Here Matthew Jinks
Just lies and st —
“It’s not nice,” he said emphatically, “and you mustn’t say it. Always speak well of the dead.” And, as they couldn’t honestly do that, they obeyed him and left Mr. Jinks in his unhonoured grave, with a broken wheel-barrow for a headstone and a mass of wire-netting to make resurrection difficult. In order to get the disagreeable epitaph out of their minds Uncle Felix substituted a kinder and gentler one, and made them learn it by heart:
Old Jinks lies here
Without a tear;
He meant no wrong,
But we didn’t get along;
So Jinks lies here,
And we’ve nothing more to fear.
He’s all right:
Jinks
Sinks
Out of sight!
It was the proud colony of wallflowers that first made Uncle Felix like the place. Their loveliness fluttered in the winds, and their perfume stole down deliciously above the rubbish and neglect. They seemed to him the soul of ruins triumphing over outward destruction. Hence the delicate melancholy in their scent and hence their lofty chosen perch. Out of decay they grew, yet invariably above it. Both sun and stars were in their flaming colouring, and their boldness was true courage. They caught the wind, they held the sunset and the dawn; they turned the air into a shining garden. They stood somehow for a yearning beauty in his own heart that expressed itself in his stories.
“If you pick them,” he warned Tim, who climbed like a monkey, and was as destructive as his age, “the place will lose its charm. They grow for the End of the World, and the End of the World belongs to them. This wonderful spot will have no beauty when they’re gone.” To wear a blossom in the hair or buttonhole was to be protected against decay and ugliness.
Most wonderful of all, however, was the door in the old grey fence; for it was a Gateway, and a Gateway, according to Uncle Felix, was a solemn thing. None knew where it led to, it was a threshold into an unknown world. Ordinary doors, doors in a house, for instance, were not Gateways; they merely opened into rooms and other familiar places. Dentists, governesses, and bedrooms existed behind ordinary, indoor doors; but out-of-doors opened straight into the sky, and in virtue of it were extraordinary. They were Gateways. At the End of the World stood a stupendous, towering door that was a Gateway. Another, even more majestic, rose at the end of life. This door in the grey fence was a solemn, mysterious, and enticing Gateway — into everything worth seeing.
It was invariably kept locked; it led into the high-road that slithered along secretly and sedulously — to London. For the children it was out of bounds. Here the Policeman lived in constant terror of his life, and here went to and fro the strange world of Passers-by. The white road flowed past like a river. It moved. From the lower branches of the horse-chestnut tree they could just see it slide; also when the swing went extra high, and from the end of the prostrate elm. It went in both directions at once. It encircled the globe, going under the sea too. The door leading into it was a quay or port. But the brass knob never turned; the Gardener said there was no key; and from the outer side the handle had long since been removed, lest Passers-by might see it and come in. Even the keyhole had been carefully stuffed up with that stringy stuff the Gardener carried in his pockets.
Till, finally, something happened that made the End of the World seem suddenly a new place. Tim noticed that the stringy stuff had been removed.
The day had been oppressively hot, and tempers had been sorely tried. Mother had gone to lie down with a headache; Aunt Emily was visiting the poor with a basket; Daddy was inaccessible in his study; all Authorities were doing the dull things Authorities have to do. It was September, and the world stood lost in this golden haze of unexpected heat. Very still it stood, the yellow leaves quite motionless and the smoke from the kitchen chimney hanging stiff and upright in the air. There was no breath of wind.
“There’s simply nothing to do,” the children said — when suddenly Uncle Felix arrived, and their listlessness was turned to life and interest. He had gone up in the morning to London, and the suddenness of his return was part of his prerogative. Stumper, Jinks, and other folk were announced days and days beforehand, but Uncle Felix just — came.
