Tick tock! It sounded all about her, coming from every direction at once, from behind her, in front of her, and above her. It filled the air. It beat remorselessly in her ears. She began to feel she was losing her head, when suddenly it once again lost volume, it grew much fainter, it was dying away, it was gone. Had it only been a warning again after all, perhaps, a warning that she was here with an important purpose, a warning that time was passing? This thought flashed through her at high speed. She tried to remember the powerful name. It all left her gasping.
“He’s come and gone, Miss,” a calm voice said quite close to her. “He never can stay, anyhow. It’s only one of his little tricks really. Just forget it.” She turned to see who spoke such comforting words, and even as she did so it struck her that all this time she had quite forgotten there was a whirling, circular group at all. She had forgotten their existence, as if they simply were not there. Queer, she reflected. “When I don’t think of them perhaps they just go out!” If that was so, she must never forget them again, or it might hurt their feelings terribly. She threw a quick glance at the Gentleman, and it relieved her to see that he, at any rate, was still there, leaning against the wall, mopping his face. He caught her eye and instantly raised his hat an inch or two, while his skin, which had become very dark and crinkly, a little shrunken even, at once regained something of its former colour and smoothness. They exchanged a rapid smile. Oh, he was a darling!
All this happened while she was in the act of turning round to see who it was had spoken. It was, she saw, the Soldier, in a bright red tunic, his blue trousers smartly creased, standing just in front of her at attention, and in the act of saluting.
“He’s gone, Miss, gone into next year right enough,” he went on in a deep, steady, husky voice, “so I hope now we’ll all get the same chance. I speak for the army. Thanks for coming.”
He saluted once more, then took a pace sharply to the rear, and clicked his heels as if awaiting orders.
Whether he referred to the Clock Man or to the Sailor, as having gone into next year, Maria did not know; nor did she seem to care much, her heart was fluttering too fast to think. She gazed at the figure steadily enough, however. His tight trousers wore a stripe of gold down the sides, his belt was white, his buttons sparkled, the braid on his peaked cap shone and glittered. He was quite gorgeous. He stood stiffly, as though rods of iron ran down his back and legs. He stared straight before him, looking neither right nor left. His face, darkly crinkled like the others, had less expression than a block of wood, but his jaw was aggressive, his shoulders of iron stood four-square. He was a fighter, a V.C., of course.
This was the man who had just saved her from the Clock Man, she was convinced; it was also the Soldier exactly as she had always imagined him. He had comforted her, at any rate.
“Thank you for rescuing me so — magnificently,” she heard herself saying in a voice that shook a trifle, yet was low and quiet. “I feel very grateful to you.” Her heart was fluttering.
“Oh, that’s all right, Miss,” came the gruff answer, as though a relief force long expected had turned up as a mere matter of duty. “I’m always at ‘and when needed.”
“You’re even better than I expected,” Maria said, with a thrill in her voice, “and I’m glad you’re not a Colonel. I like a private best. I always thought of you as a brave fighter with a V.C.”
“I took the shilling. God bless the King,” he said, moving no muscle of his face. “They gave me a V.C. I did nothing in particular.”
Maria found it rather difficult to carry on a conversation with a man so splendid but so stiff. He might have been made of marble. She racked her brains. An army phrase occurred to her.
“Oh, please stand easy,” she produced with a nice smile, and was so relieved to see him suddenly relax all over, moving his arms and legs as if he had no joints at all, that she went up close to him and looked up into his face without hesitation.
“Soldier,” she said as sweetly as she could, “will you do something for me?”
“Anything, Miss Maria,” he replied, using her name for the first time and pronouncing it, she thought, delightfully.
“I’ve come here — been brought here, that is — to look for something.”
“Look for something,” he repeated.
“And I’ve forgotten what it is—”
“Forgotten what it is,” he repeated as before.
“Yes, isn’t it awful?”
“Awful!”
“And I thought perhaps you might help me to remember — if we tried — er — together.”
