by E. Nesbit
CHAPTER VI
JOHNSON was the hero of the hour. It was he who had tracked theburglars, laid his plans, and recovered the lost silver. He had notthrown the stone--public opinion decided that Mabel and her aunt musthave been mistaken in supposing that there was a stone at all. But hedid not deny the warning letter. It was Gerald who went out afterbreakfast to buy the newspaper, and who read aloud to the others the twocolumns of fiction which were the _Liddlesby Observer's_ report of thefacts. As he read every mouth opened wider and wider, and when he ceasedwith "this gifted fellow-townsman with detective instincts whichoutrival those of Messrs. Lecoq and Holmes, and whose promotion is nowassured," there was quite a blank silence.
"Well," said Jimmy, breaking it, "he doesn't stick it on neither, doeshe?"
"I feel," said Kathleen, "as if it was our fault--as if it was us hadtold all these whoppers; because if it hadn't been for you they couldn'thave, Jerry. How could he say all that?"
"Well," said Gerald, trying to be fair, "you know, after all, the chaphad to say something. I'm glad I----" He stopped abruptly.
"You're glad you what?"
"No matter," said he, with an air of putting away affairs of state."Now, what are we going to do to-day? The faithful Mabel approaches; shewill want her ring. And you and Jimmy want it too. Oh, I know.Mademoiselle hasn't had any attention paid to her for more days than ourhero likes to confess."
"I wish you wouldn't always call yourself 'our hero,'" said Jimmy; "youaren't mine, anyhow."
"You're both of you _mine_," said Kathleen hastily.
"Good little girl." Gerald smiled annoyingly. "Keep baby brother in agood temper till Nursie comes back."
"You're not going out without us?" Kathleen asked in haste.
"'I haste away, 'Tis market day,'"
sang Gerald,
"'And in the market there Buy roses for my fair.'
If you want to come too, get your boots on, and look slippy about it."
"I don't want to come," said Jimmy, and sniffed.
Kathleen turned a despairing look on Gerald.
"Oh, James, James," said Gerald sadly, "how difficult you make it forme to forget that you're my little brother! If ever I treat you like oneof the other chaps, and rot you like I should Turner or Moberley or anyof my pals--well, this is what comes of it."
"You don't call them your baby brothers," said Jimmy, and truly.
"No; and I'll take precious good care I don't call you it again. Comeon, my hero and heroine. The devoted Mesrour is your salaaming slave."
The three met Mabel opportunely at the corner of the square where everyFriday the stalls and the awnings and the green umbrellas were pitched,and poultry, pork, pottery, vegetables, drapery, sweets, toys, tools,mirrors, and all sorts of other interesting merchandise were spread outon trestle tables, piled on carts whose horses were stabled and whoseshafts were held in place by piled wooden cases, or laid out, as in thecase of crockery and hardware, on the bare flagstones of themarket-place.
The sun was shining with great goodwill, and, as Mabel remarked, "allNature looked smiling and gay." There were a few bunches of flowersamong the vegetables, and the children hesitated, balanced in choice.
"Mignonette is sweet," said Mabel.
"Roses are roses," said Kathleen.
"Carnations are tuppence," said Jimmy; and Gerald, sniffing among thebunches of tightly-tied tea-roses, agreed that this settled it.
So the carnations were bought, a bunch of yellow ones, like sulphur, abunch of white ones like clotted cream, and a bunch of red ones like thecheeks of the doll that Kathleen never played with. They took thecarnations home, and Kathleen's green hair-ribbon came in beautifullyfor tying them up, which was hastily done on the doorstep.
Then discreetly Gerald knocked at the door of the drawing-room, whereMademoiselle seemed to sit all day.
"Entrez!" came her voice; and Gerald entered. She was not reading, asusual, but bent over a sketch-book; on the table was an open colour-boxof un-English appearance, and a box of that slate-coloured liquid sofamiliar alike to the greatest artist in water-colours and to thehumblest child with a six-penny paint-box.
"With all of our loves," said Gerald, laying the flowers down suddenlybefore her.
"But it is that you are a dear child. For this it must that I embraceyou--no?" And before Gerald could explain that he was too old, shekissed him with little quick French pecks on the two cheeks.
"Are you painting?" he asked hurriedly, to hide his annoyance at beingtreated like a baby.
"I achieve a sketch of yesterday," she answered; and before he had timeto wonder what yesterday would look like in a picture she showed him abeautiful and exact sketch of Yalding Towers.
