by E. Nesbit
CHAPTER VI
BURIED TREASURE
AND then, as he stood there in the sunshine, he suddenly knew.
Having succeeded in dreaming once again the dream which he had so longedto dream, Dickie Harding looked out of the window of the dream-house inDeptford into the dream-garden with its cut yew-trees and box avenuesand bowling-greens, and perceived without doubt that this was no dream,but real--as real as the other Deptford where he had sown Artistic BirdSeed and gathered moonflowers and reaped the silver seeds of magic, forit _was_ magic. Dickie was sure of it now. He had not lived in the timeof the First James, be sure, without hearing magic talked of. And itseemed quite plain to him that if this that had happened to him was notmagic, then there never was and never would be any magic to happen toany one. He turned from the window and looked at the tapestry-hungroom--the big bed, the pleasant, wrinkled face of the nurse--and he knewthat all this was as real as anything that had happened to him in thatother life where he was a little lame boy who took the road with adirty tramp for father, and lay in the bed with green curtains.
"Was thy friend well, in thy dream?" the nurse asked.
"Yes, oh, yes," said Dickie, "and I carved boxes in my dream, and soldthem, and I want to learn a lot more things, so that when I go backagain--I mean when I dream that dream again--I shall be able to earnmore money."
"'Tis shame that one of thy name should have to work for money," saidthe nurse.
"It _isn't_ my name there," said Dickie; "and old Sebastian told meevery one ought to do some duty to his country, or he wasn't worth hismeat and ale. And you don't know how good it is having money that you've_earned yourself_."
"I ought to," she said; "I've earned mine long enough. Now haste anddress--and then breakfast and thy fencing lesson."
When the fencing lesson was over, Dickie hesitated. He wanted, ofcourse, to hurry off to Sebastian and to go on learning how to make agalleon. But also he wanted to learn some trade that he could teachBeale at Deptford, and he knew, quite as surely as any master craftsmancould have known it, that nothing which required delicate handling, suchas wood-carving or the making of toy boats, could ever be mastered byBeale. But Beale was certainly fond of dogs. Dickie remembered howlittle True had cuddled up to him and nestled inside his coat when helay down to sleep under the newspapers and the bits of sacking inLavender Terrace, Rosemary Lane.
So Dickie went his way to the kennels to talk to the kennelman. He hadbeen there before with Master Roger Fry, his fencing master, but he hadnever spoken to the kennelman. And when he got to the kennels he knockedon the door of the kennelman's house and called out, "What ho! withinthere!" just as people do in old plays. And the door was thrown open bya man in a complete suit of leather, and when Dickie looked in thatman's face he saw that it was the face of the man who had lived nextdoor in Lavender Terrace, Rosemary Lane--the man who dug up the gardenfor the parrot seed.
"Why," said Dickie, "it's you!"
"Who would it be but me, little master?" the man asked with a respectfulsalute, and Dickie perceived that though this man had the face of theMan Next Door, he had not the Man Next Door's memories.
"Do you live here?" he asked cautiously--"always, I mean."
"Where else should I live?" the man asked, "that have served my lord,your father, all my time, boy and man, and know every hair of every dogmy lord owns."
Dickie thought that was a good deal to know--and so it was.
He stayed an hour at the kennels and came away knowing very much moreabout dogs than he did before, though some of the things he learnedwould surprise a modern veterinary surgeon very much indeed. But thedogs seemed well and happy, though they were doctored with herb teainstead of stuff from the chemist's, and the charms that were said overthem to make them swift and strong certainly did not make them any theless strong and swift.
When Dickie had learned as much about dogs as he felt he could bear forthat day, he felt free to go down to the dockyard and go on learning howships were built. Sebastian looked up at the voice and ceased the blowswith which his axe was smoothing a great tree trunk that was to be amast, and smiled in answer to his smile.
"Oh, what a long time since I have seen thee!" Dickie cried.
And Sebastian, gently mocking him, answered, "A great while indeed--twowhole long days. And those thou'st spent merrymaking in the King's waterpageant. Two days--a great while, a great, great while."
"I want you to teach me everything you know," said Dickie, picking upan awl and feeling its point.
"'OH, WHAT A LONG TIME SINCE I HAVE SEEN THEE!' DICKIECRIED"
[_Page 147_]
"Have patience with me," laughed Sebastian; "I will teach thee all thoucanst learn, but not all in one while. Little by little, slow and sure."
"You must not think," said Dickie, "that it's only play, and that I donot need to learn because I am my father's son."
