by E. F. Benson
All this was done, and Archie fled from the cold of the morning to his bath. The water was of that divinest temperature so that when he stopped still it was lovely, but when he moved he almost screamed with the rapturous heat of it. It cooled a little as he sat in it, and, still remembering that he was six, he poured a sponge-full down his spine. That over, he might wash his face and his neck, and well behind his ears with soap. Up till a few months ago Blessington had always superintended the bath, and done these things for him; but now he did them for himself as agent, with Blessington as inspector-general in the background, who might always make the strictest scrutiny into the place behind the ears and the toe-nails to see that the effects of the bath were perfectly satisfactory. If not, Blessington superintended again for the next three mornings; so Archie was very careful, since it was so much grander to wash oneself than to be washed by anybody else.
Then came the most exciting part of the bath, for close at the side of it was a big tin full of the coldest possible water. He had then to stand up in his bath, and, after washing his face in the cold water, to put cold water everywhere within reach of him on one arm and then the other, on a chest, on a stomach, on one leg and on another right down to the foot, and finally (a vocal piece) to squeeze a full sponge down his back. Archie squealed at this, and flew for a towel.
He flung himself into his new clothes and was already half-dressed when Blessington returned.
“Oh, Blessington,” he said, “look at me, and they’re just as easy to manage as the old ones, and may I go to see Harry after breakfast and show him?”
“Master Harry will be here for tea,” said Blessington.
“Yes, but I want him to know sooner than that. Did they come just ordinarily, like other clothes? Or are they a birthday present?”
“Well, I should say they were a birthday present,” said Blessington.
“Who from?” demanded Archie.
And then suddenly he guessed.
“Oh, Blessington,” he said. “I like them better than anything!” he said.
“Well, dear, and I wish you health to wear them and strength to tear them,” she said. “Eh, but how you’re disarranging my cap!”
Archie promptly handselled his clothes by spilling egg on the coat, and bread-and-butter upside down on the trousers, and, when the time came for him to make his public entry into the world, was seized with a sudden fit of shyness at the thought of anybody seeing him. The housemaid would stare, and William would laugh, and Marjorie would pretend not to know him, and for the moment of leaving the day-nursery (which from this morning was to be known as Archie’s sitting-room) he would almost have wished himself back in his knickerbockers. But the remembered rough touch of the serge on his legs provided encouragement, and soon the new glories burst upon a sympathetic and not a mocking world. They were at breakfast downstairs, and Archie, though he had already had his, was bidden by his father to have a cup of coffee, which he poured out himself at the side-table, and to drink it slowly, and at the bottom of it, among the melted sugar, there came to his astonished eyes the gleam of silver, and there was a new half-crown with his father’s happy returns. Thereafter came a hurried visit to Harry, a motor drive with his mother and Jeannie, Archie sitting on the box-seat and permitted to blow the bugle practically as often as he wanted, and the return to dinner, to find that the two things he liked best, namely boiled rabbit and spotted dog pudding, formed that memorable repast.
Up till now he had received only two birthday presents, the clothes and the half-crown, and he could not help feeling that a visit from Abracadabra was more than likely, since no one else had made the slightest allusion to clock-work trains or pens that wrote without being dipped. But in the afternoon, as he returned home from his walk with Blessington and Jeannie in the early dusk, he received an impression which was to be more inextricably connected with his sixth birthday than even the sailor suit. They were within a few yards of the front-door when there ran out of the bushes Cyrus, the great blue Persian cat. He held something in his mouth, which Archie saw to be a bird. There he stood for a moment with the gleaming eyes of the successful hunter, and twitching tail, and then trotted in front of them towards the porch. Simultaneously Jeannie called out:
“Oh, Blessington, Cyrus has caught a thrush. We must get it from him; it may be still alive.”
Till then Archie had only thought about the cleverness of Cyrus in catching a bird, which was clearly a very remarkable feat, since Cyrus could only run and climb, and a bird could fly. But, as Jeannie spoke, he suddenly thought of himself in the jaws of a tiger, of the clutch of the long white teeth, of the fear, and the helplessness; and a queer tremor made him catch his breath, as there smote upon him an emotion that had never yet been awakened by the passage of his sunny days. Pity took hold of him for the bright-eyed bird. It suffered; his imagination told him that, and never yet had the fact of suffering come home to him.