SHE KISSED HIM WITH LITTLE QUICK FRENCH PECKS.]
"Oh, I say--ripping!" was the critic's comment. "I say, mayn't theothers come and see?" The others came, including Mabel, who stoodawkwardly behind the rest, and looked over Jimmy's shoulder.
"I say, you are clever," said Gerald respectfully.
"To what good to have the talent, when one must pass one's life atteaching the infants?" said Mademoiselle.
"It must be fairly beastly," Gerald owned.
"You, too, see the design?" Mademoiselle asked Mabel, adding: "A friendfrom the town, yes?"
"How do you do?" said Mabel politely. "No, I'm not from the town. I liveat Yalding Towers."
The name seemed to impress Mademoiselle very much. Gerald anxiouslyhoped in his own mind that she was not a snob.
"Yalding Towers," she repeated, "but this is very extraordinary. Is itpossible that you are then of the family of Lord Yalding?"
"He hasn't any family," said Mabel; "he's not married."
"I would say are you--how you say?--cousin--sister--niece?"
"No," said Mabel, flushing hotly, "I'm nothing grand at all. I'm LordYalding's housekeeper's niece."
"But you know Lord Yalding, is it not?"
"No," said Mabel, "I've never seen him."
"He comes then never to his chateau?"
"Not since I've lived there. But he's coming next week."
"Why lives he not there?" Mademoiselle asked.
"Auntie say he's too poor," said Mabel, and proceeded to tell the taleas she had heard it in the housekeeper's room: how Lord Yalding's unclehad left all the money he could leave away from Lord Yalding to LordYalding's second cousin, and poor Lord Yalding had only just enough tokeep the old place in repair, and to live very quietly indeed somewhereelse, but not enough to keep the house open or to live there; and how hecouldn't sell the house because it was "in tale."
"What is it then--in tail?" asked Mademoiselle.
"In a tale that the lawyers write out," said Mabel, proud of herknowledge and flattered by the deep interest of the French governess;"and when once they've put your house in one of their tales you can'tsell it or give it away, but you have to leave it to your son, even ifyou don't want to."
"But how his uncle could he be so cruel--to leave him the chateau and nomoney?" Mademoiselle asked; and Kathleen and Jimmy stood amazed at thesudden keenness of her interest in what seemed to them the dulleststory.
"Oh, I can tell you that too," said Mabel. "Lord Yalding wanted to marrya lady his uncle didn't want him to, a barmaid or a ballet lady orsomething, and he wouldn't give her up, and his uncle said, 'Wellthen,' and left everything to the cousin."
"And you say he is not married."
"No--the lady went into a convent; I expect she's bricked-up alive bynow."
"Bricked----?"
"In a wall, you know," said Mabel, pointing explainingly at the pink andgilt roses of the wall-paper, "shut up to kill them. That's what they doto you in convents."
"Not at all," said Mademoiselle; "in convents are very kind good women;there is but one thing in convents that is detestable--the locks on thedoors. Sometimes people cannot get out, especially when they are veryyoung and their relations have placed them there for their we
lfare andhappiness. But brick--how you say it?--enwalling ladies to kill them.No--it does itself never. And this Lord--he did not then seek his lady?"
"Oh, yes--he sought her right enough," Mabel assured her; "but there aremillions of convents, you know, and he had no idea where to look, andthey sent back his letters from the post-office, and----"
"Ciel!" cried Mademoiselle, "but it seems that one knows all in thehousekeeper's saloon."
"Pretty well all," said Mabel simply.
"And you think he will find her? No?"
"Oh, he'll find her all right," said Mabel, "when he's old and brokendown, you know--and dying; and then a gentle sister of charity willsoothe his pillow, and just when he's dying she'll reveal herself andsay: 'My own lost love!' and his face will light up with a wonderful joyand he'll expire with her beloved name on his parched lips."
Mademoiselle's was the silence of sheer astonishment. "You do theprophesy, it appears?" she said at last.
"Oh no," said Mabel, "I got that out of a book. I can tell you lots morefatal love stories any time you like."
The French governess gave a little jump, as though she had suddenlyremembered something.
"It is nearly dinner-time," she said. "Your friend--Mabelle, yes--willbe your convivial, and in her honour we will make a little feast. Mybeautiful flowers--put them to the water, Kathleen. I run to buy thecakes. Wash the hands, all, and be ready when I return."