"Should I think so?" Sebastian asked; "I that have sailed with CaptainDrake and Captain Raleigh, and seen how a gentleman venturer needs toturn his hand to every guess craft? If thou's so pleased to learn asSebastian is to teach, then he'll be as quick to teach as thou to learn.And so to work!"
He fetched out from the shed the ribs of the little galleon that he andDickie had begun to put together, and the two set to work on it. It wasa happy day. And one happiness was to all the other happinesses of thatday as the sun is to little stars--and that happiness was the happinessof being once more a little boy who did not need to use a crutch.
And now the beautiful spacious life opened once more for Dickie, and helearned many things and found the days all good and happy and all thenights white and peaceful, in the big house and the beautiful garden onthe slopes above Deptford. And the nights had no dreams in them, and inthe days Dickie lived gaily and worthily, the life of the son of agreat and noble house, and now he had no prickings of conscience aboutBeale, left alone in the little house in Deptford. Because one day hesaid to his nurse--
"How long did it take me to dream that dream about making the boxes andearning the money in the ugly place I told you of?"
"Dreams about that place," she answered him, "take none of _our_ timehere. And dreams about this place take none of what is time in thatother place."
"But my dream endured all night," objected Dickie.
"Not so," said the nurse, smiling between her white cap frills. "It was_after_ the dream that sleep came--a whole good nightful of it."
So Dickie felt that for Beale no time at all had passed, and that whenhe went back--which he meant to do--he would get back to Deptford at thesame instant as he left it. Which is the essence of this particular kindof white magic. And thus it happened that when he did go back to Mr.Beale he went because his heart called him, and not for any other reasonat all.
Days and weeks and months went by and it was autumn, and the apples wereripe on the trees, and the grapes ripe on the garden walls andtrellises. And then came a day when all the servants seemed suddenly togo mad--a great rushing madness of mops and brooms and dusters and pailsand everything in the house already perfectly clean was cleaned anew,and everything that was already polished was polished freshly, and whenDickie had been turned out of three rooms one after the other, hadtumbled over a pail and had a dish-cloth pinned to his doublet by anangry cook, he sought out the nurse, very busy in the linen-room, andasked her what all the fuss was about.
"It can't be a spring-cleaning," he said, "because it's the wrong timeof year."
"Never say I did not tell thee," she answered, unfolding a greatembroidered cupboard cloth and holding it up critically. "To-morrow thyfather and mother come home, and thy baby-brother, and to-day sennightthy little cousins come to visit thee."
"How perfectly glorious!" said Dickie. "But you _didn't_ tell me."
"If I didn't 'twas because you never asked."
"I--I didn't dare to," he said dreamily; "I was so afraid. You see, I'venever seen them."
"Afraid?" she said, laying away the folded cloth and taking ou
t anotherfrom the deep press, oaken, with smooth-worn, brown iron hinges andlock; "never seen thy father and mother, forsooth!"
"Perhaps it was the fever," said Dickie, feeling rather deceitful. "Yousaid it made me forget things. I don't remember them. Not at all, Idon't."
"Do not say that to them," the nurse said, looking at him very gravely.
"I won't. Unless they ask me," he added. "Oh, nurse, let me do somethingtoo. What can I do to help?"
"Thou canst gather such flowers as are left in the garden to make anosegay for thy mother's room; and set them in order in fair water. Andbid thy tutor teach thee a welcome song to say to them when they comein."
Gathering the flowers and arranging them was pleasant and easy. Askingso intimate a favor from the sour-faced tutor whom he so much dislikedwas neither easy nor pleasant. But Dickie did it. And the tutor wasdelighted to set him to learn a particularly hard and uninterestingpiece of poetry, beginning--
"Happy is he Who, to sweet home retired, Shuns glory so admired And to himself lives free; While he who strives with pride to climb the skies Falls down with foul disgrace before he dies."
Dickie could not help thinking that the father and mother who were to behis in this beautiful world might have preferred something simpler andmore affectionate from their little boy than this difficult piece whoselast verse was the only one which seemed to Dickie to mean anything inparticular. In this verse Dickie was made to remark that he hoped peoplewould say of him, "He died a good old man," which he did _not_ hope, andindeed had never so much as thought of. The poetry, he decided, wouldhave been nicer if it had been more about his father and mother and lessabout fame and trees and burdens. He felt this so much that he tried towrite a poem himself, and got as far as--
"They say there is no other Can take the place of mother. I say there is no one I'd rather See than my father."
