by E. F. Benson
“Let’s get up a play to act to your father and mother on New Year’s night,” she said.
“Oh, it would be fun,” said Marjorie. “But what play could we act?”
“I’ll write you one,” said Miss Bampton. And write it she did, with a speed and a lavishness of plot that would have astonished more deliberate dramatists. There was a villain, a usurper king (Miss Bampton); there was a fairy (Marjorie); there was the rightful and youthful king (Archie); who lived (Act I) in painful squalor in a dungeon, attended only by the jailer’s daughter (Jeannie) who knew his identity and loved him, whether he was in a dungeon or on a throne. Luckily, he loved her too, anywhere, and they were kind to a beggar-woman, who turned out to be the fairy, and did the rest. Miss Bampton was consigned to the lowest dungeon, and everybody else lived happily ever afterwards.
Then came the question of dresses, and Marjorie rather thoughtlessly exclaimed:
“I’m sure mother will let me have her Abracadabra clothes for the fairy. Oh — I forgot,” she added, remembering that Archie was present.
There was an attempt (feeble, so Archie thought it) on the part of Miss Bampton to explain this away. She said that Abracadabra kept a suit of birthday clothes in every house she visited. Archie received the information quite politely, said, “Oh, I see,” and remained wholly incredulous. His faith in the Abracadabra myth had tottered before; this was the blow that finally and completely compassed its ruin, and it disappeared in the limbo of discredited imaginings, like the glassy sea between the rugs in the hall, and the snarl of the tigers at his enemies. Never again would the combined crash of the servant’s dinner-bell and the Chinese gong make him wonder at the magnificence of Abracadabra’s sneezings, and when the play arrived at the stage of dress-rehearsal it was no shock to see Marjorie in Abracadabra’s poke-bonnet and bediamonded bodice.
But it must not be supposed that, with the disappearance of those childish illusions, the world became in any way duller or less highly coloured to Archie; it grew, on the contrary, more and more fairy-like. The outburst of spring that year filled him with an ecstasy that could best be expressed by running fast and jumping in the air with shouts of joy. The unfolding of gummy buds on the horse-chestnut by the lake filled him with a rapture all the keener because he could not comprehend it; presently, the sight of pale green five-fingered leaves, weak as new-dropped lambs, made him race round and round Blessington till she got giddy. There was a smell of damp earth in the air, of young varnished grass-blades pushing up among the discoloured and faded foliage of the lawn, and, for the hard bright skies or the sullen clouds of winter, a new and tender blue was poured over the heavens, and clouds white as washed fleeces pursued one another aloft, even as their shadows bowled over the earth beneath. Birds began to sing again, and sparrows, chattering in the ivy, pulled straws and twigs about, practising for the nest-building time which would soon be upon them. A purplish mist hung over the birch-trees, and soon it changed to a mist of green as the buds expanded. Violets hidden behind their leaves bedecked the lane-sides, and one morning the first primrose appeared. Last year, no doubt, and in all preceding springs the same things had happened; but now for the first time they were significant, and penetrated further than the mere field of vision. They filled Archie with an unreasoning joy.
Anything in the shape of natural history received strong encouragement from Lord Davidstow, as well as anything (Archie did not fully grasp this) that tended to keep him out of doors when his short lessons were done, and he and Jeannie started this year a series of joint collections. Certain rules had to be observed: flowers that they picked must be duly pressed and mounted on sheets of cartridge paper, and their names must be ascertained. One bird’s egg might be taken in the absence of the mother-bird from any nest which contained four, and must be blown and put in its labelled cell in the egg-cabinet; but when three specimens of any sort had been collected, no more must be acquired. That, perhaps, was the collection Archie liked best, though the joys of the aquarium ran it close. The aquarium was a big bread-bowl lined at the bottom with spa and crystals, and in it lived caddis-worms and water-snails and a dace — probably weak in the head, for he had allowed himself to be caught in the landing-net without the least effort to get out of the way. He had an inordinate passion for small bread-pills, in pursuit of which he was so violently active that he often hit his nose against the side of the aquarium so hard that you could positively hear the stunning blow. When satiated he would still continue to rush after bread-pills, but, after holding them in his mouth a moment, he would expel them again with such force that he resembled some submarine discharging torpedoes.