Smiling and nodding to the children, she left them, and ran up thestairs.
"Just as if she was young," said Kathleen.
"She _is_ young," said Mabel. "Heaps of ladies have offers of marriagewhen they're no younger than her. I've seen lots of weddings too, withmuch older brides. And why didn't you tell me she was so beautiful?"
"_Is_ she?" asked Kathleen.
"Of course she is; and what a darling to think of cakes for me, andcalling me a convivial!"
"Look here," said Gerald, "I call this jolly decent of her. You know,governesses never have more than the meanest pittance, just enough tosustain life, and here she is spending her little all on us. Supposingwe just don't go out to-day, but play with her instead. I expect she'smost awfully bored really."
"Would she really like it?" Kathleen wondered. "Aunt Emily saysgrown-ups never really like playing. They do it to please us."
"They little know," Gerald answered, "how often we do it to pleasethem."
"We've got to do that dressing-up with the Princess clothes anyhow--wesaid we would," said Kathleen. "Let's treat her to that."
"Rather near tea-time," urged Jimmy, "so that there'll be a fortunateinterruption and the play won't go on for ever."
"I suppose all the things are safe?" Mabel asked.
"Quite. I told you where I put them. Come on, Jimmy; let's help lay thetable. We'll get Eliza to put out the best china."
They went.
"It was lucky," said Gerald, struck by a sudden thought, "that theburglars didn't go for the diamonds in the treasure-chamber."
"They couldn't," said Mabel almost in a whisper; "they didn't know aboutthem. I don't believe anybody knows about them, except me--and you, andyou're sworn to secrecy." This, you will remember, had been done almostat the beginning. "I know aunt doesn't know. I just found out thespring by accident. Lord Yalding's kept the secret well."
"I wish I'd got a secret like that to keep," said Gerald.
"If the burglars _do_ know," said Mabel, "it'll all come out at thetrial. Lawyers make you tell everything you know at trials, and a lot oflies besides."
"There won't be any trial," said Gerald, kicking the leg of the pianothoughtfully.
"No trial?"
"It said in the paper." Gerald went on slowly, "'The miscreants musthave received warning from a confederate, for the admirable preparationsto arrest them as they returned for their ill-gotten plunder wereunavailing. But the police have a clue.'"
"What a pity!" said Mabel.
"You needn't worry--they haven't got any old clue," said Gerald, stillattentive to the piano leg.
"I didn't mean the clue; I meant the confederate."
"It's a pity you think he's a pity, because he was _me_," said Gerald,standing up and leaving the piano leg alone. He looked straight beforehim, as the boy on the burning deck may have looked.
"I couldn't help it," he said. "I know you'll think I'm a criminal, butI couldn't do it. I don't know how detectives can. I went over a prisononce, with father; and after I'd given the tip to Johnson I rememberedthat, and I just couldn't. I know I'm a beast, and not worthy to be aBritish citizen."
"I think it was rather nice of you," said Mabel kindly. "How did youwarn them?"
"I just shoved a paper under the man's door--the one that I knew wherehe lived--to tell him to lie low."
"Oh! do tell me--what did you put on it exactly?" Mabel warmed to thisnew interest.
"It said: 'The police know all except your names. Be virtuous and youare safe. But if there's any more burgling I shall split and you mayrely on that from a friend.' I know it was wrong, but I couldn't helpit. Don't tell the others. They wouldn't understand why I did it. Idon't understand it myself."
"I do," said Mabel: "it's because you've got a kind and noble heart."
"Kind fiddlestick, my good child!" said Gerald, suddenly losing theburning boy expression and becoming in a flash entirely himself. "Cutalong and wash your hands; you're as black as ink."
"So are you," said Mabel, "and I'm not. It's dye with me. Auntie wasdyeing a blouse this morning. It told you how in _Home Drivel_--andshe's as black as ink too, and the blouse is all streaky. Pity the ringwon't make just parts of you invisible--the dirt, for instance."
"Perhaps," Gerald said unexpectedly, "it won't make even all of youinvisible again."
"Why not? You haven't been doing anything to it--have you?" Mabelsharply asked.
"No; but didn't you notice you were invisible twenty-one hours; I wasfourteen hours invisible, and Eliza only seven--that's seven less eachtime. And now we've come to----"
"How frightfully good you are at sums!" said Mabel, awestruck.