But he could not think of any more to say, and besides, he had ahaunting idea that the first two lines--which were quite the best--werenot his own make-up. So he abandoned the writing of poetry, decidingthat it was not his line, and painfully learned the dismal versesappointed by his tutor.
But he never got them said. When the bustle of arrival had calmed alittle, Dickie, his heart beating very fast indeed, found himself led byhis tutor into the presence of the finest gentleman and the dearest ladyhe had ever beheld. The tutor gave him a little push so that he had togo forward two steps and to stand alone on the best carpet, which hadbeen spread in their honor, and hissed in a savage whisper--
"Recite your song of welcome."
"'Happy the man,'" began Dickie, in tones of gloom, and tremblinglypronounced the first lines of that unpleasing poem.
But he had not got to "strive with pride" before the dear lady caughthim in her arms, exclaiming, "Bless my dear son! how he has grown!" andthe fine gentleman thumped him on the back, and bade him "bear himselflike a gentleman's son, and not like a queasy square-toes." And theyboth laughed, and he cried a little, and the tutor seemed to be blottedout, and there they were, all three as jolly as if they had known eachother all their lives. And a stout young nurse brought the baby, andDickie loved it and felt certain it loved him, though it only said, "Googa goo," exactly as your baby-brother does now, and got hold of Dickie'shair and pulled it and would not let go.
There was a glorious dinner, and Dickie waited on this new father ofhis, changed his plate, and poured wine out of a silver jug into thesilver cup that my lord drank from. And after dinner the dearlady-mother must go all over the house to see everything, because shehad been so long away, and Dickie walked in the garden among the ripeapples and grapes with his father's hand on his shoulder, the happiest,proudest boy in all Deptford--or in all Kent either.
His father asked what he had learned, and Dickie told, dwelling,perhaps, more on the riding, and the fencing, and the bowls, and themusic than on the sour-faced tutor's side of the business.
"But I've learned a lot of Greek and Latin, too," he added in a hurry,"and poetry and things like that."
"I fear," said the father, "thou dost not love thy book."
"I do, sir; yet I love my sports better," said Dickie, and looked up tomeet the fond, proud look of eyes as blue as his own.
"Thou'rt a good, modest lad," said his father when they began theirthird round of the garden, "not once to ask for what I promised thee."
Dickie could not stand this. "I might have asked," he said presently,"but I have forgot what the promise was--the fever----"
"Ay, ay, poor lad! And of a high truth, too! Owned he had forgot! Come,jog that poor peaked remembrance."
Dickie could hardly believe the beautiful hope that whispered in hisear.
"I almost think I remember," he said. "Father--did you promise----?"
"I promised, if thou wast a good lad and biddable and constant at thybook and thy manly exercises, to give thee, so soon as thou should'sthave learned to ride him----"
"A little horse?" said Dickie breathlessly; "oh, father, not a littlehorse?" It was good to hear one's father laugh that big, jolly laugh--tofeel one's father's arm laid like that across one's shoulders.
The little horse turned round to look at them from his stall in the bigstables. It was really rather a big horse.
What colored horse would you choose--if a horse were to be yours for thechoosing? Dickie would have chosen a gray, and a gray it was.
"What is his name?" Dickie asked, when he had admired the gray's everypoint, had had him saddled, and had ridden him proudly round the pasturein his father's sight.
"We call him Rosinante," said his father, "because he is so fat," and helaughed, but Dickie did not understand the joke. He had not read "DonQuixote," as you, no doubt, have.
"I should like," said Dickie, sitting square on the gray, "to call himCrutch. May I?"
"_Crutch?_" the father repeated.
"Because his paces are so easy," Dickie explained. He got off the horsevery quickly and came to his father. "I mean even a lame boy could ridehim. Oh! father, I am so happy!" he said, and burrowed his nose in avelvet doublet, and perhaps snivelled a little. "I am so glad I am notlame."
"Fancy-full as ever," said his father; "come, come! Thou'rt weak yetfrom the fever. Be a man. Remember of what blood thou art. And thymother--she also hath a gift for thee--from thy grandfather. Hast thouforgotten that? It hangs to the book learning. A reward--and thou hastearned it."
"I've forgotten that, too," said Dickie. "You aren't vexed because Iforget? I can't help it, father."
"That I'll warrant thou cannot. Come, now, to thy mother. My little son!The Earl of Scilly chid me but this summer for sparing the rod andspoiling the child. But thy growth in all things bears out in what Ianswered him. I said: 'The boys of our house, my lord, take that pridein it that they learn of their own free will what many an earl's sonmust be driven to with rods.' He took me. His own son is little betterthan an idiot, and naught but the rod to blame for it, I verilybelieve."
