the farthest side of the Three-Times table Sara saw a Fraction who consisted entirely of one eye!

There was one table, to be sure, the Eleven-Times, the noisiest of all, that was occupied entirely by Improper Fractions; but aside from their table-manners and general behavior, which were shocking, Sara thought they looked even worse than the proper ones. For one of them had two faces, another three feet, and a third one had as many arms as an octopus. Sara positively refused to look at them.

While Sara stood gazing in horror and dismay, and feeling so grieved for her friends that she could not bring herself to ask anybody what had happened or what could be done, she saw Schlorge coming at a run down the path from the Dimplesmithy. He looked as wild and distracted as any of them, but Sara felt a great relief when she saw him, because she knew he was so clever and practical. She felt, too, that she could ask him what the trouble was and he could bear it--better than the Teacup, for instance, who, she feared, would go all to pieces, or the Echo of the Plynck, who was clearly all in. So she ran up to him and touched his elbow and asked, almost crying, "What is it, Schlorge? How did it happen?"

Schlorge, even in his excitement, was comforted by her sympathy, and evidently very glad to see another ally. "Why--a--" he began, and then, remembering, he cried excitedly, "Where's the stump--where's the stump? I have to tell Sara about it!"

But alas, the invaders had razed the stump to the ground, apparently out of wanton malice, for they had made no use of it. All over and around it were strewn plus-signs, minus-signs, and other weapons; and Sara noticed that the dots from the divided-by signs were rolling about everywhere on the withered gra.s.s. Manifestly, Schlorge could not get upon the fallen stump, through such a thicket of debris, and he dared not move them nor step on them; besides, it is doubtful if he could have told Sara about it unless the stump were right side up.

At this juncture, however, Pirlaps stepped boldly forward and once more offered Schlorge his step. Schlorge sprang upon it without noticing the chocolate, but he was so agitated that he put his left hand into his bosom and his right behind his back, instead of the other way around. However, it was in a loud, firm voice, with fierce, defiant looks at the invaders, that he informed Sara:

"The Fractions came down like a wolf on the fold: Their ears are acute but their noses are cold.

They know nothing of poetry, music or art-- So why in Sam Hill should they think they're so smart?"

"Why in Zeelup?" corrected the Teacup, from above, in a tremulous, weeping voice; but even had it been louder it would have been drowned in the clamor that rose from the tables.

"Silence, impudent clown!" roared the fat, fierce-looking Multiplicand. "Ignoramus! nothing of music! Why, you don't know Common Time!"

Sara quaked; only yesterday she had got all tangled up trying to tell the difference between three-four time and two-four time; and she knew Schlorge was wrong and the dreadful creature was right. But Schlorge was beside himself with fury and beyond the reach of fear or reason.

"Oh, go on!" he shouted fiercely. "You don't know nothing about the insides of music--that's only the outsides! Besides, what time does a bird sing by? That's music, ain't it?"

But before the Multiplicand could answer, his henchman, the Multiplier, called out, "And what do you know of art, Oaf? Don't you know that modern art is colored geometry?"

"And poetry?" squeaked the Quotient, fiercely, "Don't poets have to count their feet to write poems?"

But at that juncture they were all electrified to see Avrillia stepping forward, looking so beautiful and so queenly and so transfigured by righteous indignation that even the invaders merely blinked. "Not modern poets," she said, with an icy authority that sent a hostile shiver up and down the multiplication tables. "They do not count anything--not even the cost."

It was not so much what Avrillia said, as the way she said it, and the way she looked, that cowed even the all-powerful invaders for a moment. Pirlaps, at her side, said, "Good for you, Avrillia!" under his breath; and Schlorge glared at the Fractions with triumphant scorn and continued,

"Like leaves of the forest when summer is green Our beautiful Garden at sunset was seen; Like leaves of the forest when autumn is flown, You see it this morning all withered and strown."

As he finished this stanza Schlorge seemed to rise to twice his full height (indeed, he seemed to Sara for a moment almost half as tall as her waist) in his eloquent fury, as he continued:

"But we will lambast you, you straight-waisted pigs, As sure as black's yellow and thistles is figs!

Yea, surer than squashes our vengeance we'll wreak; If it isn't today, why, we'll do it next week!"

Sara had a distressed feeling that this was rather a weak ending, but n.o.body else seemed to notice it; indeed, several of the Fractions were so incensed at the bold threat that two or three of them called out, "Shoot him at sunrise!" The Greatest Common Divisor, however, merely gave him a savage and contemptuous glance over his tear-mug, as much as to say that he would annihilate him when it was quite convenient.

In a few moments they were again entirely absorbed in their drinking and carousing, and then Pirlaps cautiously touched Schlorge on the arm. "Let's have a council of war," he said, in a very low voice, drawing him a little to one side. "I have an idea. Where shall we go?"

"Better come down to the Smithy," said Schlorge. "They haven't discovered it yet."

Very quietly then, while the Fractions were busy drinking, Schlorge and Pirlaps and Avrillia and Sara and the Snimmy and the Snimmy's wife slipped out of the Garden and down the path to the Dimplesmithy. They didn't think it necessary to tell the Plynck, who was too much crushed to be of use, or the Teacup, for whom they dreaded the slightest shock. The Echo of the Plynck might have been useful, only she was still frozen into the pool.

The farther they got from the Garden the less blighted and the more natural everything looked; and by the time they reached the road, they would not have suspected, from the look of the country, that destruction was lurking so near.

When they reached the Dimplesmithy, they sent the Snimmy to sniff out the neighborhood carefully with his debilitating nose, to see if there were any spies about; and when he returned, Pirlaps carefully unfolded his plan.

"I am convinced," he said earnestly, "from what I have observed this morning, that Poetry will be absolutely fatal to these hateful intruders who have descended upon us. The only question in my mind is, How shall we apply it? After thinking about it most carefully, I have worked out a tentative plan. Avrillia, I am sure, can furnish us plenty of ammunition." (Sara, glancing admiringly at Avrillia, saw the thrilling look of high resolve that shone in her face.) "And Schlorge will have to make us two or three more pairs of bellows. Are you strong enough to wield a pair, Sara?" he asked. Even in the stress of this dire moment he spoke so kindly that she loved him more than ever; and she told him proudly that she was sure she could. Schlorge had already dragged down from a shelf three extra pairs of bellows--one brand-new one and two old ones; and he was busy at his forge mending and putting them in order. All the while, however, he was listening anxiously to Pirlaps.

"The only part I haven't been able to work out," said Pirlaps, with a worried look, "is this: How can we reduce the Poetry to a powdered form fast enough to be effective?"

This was a problem indeed; and everybody thought deeply and desperately. Avrillia, Sara could see, was already so absorbed in making the poems that she didn't even hear; but it was an agonizing moment for the rest of them. It did not last long, however; for the Snimmy's wife stepped forward and said triumphantly, in her deep, cross voice, "My coffee-mill!"

"Ah, these practical people!" cried Pirlaps, rubbing his hands delightedly. "Now for our organization. Avrillia, have you plenty of rose-leaves?"