"You see, it's got seven hours less each time, and seven from seven isnought; it's got to be something different this time. And thenafterwards--it can't be minus seven, because I don't see how--unless itmade you more visible--thicker, you know."
"_Don't!_" said Mabel; "you make my head go round."
"And there's another odd thing," Gerald went on; "when you're invisibleyour relations don't love you. Look at your aunt, and Cathy neverturning a hair at me going burgling. We haven't got to the bottom ofthat ring yet. Crikey! here's Mademoiselle with the cakes. Run, boldbandits--wash for your lives!"
They ran.
It was not cakes only; it was plums and grapes and jam tarts andsoda-water and raspberry vinegar, and chocolates in pretty boxes and"pure, thick, rich" cream in brown jugs, also a big bunch of roses.Mademoiselle was strangely merry, for a governess. She served out thecakes and tarts with a liberal hand, made wreaths of the flowers for alltheir heads--she was not eating much herself--drank the health of Mabel,as the guest of the day, in the beautiful pink drink that comes frommixing raspberry vinegar and soda-water, and actually persuaded Jimmyto wear his wreath, on the ground that the Greek gods as well as thegoddesses always wore wreaths at a feast.
There never was such a feast provided by any French governess sinceFrench governesses began. There were jokes and stories and laughter.Jimmy showed all those tricks with forks and corks and matches andapples which are so deservedly popular. Mademoiselle told them storiesof her own school-days when she was "a quite little girl with two tighttresses--so," and when they could not understand the tresses, called forpaper and pencil and drew the loveliest little picture of herself whenshe was a child with two short fat pig-tails sticking out from her headlike knitting-needles from a ball of dark worsted. Then she drewpictures of everything they asked for, till Mabel pulled Gerald's jacketand whispered: "The acting!"
"Draw us the front of a theatre,
" said Gerald tactfully, "a Frenchtheatre."
"They are the same thing as the English theatres," Mademoiselle toldhim.
"Do you like acting--the theatre, I mean?"
"But yes--I love it."
"All right," said Gerald briefly. "We'll act a play for you--now--thisafternoon if you like."
"Eliza will be washing up," Cathy whispered, "and she was promised tosee it."
"Or this evening," said Gerald; "and please, Mademoiselle, may Elizacome in and look on?"
"But certainly," said Mademoiselle; "amuse yourselves well, mychildren."
"But it's _you_," said Mabel suddenly, "that we want to amuse. Becausewe love you very much--don't we, all of you?"
"Yes," the chorus came unhesitatingly. Though the others would neverhave thought of saying such a thing on their own account. Yet, as Mabelsaid it, they found to their surprise that it was true.
"Tiens!" said Mademoiselle, "you love the old French governess?Impossible," and she spoke rather indistinctly.
"You're not old," said Mabel; "at least not so very," she addedbrightly, "and you're as lovely as a Princess."
"Go then, flatteress!" said Mademoiselle, laughing; and Mabel went. Theothers were already half-way up the stairs.
DOWN CAME THE LOVELIEST BLUE-BLACK HAIR.]
Mademoiselle sat in the drawing-room as usual, and it was a good thingthat she was not engaged in serious study, for it seemed that the dooropened and shut almost ceaselessly all throughout the afternoon. Mightthey have the embroidered antimacassars and the sofa cushions? Mightthey have the clothes-line out of the washhouse? Eliza said theymightn't, but might they? Might they have the sheepskin hearth-rugs?Might they have tea in the garden, because they had almost got the stageready in the dining-room, and Eliza wanted to set tea? CouldMademoiselle lend them any coloured clothes--scarves or dressing-gowns,or anything bright? Yes, Mademoiselle could, and did--silk things,surprisingly lovely for a governess to have. Had Mademoiselle any rouge?They had always heard that French ladies---- No. Mademoisellehadn't--and to judge by the colour of her face, Mademoiselle didn't needit. Did Mademoiselle think the chemist sold rouge--or had she any falsehair to spare? At this challenge Mademoiselle's pale fingers pulled outa dozen hairpins, and down came the loveliest blue-black hair, hangingto her knees in straight, heavy lines.
"No, you terrible infants," she cried. "I have not the false hair, northe rouge. And my teeth--you want them also, without doubt?"
She showed them in a laugh.
"I _said_ you were a Princess," said Mabel, "and now I know. You'reRupunzel. Do always wear your hair like that! May we have the peacockfans, please, off the mantelpiece, and the things that loop back thecurtains, and all the handkerchiefs you've got?"