They found the lady-mother and her babe by a little fire in a widehearth.
"Our son comes to claim the guerdon of learning," the father said. Andthe lady stood up with the babe in her arms.
"Call the nurse to take him," she said. But Dickie held out his arms.
"Oh, mother," he said, and it was the first time in all his life that hehad spoken that word to any one. "Mother, do let me hold him."
A warm, stiff bundle was put into his careful arms, and his littlebrother instantly caught at his hair. It hurt, but Dickie liked it.
The lady went to one of the carved cabinets and with a bright key from avery bright bunch unlocked one of the heavy panelled doors. She drew outof the darkness within a dull-colored leather bag embroidered in goldthread and crimson silk.
"He has forgot," said Sir Richard in an undertone, "what it was that thegrandfather promised him. Though he has well earned the same. 'Tis thefever."
The mother put the bag in Dickie's hands.
"Count it out," she said, taking her babe from him; and Dickie untiedthe leathern string, and poured out on to the polished long table whatthe bag held. Twenty gold pieces.
"And all with the image of our late dear Queen," said the mother; "theimage of that incomparable virgin Majesty whose example is a beacon forall time to all virtuous ladies."
"IT HURT, BUT DICKIE LIKED IT"
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"Ah, yes, indeed," said the father; "put them up in the bag, boy. Theyare thine own to thee, to spend as thou wilt."
"Not unwisely," said the mother gently.
"As he wills," the father firmly said; "wisely or unwisely. As he wills.And none," he added, "shall ask how they be spent."
The lady frowned; she was a careful housewife, and twenty gold pieceswere a large sum.
"I will not waste it," said Dickie. "Mother, you may trust me not towaste it."
It was the happiest moment of his life to Dickie. The little horse--thegold pieces.... Yes, but much more, the sudden, good, safe feeling offather and mother and little brother; of a place where he belonged,where he loved and was loved. And by his equals. For he felt that, asfar as a child can be the equal of grown people, he was the equal ofthese. And Beale was not his equal, either in the graces of the body orin the inner treasures of mind and heart. And hitherto he had loved onlyBeale; had only, so far as he could remember, been loved by Beale and bythat shadowy father, his "Daddy," who had died in hospital, and dying,had given him the rattle, his Tinkler, that was Harding's Luck. And inthe very heart of that happiest moment came, like a sharp daggerprick, the thought of Beale. What wonders could be done for Beale withthose twenty-five gold sovereigns? For Dickie thought of them just assovereigns--and so they were.
And as these people who loved him, who were his own, drew nearer andnearer to his heart--his heart, quickened by love of them, felt itselfdrawn more and more to Mr. Beale. Mr. Beale, the tramp, who had beenkind to him when no one else was. Mr. Beale, the tramp and housebreaker.
So when the nurse took him, tired with new happinesses, to thatbeautiful tapestried room of his, he roused himself from his good softsleepiness to say--
"Nurse, you know a lot of things, don't you?"
"I know what I know," she answered, undoing buttons with speed andauthority.
"You know that other dream of mine--that dream of mine, I mean, thedream of a dreadful place?"
"And then?"
"Could I take anything out of this dream--I mean out of this time intothe other one?"
"You could, but you must bring it back when you come again. And youcould bring things thence. Certain things: your rattle, your moon-seeds,your seal."
He stared at her.
"You _do_ know things," he said; "but I want to take things there andleave them there."
She knitted thoughtful brows.
"There's three hundred thick years between now and then," she said. "Oh,yes, I know. And if you held it in your hand, you'd lose it like as notin some of the years you go through. Money's mortal heavy and travelsslow. Slower than the soul of you, my lamb. Some one would have time tosee it and snatch it and hold to it."
"Isn't there any way?" Dickie asked, insisting to himself that he wasn'tsleepy.
"There's the way of everything--the earth," she said; "bury it, and liedown on the spot where it's buried, and then, when you get back into theother dream, the kind, thick earth will have hid your secret, and youcan dig it up again. It will be there ... unless other hands have dugthere in the three hundred years. You must take your chance of that."
"Will you help me?" Dickie asked. "I shall need to dig it very deep if Iam to cheat three hundred years. And suppose," he added, struck by asudden and unpleasing thought, "there's a house built on the place. Ishould be mixed up with the house. Two things can't be in the same placeat the same time. My tutor told me that. And the house would be so muchstronger than me--it would get the best of it, and where should I bethen?"
