Читать книгу The children and the pictures - Pamela Grey - Страница 5

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... That ancient festival, the Fair,

Below, the open space through every nook,

Of the wide area twinkles, is alive

With heads; the midway region and above

Is thronged with staring pictures and huge scrolls,

Dumb proclamations of the Prodigies,

With chattering monkeys dangling from their poles

And children whirling in their roundabouts,

With those that stretch the neck and strain the eyes,

And crack the voice in rivalship ...

the prelude

AFTER the village children had disappeared into the wood, Clare turned to join her brothers. She found them clustered round Fieldmouse and Robin.

“Whose fortune shall I tell now, good people?” Mousie was saying, her upper lip drawn into a point, so that her mouth was shaped like the tiniest V.

“Mine, please,” said Clare, “how do you do it?”

“O,” said Rob; “she learnt it in our great adventure; she learnt it from the gipsies. Didn’t you know we’d had a great adventure?”

“No, when?”

“We were stolen by gipsies, and kept away from Mother and Father a whole six weeks,” said Robin.

“And then we only got back by being tied up in bags, so that they thought we were barley.”

“Oh, tell us all about it,” cried the others.

And as they cared to hear it, perhaps you will care to hear it, and so here is their story from beginning to end.

The Story of the Children and the Gipsies.

Charlotte and Henry Spencer lived with their father and mother at Blenheim Palace, in the County of Oxfordshire. Blenheim Palace was the name of their home, and it may be seen to this day, standing in all its magnificence in the midst of a great park. For Charlotte and Henry were the children of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, and Blenheim Palace was the gift of a grateful nation to their great-grandfather, John Churchill, the first duke. He it is you read of in your History books, who won the battles of Ramilies and Malplaquet, Oudenarde and Blenheim, fighting against the French; and his Duchess Sarah was famous for her beauty, and was the friend of Queen Anne.

Reynolds.

THE FORTUNE-TELLER.

These children then lived, as I have said, at this great Palace, and were dressed in red velvet and feathers, and taught to dance the minuet and gavotte. There were no trains in their day, and no telegrams or motor-cars. They travelled by the stage-coach if they came up to London, and life was in many ways rougher and cruder then than it is now.

If a message were needed, a man had to saddle a horse and gallop miles with it, or perhaps foot-runners were engaged. And this means that a man, footsore and mud-stained, might arrive suddenly at your father’s door, having run or ridden over half the country, with a note to deliver in his hand. Charlotte and Henry knew a very different England to what we know now in many ways; yet essentially it was the same. The flower seeds in their garden plots grew in just the same manner as do yours, and when they went bird-nesting they found just the same kind of nests in the same kind of hiding-places as you do now. The wren’s nest, made of last year’s leaves, because it is built in a beech-wood, and the one made of green moss, because it is built in a yew-tree; these they knew just as you know them, because these belong to the kind of things that don’t change. So you may imagine them, when at last they had finished their lessons, which occupied many more hours of the day than yours, you may imagine them running out to the hay-field, which looked to them just as you see it, or running to the dairy, which held the same cool pans of creamy milk. But in one way perhaps their condition was different; they were so rarely left alone. They had always a nurse or governess or a tutor with them; and if they were with their parents, they had to sit so quiet in the large rooms that it was little or no pleasure to be there. They lived in the days that Miss Taylor writes of when she says:

Good little boys should never say

“I will,” and “give me these!”

Oh no—that never is the way,

But “Madam, if you please.”

And “If you please,” to sister Anne,

Good boys to say are ready;

And “Yes, Sir,” to a gentleman,

And “Yes, Ma’am,” to a lady.

Those were the days of strict upbringing and formal manners. If a little child wouldn’t dress quickly, she was left in her night-gown all day; or if two little girls quarrelled over two new dolls that they loved intensely, their mothers would send these two new dolls back at once to the shop from which they were bought; and no matter how many tears, no forgiveness.

Well, as one result of all this strict surveillance Charlotte and Henry developed a passion for being alone. The words “to escape” were to them words of magical import, and they would sometimes lean out of their little beds towards each other whispering long plans. It began something like this:

“Mousie?”

“Yes——?”

“Are you asleep?”

“No—are you?”

“No. I say.”

“Yes?”

“Shall we escape?”

“O-O-Oh....”