An expression of deep thought came on his face. He did not reply for a moment.
“I’ll do my best, Miss Maria,” he said presently. “What is it you’ve forgotten?” he asked simply.
“But that’s just what I can’t remember. If I knew, it wouldn’t be forgotten.”
She spoke with a touch of impatience, but he did not seem to notice it. “No, of course it wouldn’t, would it?” was all he said.
“It’s frightfully important,” she went on; “most terribly important. I know that. I’ve got to search and search everywhere for it, oh, everywhere. If I don’t find it — I daren’t think what would happen.”
“We’ll all help,” said the Soldier, moved evidently by her distress. “Every one of us. We’ll search with you. Oh, we’ll — you’ll find it right enough. Only don’t forget us whatever you do.”
“I’ll never forget any of you for a single minute,” she assured him. “I promise. But, remember, I’ve only got five minutes.”
“Only got five minutes,” he repeated, in the odd way he just repeated all she said, as though he never thought for himself.
Yet that was right and natural, she reflected, for a soldier’s job was not to think, but to obey orders and be a brave fighter. That was why he had asked her what she had forgotten when he had heard her tell him she had forgotten. He could help her search, no doubt, but only in the sense of doing what he was told to do.
“I can depend on him,” she told herself. “Whatever happens, he would never let me down. He would protect me too.” His bravery must be something awful. There was no question about his steadiness, nor about his splendour, and her heart, still fluttering with admiration, warmed to the stalwart fellow.
Oh, she was going to have a grand time, she was going to enjoy herself tremendously. It was a very wonderful place she had come to. That haunting, following sound now alarmed her less; it had gone, anyhow, its dreadful warning was no longer audible. What puzzled her more was the way the Fruit Stoners all smiled when she said she had only five minutes. The Clock Man seemed almost a figure of fun to them. The Soldier had even said something about a “trick.” He was smiling now, as she looked at him. A touch of laughter hovered about the corners of his stern lips. “Five minutes, five minutes,” he kept repeating, though more to himself than to her, “only got five minutes.” The laughter ran visibly beneath his skin. And it was plain that his habit of rigorous discipline alone prevented his exploding into a loud guffaw.
Would all the others, too, show this same happy indifference towards a matter that to her seemed so grave and serious?
The others! There, she was forgetting them again. There were several more to see; she wanted to meet them all, all — the Tailor and Tinker and Ploughboy, oh, every one of them. There was, above all, she remembered, a Thief, and — oh, more important still — the Apothecary. The Gentleman had referred to him particularly. The entire Company of Fruit Stoners, that is, passed through her mind at once, and she did not fasten her thought upon any one of them especially.
The Soldier, still standing at ease, had not moved. She had better get him out of the way first, it occurred to her, though she did not want him really to go. Still, he would always be within reach, she remembered.
“Dismiss!” The word sprang to her lips, and she saw him instantly give the salute, turn on his heels with a click, and step back towards the top of the stairs. It was queer, she thought, how
instantly he appeared to dwindle, pass into a kind of distance, melt and merge into the rather shadowy background where the top of the great staircase met the angle of the walls. He retired to join the whirling ring, but as her eye followed him, the group was not so clearly visible as it had been. A confused and rather dim medley of figures and faces was all she could make out at first, with no one in particular she could pick out definitely.
“Oh, please, my other Fruit Stoners,” she called aloud, “please come and talk to me. I want to meet you all — every one of you.”
CHAPTER VI
WHAT then immediately happened in response to her invitation was certainly, she thought, remarkable; it took her, at any rate, unawares. For she had expected that the other Fruit Stoners would answer her summons gradually, coming up to her one by one, and rather shyly. There were only five or six of them to come, for the Soldier and Sailor had gone, and the Gentleman was still mopping his face against the wall behind her.