"I'll ask where thou'd be," was the very surprising answer. "I'll asksome one who knows. But it'll take time--put thy money in the greatpress, and I'll keep the key. And next Friday as ever is, come yourlittle cousins."
They came. It was more difficult with them than it was with thegrown-ups to conceal the fact that he had not always been the Dickie hewas now; but it was not so difficult as you might suppose. It was noharder than not talking about the dreams you had last night.
And now he had indeed a full life: head-work, bodily exercises, work,home life, and joyous hours of play with two children who understoodplay as the poor little, dirty Deptford children do not and cannotunderstand it.
He lived and learned, and felt more and more that this was the life towhich he really belonged. And days and weeks and months went by andnothing happened, and that is the happiest thing that can happen to anyone who is already happy.
Then one night the nurse said--
"I have asked. You are to bury your treasure under the window of thesolar parlor, and lie down and sleep on it. You'll take no harm, andwhen you're asleep I will say the right words, and you'll wake under thesame skies and not under a built house, like as you feared."
She wrapped him in a warm cloth mantle of her own, when she took himfrom his bed that night after all the family were asleep, and put on hisshoes and led him to the hole she had secretly dug in below the window.They had put his embroidered leather bag of gold in a littlewrought-iron coffer that Sebastian had given him, and the nurse hadtightly fastened the join of lid and box with wax and resin. The box waswrapped in a silk scarf, and the whole packet put into a big earthenwarejar with a lid, and the join of lid and jar was smeared with resin andcovered with clay. The nurse had shown him how to do all this.
"Against the earth spirits and the three hundred years," she said.
Now she lifted the jar into the hole, and together they filled the holewith earth, treading it in with their feet.
"And when you would return," said the nurse, "you know the way."
"Do I?"
"You lay the rattle, the seal, and the moon-seeds as before, and listento the voices."
And then Dickie lay down in the cloth cloak, and the nurse sat by himand held his hand till he fell asleep. It was June now, and the scent ofthe roses was very sweet, and the nightingales kept him awake awhile.But the sky overhead was an old friend of his, and as he lay he couldsee the shining of the dew among the grass blades of the lawn. It waspleasant to lie again in the bed with the green curtains.
When he awoke there was his old friend the starry sky, and for a momenthe wondered. Then he remembered. He raised himself on his elbow. Therewere houses all about--little houses with lights in some of the windows.A broken paling was quite close to him. There was no grass near, onlyrough trampled earth; the smell all about him was not of roses, but ofdust-bins, and there were no nightingales--but far away he could hearthat restless roar that is the voice of London, and near at hand thefoolish song and unsteady footfall of a man going home from the "Cat andWhistle." He scratched a cross on the hard ground with a broken bit of aplate to mark the spot, got up and crept on hands and knees to thehouse, climbed in and found the room where Beale lay asleep.
* * * * *
"Father," said Dickie, next morning, as Mr. Beale stretched and gruntedand rubbed sleepy eyes with his unwashed fists in the cold daylight thatfilled the front room of 15, Lavender Terrace, Rosemary Lane. "You gotto take this house--that's what you got to do; you remember."
"Can't say I do," said Beale, scratching his head; "but if the nippersays so, it _is_ so. Let's go and get a mug and a door-step, and thenwe'll see."
"You get it--if you're hungry," said Dickie. "I'd rather wait here incase anybody else was to take the house. You go and see 'im now. 'E'llthink you're a man in reg'lar work by your being up so early."
"P'raps," said Beale thoughtfully, running his hand over the rustlingstubble of his two day
s' beard--"p'raps I'd best get a wash and brush-upfirst, eh? It might be worth it in the end. I'll 'ave to go to the dossto get our pram and things, any'ow."
The landlord of the desired house really thought Mr. Beale a quiterespectable working man, and Mr. Beale accounted for their lack offurniture by saying, quite truthfully, that he and his nipper had comeup from Gravesend, doing a bit of work on the way.
"I could," he added, quite untruthfully, "give you the gentleman Iworked with for me reference--Talbott, 'is name is--a bald man with asquint and red ears--but p'raps this'll do as well." He pulled out ofone pocket all their money--two pounds eighteen shillings--except sixpennies which he had put in the other pocket to rattle. He rattled themnow. "I'm anxious," he said, confidentially, "to get settled on accountof the nipper. I don't deceive you; we 'oofed it up, not to waste ourlittle bit, and he's a hoppy chap."