“We’ll go to the End of the World,” he decided gravely, the moment he had changed. “There’s something going on there. Quick!” This meant, as all knew, that he had an idea. They stole out, and no one saw them go. Across the lawn and past the lime trees humming busily with tired bees, they crept beneath the shadow of the big horse-chestnut, where the staring windows of the house could no longer see them. They disappeared. The Authorities might look and call for ever without finding them.
“Slower, please, a little,” said Maria breathlessly, and was at once picked up and carried. Moving cautiously through the laurel shrubbery, they left the garden proper with its lawns and flower-beds, and entered the forbidden region at the End of the World. They stood upright. Uncle Felix dropped Maria like a bundle.
“Look!” he said below his breath. “I told you so!”
He pointed. The colony of wallflowers were fluttering in the windless air. Nothing stirred but these. The stillness was unbroken. Sunshine blazed on the rubbish-heap. The currant bushes watched. Deep silence reigned everywhere. But the flowers on the crumbling wall waved mysteriously their coloured banners of alarm.
“It looks different,” said Judy in a hushed aside.
“Something’s happened,” whispered Tim, staring round him.
Maria watched them from the ground, prepared to follow in any direction, but in no hurry until a plan was decided.
“The keyhole!” cried Tim loudly, and at the same moment a huge blackbird flew out of the shrubberies behind them, and flashed across the open space toward the orchard on the other side. It whistled a long, shrill scream of warning. It was bigger by far than any ordinary blackbird.
“Home! Quick! Run for your lives!” cried some one, as they dashed for the safety of the elm tree. Even Maria ran. They scrambled on to the slippery, fallen trunk and gasped for breath as they stood balancing in an uneasy row, all holding hands.
“It was bigger than a hen,” exclaimed Judy inconsequently. “It couldn’t have come through any keyhole.” She stared with inquiring, startled eyes at her brother. The bird and the keyhole were somehow lumped together in her mind.
“They’ve stopped,” observed Maria, and sat down in the comfortable niche between the lopped branch and the trunk. It was true. The wallflowers were as motionless now as painted outlines on a nursery saucer.
“Because we’re safe,” said Uncle Felix. “It was a warning.”
And then all turned their attention to Tim’s discovery of the keyhole. For the stuffing had been removed. The white, dusty road gleamed through the hole in a spot of shining white.
“Hush!” whispered their guide. “There’s something moving.”
“Perhaps it’s Jinks in his cemetery,” thought Judy after a pause to listen.
“No,” said Uncle Felix with decision. “It’s outside. It’s on the — road!”
His earnestness on these occasions always thrilled them; his gravity and the calm way he kept his head invariably won their confidence.
“The London Road!” they repeated. That meant the world.
“Something going past,” he added, listening intently. They listened intently with him. All four were still holding hands.
“The great High Road outside,” he repeated softly, while they moved instinctively to the highest part of the tree whence they could see over the fence. They craned their necks. The dusty road was flowing very swiftly, and like a river it had risen. Never before had it been so easily visible. They saw the ruts the carts had made, the hedge upon the opposite bank, the grassy ditch where the hemlock grew in feathery quantities. They even saw loose flints upon the edge. But the actual road was higher than before. It certainly was rising.
“Metropolis!” cried Tim. “I see
an eye!”
Some one was looking through the keyhole at them.
“An eye!” exclaimed several voices in a hushed, expectant tone.
There was a pause, during which every one looked at every one else.
“It’s probably a tramp,” said Uncle Felix gravely. “We’ll let him in.”
The proposal, however, alarmed them, for they had expected something very different. To stuff the keyhole, run away and hide, or at least to barricade the fence was what he ought to have advised. Instead of this they heard the very opposite. The excitement became intense. For them a tramp meant danger, robbery with violence, intoxication, awful dirt, and an under-the-bed-at-midnight kind of terror. It was so long since they had seen the tramp — their own tramp — that they had forgotten his existence.
“They’ll kill us at once,” said Maria, using the plural with the comprehensive and anticipatory vision of the child.