Instead of advancing singly, however, and with hesitation, the whole group was upon her in a whirling flash. She was surrounded by them, they were all about her, and they seemed like two dozen instead of five or six. They seemed to fly up to her as if blown by a wind. Their hands were outstretched, their crinkly faces swirled like eddying water, their figures merged indistinguishably as they whirled past and round her. It was quite impossible in this jumble to pick out one definite outline from another. And at first this puzzled her completely, until the explanation a moment later flashed upon her. She saw then that they appeared so numerous because they moved so rapidly, and they were indistinct because this movement was circular. They were running round her in a circle. She stood in the centre of the circle. But the reason she saw them merged together, as it were, was because she had thought of them as a general group rather than as separate individuals. Movement round the rim of a plate, she remembered, was, of course, the one that came most easily to them.
She must choose the one she wished to meet and call him out, and it was the Tailor, for some reason, who earned this privilege. She knew of no special reason for picking him out, nor was there anything particular she had to say to him. It was merely that his name popped into her head.
“Oh, Tailor,” she cried out, “come, please, and talk to me. I want to ask you something,” for in the act of speaking his name it occurred to her that his very sharp eyes would help her in the great search. She would tell him about it at once. “Come, Tailor,” she added, “there’s no plate spinning really. I’ve a very important thing for you to do, and I need your sharp eyes. Come, my Tailor, come, please!”
The whirling movement ceased, the main group whirled back into the shadows by the stairs, and a single figure was at once in front of her; yet the instant she set eyes on him clearly she found him so delightful, and he made her laugh so, that the important questions she had meant to ask passed from her mind completely, and the urgent matter of her search was all forgotten. He had never been in any way a special favourite of hers, but now, as he stood out sharply against the less visible group behind him, he seemed uncommonly attractive, and he was, moreover, exactly as she had always imagined him.
A little fellow with bright eyes in a sallow face, he darted out in his shirt-sleeves, carrying round his neck a long tape-measure, and in one hand a very large pair of scissors. He was extremely light on his toes, shooting here, there and everywhere with what she called a hoppity-skip sort of movement, and the first words he spoke were similar in kind to what the others had also said.
“I’m quite ready, Miss,” he exclaimed in a piping voice, “quite ready for you. It’s been a long time waiting, but I knew you’d be coming to see me as soon as you could. I felt sure of that. Will you step this way, if you please, Miss?”
He seemed pleased as Punch, yet his manner was most attentive and respectful, though he did not move aside to lead the way, because, she supposed, there was nowhere particular to step to. He skipped, instead, from foot to foot, examined her closely and critically all over, touched her, pinched her, stooped to measure her length from neck to feet, and then finally, as he passed the tape about her waist, exclaimed with great decision, “Blue serge for winter, merino for summer, I should advise, Miss, only the skirts are worn now a trifle longer,” and then his voice became suddenly fainter, and he fell to mumbling a long string of words to himself as though he had learned them by heart and did not really know their meaning, all of them, however, names of stuffs for dresses she would have liked to wear. “Organdie, georgette, chiffon, taffeta, charmeuse, crêpe de Chine...” she caught, and a host of other enchanting words, and then, his voice growing quite loud and ordinary again, “silk, satin, calico, rags.,” and as he called these last four, he began dancing about again on his toes, snapping his big shears vigorously, even dangerously, she thought, to mark the time.
“Ready for the fitting, Miss, whenever you are. Any time suits me,” and then he added suddenly with a wry face, “Alas!”
The laughter left her as she looked down into his rather puzzled and crinkled face. He was kneeling on one knee now, taking another measure over again.
“Oh, then are you too bothered by something?” she asked.
Holding the tape between finger and thumb as he marked off the inches carefully, he turned up his darting eyes to her.
“Not to say bother, Miss,” he replied, forcing a quick, polite, even fervent smile. “I wouldn’t call it that, seeing as how it’s yourself that calls the tune. But I’m moved about a good deal, what with the Big House, Little House, Pig Stye and all the rest. I’d get a better fit, maybe, if I was fixed sort of more permanent. And by myself. There are eight of us, you know, and only four places to live in. Myself, I don’t like doubling up much.”