They hemmed Cyrus in, and Blessington took the thrush out of his mouth, while Cyrus growled and struck at her with his paws, and then, greatly incensed, bounded out into the garden again, so as not to lose the chance, at this cat-hour of dusk, of a further stalk and capture. They carried the bird into the hall, where they looked at it, but it lay quite still in Blessington’s hand, with its helpless little claws relaxed, and with its eyes fast glazing in death. Its beak was open, and on its speckled breast were two oozing drops of blood, that stained the feathers.
“Eh, poor thing, it’s dead,” said Blessington.
Archie felt all the desolation of an unavailing pity.
“No, it can’t be dead, Blessington,” he said. “It’ll get all right, won’t it?” and his lip quivered.
“No, dear, it’s quite dead,” said Blessington; “but if you like we’ll bury it. There’ll be just time before tea. Shall I run upstairs and get a box to bury it in?”
Without doubt this was a consoling and attractive proposal, and while Blessington went to get a suitable coffin, Archie held the “small slain body” in reverent hands. It was warm and soft and still; by now the bright eyes had grown quite dull, and the blood on the speckled breast was beginning to coagulate, and once again, even with the novel prospect of a bird-funeral in front of him, Archie’s heart melted in pity.
“Why did Cyrus kill it, Jeannie?” he said. “The thrush hadn’t done any harm.”
“Cats do kill birds,” said Jeannie. “Same as birds kill worms, or you and William kill worms when you go out fishing.”
“Yes, but worms aren’t birds,” said Archie. “Worms aren’t nice; they don’t fly and sing. It’s an awful shame.”
Blessington returned with a suitable cardboard box which had held chocolates, and into this fragrant coffin the little limp body was inserted. This certainly distracted Archie from his new-found emotion.
“Oh, that will be nice for it,” he said. “It will smell the chocolate.”
“It can’t; it’s dead,” said hopeless Jeannie.
But Blessington understood better.
“Yes, dear, the chocolate will be nice for it,” she said, “and then we’ll cover it up with leaves and put the lid on.”
“Oh, and may it have a cris — a crisantepum?” said Archie. “May I pick one?”
“Yes, just one.”
Archie laid this above the bird’s head, and the lid was put on.
“Oh, and let’s have a procession to the tool-shed to get a trowel,” said Jeannie.
“Yes!” squealed Archie, now thoroughly immersed in the fascinating ritual. “And I’ll carry the coffin and go first, and you and Blessington shall walk behind and sing.”
“Well, we must be quick,” said Blessington.
“No, not quick,” said Jeannie. “It’s a funeral. What shall we sing?”
“Oh, anything. ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter.’ That’s sad, because the oysters were dead.”
So, to the moving strains, the procession headed across the lawn, and found a trowel in the tool-shed, and excava
ted a grave underneath the laurestinus. The coffin was once more opened to see that the thrush was quite comfortable, and then deposited in its sepulchre, and the earth filled in above it. But Archie felt that the ceremony was still incomplete.
“Ought we to say a prayer, Jeannie?” he said.
“No, it’s only a thrush.”
Archie considered a moment.
“I don’t care,” he said. “I shall all the same.”
He took off his sailor cap and knelt down, closing his eyes.
“God bless the poor thrush,” he said. “Good-night, thrush. I can’t think of anything more. Amen. Say Amen, Jeannie.”
“Amen,” said Jeannie.
“And do get up from that damp earth, dear,” said Blessington. “And let’s see who can run the fastest back to the house.”
Blessington ran the least fast, and Archie tripped over a croquet-hoop, and so Jeannie won, and very nearly began telling her mother about it all before Archie arrived. But, though breathless, he shrilly chipped in.
“And then I picked a crisantepum, and we had a procession across the lawn, and made a lovely grave by the tool-house, and I said prayers, though Jeannie told me you didn’t have prayers for thrushes. Mummy, when I grow up, may I be a clergyman?”