Then there was the butterfly and moth collection, which was of short duration, and was abandoned on account of a terrible happening. The insects were emptied into the killing-bottle, and when dead transfixed with a pin, and set. But one morning Archie, examining the setting-board to see if they were stiff and ready to be transferred into the cork-lined boxes, found, to his horror, that, so far from being stiff, two butterflies, a tortoiseshell and a brimstone, were alive still, with waving antennae and twitching bodies. That dreadful incident poisoned the joy of that collection; he felt himself guiltier of a worse outrage than Cyrus, and all Blessington’s well-meant consolations that insects hardly felt anything at all would not induce him to run the risk of committing further atrocities. For a day and a night the two had writhed under their crucifixion, and that day the caterpillars were released from their breeding-cage (even including that piece of preciousness, the caterpillar of the convolvulus hawk with a horn on his tail), and the killing-bottle was relegated to the attic.
The Sunday church-goings for which an intermission had been ordained in consequence of Archie’s infant remarks about the amusingness of the man with the wagging beard, had long ago been resumed again, and this year he had a sudden attack of spurious and sentimental religion that caused his mother some little anxiety. He developed a dreadful conscience, and came to her with a serious face and confessed trivial wrong-doings. (This phase, she comforted herself to think, occurred in the autumn of this year, at a time when there was nothing much to be done in the way of collecting.) One morning Archie came to her with a crime that sorely oppressed him. Nearly two years ago, somebody had sent her a painted Easter egg, an ostrich’s egg, adorned with gilt designs of a cross and a crown and some rays, which Archie had been forbidden to touch.
“I touched it,” he said. “I wetted my finger and rubbed it on the crown, and some of it came off.”
“Well, dear, of course you shouldn’t have done it, if I had told you not to,” she said. “But don’t bother about it any more. What made you come and tell me so long after?”
Archie grew more solemn still.
“I was leaning out of the nursery-window,” he said, “and I heard Charles singing ‘A few more years shall roll.’ So I came and told you before I ‘was asleep within the tomb.’”
His mother laughed, quite as if she was amused.
“We’ll hope there’ll be more than a few years before that, darling,” she said.
“And shall I be forgiven now I’ve told you?” asked Archie.
“Yes, of course. Don’t think anything more about it.”
Archie would have preferred a more sentimental treatment of his offence, and rather wished his mother bore a stronger resemblance to Mrs. Montgomery, in the Wide, Wide World, whose edifying tears fell so fast and frequently, and after this he tended to keep his misdeeds more to himself and repent of them in secret. Simultaneously also the copy of the Wide, Wide World, which he had discovered in a passage book-case, mysteriously vanished, and no one appeared to have the slightest idea where it had gone. So, unable to stuff himself further with that brand of mawkishness, the desire that his mother should be more like Mrs. Montgomery faded somewhat, and there seemed but little pleasure in repentance at all, if your confessions were received in so unsentimental a manner, and it was no fun really keeping them to oneself. But for some weeks
Sunday morning service in church (he had expressed a wish to go to evening church as well, but his mother had told him that once was as much as was good for him) became the emotional centre of his life, though his religion was strangely mixed up with a far more mundane attraction. There was a particular choir-boy there with blue eyes, pink cheeks, and a crop of yellow curls who sang solos, and thrilled Archie with a secret and perfectly sexless emotion. Only last Sunday he had sung “Oh, for the wings of a dove,” and religion and childish adoration together had brought Archie to the verge of tears. He longed to be good, to live, until a few more years should roll (for he felt that he was going to die young), a noble and beautiful life; he longed also to fly away and be at rest with the choir-boy. He made up pathetic scenes in which he should be lying on his death-bed, with his weeping family round him, and the choir-boy would sing to him as he died, and they would smile at each other. When this vision proved almost too painful for contemplation he would console himself by picturing an alternative scheme, in which there were to be no death-beds at all, but instead he would get into the church choir, and sit next the choir-boy, and they would sing duets together before a rapt congregation. But, adorable though his idol was, he did not really want to know him, or even find out who he was. The idol existed for him in some remote sphere, becoming incarnate just for an hour on Sunday morning, a golden-haired surpliced voice, that suggested the vanished thrills of the Wide, Wide World. He pronounced certain words rather oddly, and had a slight lisp which Archie tried to copy, until one day his father told him never to say “Yeth” again, or he should write out “Yes” a hundred times.