"That's odd," said the landlord; "there was a lame boy lived there alongof the last party that had it. It's a cripple's home by rights, I shouldthink."
Beale had not foreseen this difficulty, and had no story ready. So hetried the truth.
"It's the same lad, mister," he said; "that's why I'm rather set on the'ouse. You see, it's 'ome to 'im like," he added sentimentally.
"You 'is father?" said the landlord sharply. And again Beale wasinspired to truthfulness--quite a lot of it.
"No," he said cautiously, "wish I was. The fact is, the little chap'saunt wasn't much class. An' I found 'im wandering. An' not 'avin' noneof my own, I sort of adopted 'im."
"Like Wandering Hares at the theatre," said the landlord, who had beentold by Dickie's aunt that the "ungrateful little warmint" had run away."I see."
"And 'e's a jolly little chap," said Beale, warming to his subject andforgetting his caution, "as knowing as a dog-ferret; and hispatter--enough to make a cat laugh, 'e is sometimes. And I'll pay a weekdown if you like, mister--and we'll get our bits of sticks in to-day."
"Well," said the landlord, taking a key from a nail on the wall, "let'sgo down and have a look at the 'ouse. Where's the kid?"
"'E's there awaitin' for me," said Beale; "couldn't get 'im away."
Dickie was very polite to the landlord, at whom in unhappier days he hadsometimes made faces, and when the landlord went he had six of theirshillings and they had the key.
"So now we've got a 'ome of our own," said Beale, rubbing his hands whenthey had gone through the house together; "an Englishman's 'ome is 'iscastle--and what with the boxes you'll cut out and the dogs what I'llpick up, Buckingham Palace'll look small alongside of us--eh, matey?"
They locked up the house and went to breakfast, Beale gay as a lark andDickie rather silent. He was thinking over a new difficulty. It was allvery well to bury twenty sovereigns and to know exactly where they were.And they were his own beyond a doubt. But if any one saw thosesovereigns dug up, those sovereigns would be taken away from him. No onewould believe that they were his own. And the earthenware pot was sobig. And so many windows looked out on the garden. No one could hope todig up a big thing like that from his back garden without attracting_some_ attention. Besides, he doubted whether he were strong enough todig it up, even if he could do so unobserved. He had not thought of thiswhen he had put the gold there in that other life. He was so muchstronger then. He sighed.
"Got the 'ump, mate?" asked Beale, with his mouth full.
"No, I was just a-thinkin'."
"We'd best buy the sticks first thing," said Beale; "it's a cruel world.'No sticks, no trust' is the landlord's motto."
Do you want to know what sticks they bought? I will tell you. Theybought a rusty old bedstead, very big, with laths that hung loose like ahammock, and all its knobs gone and only bare screws sticking upspikily. Also a flock mattress and pillows of a dull dust color to go onthe bed, and some blankets and sheets, all matching the mattress to ashade. They bought a table and two chairs, and a kitchen fender with around steel moon--only it was very rusty--and a hand-bowl for the sink,and a small zinc bath, "to wash your shirt in," said Mr. Beale. Fourplates, two cups and saucers, two each of knives, forks, and spoons, atin teapot, a quart jug, a pail, a bit of Kidderminster carpet, half apound of yellow soap, a scrubbing-brush and broom, two towels, akettle, a saucepan and a baking-dish, and a pint of paraffin. Also therewas a tin lamp to hang on the wall with a dazzling crinkled tinreflector. This was the only thing that was new, and it cost tenpencehalfpenny. All the rest of the things together cost twenty-six shillingsand sevenpence halfpenny, and I think they were cheap.
But they seemed very poor and very little of them when they were dumpeddown in the front room. The bed especially looked far from its best--amere heap of loose iron.
"And we ain't got our droring-room suit, neither," said Mr. Beale."Lady's and gent's easy-chairs, four hoccasionals, pianner, and foomedoak booreau."
"Curtains," said Dickie--"white curtains for the parlor and short blindseverywhere else. I'll go and get 'em while you clean the winders. Thatold shirt of mine. It won't hang through another washing. Clean 'em withthat."
"You don't give your orders, neither," said Beale contentedly.
The curtains and a penn'orth of tacks, a hammer borrowed from aneighbor, and an hour's cheerful work completed the fortification of theEnglishman's house against the inquisitiveness of passers-by. But thelandlord frowned anxiously as he went past the house.
"Don't like all that white curtain," he told himself; "not much be'indit, if you ask me. People don't go to that extreme in Nottingham lacewithout there's something to hide--a house full of emptiness, mostlikely."