Mademoiselle denied them nothing. They had the fans and thehandkerchiefs and some large sheets of expensive drawing-paper out ofthe school cupboard, and Mademoiselle's best sable paint-brush and herpaint-box.
"Who would have thought," murmured Gerald, pensively sucking the brushand gazing at the paper mask he had just painted, "that she was such abrick in disguise? I wonder why crimson lake always tastes just likeLiebig's Extract."
Everything was pleasant that day somehow. There are some days like that,you know, when everything goes well from the very beginning; all thethings you want are in their places, nobody misunderstands you, and allthat you do turns out admirably. How different from those other dayswhich we all know too well, when your shoe-lace breaks, your comb ismislaid, your brush spins on its back on the floor and lands under thebed where you can't get at it--you drop the soap, your buttons come off,an eyelash gets into your eye, you have used your last cleanhandkerchief, your collar is frayed at the edge and cuts your neck, andat the very last moment your suspender breaks, and there is no string.On such a day as this you are naturally late for breakfast, and everyone thinks you did it on purpose. And the day goes on and on, gettingworse and worse--you mislay your exercise-book, you drop your arithmeticin the mud, your pencil breaks, and when you open your knife to sharpenthe pencil you split your nail. On such a day you jam your thumb indoors, and muddle the messages you are sent on by grown-ups. You upsetyour tea, and your bread-and-butter won't hold together for a moment.And when at last you get to bed--usually in disgrace--it is no comfortat all to you to know that not a single bit of it is your own fault.
This day was not one of those days, as you will have noticed. Even thetea in the garden--there was a bricked bit by a rockery that made asteady floor for the tea-table--was most delightful, though the thoughtsof four out of the five were busy with the coming play, and the fifthhad thoughts of her own that had had nothing to do with tea or acting.
Then there was an interval of slamming doors, interesting silences, feetthat flew up and down stairs.
It was still good daylight when the dinner-bell rang--the signal hadbeen agreed upon at tea-time, and carefully explained to Eliza.Mademoiselle laid down her book and passed out of the sunset-yellowedhall into the faint yellow gaslight of the dining-room. The gigglingEliza held the door open before her, and followed her in. The shuttershad been closed--streaks of daylight showed above and below them. Thegreen-and-black tablecloths of the school dining-tables were supportedon the clothes-line from the backyard. The line sagged in a gracefulcurve, but it answered its purpose of supporting the curtains whichconcealed that part of the room which was the stage.
SHE SAW THAT FULLY HALF A DOZEN OF THESE CHAIRS WEREOCCUPIED, AND BY THE QUEEREST PEOPLE.]
Rows of chairs had been placed across the other end of the room--all thechairs in the house, as it seemed--and Mademoiselle started violentlywhen she saw that fully half a dozen of these chairs were occupied. Andby the queerest people, too--an old woman with a poke bonnet tied underher chin with a red handkerchief, a lady in a large straw hat wreathedin flowers and the oddest hands that stuck out over the chair in frontof her, several men with strange, clumsy figures, and all with hatson.
"But," whispered Mademoiselle, through the chinks of the tablecloths,"you have then invited other friends? You should have asked me, mychildren."
Laughter and something like a "hurrah" answered her from behind thefolds of the curtaining tablecloths.
"All right, Mademoiselle Rapunzel," cried Mabel; "turn the gas up. It'sonly part of the entertainment."
Eliza, still giggling, pushed through the lines of chairs, knocking offthe hat of one of the visitors as she did so, and turned up the threeincandescent burners.
Mademoiselle looked at the figure seated nearest to her, stooped to lookmore closely, half laughed, quite screamed, and sat down suddenly.
"Oh!" she cried, "they are not alive!"
Eliza, with a much louder scream, had found out the same thing andannounced it differently. "They ain't got no insides," said she. Theseven members of the audience seated among the wilderness of chairs had,indeed, no insides to speak of. Their bodies were bolsters and rolled-upblankets, their spines were broom-handles, and their arm and leg boneswere hockey sticks and umbrellas. Their shoulders were the woodencross-pieces that Mademoiselle used for keeping her jackets in shape;their hands were gloves stuffed out with handkerchiefs; and their faceswere the paper masks painted in the afternoon by the untutored brush ofGerald, tied on to the round heads made of the ends of stuffedbolster-cases. The faces were really rather dreadful. Gerald had donehis best, but even after his best had been done you would hardly haveknown they were faces, some of them, if they hadn't been in thepositions which faces visually occupy, between the collar and the hat.Their eyebrows were furious with lamp-black frowns--their eyes the size,and almost the shape, of five-shilling pieces, and on their lips andcheeks had been spent much crimson lake and nearly the whole of ahalf-pan of vermilion.