He opened and shut his big scissors thoughtfully, and a rather weary expression in his eyes stirred a feeling of pity in her as she saw it. She had never thought of it before, but eight men with only four places to live in was not right, and doubling up, as he called it, must be most uncomfortable. “Oh dear!” she thought to herself, “to create things means an awful lot of care!”
“It’s troublesome with my needles, you see, Miss, for one thing. I keep leaving them about. A lot of them are in the Barn still, only I’m not sure if it was some year or last year I left them there. You moved me off so quickly. I’m afraid they’re lost — and you put me in with the Thief as often as not—”
“Lost!” she interrupted sharply, for the word woke something in her with a sting. “But I’ve lost something too. I’m here to look for a lost thing — a forgotten thing — only it isn’t needles. It’s far more important than needles.”
He eyed her doubtfully. “What could be more important, Miss?” he asked. “How am I to pin you up without my needles?”
She could think of no really good answer to that, so she asked a question instead. “Who are you doubling up with at the moment — er — this year, I mean?” she inquired sympathetically.
“Well, I’ve got the Tinker just now, Miss, as you know, but he isn’t much of a bother really, because he’s out on the road so much!” He looked over his shoulder quickly towards the group. “But he’s here now, I see,” he added. “He knew you had come, of course. One more fitting, Miss, will do the trick — only one—”
The voice grew fainter, dying away, fading, less convincing. An odd sound interrupted the chattering Tailor, who was now gone before she had time to say good-bye, and the new figure that stepped forward she recognized instantly as the Tinker, her beloved Tinker, for he was not only the first to be mentioned in the old saying, but in imagination she had always visualized him with peculiar clearness. A whiff of the open road came with him, the tang of fragrant wood smoke, and the odd sound that had preceded him was the rattling of pots and pans and a kettle with the lid tied on by string, that swung jangling from his belt. Behind him was a travelling grindstone on wheels, and with his left thumb he was feeling the edge of a long-bladed knife in his other hand. His bearded, crinkl
y face, tanned and weathered by the open life, was just as she knew it would be, his ragged, tattered clothing, the frayed rim of trousers over the old boots too. It was on the knife, however, her eyes seemed to fasten with peculiar interest.
“My faithful Tinker,” she exclaimed affectionately, “here you are at last.”
“Here, there and everywhere,” he said sadly, “come to-day and gone to-morrow, and the way you’re always shifting me — by your leave, Miss — is something awful.” A grin showed on his crinkled skin, but it was a kindly grin. “Still, there’s a road past every door,” he added, “and leastways, there’s a good edge on this at last,” as he felt the blade lovingly again. He looked up at her with a kind of respectful wonder. Also he looked significantly at the knife in his hand.
“It does look terribly sharp,” mentioned Maria tactfully. “It took you some time, I suppose?”
He gave a deep chuckle in his throat. “Begun in the Big House, Miss, when you put me in silk, continued in the Little House with a strip of calico to cover my old bones, and just finished now on my way from the Pig Stye in rags to the Barn in satin, I suppose.” There was a grievance in his voice and manner, but not one he took too seriously.
“I’m so sorry,” Maria murmured, “I — I”
“It’s the knife,” he interrupted her rapidly but gravely, “the one you’ve so often spoken about,” and as he said this a familiar phrase flashed across her mind: “Before you can say knife!”
“Will you keep it for me,” she said quickly, for he was already holding it out to her, “till I need it,” she added, lowering her voice.
“It will be quite safe with me, yes,” he whispered, putting it away behind him somewhere in the wheeled stand, “but you mustn’t forget it — or forget me either—”
“Forget it — forget!” She seized once again on the word.
He gave her a searching look. “That’s your trouble, Miss, especially with us, isn’t it? Forgetting, always forgetting. And they tell me there’s something you’ve come here to look for—”
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 303