Inside Dickie was telling a very astonished Mr. Beale that there wasmoney buried in the garden.
"It was give me," said he, "for learning of something--and we've got toget it up so as no one sees us. I can't think of nothing but build achicken-house and then dig inside of it. I wish I was cleverer. HereWard would have thought of something first go off."
"Don't you worry," said Beale; "you're clever enough for this poorworld. _You're_ all right. Come on out and show us where you put it.Just peg with yer foot on the spot, looking up careless at the sky."
They went out. And Dickie put his foot on the cross he had scratchedwith the broken bit of plate. It was close to the withered stalk of themoonflower.
"This 'ere garden's in a poor state," said Beale in a loud voice; "wantsturning over's what _I_ think--against the winter. I'll get a spade and'ave a turn at it this very day, so I will. This 'ere old artichook'sgot some roots, I lay."
The digging began at the fence and reached the moonflower, whose rootswere indeed deep. Quite a hole Mr. Beale dug before the tall stalksloped and fell with slow dignity, like a forest tree before the axe.Then the man and the child went in and brought out the kitchen table andchairs, and laid blankets over them to air in the autumn sunlight.Dickie played at houses under the table--it was not the sort of game heusually played, but the neighbors could not know that. The tablehappened to be set down just over the hole that had held the roots ofthe moonflower. Dickie dug a little with a trowel in the blanket house.
After dark they carried the blankets and things in. Then one of theblankets was nailed up over the top-floor window, and on the ironbedstead's dingy mattress the resin was melted from the lid of the potthat Mr. Beale had brought in with the other things from the garden.Also it was melted from the crack of the iron casket. Mr. Beale's eyes,always rather prominent, almost resembled the eyes of the lobster or thesnail as their gaze fell on the embroidered leather bag. And when Dickieopened this and showered the twenty gold coins into a hollow of the drabticking, he closed his eyes and sighed, and opened them again and said--
"_Give_ you? They give you that. I don't believe you."
"You got to believe me," said Dickie firmly. "I never told you a lie,did I?"
"Come to think of it, I don't know as you ever did," Beale admitted.
"Well," said Dickie, "they was give me--see?"
"We'll never change 'em, though," said Beale despondently. "We'd
getlagged for a cert. They'd say we pinched 'em."
"No, they won't. 'Cause I've got a friend as'll change 'em for me, andthen we'll 'ave new clobber and some more furniture, and a carpet and acrockery basin to wash our hands and faces in 'stead of that old tinthing. And a bath we'll 'ave. And you shall buy some more pups. And I'llget some proper carving tools. And our fortune's made. See?"
"You nipper," said Beale, slowly and fondly, "the best day's work ever Idone was when I took up with you. You're straight, you are--one of thebest. Many's the boy would 'ave done a bunk and took the shiners alongwith him. But you stuck to old Beale, and he'll stick to you."
"That's all right," said Dickie, beginning to put the bright coins backinto the bag.
"But it ain't all right," Beale insisted stubbornly; "it ain't no good.I must 'ave it all out, or bust. I didn't never take you along of me'cause I fancied you like what I said. I was just a-looking out for anipper to shove through windows--see?--along of that redheaded chap whatyou never set eyes on."
"I've known that a long time," said Dickie, gravely watching the candleflicker on the bare mantel-shelf.
"I didn't mean no good to you, not at first I didn't," said Beale, "whenyou wrote on the sole of my boot. I'd bought that bit of paper andpencil a-purpose. There!"
"You ain't done me no 'arm, anyway," said Dickie.
"No--I know I ain't. 'Cause why? 'Cause I took to you the very firstday. I allus been kind to you--you can't say I ain't." Mr. Beale wasconfused by the two desires which make it difficult to confess anythingtruthfully--the desire to tell the worst of oneself and the desire to dofull justice to oneself at the same time. It is so very hard not toblacken the blackness, or whiten the whiteness, when one comes to tryingto tell the truth about oneself. "But I been a beast all the same," saidMr. Beale helplessly.
"Oh, stow it!" Dickie said; "now you've told me, it's all square."
"You won't keep a down on me for it?"
"Now, should I?" said Dickie, exasperated and very sleepy. "Now all isopen as the day and we can pursue our career as honorable men andcomrades in all high emprise. I mean," he explained, noticing Mr.Beale's open mouth and eyes more lobster-like than ever--"I mean that'sall right, farver, and you see it don't make any difference to me. Iknows you're straight now, even if it didn't begin just like that. Let'sget to bed, shan't us?"