“Why, dear?”
“Don’t they have lots of funerals?”
“Pooh; that’s the undertaker,” said Jeannie. “Besides, I did say Amen, Archie.”
“I know. But mummy, why did Cyrus kill the thrush? Why did he want to hurt it and kill it? That was the part I didn’t like, and I expect the thrush hated it. Wasn’t it cruel of him? But if he kills another, may we have another funeral?”
He stood still a moment, cudgelling his small brain in order to grasp exactly what he felt.
“The poor thrush!” he said. “I wish Cyrus hadn’t killed it. But, if it’s got to be dead, I like funerals.”
* * * * *
Tea, on such solemn occasions as birthday feasts, took place for Archie, not in the nursery, but in the drawing-room, as better providing the proper pomp. He appreciated that, and secretly was pleased that Harry Travers should be ushered by William into the drawing-room, and have the door held open for him, and be announced as Mr. Travers. With that streak of snobbishness common to almost all small boys Archie thought it rather jolly, without swaggering at all, to be able to greet his friend in the midst of these glories, so that he could see their splendour for himself. In other ways, he would have perhaps preferred the nursery, and certainly would have done so when the moment came for him to cut his birthday-cake, for the sugar on the side of it cracked and exploded, as such confectionery will do, when Archie hewed his way down that white perpendicular cliff, and (a number of fragments falling on the floor), he had to stand quite still, knife in hand, till William got a housemaid’s brush and scoop and removed the debris, for fear it should be trodden into the carpet.
Marjorie had not appeared at tea at all, and when this sumptuous affair was over, Jeannie and Harry and Archie gathered round Lady Davidstow on the hearthrug with a box of chocolates planted at a fair and equal distance between them, and she told them the most delicious story about a boy whose mother had lost his birthdays, so that year after year went by without his having a birthday at all. The lights had been put out, and only the magic of leaping fire-light guided their hands to the chocolate-box, and every moment the phantasy of the story got more and more interwoven with the reality of the chocolates. Eventually, while the birthday-less boy’s mother was clearing out the big cupboard underneath the stairs, she came across all his birthdays put away in a purple box with a gold lock on it.
“Was it the cupboard underneath the stairs in the hall here?” asked Archie, for questions were permitted.
“Yes. There they all were: eight birthdays in all, so he had one every day for more than a week. My dears! What’s that?”
It certainly was very startling. A noise like a mixture between the Chinese gong and the bell for the servants’ dinner broke in upon the quiet, with the most appalling clamour. Archie swallowed a chocolate whole, and Harry, with great prudence, took two more in a damp hand to sustain him in these rather alarming occurrences.
“It sounds as if it was in the hall,” said Lady Davidstow. “Harry, will you open the door and see what it is?”
“Yes, I’ll go,” he said firmly. “But — but shan’t Archie come too?”
The noise ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and with a pleasing sense of terror the two boys went to the drawing-room door and opened it.
“But it’s quite dark,” said Archie. “Oh, mummy, what is happening?”
“I can’t think. I only know one person who makes a noise the least like that.”
“Oh, is it Abracadabra?” asked Archie excitedly, finding that his scepticism of the day before had vanished like smoke. It had occurred to him that Abracadabra was his mother, but here was his mother telling them stories.
“Well, the only time I ever heard her sneeze it was just like that,” said Lady Davidstow.
Archie came running back, shrieking with laughter.
“And what does she do when she blows her nose?” he asked.
The words were hardly out of his mouth when a piercing trumpet-blast sounded, and his mother got up.
“She did it then,” she whispered. “What had we better do? Shall we go into the hall? She would like us to be there to meet her, perhaps, if she’s coming.”
She went to the door, followed by the children, and they all looked out into the black hall. The wood-fire in the hearth there had died down to a mere smoulder of red, which sent its illumination hardly farther than the stone fender-curb.
“But there’s something there,” said Lady Davidstow in an awe-struck whisper. “There’s something sitting in the chair.”