"You have made yourself an auditors, yes? Bravo!" cried Mademoiselle,recovering herself and beginning to clap. And to the sound of thatclapping the curtain went up--or, rather, apart. A voice said, in abreathless, choked way, "Beauty and the Beast," and the stage wasrevealed.
In the wings: "They look just like a real audience, don't they?"whispered Mabel. "Go on, Jimmy,--don't forget the Merchant has to bepompous and use long words."
Jimmy, enlarged by pillows under Gerald's best overcoat, which had beenintentionally bought with a view to his probable growth during the twoyears which it was intended to last him, a Turkish towel turban on hishead and an open umbrella over it, opened the first act in a simple andswift soliloquy:
"I am the most unlucky merchant that ever was. I was once the richestmerchant in Bagdad, but I lost all my ships, and now I live in a poorhouse that is all to bits; you can see how the rain comes through theroof, and my daughters take in washing. And----"
The pause might have seemed long, but Gerald rustled in, elegant inMademoiselle's pink dressing-gown and the character of the eldestdaughter.
"A nice drying day," he minced. "Pa dear, put the umbrella the other wayup. It'll save us going out in the rain to fetch water. Come on,sisters, dear father's got us a new wash-tub. Here's luxury!"
Round the umbrella, now held the wrong way up, the three sisters kneltand washed imaginary linen. Kathleen wore a violet skirt of Eliza's, ablue blouse of her own, and a cap of knotted handkerchiefs. A whitenightdress girt with a white apron and two red carnations in Mabel'sblack hair left no doubt as to which of the three was Beauty.
The scene went very well. The final dance with waving towels was allthat there is of charming, Mademoiselle said; and Eliza was so muchamused that, as she said, she got quite a nasty stitch along of laughingso hearty.
You know pretty well what Beauty and the Beast would be like acted byfour children who had spent the afternoon in arranging their costumesand so had left no time for rehearsing what they had to say. Yet itdelighted them, and it charmed their audience. And what more can anyplay do, even Shakespeare's? Mabel, in her Princess clothes, was aresplendent Beauty; and Gerald a Beast who wore the drawing-roomhearthrugs with an air of indescribable distinction. If Jimmy was not atalkative merchant, he made it up with a stoutness practicallyunlimited, and Kathleen surprised and delighted even herself by thequickness with which she changed from one to the other of the minorcharacters--fairies, servants, and messengers. It was at the end of thesecond act that Mabel, whose costume, having reached the height ofelegance, could not be bettered and therefore did not need to bechanged, said to Gerald, sweltering under the weighty magnificence ofhis beast-skin:--
"I say, you might let us have the ring back."
"I'm going to," said Gerald, who had quite forgotten it. "I'll give ityou in the next scene. Only don't lose it, or go putting it on. Youmight go out all together and never be seen again, or you might getseven times as visible as any one else, so that all the rest of us wouldlook like shadows beside you, you'd be so thick, or----"
"Ready!" said Kathleen, bustling in, once more a wicked sister.
Gerald managed to get his hand into his pocket under his hearthrug, andwhen he rolled his eyes in agonies of sentiment, and said, "Farewell,dear Beauty! Return quickly, for if you remain long absent from yourfaithful beast he will assuredly perish," he pressed a ring into herhand and added: "This is a magic ring that will give you anything youwish. When you desire to return to your own disinterested beast, put onthe ring and utter your wish. Instantly you will be by my side."
Beauty-Mabel took the ring, and it was _the_ ring.
The curtains closed to warm applause from two pairs of hands.
The next scene went splendidly. The sisters were almost _too_ natural intheir disagreeableness, and Beauty's annoyance when they splashed herPrincess's dress with real soap and water was considered a miracle ofgood acting. Even the merchant rose to something more than mere pillows,and the curtain fell on his pathetic assurance that in the absence ofhis dear Beauty he was wasting away to a shadow. And again two pairs ofhands applauded.