“They’re harmless as white mice,” said her Uncle quickly, “once you know how to treat them, and full of adventures too. I do,” he added with decision, referring to the treatment. And he stepped down to unbar the gate.
The children, breathless with interest, watched him go. On the trunk, of course, they felt comparatively safe, for it was “home”; but none the less the “girls” drew up their skirts a little, and Tim felt premonitory thrills run up his spidery legs into his spine. The wallflowers shook their tawny heads as a sudden breath of wind swept past them across the End of the World. It seemed an age before the audacious thing was accomplished and the door swung wide into the road outside. Uncle Felix might so easily have been stabbed or poisoned or suffocated — but instead they saw a shabby, tangled figure come shuffling through that open gate upon a cloud of dust.
“Quick! he’s a perjured man!” cried Judy, remembering a newspaper article. “Shut the gate!” She sprang down to help. “He’ll be arrested for a highway violence and be incarc-”
There was confusion in her mind. She felt pity for this woebegone shadow of a human being, and terror lest the Policeman, who lived on the white, summery high road, would catch him and send him to the gallows before he was safe inside. Her love was ever with the under dog.
There was a rush and a scramble, the gate was shut, and the Tramp stood gasping before them in the enchanted sanctuary of the End of the World.
“He’s ours!” exclaimed Judy. “It’s our old tramp!”
“Be very polite to him,” Uncle Felix had time to whisper hurriedly, seeing that all three stood behind him. “He’s a great Adventurer and a Wanderer too.”
CHAPTER IX. A PRIEST OF WONDER
He was a grey and nameless creature of shadowy outline and vague appearance. The eye focused him with difficulty. He had an air of a broken tombstone about him, with moss and lichen in wayward patches, for his face was split and cracked, and his beard seemed a continuation of his hair; but he had soft blue eyes that had got lost in the general tangle and seemed to stray about the place and peep out unexpectedly like flowers hiding in a thick-set hedge. The face might be anywhere; he might move suddenly in any direction; he was prepared, as it were, to move forward, sideways, or backwards according as the wind decided or the road appeared — a sort of universal scarecrow of a being altogether.
Yet, for all his forlorn and scattered attitude, there hung about his rags an air of something noble and protective, something strangely inviting that welcomed without criticism all the day might bring. Homeless himself, and with no place to lay his extraordinary body, the birds might have built their nests in him without alarm, or the furry creatures of fields and woods have burrowed among his voluminous misfit-clothing to shelter themselves from rain and cold. He would gladly have carried them all with him, safely hidden from guns or traps or policemen, glad to be useful, and careless of himself. That, at any rate, was the mixed impression that he gave.
“Thank you,” he said in a comfortable sort of voice that sounded like wind among telegraph wires on a high road: then added “kindly all.”
And instantly the children felt delighted with him; their sympathy was gained; fear vanished; the Policeman, like a scape-goat, took all their sins away. They did not actually move closer to the Tramp but their eyes went nestling in and out among his tattered figure. Judy, however, it was noticeable, looked at him as though spell-bound. To her he was, perhaps, as her Uncle said, the Great Adventurer, the type of romantic Wanderer for ever on the quest of perilous things — a Knight.
It was Uncle Felix who first broke the pause.
“You’ve come a long way,” he suggested.
“Oh, about the same as usual,” replied the Tramp, as though all distances and localities were one to him.
“Which means — ?”
“From nowhere, and from everywhere.”
“And you are going on to — ?”
“Always the same place.”
“Which is — ?”
“The end.” He said it in a rumbling voice that seemed to issue from a pocket of the torn old coat rather than from his bearded mouth.
“Oh, dear,” sighed Judy, “that is a very long way indeed. But, of course, you never get tired out?” Her eyes were brimmed with admiration.