Mr. Beale dreamed that he was trying to drown Dickie in a pond full ofstewed eels. Dickie didn't dream at all.
* * * * *
You may wonder why, since going to the beautiful other world took notime and was so easy, Dickie did not do it every night, or even at oddtimes during the day.
Well, the fact was he dared not. He loved the other life so much that hefeared that, once again there, he might not have the courage to returnto Mr. Beale and Deptford and the feel of dirty clothes and the smell ofdust-bins. It was no light thing to come back from that to this. And nowhe made a resolution--that he would not set out the charm of Tinkler andseal and moon-seeds until he had established Mr. Beale in an honorablecalling and made a life for him in which he could be happy. A greatundertaking for a child? Yes. But then Dickie was not an ordinary child,or none of these adventures would ever have happened to him.
The pawnbroker, always a good friend to Dickie, had the wit to see thatthe child was not lying when he said that the box and the bag and thegold pieces had been given to him.
He changed the gold pieces stamped with the image of Queen Elizabeth forothers stamped with the image of Queen Victoria. And he gave five poundsfor the wrought-iron box, and owned that he should make a little--a verylittle--out of it. "And if your grand society friends give you any moretreasures, you know the house to come to--the fairest house in thetrade, though I say it."
"Thank you very much," said Dickie; "you've been a good friend to me. Ihope some day I shall do you a better turn than the little you make outof my boxes and things."
The Jew sold the wrought-iron box that very week for twenty guineas.
And Dickie and Mr. Beale now possessed twenty-seven pounds. New clotheswere bought--more furniture. Twenty-two pounds of the money was put inthe savings bank. Dickie bought carving tools and went to theGoldsmiths' Institute to learn to use them. The front bedroom was fittedwith a bench for Dickie. The back sitting-room was a kennel for the dogswhich Mr. Beale instantly began to collect. The front room was aparlor--a real parlor. A decent young woman--Amelia by name--wasengaged to come in every day and "do for" them. The clothes they worewere clean; the food they ate was good. Dickie's knowledge of an orderedlife in a great house helped him to order life in a house that waslittle. And day by day they earned their living. The new life was fairlystarted. And now Dickie felt that he might dare to go back through thethree hundred years to all that was waiting for him there.
"But I will only stay a month," he told himself, "a month here and amonth there, that will keep things even. Because if I were longer therethan I am here I should not be growing up so fast here as I shouldthere. And everything would be crooked. And how silly if I were a grownman in that life and had to come back and be a little boy in this!"
I do not pretend that the idea did not occur to Dickie, "Now that Bealeis fairly started he could do very well without me." But Dickie knewbetter. He dismissed the idea. Besides, Beale had been good to him andhe loved him.
The white curtains had now no sordid secrets to keep--and when thelandlord called for the rent Mr. Beale was able to ask him to stepin--into a comfortable room with a horsehair sofa and a big, worneasy-chair, a carpet, four old mahogany chairs, and a table with a cleanblue-and-red checked cloth on it. There was a bright clock on themantelpiece, and vases with chrysanthemums in them, and there were redwoollen curtains as well as the white lace ones.
"You're as snug as snug in here," said the landlord.
"Not so dusty," said Beale, shining from soap; "'ave a look at mydawgs?"
He succeeded in selling the landlord a pup for ten shillings and cameback to Dickie sitting by the pleasant firelight.
"It's all very smart," he said, "but don't you never feel the fidgets inyour legs? I've kep' steady, and keep steady I will. But in thespring--when the weather gets a bit open--what d'you say to shutting upthe little 'ouse and taking the road for a bit? Gentlemen do it even,"he added wistfully. "Walking towers they call 'em."
"I'd like it," said Dickie, "but what about the dogs?"
"Oh! Amelia'd do for them a fair treat, all but Fan and Fly, as 'ud goalong of us. I dunno what it is," he said, "makes me 'anker so after theroad. I was always like it from a boy. Couldn't get me to school, sothey couldn't--allus after birds' nests or rabbits or the like. Not butwhat I liked it well enough where I was bred. I didn't tell you, did I,we passed close longside our old 'ome that time we slep' among the furzebushes? I don't s'pose my father's alive now. But 'e was a game oldchap--shouldn't wonder but what he'd stuck it out."
"Let's go and see him some day," said Dickie.
"I dunno," said Beale; "you see, I was allus a great hanxiety to 'im.And besides, I shouldn't like to find 'im gone. Best not know nothing.That's what I say."
But he sighed as he said it, and he filled his pipe in a thoughtfulsilence.