"Here, Mabel, catch hold," Gerald appealed from under the weight of atowel-horse, the tea-urn, the tea-tray, and the green baize apron of theboot boy, which together with four red geraniums from the landing, thepampas-grass from the drawing-room fireplace, and the indiarubber plantsfrom the drawing-room window were to represent the fountains and gardenof the last act. The applause had died away.
"I wish," said Mabel, taking on herself the weight of the tea-urn, "Iwish those creatures we made were alive. We should get something likeapplause then."
"I'm jolly glad they aren't," said Gerald, arranging the baize and thetowel-horse. "Brutes! It makes me feel quite silly when I catch theirpaper eyes."
The curtains were drawn back. There lay the hearth-rug-coated beast, inflat abandonment among the tropic beauties of the garden, thepampas-grass shrubbery, the indiarubber plant bushes, the geranium-treesand the urn fountain. Beauty was ready to make her great entry in allthe thrilling splendour of despair. And then suddenly it all happened.
Mademoiselle began it: she applauded the garden scene--with hurriedlittle clappings of her quick French hands. Eliza's fat red palmsfollowed heavily, and then--some one else was clapping, six or sevenpeople, and their clapping made a dull padded sound. Nine faces insteadof two were turned towards the stage, and seven out of the nine werepainted, pointed paper faces. And every hand and every face was alive.The applause grew louder as Mabel glided forward, and as she paused andlooked at the audience her unstudied pose of horror and amazement drewforth applause louder still; but it was not loud enough to drown theshrieks of Mademoiselle and Eliza as they rushed from the room, knockingchairs over and crushing each other in the doorway. Two distant doorsbanged, Mademoiselle's door and Eliza's door.
"Curtain! curtain! quick!" cried Beauty-Mabel, in a voice that wasn'tMabel's or the Beauty's. "Jerry--those things _have_ come alive. Oh,whatever _shall_ we do?"
Gerald in his hearthrugs leaped to his feet. Again that flat paddedapplause marked the swish of cloths on clothes-line as Jimmy andKathleen drew the curtains.
"What's up?" they asked as they drew.
"You've done it this time!" said Gerald to the pink, perspiring Mabel."Oh, bother these strings!"
"Can't you burst them? _I've_ done it?" retorted Mabel. "I like that!"
"More than I do," said Gerald.
"Oh, it's all right," said Mabel, "Come on. We must go and pull thethings to pieces--then they _can't_ go on being alive."
"It's your fault, anyhow," said Gerald with every possible absence ofgallantry. "Don't you see? It's turned into a wishing ring. I _knew_something different was going to happen. Get my knife out of mypocket--this string's in a knot. Jimmy, Cathy, those Ugly-Wuglies havecome alive--because Mabel wished it. Cut out and pull them to pieces."
Jimmy and Cathy peeped through the curtain and recoiled with white facesand staring eyes. "Not me!" was the brief rejoinder of Jimmy. Cathysaid, "Not much!" And she meant it, any one could see that.
And now, as Gerald, almost free of the hearth-rugs, broke his thumb-nailon the stiffest blade of his knife, a thick rustling and a sharp, heavystumping sounded beyond the curtain.
"They're going out!" screamed Kathleen--"_walking_ out--on theirumbrella and broomstick legs. You can't stop them, Jerry, they're tooawful!"
"Everybody in the town'll be insane by to-morrow night if we _don't_stop them," cried Gerald. "Here, give me the ring--I'll unwish the
m."
A LIMP HAND WAS LAID ON HIS ARM.]
He caught the ring from the unresisting Mabel, cried, "I wish the Uglies_weren't_ alive," and tore through the door. He saw, in fancy, Mabel'swish undone, and the empty hall strewed with limp bolsters, hats,umbrellas, coats and gloves, prone abject properties from which thebrief life had gone out for ever. But the hall was crowded with livethings, strange things--all horribly short as broomsticks and umbrellasare short. A limp hand gesticulated. A pointed white face with redcheeks looked up at him, and wide red lips said something, he could nottell what. The voice reminded him of the old beggar down by the bridgewho had no roof to his mouth. These creatures had no roofs to theirmouths, of course--they had no----
"Aa oo re o me me oo a oo ho el?" said the voice again. And it had saidit four times before Gerald could collect himself sufficiently tounderstand that this horror--alive, and most likely quiteuncontrollable--was saying, with a dreadful calm, polite persistence:--
"Can you recommend me to a good hotel?"