He shrugged his great loose shoulders. It was odd how there seemed to be another thing within all that baggy clothing and behind the hair. The shaggy exterior covered a slimmer thing that was happy, laughing, dancing to break out. “Not tired out,” he said, “a bit sleepy sometimes, p’r’aps.” He glanced round him carelessly, his strange eyes resting finally on Judy’s face. “But there’s lots of beds about,” he explained to her, “once you know how to make ‘em.”
“Yes,” the child murmured, with a kind of soft applause, “of course there must be.”
“And those wot sleeps in ditches dreams the sweetest — that I know.”
“They must,” agreed Judy, as though grass and dock leaves were familiar to her. “And you get up when you’re ready, don’t you?”
“That’s it,” replied the wanderer. “Only you always are ready.”
“But how do you know the time?” asked Tim.
The Tramp turned round slowly and looked at his questioner.
“Time!” he snorted. And he exchanged a mysterious glance of sympathy with Maria, who lifted her eyes in return, but otherwise made no sign whatever. “Sit quiet like,” he added, “and everything worth ‘aving comes of itself. That’s living that is. The ‘ole world belongs to you.”
“I’ve got a watch,” said Tim, as though challenged. “I’ve got an alarum clock too. Only you have to wind them up, of course.”
“There you are!” the Tramp exclaimed, “you’ve got to wind ’em up. They don’t go of theirselves, do they?”
“Oh, no.”
“I never knew ‘appiness until I chucked my watch away,” continued the other.
“Your watch!” exclaimed Tim.
“Well, not igsackly,” laughed the Tramp.
“Oh, he didn’t mean that,” Judy put in quickly.
“I was usin’ it at the time, any’ow,” chuckled their guest, “and wot you’re usin’ at the time belongs to you. I never knew ‘appiness while I kep’ it. Watches and clocks only mean ‘urry. It’s an endless job, tryin’ to keep up with ‘em. You’ve got to go so fast for one thing — I never was a sprinter — bah!” he snorted— “there’s nothing in it. Life isn’t a ‘undred yards race. You miss all the flowers on the way at that pace. And what’s the prize?” He glanced down contemptuously at his feet. “Worn-out boots. Yer boots wear out — that’s all.”
He looked round at the children, smiling wonderfully. Maria seemed to understand him best, perhaps. She looked up innocently into his tangled face. “That’s it,” he said, with another chuckle. “YOU know wot I mean, don’t yer, missie?” But Maria made no reply. She merely beamed back at him till her face seemed nothing but a pair of wide blue eyes.
“Stop yer clocks, go slow,” the man murmured, half to himself, “and you’ll se
e what I mean. There’s twice as much time as before. You can do anything, everything,” — he spread his arms out— “because there’s never any ‘urry. You’d be surprised.”
“You’re very hungry, aren’t you?” inquired Tim, resenting the man’s undue notice of Maria.
The Tramp stared hard into the boy’s unwavering eyes. “Always,” he said briefly, “but, then, there’s always folks to give.”
“Rather,” exclaimed Judy with enthusiasm, and Tim added eagerly, “I should think so.”
They seemed to know all about him, then. Something had entered with him that made common stock of the five of them. It was wonderful of Uncle Felix to have known all this beforehand.
“We’re all alive together,” murmured the Tramp below his breath, and then Uncle Felix showed another stroke of genius. “We’ll make tea out here to-day,” he said, “instead of having it indoors. Tim, you run and fetch a tea-pot, a bottle of milk, and some cups and a kettle full of water; put some sugar in your pockets and bring a loaf and butter and a pot of jam. A basket will hold the lot. And while you’re gone we’ll get the fire going.”
“A big knife and some spoons too,” Judy cried after his disappearing figure, “and don’t let Aunt Emily see you, mind.”
The Tramp looked up sharply. “I had an Aunt Emily once,” he said behind his hedged-in face. Expecting more to follow, the others waited; but nothing came. There was a little pause.
“Once?” asked Maria, wondering perhaps if there were two such beings in the world at the same time.
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 267