“Oh, mummy,” said Archie, coming close to her. “I don’t think I like it.”
“I’m sure there’s nothing to be frightened at, Archie,” said she. “Which of us shall go and see what it is?”
There was no volunteer for this hazardous job, for now, with eyes more accustomed to the faint light, they could all see that it was not Something there, but Somebody. The outlines of a head, of a body, of legs all clothed in black, could be seen, and Somebody sat there perfectly still…
Then all of a sudden the gong and the bell and the trumpet broke out into a clamour fit to wake the dead, the great chandelier in the hall flared into light, and the black figure sprang up, throwing its darkness behind it, and there, glittering with silks and gems and gold and the flowers of fairyland, stood Abracadabra. She had on a huge poke-bonnet which cast a shadow over her face, and left it terrifyingly vague. Her bonnet was trimmed with sunflowers and lilies of the valley, and round the edge of it went a row of diamonds which were quite as big as the drops in a glass chandelier. Another necklace of the same brilliance went round her throat and rested on a crimson satin bodice covered with gold. From her shoulders sprang spangled wings, and from below her skirt, with its garlands of roses, were silver shoes with diamond buckles. In her hand she carried a blue wand hung with bells, and by her side was a clothes-basket (such was its shape) made of gold.
She stamped her foot with rage.
“Here’s a nice welcome, Lady Davidstow,” she said in a thin, cracked voice. “I sneezed to show I was coming, and, when I got through the keyhole, I found the hall dark, and no one to receive me. How dare you?”
Lady Davidstow advanced with faltering steps and fell on her knees.
“Oh, your majesty, forgive me,” she said.
“Why should I forgive you?” squeaked the infuriated fairy. “Why shouldn’t I take you away in my basket and put you in the Tower of Toads?”
Archie gasped. He would have given much for a touch of yesterday’s scepticism, but he couldn’t find an atom of it. The thought of his mother being whisked off to the Tower of Toads was insupportable.
“Oh, please don’t,” he said.
“And who i
s that?” asked Abracadabra.
Archie almost wished he hadn’t spoken, and took hold of Jeannie on one side and Harry on the other.
“It’s me; it’s Archie,” he said.
“And you don’t want me to take your ridiculous mother away?” she asked.
“No, please don’t,” said Archie.
“Very well, as it’s your birthday, I won’t. Instead I’ll make her extra lady-in-waiting on my peacock-staircase, and mistress of my tortoise-shell robes.”
“Oh, mummy, that will be lovely for you,” said Archie, remembering that his mother was something of the kind to somebody already.
Then there came the giving of presents, with the surprises that occurred during such processes. Archie was told to advance and put his hand in the left far corner of the golden basket, and, as he prepared to do so, Abracadabra sneezed so loudly that he fled back to the bottom stair of the staircase where they had been all commanded to sit. There was a tennis racquet for Harry, but the lights all went out when he had just reached the clothes-basket, and Abracadabra blew her nose so preposterously that his ear sang with it afterwards. There was a great parcel for Lady Davidstow, as big as a football, which was found to contain, when all the paper was stripped off, nothing more than a single acid drop, in order to teach the mistress of the tortoise-shell robes better manners when her mistress came to pay a visit, and Blessington, summoned from the nursery, was presented with a new cap. But the bulk of the gifts, as was proper, was for Archie, a clock-work train, and a pen that needed no dipping, and a fishing-rod, and a second suit of sailor-clothes. And then the light went out again, and Abracadabra began sneezing and blowing her nose with such deafening violence that the screen which stood just behind her rocked with the concussion, and the children, at the suggestion of the mistress of the tortoise-shell robes, groped their way back into the drawing-room with their presents, and shut the door till Abracadabra was better. And when, from the cessation of these awful noises, they conjectured she might be better, and ventured out into the hall again, that audience-chamber was just as usual, and Archie’s father came out of his room, looking vexed, and asking what that beastly noise was about. But when he heard it was Abracadabra, who had gone away again, he was greatly upset and said that it wasn’t a beastly noise at all, but the loveliest music he had ever heard.