Then came the most exciting discovery: this vocal angel proved to be the son of the head-keeper, and it was therefore perfectly easy to make his acquaintance. The notion of meeting him face to face, of exchanging a “good-morning” with him was almost overpowering, and yet Archie instinctively shrank from bringing the idol into contact with actual life. He began to choose for his walk the rather dank and gloomy path that led past the keeper’s cottage, and yet, when that abode where the idol lived came within sight, Archie, with beating heart would avert his eyes, for fear he should see him. Then one day, as they got opposite the gate, a small boy in corduroy knickerbockers with a rather greasy scarf round his neck and a snuffling nose came out, and touched his cap. There could be no doubt about his identity, and Archie suffered the first real disillusionment of his life. The fading of Abracadabra was nothing to this: that had been a gradual disillusionment, whereas this was sudden as a lightning-stroke. He was a shattered idol, and from that moment Archie could hardly recall what it had been about, or recapture the faintest sense of the emotion which had filled him before that encounter in the wood which caused it to reel and totter and fall prone from its unsubstantial pedestal. This blow, on the top of the robust reception of his confession, did much to restore Archie to the ways of normal boyhood, and it was really rather a relief to his mother, when his expanding experimenting nature took a very different turn, and he became for a time obstreperously naughty. She thought, quite rightly, that this evinced a greater vigour. That it undoubtedly did, and the imagination contained in some of Archie’s exploits rivalled the more visionary power that constructed death-bed scenes for himself and the idealization (cruelly shattered) of the choir-boy.
One very dreary November afternoon, shortly after his seventh birthday, he was sitting alone in his mother’s room. All day the sullen heavens had poured their oblique deluge on the earth, and sheets of water were being flung against the windows by the cold south-easterly gale. Archie was suffering from a slight cold, and had not been out of doors for a couple of days, and this unusual detention in the house had caused him to be very cross, and also had dammed up within him a store of energy which could not disperse itself innocuously in violent movement. Jeannie had gone for a motor-drive with his mother, Marjorie and Miss Bampton were closely engaged over their rotten German, and Archie that morning had been stingingly rebuked by his father for sliding down the banisters in the hall, a mode of progress strictly forbidden. Blessington had not been less stinging, for an hour ago Archie had been extremely rude to her, and, with a dignity that he both respected and resented, she had said, “Then I’ve nothing more to say to you, Master Archie, till you’ve remembered your manners again.” And had thereupon continued her sewing.
Archie knew he had been rude, but his sense of that was not yet strong enough to enable him to apologize, though of sufficient energy to make him feel woebegone and neglected. He had been allowed by his mother to sit in her room that afternoon, when she went out with Jeannie, and to investigate what was known as her “work-box,” which contained her “treasures.” In earlier days these had been a source of deep delight: there was a minute china elephant with a silk palanquin on his back; there was a porcupine’s quill, there was a set of dolls’ tea-things, a pink umbrella, the ferrule of which was a pencil, a chain of amber. Once these had held magic for Archie: they were “mummy’s treasures,” and could only be seen on wet afternoons or in hours of toothache. But to-day they appeared to him perfectly rubbishy; not a gleam of glamour remained; they were as dull as the leaden skies of this interminable afternoon.