This was Mousie putting her lips in that particular way she has, and running her little eyebrows up. And this was not a conversation of one evening, it was a conversation of a hundred rush-light vigils, the burden of a hundred corner-talks. And to run from one end of a hay-field to another was a joy, and to look at the wide world from the window of the family coach, was an enchantment.

One day, as they were walking with their governess in the gardens, something unusual occurred. Mousie cut her hand badly with a sharp strand of Pampas grass, and the blood flowed so swiftly from the fingers that the governess became alarmed. Hurrying the child into the gardener’s cottage she asked for cold water and a bandage for the wound. Robin followed, distressed and silent, while the gardener’s wife eagerly fetched everything she could supply.

“We must bathe it in vinegar before bandaging,” said the governess, “and if this is beyond your power to provide, my good woman, I will myself go and fetch some from the house. Lady Charlotte must take no undue exertion till the wound is properly tied.” And Mrs. Goodenough left the cottage immensely perturbed, walking past the good gardener’s wife in the doorway, as if no such person held open the door.

Mousie had other manners, however, and now her whole mind was centred on the actions of the kindly woman who had done all so willingly.

“I’m afraid your basin is stained, I am so sorry, I didn’t know that grass cut.”

“And how should you, my lady? ’tis a nasty cut surely, and as for the basin there’s no manner of harm done at all. I’m that sorry I’ve no vinegar for your ladyship, but Peter was to buy me some coming back from the fair.”

“From the fair! O, what fair?” said both the children.

“Why, Woodstock Fair,” said the woman; “the road has just been packed with gipsy vans and menageries, and tinkers, and droves of ponies—just packed, for the last few days! But you wouldn’t be seeing that, being never on the common roads, as a body might put it. But George and Peter are away to see the fun, and to bring us all fairings.” Smiling she went to the lintel to see if Mrs. Goodenough were returning from her quest. Mousie and Rob looked at each other, and their eyes exchanged the same thought.

What longing possessed them to visit the fair; they knew well enough what it meant, for they had had a nursery maid who used to tell them; and now to think the fat lady, and the mermaid in a bottle, and the double-headed calf and the clowns, and the cocoanuts were, so to speak, at their very door. How should they get there? It was no use asking to go, for fairs were common things; only common people went to them, that is how Mrs. Goodenough would have answered the request. Yet go they must, thought Rob; and “Mousie,” he whispered, “shall we escape?”

Mrs. Brown was standing at the doorway and heard no sound of Robin’s whisper, nor caught a glimpse of Mousie’s bright-eyed response. She only turned away as being satisfied Mrs. Goodenough was not yet in sight, and she might set about some household task.

But Robin held his little black hat with the white plume across it in his hand, and in his finest manner stepped to meet her.

“We thank you very much, Mrs. Brown,” he said, “for your kindness. Charlotte’s hand is no longer bleeding, and we will follow Mrs. Goodenough from your door.”

“Do’ee stay, my dear,” said the cottage woman. “I shouldn’t like to see ’ee leave the cottage till Madam return: do’ee sit down by the settle and I’ll fetch the kittens for ’ee, they are but in the wood-shed at the back.”

But Robin’s mind had but one thought, and Mousie’s hand was clasped in his.

“Come away, come away,” he said, “Mousie, we’ll escape, we’ll escape to the fair.”

Do you think Mousie needed any further instigation? wasn’t the lovely freedom implied in the word “escape” enough? They had no one round them to whom their naughtiness would give pain; displeasure had till now but followed the commission of a fault. It is only when children really love those around them, that they hold some rein upon their fitful desires. Only when they stop to say: “Will it grieve Mummie if I do it?” is there a chance of their denying themselves.

Robin and Mousie knew only severity, so their inclination was a thing to be pursued, especially if it outweighed in pleasure the chastisement it might bring. They were soon running down the drive, and dodging among the bushes, clambering over fences, dropping into ditches, in the best manner of a runaway thief. How their hearts pounded against their ribs, how their cheeks glowed from running. And how wonderful it was to be alone; and to be so excited and happy.

Sometimes a rabbit would dart away among the bracken, its white scut bobbing up the hillside. And once when they sat down to rest, shielded by the high undergrowth, a large heron rose majestically from near.

“How lovely it all is,” sighed Robin; “at last we’ve escaped.”