Archie lay in the window-seat, and wondered that his sailor-trousers only a year ago had given him so complete a sense of happiness. He rubbed one leg against the other, trying to recollect how it was that that rough serge against his bare calf felt so manly. He tried to interest himself in Alice in Wonderland, and marvelled that he could have cared about an adventure with a pack of cards. He longed to throw the book at the foolish Dresden shepherdess that stood on the mantelpiece. He supposed there would be trouble if he did, that his mother would be vexed, but trouble was better than this nothing-at-all. Probably it would rain again to-morrow, and he would have another day indoors, and the thought of Nothing Happening either to-day or to-morrow seemed the same as the thought of nothing happening for ever and ever.
There was a bright fire in the hearth and beyond the steel fender a thick hearthrug of long white sheep’s wool. Suddenly Archie remembered the odour that diffused itself when, one day, a fragment of hot coal flew out of the fire, and lodged in this same hearthrug. There was a fatty, burning smell, most curious, and simultaneously the wild, irresistible desire of doing something positively wicked enthralled him. Instantly he knew what he was going to do, and with set, determined face, he took the fire-shovel in one hand and the tongs in the other, and heaped the shovel high with burning coals. He emptied them on the hearthrug.
The smoke of singeing, burning wool arose, and he took several more lumps of glowing coal from the fire-place and deposited them on the rug. Then a panic seized him, and he tried to stamp the conflagration out. But he only stamped the glowing coals more firmly in, and, though amazed at his audacity, he did not really want to extinguish it. He wanted something to happen. Quite deliberately, though with cheeks burning with excitement, he walked out of the room, leaving the door open, and simultaneously heard the crunch of the gravel under the wheels of his mother’s returning motor. He did not wish to see her, and went straight to the night-nursery (now his exclusive bedroom) and locked himself in. But he was not in the least sorry for what he had done: if anything he wished he had put more coals there. Nor was he frightened at the thought of possible consequences. Merely, he did not care what happened, so long as something happened. That, he reflected, it was pretty certain to do. But he made no plans.
Before very long he heard some one turning the handle of his door, and he kept quite still. Then his father’s voice said:
“Are you there, Archie?” And still he said nothing.
The voice grew louder and the handle rattled.
“Archie, open your door immediately,” said his father.
Not in the least knowing why, Archie proceeded to do so. He still felt absolutely defiant and desperate, but for some instinctive reason he obeyed.
Enormous and terrible, his father stood before him.
�
��Did you put those coals on your mother’s hearthrug?” asked Lord Davidstow.
“No,” said Archie.
“Then how did you know they were there?” asked his father.
Archie had something of the joy of the desperate adventurer.
“Because I put them there,” he said.
“Then you have lied to me as well.”
“Yes,” said Archie.
Lord Davidstow pointed to the door.
“Go downstairs at once,” he said, “and wait in my study.”
Archie obeyed, still not knowing why. At the top of the stairs was standing his mother, who took a step forward towards him.
“Archie, my darling—” she began.
“Leave the boy to me,” said his father, who was following him. Archie marched downstairs, still without a tremor. It occurred to him that his father was going to kill him, as Cyrus killed the thrush. There was a whispered conversation between his mother and father and he heard his mother say, “No, don’t, don’t,” and he felt sure that this referred to his being killed. But he was quite certain that, whatever happened, he was not going to say he was sorry.
He went into his father’s study and shut the door. On the table he noticed that there was standing one of Miss Schwarz’s medicine-bottles, and a syphon beside it, and wondered whether Miss Schwarz had come back. But there was no other sign of her.
In another moment his father entered.
“Now, you thoroughly deserve a good whipping, Archie,” he said. “You might have burned the house down, and if you were a poor boy you’d have been put into prison for this. But your mother has been pleading for you, and, if you’ll say you are sorry, and beg her pardon for burning her hearthrug, I’ll let you off just this time.”
Well, he was not going to be killed, but he was going to be whipped. Archie felt his heart beating small and fast with apprehension; but he was not sorry, and did not intend to say he was.